Snow-Flakes

I absolutely don’t mind receiving those gifts where you can guess the contents even before they’re unwrapped, namely books and CDs. One of my favourite Christmas gifts this year is a nicely proportioned, well-designed little book full of snow poems, A Mind of Winter. Clearly poets have an affinity for the white stuff and this collection has some beauties. I’m particularly enjoying this one by Mr Longfellow (1807–1882):

Snow-Flakes

Out of the bosom of the Air,
Out of the cloud-folds of her garments shaken,
Over the woodlands brown and bare,
Over the harvest-fields forsaken,
Silent, and soft, and slow
Descends the snow.

Even as our cloudy fancies take
Suddenly shape in some divine expression,
Even as the troubled heart doth make
In the white countenance confession,
The troubled sky reveals
The grief it feels.

This is the poem of the air,
Slowly in silent syllables recorded;
This is the secret of despair,
Long in its cloudy bosom hoarded,
Now whispered and revealed
To wood and field.

The History Boys

This is a movie I have to see this Christmas. The Globe & Mail’s Johanna Schneller (The Moviegoer) gives her magical movie moments of 2006 (“not my Best Of list ... more of a thank-you note.”) and has this to say about The History Boys:

Richard Griffiths dissects a poem in The History Boys. How do you dramatize what a great teacher does? Movies about the glory of education usually rely on big moments — teachers jumping onto desks, students speaking rapidly in a frenzy of intellectual revelation. Instead, this film has one exquisite scene in which Griffiths sits with a single student and mentions a few things about a poem. In the questions he asks and the gentle manner in which he asks them, you learn everything you need to know about this man, you absorb everything the movie is saying about teaching — and you actually feel what it is to learn, the quiet, private thrill of thinking.

’Nuff said?

Some People

Some people
ascend out of our life, some people
enter our life,
uninvited and sit down,
some people
calmly walk by, some people
give you a rose,
or buy you a new car,
some people
stand so close to you, some people,
you've entirely forgotten
some people, some people
are actually you,
some people
you've never seen at all, some people
eat asparagus, some people
are children,
some people climb up on the roof,
sit down at table,
lie around in hammocks, take walks with their red
umbrella,
some people look at you,
some people have never noticed you at all, some people
want to take your hand, some people
die during the night,
some people are other people, some people are you, some people
don't exist,
some people do.

“Some People” written by Rolf Jacobsen and translated by Robert Bly, from The Winged Energy of Delight. © Harper Collins Publishers.

Covers

My covers, my friends’ covers, my neighbours’ covers.

Diana Fayt makes beautiful bowls

Via design*sponge, the work of Diana Fayt is simply gorgeous. Apparently a combination of ceramics and printmaking, these works have a whimsical, sketchbooky quality I can't quite get over. Great colour sensibility as well. Would be nice to own one!

Best folk CDs of 2006

Well, since we’re talking about favourites, how about Folk Alley's Top 10 Folk CDs for 2006? I own only two of them but I’ve already exceeded my quota for December. (the Canadians do quite well, don’t they?!)

1. Wailin’ Jennys: Firecracker

2. Hem: Funnel Cloud

3. Kieran Kane, Kevin Welch & Fats Kaplin: Lost John Dean

4. Linda Ronstadt & Ann Savoy: Adieu False Heart

5. Mark Knopfler/Emmylou Harris: All the Roadrunning

6. The Duhks: Migrations

7. Antje Duvekot: Big Dream Boulevard

8. Michael McGoldrick: Wired

9. Solas: Reunion: A Decade of Solas

10. Bruce Cockburn: Life Short, Call Now

Joseph’s favourite book covers 2006

Joseph over at The Book Design Review lists his favourite book covers for 2006. They are something to behold.

The Door

When she came suddenly in
It seemed the door could never close again,
Nor even did she close it – she, she –
The room lay open to a visiting sea
Which no door could restrain.

Yet when at last she smiled, tilting her head
To take her leave of me,
Where she had smiled, instead
There was a dark door closing endlessly,
The waves receded.

Robert Graves

Despite and Still

Have you not read
The words in my head,
And I made part
Of your own heart?
We have been such as draw
The losing straw —
You of your gentleness,
I of my rashness,
Both of despair —
Yet still might share
This happy will:
To love despite and still.
Never let us deny
The thing's necessity,
But, O, refuse
To choose,
Where chance may seem to give
Love in alternative.

Robert Graves, 1958

Brush & Ink

Ward Schumaker has such a nice way with an inkpot.

“Romance has been reduced to a boob graze”

Or so says Johanna Schneller, “The Moviegoer” columnist at The Globe and Mail. And who can argue?

“What I want for Christmas can’t be found. I am pining for a strong, smart, sexy, grown-up romance. Not a romantic comedy, where everything is fey and giggly. Not romance as a subplot in an action/adventure picture. I want a movie where love is the point — face-flushing, heart-racing, tears-streaming love....

“....Hollywood has lost faith in love. It has lost faith that watching a couple go through legitimate ups and downs is inherently interesting — to both sexes. It’s lost faith that words alone can seduce, that romance can be serious, and that it can be funny without pratfalls, fart jokes and fake sobs. It’s lost faith in the unhappy ending, the glorious torture of watching two people who are meant for each other but can’t work it out .... And that loss is a terrible shame, because any adult knows that often the greatest romances are the ones that end.”

Their Lonely Betters

As I listened from a beach-chair in the shade
To all the noises that my garden made,
It seemed to me only proper that words
Should be withheld from vegetables and birds.

A robin with no Christian name ran through
The Robin-Anthem which was all it knew,
And rustling flowers for some third party waited
To say which pairs, if any, should get mated.

Not one of them was capable of lying,
There was not one which knew that it was dying
Or could have with a rhythm or a rhyme
Assumed responsibility for time.

Let them leave language to their lonely betters
Who count some days and long for certain letters;
We, too, make noises when we laugh or weep:
Words are for those with promises to keep.

W.H. Auden, June 1950

My favourite Christmas song this year

The Atheist Christmas Carol by Vienna Teng.

“Thunder on the Mountain”

Newest Dylan video made up entirely of misc. career footage.

Disaster averted

I inadvertently deleted my last.fm account over the weekend. Two and a half years of music listening charts gone forever! But thankfully the last.fm people were able to restore my account to its formerly lustrous glory! How do you spell "whew"?

Speaking of "whew", isn't there something about Deb Talan's (of The Weepies as well as a solo career) voice that just about whistles? I love that quality, esp. in a song like "gotta have you" where she sings "No, nothing else wieiell (whistle) do / I've gotta have you". Be still my heart.

Calvin College and me

The winter issue of my alumni magazine, The Spark, just came out and they've done a profile of yours truly. I haven't actually seen the issue yet but my sister Gwen from Michigan called to tell me about it (the online version can be found here). The photo, by the way, is of me and Alain Leduc, stamp design manager at Canada Post, carefully examining sheets fresh off the press (don't we look serious!) in Ottawa. The photographer is my talented 12-year-old son, Caleb.

Danny *hearts* Jordan

*** missing YouTube video ***

I know I know — some of you disparage the posting of YouTube video on blogs. And yes, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip is a slick Hollywood TV show. Still, the cast is great and the writing is smart and snappy. Plus they've managed a really nice blend of wit and pathos. And then there's the emerging romance between characters Danny Tripp and Jordan McDeere:

“I've been married twice before and I’m a recovering cocaine addict. And I know that’s no woman’s dream of a man — or of a father. Nonetheless I believe I’m falling in love with you. If you wanna run I understand. But you better get a good head start ’cuz I'm coming for you Jordan.”

Addendum: You can download the song "O Holy Night" from the Studio 60 website (worth it!). The above video clip (removed from YouTube) can be found there as well.

Canada’s next Prime Minister

An academic, a “nerd”, a man with a dog named Kyoto, and, if recent history is any indication, this country’s next Prime Minister.* Stéphane Dion was in fifth place going into this weekend’s Liberal leadership hootenanny and even though convention-al wisdom saw the prize going to one of the giants with “star power”, Michael Ignatieff or Bob Rae, the man with little charisma, so-so English, and a geeky reputation (but the most meaningful political experience) emerged the convention victor.

This is how politics is supposed to work. I couldn’t be happier.

*i.e. the newly instated leader of the Liberal Party invariably wins the next election.

Tragedy

“The essence of dramatic tragedy is not unhappiness. It resides in the solemnity of the remorseless working of things.”

— Alfred North Whitehead

Wheatfield with Crows, part I

This is a landscape of a cornfield with birds flying out of it. Look at it for a moment.

Then scroll down and look at the painting again with the caption written beneath it.

Wheatfield with Crows, part II

This is the last picture that Van Gogh painted before he killed himself.

“It is hard to define exactly how the words have changed the image,” says Berger, “but undoubtedly they have. The image now illustrates the sentence.”

From John Berger’s Ways of Seeing.

Southern Ontario, Summer 2006