Author Archives: Thelma

Lone

I was weeding a flower bed a few minutes ago, taking advantage of these sweet long evenings before the biting insects emerge. I would be outside all day long at this time of year if I could, but usually I have to steal a few minutes here and there.

A small flock of Canada geese flew down the river towards Yeo’s Bridge, probably aiming for the fresh-water pond just beyond. They were very low and close enough to me that I could hear their whistling wings. A few minutes later, I heard and saw another goose up the river, wheeling around in an unusual way. Then, as I was fully occupied with destroying some particularly stubborn weeds, a loud call came suddenly from the river just in front of me.

There was the lone goose, bobbing along in the water in the direction as the small flock had gone, calling over and over, the same call as when they are flying overhead, which I always imagine to be “here we are, stay together, don’t straggle, we can do it!”

But this was sadder, one insistent voice and no response. It cried, for that’s how it sounded to me, for at least five minutes, swimming further away. A mourning dove in the woods kept it company, coo wooo wooo wooo, you’re not alone.

And then it stopped. I will imagine it heard its friends and flew to join them in the pond.

Why is this man smiling?

Dear government comms people,

When official photos are taken, make sure they take two: one happy and one solemn.

Or maybe just buy a couple of ads a year without someone’s mug on it? Trust me, we won’t notice the lack of smiling politicians as much as we will take note of ghoulish grinning.

Sincerely,

Those of us still reading newspapers

Can you handle this brush?

My attempts to find a reasonably-priced wooden scrub brush with a handle to use outside to clean garden buckets, tools and feed and water dishes for the hens have never been successful. There are tons of plastic ones, but the bristles start falling out after just a few uses and the plastic breaks down over time.

A couple of years ago I found a small wooden brush, much like the scrub brushes my mother used to use to clean floors, but this one had a hole for a handle. The bristles seem to be non-plastic, probably from hogs, probably from China. Not ideal, no doubt a by-product of industrial farming, but better than plastic, I guess?

The brush worked okay, but was a bit too big and unwieldy for smaller items and, as I’m often cleaning things in sub-zero temperatures, not having a handle meant wet, cold hands.

Yesterday I looked at the brush and thought I might be able cut it in two and add a handle to each half, thereby creating a more nimble tool and getting two brushes out of one: one for garden things and one for hen things. So that’s what I did.

*Cut the end of the handle at a bit of an angle for easier scrubbing.*

I pulled a wooden rake handle from my bucket of “pointy things used in the garden” (rebar, many old broom and rake handles, a couple of pieces from an old TV antenna) and cut one end so it would sit flat against the top of the brush. I screwed the handle on, cut it to the length I needed, and that was it, quick and easy. I added a hole at the end to attach some twine to hang it up and I’m all ready for more comfortable scrubbing.

The handle turned out to be made from a beautiful and extremely hard red wood. I’ve no idea what kind it is, and possibly it, too, is from China. It was a surprising pleasure to drill into it, pushing hard against the firm tight grain, and watch red curls come out in the drill bit. It is satisfying to know I am reusing this piece of wood after the rake head it once held fell apart, ensuring the tree that stretched and grew towards the light, sheltered birds, animals, insects and bacteria, brushed against its neighbour, felt the rain and watched the moon and sun dance across the sky, did not fall in vain.

Food/Not Food

If you are unsure if something is a food, a good test is to put it outside and see what happens (most memorably done by Spy magazine in 1989 when they put a Twinkie cake on a NYC window ledge for four days and not even the pigeons went near it!).

I found three stale rice cakes in the back of a cupboard this morning and tossed them onto the lawn, confident some creature would eat them. The crows arrived quickly, took a few bites and passed, as did their bluejay cousins. A red squirrel triumphantly grabbed one, probably excited by how large and relatively light it was, scurried up a pine tree, took a nibble and dropped it to the ground.

I gathered up the rice cakes and presented them to the hens, who have pecked at them with little enthusiasm for four hours. They will probably finish them, but it will take a while. Their diet includes grit and small stones, so they are used to eating things without obvious (to us) nutritional value.

Not food.

“*Why did you give us styrofoam? We’ll eat it, of course, but…styrofoam?”*

Another Planet

In the end, it went by so quickly. We went outside just before 3:30pm as the moon started to move in front of the sun. By 4:30 the sun was almost hidden, the temperature had dropped a few degrees, the light was odd, the birds were quiet, the wind had died down.

Then gulp, the moon ate the sun, we took off our eclipse viewing glasses, and we were on another planet, a twilight planet where a ring glowed in the sky. I had anticipated our hens would head for their coop as it darkened, which is what they do every evening, needing to get up high on a roost as their eyesight is poor in dim light. Instead they kept pecking until it was too late, and they gathered together, confused, huddled next to a shrub. They heard their automatic chicken door shut, and knew something was up. It all happened so fast.

I was anticipating pitch black, but instead the horizon glowed, there was blue sky. It felt as almost like sunrise, except we were facing west. We could see a planet, maybe Jupiter, just below the sun. The sky that had been cloudlessly clear all afternoon had wispy clouds, but that just added to the magic. We had nearly three minutes of totality, but it felt like a second.

Then the light roared back in a whoosh, the strange shadows returning, our glasses back on to see the rest of the show. I stayed outside for another hour, watching the moon move away, the hens back to their scratch scratch pick pick dance. Then I had supper, the winds picked up, the birds started to fly around again, the sun shone brightly.

Preclipse

It’s cool, bright and sunny here this morning. Around 3:30 this afternoon, we will step outside our house and watch the moon eat the sun. We should experience 2 minutes and 47 seconds of totality here. I bought viewing glasses months ago, signed up to do some citizen science, and now just have to wait for this once-in-many-lifetimes event.

If what I heard on CBC is true and a total solar eclipse only happens in a specific location on average every 375 years, the last time a total solar eclipse occurred where we live would have been around 1650, and this land would be have been covered by an ancient forest: beautiful tall white pine, red oak, birch, maple, spruce. The red squirrels, chickadees, blue jays, crows and ravens we see here year-round would be flying and running around, perhaps joined by a now-extirpated species, the black bear. My ancestors were still all in the UK, 100 years from even thinking about heading west, so maybe a Mi’kmaq family were on the river fishing when early night came and went.

When bidden, Perplexity “curated” a playlist for the event, but left off some obvious (to my human brain anyway) choices: Moonlight Sonata, Claire de Lune, Here Comes The Sun. And, of course, You’re So Vain, with its line about some pompous fella taking his Learjet to Nova Scotia to see the 1972 solar eclipse. Did you know Carly Simon’s daughter, Sally, now lives in Halifax? The media has truly covered every angle under the sun.

We won’t be blasting music here, but will instead watch and listen to how the birds and animals around us respond. I’m going to let our little flock of hens run around the yard and watch them head back to the safety of their coop as it starts to get dark, then wait to see if they reemerge after their shortest night ever. I will report.

For a total solar eclipse, Perplexity suggests:

“Total Eclipse of the Heart” by Bonnie Tyler
“Blinded by the Light” by Bruce Springsteen
“Blinding Lights” by The Weeknd
“Solar Eclipse” by YoungBoy Never Broke Again
“Moon at the Window” by Joni Mitchell
“Blue Moon” by Billie Holiday
“Starman” by David Bowie
“Space is the Place” by Sun Ra
“Eclipse” by Earl Sweatshirt
“Moonlight” by Jay-Z and Kali Uchis
“Seven” by Taylor Swift
“Moonshadow” by Cat Stevens
“The Moon and the Sky” by Sade
“Eclipse” by JACE Carrillo and Alyko
“La Noche de Anoche” by Bad Bunny and Rosalía
“Eclipse” by LOONA’s Kim Lip
“Eclipse” by GOT 7
“Eclipse” by MAMAMOO’s Moonbyul
“Eclipse” by Pink Floyd
“Gravity” by John Mayer

Retail Humour 1964

My parents’ grocery store was part of the Lucky Dollar brand. They were independent owners but benefited by being able to purchase stock through the Lucky Dollar centralized system, giving them more favourable wholesale prices, and being included in the Lucky Dollar advertising, which was mostly limited to a large one or two page ad in the local papers that showed the weekly specials.

My mother or father would tear that ad out from the paper and it would hang over their cash register so they could refer to it as they rang up customer orders.

Here’s one they probably didn’t bother to put over the register, although they might well have stuck it up somewhere else in the store so people could get a chuckle. The regular Lucky Dollar ads were usually pretty dry, so this is zany stuff!

10 Minutes as Thelma Medici

Ton’s lovely description of the unexpected pleasure of being the only visitors at a museum sparked warm memories of my visit to the Bargello museum in Florence.

It had been a dream of mine to visit Florence ever since I took a Renaissance art history course at Mount Allison University, so when I did get there 15 years later, I wanted to see every piece of art in the city, which is a mighty tall order! I did very well, cramming pretty much everything I had wanted to see into the four days we had to explore.

My sister-in-law and her then-partner, who live in England, had both been there before and took a much more sensible and leisurely pace. Dear Steven stuck with me for the first two days, but after I inflicted both the Uffizi and the Pitti Palace on him on the second day, he cheerfully waved me off early on the third morning and met up with me later.

I’m grateful I kept a good journal of that trip, pasting in tickets and cards of places we visited. It’s only because of that foresight that I have a good record of the morning I was Thelma Medici:

Monday, November 3, 2003

Up early and off to the Bargello via the San Lorenzo market, which opens at 7 am. Beautiful things everywhere, the vegetables so fresh and plentiful, so much to see.

Arrive at the Bargello at about 8, too early, so go for a cappuccino at a little place close by. The man behind the counter had a classic sophisticated look: well-groomed dark hair and moustache, dark trousers, freshly-pressed white shirt, maybe a little sad looking. No other customers.

I watch as he opens a bottle of sparkling wine or champagne with a pop, puts another stopper in and puts it away again. A few minutes later, an older man comes in. They say a few brief words to each other in Italian and the waiter pours the man a drink from the bottle he had just opened, like he had been expecting him, which I imagine he had.

Finish my coffee and head to the Bargello. It had been a prison at one time, as well as a place of execution. You first walk into the courtyard where the gallows once were. I go straight into a room where Verrochio’s David stood all on his own. After years of improper cleaning and restoration, they think they have him back in his original finish: dark with beautiful highlights. Also he is no longer standing on Goliath’s head, but rather the head is off to one side as they believe it was meant to be. Not a very big work, but powerful. Sweet face.

The museum is not particularly well signed, so I decide to wander up a staircase and end up in a room with various carved ivories, and into another room filled with a mishmash of antiquities, jewellery, and paintings.

The next large room turns out to be the Donatello room. What will always make this my favourite place in Florence is my great fortune to be here by myself for what seemed like a long time. There was the original St. George from Orsanmichele looking off into the distance and the stone relief below. Then his St. John and his two Davids. Also the competition panels for the Baptistry doors by Ghiberti and Brunelleschi, more Donatellos, Della Robbias and Ghibertis.

So wonderful, and, for about 10 minutes, the beauty in this huge hall with its sleepy guard was miraculously all mine.

Finally, the doors swung open and in trooped a noisy tour, so I continue on to the Giambolgna loggia to see his amazing bird sculptures.

If I visited today I might snap a quick photo on my phone to capture the moment, but it lives only in my diary and in my head. The heavy quiet, the morning light through the windows, the hard floor. Donatello’s two Davids are especially clear: his early stiff marble giant-slayer, and the later sinuous, seductive bronze. My art history professor at Mt. A told us that the flirtatious pose of the bronze work clearly showed that David had seduced Goliath and then, when the giant was distracted by the youngster’s beauty, David cut his head off. The professor’s proof of this was that David is still holding the rock that the Bible says he hurled at Goliath to knock him out, not needing to use it at all to capture and defeat Goliath. Who knows? For a few minutes, it was all mine.

I remember the rainy early morning drive from my sister-in-law’s house in Ipswich to the Stansted airport for the cheap Ryanair flight to Pisa. I wasn’t giving any thought, as I would now, to climate change or my carbon footprint because that wasn’t at all part of travel for most of us then. All I was thinking was that I needed to make the most of that quick trip to Florence because I might never get another chance. Age and circumstances have made me more grateful for such luxuries of time and opportunity, but it was a rare conscious acknowledgement on the part of my younger self that I was about to do something to carefully imprint on my memory.

It was the last trip I made to Europe, though time will only tell if it will be my final trip; if it was, I am content. David was all mine for a few minutes.

Lardair

I just got back from feeding the hens their supper. When I stepped outside, there it was: a weird smell, like lard, faint but clear. There is no obvious source for this, no nearby rendering plant, food processing or food disposal. I only remember smelling it a few times in my life, always faint, always brief.

This happened at about 4:00 pm. The temperature was +2C and the barometric pressure falling. There was a strong wind from the east, which the old timers always said was where the rain came from, and there is indeed rain and snow forecast for this evening. We had 27 cm of snow fall four days ago on what had been almost bare ground. The river is still completely frozen over.

I’m putting this here so the next time I smell that strange odour I can check to see if it is under similar conditions. I realise I may have just tipped over into “old timer predicts the weather” category.

Lardair. If you’ve smelled it, let me know.

Miami Beach, February 1964

60 years ago tonight, Cassius Clay beat world heavyweight boxing champion Sonny Liston at a match in Miami Beach. Soon after that fight, Clay would take the name Cassius X and then Muhammad Ali.

A few days earlier, the Beatles returned to England after a successful short tour of the US, the start of Beatlemania on this continent. They appeared three times on The Ed Sullivan Show, the biggest variety program on American television, watched by tens of millions each week. Their second appearance was broadcast live from Miami Beach on February 16.

It just so happened that my parents, Harold and Vivian, took their first vacation to Florida in February 1964 and were in Miami Beach on February 16. They were both 41 and had been married for 19 years. They had worked hard to build up their general store business, so were overdue some fun and relaxation. They travelled with my mother’s cousin and her husband. By all accounts, they all had a marvellous time soaking up the sun and seeing the sights of Miami and Daytona.

Harold and Vivian Phillips, Miami Beach, February 1964. They obviously had a snazzy TV in their room, but my mother doesn’t remember if they watched the Beatles on Ed Sullivan on February 16. With few stations on the TV, my guess is they did, but she was more a Perry Como fan and never really got the Beatles.

Bill for nine nights at the Golden Nugget motel, Miami Beach, February 1964.

My father lugged his 8mm Kodak film camera with him, taking plenty of shots of palm trees, orange groves, alligators and swimming pools. He took some footage of BOAC and KLM airplanes outside a terminal somewhere along their Summerside>Moncton>Montreal>NYC>Miami route.

Their handwritten tickets listed their NY airport as IDL for Idlewild, except Idlewild had been renamed JFK in December 1963 just after the assassination of the US president, but obviously the change had been recent enough that no one was used to it.

Moncton to Miami $132.99 return via Tran-Canada and Eastern airlines.

YSU (Summerside) to YQM (Moncton) $14.00 return

One day, the four travellers hopped in their rented convertible and drove around the Miami area, my father aiming his camera at the passing buildings and advertising banner towing planes. When we watched this reel when I was a child, this short sequence would just slip by, but when I had the film digitized, I was able to pause it and have a better look, and quickly fell down a rabbit hole of early 1960s popular culture.

Miami Beach, February 1964, showing advertising banner towing planes, Sonny Liston’s training headquarters at Surfside, Florida, and Hotel Deauville with Mitzi Gaynor on the marquee.

I knew who Mitzi Gaynor was from her movie roles and appearances on television variety shows when I was a child. I looked up the Hotel Deauville and learned it was where the Beatles had stayed in Miami and where their second Ed Sullivan appearance had been recorded, a show that also included Gaynor. Then I read about Sonny Liston’s training camp in Surfside, just north of Miami Beach, and of him appearing on the Ed Sullivan show the same night as the Beatles, and the Beatles also meeting Cassius Clay and posing for a famous photo, and the February 25 boxing match. So much was going on!

The Beatles meeting Cassius Clay/Muhammed Ali at the 5th St. Gym, Miami

I’ve done a few presentations about my father’s film footage to local groups and have used this little clip to encourage people to look at their own photos and videos and to save, document and share what they have. It might take many years before something becomes important or interesting, but if you haven’t saved it, you’ll never know.

What my father filmed isn’t as important as footage of the Beatles or Liston or Ali or even Mitzi Gaynor would be, certainly, but he did capture a few seconds of a time in US history when the country was still trying to come to terms with the assassination of their president only three months earlier, square old Ed Sullivan was kicking off Beatlemania using the huge influence of his television program, and Clay/Ali was on his way to becoming an important sports star as well as a towering figure in the black power, civil rights and anti-Vietnam war movements.

What do you have in that cardboard box in your attic or closet? Nothing much? Look again.

thelmaphillips.ca

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