November's Books

As the month draws to a close, I am just closing the cover on Let The Great World Spin Colm McCann's fictionalized account of events in New York City during the 1970s on the day when a man walked across a tightrope strung between the World Trade Center towers. It's a great character study, with the city itself one of the main characters, and stands quite nicely as a much more compact and unassuming companion to Don Delillo's Underworld.

Last month I read Richard DuFour's book on Professional Learning Communities, Learning by Doing. This month, I'm reading David Townsend's Made In Alberta Reply, Essential Questions. One day soon I hope to update my Exploding Beakers blog with some brief thoughts of these work related books.

I also started reading British historian Eric Hobsbawm's slim volume On The Edge Of A New Century because I was bored one night and frankly too lazy to go all the way downstairs to get my other books out of the trunk of my car. Hobsbawm used to review jazz records under a pseudonym as an undergraduate back in the 1930s, so we get along fine.

With luck, December will be a lot quieter and I'll be able to dip into some pocketbooks.

Books Read
Colm McCann, Let The Great World Spin (2009)

Currently reading:
Eric Hobsbawm, On The Edge Of A New Century (2000)

David Townsend, Pamela Adams - The Essential Question: A Handbook For School Improvement (2009)

J. Lloyd Trump - A School For Everyone (1977)*
Robert T. Kiyosaki, Sharon L. Lechter - Rich Dad, Poor Dad(1997)*
*I'm in no hurry to finish these, but for different reasons

Books Acquired
Zadie Smith, Changing My Mind: Occasional Essays (2009)

How I Spent My Time

I'm a pretty busy guy, it's true. Perhaps I'm a little twisted since my "hobby" is actually more work on top of regular work. Nevertheless, it's fun.

So here's a run down of November:

Under the FastForward Weekly masthead:

Welcome to the Urban Revolution, by Jeb Brugmann

Molina & Johnson, S/T

For the fine folks at Spectrum Culture:

Orenda Fink - Ask the Night

End of the Aughts: Films of the Decade - Brokeback Mountain

End of the Aughts: Songs of the Decade - Kids With Guns

Lou Barlow - Goodnight Unknown

Do Make Say Think - Other Truths

Music Update

Where did the month go? It started with a bit of a lull as Bowie or Bust wound down, giving me some time to listen to the fabulous Herbaliser Sessions 1 & 2 album. Blow Your Headphones was a phenomenal album and I can listen to any version of "Mr. Chombee Has The Flaw" you'd care to drop at any time. However subsequent albums saw the band go into a bit of lull until their rejuvenation with last year's Same As It Never Was, so it's great to hear them re-do some of those mid-period songs with renewed verve and energy.

My ipod got a further dose of UK bump courtesy of the (now) London-based Swedish DJ Annie, who released her campy follow-up to 2005's Annimalia this month, with Don't Stop. It's fun, but kinda light, though this particular track bucks that trend a bit.

Jason Molina and Will Johnson teamed up for something a little darker and edgier with the self-titled Molina & Johnson. Johnson plays mostly piano, Molina guitar, and occasionally I think hear someone play a saw. It's the closest thing I can probably get to earlier Songs: Ohia, so I'll take it.

Molina & Johnson were not the only representatives of Austin, TX to make their way to my ears this month as Gordie Johnson of Big Sugar fame released the third album under his metal-punk hybrid vehicle, Grady. Johnson relocated to Austin five years ago after spending some down time back home in Alberta. Good As Dead, the first post-Big Sugar work I've heard from Johnson, takes me back to those "Dear Mr. Fantasy" days.

I also picked up the latest album from The Thermals, Now I Can See, as well as XXXX by You Say Party! We Say Die!. For me, the rough-and-tumble rhetoric of the Thermals trumps the dance floor friendly tunes of YSPWD.

Finally, after weeks of waiting for it's arrival, DJ Spooky's dense The Secret Song is the most recent composition to attract my attention. It'll take a few more spins for all of it's secrets to tumble out.

Darlin' Don't You Go And Cut Your Hair

I need a haircut. I've been quite conscious of my hair for some time now as, the longer it gets, the more out of place it seems in my work environment. It's made me think of how often haircuts play an integral role in self-identity in the early stages of cultural movements ultimately result in those movements being reduced to a haircut (perhaps the subject of another post). I'm not sure what kind of cultural signifier my hair qualifies as these days, but as the youngest person in my office by twelve years, it definitely sets me apart.

I plan on cutting my hair soon, but since I need a shorter haircut for Christmas, I'm caught in a kind of barber limbo and have to tough it out for a few more weeks.

As an aside, when I was much younger, this is what my classmates said my hair resembled:

When I got older, it looked more like this:

Now, I feel it growing increasingly unruly, more like:

In a few more days, I will be a different character altogether:

October Bookends

October was a busy month and November shows no sign of relenting. Having said that, I did manage to finish Jack Whyte's finale to his Templar Knights Trilogy, Order In Chaos. I was very pleased with the way he ended his chronicle with the unfolding of events in France under the reign of Philip the Fair. Last month, I mentioned that I had been a bit disappointed with the middle volume of the series, Standard of Honour; my wife is reading that particular book at the moment and has no such feelings, so maybe it was just me all along.

I am currently reading Let The Great World Spin Colm McCann's fictionalized account of events in New York City during the 1970s on the day when a man walked across a tightrope strung between the World Trade Center towers. The actual events, I believe, are captured in the documentary Man on a Wire, a film that's been on my to-watch list for quite some time. There's been a lot of talk the last few months about how New York has become a squeaky clean city in the wake of the post-9/11 rebuilding and finance bubble. McCann and his characters, a socialite, a prostitute, two Irish brothers (one a priest, the other a writer), all hearken back to that grittier, edgier, New York that we seem to have lost.

The other book I read in October was Richard DuFour's book on Professional Learning Communities, Learning by Doing. It was quite the unintentional experience. I read it for my nine to five work, and while I had some questions about how to translate some of its Message to American Audiences to the Alberta Experience, it nevertheless became obvious that many people I work with had read his earlier work. The result made me laugh, a kind of laughter that allows you to let go of a lot of pent up baggage. I felt a lot of relief afterwards. Not because of anything that that DuFour wrote about facilitating change, but because it was clear that my organization was following his (or similar) principles and all of sudden their goals became clear. It was like discovering the playbook to the other team.

Books Read
Jack Whyte - Order In Chaos (2009)

Richard DuFour, et al., Learning By Doing (2006)

Currently reading:
Colm McCann, Let The Great World Spin (2009)

David Townsend, Pamela Adams - The Essential Question: A Handbook For School Improvement (2009)
J. Lloyd Trump - A School For Everyone (1977)*
Robert T. Kiyosaki, Sharon L. Lechter - Rich Dad, Poor Dad (1997)*
*I'm in no hurry to finish these, but for different reasons

Books Acquired
None

Moms Against Climate Change

I saw this commercial on TV today and it brought a tear to my eye in a completely sincere and non-ironic way.

Because it's totally true in the cynical sense that after watching a decade of post-Battle in Seattle news coverage, I don't think the riot police would stop just because these protestors are children.

I'm also glad that Moms Against Climate Change are running the ad above in an attempt to shame Prime Minister Stephen Harper into action. I don't know what else will. Harper's been letting us down since his election:

Here.

Here.

Here.

Here.

Here.

Here.

And here.

After his uninspiring I'll-go-if-everyone-else-is-going example of leadership regarding the proposed Climate Change conference in Copenhagen, no one will be mistaking him for Lester Pearson anytime soon. Oh wait, Harper isn't really interested in Pearson's legacy, after ignoring the Fiftieth Anniversary of Pearson's Nobel Peace Prize and founding of UN Peacekeeping.

Good job Stephen. Way to make us proud.

Spread the Word

New "What Sister Ray Said" T-Shirts available from Zazzle.ca. Believe it.

I'm Making Some Love and Put My Root Down

It was a gloomy day here in Cowtown. My wife and daughter are at the end stages of their colds, and really all we wanted was some soup. So, with my daughter peeling vegetables, my wife chopping, and myself relegated to washing dishes, we took this:

and added them to this:

to achieve this delicious root vegetable soup:

Understanding Your Family

Sometimes it takes awhile to put two and two together.

This past week I've been asked for my Best Albums of the Decade picks, and in the process of compiling my faves, I realized that there's a significant gap in my record collection during 2003-04. I mentioned this to wife and she matter-of-factly declared "d'uh." It took me a moment to realize that she was referring to the birth of our daughter in 2003. With her birth, I took a step back from quite a few things to devote time and energy to her. Collecting records easily went on the back burner.

For someone who studies history and pop culture, there are some surprising gaps in my knowledge, specifically for a lot of mainstream pop events that happened from 1974 to about 1982. As my wife and I watched tv tonight, a Kenny Rogers song appeared in the soundtrack. She groaned, expressing her disapproval of the song. I shrugged and admitted that I didn't know it, musing, "Sometimes I think the seventies never happened in my house." No sooner did I say it, than I suddenly realized why - the seventies were a hectic time for my parents, with the births of my brother and I followed by our move from Vancouver to Calgary. My parents were too busy being parents to indulge in the pop ephemera of the seventies.

Goodnight and Farewell, Reverend Ron

Earlier today I heard that Calgary community radio station CJSW (my good friends and family), lost one of their most iconic voices in the Reverend Ron, long-running host of The Blues Witness. Reverend Ron was a fixture during my time at the Station, from 1994-2003, and for the last few years I had the good pleasure of of hosting on Wednesday evenings from 4:00 - 6:00 PM, just prior to the Blues Witness. Ron and I saw eye to eye on a lot theories about radio, despite some of the curmudgeonly airs he would sometimes put on. At heart, Ron believed in music and he believed in people. He believed in both very strongly, and would often aggravate people who wanted the one without the other. But that was the point. Radio and music ought to be of the people, and Ron was never afraid to remind us of that.

Somewhere tonight, we know that the Reverend Ron has his own spot in the Church of Get Down Choir he so often celebrated.

Ilie Nastase - That's How He Rolled

Want it? Need it? Christmas is coming.

October Progress Report

So, on the one hand, I'm statistically falling even further behind. On the other, I think I've stumbled back into a productive groove, doing a significant amount of creative writing early weekend mornings, bulking up Games of Chance with transcribing a fair amount of the handwritten copy I wrote during the summer.

I also managed to edit and upload the short story "Psychic Hearts" - while not technically part of my Twilight of the Idles quartet, it is set in the same late 1990s Calgary and would probably be best packaged with them.

Short Stories:
"Of Light and Darkness" - in revision*
* this is part of my Twilight of the Idle short story series along with"Labellypock", "A Night on the Fronde" and "Out of Time (Ped Xing)"
"How My Uncle Faught The Spanish Civil War" - 1000 words
"Il Brute" - 700 words, a short story about living in Bridgeland

Novel Ideas (and working titles):
A Saturday Afternoon By The Slurpee Machine - 2100 words, growing up in NE Calgary, circa 1990
Games of Chance - 14590 words, quasi-related to the current economic downturn
The Last Days of the Daily Wenzel - 8150 words
Father Borsato di Sangi - notes only, about a priest in small town Alberta, circa 1910,
Mt. Pilatus Calls My Name - notes only, a corporate satire

Good Ideas At The Time (Whole draft novels):
joculatores domini - in revision, a novel about parking attendants and the Calgary Stampede
The Liminal Trip - in revision, backpacking through Europe,

October's Total Word Count: 2590

Two other things

Here are two other things I managed to squeeze out of my limited free time:

Orenda Fink: Ask The Night

Best Films of the Decade: Brokeback Mountain

Things I've Done Recently

As my nine-to-five threatens to extend way beyond it's proper borders, I have managed to eke out a few things on the side:

The Big Pink: A Brief History of Love

Said The Whale: Islands Disappear

The Pastels/Tenniscoats: Two Sunsets

Jeb Brugman: Welcome to the Urban Revolution

Enjoy.