SANTA CLAUS GOES TROPICAL

Somewhere in the Far Frozen North, some rather suspicious white bearded elf (and I am white bearded and I am suspicious but I ain't no elf) is warming up a bunch of magical reindeer and kicking the skids on his sled

Mr Claus is topping up his windshield wiper and getting ready for a bit of a Christmas Eve flight.

Well so am I. But instead of a sled, Collette and I will strapped into a white metal tube, not proprelled by deer, but by a couple of screaming jet engines

Posting this from the Air Tranist lounge at Pearson International Airport. Such a jolly festive place, what with the screaming babies and the tourists and the 40 dollar sandwhiches and the body cavity searches at Customs .. OK, some of that may have been slightly exaggerated

But the truth is, we are waiting for our flight to wing us to an equally less Christmas like place, the country of Panama. Well OK, they celebrate Christmas there but they don't have no snow nor ice nor howling wind .. And yeh, that's why we're going

They don't have our families either and we will miss that. No, really we will, for once that was not sarcasm. But one of us actually works for a living, deals with all kinds of levels of stress and just needs some down time ... preferably in the ocean, with some sort of adult beverage in hand

As we packed for this trip we estimated that at least a third of our weight would be camera gear. Collette is taking her two Nikon bodies, four lenses, a tripod, a monopod as well as her little Nikon underwater cam. I'm taking my Sony Handycam and my newest toy, a GoPro "sports" cam, a tiny little thing that you strap into various enclosures, including a waterproof one. It comes with a wide variety straps and attachments that allow you to take it with you in virtually any situation. It is shock proof, let us find out if it is Victor proof.

So many images will be taken and eventually processed, I will probably blog a couple of times, though I'm unsure of the connectivity in Panama.

We will miss all of you. Really we will. I will have a rum and a beer for each of you .. god I love having big families.

TRAGIC

Something tragic happened at a school in Connecticut.

Something this is very difficult for me to process. To be honest, that act is something I'm not really prepared to think about at this time. I don't want to dismiss it or ignore it but at this point it's a terrible event about which we know little when you come down to it. This will take time

Another tragedy occurred. On the day of the shooting I turned on my TV, it was set to CNN and there were children, children who had been in the school while their friends and classmates and teachers were being slaughtered, some of them had just exited the school, and they were being interviewed

There was a reporter, an adult, with a mic in the face of these very young kids who had just had something horrible happen to them and they were being asked questions: Who was he, did you see him, do you know which children have been killed ...

What the fuck.

North American media is ruled by ratings and profit. Our lives our ruled by immedicacy; Facebook, emails, Yahoo, all flying at the speed of light. All available right there, right that second, when we want it. Media sees that as competition. They want to put out the story right there, right that second, when they think we want it.

Even if the story is nascent, even if we really don't know what the story is; get it out get it out there fill up the space that may be filled by another source

So let's get a kid who may not be able to properly process what has happened for a long time, and let's put the event in crystal clear focus for them, so that a percieved void in a viewer's life may be filled. "Did you see the gun, did you see a body, do you know you were almost killed"

And no adult seemed to think about it, no one said "Hey, leave the kid alone, this just happened" I saw an adult hand on a child's shoulder as the little girl was asked to elaborate on this horrible event

Tragic

THE CRUELEST POST I'VE EVER WRITTEN ... OR IS IT

The internet is a wonderful thing. I use it many times a day. It's a great place to find information, to solicit opinions, and to gaze for way too long at videos of border collies forming sentences but herding sheep who've had letters painted on them ...

That may just be me

The internet is instant. You see something, you post a response and blam there it is. What one has to bear in mind, of course, is that what you've just seen/heard is also instant, the person who posted it may have done so as an immediate reaction to something, without full consideration of the facts.

This brings me to the case of Jacinta Saladanha. This is the nurse who fell for  a prank phone call from some DJ's  about the health status of the Dutchess of Cambridge. That story surfaced very quickly and people jumped on it just as quickly

Oh how cruel people howled, how awful are these DJs to case this woman to take her life. They are evil, putting this poor woman in such a position ...

Um, hit the pause, drink some camomile tea to swallow down your outrage and think about this. My first response to this story, knowing only that headline was: What the fuck ... she killed herself over a prank phone call.

Then I learned that all she did was transfer a call to another nurse who then disclosed the information. As far as I know that nurse, who violated a confidence is alive and kicking.

Oh and yeh, Mrs Saldanha was married with children, now left behind.

Now more news has emerged: She left notes behind, including detailed funeral arrangements and a letter critical of the hospital and its staff.

So, cruel evil hospital putting this woman in a position to ..

To what? Not be able to gain a grip? Yup that right there is the cruel part of this post. And why the lightspeed nature of the internet can cause us all to lose a grip

People responded to this story, I'm not sure how much they actually thought about it. Why did this woman take her life. Was it actually due to strictly to this one event? Not likely. I'm making assumptions here but surely there were other things going on in this woman's life, this happened so quickly, one wonders if this event was a trigger pulled on a chamber full of misery.

The initial outrage around this story, which centered on the phone prank, was in my opinion very misplaced. These happens all the time. They also happened to the other nurse, the one who actually betrayed a confidence and she seems fine.

The outrage here should be more about the person who took her life and who has now left a wound in the life of those who loved her, a wound that will never properly heal. It is tragic when someone kills themselves but once that act has been commited, the tragedy shifts to the ones they've left behind

When I was in high school there was a guy whose initials were D.K., his last name was very similar to mine. In our "home room" classes in high school they sat us in alphabetical order so I was often seated right behind him. Yeh, we talked.

D was a good guy, easy going, even temprered, good humored; a decent student but not driven by ambition. He didn't care if he was the quarterback or the valedictorian, he had dreams of course but he was not consumed by him. He had a younger brother, G; he was the true golden boy. Top athlete, top student, chick magnet, he was blond and I really did think I saw a light coming off of him ... OK those were my drug experimentation days but still

One day D came home from school and found his younger brother hanging in the garage. G had killed himself. It came out of nowhere. It was totally unexpected. And it changed D's life forever. I have not seen him in a long time but I recall years ago, on a visit to my home town, I flagged down a cab and the driver was D. We chatted an bit and it was clear that, some 15 years after high school, D had not really moved on. G had taken his own life but he had essentially stopped D's life

So it's tragic that Jacintha Salandha took her own life. But the tragedy how it will affect her husband, her children. We are focussed on why she did it; we really don't know. I strongly suspect more information will come out but I honestly don't know if D or his family ever really found out why G killed himself.

Suicide is the ultimate selfish act. You are in pain, you are shattered, you've gone down a path that leads to darkness and you've forgotten the way back. You are in pain and you just need that pain to end. You are in a place where you feel only your pain, see only your darkness, you have ceased to see the ones around you; the ones who love you, who need you, who will be shattered when you're gone

Did a prank phone call cause this woman to kill herself? Her family may be asking that question now. But as time goes on that will diminish, what will be left behind is the void, there will be guild "Why didn't we see this coming, why didn't we know she was in so much pain" These are questions that will alter a life, and perhaps ruin it

That is the real tragedy here. Lives have been ruined, may continue to be ruined. Was that from a phone call, or from a selfish decision.

A prank can hurt people's feeling, it can be cruel. But leaving your loved ones to live on with nothing but doubt and sadness and guilt ... that is cruelty on another level,

SELLING WINTER BY THE SONG

Canada has winters. You may have heard of them: Darkness, cold, snow, seasonal depression disorder. Bad things, these winters. Bad bad.

Luckily I live in Toronto, where lately our winters have more resembled spring; ok a cool less sunny kind of spring, not a Tiffany spring but a Wal Mart Spring.

What I'm saying, of course, is that we have mild winters. Winter usually doesn't start until after Christmas. Still, that doesn't stop us from celebrating winter. We had the Cavalcade of Lights earlier and his weekend we had the Winter Market. Ah, now that is the Toronto way, celebrate the season by enticing people to shop.

Which holidays do you celebrate? Which ones are on sale.

The Winter Market is held at the Distillery District, one of our favorite places to visit, a former .. you guessed it .. distillery first established in the 1800's. With it's cobblestone lanes and red brick buildings and Victorian people-worked-here-till-they-died-charm, it has some how avoided Toronto's condo destruction wave and is used for public events, restaurants and shops.

They did a nice job festooning the site with thousands of lights, a christmas tree maze, carousel and ferris wheel, dozens of vendors housed in little cabins and the obligatory giant Christmas tree

Of course there were Beer Gardens, which in Canada means a patio and in Toronto means patio's with tree-like heaters and in one case wood burning fire places. There were also carollers. Carollers are like mimes, who sing. How bad is that, singing mimes. At least they had better outfits

But they did have the most adorable Elves, three girls who seemed to spout out of nowhere with spontaneous and rissable dancing.

                                     

Luckily the carollers were not the only musical entertainment that the cutie elves could dance to. Royal Wood is a local musician with an unfortunate name (seriously, is this his porn name) but some lovely music. He's won a lot of awards for his songwriting but seems largely unknown .. because he can actually play an instrument, he can actually sing live and is not known to wear belly shirts or dance as if he's riding a horse. I've included a brief clip of his performance in the video below

                                    

So with the dancing elves, some skilled live music and of course some cocoa it was a perfectly lovely spring .. I mean .. winter evening.

LIGHTEN UP LEONARD

The poet stands in the middle of stage. He is tall and thin and dressed in a dark suit and a fedora; he is the epitome of an antiquated word: Dapper. The word suits him as more than just a physical description. For he is an old man, clothed in history, most of it public. He is, after all, a poet, and it his vocation to make the personal public, to let what is inside of him out and he has been doing it for a very long time.

The poet is very still, one hand raised closed to his face, his feet close together, head slightly bowed so that his face is shaded by his fedora. He begins to speak in a voice that voice, a voice more famous than the suit, than the face, than the name of the man; a raspy voice a learned voice a raw voice a cultured voice a passionate voice a measured voice .. the poet's voice.

Music comes to the poet's voice, other voices join in the, the voices of women, women singing, orange lights sweep across the stage, the poet sways to the music and we are taken we are taken away, we are taken to some place, to some other place.

We are taken to the world of Leonard Cohen.

The poet on the stage.

Leonard Cohen is 78 years old. Last night in Toronto he performed a three hour show with a 20 minute intermission. He literally danced off the stage. He made a joke that he has not toured in 15 years but hopes to be turning for two more years; when he turns 80 he wants to take up smoking.

I have been a Cohen fan since I first heard the album The Songs of Leonard Cohen sometime in the early 1970's. I had never read his printed poetry at that time but the lyrics of that album had a powerful influence on me; along with Margaret Atwood, Cohen was probably the poet who shaped my own early attempts at poetry.

We saw Cohen perform once before, in 1992, supporting the album The Future. I remembered it as one of the best live shows I'd ever seen. Last night I experienced deja vu; this old man gave me the best show I've seen in a couple of years.

The band was superb, including two virtuosos: Alexandru Bublitchi on violin and Javier Mas, who's flamenco guitar and mandolin playing was as fine as I've ever heard.

I've often said that if you are a female singer, you want to sing with Cohen. He doesn't have backup singers, he has co singers. Some of them, like Jennifer Warren, have used their association with Leonard to launch their own careers.

Last night Cohen was accompanied by three women: Sharon Robson is a singer and songwriter in her own right and collaborated with Cohen on his album 10 New Songs. She gave us a moment of pure transcentendel bliss as she soloed the song Alexandra Leaving, a perfectly beautiful song based upon some ancient poetry.

Cohen at one point referred to his singers as "these angels" and that certainly applied to the Webb Sisters, who not only have spine tingling voices, but are adept instrumentalists.

Cohen's work is rich and complex and often thought of as "dark". And while he never shies away from those deeper areas of the human heart, I've always appreciated his sense of humour. In one of several asides, Leonard talked about "what's with all this melancholy and darkness, I get up in the morning and stumble down the stairs and look at myself in the mirror and say, Leonard, lighten up"

Not only did Leonard lighten himself up, he lifted us up, giving us one of those experiences you can only receive from a live performance. Through his poetry and his artistry and his overwhelming desire to please the audience, Leonard lifted us, he transported us, he brought us into his world, the world of the poet.