We're already looking towards our Spring issue

I hoped to begin blocking it out this afternoon, but we've been very happily interrupted by people seeking last minute gifts of the N. Q. And now the cards are signed and the labels printed and I will personally escort these issues to the mail room. This will be my last entry until 2009, so, Bless us, everyone, and bring on the New Year!

(Image: wordpress.com.)

Walking in a Winter Wonderland

When you don't drive, there are a few problems. It can be hard to keep your hair looking nice, for example. You can do the hair straightener thing and emerge as quite presentable, but after 10 minutes walking face first into a northeaster, you might as well have styled your hair with a knife and fork.
Also, you can end up carrying a lot of stuff. Gym bags, library books, small children. Trips need to be planned to allow for trade-offs in baggage.
It's hard to wear heels.
And sometimes, even though you're 45, you have to call your mom to ask her to drive you somewhere.
People often ask why I don't drive. "Why don't you drive?" Like that. I always say because I'd be a terrible driver. They always say, "Oh, no you wouldn't." But the thing is oh yes I would. I can't tell my right from my left, I'm often so distracted and daydreamy I'll walk into a street sign, and if you ever saw me trying to operate a piece of complex machinery, like, say, a can opener or a pair of scissors, you would think, "Mother of God, that person must never, never be allowed behind the wheel of a car."
Don't worry. Won't happen.

(Image: wordpress.com)

There used to be a few guys downtown who sold Christmas trees from their houses. It was a bit of a hard gig - get up at 4AM, drive to the woods, harvest the stock and then come home and deal with the clientele who'd see the trees and knock on the door. No one seems to do that now so we're looking further afield. Being without a car makes this an endeavour that takes some planning, but people in movies are always carrying trees along sidewalks, the snow softly falling, it's very seasonal though often set in New York I believe. But in the spirit of the current festivities we might give it a try.

(Image: farm1.com.)

Seussian Tunes

Usually I manage to miss out on the TV Christmas Specials, but this year I'm catching them all - Charlie Brown, It's A Wonderful Life, Bill Murray's excellent take on Scrooge. I'm steeped in moral messages, spiritual uplift and bonhomie. Hark the Heralds, Zuzu's petels and Mankind is my business, got it. Most lingering of all is that bah-hoo doo-ray carol from How The Grinch Stole Christmas. The show still stands up as an exceptional cartoon riff on malice, loneliness and sweet redemption.

(Image: filmschoolrejects.com.)

We're getting awfully used to seeing Christmas lights in the rain and fog - no matter, they're still some pretty. We get a real treat at the office because we're on the Parkway, which is so beautifully festooned again this year.


(Image: dailygalaxy.com.)

A Visual Representation Of Our Office Dynamics

As we process the Christmas mailout. Very busy but also a nice feeling of being Santa's helpers.

(Image: zerotoys.com.)

Weather Gone Bonkers

It's near freezing, slush mixed with hail, northern gusts on the Parkway - and this was the nicest walk to work this week! The forecasts are bananas, with temperatures shifting ten or fifteen degrees in either direction, every old thing falling from the sky, warnings about this, that and the other - how are we supposed to handle this? What are we supposed to wear? Halter tops or parkas? Mukluks or ballet flats? I need more guidance from the CBC Morning Show team about this. Never mind whether they can or can't see the parkway - did they wear hats and mittens to work or not? Did they bring their sunglasses? Emergency rations?

(Image: storm3.com.)

Took yesterday off to wallpaper my daughter's bedroom, something that's been on the household to-do list for, oh, ten years or so. Now, it is done - she picked some really nice stuff, too. Oh, and here's a tip: when you buy the wallpaper, don't forget to ask the salespeople if it is pre-pasted or not. You could save yourself much trouble, tears and marital stress. I'm just saying.

(Image: coolchaser.com.)

Merry Christmas Charlie Brown

A Charlie Brown Christmas is now as necessary to the Christmas Season as rum in eggnog, but when it was first created it was actually quite controversial. There was no laugh track, the jazzy score was thought over-sophisticated, and there were objections to Linus's recital of the Christmas story from the Gospel of Luke. Thankfully, Charles Schultz trusted his instincts and fought for his choices and has left us this sweet tempered, compact and gloriously un-hyper gem.

(Image: musicfromthemovies.com.)

Mags in Bins

Here's how the conversation in the office ran today;
Me: I think we need another bin for the NL Residue.
Circulation Manager: Right here. (She's very organized, as I have mentioned.)
Me: Oh No! I've mixed the AIEs with the AIKs!
Yes, it's all about postal codes, as we gear up for the mailout tomorrow am.

(Image: flickr.)

International Mailout

All our international issues and gift subs go out today - Canada Post promises they'll make their destination by Christmas. And the N. Q. does some serious traveling - Paris, Australia, Berkeley, China, New Caledonia (keep meaning to look up where the heck that is - South Seas?).

(Image: mymapman.com.)

Boland/Gill @ CPG

Nice event tomorrow if you're round these parts: Grant Boland, New Paintings, and Will Gill, New Work, opening at Christina Parker Gallery, with art, wine, and nibbles all good to go at 5:30pm.

(Image: Boland/Oranges.com).

Christmas Elementals

The best place to anticipate Christmas is in elementary school. The kids aren't weighed under by shopping lists and decorating plans and the incredible pressure to spend so much. They are just plain excited. And the best place in elementary school to anticipate Christmas is the Grade 5 homeroom. I don't know why but it is true. The cut-out snowflakes. The early dusk that brings the Christmas lights taped around the teacher's desk and strung amidst the bare park trees outside to a neon pop. The chalk-written list on the board: Fun Things To Do: #1 nitting (spelled without a 'k') #2 yelling at the TV #3 going to Australia.

(Image: webdesignerwall.com.)

What Goes Up, Goes Up

From the rain it seems the sky is falling and from the news it seems the government is falling, but one thing we at the N. Q. are determined to see go up in our mail-out numbers. As the Circulation Manager gets the Christmas cards organized (well over a hundred! and yes we'll remember any special salutations you requested) she's also printed off the lists of 428s and 429s (readers who need to renew from the summer and fall issues). So I'm sending emails and getting on the phone to subscribers, hopefully herding together all the strays who want to keep getting the magazine but haven't had time to contact us.

(Image: w3.org.)

Coming off back-to-back Craft Fairs in St. John's and Corner Brook. Both events were really good for us - we met people, garnered some new subs, and got to show off the Jean-Claude Roy painting from coast to coast. But the experience is also a bit surreal. Spending six, eight, even twelve hours a day in a big arena filled with sparkly lights, dangling stars and slightly echo-y Christmas tunes starts to feel like a stint on a space station, only HAL keeps singing "I'll be home for Christmas..." instead of "Daisy, Daisy..." It's intense I tell you.

(Image: malaland.files.)

Countdown to magazine delivery...

...and feeling restless as a cat. I started typing this blog 50 minutes ago, but keep jumping up to have brief, cryptic exchanges with the Circulation Manager about "running the 429s" and "sending another Art & Chocolate email" (which means seeing how many reader subscriptions lapsed with the Fall issue, and contacting them about our Jean-Claude Roy and Newfoundland Chocolate Company promotions, respectively.) And I wandered away from the desk four times during the writing of that sentence.

(Image: regmedia.co.uk.)

One Craft Fair Down, Two To Go

An intense four days at the Convention Centre in downtown St. John's, where we set ourselves up with sub cards and receipt books and magazines and calendars and of course our subscription prize of Jean-Claude Roy's gorgeous landscape, St. George's (2007). It was an eye-catcher and a conversation starter. One man's astute assessment: "I've see him on TV, painting. He just slaps it down, but it all comes out right in the end, God bless him."
Tomorrow sees me out of the office and away from this computer - though I'll be taping an interview with CBC's Ted Blades @ On the Go - but I'll manage one more post before we embark on our drive to to Corner Brook Craft Fair. After that, the next time we talk it will be mail-out day, woohoo!

One thing about having children, it makes you note the passage of time. When I walk to work I pass through all the parents escorting their kids to Bishop Feild school, just around the corner from our house. It wasn't so long ago that I, too, was a Bishop Feild parent, an experience I enjoyed so much that I completely understood a friend's decision to have a third child partly so she could keep on being a Bishop Feild parent that much longer. But the thing is, although it feels like it wasn't that long ago that my daughter went there...actually it kinda was. More than four years. I'm a Holy Heart parent now, an entirely different experience. I've shifted from intensive volunteering (two mornings in the library, theatre sports with the Grade 5s, organizing the Bishop Feild Talent Show - and, believe me, when you can organize the Bishop Feild Talent Show, you can organize anything) to being not even completely sure who my daughter's homeroom teacher is. (They have homeroom in high school, right?) Some old habits die hard though. I still have a terrible tendency to speak for my daughter, though she's standing right beside me and fully capable of expressing any thoughts she might like to air. It's like I'm her attorney: I'm sorry, my daughter does not wish to comment on the strawberry-banana yogurt at this time. She may issue a statement on the peach cups later.
Please note: we're at the NLCDA Craft Fair from tomorrow until Sunday - love to chat with any NQ readers who happen by! But I'll miss a blog or two...catch up with you soon.

(Image: photobucket.com.)

Great Expectations Launch @ Sweet Relic

Tomorrow evening 5:30-7pm. Sweet Relic is a nice spot (at the foot of Signal Hill) and the book is a wonderful read - true birth stories for 24 contributors, and isn't that one sweet cover? We have a review in the upcoming issue...but, why be coy, we'll just come right out and say it is a super collection.

And we're face and eyes into the final proofing now, with a magnifying glass and a fine tooth comb...a compass and an encyclopedia...no stones unturned etc.

(Image: moonbattery.com.)

Silvern Voices Tuning Rills

Walking into work early on a cold, windless November morning, a few notches above dawn, the brake lights on cars still making small neon punch holes in the day, everything is...silvern. Which is not exactly as it plays out in the Ode to Newfoundland, not that I know how to tune any rills, or could be trusted to recognize such an activity. But the word seems apt for that mother-of-pearl cast and silver slant of early winter light that keep the sky, and the world, a nice way from dingy.
(Image: newsimg.bbc.)

Angels in America

I must be the last person to make this find, but in the past week I've read Tony Kushner's original script and watched the HBO special. I can't stop talking (somewhat incoherently) about it: the confident theatricality, the sensibility of the text, and the wonderful, fantastic, all-powerful and sweetly-pining angels.

(Image: wordpress.com.)

101.3 Cover

Always an exciting decision - we think we're close - here's a teaser -
(Image: webscripts.)

101.3 coming together

Our columnists are filing, our regular content of Archival Notes and Aspects is all ship-shape and Bristol fashion, we've gathered some fab visuals...only gap remaining, as I suddenly realized walking home through that incredible fog yesterday evening, is the editorial. Which is composed of course by me. So that's on my to-do list for today.

(Image: changinglibrarian.blogspot.com.)

Have you heard of slate.com? It's a daily online fix for me. One reason is their slide shows - on Hopper, Maus, visual artists who work from scientific formalities. The current exhibit concerns Joan Miro (should be an accent in there, obviously, excuse the inadequate keyboard) - you should check it out. (It's free.)

(Image: Singing Fish, weblo.com.)

Copy Deadline 101.3...

...as of tomorrow. Got some great, great stuff coming together. Solid piece from Michael Deal about Newfoundland pilots in WWI. Hilarious riff from Berni Stapleton on the current state of airline comfort and passenger services ( something like the joke about Air Canada's apparent new slogan: We're not happy until you're not happy!). Nice batch of reviews including Great Expectations, a must-read for new parents, old parents, anyone thinking of becoming a parent. A ton of great artwork, including illustrations from Newtopia, and all kinds of drawings and photos of bi-planes, jet planes, even, courtesy of Derek Pelley's essay, Are-You-Out-Of-Your-Vulcan-Mind planes.

(Image: wordpress.)

In this day and age few things are more frustrating than having problems with your email. Hotmail has upgraded, again, they are always doing this, I don't know why, and now my sweet little laptop goes bonkers when I try to access it. So if I'm working at home in the evening and I try and send an edit to somebody, I have to send it and then phone that person to make sure it arrived, tres humiliating and exactly the opposite of what the email experience should be! Sigh. Well, never mind, it's a good morning, nice golden autumn sunshine spilling across a new world order, which was a pretty good band, too, now that I think of it.

(Image: redcross.com.)

Dear America,

Peace out.

(Image: wordpress.com.)

Spent the weekend doing laundry at Mighty White's (where one staff member had returned from a family wedding on the Northern Peninsula and the day had been so windy they couldn't go outside for photos as all hands would have been blown around like wet autumn leaves) and reading Kate Atkinson, can't recommend her enough, just galloping through her novels and stories...

(Image: fantasticfiction.co.uk.)

The Intelligence of the Body...

... was the title of a lecture I caught yesterday. The discussion was divergent and engaged. Thoughts of Aldous Huxley's concept of getting out of one's own way. Of Wayne Gretzky being able to skate, in sports writer's terms, not where the puck was, but where it was going to be. Of Steve Carel's character in Little Miss Sunshine, who, racing to the aid of his beloved niece, runs (Roger Ebert writes) like a man who has read about running, has seen the diagrams of people running, does understand that human beings run - but has never actually run before in his life. (See it - it's hilarious; the whole movie is wonderful.) The lecturer - Gabor Csepregi - who, I have to say, was also an Olympic-level athlete, qualifying for Canada's water polo teams in 1972 and 1976, and about which, I also have to say, it was pointed out that water polo was the first group sport admitted to the Olympic Games (1900) and was invented by bored British officers posted to warm climes who played on underwater wooden horses - amidst all this came the name of writer Stefan Zweig , whose popularity and readership has ebbed and flowed, but whose Twenty-Four Hours in the Life of A Woman remains on the literary radar.

(Image: S. Zweig in 1930, davidbolduwork.com.)

New Portrait Exhibit Opens Tonight

Portraits are a genre unto themselves. Some visual artists, ie. Mr Warhol here, are primarily associated with it. Closer to home, Sheilagh O'Leary excels at portraiture, as anyone who has seen her Twinning Lines or Island Maid, among other shows, will know. Her latest is More Than Meets The Eye, 28 black and white photographs of models, mostly children, with Down Syndrome. The opening reception is 7-9pm tonight, the third floor gallery at the St. John's Arts and Culture Centre, free admission and all welcome.

(Image: sf.moma.org.)

Ever hear tell of the semantic web? The goal is to create a language machines can read. Funny how that usually turns out very badly in science fiction movies...and it definitely added to the dearth of lucidity in Eagle Eye...but the end product here is not a scary Terminator-type guy but an Internet that can make its own connections and inferences.

(Image: murdoch.edu.au.)

Why You Won't See Me At The Glacier

It's Craft Fair season, and we're gearing up for three. We'll have booths at the NLCDA events in St. John's (at the Convention Centre) and Corner Brook (at the Pepsi Centre). We'll also be at the Anna Templeton Centre in mid-December (this is a smaller-scale market, and quite lovely). But we won't be at The Glacier. Why not? You might be wondering. Well, here's the story of my book signing at The Glacier.
I had a book published two years ago, and as every author knows that means book signings. There you are at the Avalon Mall/Village Mall/Costco, at a fold-out table with a stack of your books fetchingly arranged, while shoppers flow past maybe vaguely registering your presence and wondering if you're selling Girl Guide cookies. I don't drive so I learned lots and lots about our Metrobus system; even so getting to The Glacier was a transportation challenge.
Eventually I found myself embarked on the first of two 45-minute rides, surrounded by some...interesting characters. One woman I remember was enthralled in a vicious and convoluted fight with her landlord about something weird, not like the hot water heater or furnace but about a shower curtain or something. Anyway, the bus driver got me as close to The Glacier as he could, pointed out where it was and where I could cross the road, and said he would see me in two hours.
The Glacier, as its name implies, is a rink. The floor was composed of boards - plywood I think - laid over the icy surface. The crowded booths were arranged on top of this. I found my small table and spread out a fan of books. In the background, a looped tape played the same six Elvis Presley Christmas music covers, over and over.
A shadow fell across the table. I looked up. There stood a Very Big Woman.
VBW: Is that a Newfoundland book?
Me: Why, ah, yes. (It was a collection of obituaries about Newfoundlanders and Labradorians that I'd had published in the Globe and Mail.)
VBW: Doesn't look like it.
(I have no idea what she meant. Should it have been shaped like Newfoundland? Had 'Newfoundland Book' stamped on its cover? She picked up a copy, took out her cellphone, and dialled.)
VBW: Is Bernice there? Well get her...Bernice. I'll looking at a book. I think it might do for Poppy. It's about nondescript people.
(I really have no idea what she meant by that. However Bernice must have said something like, Yes, you know Poppy is all about nondescript people, get it for him.)
VBW: OK. I'll buy it.
Me: Great! Would you like me to sign it?
VBW: Whatever. OK. Say, 'To Poppy from Zachary."
So I did.
I did laugh all the way home. But I will never go back to The Glacier.

(Image: lealawatson.co.uk.)

C2C New Season

Was part of a 'do last night - 4Play5, the season launch and fundraiser for C2C Theatre. Their motto is Good Theatre Done Well, and that's pretty much what they accomplish, except you could add With Great Style, and their next show is The Leisure Society.

(image: americaslibrary.com.)

Spring Ahead, Fall Ahead, Look Ahead -

- Look out - it's something like that, right? Daylight Savings Time I mean. Which stops (or starts?) soon. (And which is the real time?) Said to have been initiated by one William Willett who was dismayed to see so many of his fellow Londoners snoozing away a dulcet summer morning. Newfoundland has it's own connection to DSL, too, of course, being the kind of well-connected place we are. The time shift is not kicking in this year until the first Sunday of November, so a few more dark fall mornings ahead...let's focus instead on that beautiful slanting silver sunlight so calibrated to late autumn.

(Image: einsteinslock.com.)

ultrabionova @ A1C Gallery

This solo exhibit opens tomorrow night at AIC - big striking works as fundamental as cells and as ephemeral as snowflakes. The big 'do includes a performance by the artist, Ingrid Mary Percy - she'll compose a work of string art, scheduled for around 8:30pm if you find yourself downtown, Friday night, having a few drinks, having a few laughs, add a shot of culture...
(Image: Ingrid Mary Percy)

nobody, not even the rain

Our slightly extreme weather this morning has put me in mind of this poem by e. e. cummings;

[somewhere i have never travelled]

somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully, mysteriously) her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility: whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens; only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands

(Image: painting by cummings, courtesy of yale.library.edu.)

Want some chocolate?

We're test driving a new idea - the next five people to start or renew a subscription or give a gift of the N.Q. will receive a box of gourmet dark chocolates (retail value $22) from the Newfoundland Chocolate Company. Just give us a call at 709.737.2426, or email us at nfqsub@mun.ca.

(Image: newfoundlandchocolatecompany.com)

The seminal Newfoundland film The Adventure of Faustus Bidgood, which you may or may not know was also adapted for stage by Mark Turner, of alternative band King Nancy fame, is available on DVD, a mere thirty years or so after those first frames (of the school maybe? "Napoleon was an Emperor, not a King!") were shot. Word is NIFCO is handling the distribution.

(Image: heritage.nf.ca.)

Reading David Hare's The Judas Kiss, the story of

Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900), the Irish playwright and poet whose ill-advised decision to pursue a controversial libel suit wrecked his health and ended his life. The plays of this dramatist, perhaps wittiest person in the history of the English language, are still (justifiably) popular today, as is his poetry (see The Ballad of Reading Goal) and his bon mots, ie. "Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination".

(Image: poems.net.)

You must see this movie!

The Fall. It is absolute visual magic, a world beautifully realized without an ounce of special effects, and if you don't lose your heart to Catinca Untaru you don't have one.









(Image: collider.com.)

Today's the day! Don't forget to

(Image: austinchronicle.com

Ilse Hughes' New Show

This weekend I'm hoping to spend some time with Ilse Hughes' latest exhibition, Infrared...an urban landscape, up at Red Ochre Gallery until October 29th. I'm a big fan of Hughes bold palettes and dynamic brushwork - she's a painter who thinks paintings should be about paint!

(Image: View From the Fort, Red Ochre Gallery.)

Further to Rabbittown

This will take you a series of linked videos, a viral preview of this weekend's To Be Loved. Very fun stuff - maybe a little bit of language.




(Image: grooveshark.com.)

Theatre of Fact

There's a new play opening this weekend at Rabbittown Theatre: To Be Loved, written by Ed Riche, which is exciting enough, but it also includes the promising cast of Brad Hodder as Steven Harper and Neil Butler as Stockwell Day. Guaranteed to be a piece of sharp, incisive comedy, it may also be a nod to the genre of documentary theatre, which is gaining such prominence these days thanks to such silver screen versions of The Queen and Frost/Nixon.

(Image: mensvogue.com.)

a visual escape from the intense headlines...

...courtesy of Rachel Ruysch (Still Life With Flowers on a Marble Tabletop, oil on canvas, 1716).
(Image: rijksmuseum.)

Riddlefence Launch

The second issue of Riddlefence hits the stands today, with a ritzy launch party. The N.Q. will be in attendance at Government House, NL's oldest magazine saying congrats to its youngest.









(Image: the scope.ca.)

Time to Organize Those You-Know-Whats

We're approaching a month from copy deadline - let's get those ducks in a row !

(Image: wordpress.com.)

Scenes From Metrobus

On the #10 bus this morning we drove past the Fire Station on Harvey Road, where they were testing out a giant cherrypicker. The slow stately ballet of heavy equipment is always mesmerizing - and reminds me of this very good movie: The Lost Language of Cranes.

(Image: sigalminc.com.)

First of October

And we all know what that means: monthly reports!














(Image: superstock.com.)