The Reconciliation of John and Gordon

It was February in Prague, just a month after the former Czechoslovakia had been split into two separate countries, the Czech and the Slovak Republics. A sad event for me as I had already made many friends on both sides of the border. And I favour inclusiveness over separatism. But it was a beautiful evening all the same.

Powder snow swirled and glistened under the century-old lamps as we wound our way through the narrow streets of the old city, heading to the Staroměstské subway station. Another time I might be humming Good King Wenceslas as I held my head low against the wintry blast. But not tonight. Christmas was six weeks past. Besides, I only hum when I’m alone.

John, Jana and I had spent an evening in her cozy apartment overlooking the Vltava. After a simple dinner we did our best to empty a bottle of Becharovka. As it closed in on eleven, I headed to catch the last train to the hostel which was home. John insisted on accompanying me to the station. A Czech by birth, he was now a Canadian who had returned to his native land and was organizing volunteers to teach English to an eager populace. I was playing a part in this venture.

A retired career army officer, he wrote The Disarming of Canada, a critique of Canada’s military policy as a peace-keeping force. There was a chapter in it criticizing a peace education project which I had initiated. But over three years of collaboration a lot of trust had developed between us, seasoned with good humour and Pilsener.

The streets were empty so it was a surprise to come upon an unsteady figure in tattered clothing. As we approached, this Robinson Crusoe apparition stumbled again, his bleeding hands pierced by nails protruding from a packing case he dragged behind him. John rushed to his rescue and we proceeded, supporting him, to a nearby apartment. Despite the doorkeeper’s protests we took him to his room, cleaned him up, and John left him with a five hundred crown note. Apparently the wretched one had spent his rent money at a local bar, something that newfound capitalism couldn’t tolerate.

In the process I missed the train. The taxi was much more expensive. But well worth the cementing of our bond. It was the last time I saw John. He was drawn to the smell of conflict and became a war correspondent in Bosnia. He died there when his car ran over a land mine.

The Ghost of Maggie Thatcher?

This is a purely political rant.

Civic employees of the beautiful city of Vancouver are on strike. The libraries are closed for the first time in a seventy-seven year history. And the city has a magnificent library system which not only provides for the reading and research needs of citizens, but actively reaches out to those who are most in need of encouragement - the poor, the disabled, the non-English speaker, and the immigrant.

Their librarians are amongst the most committed of employees, with a sense of mission and passion for their work. Without going into all the details it is clear that their treatment has been shabby to say the least.

But why? This comment from the management on August 13 suggests that the bosses want it that way.

Vancouver's four-week-old civic strike could stretch past Labour Day and into the fall, a city spokesman predicted Monday.

"Our past strikes have lasted on the order of six to eight weeks and if that's an indication of where we are this time then that's how long it might last," Jerry Dobrovolny said.

Was this an event planned by the city administration to recoup money overspent in the run-up to the Winter Olympics 2010?

More information:

End of rant!

Hank

I knew nothing about him, not having a radio in our family home. But there we were, my buddy Gord and I on assignment for Quality Records who handled MGM and other labels in Canada. In our last years of high school we earned enough from these infrequent photo gigs to supplement more regular pay. In my case working part-time for a local supermarket. Doing the gamut from cutting meat to stocking shelves.

It was October 27, 1949 and I was seventeen, in grade thirteen, my final year. On the other hand, Hank was just short of nine years my senior, and had made it to #1 on the Billboard Country Singles chart with his version of Lovesick Blues.

The show took place in the Mutual Arena, a venue for ice skating in winter, and in summer a “roller rink”. It was my first venture into this particular kind of worldly atmosphere. But not the last. I was somewhat overwhelmed, and very intimidated as we entered the cavernous hall. The stage setting, lighting, and swelling audience were a far cry even from the high school auditorium gatherings. Even more remote from our gospel hall’s special meetings.

We were nervous. You can take landscape, or store window display photos over again if you flub them the first time around. But concerts are another matter. Our primary task was to take some shots after the show was over. Which it was all too quickly. Using Gord’s Kodak Vigilant, f/4.5 lens, bellows extended, loaded with a roll of 620 Super-XX, and with a carton of eight GE flashbulbs at hand we began. All eight shots counted.

Neither of us had any directorial skills, but fortunately the record company rep managed that for us. Hank Williams was most gracious to these two amateurs. So was Fred Roden, with Hank in this picture. For many years afterwards I meant to drop into Fred Roden’s Record Corral on Avenue Road north, and give him prints. But, like many good intentions .....

Tabula rasa

An inauspicious beginning I know! My encounters with Latin will no doubt be the grist for another day at blogger’s mill . However, tabula rasa, the slate wiped clean, interests me a lot right now. Piqued by Naomi Klein’s new book, The Shock Doctrine, released just yesterday. I haven’t read it yet, but just listened to her, and find its thesis fascinating.

The notion that major social and political change can be introduced following massive events such as the breakdown of an existing system has often focussed on armed revolutions and uprisings. The French, American and Russian revolutions are the most commonly known of these.

There are variations on this theme. After the surrender of Japan in August 1945, the Allied Command, at the behest of the Netherlands, asked the Nipponese troops to remain in control of The Dutch East Indies in order to preserve the existing colonial system. But Sukarno moved quickly to establish a republic, which became a reality four years later.

As an aside from Klein’s social approach, it appears to me that at the personal level, tabula rasa, would be a process that born-again Christians consider essential. A baptism or ritual cleansing. The slate wiped clean, and a new spiritual birth with its presumed attendant moral, ethical, and other personal consequences.

Klein goes further with her collective study. She documents the deliberate political, social, and economic efforts over decades to create and exploit “disaster mentality” and fear. Generated out of both natural events such as tsunamis and those with human intervention such as national fiscal crises. All to the end of supporting The Shock Doctrine, the Rise of Disaster Capitalism, a situation of fear, despair, or numbness which allows the introduction of conditions beneficial to interests groups but not to the general citizenry. This is not conspiracy theory but the work of a disciplined journalist.

I’m off now to buy a copy. No, this is not a paid commercial!

Fate strikes

As predicted in today's paper. Three very busy blogging weeks ahead!

GEMINI Today your ruler, Mercury, moves into a fellow air sign. That means the next three weeks are a wonderful time for expressing your thoughts.

Now I'll check the tea leaves [tasseography] for alternatives!

Archives

The past two days have seen a blundering archivist at work. He has never followed the rules of the professional. That is, to store safely, catalogue accurately (with appropriate cross-references), and have proper retrieval procedures. Now time is catching up with this amateur. The cardboard boxes are being unearthed, the contents spread across every inch of level flat space in the house, and the goodies being unruffled and placed first in categories, then assigned spaces and places of their own.

The thought behind this action has been of long-standing. But stand it did, without any movement. Until recently. The German Film Archives made a generous and irresistible offer to restore a film completed 28 years ago. Which brought the chronicler instinct to the fore. But simultaneously raised many questions.

We realise that certain of the records and artifacts are of international interest. Those we have separated from the family treasures. We also know from experience that Archives tend to be preoccupied with preservation and are anything but “user-friendly”. And those with an hospitable bent are scattered in nooks and crannies around the globe. So what to do with this conglomeration?

One option is to digitize and open our own cyber-archives, then hand the originals over to the best caretakers wherever they may be. But who would caretake the cyber-archives?

And of course we must first write the book before relinquishing the source material. He says with a wry grin.

And the odd item may be of interest to our children. Like the glass-framed original silhouette of Galahad at the completion of the Quest when the ghostly maidens enter the hall. And he cries out, “In the name of God, stay a moment!”

Illustration by Lotte Reiniger from Roger Lancelyn Green’s book, King Arthur and His Knights of the Round Table [1953 - Penguin]

The Reconciliation of Carl and Jean

In my opinion the richness of “reconcile” has been somewhat debased by the bean counters. They use it to mean the verification of financial accounts. But reconciliation has much more potential than simply ticking off the items on a credit card statement. I think that Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu had it right, in principle.

What got me thinking about it was the first time that Jean Renoir and Carl Koch really met. Of course they didn’t know about that meeting until later. I will let Renoir tell the story himself.

Carl Koch had been a German army captain of artillery in the First War. In 1916 he was in command of an anti-aircraft battery in the Rheims sector. “It was a good sector,” he told me. “Nothing against it except the incessant attack of the French squadron opposite us.” As it happens, in 1916 I was flying in a reconnaissance squadron in the same sector, and we were the main target of a Germany battery which gave us a lot of trouble. Koch and I concluded that this was his battery: so we had made war together. These things form a bond. The fact that we were on opposite sides was the merest detail.

From: My Life and My Films by Jean Renoir 1974

We met both Carl and Jean long after they had died. Carl’s wife, Lotte Reiniger, introduced us to them both with delightful stories of their first meeting in Paris at the première of Lotte’s Die Abenteuer des Prinzen Achmed. And their subsequent adventures in working together on the Renoir films. Glorious days in Meudon as well as dedicated work on such masterpieces as La Marseillaise and La Grande Illusion. Carl left first, and when he did Jean wrote to Lotte from his home, which was by that time in Hollywood.

“The best times in my life working in film were with Carl. It was through this connection that The Rules of the Game was such a success. Carl, from Heaven on high, must surely be laughing.”

True reconciliation.