This gem dates back some 18 years. As near as I can tell the Lodge is long gone, but it’s a fun story of the vacation from hell, and has only recently been unearthed.

STUBBS ISLAND CHRONICLES
a saga of adventure and larceny by
Barry Rueger

CLAYAQUOT LODGE
Lodge – (Apr-Oct)-Private Island resort, 56.6 ha (160 acres), lodge rooms w/bath or 2 bdrm cottage w/fireplace. Lounge and diningroom. Beaches, trails, rain forest, whale watching and fishing. Phone for boat pickup from Tofino. Moorage for floatplanes and yachts.

It had been the summer of Expo. Unless you live in the heart of Vancouver you can’t understand what that meant. The street just outside our bedroom became a major tourist route. Car exhaust and the nightly fireworks had left our windows coated with black soot. At some point in the first weeks of summer the old folk’s home across the street had been transformed into a hotel. Our neighbourhood became the Mecca of the tour bus industry, with every load of tourists arriving after midnight and before 6 AM. The crowds were everywhere: on sidewalks, in restaurants and stores, on public transit. The simplest tasks became nightmares as you fought past the line-ups and paid the newly inflated “Expo Special” prices.

Our two bedroom apartment had become the favoured bed and breakfast for friends and relatives. One, two, four at a time they arrived, made themselves at home, used up all the hot water, and left. Our file cabinets were filled to overflowing with tourist brochures, maps and bus schedules. In no time at all we became experts on every tourist attraction for twenty miles around. And aside from our roles as model citizens and charming hosts, both Victoria and I were working fulltime jobs for the first time in over a year.

By the time October arrived we needed a break, an opportunity to ignore everything but ourselves. We needed to get away from the crowds, and the relatives and friends, the phones and the jobs. We needed to escape. (more…)

If you’re stuck for a Christmas gift I’d like to make a suggestion. Coach House Press is a small Canadian publisher of mostly poetry and literary works. They will, of course, sell you as many books as they have in their catalogue, but they also offer something really special.

If you’re willing to make a little more of a commitment you can sign up for a “Standing Order“.

What that means is that every three or four months a big box will arrive at your door with a copy of everything that they have published in the last few months. Usually that means at least a dozen books, plus posters, stickers, postcards, chapbooks, and whatever other promotional stuff they have around the shop. Plus you get a discount on the purchase price and free shipping.

What I have loved about these packages are the many writers that I never would have thought to read, and the forms that I would have skipped over. In the last year or so we’ve enjoyed poetry, novels, screenplays, librettos – even CDs. (more…)

This has been a year when escape became very important. Not so much geographic escape, or isolation from the trials of life, but mental escape. I found that one of the lifelines that kept me going was a simple one – taking an hour each night to end my day by reading something purely escapist.

That escape began with Kinky Friedman, an author perhaps better known as the front man for “Kinky Friedman and the Texas Jewboys“. His were the first mystery novels that I had ever read, and marked the beginning of reading for fun and entertainment instead enlightenment and education.

Once I had finished the collected works of The Kinkster, I tried a number of name brand mystery writers. Needless to say none of them matched Friedman’s style of Texas counterculture. (more…)

My CAJ buddy Bill Doskoch comments (at his blog) on the right wing’s obsession with stripper immigration at a time when child poverty is on the rise in Canada.

For my part, I will admit to some morbid fascination while watching the Minister responsible for Immigration, academics, and the lawyer for the Canadian Adult Entertainment Association debate whether or not there are enough native Canadian strippers to meet market demand.

I’m also pondering how a story like this – special visa exemptions for Romanian exotic dancers – would be handled in the U.S. Surely the conservative right wing would rise up en masse to protest such an action by the INS.

Tune in to WMMT, or your local Pacifica radio station on December 20th, 7 to 10 pm EST.

This Holiday Call in for prisoners is one of those amazing programming projects that leaves a mark on everyone who is associated with it. I see that this year they’re expanding participation to the Pacifica Network.

This started five years ago when I was managing WMMT at the Appalshop in Whitesburg, Kentucky. It’s not well known, but there are a number of maximum and super-max prisons in rural Virginia just over the state line from WMMT. These prisons are intended as profit centers by the Virginia Department of Corrections, and house predominantly young urban kids from big northern and western cities.

They have nothing in common with the bluegrass and Lynyrd Skynyrd music common to rural Virginia. (more…)

Tonight I found myself watching a documentary called Searching For The Wrong Eyed Jesus, yet another film that attempts to capture the essence of the American South. In fact it’s a beautiful film which largely succeeds.

Watching this film took me back to the mountains of Kentucky where we lived for a number of years.

It’s hard not to talk about rural America without falling into what seem like clichés and stereotypes. In those mountains we knew preachers and moonshiners, coon hunters and banjo pickers. We saw faith that was raw and absolute, and sin that did nothing to pretend that it was respectable. (more…)

Well, it’s the craze that has swept the Internet. Or a vanity publication. Or a journal. In this case it means that when I have free time or find something neat, I’ll write a note, add some links, and post it. The newest stuff is at the top, with the ten newests posts on the front page.

If you prefer you can click on one of the Categories to the right to see everything that fits into one subject.

You can also post your own comments to any article that you find here.

More blog background can be found here or here or here.

Former cabinet minister and Ambassador to Denmark Alfonso Gagliano has been much in the news this year. First he was fingered as one of the central figures in the Liberal Sponsorship scandal, which suggests that the ruling party of Canada somehow spirited at least a hundred million dollars out of the government into the pockets of Liberal friendly businesses in Quebec.

This week though news arrives that the former Minister of Public Works may belong to not only the Liberal family, but the Bonanno family as well!

Even though the New York Daily News reports that one crime family member has described Gagliano as a “made” man, the Canadian media have been very careful not to suggest a link between political corruption and good old fashioned mob corruption.

The highlight for me though came this morning, on the CBC News: Sunday news program. (more…)

Serpent’s Wall – History of Kiev’s Defensive Ramparts

Some will recall that last year Elena, the author, created a very haunting website wherein she traveled through Chernobyl by motorcycle. This is her new project.

There was speculation that some or all of her previous site was fictionalized, and that she perhaps hadn’t actually visited Chernobyl, but that did not take away from the beauty and awe that I found in her work.

The story goes like this. We were sitting around the front porch with our friends Tony and Angie down in Virginia. They live on top of a mountain. For whatever reason we started talking about hunting for food. The comment was made that “there’s not too much meat on a squirrel.”

Our friend Tony stopped, thought, and then drawled “well…. three squirrels in a pressure cooker makes a pretty good supper.”

This weekend the New Democratic Party is holding their semi-annual convention here in Hamilton. For those outside of Canada, The NDP is a nominally socialist party that consistently places third or fourth in every election. Although they proudly claim the moral high ground on most issues, they couldn’t win an election if their life depended on it.

With the convention comes our good friend London Victoria, a party faithful and one of those genuinely good people. Now even though I vote NDP and support them financially, I have to admit to taking considerable pleasure in goading her about all of the shortcomings of her party.

In particular I like to ask her “So Victoria, what exactly does the NDP stand for these days?” (more…)

… There were electrons. The things that make all life, and all of the Internet possible

And why would I join the blogosphere? That word alone should be enough to keep me away.

Well, the truth is that I spend much of my life on the ‘net, and even more on e-mail. I see a lot of things, and have a lot of ideas which people find interesting. I like to share them, but they don’t always fit into the mailing lists that I subscribe to. Some of the wonders of this virtual world don’t fit into neat topic headings, or don’t express ideas in ways that are acceptable to self appointed censors and monitors.

So now I can allow myself some freedom to talk at length and pass on links of note.

I’m going to kick things off with a fascinating site that was sent to me today by a good friend in Gananoque Ontario. It’s all about Headless Dakinis, which I think would be not a bad thing to be.

Note: that joyous picture at the right shows myself (in the middle), my wife Victoria (left) and our good friend Annice, all jammed into the photo booth at the Drake Hotel in Toronto. You can take that as setting the tone for this blog. It is likely my favorite picture in years. But then again, squeezed in between two beautiful women like that, who wouldn’t smile!