Goodbye to a Mentor

Just a couple of weeks ago I wrote about the world losing seven great and wonderful artists. Since then we have lost two more. The founder of Jefferson Airplane, Paul Kartner and the voice of Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck, Joe Alasky. That makes nine in total of the great artists that my generation grew up with gone. But that is not why I am writing today, it is because of someone far less well known but someone just as powerful and someone whom I will always remember.

I am going to keep this person anonymous but those of you who know me will understand, those of you who do not know me will appreciate the story.

I started school late in life. I had no idea what I wanted to be and it turned out that what I was studying was not it either, but that is another story. It was spring of 2001 and I had just entered the ECE course at Humber College. Everything was going fine until May 24^th weekend. My father died suddenly of a heart attack. It was Sunday and the world had just fallen apart. I was in school and had a project due that Tuesday morning in a course called Teaching the Young Child. Most of the assignment was done but I did not know what to do. I called my professor and left a voice message for her. Apparently she picked up her messages sometime that day and she called me at home later that evening. She guided me through to the people I needed to talk to and then wished me her deepest condolences. From her end she began the process of paper work for me and took over any of the on campus requirements that kept me from losing credits and money. Her help was immeasurable. Her kindness to a virtual stranger held my faith in humanity and gave me hope that in time things would return to a new normal.

 

 

I returned to campus the following September and resumed the course all over again. At some point during the first week of school I needed to attend the ECE offices and in the hallway met my professor. She greeted me with a huge hug and a smile that put it all at ease for me. My nerves had been firing all week long as I had be slotted into a different time table than she was teaching. I wanted to change to her schedule but she would not allow me to do that. She knew I could succeed without her as my teacher and that I would be fine. Of course I was reassured and went forward knowing she would always be there if I needed her. I graduated with honours. She was right, I could do it on my own. She had taught me a lesson I did not even think I needed to learn.

Years later and after I closed my daycare and retired my RECE I was told that this incredible lady had been diagnosed with cancer. My heart raced and I began to secretly panic. A cruel twist by life had encroach upon the wrong person, all I could think was no not her. Outwardly I was as stoic as possible, inwardly I was losing a supporter and mentor. I cried at first then told myself she was strong and would fight. She did for several years her struggle was kept out of my mind as I did not dare to face the reality of losing another person in my life. I packed it away and turned my back on the child care industry, leaving behind everything about it.

 

 

I spent this January grieving for people I never even knew. Now when I say grieving I do not mean I wept for them, I felt saddened that they had died and that the world had lost something, someone, somehow. And as the death toll rose over the month and now into February I know that I have come to a time in my life when the people I looked up to will die. Whether that person be a world renowned artist or a professor from Etobicoke. We will slowly loose them all. I will remain one of the last of the standing wishing I had been one of the first and to not have watched them all go before me. These great people, grandparents, parents, mentors, and the artist who has entertained and taught without knowing, gone. But the people that we grieve the most are those that have touched our souls. Whether that be from afar or from up close there are people that leave an indelible mark upon us and change us forever. In my case that was done with grace and I thank you for your precious gift to me, and what it has given me today is the ability to follow my own path with strength and confidence.

 

Your candle maybe extinguished, but your flame still burns bright within our hearts.

Rest in Peace Carol.

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The Loss of Eight Great Artists

Somehow I will remember January of 2016 as the month we lost seven great members of the arts culture. From music to stage acting to t.v. and movies to management the arts have been touched by these losses as never before in my lifetime. The month is not over but I pray the loss is done.

In life we all try our damnedest to accept death as part of the process. We know that it is a part of life. We know it is the end of our corporeal state, the end of living as we know it and the end of our person existence. We fight it, we hate it, we live with it, we learn to live without people in our lives, we suffer it’s effects on ourselves and others, and we believe that we will be punished after it or cleansed of our nasty behaviour and will live is glory or in dire. Some of us are touched by the deaths of people we have never met and some of us move on easily and our own lives carry on without too much disruption.

In early January we heard of the death of David Bowie one of the world’s most prolific rock artists. Many of us listened to his music. There was almost a cult following, you were a Bowie fan and you knew how to pronounce his name, you dressed the part of Ziggy Stardust at Halloween, to the dismay of many of the adults, but Bowie fan. His music rang out loud for a generation breaking as many boundaries as possible.

 

William Needles

Brian Bedford

But it is not just Bowie we lost, it is two great stage actors from Stratford. William Needles and Brian Bedford both died this month as well. I remember seeing both perform in The Taming of the Shrew when we attended in high school. If you do not know who these t men are or were look up their names and find a photo you more than likely will recognize them from other works they have done. I remember them both from interviews and from other t.v. shows. Now the count is three.

As the number keeps climbing the next on the list was Glen Fry from the Eagles. A talent silenced far too early. Like Bowie, unmatched as a musician the legacy of Fry will live long after the generation has passed. My daughters are already a fans, a new generation listening to the twisted story of Hotel California. May it continue to haunt well into the future and his legacy remain alive.

 

Glen Fry

 

Next to leave was another of music’s great people and a Canadian. Rene Angelil, husband to Celine Dion and manager died just last week. To top off Celine’s pain her brother had died as well. I can only imagine the break in her heart and hope that she comes through this time to sing again. Rene was not only a manager and producer but also an a stout singer in his own right. His legacy lives on in the career he built for his wife.

Rene Angelil

Then one morning I wake up and check in on the news only to hear of the death of Abe Vigoda. One of my childhood memories has died, but at a ripe old age. Living into longevity and passing with grace. It will forever be the voice she used as that character that will ring in my ears and make me laugh. I have plenty to say about Abe Vigoda and how he made me laugh as well. His portrayal of Fish in Barney Miller was one of my favorite characters on t.v. as a child. His career was just as powerful as all that I have mentioned today and stands alone in his own right as one of the many greats who have come and gone in this world.

Abe Vigoda

John Alaskey, his name may not be familiar but his voice would be. He was the voice of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Tweety Bird and Sylvester. Saturday mornings will never be the same again to know that this comical genius has been silenced. The banter between characters and the ability to make us laugh as both children and adults was his true gift. If you listen closly to some of the tracks you find some truly adult messages hiding in the slurp of Sylvester or the lisp of a Tweety Bird. Have fun with that one. Now the count is seven.

John Alaskey

 

We moved into the month of February and the first few days were calm, but I wake again to the news that another of the great artists had left us. Maurice White from Earth, Wind and Fire has died too. The soulful sounds of his voice are again for me precious childhood memories and I will always enjoy dancing to the music he was a part of creating.

Maurice White

 

But all-in-all I know we come and we go but I will remember the beginning of 2016 as the year we lost eight beautiful artists. I suppose as an artist I am hit with the loss in a way that I can relate or maybe not. But my heart feels heavy and my eyes are saddened with tears, may you all rest in peace and live long in your legacies.

I believe this blog post is not over yet. I am very sorry to say…

 

 

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Thoughts, the Negative and the Positive

 

While dabbling in thoughts about what today’s topic should be I came across an old thought. A thought about someone I had not seen in what seems a life time. Now it is a good thing I have not seen this person as I do not want too, but just what is in a thought and how do we manifest odd from bad or indifferent?

 

 

I have never given much thought to thought. It occurred to me there was a process for it but I never minded to investigate the process, obviously it occurs in the brain of humans and maybe some animals. But thoughts come in many shapes, sizes and also emotion levels. The thought I had of the person earlier left me feeling somewhat angry as this person had done something to injure me in the past. But it also left me wondering if the old crow was now bald and wrinkled and gave me a good snicker at the mental image I had formed, not a good one.

 

 

As a thoughtful person I try my very hardest to have only good thought about people and for the most part I do. It saddens me to think that there are such toxic people out there that when thought of all the thinker wishes is to expel the thought and move onto something more positive, but there are those people that stand in the way and sometimes hijack our thoughts no matter what we do to remove the toxicity the thought remain. It is a fight within ones soul to eliminate the thought that hurt or is binding us mentally to an incident. I personally like to use the red circle and stroke method and then I shrink into the tiniest of pieces and flick it away.

 

 

My eldest daughter seems to be the target of bullies at school and she struggles with the thoughts they create and the hurt. We have given her a super power to deal with the remaining hurtful backlash that occurs in her mind. We have talked about her bringing forth her inner Velociraptor. I am not sure why she a lines with this creature but she does and her use of this creature in changing her thought pattern works. It is not in violent thought but thought of strengths and agility and an ability to get away from what is hurting and distracting her from her school work.

 

 

It seems to me that we all have our own unique and individual thought patterns and use varied techniques to get through our thoughts and keep them as positive as possible. But is the power of thinking as strong as we have been lead to believe? I have no proof, scientifically anyway about that being true or not, but I do believe that if we think great things it can happen. What I mean is if we constantly look for bad and negative that is all we will find being a pessimist. But if we look to the bright and shiny side of life we could and just might find out that there is a glory out there that belongs to us in a pocket. Something we can own without too much struggle, something we are good at and the world notices, something that is positive. Let’s look at the motivation to loose weight. It takes a thought to get going with the process. It then takes more thought to get to the gym and choose a trainer to help. Then beyond that, we are looking at changing eating habits and relearning to live life without the junk and the television so much and becoming healthy. Keeping those thoughts alive by feeding them with more positive thinking. Yes I do believe that thoughts can and do help us change our lives. The funny thing is though…we must recognize there is a problem to begin with…

 

 

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The Silencing of the Lights - A New Year

 

After a month of parties and bright lights it is time for them to be silenced. It seems so short a time, a time that we prepare for in great length and a time that we live in so briefly. The glory of the holiday is over and now the lights will be silenced.

There are always the stragglers that keep the colours and a glow for some time afterwards that remain with the decorations frozen into the ground as winter progresses and  are waiting for the thaw of March and April to release their Christmas hostages and package them away for another eight months until they are needed again.

I look forward to the quiet of the deepest days of the winter when things inside the house get done and changes in lifestyle are made. Trying to keep up with New Year’s resolutions and fitting in gym time into an already very busy schedule. Health and fitness at the forefront of many changes that people want to make it takes dedications and rest to make these things happen. Clean eating, more exercise, and quitting bad habits seem to top the cake of changes we all want to make. But no matter what we decide and follow through on, the lights will be silenced.

 

Moving forward into a new year with new promise and hope. Well-deserved issues and broken promises left behind in a single night the human race works itself into a tizzy of change in just a few short hours. The old year’s calendars chucked in the garbage and new ones hung in their place bring a glory of the lights that reminds us of the days just past and the promises made to change. It is a time of cleansing the soul and purging the pain of a year that may not have been stellar. Expelling the memories of hurt that were shameful gifts thrust upon us by others and closing the doors on such behaviours. A time for improvement has come.

 

 

Whether that improvement comes from within yourself or is announced and followed through upon with other that support you, we all have a great deal of work to be done. I can feel the excitement in our home of returning to school and the dance studio refreshed and ready to strive for excellence. The last days of the holiday remain as holders of a place in time when we can recreate ourselves as better, improved, learning and striving.

The cold and bleak winter’s day reminds me that one more night the lights will shine bright and then be silenced for the long stretch ahead. The days will come when we all walk in the sunshine and warmth again but until then we must rest, recoup and move forward in this new year. The ability to start over with a fresh slate truly does not exist but we can try and we can hope and do our very best to improve our own corner of the world. Leaving the hurt and disappointment of others and ourselves behind us. There is nothing anyone can do to change the past but taking on a new approach and following through in a new way is always a good start. Maybe the lights are not silenced after all, maybe they just shine a little differently.

Happy New Year and may all your dreams come true!!!

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Why I Use the Title of Writer with Pride

Lately I have been reading several articles on being a writer and the embarrassed feeling people get when they own the title of “Writer”. I have never paid much attention to the public perception of a writer and truly find it strange that someone with such a creative mind can be dismissed as easily as a musician. I mean people like that are usually called flakes because we as a society have made it so very difficult to have jobs in the field of being creative. We gravitate towards work in construction, business or education as the paying jobs. Why are artists not as gainfully employed? Maybe it is just that where talents lie I always see direction when it comes to artistic people like myself.

 

I mean here I sit now with my day totally organized, my new career path as a personal trainer mapping out a little more every day, dinner cooking, dance gear organized, laundry done and in comfy clothes to sit and writer for a few minutes. It is almost a guilty pleasure to be able to spill out the words onto the screen and let it a fall where it may. And I suppose for most artists it is that way as art can never be called work. It is just not able to qualify. It is fun to create art, it is fun to be and artist and draw characters and then write about them. As a musician telling a story set to music and using poetry to balance the two that marry so well together is just not work.

 

Please understand I am not putting down artists I just think they have the best job in the world and feel very fortunate to be part of the creative and artistically strange and misunderstood segment of the population. I guess at this point I could bring up compensation for the jobs of being an artist. For the most part it is little to nothing. I know nothing as I have never been paid for writing and for my other artistic skills I have received very little in the way of finances. That goes for most of us. There is a passion that drives artists and it is not money. Some of the richest artists in the world are not great artists what they are, are masters at hiring the right person to mass market them and hitting a niche market that spends money on the fame. Not always the best, and sometimes the best are hidden away and never seen by the public. Can you imagine if the world was full of artists only? How dull it would become to be a human being on this planet.

Diversity speaks loudly when it comes to artists. The genre is diverse and within each genre is more and more to focus on. Sometimes as an artist it is difficult to find what it is you with to focus on and you want to do everything as most artists are very talented in many ways and can touch on several genres at a time. Be careful not spread yourself too thin. But to call myself a writer I do not feel like a flake. I happen to like flakes, especially snowflakes. And I do not feel that we should shy away from calling ourselves what we are. We are writers and we should be proud. Yes it is a comfy job when it pays and we get to live in our pj’s if we choose. So why are we frowned upon? Using the mind to help create play for others is not wrong, but glorious and entertaining.

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Children are Our Children, Not Kids

I often discuss respect and maybe today is no different but this one drives me crazy!!! Kids….kids….kids. No not my children, they are not driving me crazy, although sometimes other people who do not parent their children and their children are out of control drive me crazy, but not this time. It is the word "kids" and its constant use to refer to a human child.

 

Children in society have very few rights, have little say is the world and are one of our most vulnerable of populations. We often ignore them and disregard what they say as unimportant. So that with standing why is it that we continue to insult them further and not only insult but patronize and demean our most precious asset in the world, our children, by calling them kids?

 

It was my understanding that a kid was a baby goat, not a human child. When I gave birth to my children I do not recall giving birth to goats. I do not recall the sound of Nanny goats is the delivery room and I do not recall the smell of hay, nor do I recall any one calling my new born infant anything but a child, with respect.

 

We deliver such little respect to children in a general sense that calling them something they are not just seems to pile on the ignorance by the adults. My children are accustom to being called a child or the children. We have never addressed them any other way since they were born. It just seemed the right thing to do. After all they are not goats they are humans.

 

After some general research on the web I was unable to find any information as to why we call our children this sad and insulting name. Some of you may find goats cute and baby ones at that might be cute. My best guess as to why, is it came from the days when we were farmers and hunters and food was more scarce and some poor soul went and had some milk right from the goat like the baby did and maybe that stuck who knows? It is only a guess and a thought.

I never liked being called a kid when I was a child and remember fighting over that with people usually my older brothers even at times my parents. I just found it to be something that lowers a human being to the ground. And when we look back at the movies from the past and you can see the older man waving some change at young boy to get him to run an errand and shouts out to him “Hey kid.” That image of the elder taking respect but not giving it to the child runs in my mind and draws me to the present day and hearing people talk and how casually they will use the slang "kids" to describe their children.

 

 

I suppose I am never going to change the world but I hope my little corner has some understanding in this idea of respect to our children. Those who know me know that I stand with integrity and do my very best to be respectful to others. This includes the little ones around me and I call them all children with respect.

 

Give respect to our children by calling them children they deserve that.

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Islands of Plastic

 

It is amazing to me that I do not have anything to complain about and no curmudgeon to report. It actually is a very good feeling to not have a beef and an axe to grind for once. But now that I think of it that is sooooo not ture. I was speaking with a friend last night about the garbage dumps in our oceans. You know the ones we ignore and do not even realize are there!!!!!!

That is right human race we have created islands of garbage that float around in our oceans. There are about 5.2 trillion pieces of garbage mostly plastic according to The Nation Geographic magazine. That is astounding when I was a child the oceans were clean and we as people could enjoy the waters and see aquatic life on TV. Now it is just a dumping ground. So what gives us the right to turn our planet into this dumping ground?

 

Well nothing does, nothing gives us the right to raid the planet and leave it raped of its resources. That reminds me of the movie Independence Day in which the aliens that come to invade earth are really here to take the resources of the planet and use them for their own needs. That is what we are doing here. If you dig into some article you will find that we have out grown the planet as a population and the planet can no longer recover and regrow from what we take from it every day. Tis to me is very distressing. What do we need so much plastic for anyways?

 

I have yet to see the value of a plastic mayonnaise container and plastic pop bottle or even plastic anything for that matter. When the stuff burns it is toxic, it is toxic to produce (go ahead I dare you to do the research into that statement), it is non compostable, meaning it lasts for a multitude of years before it breaks down….well we could say the same thing about glass but at least glass is a natural product made from sand and it 100% recyclable. Oh there is the next rant ready and primed.

 

 

So recycling is it a myth or magic? Personally I believe that it is myth. Why you ask? Well considering I have seen our local refuse collector dump both boxes being grey and blue into the same compartment of his truck it leads me to wonder what happens next. Now I have never followed the garbage truck to personally see this but what really is the truth behind the recycling game? It has been reported by news magazine TV shows that it is not managed the way we believe it is and that it goes into the landfill, which I am inclined to believe as I do not see many products on the market claiming o be 100% recycled material. I am going to encourage you to look that one up too.

 

I guess I am just sick and tired of the human race being so destructive and so ugly over it all. I cannot stand the Kurig cups, plastic water bottles, sandwich bags, individual pudding cups or yogurt, even coffee cup lids and plastic cutlery, the list goes on. We abuse our planet by creating single use items and being lazy over convenience. And this pollution has all taken place over the last 100 years give or take a decade. What is so wrong with doing things far more green? Using a cloth sandwich bag and washing those bags. My family does that, we send real metal cutlery to school and have taught our children to bring home these items. I guess I have an expectation on the human race to be clean and neat and to stop being such complete assholes to this beautiful planet we have. Well maybe, just maybe my expectations are too high. I never though cleaning up after yourself was an issue.

 

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