St-Sauveur New Year 2011-2012, in photos

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Hedge fun

Kate Anna Rufus Lily Martha and Sylvan - Gardencourt circa 1985, pic by Dane Lanken.

It would seem that not everyone enjoyed this singing session up against the old cedar hedge at Gardencourt.. Another pic in this series was used for the UK charity record Feed the Folk. Our contribution to the project was the song A Place in Your Heart.

Les gens de Gardencourt souhaitent à tous une joyeuse St-Jean-Batiste.

We aren’t flag people but Robert Lanctot loaned us his amazing fleur-de-lys and though it’s thoroughly soaked having been out in the rain since Vinnie hoisted it into the trees yesterday the wind just now managed to breathe a little life into it. Also Vin strung up the lights. They’re normally red and white to compliment the original Gardencourt colour scheme, no political message here, but tonight for a change they’re blue and white. Rufus and Martha join Robert Charlebois and a variety of wonderful artists in the big St Jean concert at Parc Maisonneuve in Montréal, Qc. Bonne chance à tous et merci.

Hommage à Claude Léveillée des gens de Gardencourt.

A snippet of Clo-Clo’s ‘Les après-midis d’hier’ from his 1961 Columbia Records release. (Sounds like he may have reworked part of this song into ‘Frédéric.’) Everything is authentic here including the scratches. A wonderful recording with liner notes by of all people Anita Loos who mentions that at the time of the sessions she and Claude were working together on a musical. Wonder what happened to that?

mittenstrings snippet at muziekfest in point st charles

a couple of verses of the song ‘rochester’ during the soundcheck.

The window people and Canadian Thanksgiving 2010.

I think Kathleen, Vinnie and Lily took these. They’ve been uploaded to the gardencourt site since last year but I think somebody forgot to click the publish button. What a beautiful Fall day that was. Today’s forecast, rain for the next 18 hours.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

arco and the ampeg wall

Huffpo + AOL (this blog was meant for the PITSOL site)

I would have thought Huffpo was worth a lot more than 300 million. I think having all those links to sensational stories cheapened it. It was better as a political blog and the commenters were smarter back then. I’m wondering if the way Al-jazeera English has come on in a big big way rushed Arianna into this forced marriage with AOL. And of course there was the scare of the Daily Beast, a digital rag now, but it never had the cachet Huffpo had, plummy British editor Tina Brown notwithstanding. Al-jazeera is relatively pure in that it sticks to political stories and it’s anchors are fully clothed though some have been showing more chest of late, drawing the line at cleavage. Our satellite provider has started giving it to us for free hoping we’ll be regular subscribers. I think we’re sold. Vis a vis CNN, I like Piers Morgan a lot and he should pick up more discriminating viewers for the network.

NPR host Tom Ashcroft is sounding alarmist as he grills some Egyptian mouthpiece with stuff like ‘what if Egypt falls into the hands of religious fundamentalists?’ Hello, Tom! What about the religious fundamentalists calling the shots in your own Government?

Today

Day of the Dead

I went yesterday to visit the grave of my sister in the Catholic Parish Cemetery of St Sauveur. This final resting place for the Catholic faithful has been there for as long as anyone can remember, the village was founded in 1867, so it’s fairly historic. It’s surrounded by a heavy growth of spruce and pine, a favorite haunt of crows and blue jays, with a long dark spruce-lined lane through the middle ending in a statuary of the Crucifixion. On either side of the centre aisle are two more gravel lanes for a total of five and there is a new section but we won’t go there now. Against the boundary fence of the original cemetery are white gothic freestanding windows depicting scenes from the Way of the Cross and a couple of nice old white-painted sheds. It’s a little on the drab side especially at this time of year as we approach All Souls Day but it is after all a cemetery, a reminder of the final destination to this life’s uncertain voyage, and a respite from the rest of St Sauveur with it’s endless boutiques and bad restaurants housed in the old village homes where people once lived and died but that are now ‘cutesified’ to death. So I guess it was just a matter of time before the cute people got around to ‘doing’ the cemetery. Try to imagine my shock yesterday as I entered through the stone gates of this venerable village landmark, the final resting place of Polish notables (including the parents of Zbigniew Brzezinski), a Prime Minister’s brother (Charles Trudeau), fine village artisans and one great songwriter (Kate McGarrigle), to be greeted by a garish sub-division sign with all the plots numbered and the lanes now named after flowers and labelled with cheap little signs. The middle one is called Avenue des Fleurs. Somebody remind them we’re not in Florida, it’s the Laurentians. It’s about dark evergreens and white snow. Des Muguets, des Violettes, des Roses and worst of all des Pétunias. Kate is at 702 Ave des Pétunias for eternity and where we’ll all be unless somebody starts attending parish meetings where these damaging decisions are taken.