Uncut Gems, Unexplored Treasures

There has been considerable buzz about the new Adam Sandler film, "Uncut Gems," due to appear on screens large and small this week.

Part of the interest is the story's setting: New York's diamond market--a world largely unknown to all but those who work and live in it.

Reading about "Uncut Gems" reminded us at once of another story set in that insulated community: "Florentine Finish," a novel by Cornelius Hirschberg.

"Florentine Finish" was published in 1963, which means you're unlikely to find it on any bookstore's shelves, and probably not in most libraries, and we're not giving our copy away, but there are those online book search services that seem able to turn up anything. And so, if you're looking for an off-beat mystery (Hirschberg's book won an Edgar from the Mystery Writers of America) we would push you to seek out "Florentine Finish."

And enjoy "Uncut Gems," as well.

Catching Up

It seems that January 25 went by while we were otherwise engaged, and it is a date notable for several reasons, not least the birthday of a petite, pretty niece.

But for Scots, it is, of course, Robbie Burns Day, and we regret not being present when the dirk was plunged into the haggis, the atholl brose was poured, and someone recited "A Man's a Man for a' That." We will make up for this by downing a tumbler of Scotch and playing recordings of Rufus Harley, only known jazz bagpiper.

January 25 is also the day marked on the Christian calendar for the conversion of St. Paul, one of the great dramatic moments in ancient history, when Paul, then Saul, was struck down on the road to Damascus by a light "above the brightness of the sun." Paul went on to write some of the most beautiful words collected in the Bible, along with a few some wish he hadn't written, or had ascribed to him.

As Dave Garroway used to say, Peace.

On Going Viral

We have found that "going viral" has a less desirable meaning. This occurred to us while reclining in the paramedics' limo en route to the ER.

The background music was not the best choice: tuned to All-Country, All-the-Time, they were playing "I'm Heading for the Last Roundup."

Still, it was comforting to be rolled into a hospital bed, even though it was designed for someone the size of Danny DeVito, and once all those IVs went to work--Martinis in one, sangre de toro in the other--the road to rude good health was reopened.

Our conclusion: Next New Year's, we will resolve not to get sick.

Unless it's a simple hangover. We can handle that.

--Slap Maxwell, back for the Super Bowl.

Epiphany

Epiphany was Dirk Rinehart's favorite season in the Christian calendar. And it does seem a lovely, gentle time--those days following Christmas and New Year's.

We have just ended the Epiphany octave, but there are so many memories and customs attached to it. The usual memory, of course, or the inherited memory, is of the Magi, traveling to Bethlehem, following the Star. "Star of wonder, star of light..." How many years in which three male members of the church choir, or two members and the priest, would sing "We Three Kings of Orient Are," playing the parts of Caspar, Melchior and Balthazar.

"A cold coming we had of it" begins T.S. Eliot's "Journey of the Magi," but those five opening lines are not Eliot's--he took them from a 1622 sermon by Lancelot Andrewes. And there is a later, often funny, "Journey of the Magi," by Paul William Roberts in which the Toronto journalist and a profane taxi driver follow the astrologers' route from Tehran to Bethlehem.

This is also the time of Janus, the two-headed god who sees both forward and backward, at the hinge of time.

Good reading at this time: "The Four Wise Men," by the mystical Michel Tournier, and--most appropriate--"Twelfth Night," one of Shakespeare's most charming romantic comedies, written to conclude the Court's Yuletide celebrations 420 years ago.

James Joyce wrote often of epiphanies, as they may appear in daily life. In Joyce's world, the word, though it is derived from the Greek verb "to reveal," seems more to mean an enlightenment, an awareness, an understanding--perhaps a gentle revelation.

May we experience many epiphanies this year.

Hangover Helper

That's what the world needs now. Hangover Helper, in a box like Hamburger Helper. Stir a spoonful of the miracle powder into a tumbler of sparkling water, drink at down, and at once those vicious after effects of New Year's Eve celebrating are gone. No more the feeling of someone using a jackhammer on your skull, no more the queasy stomach that has turned your complexion green, no more the remorse and embarrassment (Did I really sing that song? Did I really do that dance?)

Sadly, there is not yet a clinically proven remedy for a hangover. But there are several suggestions. Gabrielle Hamilton recommends steak tartare and Champagne. Vancouver's Salvador Deli offered a hangover special, a combination egg salad-tuna salad sandwich. A friend believed in the curative power of a large bowl of clam chowder. We have heeded the advice of many on this matter, from Jack Webster to Kingsley Amis.

But perhaps the best guide is "Floyd on Hangovers," a compact book by the clever British chef Keith Floyd, who writes, in the introduction, that he is accustomed "to waking up in San Francisco, Bangkok or Sydney feeling sick and tired of waking up sick and tired."

And so, Floyd compiled several cures, from the quick hit (The Bullshot: beef consommé, Worcestershire sauce, dash of Tabasco, hot horseradish, one shot of vodka, juice of one lemon, one egg yolk, salt and pepper, and heaps of crushed ice. Swallow in one gulp) to a five-day detoxification program, which includes playing Elvis's "Blue Suede Shoes" at breakfast.

But all of this may be too much, as you stare bleakly at the day and try to regain comprehension. In which case, you may be comforted by these words of Jack Wasserman: "It's better to have a few mornings after than never to have a night before."

Lost: Two Decades

Okay, where did those last twenty years go?

Anyone?

Reward if you can recover them.

Greetings, All

In a small city's otherwise deserted radio station a deejay and his operator get ready to play "The Christmas Song" for the nine hundred and ninety-ninth time. Across town a reporter sifts thru the wire copy, tries to ignore the mainly bad news, is pleased that Marshawn Lynch is returning to the Seahawks, and wonders if he'll still have a job next week. An emergency ward doctor moves from cubicle to white-curtained cubicle, and knows another fifty patients are being triaged in the waiting room. A nurse, in the middle of her fourth 14-hour shift, responds to another bell. A 911 operator reaches for her cold carton of coffee in between panicked calls. A highways worker studies avalanche reports. A bus driver pulls on a Santa Claus toque and grins at his rowdy late night riders. A priest adjusts her robe and prepares for her third service in twenty-four hours. A ninety-year-old in a nursing home dozes in his wheelchair and dreams of Christmases past.

Greetings, all.

Welcoming Ghosts

A widower we know said he had thought of moving away from his now too large house, but decided to stay, because it was still home to a friendly ghost.

Four ghosts appear in Dickens's "A Christmas Carol"--first the mournful Marley, dragging his chains, and then the ghosts of Christmases past, present and future.

But ghosts are not always frightening. Ghosts can be friendly, and are especially welcome at Christmas, bringing with them memories as colorful and treasured as the tree ornaments we hung decades ago.

It used to be customary--perhaps still is--for children to leave a plate of cookies for Santa's midnight arrival. We're leaving glasses of sherry for the ghosts.

Send in the Bathrobed Magi

It is, as many know, Christmas pageant time. Tiny tots from Sunday school, garbed as angels, will  open the program with "Jingle Bells" and at least one will have a meltdown.

Then the older group will present the Nativity play, with the prettiest girl as Mary, the class thug as the gentle Joseph, three pre-teen boys in bathrobes as the Wise men, and a confused dog as a camel.

At the conclusion, the entire cast and watchers will sing "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing." Then the performers will be given bags of oranges, hard candies and possibly toxic nuts, and sent off into the snowy night.

We've all been there. Some of us on stage, in our bathrobes.

Thomas the Twin

There has always been particular interest in a few of those who traveled with Jesus--Judas, of course, and Mary of Magdala, but also Peter, the rock, and John, thought to be "the one whom Jesus loved," and Matthew, the tax collector. Often readers identify with one of these.

Then there is Thomas, whose feast day was/is December 21. Thomas is often tagged "Didymus," but this is redundant. "Didymus" is the Greek word for "twin," but"Thomas" itself is derived from the Hebrew word "teom," which also means "twin." So one of the things we know about the man called Thomas is that he was a twin, but we do not know whose twin he was.

It seems to some of us that Thomas has gotten a bad rap, being dubbed for centuries "Doubting Thomas." Thomas's doubt--that Jesus had been resurrected--seems, again to some of us, not a failing, but an indication of how deeply he loved Jesus, and his need for absolute certainty to assuage his grief and give him peace.

A few years ago, a collection of fragments was published as "The Gospel of Thomas," and there has been doubt about that; doubt, as well, that he journeyed to India as some legends have it.

But is doubt necessarily a bad thing? Not if it leads somewhere. Peter Abelard wrote "The beginning of wisdom is found in doubting." And Paul Tillich wrote "Doubt is not the opposite of faith; it is one element of faith."

Good Year for Stamp Collectors

One of the most interesting philatelists of the current day is Keller, the gentle hit man in a series of Lawrence Block novels. After dispatching a subject, Keller uses his ill-gotten gains to purchase rare florals from the Ivory Coast and commemoratives from St. Pierre et Miquelon.

Stamp collecting may have slipped from fashion as a hobby, despite the fame of some of its followers--George VI, Franklin D. Roosevelt, et al. And making it harder for those of us who still lovingly tend their albums is the development of the pre-gummed postage stamps.

But the design of these miniature works of art continues to thrive, and we were delighted this year to see the new portrait of Elizabeth II on a series of mauve Canadian stamps, and, as the year ends, a Leonard Cohen stamp.

This is the happiest news since the US issued a Duke Ellington 22-cent stamp in recognition of Duke's "22 Cent Stomp."

And now, a Leonard Cohen stamp! Hallelujah!

Old Scrooge, Young Dickens

There is an excellent Modern Library edition of Charles Dickens's Christmas novellas--not only "A Christmas Carol," but the less familiar "The Chimes" and "A Haunted Man." After the success of "A Christmas Carol," readers looked for a Dickens story each Christmas season, and he continued to produce them. Perhaps the best known of these later stories is "The Cricket On the Hearth."

Most of us are accustomed to seeing portraits of the author in late middle age--bearded, slightly balding, wrinkled, all the ravages of time. But the portrait on this Modern Library edition shows him as a young man, unbearded, longhaired, delicately handsome. It was painted by David Maclise in 1839, when Dickens was 27.

Four years later, Dickens published "A Christmas Carol." And this is the almost hard to believe truth: that a 31-year-old created the crabbed old miser Ebenezer Scrooge.

The introduction to the Modern Library edition is by John Irving, who writes of watching the Alastair Sim film in a tent of the Great Royal Circus in Junagadh, Gujarat in northwest India. It's a good opening for Dickens's Christmas classic.

The other surprise, perhaps, is that "A Christmas Carol" is short, just over one hundred pages. It can be read in one sitting, and probably should be.

In his own short introduction, Dickens wrote "I have endeavoured in this Ghostly little book, to raise the Ghost of an Idea, which shall not put my readers out of humour with themselves, with each other, with the season, or with me. May it haunt their house pleasantly."

Homage to St. Lucy

December 13--feast day of St. Lucy.

St. Lucy of Syracuse, a third century Christian martyr who is regarded as the patron saint of--among others--writers.

All of us who string words together--Jurgen Gothe once had cards identifying himself as a "word arranger"--are grateful for St. Lucy's watchfulness and intervention. Writers who labor for years on an idea, writers like Flaubert who spend days searching for le mot juste, writers who collect stacks of publishers' rejection slips, writers who may not even think of themselves as writers but continue to delight their circle of friends with wonderful letters, writers who try to find time for their own work while writing labels for stain removers and speeches for politicians, and, especially, writers whose names may now be forgotten, but whose stories have enriched our lives from the time parents read to us.

St. Lucy, bless them all.

Here We Come A-Caroling

We once were part of a civilized radio station that refused to play Christmas music before December 15. Now stations fall over each other trying to be the first to go "all Christmas." Some start the day after Hallowe'en. And then comes the avalanche of bad pop tunes and albums hammered together for seasonal sales. So far we have escaped "Christmas with Keith Richards."

One should hear Bach's Christmas Oratorio at least once this season, and there are other choice works to enjoy, including Andre Previn's recording of "The Nutcracker" with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Menotti's charming "Amahl and the Night Visitors," and Baroque Christmas concerti by Il Giardino Armonico and Les Violons du Roy. The most interesting new recording may be "Cantica Nova" by the choir of Victoria's Christ Church Cathedral, ten new carols by Canadian composers, including Stephen Chatman and Paul Halley.

And now, in response to an overwhelming absence of requests, we bring you again our recommended playlist for jollity 'round the wassail bowl:

"Sleighride," a runaway version of the Leroy Anderson number by Art Pepper and Richie Cole. Roger Kellaway steers the sled thru some scary curves and over some crazy bumps.

"England's Carol," which is really "God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen," as interpreted by the Modern Jazz Quartet.

"Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas." Hard to top Judy Garland's wistful performance of this Hugh Martin-Ralph Blane ballad, but there is a tougher reading by Rosemary Clooney. Our choice, again this year: the Dexter Gordon version. Long tall Dexter gives the song a more upbeat treatment.

"An Appalachian Christmas." Mark O'Connor's party. James Taylor is here, along Renee Fleming and a string band, but the pick is Jane Monheit's "The Christmas Song," the hippest (apologies to Nat Cole) version of the Mel Torme-Bob Wells standard.

"Away in a Manger," George Shearing and Don Thompson give a Brahmsian depth to the children's carol. It's on the 1983 "Top Drawer," one of the Shearing-Torme live performance albums.

"Midnight Sleighride" by the Sauter-Finnegan Orchestra. Yet another romp thru the snow, with this variation on the Troika from Prokofiev's "Lieutenant Kije" suite by the clever, eclectic ensemble led by Eddie Sauter and Bill Finnegan.

"'Zat You, Santy Claus?" Hey, it's Louis. What more do you need?

Yes, thank you--we will take one more mince tart and another mug of mulled wine.

Trump Trash Talk

Trudeau: "The next time we mock Trump we should do it in French."

Macron:  "Or use bigger words."

Wait, can I get that letter back?

There is always the danger when writing a stack of Christmas cards that you may goof up. For example, you're writing to your brother and saying, "Are we going to have to put up with wacky Uncle Fred again this year?" and then realizing you have mixed up the envelopes and sent that one to Uncle Fred.

Some years ago, there were sensors and cameras installed at high traffic locations in southern British Columbia, and these were programmed to record vehicles exceeding the speed limit. The erring driver would receive a ticket in the mail--at that time, 75 bucks--but as a bonus, a photograph of the vehicle blasting through the intersection. We were tempted to have the photo reproduced as a Christmas card, to send to friends with the message "Speeding Our Greetings to You."

We look forward to the cards sent by political leaders, and the one awaited most eagerly this year is the White House card showing Donald Trump's head photo-shopped onto Rocky Balboa's body.

A merry Christmas to all, and especially card-carrying Canada Posties.

More Great Opening Lines

We do not mean "Do you come here often?" or "Let me guess your sign" or "Have many people told you how much you resemble Rachel McAdams?" These are not pick-up lines, except in the sense they make you pick up a book. Try these:

"This is a story to be read in bed in an old house on a rainy night." -- John Cheever, "Oh What a Paradise It Seems."

"I still haven't figured out my accident." -- Elia Kazan, "The Arrangement."

"He sent her a music box which played an aria from Trovatore while simultaneously emitting Chanel's wonderful new scent." -- Richard Condon, "An Infinity of Mirrors."

"They threw me off the hay truck about noon." -- James M. Cain, "The Postman always Rings Twice."

And one we'll hear often this December: "Marley was dead to begin with."

You know whose line that is.

Happy Birthday to Hawk

He was probably the only musician to play with Mamie Smith's Jazz Hounds in 1913 and with Art Pepper in 1977. He was Coleman Hawkins, dubbed "Hawk" and "Bean," and he was born November 28, 1904, in St. Joseph, Missouri.

Coleman Hawkins might not have invented the tenor saxophone, but he was the first to show how it could be played. His 1940 recording of "Body and Soul," a largely ad lib rendition, remains one of the seminal jazz performances. Out of Hawkins came Ben Webster, Buddy Tate, Lucky Thompson, Eddie "Cleanhead" Vinson, Chu Berry, and two generations of muscular, big-toned  saxophonists, through to Sonny Rollins, Ernie Watts and John Coltrane.

Rollins said that he and other children would sit on the front steps of their Harlem homes and watch for Hawkins coming down the street, always nattily dressed, always wearing a snapbrim fedora. They looked on him with awe, the way Montreal children would have looked at Maurice Richard.

One of the remarkable things about Hawkins was his ability to move with the music, from the rough blues of Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey through 1940s swing and Jazz at the Philharmonic tours to the bop and post-bop era of Coltrane and Rollins and Thelonious Monk.

A tip of our fedora to Coleman Hawkins, as we exit now to listen again to his "Body and Soul."

In the Beginning...

"You must begin well and end well." This was a dictum pronounced by Maurice Chevalier, quoted often by Stephane Grappelli.

We thought of it when reading "Mary Who Wrote Frankenstein," the wonderful new book by Linda Bailey, which has a perfect beginning.

And then we thought of other memorable opening lines, remembering that maybe you can't tell a book by its cover, but you can tell a lot by its first paragraph.

Here are a few:

"It was the morning of my hundredth birthday." Len Deighton, "Billion Dollar Brain."

"Willis Wayde, before he went to sleep, could shut his eyes and see every detail of the Harcourt place." John P. Marquand, "Sincerely, Willis Wayde."

"I first heard Personville called Poisonville by a red-haired mucker named Hickey Dewey in the Big Ship in Butte." Dashiell Hammett, "Red Harvest."

"In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since." F. Scott Fitzgerald, "The Great Gatsby."

Probably the most famous opening line, apart from "Once upon a time" and "It was a dark and stormy night" is "Call me Ishmael" from Herman Melville's "Moby Dick." But almost as famous, and, we think, much better, is "For a long time I used to go to bed early," the beginning of Marcel Proust's "Remembrance of Things Past."

That might be our favorite. Although to our cluttered, dusty bookshelf mind, it is hard to top the first sentence of Ernest Hemingway's "A Moveable Feast," which is like a jazz solo that ignores the opening melody and goes straight to the improvisation: "Then there was the bad weather."

And Ms. Bailey's fine opening to "Mary Who Wrote Frankenstein"? "Here is Mary. She's a dreamer. The kind of girl who wanders alone, who stares at clouds, who imagines things that never were."

It's a book intended for young readers. Never mind. After that opening, this reader is hooked.

Grey Cup and other football memories

November 24, 2019: the 107th Grey Cup game. By the time this is read, it may be over. No late bets allowed.

Not the first time the Winnipeg Blue Bombers and Hamilton Tiger-Cats have met in the CFL championship game. They went against each other in the memorable Fog Bowl of 1962, when the fog rolled in from Lake Ontario over the Toronto stadium and the game was halted, to be resumed the next day. The Bombers won that year: 28 to 27 over the Ti-Cats.

One hundred and seven games have been played for the silver cup given by Governor General Earl Grey. Game #1 was between the University of Toronto Varsity Blues and the Parkdale Canoe Club. Blues took it, 26-6.

Winningest teams over the decades: Toronto Argonauts, 17 wins; Edmonton Eskimos, 11.

Longtime fans remember watching the game outdoors in frigid weather, or listening to the radio in pre-TV times, leaping up and down when Jackie Parker scooped up a fumble on his team's 11-yard line and ran the ball 93 yards for a touchdown against the Montreal Alouettes. Final score: Eskimos 26, Alouettes 25. You wanta talk cliffhangers?

Numerous great names in the game, but the Big Daddy of all may have been Annis Stukus, a player on two Grey Cup winners, later coach and general manager of the newly minted Edmonton Eskimos and BC Lions. We knew Stuke late in his career, when he wrote on sports for the Vancouver Courier, but he had enjoyed a long run in radio and print before that. Most off-beat assignment: Sent to Taiwan by the Vancouver Sun to cover a conflict between China and Formosa, he interviewed Generalissimo Chiang Kai-Shek and sent back a story headlined "No New Normie Kwongs in Formosa."

Denny Boyd, whom we miss every day, talked about Grey Cup games in his cookbook, "Man On the Range." He wrote, "Having been a jock writer for some 20 years, I have had my allotment of Grey Cup weeks. Been to some parties we could have been sent to jail for. Played all the popular Grey Cup Week games, like Naked in the Elevator, Mattress Out the Window and Chug-a-Lug-a-Jug." For those recovering from the celebrations, Denny offered a remedy: pot roast cooked in coffee.

For some of us, football has always been The Game, even in a country where hockey is almost a religion. (Don Cherry: "Whaddya mean, almost?") It's the game played in rain and snow, often on miserable fields that have more dirt and gravel than grass, and at some schools, where players were lucky to find cleats that would fit.

At one of those schools, standing on the sidelines, a kid disc jockey kept ignoring the game to look at a beautiful girl who wore the quarterback's St. John's College pin. The dj had been a flop as a high school guard, but he did, to his continuing amazement, win the girl.

And there were the three brothers--one who planned a career as a coach, but instead, "went for a soldier," and led troops in Germany and Cyprus; another who played for the Lions and Roughriders, but ended as a CBC writer with a specialty in Russian literature and politics; and the youngest, and smallest, who, despite his size and a wailing mother in the stands, played centre.

All these memories flash across the gridiron of the mind.

Everyone's a winner.

--Slap Maxwell.