She is notoriously difficult to photograph but popular demand means that I must try:

Her eyes tend to disappear but we are pretty sure that she has at least two!

She has much the same heroic Schnauzer stance as Kal.  If the house is ever invaded by Intelligence Mice from Mars, I know that we will emerge triumphant!

 

Both Kal and Chloe are very concerned about the all the new cracks in the sidewalk...maybe the mice are interdimensional and are trying to make their way into Etobicoke through the ground.  Hmmmm.....Mole-Mice from X-Space? Yes, the mind of science fiction writer does tend to wander a bit while walking the dogs...

Back to essentials.  Chloe is very cute.  Odd because I'm sure none of the other puppies in the world are particularly cute.

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No, the title is not intended to warn you that those young people at your door are plotting to put your RSPs into a Ponsi Scheme.  No, earlier this month I went to the Restoration Studies Symposium in Independence, Missouri -- partly because I wanted to support the work of some former clients but mostly because there are some personal questions and issues I'd like to resolve someday.

I prepared a slideshow which you can view on in the video section of this blogsite.  Here's a sample image:

 

If the show rolls past too quickly just hit the pause button and it will stop at the frame for you.  The show may confuse and annoy some of you -- and I apologize for that.  But hopefully it will also enlighten some.

Comments most welcome.

First the important stuff.  Here is a picture of the beautiful Chloe: 

If you're using a laptop you will have to wiggle your screen around before you can actually see her.  She's a stealth-puppy and tends to disappear on all imaging systems.  But trust me, she is tiny and insanely cute.  Reports from the homefront tell me that she and Kal get along quite well but Chloe is a feisty girl and there have been barking incidents...

I'm back in Hong Kong and once again I've got stomach flu.  I was recently told by some friends from Syria was that the expression for going to the toilet was to say that "I'm going to visit Winston Churchill".  To build on that metaphor I would say that the Prime Minister and I have moved beyond the War years and we're talking about the various merits of water colours. 

I hate the flu but there are one or two advantages.  One was that I was too weak to change the TV on the hotel and ended up watching a really interesting documentary on NHK World about the radio dramatist Kuramoto which I would have never encountered otherwise.  Another fascinating development (at least to me) are the incredibly weird and thought provoking fever dreams I have. 

Last night I dreamed that I was at a literary symposium and for some reason had been assigned the honour of reading an undiscovered manuscript by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.  My subconscious may have made this selection because I'm reading Dostoevsky for the first time in a long time and I discovered both authors at the same time in my adolescence. 

Anyway the reading is going only quite well, I can't remember what the story was about but the audience was enjoying it tremendously -- laughing in all the right spots and all that sort of thing.  Then it starts to get difficult.  First of all, the story moves into a segment of experimental free-verse poetry -- which is actually pretty good -- there's even a mock-Biblical entry which is attributed to "Lunatics: Chapter 4, Verses 3-11."  But the problem is that the manuscript I'm reading from is a photocopy and the quality gets worse and worse as I continue to read.  I'm doing the best I can but it's almost impossible to read.

Then I hear an angry voice from the side of the lecturn:  "You are not reading it right!  You have to read Vonnegut in a set number of very specific ways!

Of course its a creative anxiety dream.  Both disturbing but also kind of fun....

The headline is a true statement.  However, there has not been a major ideological shift or theological crisis in the Spencer household.  Well, no more than usual anyway.

 

Here is a picture of Simon.  The son in question.  Yes, the symbol with the apple and the biting of it are quite deliberate and very obvious.  Tree of knowledge, forbidden fruit, loss of innocence, keeping the doctor away.  It's all here in this blog.  Well, maybe not the doctor.

So here's a covert shot of the inside of the local Blockbuster.  One of the evil hang-outs where my boys pick up video games.  Terrible places these.  I really should stop agreeing to drive them there.

Can't you just see the corruption floating about there?  Threatening to envelop my helpless children?
Well, shot with my Lomo it does look a bit grimmer (grimier) than it really is.

Here's the going to Hell and Satan part.  Two weeks ago, Simon used his allowance to buy a copy of the Dante's Inferno video game.  It has an 'M' rating but Simon is a pretty together kid and I trust him.  Besides, the game included a digital copy of Dante's original poem and while I was doubtful  he'd actually read it I figured he might accidently bump into the literature while he was loading up the system.

Simon did not let me down.  He played the game for about half an hour and put it away.  It wasn't a cheap game so I asked him why and he said he was uncomfortable with all the nudity and some of the grotesque images.  He went on to say that it looked like a really good game but he just had trouble getting around the visuals.  He seemed to have the situation in hand so I didn't say anything.  He tried playing the game again a few days later but it was still beyond his comfort level so he asked me to take him to EB Games so he could trade it in for something else.  Fine.  On the way there he says that his real regret is that he won't be able to keep the digital version of the Dante poem.  Would it be okay to stop by Chapters bookstore so he can pick up a copy?

Here's the only useful parenting advise I probably ever give you:  when your kid says can he go get a copy of one of the great works of World literature.  Say yes as fast as you can.

So we got the book.  Actually we got a nice Everyman edition of the whole Divine Comedy.  Reasonably priced hardback that he picked up with the dosh he got from the game refund.  At this point Simon's finished about two-thirds of it -- past Purgatory, through all the levels of Hell and soon on to Paradise.  I was kind of interested in the reaction he'd get when people at Lakeshore Collegiate Institute walking around with this not-small hardback.  His teachers were pretty impressed.  I was pretty impressed that his teachers noticed and complemented him on taking on the epic poem.  I suspect his peers think it's cool (or at least aren't trying to beat him up) because it's source the material for an interesting video game.

None of this surprises his brother Evan who's been downloading free classic novels and short stories from various stories for a while now.  He's reading Dracula on his iPod while he rides the streetcar into school.

Yeah, life is hell sometimes. 

My love of DC then Marvel comics was a source of great concern to my mother.  Comic books, she believed were filled with violence, poorly concealed sexual deviancy and all forms of social maladaption.

  

She was of course absolutely right  which is why I enjoyed them so much.    Eventually she surrendered in the Battle of Sequential Art and let me get on with my comic book collecting.  I suspect there was a variety of reasons for this.  One was that compared to many of the other vices out there, comic books were relatively small potatoes -- and back in the sixties and seventies they were cheap, cheap, cheap!  The other reason was that I was trying to turn comics into some kind of creative outlet as the hours that I spent at my dad-built drafting board scratching out my own strips will attest.  I owe my Uncle Bill big time for reassuring my mom that my work was actually very good and and wise use of a young mans free time.  He was being very kind.  Working on all those home-made comics was actually very useful as it taught me a degree of creative discipline and somehow blocking out those words, pictures and panels also gave me a sense of how to construct the narratives of stories and essays. 

All of which came in pretty handy in later life.     The actual comics themselves were not really something people would want to pay to read but there you go.  I was always very partial to my character Math Man: The Quadratic Crusader and I did some personalized comics for close friends and I really enjoyed that.  I recently learned that a friend had kept and framed the one I did for him back in 1975 and that was a wonderful feeling.

My mother gave up on the comics front but she did not give up on the raising the standards front.  Mark Twain once said that classics were books that everyone admired but nobody read.  Fortunately my mother did not believe that.  My father did a number of very important things for me but I have to say that mom had the ability to drop in books at crucial points in my life that made a huge different in my development.  

Christmas 1972 was a good example:  she gave me that double LP of the Mercury Theatre on the Air production of The War of the Worlds.  It was, and is, a remarkable production.  I think you can find a legal download at the Internet Archives or some of the OTR sites.  I credit reading Hadley Cantrils study of the effects of W of W The Invasion from Mars as sparking my interest in social science.  She also gave me a little paperback edition of The Time Machine.  Amazing how such a such a tiny object could open those infinite vistas.  It was also amazing to be sitting there in 1995 at the symposium to mark the 100th anniversary of that book to sitting next to Micheal Foote getting ready to give my paper. 

Every birthday or Christmas there was usually another great transformative book for me: 

The Citizen Kane Book - which taught me that cinema had a history and it was worth studying as an art form. 
My Country Right or Left by George Orwell - my introduction to serious political criticism.
Crime and Punishment - the need for mercy as well as justice.  AndI completely disagree with those who say that the last chapter of that book is incongruous -- the novel has no point without Rs repentence.

The list goes on.

All this was sparked by the fact that I finally got around to reading To Kill a Mockingbird.  It is a great book.  Of course since I am probably the last person on the planet to have read it, I dont need to tell all of you that.  However, I really wish could talk to my mother about it. 

But I cant.

Sigh. 

I guess this void never closes.

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My mother passed away today. 

I found this story she wrote about me when I was four years old.  It was something she composed as an assignment for a creative writing course she was taking while we were living in California.  She got a lot of flak for it but I think its a great story and surprisingly relevant today considering that she was writing in 1963.  I was also struck how much her work has influenced mine.

Goodbye Mom.  Thank you.  I love you.

THE LITTLE ALIEN

 

 

            A long time ago when he was very little he saw a flag for the first time.  He was bouncing on the sofa, humming to himself while he waited for the cartoons to come on television, when suddenly the test pattered disappeared.  He saw instead a big Maple Leaf flag blowing in the breeze, and he heard stirring march music.  All the flag he saw tiny pictures – a tall building with a clock in a tower, oil wells, wheat fields, tall mountains, Mounties on horseback, soldiers marching and aeroplanes in formation flying overhead.  It was exciting!  He jumped to his feet and marched around the room, swinging his arms and stamping his feet.  Every day after that he watched for the flag.  Every day he saw it.

            One day his sister, Margaret, who was home from school, watched with him.  When the flag came and the marching music started she said:

            “No, you don’t march when you hear that song.  You stand at attention, like this.”  She sang words to the music and he listened.  The next day when the flag picture came and the music played he stood tall and sang as loudly as he could.  His mother came from the kitchen and her eyes were laughing.

            “Not ‘O Can A Duck’ Son.  It’s ‘O Canada!’  Can-a-da.  That’s the name of our country.”

            What’s country? Is it a flag?  Is it a clock building with a tower, a wheatfield, an oil well?  Is it Mounties on horseback, soldiers marching?  The little boy wondered.

            He’d had his own little flag once when he was three.  The Queen of England came to visit and they went to visit her.  Before the bands played and the parade began a soldier climbed on top of a high building and unfurled a big flag.  When he stood at attention to it, the little boy wanted to up there with the soldier, but they wouldn’t let him.  His father held his hand tightly, and his mother told him not to fuss but to watch and wave his little flag for the Queen when she rode by in her shiny car.  All he saw was a lady with a pretty hat, smiling and waving a gloved hand in his direction.  He still wanted to be up on the building with the flag, standing at attention.

            Once they had a cake on Canada’s birthday – no candles, just his little flag in the middle of the white frosting.  When his birthday came he got a bag of plastic Canadian soldiers.  Sometimes when he played with them he let one of the infantrymen carry his little flag.

            Then his father went away for a while to California, and when he came back he brought him a little pop gun.  His father said, “Next year we’re all going to California for a year.”  The boy was glad.  It must be nice there, he decided.  That was where his father got the pop gun.

            Winter came and it was so cold that he couldn’t play outside.  His father had to shove pathways through the high drifts nearly every day.  “This is the year we should be in California!” he exclaimed between puffs.

            Then in the spring after the snow went and there was lots of water and mud outside to slosh around in, his mother started to put things in boxes.  One day all the boxes were loaded into the car and they all squeezed in around them.  Last of all his mother handed him his bag of plastic army men to hold.  When they drove away they waved goodbye to the cluster of neighbours gathered in their backyard, and his sisters sang a song about going to California.

            They stopped to visit his grandparents on the way.  His grandfather who liked to tease said, “Oh, you’ll get down that promised land of ‘milk and honey’ and forget about Canada.”  His grandfather said funny things sometimes. 

            They travelled for a long time, by wheatfields and oil wells, and through the high mountains.  Then one day they came to a place called the border.  There was a building with his flag above, and the man there just smiled, counted them, and waved them on.  Nearby there was another building with a different flag.  His father went inside with this briefcase full of papers, and stayed there for a long time.  When he came back to the car another man in a uniform came with him.  The man looked at everyone, wrote things down, and asked, “Any fruits?  Any vegetables?”

            Then he let them go.

            His father said, “Well, we are now in the United States of America.”  It didn’t look different.  He and Janie looked out the back window of the station wagon and waved goodbye to Canada. 

            After many days his father said, “We’re just about there.”  The promised land looked just like Canada.

            Their house was waiting for them.  The next morning he found some children to play with.  One day they played army and he took out his little plastic men.  Roger, the boy down the street, called them “Kooks!”  and killed them all.  He ran to his mother screaming, “Mama, Canadians are so good guys, aren’t they? Tell Roger!”

            When he sent to kindergarten he saw two flags in the schoolyard.  One had stars and stripes and the other had big brown bear.  School was fun most days.  His teacher knew lots of things but she didn’t know that there was freedom in Canada.  She said that America was the home of the free.

            Life was different in wintertime.  There was no snow and he didn’t need mittens.  There were days and days of rain and he wore his new yellow raincoat and southwester hat.  Sometimes when dense fog hung like a thick curtain the street lights were soft and muted.  On Christmas he and his mother heard a meadow lark sing.

            “That’s a different kind of Christmas carol,” his mother said.

            During the Christmas holidays he watched television, and he hear a man say in a stern voice, “All aliens must be registered at their local post office before January 31^st.”

            “What are aliens,” he asked.

            His father explained, ending, “We are aliens.”

            “Will it hurt to be registered?” he then asked.  “Is it something like being inoculated?” His father told him not to worry, that he would take care of it.

            He went to a new school after the holidays, so new that there weren’t any flagpoles in the school grounds.  Then his teacher told them that soon they would be given their flags, and the children began preparing for Flag Day.  She taught them the songs they would sing, and then she taught them the pledge of allegiance, and told them that on the coming Friday the kindergarten children would join the other school children and they would join the other school children and they would pledge allegiance to the flag together.  He was worried – it wasn’t the right flag for him.  He asked his mother about it, and she told him to stand at attention but not to say the words.  He didn’t want Friday to come.  On Friday morning he felt sick, but his mother felt his head and decided that he was well enough for school.

            He went to school and they held the Flag Day ceremonies.  They sang the songs and he sang with them. When they said the pledge of allegiance he stood at attention and listened.

            “Why aren’t you saying the words?”

            The child next to him hissed the question in his ear and elbowed him sharply in the ribs.

            “You’re supposed to say the pledge!” There was another jab in his side.

            The small boy shook his head, stood straight and tall and said nothing.  All around he heard the other children reciting, holding their hands to their hearts, looking proudly at the flag at the front, not his flag.  He knew his sister and his brother were there somewhere, standing at attention like him, but he couldn’t see them.  He felt alone.  He was a little alien.  His eyes filled with tears.  When they went back to his kindergarten room for their milk his tears ran down his cheeks.  His teacher asked, “What’s the matter with this little boy?  Is he sick?”

            He raised his head and met her eyes, “I think I’m homesick,” was all he said.