EPISODE 392 JUST IN CASE YOU ARE INTERESTED…TABLES ( sort of tables )

EPISODE 392     JUST IN CASE YOU ARE INTERESTED…


alan skeoch
July 20. 2021

The phone rang early this morning.
“Alan, I have some tables you might want to purchase.”
“What kind?
“I will send a picture.”

And so she did.  I am not interested but maybe someone
who gets my episodes might have room for them in an apartment
or condo…or maybe in their five ton truck.

If so, let me know…I will forward the info.

alan

P.S.  Just a thought.  Old man Trump has not quite finished his
border wall…maybe these would help if covered with barbed wire.

IMG_1144.JPG

Episode 391 MOTION PICTURE TREASURES…(beaten and bashed like all of us)

FILMING IS BIG BUSINESS IN TORONTO…HERE IS ONE REASON WHY


EPISODE 391     MOTION PICTURE SET DRESSING TREASURES (matter of opinion)


alan skeoch
july 2021



Good news came up the farm laneway in the form of a 5 ton truck sent
loaded with gifts from Michael V.   Treasures ,really.  So here are
some pictures and a few questions to which the only answer is “GOOD!”

“ALAN, we need set dressing for a factory in ruins…”
GOOD
“MARJORIE, we need some things for village in 1950’s…i.e. oil storage tanks…iron wheels.”
GOOD
“ALAN, we need some things for a back alley in a tough city.”
GOOD
“MARJORIE, we need some things for a ship yard in ruins…1930’s rusty…broken…forgotten”
GOOD
“ALAN  we need a disaster scene dressing”
GOOD
“MARJORIE, The setting is a scrap yard.”
GOOD
“ALAN, we need rusty things left on a desert island in 1944.
GOOD

“MARJORIE, I would not have this stuff on our lot.”
GOOD
“ALAN, This is ridiculous…junk”
GOOD
“MARJORIE, there is no place to keep this stuff.”
GOOD
“ALAN, we need a fake sunflower,,blooming in a junk yard.”
GOOD
“MARJORIE we need a guy in short pants …goof/”
GOOD
ALAN. I would not allow this stuff..”
GOOD

THANKFULLY few people know the secret of good set
dressing.  Do you really want to know? Good set dressing
must be beaten and twisted, torn and paint chipped, weathered and
dying.  Why?  Because then and only then does a motion picture
set capture the human condition. I’m talking about serious drama…
not the fluffy stuff.  Take a close look around the real world.

alan


EPISODE 390 “PLANTING A SUN FLOWER THAT WILL NEVER DIE” (With help from Bill Brooks)

EPISODE 390   “PLANTING A SUN FLOWER THAT WILL NEVER DIE” (with help from Bill Brooks)


alan skeoch
July 20, 2021



“Bill, could you help me get this sunflower ready to survive the winter…to survive many winters?”
“Expect I can”
“After you get the road grader done.”
“Might just do the sunflower first.””
(Bill never said I look like a water melon but he must have
thought that…instead he got working on the sun flower.)


“This potato digger needs a new home…are you interested?”
“Bill, Marjorie will be thrilled…”
“I’ll drop it on the lawn in front of your farm house tomorrow….along
with the sunflower.”




“NOW I might just get back to the road grader…”

EPISODE 390 “PLANTING A SUN FLOWER THAT WILL NEVER DIE” (With help from Bill Brooks)

EPISODE 390   “PLANTING A SUN FLOWER THAT WILL NEVER DIE” (with help from Bill Brooks)


alan skeoch
July 20, 2021



“Bill, could you help me get this sunflower ready to survive the winter…to survive many winters?”
“Expect I can”
“After you get the road grader done.”
“Might just do the sunflower first.””
(Bill never said I look like a water melon but he must have
thought that…instead he got working on the sun flower.)


“This potato digger needs a new home…are you interested?”
“Bill, Marjorie will be thrilled…”
“I’ll drop it on the lawn in front of your farm house tomorrow….along
with the sunflower.”




“NOW I might just get back to the road grader…”

EPISODE 389 “STRIPPING THE GEARS” ( with Bill Brooks)

EPISODE 389   “STRIPPING THE GEARS”  (with Bill Brooks)


alan skeoch
July19, 2021



“World treating you well, young fellow?”
“good and bad…up and down…hot and cold”
“Come over here…something for you to see.”

I had a job for Bill Brooks to do…to make a special sunflower…but
he got me distracted right away.  Bill is a mechanic who likes
to be challenged.

“Take a look at those gears”
“Look good to me…what are they worth?’
“Can you spare $3,000?”
“You mean those gears are worth $3,000?  what’s wrong with them?”
“Look closer….gears have been stripped…”



“I have to find new or used gears like this…to fit the front end of a
four wheel drive Ford tractor built in the 1960’s.”
“Any luck?”’:
“We can get new gears from a factory in Italy for $3,000…right now we are
asking around scrap yards for a used set but no luck.”





“Stripping the gears…jamming a gear change without using the clutch…that’ll
start the stripping….eventually the gears just will not work together any more.”

“You know something Bill…”

“Know some things.”

“The term ‘stripping the gears’ could be applied to the current big
problems below the border in the United States.   A lot of gear 
stripping going on down there…eventually the government could 
just not work any more.  Trump stripped the gears a lot when he 
was president….”



EPISODE 388 ROAD JUST DID NOT LOOK GOOD … UNTL OUR HIBISCUS GREETD

EPISODE 388   ROAD JUST DID NOT LOOK GOOD … UNTL OUR HIBISCUS GREETED


alan skeoch
july 13. 2021

TWO WAYS OF LOOKING AT RAINDROPS…BETTER TITLE



“Alan, this storm is bad…cannot see as I drive…should I pull over?
“too dangerous…cars behind will drive over us…keep moving.”
“Why did they decide to reconstruct the road?”
“To test your driving skills Marjorie.”





“Alan, I can’t see the road….driving blind.”
“Try prayer.”




“Road blocked…just as rain eased….”
“Power of prayer”


Not exactly comforting to find this blocking the road just as the rain eased up.

And then we were home and raindrops began to look charming


EPISODE 386 YOUR HOME ON NATIVE LAND…BOOK I WROTE ON FIRST NATIONS PEOPLE…SAD RESULT

EPISODE 386     YOUR HOME ON NATIVE LAND…BOOK I WROTE ON FIRST NATIONS PEOPLE…SAD RESULT


alan skeoch
July 2021




When I wrote ‘Your Home on Native Land’, I was quite proud of the result.   I felt I was doing my small bit
to right the wrongs suffered by our First Nations people.  Well, the old adage that pride goeth before a fall
soon deflated my pride.  




“Dad, you must publish your stories.  Get an agent.”
“Kevin, I do not want to go through that grief.”
“But the stories are good.””
“So say you…an agent, then a publisher will put them through
a meat grinder along with my soul, if I have a soul.  I would rather
just muddle along and hope someone actually reads the stories
on the internet.”

Writing is a tough and thankless job that triggers more criticism than compliments.
I wonder why so many people actually write and publish books only to have
the manuscripts taken apart…sometimes brutally.  I have been on both ends
of this.   For a few years long ago, I was the book critic for the OSSTF BULLETIN.  Loved
doing the evaluations but now wish I had held back some of my smart ass comments.
Those comments hurt people.  I wish it had not been so.  I was young and thoughtless.
One book in particular should have been treated better.  Title? I think it was about an owl
and life experience.   I rushed the review…said things that must have hurt the author.
Regret that deeply even now … the review was 50 or so years ago. Very few ever
read it thankfully.

  So far I have authored and co-authored
around 13 book and several filmstrip histories (Filmstrip?  That word means nothing today).
All the books had to grind their way across the burning coals of criticism.

“Alan. you must be a rich man from the royalties!”

What a joke.  The Canadian writer, Hugh Garner, framed one of his
royalty checks.  It was somewhere around $2.50!    He cursed about that
in his book ‘One Damn Thing and Another’.  I know the feeling having received
such a check myself.  Today publishes do not send out such checks. Ten dollar
minimum royalty to get a check.

Some checks were larger and reasonable but no check
was ever humungous.  Young writers should never quit their day jobs.  Any author
will tell you that. (Publishing is a tough game as well…involves investing lots of
cash that may never return.)

Advice: “Write because you want to write…as if you have something
worth saying.  Never expect a financial reward.  That will keep you sane
and reduce the number of expletives you will use.”


  This book titled
YOUR HOME ON NATIVE LAND comes to mind.   Never seen a copy?  Little wonder since the
book was likely ground into paper dust several years ago.  Before that happened
the publisher, Jackie Stewart, delivered 30 copies to our house.  Most are still here.


The legends of our indigenous people are fascinating and plump with meaning.
Particularly the Legend of Creation which is told something like this”

LEGEND OF CREATION

“High above the clouds lived the Sky People
One day, a crack appeared in the sky a hole, where
a big tree had fallen over.
Sky Woman , who was pregnant, looked down through the hole…slipped
and fell.
As she fell, a pair of loons saw her and caught her on their backs, saving her
from drowning.
But they could not hold her, so they cried for help.
Then a great SNAPPING TURTLE emerged fro the water world and 
Sky Woman dropped on the turtle’s back.
But his back, though large, was not large enough to hold
her forever.
So all the creatures of the water and air were called to a meeting to see
what they could do for Sky Woman.
The snapping turtle said, “We must have some earth.”
And so the beaver and the muskrat and all the birds that could
dive tried to get some mud from the bottom of the ocean.
They failed.
Then the great snapping turtle found some mud already lodged
in a hidden place in its own mouth.
“Here is some mud.Rub it on the edges of my back and it will grow.”
They did, and the turtle’s shell grow to become the land we know
as North America.*

(*First Nation story tellers of eastern North America repeated versions of this story
…with the same core truths…expressed
orally,  hence variations.   Indigenous people of western North America used
ravens in their legends.)

THINK ABOUT IT:  GIANT SNAPPING TURTLE and PLATE TECTONICS

The Legend is not that much different from the scientific
explanation of plate tectonics…great masses of rock floating
above the earth’s liquid magma.   One touching theme in the
legend is First Nation respect for all living things on the earth…
and also recognition of women as leaders.


MY THOUGHTS AS I BEGAN TO WRITE

  Why did I choose a boy rather than a girl?  Boys, in my
experience teaching high school for 30 years, just do not read as well as girls.  So I wrote a book
that I hoped boys would read as well as girls.  I created an indigenous boy to tell the story of his people. He asked
questions that his wise grandmother answered.  All using first person dialogue between the boy and his grandmother.

Seemed like a good idea.  It was not.


End of story.

Well not quite the end.  If I had not taken on the task I would never have got the
phone call that led me to the Lubicon Cree…a small tribe that was forgotten.
Next story.

alan

EPIODE 385 WALL PAINTINGS BY MR. KUNA…ISLINGTON

EPISODE 385     WALL PAINTINGS BY MR. JOHN KUNA…ISLINGTON


alan skeoch
July 2021


This could have been my grandfather, Ed Freeman…trying to make a living selling produce from his tiny farm near
Islington in 1908.  Tough times.   Sold the farm and headed for Northern Ontario where conditions were worse…seemed
all the north was on fire…bush fires.

MARJORIE SKEOCH MAKES A DISCOVERY


“Alan, I want to show you something wonderful..startling.”
“Not another visit to the Salvation  Army used clothing store I hope.”
“Don’t be silly…I want you to see the street art gallery by John Kuna on brick walls of Islington.”

“Islington … that was where granddad Freeman first settled in 1908…tried
to run a market garden.  Tough time.  Failed.”
“You might see him in one of the paintings.” (SEE FIRST PAINTING…HORSES AND WAGON)

EPIODE 385 WALL PAINTINGS BY MR. KUNA…ISLINGTON

EPISODE 385     WALL PAINTINGS BY MR. JOHN KUNA…ISLINGTON


alan skeoch
July 2021


This could have been my grandfather, Ed Freeman…trying to make a living selling produce from his tiny farm near
Islington in 1908.  Tough times.   Sold the farm and headed for Northern Ontario where conditions were worse…seemed
all the north was on fire…bush fires.

MARJORIE SKEOCH MAKES A DISCOVERY


“Alan, I want to show you something wonderful..startling.”
“Not another visit to the Salvation  Army used clothing store I hope.”
“Don’t be silly…I want you to see the street art gallery by John Kuna on brick walls of Islington.”

“Islington … that was where granddad Freeman first settled in 1908…tried
to run a market garden.  Tough time.  Failed.”
“You might see him in one of the paintings.” (SEE FIRST PAINTING…HORSES AND WAGON)

EPISODE 384 EXPERIENCES WITH INDIGENOUS PEOPLE…”OK, BOYS, PICK YOU UP IN SAULT STE. MARIE.”

EPISODE 384     EXPERIENCES WITH INDIGENOUS PEOPLE…”OK, BOYS, PICK YOU UP IN SAULT STE. MARIE.”


alan skeoch
July 2021

This story is too scattered…I know that.  Originally much longer but I cut
a lot.   Included is a small indigenous story…an evening in a beer bar with 
our First Nations employees. The point of the story.  That evening was Warm and friendly…
as were most of my evenings with First Nations people in tiny communities across North
America.

Please excuse the scattered story line.  No time to cut even more. If you
need a theme then consider the story a bit of Canadiana.  This was a 
big year for Marjorie and me…marriage.  The money I earned in the bush
was invested in our honeymoon.   Three months labour spent in four days.



AFERNOON SUN, LAKE SUPERIOR…by Lawren Harris

PIC ISLAND, LAWREN HARRIS…GROUP OF SEVEN
Captures the hardness of some landscapes on Lake Superior…near Marathon



This is the company town of Marathon looking out on to Lake Superior…strikingly
close to the paintings of Lawren Harris (i.e. Pic Island…only  a few miles from
the  town).  The town smelled bad…air saturated with H2S…hydrogen sulphide
from the paper (cardboard) mill.  We set up camp in a gravel pit east of town.



Summer of 1963 is hard to forget.  We were married that year and, believe it or not,
Marjorie was not sure I would make it to the wedding.  Dr. Paterson had sent me with
a crew to check out the mineralization around Marathon, Ontario.  That’s a long way
from Toronto. I left all marriage arrangements to Marjorie.  

To ensure my return for the August 24 wedding, Marjorie, her guardian Phyllis Morgan and my
mother decided to come to our bush camp and drive me back to Toronto. 

 Everyone was in good
spirits including the fellows in our crew.  

But there was one problem.  Our linecutting crew was First Nations people from Heron Bay, a reserve
near Marathon.  It was getting late in August and the boys had planned a trip to Sault Ste Marie…a drinking
session in the bar at the Albert Hotel.  They had a ride down to the SAullt but no ride back to our camp.

“Don’t worry, boys, I’ll drive down and pick you up;”

There were two hitches in the plan.  

HITCH #1:  The distance between Marathon and Sault Ste. Marie is 255 miles (411 km)….nearly
a five hour drive.  A ten hour Drive there and back.  Not a big deal to residents of Northern Ontario.

So away they went for the week-end .  Most of the time would be spent drinking beer and subsequent revelry.

HITCH #2:  Marjorie, aunt Phyllis and my mom were staying at the Albert Hotel the same evening.
I was not too sure how they would react to the ‘boys’ in the beverage room. Now, in retrospect, I should
have introduced them.  Stuffy of me not to do that.

Actually the whole experience was great.  I loved the lonely drive down to the Salt…even stopped twice
for a swim.   Did so when my eyes began to wander.  One swim at Batchawana Bay.

Meeting the ‘boys’ with all their friends was a great experience.   This was their turf…their friends…their week-end…
and they were being picked up by their boss.   The term boss is not nice. I wondered how it would work.  No need.  The moment I arrived
in the bar room there was a great whoop and the boys hustled me to a seat and bought me a couple of
draughts.   The glasses of beer were tiny in the 1960;’s.  We socialized then the boys piled in the truck
and we headed back to Marathon…255 miles North west on Highway #17.    Arrived late at night.  Dropped
the boys of at Heron Bay then hit the sack in our  tent camp.

Late the next afternoon the women arrived.     They loved the campsite and the Toronto crew.
I think would hey have loved our Heron Bay crew,  Ojibwa First Nations, but they never met. My error.

HITCH #3    We got married right on time.  The Marathon gang sent us a card table…good one,  lasted 40 years.






The beach near Marathon, Ontario…with worn mountains in the distance.  The same mountains Lawren Harris saw and painted.