Crusty Bits

You know how you do a roast, and when it's done and out of the pan, it's left behind these little crusty bits of well done meat, full of the fatty juices from off the roast? Such delicious stuff! But you can only take so much of it - a couple of nibbles, or a few. I used to think I could make a meal of it, it was sooo tasty! But beyond those first couple of bites...well, it's pretty damn thick on your taste buds.

Okay, so these crumbs of writing won't be anything like eating those crusty bits! Well...maybe a little, I hope. But you might want to limit yourself to one or two and be done wid it:

We had a soft, mild winter. I didn't shovel a single shovelful of snow, and never broke out my heavier coats. Will a time come when I will miss winter?

My dear friend RevBob wrote in a comment, about the role of listening in living a useful life. I've been thinking about that - and trying to be more attentive to my own attention giving, being reminded of how hard it is. The main difficulty is putting aside 'what I think'.

One of the things I love about sports is seeing people who are the absolute best in the world, making mistakes. Not just occassionally. All the time. Perfection is a relative rarity in sport, I think. I feel that it's common to experience perfection in the arts - in books and movies, sculptures and songs. And it's all around in nature. But in sport, you're watching unrehearsed, accelerated struggle. It's Dangerous improvisation. And you watch these athletes negotiate their errors, miscues, over-reaches and their perilous hesitancy, and all that it brings them. And, of course, you get to see and appreciate the remarkably regular miracles that people perform with their bodies, right before your eyes.

We got rid of the Ford Explorer and now have a Honda Fit. Half the size, twice the mileage. The Explorer was great. Got to 280,000km and always ran well. We let it sit as much as laziness allowed - Ponczka commutes with her moped and I with my bike - but when we needed it, it carried tent and all of Ponczka's art to her shows, pulled our collapible camper, etc. With the Fit, we expect to meet 80% of our needs. It has unbelievable cargo room compared to my expectation. I got my fully-assembled bike in the back today. Maybe we can really, finally do a road trip to the West Coast.

I've been blessed with musical experiences this season: concerts, jams, hearing new stuff on the radio. And Speaking of Radio - I'll soon be hosting an Internet Radio Show!!! Whoop Whoop! I'm calling it Jazz Gumbo, and various expressions of jazz will form the core, with crusty bits of r&b, rock, soul, folk, funk, r&b and gospel, and other stuff. It'll be on Regent Radio, coming out of Toronto's Regent Park. Regent Park Focus, choreographed by Adonis Huggins, is an amazing media arts program for youth. They produce videos, a community paper, radio shows, graffiti, music and dance productions, on and on. And they're letting me come and play on Monday nights, 6-8pm est. Not yet though...starting up about mid May.

I've suspended the Change Workshop. The clients in the bedded program weren't coming. Not giving it up. There are five of us who came forward, singly and paired, with programs we wanted to do. The others are Housing Tactics and Art. We may change times, begin inviting clients from our other programs, develop a peer education strategy, etc. We had some good meets, and will have more.

Had a great read - Jim Thompson's The Getaway. Great crime genre fiction from 1958. A surprisingly sympathetic but scars-and-all exploration of the psychology of motive and motivation. Had to go out after that and find a dvd of the '72 film by Sam Peckinpah, with Steve McQueen and Ali McGraw. What a great interpretation, ratcheting up the vulnerability of McQueen's Doc McCoy with a prologue that was only hinted at in the book. It completely omitted Thompson's surreal and horrific ending, substituting a really sweet and life-embracing Hollywood Ending. But you know, if only because of its perfect casting, it pulls it off.