This is a painting I did when I was
five. Interesting choice of colours.
You can clearly see the apple, rushing
to its impending demise. There is a
defining, pervasive sense of motion in
the piece... suspended motion. I really
nailed it, in my opinion. For a child, I
had a strong sense of foreboding. Kind
of eerie, actually, now that I think
about it (which is something I hadn’t
done in ages, until I found it in a stack
of papers, coffee-ringed and largely
ignored). But I’m beginning to feel the
significance of it now. Powerfully. As
if I’ve just realized that I’m holding
the Rosetta stone to my life,
masterfully executed by me at the ripe
and sage fifth year of it. Weird. I don’t
actually remember painting it. I do,
however, remember having the idea to
paint it... stranger still. Read
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Vol.14,
No.82, December 2011/January 2012 Haying Time by Robert J. Patmore
We lived on a
small farm
in the North
S a s k a t c h e w a n
Parklands area.
The country was a
little rolling, with a few valleys. Most
of us farmed the valleys, and ran a few
cattle on the marginal part of the farm,
down near the slough. Up on the hilly
part, to the east, a lot of “prairie hay”
grew. Prairie hay is not very tall, and
kind of woolly. The mower has to be
in good shape to cut it, and the hay
must be very dry. Damp prairie wool
won’t mow! You know, I am sure, all
about that! Before you mow “prairie
wool” you overhaul the cutter bar on
the old 5 foot horse drawn mower.
You rivet new mower sections in the
knife, as well as new “ledger plates”,
in the “stone guards”. Oil all the right
places! Now, you are ready. Hitch up
old Sparky and Babe, take along a
gallon jug of cool water, and begin.
When you arrive at the edge of the odd
shaped hay patch, you lower the cutter
bar from its transport position. Now,
the mower has a big lever, so you can
raise the cutter bar, to avoid any stones
or “mole hills”. Gotta take care of
your new knife! If you see a quite
thick patch of grass ahead, you
“encourage” the horses to hurry a bit,
so the mower will cut this thick patch.
Now when you are mowing, you can’t
go around all the sticks and little
shrubs. If they’re not too big, they’ll
do for hay too! You’d be surprised
what the cows will eat in the middle of
the winter! After the mowing, the hay
has to cure a couple of days or so, to
be sure it’s dry enough. Then, along
you come with the big hay rake.
That’s fun! And the team seems to
enjoy it too. You rake back and forth,
so as to make long windrows. When
you think you have enough hay in the rake, you just step on that tidy little
lever there by your right foot. Up
comes the rake tines. And your long
row of hay looks so nice! But don’t
get too much hay in each rake full,
because if it should rain the hay won’t
dry. Now, when you get the whole odd
shaped hayfield into long rows, the
next step, in a day or so, is to rake the
rows up into ‘hay coils’, to be forked
onto the hayrack. It’s surely not going
to rain, now you’ve got this far, is it ?
So make good big hay coils, as you
gather up the long rows. Read
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Vol.14,
No.81, October/November 2011 Ice Crossing by Anneli Purchase
“Yippee! We’re going for a ride!” Lynn crowed.
“In you go, kids.” Their mother held the door for them. Lynn’s older brother, John, had his driver’s licence and proudly announced that he would treat them to a Sunday outing in his new 1959 VW Beetle. Lynn piled into the back along with her younger brother and two little sisters.
“Don’t go too fast now,” Mother admonished John. “You have precious cargo aboard.”
“Na-a-a-h. Stop worrying.” John waved her off. Like all eighteen-yearolds, he knew everything. Read
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Vol.14,
No.81, October/November 2011 A Phone Call Away by Jean Spicer
In the twilight of my years,
Constantly beset by fears,
Comes a ringing on the phone.
Suddenly I’m not alone. Read
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Vol.14,
No.80, August/September 2011 The Wedding Day by Lorna Wilson
The wedding day is just one day, and yet you will revisit it time and time again, in your memories. What magic, what mystery will unfold, as the life that you share begins. And all this will come to pass in just one day.
Such a day was April 29, a date that is now part of history. Atime for British pride, the day that young William wed his bride.
Read
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Vol.14,
No.80, August/September 2011 The English Lounge by Matthew Clarke
My name is Matt Clarke and I’m a twenty-year-old student at York University. I’ve written a few stories but I have never been published or submitted any stories. I’m going to include a somewhat fictionalized account of something that happened to me in high school.
“Damn you Mordecai Richler,” I said and I got up from my desk and left the classroom. My class had been doing silent reading. The book I chose had been Barney’s Version. It was my second time reading the book and I was becoming upset when the story was more humorous than any other book that I’d ever read. My joy had been overcome by jealousy when I realized that I’d never be such a good writer. My teacher asked, “Where are you going?” as I was leaving but I kept walking and paid her no attention. My fury was deafening. When I exited the classroom I saw a teacher walking through the hall toward me. I could immediately tell that he was going to say something to me. I figured I looked pretty conspicuous. He asked me, “Why are you not in class?” Read
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It’s the sudden slam of the back door that wakes me. As I thrust my body forward to get up, I do a nose dive over the foot stool. My left arm is restrained and the chair which I had been sitting in seems to be glued to my body. Everything’s a fuzzy haze.
“Mom, Mom, where are you?” my daughter yells.
“I’m downstairs,” I respond.
My son-in-law’s heavy footsteps thunder down the stairs as they come to rescue me. Read
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When I lived in southern
California, on and off in the
early 1980’s, a woman whom I
worked with introduced me to a band
called Motorhead while we were
coming home to Orange County from
a bar in Long Beach in her flat-bed
Ford one night. She popped in a
cassette tape and I was enraptured! I
thought the singer had quite a rough
voice, but then again so did Louis
Armstrong and Jimmy Durante. The
guitar and drums of Motorhead were
everything I ever wanted in a band,
and could never quite get. I went out
the next day and bought a tape called
No Sleep At All and played it over and
over and over, driving all around
sunny California and God’s green
acres in my souped-up ‘76 Celica. Read
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The friendly village of Blumenort in which I was born is located in Southern Saskatchewan. Lying just east of the number four highway, it is right in the centre of a fertile farm area. Twenty-one brown frame homes occupied by twenty-one families stand there on either side of the road running east and west. Each home is built on a yard lot of similar size, and is joined to the next by a common fence. Around this group of homes is the community pasture and beyond stretch acres and acres of golden grain Read
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Forget all that you may have read in your
dictionary about the names of the
months of the year. All of those Latin words
which the Romans had coined for mythical
gods, ancient leaders, planets, and the
months of their own calendar. The good
folks who create dictionaries certainly try to present true
and correct definitions, but someone has been pulling their
legs. After extensive research, the real meaning of the
names of the months of the year have been discovered and
are presented below, for the edification of the esteemed
reader. Read
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At Blossom End
Railroad Station
22-year-old Stanley
Vine sat clutching his
cardboard suitcase on
the empty platform, waiting for his
new employer. The green fields of
Glengarry County, Ontario were so
unlike the ruined muddy landscape of
war-torn France. After four horrible
years as an army private in the thick of
the fighting in Europe, Stanley had
returned to England and was
discharged on February 1, 1946.
Armed now with some savings and
with no prospects for a job in England,
he answered a newspaper ad for farm
help in Canada. Two months later he
was on his way. Read
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