Malarky tour 2012 and major weather events

I have been on the road with Malarky on and off since Sept. 23 when I began at the Brooklyn Book Festival followed by Ontario (Trent, Peterborough), THIN AIR Winnipeg International Writers Festival, Victoria Writers Festival, Wordstock Portland Writers Festival, Vancouver Writers Fest and I am just returned from the marvellous experience that is IFOA in Toronto.

Thank you to all those festivals who invited me, to the audiences and many readers I met, writers I read with and the staff and volunteers who work so hard at these festivals and my publisher Biblioasis for their stellar efforts on behalf of Malarky. I also thank the Canada Council for the Arts, the Writers Union and the BC Arts Council for support.

Obviously I have been greviously remiss with my weather reports and must take a big inhale and apologize for this. It is not that I haven’t been observing for I have, just have not quite managed to nail it onto the screen.

Yesterday’s weather events in New Jersey and New York give great pause. The ferocity. The build and how the weather pattern increased its speed on approach, thus making the predication even more challenging. One of the descriptions that has stayed with me from relatives in the middle of it was of the windows bending. The windows being bent (inwards I assume) from the power of the wind. And how fire and water co-existed throughout. Houses on fire in the Rockaways that were surrounded by water on all sides was another description I caught.

I send good thoughts and courage to those involved in recovery efforts and getting the lights turned back on. I am always impressed by the spirit of New Yorkers and was doubly impressed by noting friends who woke this morning there and immediately turned their thoughts and attention to how they might join volunteer efforts today in that city.

Over the next weeks I will catch up on some postings and thoughts about my experience on the road.

Stay warm and safe and thank you again.

Churchill runover

Today I was contemplating how to recover from the awful sight of the accident I witnessed on Sunday, as it has made me very jittery and I keep seeing the poor cyclist airborne. I’ve been observing how shock physicalizes into certain muscles in the body and working with those muscles, while recognizing the need to not do very much, except drink ginger tea, meet my daily responsibilities and wait until it passes. This being nothing compared to the poor man who took the flight.

I am very lucky that my daily life and my co-habitants can facilitate this. None of us are adverse to lying around reading and we need plenty of down time which we treasure, even when heart rates are not higher than usual.

And sometimes subjects converge in interesting ways. My son was watching a documentary series on Churchill for some research. For whatever reason I started in 4 parts in on Part 1 by accident. It began with Churchill and Michael Collins and the treaty and moved through his poor handling of the 1926 General Strike and woeful attitude to breaking the miners and on. It then moved into his 10 year period where he was out of politics. He travelled to America on a lecture tour and lo and behold the pictures informed us was hit, quite seriously, by a taxi in New York. He wrote an article about it and earned a much needed (read extravagant lifestyle) five thousand pounds.

I went in search of the article and lo agus behold encore this was what I found

I have been squinting and one paragraph on the left hand side of the piece, but have a hard time making out the words.

It may read:

“There was one moment — I cannot measure it is time — of a world aglare (?) a man aghast. I certainly thought quickly enough I am going to be run down and probably killed. Then came the blow.”

When I read it or squinted it, I unfortunately could hear the blow.