On Thursday night, we went to the LSPU Hall in St. John’s see The Night Logan Woke Up, the latest Artistic Fraud of Newfoundland collaboration between writer Robert Chafe and director Jillian Keiley.
This time, the collaboration extends beyond their usual partners: the production is adapted from Quebec playwright Michel Marc Bouchard’s La nuit où Laurier Gaudreault s’est réveillé, and is a co-production with RCA Theatre and Tarragon Theatre in Toronto.
The setting had been in rural Quebec, and now it’s in rural Newfoundland, specifically Clarenville, a small town about two hours west of St. John’s (or Mount Pearl, which becomes a not insignificant plot point).
In the coulda-woulda-shoulda world of political speculation, it’s always been hard not to think of the late Leo Barry as a decent candidate for the premier’s office at Confederation Building in St. John’s.
Barry, who died Saturday, was a heavy-hitting cabinet minister in the 70s and 80s — that was him talking about “Texas tea” while cradling a little vial of oil while announcing the discovery of Hibernia in 1979. He was among a generation of passionate, smart Newfoundlanders who came of age in that era and found a home in policy — folks like Cabot Martin, Vic Young, Bill Marshall, Lynn Verge and more. The issues included correcting hydro policy, celebrating Newfoundland and Labrador’s rich culture as an asset not an embarrassment, and aggressively pursuing offshore oil.
“That’s the thing about lessons, you always learn them when you don’t expect them or want them.” — Cecelia Ahern
I was intrigued enough by the wisdom of this quote — from the Irish author Cecelia Ahern — that I tracked down the novel from which it is sourced and borrowed it from the library. It appears in a 2005 book called If You Could See Me Now.
I’ve often heard it expressed that as we get older, we realize how much we don’t know — even how little we do know. Lessons are part of our schooling, our childhood days when we’re sponges, soaking everything up.
My mother-in-law, Julita Muzychka (left), became a great friend of my mom, Sheila Gushue. Years ago, they bundled up for a Shakespeare By The Sea performance on Signal Hill in St. John’s featuring their mutual grandchild.
We knew Tuesday was going to be difficult, and it was.
Tuesday marked the anniversary of the death of my mother-in-law, Julita Muzychka. It’s been three years since Martha’s much-loved mom died, and while it’s true that time can be a salve, it certainly doesn’t make grief vanish.
Our memories of Julita are invariably largely happy ones. She came in a small package — there was a height difference of more than a foot and a half between her and me, which is why we were often photographed with me sitting down — but she was a mighty force. She was a pediatrician, an active member of her community, and a woman of countless hobbies, activities, interests and friend groups.
The third anniversary of her death this week helped me frame — again — a topic that has been central to Martha and me for several years now: grief.
In the fall of 1982, Donald Fagen released his first solo album, not long after he put his Steely Dan partnership with Walter Becker on ice.
The Nightfly was inspired by the late-night DJs Fagen had heard while growing up in the late Fifties and early Sixties in the suburbs of New Jersey.
New Frontier was the second single from the album, and it may be one of Fagen’s more heartfelt songs, even though it is also deeply dipped in his trademark irony and sarcasm.
The good news for Donald Trump: he does not have to worry any more about the dubious achievement of recording the lowest approval rating in presidential polling history. He did that in September.
The bad news, for Republicans as the midterm elections race ever closer: Trump just bested himself with yet another lower rating.
Perhaps it’s frugality, or perhaps it’s a love of food, or perhaps it’s the smell in the house … but we love making jam. And other things that we can can, or bottle up for later consumption.
Over the weekend, we cleaned out some chunks of the freezer and made two types of jam, and working largely with a sack of apples that Martha brought back from book group, we made a batch of chutney to boot.
“Most conversations are simply monologues delivered in the presence of a witness.” — Margaret Millar
This observation is from Margaret Millar, the Canadian-born writer who was a staple of the dime-store book racks that teemed with crime fiction and pulpy novels. Born in Kitchener, Ont., during the First World War, she made her war to California, and was part of the noir world of the 1940s and 1950s. She wrote no less than 26 books.
“You may not have luck on your side, but you can still have grit in your corner.” — John Dabell
Social media certainly has a lot to answer for, but there are still many elements that I appreciate. One of them is discovering voices of ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances, and/or who have something extraordinary to say.
John Dabell is an Englishman whose posts I discovered on Threads, the social media feed that Meta set up to compete with Twitter/X. It certainly hasn’t supplanted that, but I do find myself stumbling upon enjoyable things.
“That was my life. Except for the methamphetamine.” — RJ Mitte
The actor RJ Mitte, who brought his lived experiences with cerebral palsy to screens as well as to podiums and social forums, has died, by suicide.
Just 34, he was best known for playing Flynn, Walter White’s son, on Breaking Bad, Vince Gilligan’s peerless series that looked at American life through the lens of a teacher (Bryan Cranston) who turns to drug-making to spare his family financial ruin from his cancer diagnosis. (And, then, of course, becomes an unlikely crime lord.)
When you think of Édith Piaf, it’s hard not to think automatically of La Vie En Rose. It’s often called her signature song, and with good reason. The song inspired the title of the Oscar-winning film about her life, starring Marion Cotillard.
Eight decades on, La Vie En Rose strikes me as a kind of longing for love, sweetness and goodness in the aftermath of the Second World War. Well, that’s the reading I put it into it.
“You cannot play a lie. You must play some kind of truth.” — Gene Hackman
We’ve been watching the second season of the U.K. series Celebrity Traitors, which is like the regular show (a bunch of people in a castle play a game in which three or so are “murdering” — eliminating, really — the others, who in turn play detective and try to catch the traitors) but at a higher, funnier pitch.
The highlight, right out of the gate was the luminous, joyful Richard E. Grant cackling out loud to others that he is a traitor — right after getting the shoulder tap from host Claudia Winkleman. We’ve never seen that move before!
It was a crisp winter evening, right after work, and I had just arrived at my parents’ house in St. John’s. I knew instantly that my mother was out of sorts.
“You!” she cried out. “You are responsible for all of this!”
My mom was in a delirium — a condition I was, at the time, still struggling to understand. It was the late winter of 2024, and while my mother, Sheila Gushue, was in the kitchen, angrily accusing me of manipulating her, my dad, Bill Gushue, was in the nearby living room, in the temporary hospital bed where he would spend his final months.
“A clear sentence is no accident. Very few sentences come out right the first time, or even the third time. Remember this in moments of despair. If you find that writing is hard, it’s because it is hard.” — William Zinsser
Earlier this week, I was delighted to join (by Zoom) Kathryn Gretsinger‘s journalism class at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. Kathryn and I have both been involved with journalism training over the years at CBC, and she was kind enough to share a recent post on the final bit of advice I gave my colleagues before I retired. They and Kathryn were kind enough to invite me to speak with them for about an hour.
