In 1993, Len Simms took the Progressive Conservatives into a provincial election in Newfoundland and Labrador, against Clyde Wells and the governing Liberals.
It was an uphill battle, and Simms knew it. By the end of it, Simms was still in Opposition, which he led until his retirement a couple of years later.
I interviewed him several times over the years, and I can’t recall him ever being anything but accessible and straight-up. Decent, in other words.
Premier Tony Wakeham, who took the PCs back to power last fall, announced today that Simms had died. He was 82.
This is me on my living room couch. In my latest Substack post, I write about a brief moment of panic earlier this month, when I looked at the clock and a wave of stress hormones hit me. Again, briefly.
Please consider subscribing, too, if you have not already. It’s early (literally) days with both this site and my Substack, and I’m grateful for hearing from people.
“You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake.” — Jeannette Rankin
Jeannette Rankin was a political force a century ago. In 1916, she became the first woman to win federal office in the United States. She is best known for fighting for legislation clearing the way for women to vote.
Red Nose Day yesterday posted to YouTube this sketch from 2001, of a satire of music competition reality shows. Lenny Henry and Simon Pegg are among those auditioning for the likes of Rowan Atkinson, who channels Simon Cowell. To put the sketch in perspective, this was a year before American Idol launched.
Michael Penn may be best known as the brother of Sean Penn, perhaps as the husband and sometime collaborate of Aimee Mann, but I think of him primarily for his debut single.
No Myth is a song — I think — about the earliest stages of a relationship, the moments between illusions of grand romanticism (hey, Romeo in black jeans, yo Heathcliff) and having a scuff at a bar (maybe she truly is just looking for someone to dance with).
No Myth came out in 1989, which feels like a long, long time ago. The song still feels very fresh to me, though. I always turn it up when it pops on during a playlist in the car.
And let’s not forget this moment from Community ..
“The guilty think all talk is of themselves.” — “Geoffrey Chaucer”
The quote of the day is a well-known proverb from Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, although of course that’s not how he wrote it … modern English being a few generations away. Instead, it’s been passed along from one book (or website) of quotations to another.
Forgive me for going all English major with this post. (My “Beowulf to Virginia Woolf” honours program included a course just on Chaucer, plus two courses on Middle English. Learning how entertaining Chaucer was a revelation that assured me I was in the right place as a student.)
Chaucer might well be surprised to see that he has been getting full credit for the quote, as he actually attributed it to Cato the Elder in the Canon Yeoman’s Prologue … or rather, he has one of his characters do it for us:
For Catoun seith that he that gilty is/ Demeth alle thyng be spoke of hym, ywis.
It’s too early to say what’s coming our way early next week, but after a zigzag winter, nothing surprises me. We had a ton of snow in December, and it all melted earlier this month, at least a couple of times over. We had double-digit temperatures at one point (a reminder that I’m in Canada, and following Celsius, just as the map above is showing centimetres of snow, not inches!), followed by lashings of rain and then brutally cold winds.
Later this month, a revamped version of the 1984 Style Council album Cafe Bleu will be released, and Paul Weller & co. have been goosing the deluxe treatment with social media posts.
On YouTube, there’s an extended version of Paris Match, a travelogue of a song that Weller and Style Council colleague Mick Talbot reinvented from an original Weller-fronted version from the year before. For the album (it was released in Canada and elsewhere as My Ever-Changing Moods), they recruited Tracey Thorn to sing. Everything But The Girl was just getting going, and this was the song that helped make me a fan of her talent for life.
Thorn is a gifted writer, too; apart from her columns and several books, check out her perfectly titled 2013 memoir Bedsit Disco Queen. In addition to her EBTG work with partner Ben Watt and her voluminous solo work, Thorn is renowned for teaming up with folks, from Massive Attack to Lloyd Cole.
“Authors like cats because they are such quiet, lovable, wise creatures, and cats like authors for the same reasons.” — Robertson Davies
A note: the cat above was Bellybutton, the much beloved cat Martha and I lived with for about 15 years. He was a street cat in Ottawa who barged his way through a friend’s bathroom window. She couldn’t keep a pet, so he came to us … and came back with us to St. John’s. A wonderful tabby, Bellybutton was a terrific companion for writing, sitting nearby while I typed, purring from time to time, only intruding when he needed food or (I’d like to think) when he knew I needed coffee.
I learned a lot in Brian Jay Jones’s wonderful biography of Jim Henson, including the fact that Henson had mapped out The Muppet Show — right down to the colonnades, with the dancing muppets introducing the show to a tune I bet is playing right now in your ear — a full decade before it went on the air. He pitched the show in the mid-Sixties, and never stopped, until he finally got an OK in the U.K. from Lew Grade. The show that the American networks just could not visualize of course became a classic that ran five world-syndicated seasons.
(Still humming that theme song, right? Me too.)
It was no coincidence I made time this afternoon to watch the official trailer of the revamped version of The Muppet Show, coming as a special on Feb. 4.
I watched The Muppet Show as an adolescent, and then rewatched it decades later on DVD as a parent, and then later on streaming as, well, an older adult. I love that one of the jokes in the trailer, with Sabrina Carpenter whispering sweet nothings into Miss Piggy’s pointy ears, is about just how many generations have been fans of the Muppets through the years. Even an ageless diva like Miss Piggy would prefer not to do the math.
I also like that the trailer is transparent that this special will determine whether or not the (Seth Rogen-backed) show will go on:
It’s standard practice that when a new party takes over a government, things change. Some shifts are dramatic and soon, and others take a while.
On Thursday, three months and a week after ousting the Liberals in the Newfoundland and Labrador general election, the Tory government led by Premier Tony Wakeham made a significant move on health care, by far the greatest source of public spending. (It’s now about 40 per cent.)
In a shakeup of the Newfoundland and Labrador Health Services, the mega health board that runs the hospitals, many nursing homes and many health-care services, the government showed Dr. Patrick Parfrey the door as CEO.
We saw the kitchen during a visit in 2013, and it impressed. The attention to detail is something else. As a tall person (I’m 6’6″, and Child was 6’2″), I noted that her counters were raised to make things easier for her to work. A boy can dream, although mine is of the pipe variety, as my wife is, um, not nearly as tall as I am.
As for the gear and tools she kept at hand, here are some notes from the museum: The museum collected about 1,200 individual objects, including equipment kept out of sight in cabinets and drawers, but the exhibition presentation includes only those things that can be seen out in the open. Because of Julia’s preference for having her kitchen tools close to hand, however, there are still hundreds of objects to see.
Like a lot of townies, I love a stroll in Bowring Park.
The park, in the traditional west end of St. John’s and nestled near the Waterford River, is a magnet for people looking to get some exercise or to gather together, especially in the warmer months.
On Sunday, the weather was nippy but fair, and we took advantage of clear skies for a walk and some fresh air. It never disappoints.
The photos here might indicate no one else was there, and while that’s not quite true, the park was hardly bustling. As we branched off here and there, we had the illusion of having the place to ourselves.
The bungalow seemed like it had been fenced off a bit, at least by glancing at the wooden posts. All of the snow that had built up on the lawn had melted in the preceding days, especially when we had both double-digit temperatures and quite a lot of rain. The lawn still has green tints across it.
The skateboard park, just by the pool, felt like it was also in a wintry rest. I wonder if boarders come for a spin in the dead of winter; for a few days this month, the conditions would certainly be fine.
The trails themselves were a bit soggy in places (see above) and even a little icy or still snow-covered when you got deeper in the woods.
A fallen tree is not unusual to see along the many trails in St. John’s. I wonder if this one fell prey to the brutal winds. that we have had.
Bowring Park is always a great place for a brisk walk. Even in winter, it’s lovely to look at the details.
Looking for some company while you walk the dog, hit the gym or do the laundry?
Here are three new episodes of podcasts made here in Newfoundland and Labrador. (From time to time, I’ll point to some good things to hear, read, see or experience.)
Adam Walsh — a friend, former colleague and intermittent trivia collaborator — has been fronting a recently launched podcast called This is Newfoundland and Labrador. This week’s edition features Mark Dobbin, and the focus is on the local tech sector.
Journalist Alex Bill and recovering retired politician Andrew Parsons have teamed up to produce a political podcast called The Honourable and the Hack. (The names are reversed for the title, btw.) The latest podcast features Kate Cadigan, who made history in the fall while becoming the youngest person ever elected to St. John’s council. Here’s the YouTube version of their conversation:
From politics to books… Esteemed author Trudy Morgan-Cole has for years been hosting a books-focused podcast called Shelf Esteem, which is one of my favourite podcast titles. (I’ve also been a guest on the show, talking with Trudy a couple of years ago about Sarah Polley’s Run Towards the Danger.)
The latest episode features Heather Barrett, the host of CBC Radio’s Weekend AM and the author of The Mill Girls, a book about young women who migrated from Newfoundland decades ago to work in the industrial mills of southwestern Ontario. Here’s their conversation:
