safia chisti

Not all the stories in our lives are about us personally. How could they be? We're naturally social creatures and not the paranoid, selfish, violent beings the media likes to foist on us as a way of coercing our decisions. This is a story about a woman I knew and how her life was changed by the kindness of strangers.

In the late 1980's I was living in Providence, RI where at the advanced age of 42 - yes, the meaning of life, the universe and everything age according to Douglas Adams - I was the proud owner and driver of my very first car. It was a standard shift little red Pontiac leMans which I loved. She could fly and I was her pilot. An old friend called me one afternoon from Philadelphia and asked if I'd be able to drive a woman she knew from Providence to New York. All she told me was that I'd find the woman a very interesting travel companion for the three and a half hour journey and that the trip would involve an overnight stay. I really didn't need much convincing and agreed to pick up my mysterious passenger the following afternoon.

I met Safia Chisti at her daughter's house in North Providence, noticing nothing unusual about her as she walked down the steps from the old tenement, nothing about her that made her appear different from any other middle-aged white woman other than perhaps the scarf she wore covering her hair. We introduced ourselves and she put her little bag on the back seat, took the co-pilot position and off we went. I soon learned my friend had been correct about the lady being interesting.

Safia Chisti wasn't the name she had been born with, nor was it a name she'd gained from marrying Mr. Chisti. She'd had a normal American name which I knew once but have forgotten now. To me she was always Safia. Before circumstances saw her change her name and her life she had been the divorced mother of a grown-up married daughter and was a Providence city bus driver. She had also recently been diagnosed with liver cancer. I don't know how familiar you may be with that disease but twenty years ago there were no targeted treatments like there are now and the diagnosis was essentially a six month death sentence.

Her only option was to keep working as long as she could. One day when she stopped downtown to pick up passengers a rather nondescript man climbed on board, paid his fare then stopped and looked at her. Taking a slip of paper from an inside pocket he told her, 'You have to go here as quickly as possible. Your life depends on it.' Naturally she wondered if he was planning to hijack the bus to Worcester, MA or some other place not on her usual route but he got off the bus leaving her with the piece of paper. On it was written a very foreign sounding name and an address in Pakistan.



Well, what's a woman going to do? Most would throw away the piece of paper, forget the whole incident and just keep on with the normal routine until they couldn't get out of bed one day. Not Safia. Safia went to the post office, had a passport photograph taken, sent off the documents and bought a ticket to Islamabad. Two weeks later she was in Pakistan with the piece of paper, a sleeping bag, a suitcase and her purse. Rather than finding a hotel she showed the paper to a taxi driver who took her to a small building standing next to an unprepossessing mosque - a neighborhood place rather than one of the enormous ones. Oddly enough the man who opened the door wasn't surprised to find her standing there and better still, spoke English. He welcomed her inside for tea and sweets and a closer look both at her and the now rather worn piece of paper that had brought her to his doorstep.

He told her about a Sufi master who lived a hermit's life in the Himalayan mountain region of the country and told her that's who had sent for her. Oh my. It's hard to imagine, isn't it? She was instructed to make her way to the northern border with China and was given another paper where he'd written the instructions in English for her and Urdu for anyone she'd need to consult for help on the way. She left by bus early the following morning, a trip that lasted days and transfers to buses more and more local all the way to the region where the world's second tallest mountain stands, K-2. When there were no more buses she walked for miles, eventually climbing to the hermitage where she met the elderly man who would be her teacher for the following two years. Not only did he not speak English, he wasn't particularly happy to see her either. Through sign language he indicated that he expected her to work - which she did. Safia cleaned, carried water and wood and cooked. The teacher taught her to pray. He gave her a new name. He also taught her to speak Urdu and to read and write Arabic. After a little more than two years he told her it was time she went home.

Anyway, although we were driving to New York, our destination was in Spring Valley west of the Hudson River in the Catskills - Rip vanWinkle territory, yes, and 20 miles outside Manhattan. The Sheikh was called Tosen Baba and was a professor of mathematics at Columbia during the week. We arrived at the mosque in good time for a wonderful dinner and a chance for me to converse with some very interesting people before the evening prayers, the teachings and the group Zhikr, the remembrance of God. There's no way to describe the warmth and beauty of inclusion in a Sufi Circle and although I was, as a first time visitor, shy and reluctant to participate I was drawn into the company of the women's position at the back of the mosque. In fact, I made sure to stand behind all of them. The prayers and the music were astounding to me and, although I'm not overtly emotional, tears streamed down my face.



Safia left for her home in Philadelphia the next morning after breakfast and I went home too. The following Saturday found me back on the road to New York alone and listening to the Paris Concerts of the famous Qawwali singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan she had given me as a parting gift with the admonishment that one is never supposed to dance to Qawwali music no matter how tempted one may be. Only moving the head is acceptable. So I moved my head in time to one piece after another while the driving time flew by. Unfortunately, I was so wrapped up in the music and the idea of another evening with the Sufis I missed the exit I was supposed to take from the highway and not long after found myself barreling down the Bronx Expressway on my way to the city center. It was after 5 o'clock, getting dark this autumn night and raining heavily. Not knowing what else to do I made a right turn into the huge empty parking lot of an old commuter station so I could at least stop and try to figure out how to get back to 95 and the correct exit. A car followed mine into the lot and parked next to me. When I looked over I breathed a sigh of relief to see it was a woman driving and that she was waving me to roll down the window. I don't know how in the dark and the pouring rain but she'd noticed I looked lost and was there to help. When I told her where I was supposed to be going she gave me very clear directions for the quickest way to Hwy 87 west.

Within an hour I was in the town of Spring Valley again but couldn't remember how to get to the address. Pulling up at a stop light I tried to remember landmarks Safia and I had passed the week before. Somehow everything looked very different this time and I was kicking myself for not having paid better attention. A young guy crossing the street came over to my side of the car and motioned that he wanted to talk to me. I opened the window a little way both to keep the rain out and for the old paranoid reasons (after all this was the US and not someplace safe like Pakistan) but he too asked if I was lost. It seemed I was giving signals I wasn't aware of. Anyway, I told him the address I was looking for and he told me how to get there and ran off to somewhere drier than the middle of the street.



Not long after I found the narrow drive that led up to Tosen Baba's house and the attached mosque. The rain had stopped and the clouds had blown away leaving a beautiful starry nighttime sky. People had begun arriving for Zhikr and I wondered who I'd meet and what I'd learn that night.

Going there on Saturday evenings became a regular, if infrequent, habit for several years after that and when Safia was in Providence seeing her daughter she came with me. I never did become a Sufi in spite of the appeal and eventually we moved out to the west coast. Safia lived for another five joy-filled years. She'd found what she was looking for.

how Crow met susan

Crow here. Since I've never told you how I first encountered susan I thought today would be a good time to remedy that oversight.

One spring morning long ago in human terms, but not so very distant in mine, I happened to be flying over the green rolling hills of the southern Ontario countryside. It had been a long flight that left me feeling in need of rest, so spying a tall tree just beginning to sprout it's foliage, I took on the guise of a normal crow and prepared to land. What to my surprise should I discover beneath the tree but a little girl making dandelion garlands? She seemed to be perfectly content but it was a strange place to find a child all alone for it was a cemetery and not too far away from where she sat were rows of old headstones and a little old church in the distance.

Being too curious to maintain my usual reserve I had to ask, 'Why are you out here by yourself, child?'
Not the least surprised about being addressed by a bird she answered, 'I just got expelled from Sunday school.'
'Why was that?'
'The teacher told me since I wouldn't stop asking impossible questions and was disrupting the class I couldn't be there anymore.'
'Does that upset you?'
'No, I like it out here better.'
'What's better about out here than in there?'
'Out here I don't care about the questions I asked in there.'
'I see.'

I stayed nearby until her father drove into the lane near the church and she ran off to meet him. By then I'd taken an interest and planned to return.

The next time I saw her was winter, nearly Christmas, and a school pageant featuring a play written by her teacher had been planned and rehearsed for weeks. The expected captive audience of these events - parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, sisters, brothers, cousins and neighbors - were all gathered to see the children perform. As I stood in the wings waiting while they donned their costumes and all was made ready on stage I found a copy of the script which appeared to be about Santa, Mrs. Santa, toy making elves and the reindeer having a boisterous adventure on their way to meet the Baby Jesus and his retinue. Forgive me for not being able to discern a more detailed plot synopsis but it was clear the writer was never going to challenge my old friend Will Shakespeare. The good thing about it was that it allowed parts for all the children of the second grade as well as their pets and some favorite toys to be on the stage at once. The audience members were checking their Brownies and flash attachments.



The curtains parted and the play began. Unfortunately, the children had only rehearsed in daytime without an audience and without the pets dressed up with bells and antlers. Chaos ensued.

Suddenly one little girl yelled, 'Stop!' and everybody went very still and looked at her. Wearing her little fairy crown and fancy dress my little susan imperiously and in no uncertain terms told the other children they were standing in the wrong places and weren't delivering the correct lines. So they all shuffled around and started over while the audience erupted in gales of laughter. Her parents, sitting near the front, tried to hide their embarrassment.

How could I not love a little girl like that? She was going to need some help.

gallerivanting

When I was painting all the time, following the hints and flashes of inspiration that showed the next three or ten pictures or maybe just parts of another complete watercolor, there were always two things I looked forward to. The first was taking all of them out of the portfolios, where they'd been stored within a day of recognizing one more line would cause ruin, and looking at 12 or 20 all at once. Seeing where I'd spent the past year or two in imaginary worlds was always the best moment and I'd start making plans toward a gallery show, imagining the delight they'd bring to others and hopefully, enough money to allow me the peace and long silences required to stay in watercolor land.

The next best part was going to the picture framing shop where, naturally enough when I think about it, the guys who ran the place were always delighted to see me. As is normal in such places it was decorated with multiple examples of picture framing arts throughout the ages, and since my favorite store in RI had been in business for more than a century, it was an old fashioned wood floor, tin ceilinged place that offered feelings of security and harmonious gentility. Since framing for galleries meant sticking to clean lines and simplicity we'd spend the time it took deciding on the shade of white museum board mattes, whether to edge the separate pictures in gold, silver or copper frames and the benefits of regular glass compared to the non-reflective kind. Framing then wasn't as expensive as it is today but I was still happy with the professional discount and always satisfied with the result when I went to retrieve them a week or two later. The only problem then, of course, was that they were now huge, unwieldy objects.

So followed the next part. Although painting always has been a pretty intense part of my life I never really connected with the marketing side. I'd start making phone calls to the few people I knew in the New England arts scene. I tend to be pretty shy when it comes to such things but there were a few gallery owners who'd bought some of my paintings for themselves and were happy to hear I'd finished another selection. Since art shows are usually booked a year or more in advance it wasn't a surprise when I learned there were no venues currently available. One friend, having opted out of showing the work of contemporary artists, had turned her gallery into a showcase for dead nautical painters, since even if the paintings weren't good, at least they had historic value.

Two days later she called me back to say she'd met a woman who was planning to show her sculptures at the Providence Watercolor Club and required watercolors to comply with their rules. Would I be interested? I agreed with no hesitation since it was a great opportunity to have my work shown to the rich and well connected old New England society members who belonged to the place.

Accompanied by my friend I met the sculptor at her palatial home on Providence's East Side one early spring afternoon. Have you ever heard of a merry widow? This woman was the epitome of the title and having inherited her husband's factories and fortune, was using her newly gained money and power to make a frontal assault on the previously mentioned society. Her husband had not only owned a ceramics business that mostly made lamp bases but also owned one of the jewelry factories that made Providence famous in the 50's and 60's. What he hadn't let his wife do was to follow her artistic tendencies and after 45 years of marriage she felt she had no time to lose if she was going to make an impression.

What she'd done was to turn the ceramic factory into a production center for some of the ugliest lumps of hardened clay I'd never imagined seeing. She was quite proud to tell us the workers had to make these (poorly designed, acid colored giant lumps) sculptures if they wanted to keep getting their regular paychecks. Two of them were delivered and uncrated while we were there and a couple of her maids were dusting and polishing them so she could add her own unique artistic signature, namely, gluing large pieces of colored cut glass to each one in random patterns while dancing around her studio drinking from a large glass of wine. She called them her 'Dragon' sculptures and was happy to know I'd painted dragons too.

She came by to see the paintings and told me they'd make an excellent counterpoint. Just a week before the show was scheduled to open she called the friend who'd introduced us demanding I paint dragons into the pictures that had none. She'd donated $100K to the Club in order to bypass their watercolorist rule so if I couldn't comply she planned to cancel my part of the show. Well, since that was not only outrageous but impossible, I cancelled. My friend offered me a corner in her dead seascape gallery and a few of the paintings went there for a month. It was a pretty funny juxtaposition.


Late in the summer I got a call from a woman who owned a restaurant gallery in Newport wondering if I'd be interested in hanging a show for the autumn season. I'd never dined there but knew the place had a good reputation. Arriving on a beautiful sunny day I met the owner and checked out the gorgeous space, finding windows galore, even tall clerestory ones all around the dining area, linen tablecloths, antique carpets and tons of flowers. Feeling buoyantly hopeful we went back and hung the paintings a few weeks later.

My friends at work were excited about the show and had insisted on making reservations for a big dinner party on opening night. It was after 7:00 pm when we arrived, the first time I'd been there after dark. Remember I told you about the windows? Well, it turned out they only let in light during the daytime and what I hadn't noticed the other times was something that struck me immediately when I walked in that evening. The place was dark. Well, it wasn't grope around, black dark but the only lights were tiny ones high up in the ceiling and low ones at the front counter. The tables were all lit by candles that at least hid any disappointment I may have been showing.

We ate, laughed and told silly stories. The owner introduced me to the other diners who all applauded, much to my embarrassment and delight. Just before dessert the waiters brought out several dozen more candles in their little holders and my friends led a procession around the room examining each painting in turn. It was a wonderful night.

armadillo arms

We arrived in Vancouver in the autumn of 1972 to be surprised by the fact there were almost no places to rent. The only place available was a nasty little house with a significant enough tilt that we felt compelled to sit and sleep in the higher corners so our combined weight wouldn't send it sliding down the hill where it had come to a precarious and obviously temporary rest. None of us had planned on continuing the communal living experience we'd begun in Montreal but after a week of fruitless search a young man visited us one evening with a proposition. He told us about the big house he'd leased a couple of blocks away and the fact the people he'd shared it with had moved out to the country. He needed help with the rent and had heard we were looking for a place. With that offer Armadillo Arms was begun.

There are places that exist in space and time that defy the timelines of ordinary experience. Although I remember Armadillo's inception much of the following five years remains in memory as intense vignettes rather than a series of linked episodes. It was a big place, three stories tall at the front and four behind, standing on a huge lot overlooking False Creek, actually a tidal inlet of English Bay, where Vancouver meets the Pacific. Across the water was the city center and beyond that were the mountains that separated us from the rest of Canada. It seemed like a World's End kind of place and was large enough to accommodate us and any number of friends and acquaintances passing through.

The front porch was a gathering place as well as being the local center of the food co-op we started shortly after our arrival. The house became pretty well-known once we got involved in community projects like free clinics, arts and craft centers, park building and generally having fun without burdening the city government. The police only bothered us once when one of our friends decided it was a good idea to grow marijuana in the back row of the garden and two of the boys in blue came by to harvest it. They knocked on the door and said, "Do you know what this is, young woman?" I answered, "Where are you taking our wheat?"

Naturally, there were conflicts and all was not wine, roses, fresh cheese and orgies. In fact, we hardly had any of the latter but cracks in mutual understandings did lead to breakups. That said, there were new people and the beginnings of new relationships.

An artist from Ireland was one of the new house members and on a Christmas Eve, although she was looking forward to the arrival of her brother, she went along with everyone to a party in a house nearby. An hour after they'd left I answered the door to a youngish bearded guy wearing a long coat and a very big smile who made a bee-line to a velvet upholstered tank chair. Returning from the kitchen with snacks I noticed he'd put a lampshade on his head. "Poor Geraldine", I thought, "She has a crazy person for a brother." He sat quietly holding his wine glass and another hour slipped by before everybody returned home. They'd met brother Don on the way to the party so he'd been with them all the time. 'Who's that?' somebody said, pointing to the lampshade man. He left soon after.

We kept a vegetarian household because it made cooking simpler. There were usually eight adults and one child living in the house but evening meals around our huge dining table often fed twice or more that number. We'd got rid of all the post Victorian furniture, sawed down the legs of the table, painted the walls, sanded and finished the floors and had made a project of sewing several dozen large cushions that served as main floor furniture. Things like looms, spinning wheels, dyeing equipment, musical instruments, quilting frames, movie projectors and screens came and went but the creative environment stayed. There was always music.


One morning I was having my usual early soak and read in the bathtub, a time I could usually count on being alone and quiet, when someone tapped at the door and came in. This wasn't in itself unusual since we did share one bathroom and were pretty used to brushing our teeth and peeing while someone else was using the tub but I didn't know the guy who'd entered this time. He was pleasant and said 'good morning'. Somebody else came in right after and before I could start counting there was a steady stream of strangers coming into the bathroom carrying towels and toothbrushes saying 'hellos' and 'how-are-you's' and 'nice day, isn't it's?' and talking and laughing amongst themselves while my bath water cooled and my bubbles popped out of existence. When a guy came in saying he really needed to take a shit I finally put my water logged foot down and asked him to go out, close the door and wait for two more minutes. Quickly drying off and putting my robe on I opened the door to find a group of people I'd never met standing on the landing and lined up all the way down the main stairs. It turned out they were members of a rock band entourage whose buses had arrived outside of Armadillo Arms late the previous night. You just never knew who was going to show up or when.

The few years we spent together passed quickly with people coming, going and returning and the whole seeming as though it would always be. Geraldine married Alan, a sculptor who'd arrived with us from Montreal and their first child was born in the house. I'd never expected to be a midwife but that's another thing that happened and perhaps another story.

Toward the end of the time we lived there an eclipse of the full moon was expected but a week of heavy rains had made it unlikely to be visible in Vancouver. Long past midnight I awoke hearing someone playing guitar. Through the open window I saw the first shadow of the earth touch the moon and heard my friends voices murmuring on the porch roof below. Although I could have gone down to join them time I couldn't look away. Time seemed to have stopped as I stood there entranced. Music played, friends laughed quietly and the heavens danced their eternal waltz.

gone west

This is not a real story since nothing in particular really happens but then again, that's true of much of our lives. What we're left with is a series of impressions whose implications we reflect on later. When we departed Montreal for Vancouver the train seemed to be our best means of getting there for several reasons. We had tons of stuff and it was cheaper to ship it all if we were passengers on the same railroad. Since we had a small child and pets to look after we decided for comfort's sake to travel first class.

We boarded the Canadian early on a beautiful autumn morning to learn that the first class cars would be added that evening when we got to Thunder Bay north of Lake Superior; the first day was spent just watching the gentle rolling landscape of Quebec and southern Ontario between bouts of excited conversation. It had been dark for several hours when the train rolled to a hissing stop and the conductor asked us to step down and wait until our car was available. We expected a station and a cozy place to wait but instead found ourselves between the rails in an enormous switching yard while the wind blew and sodium lights glared pieces of heavy equipment into high relief while leaving everything else in Stygian darkness. Luckily none of us suffered frostbite as we watched the engines push the new cars into position and soon a door opened to warm light and we climbed the little stairs with great relief.


Our conductor very kindly brought us a late dinner and hot drinks then went off to finish making up our beds. As the train pulled away into the pitch darkness of the northern night I settled the baby into his bed and climbed into my own bunk with a fresh cup of tea. The stars and moon lit the lakes as we rode further west.

My love affair with trains began in Europe and most especially in England in the mid-60's. You've seen them in movies like 'The Lady Vanishes' - narrow corridors, private little compartments with 2 cushioned benches facing each other and the semi-open area between the cars to traverse when you want to go to the bar or the dining car. There's something magical about spending hours or days not quite being anywhere at all but simply being another anonymous passenger temporarily suspended from the routines of place.

Our train was nothing like the old English ones but it wasn't new either. When Canadian Pacific decided to replace the rolling stock they discovered new train cars would cost millions more than they were prepared to spend. Instead, they refurbished the ones they'd had for more than thirty years so we got to travel in the most old style comfort North America could provide. The dining car was wonderfully appointed with crisp white linens, fine china, silver flatware and crystal.. not to mention great food. Yet guilt and sadness weren't that far away either. At breakfast that first morning the train moved slowly through part of a native Canadian reservation. The houses I saw were ramshackle and the children watching the train looked hungry and cold. I hope things got better for them.

Probably the neatest part about the trip, other than having real beds, was that we got to spend time in the baggage car. Every so often the train would stop and, even though I have no clear reason about the why, the result was that our conductor would let us know in advance so we could go and take the dogs for a walk along the track. The baggage handlers had a very comfortable setup with overstuffed furniture for relaxing on and a real potbellied stove for heating water for tea or whatever. During the day they left the big doors open and I remember the horses running alongside as we picked up speed one day on the prairies. So long as one of us was there the dogs were allowed out of of their traveling crates making them happy too.


As we closed in on the Rockies, the observation cars were added to the train in Calgary. Seeing the mountains of the west for the first time was an experience hard to describe.. or to draw. Mountains as far as the eye could see and beyond with huge forests and rivers raging through the gorges. Our waiter told us about the train that had fallen a couple of thousand feet into Hell's Canyon years before then told us he'd been ordered not to mention that and to please not tell the other passengers. As if we would ;-).

how cold was it?

(raisons de partir or moving signs)


Cold, glacial chill seeping under the covers on a frozen February night woke me with the sudden realization that the heat had failed in our Montreal loft. I could hear our son squeaking a loose rail on his crib, a sure sign he was awake, but not sounding upset or uncomfortable. He had a tendency to throw his blankets off anyway so I always made sure he was well bundled for bed. Nevertheless, this wasn't the usual nip of a winter night in our drafty place but the portent of a numbing, pipe freezing arctic cold that would murder further hopes of sleep while we worried about how much colder it could get.

The loft was the fourth floor of a building on Boulevard St. Laurent with tall windows at front and back and lots of open space in between separated into personal living and work areas by painted partitions and hundreds of yards of extensive drapes. In the distant past it had been a nightclub but all signs of that were mostly gone and we were down to bare brick and supporting posts. The two floors below ours were clubs used by the Loyal Order of the Moose and the Royal Canadian Legion mostly on the weekends. The ground floor was an old fashioned Montreal bar. The guys went to the cellar and found the boiler working. As we sat around the central living area drinking hot coffee and talking we realized that our problem was that the bartender, Jacques, had shut off the heat when he went home. What made it a rather serious problem was that the next day was Sunday.

























When it got light we called the landlord who drove in from his home 20 miles away to unlock the door to the bar. Sure enough he found the thermostat was turned almost all the way off and said he'd tell Jacques to leave it set at 70 so we'd get heat on the top floor. Everything was fine til the following weekend - a long weekend - when he did it again. Once again the landlord drove into the city, grumpy as would be expected, promising he'd tell the guy again to leave the heat on. By this time we'd begun to suspect the bartender was doing it deliberately and knew that action needed to be taken.

On Tuesday when the bar opened three of our friends dressed as electricians went in and convinced old Jacques they worked for the city and had to check the wiring for safety. While they were there they put a bypass on his thermostat and rerouted control of it to the loft. Our heat was no longer a problem - at least not the warm air kind.

That problem with heat was the night we got raided. One of my friends owned an antique nickel slot machine which had been providing amusement for months especially among the people who came to visit. Several months earlier an area of the loft we never used had been walled off and soundproofed for use as a small FM radio station with one result being visitors who weren't already friends. Word must have been passed along because one night at 3am we were awoken by the clamorous noise of heavily booted feet kicking open our lower door. Now that's a sound that'll get you out of bed in a hurry.



















Mayor Jean Drapeau's long career as an old style city boss wasn't unlike the hold Richard Daley had on Chicago and his police force could equally be described as a corrupt organization simply because of longevity. The Montreal Vice Squad had arrived in force and they'd come for the nickel slot machine.. must have needed it for their policeman's lounge. It was a classic made by the Caille Brothers in 1936 and one of the last slot machines the company produced before going out of business. It was unique in having a circular jackpot window and streamlined styling - about 22" tall by 16" wide and equally deep. The coins traveled up an escalator device in the front window and dropped down into the jackpot window. You can understand why it was valuable before the days of personal computer fun.

It had taken two guys to carry it up the stairs the day it arrived but the night it left it was carried out by an overweight, red-faced, very distressed looking junior officer. He stood in the middle of the loft space with sweat glistening his jowls in the dim light as his captain threatened us with arrest for running a gaming house. My friend wanted a receipt so she could claim it back and he wanted the documents that would eventually guarantee his ownership. It was a standoff that lasted only until he added the menacing promise of a return visit to search for drugs he guaranteed he'd find. That was the end of it and off they all trooped but for the fact he never got the paperwork.

Politically, things had been pretty intense in Quebec in the early 70's with the rise of the Front de Libération du Québec (FLQ), a revolutionary organization promoting an independent and socialist Quebec. They had kidnapped two government ministers in 1970 demanding a fortune in gold, publication of their manifesto and the old standby, a plane ride to Cuba. One of the ministers, Pierre LaPorte was found in the trunk of a car, strangled with his own rosary. Prime Minister Trudeau got serious at that point and a manhunt funded jointly by the provincial and federal governments ended with the successful arrests of the conspirators.

Nevertheless, things were still tense. The Parti Quebecois with its separatist ideal was gaining strength and momentum in the provincial government and regulations were passed outlawing the use of the English language in business as well as schools. Montreal had been Canada's leading financial center but there was a mass exodus of local US corporate headquarters 400 miles west to Toronto.





















One winter afternoon one of our friends was downtown when a mailbox exploded on a street corner just a hundred yards behind him. Thankfully, nobody was injured that time but these terrorist incidents were still common. Half an hour later as he was still wending a shaky way back home he noticed puffs of dust at his feet and chipping brickwork of a building nearby followed by popping sounds and shouts. Turning to see what was going on he was knocked to the ground by a pair of fleeing bank robbers who were being chased by several policemen firing guns wildly in all directions.

That evening we had a long discussion. Montreal was a beautiful city but it might no longer be the ideal surrounding for a long term stay. Other friends who had moved to Vancouver the previous year were encouraging us join them in a climate that was gentle both physically and socially. It seemed reasonable and besides, a first class train journey across the country sounded like a lot of fun.

The next day we bought tickets for six adults, one child, two dogs and a pair of crazy cats. It was time to move on.

outsider art

Once there was a girl who decided to pack up her clothes and her paintings and fly away from her dull life in southern Ontario to London, England where she was sure to win fame and fortune. She was a self taught artist since the school she'd attended taught all sorts of subjects but not art. Everyone (mostly her parents) agreed she was very good and art school would only spoil her vision.










 
That's how I wound up in London in the mid-60's. At the time I'd been having a wonderful time with color, painting big abstracts of dancers in acrylics and enamels, which I thought were very avant garde. Dressed in my spiffy new Emma Peel style trouser suit I picked up my portfolios and headed off to the best art galleries in the city with the absolute certainty my paintings would soon be the next big thing. I was due for a surprise.

I went to half a dozen galleries that day walking from one place to another as each of the very polite owners or managers essentially said, "Oh, that's very nice work but not quite the style we're looking for at the moment. Why don't you try so and so on Sowhatsit Street. Your work looks very much like something they'd hang."



























The very last gallery I walked into was a huge, silent space where all the enormous canvasses were painted gray except for one that was gray with green spots. There were big metal objects looking like nothing I'd seen before spaced far apart around the room. I must have passed a motion sensor because once I got to the middle all of a sudden the machines whirred to life. Chains slithered around on the floor, blades swirled and slashed, wires whipped around on metal balls and there was a lot of general banging and clanging from every direction. I looked for a way out but it just wasn't safe to go back to the door.

Finally, a well dressed 40ish man strolled out from a back room somewhere, touched a button on the wall as he passed and the clatter stopped. I already knew by then what the story would be at this gallery too but I was too proud to just excuse myself out of the place so I showed him my paintings. He stroked his chin, arched his eyebrows and told me I really should go to the Green Park Gallery - that it would be just the place for my work. So I asked him directions and off I went.


























The Green Park Gallery turned out to be the grassy area between the sidewalk and the wall of London's Green Park. Paintings, sculptures and oddly dressed people filled the narrow space that stretched a mile or at least as far as I could see. Hmpff. I think I was getting the idea by then that there are a lot of artists in the world each with their own unique vision that isn't quite cool enough for hard core art galleries. There was a lot of very good work on display and a lot of bad stuff too but mostly I saw people even more determined than me to sell their stuff.

Most amazing of all were the guys doing perfect replicas of some very famous old paintings in chalk - on the pavement. I saw VanGogh's 'Sunflowers' and Michaelangelo's 'God and Adam' from the Sistine Chapel. Yow. It sounds silly to be impressed by such a thing now that we're all older and sophisticated but it was a big surprise to me and also very daunting. Quite frankly, I was depressed.

That evening found me down at the Thames Embankment looking at the moonlit Palace of Westminster and Big Ben across the river. The traffic flowed by on London Bridge as the dark water flowed by me. I was overwhelmed by how ancient and carefully made everything was. Generations of masons had worked on these buildings while living in squalor themselves on streets now burned, bombed and gone. Who did I think I was I wondered in that moment of revelation as I got ready to sling all my paintings into the water.


































Then I heard a quiet 'Ahem' from somewhere close behind me. When I turned to see who was interrupting I saw a tall, long beaked, formally dressed Crow. It seemed he knew me, although I didn't recognize him when he told me we'd met once long ago and he'd been keeping an eye on me ever since. His next words were, 'Well, today was a lot of fun, what do you plan for tomorrow's entertainment?'

I knew then it was time to find a job, maybe take some more drawing classes, make some friends, travel around Europe, see the great public galleries, museums, churches, palaces, castles, parks, seasides.. There was a lot to do and there are advantages to being an outsider. Crow and I have been friends ever since.

:)

The Market

This one's for my friend, Belle, with love.

Kensington Market in the heart of Toronto is infamous for its year-round vendors selling everything from fresh fish to chilies and everything in between. Small houses set among labyrinthine streets with murals, sculptures, tiny restaurants, vintage clothiers are a mishmash of unique urban adventure. With a rich European cultural heritage and several main streets occupied by family shops that have been there for generations it was a really great place to live.

It was the kind of place where one of your friend's four year old daughter could fall in love with a bunny in a cage and your friend would agree that it was a bunny worth having as a pet so she'd pay for it and they'd come back later to take it home. Later she'd have to deal with her daughter's hysteria when the bunny was presented skinned and gutted. The butcher shops didn't deal in sentimentality.

It was the kind of place that if you had another friend who was a confirmed shoplifter you remembered never to go marketing with her again after she'd shoved purloined fruit and veggies into your bag while she tasted various delicacies and argued with the vendor about the price. Being chased down Augusta Ave. by an angry Zorba the Greek was not my idea of fun.



Tall brick built houses from the 20's were well decorated with gingerbread moldings, multiple little windows and the most outrageous outside paint jobs you could imagine. Houses were often divided down the apparent middle with one side painted lime green with yellow trim and the other side colored lavender and red. I often wondered if the people living inside them ever talked to each other. Estate gardens may be a new idea here but old Toronto neighborhoods like Kensington have been growing vegetables in their tiny front yards from day one.

The vintage stores were filled with flapper dresses, kimonos, real silk Hawaiian shirts, beaded jackets, shadow dyed silk dresses from the 30's, tailored WWII women's suits and lots of shoes, beads, feathers, jewelry and general finery. I never wore clothes made in the 60's or the 70's either unless I made them myself but that's another story.



In the late 60's three of us moved into an apartment on the second floor of a house owned by a middle-aged Chinese couple. It was a nice enough place with a big living room at the front, a big kitchen and porch at the back and a long corridor in between with bedrooms and a bathroom off to one side. The only unusual feature was a tiny bed sitter apartment on the third floor that was accessed through our place. It had a little kitchen but no bathroom so whoever lived there shared ours which was no problem so long as the teenage runaway lovers from Thunder Bay lived there.. or somebody else we knew.

We got right into the spirit of the times (as well as that of the neighborhood) and painted all of the rooms ceilings to floorboards in color vibrating panels, swirls, lightning bolts, circles, moons, stars and rainbows. Our friends came by to visit at all hours to smoke dope, drink wine, listen to music, play music, joke, laugh, tell stories, plan adventures and generally have fun. We couldn't understand why the owners would peek upstairs through the window in the lower door or through their curtains whenever we went out but decided that was just their inscrutable way.

One day the kids upstairs packed their suitcases and left after telling us they were going to hitch-hike to BC. We didn't think much about it but decided we'd ask around to see if anybody might want to share the space with us and then went away ourselves for a weekend in the country. We got back late on the Sunday evening not noticing anything unusual.

Next morning I got up early to get ready for work and found the bathroom door locked. Well, that was a bit of a problem but I had my coffee and waited out on the porch which was when I noticed the sounds of splashing from the open bathroom window. Maybe Terry was up earlier than usual but he hadn't mentioned plans. I got on with washing my hair and the rest of me in the kitchen sink but the splashing sounds continued and I was getting more curious by the minute. I went down the hall, peeked into Terry's room and found him sleeping. Larry was asleep as I'd left him. As I dressed I was still wondering who could be in the bathroom? I mean there was one thing I needed to do that couldn't be done in the kitchen sink.





The bathroom door had a little hook inside for a lock so I went to the kitchen, got a butter knife and went back to the bathroom. I knocked. Splashing. I knocked again. More splashing. Time for the butter knife. I unlatched the door, flipped up the hook and looked inside where to my surprise I discovered a very tiny, very old, fully dressed Oriental lady sitting in our bathtub with laundry. There were towels, pants, socks, sheets, underwear, dresses, shirts all dripping from the shower rail and her sitting smiling in the midst of a tub filled with water and more clothes. Weird. I closed the door and went to work.

 When I got home later the boys told me a family of at least 15 people had moved into the little apartment upstairs. They'd been up and down the stairs all day long and even as we talked there were 6 kids peeking into our living room. We couldn't imagine how they'd managed to fit into the space but there was one thing we knew for sure. It was time to move.

Thayer St.

Now I can't say I'm a big fan of cars nor ever have been other than having appreciation for their utility at being able to provide transportation for oneself and one's stuff from point a to point b. That being said I must point out that I did grow up in North America during a time that new highways and burgeoning suburban enclaves made it appear that the future was to be ongoing technical and mechanical Utopia for all. The size, power and design of Detroit built cars reflected this belief of constant improvement and the car that epitomized the height of the auto-makers vision was the 1959 Cadillac Eldorado Biarritz convertible.

Early one afternoon as we walked toward our favorite Thayer St. hangout in Providence one of those was parked right out front - so long it took up two parking spaces and all gleaming white with chromed everything else. It was beautiful. Happily, our usual table outside Andrea's was just being cleared so we ordered our beers and spanikopitas while sitting back to watch the summer parade of locals and visitors stroll by. We liked the spot because there was a crack in the sidewalk right next to it that only the previously initiated would avoid tripping over. We'd take great delight in watching snooty rich people come to check out what qualifications Brown University and its environs could offer their young scions against Harvard or Yale. Invariably one of them would trip on the crack but, since we were connoisseurs of pratfalls, we wouldn't laugh out loud but give one another hand signals indicating points for style and flair in recovery just like they do at the Olympics.

On this particular Sunday the Caddy was of special interest since cars like it were always rare and by the mid-80's were next to extinct. Even now there are still more Model T Fords in regular operation than there ever were Eldorados and the few that existed were owned by very wealthy people.

As usual some friends came by pulling up extra chairs and eventually an extra table too. When I moved my chair to make room I found myself sitting rather close to a tall man of early middle age with languid eyes set in a milk chocolate face. He was dressed casually, almost carelessly, in clothes that were of the very best quality as well as the last word in fashion. He smiled and I felt my heart melt all the way down to the happiest places. It wasn't long before he and his friend-driver were sharing jokes and stories with the rest of us. The low rumble of his laughter was so infectious and sensual that people at other tables who couldn't possibly have heard what had been said laughed as well. We learned he was a talent agent with offices in New York and Hollywood and they were touring the country in a car he'd bought for the sheer luxury of doing the trip at his own pace in style and comfort.

Our waitress, Rachel, who had high hopes of becoming a Broadway star, was also very interested and our tables were getting a lot of her very personal attention much to the general outrage of other patrons. This was New England, after all, and the natives tend to express their irritation volubly when they don't get their food and drink replenished immediately. We heard a lot of comments like, 'Hey, bitch, where's our fucking beer and cheese dip?' and even more impressive variations of where they were planning to look for their meals.

Rachel was not only oblivious to the comments but was getting even more caught up in what she appeared to feel was her one chance of winning fame and fortune. She'd found some odd chromed bar utensil inside that she began to use as a pretend microphone while she proceeded to go into a full Debbie Reynolds routine that you'll understand if you've ever seen 'Singin in the Rain'.

We got to hear a capella versions of 'Some Enchanted Evening', 'Someone to Watch Over Me', 'Send in the Clowns' and 'Anything Goes'. When she got to that one she put down her tray and microphone, took off her shoes and continued to sing while turning cartwheels up and down the sidewalk. By then even the most jaded of Rhode Islanders were beginning to look a bit stunned and more than a few were hoping right along with her that she really would get a chance to go to Hollywood. Naturally, they were also hoping she'd just go away and another waitress would come out to serve their tables.

The Cadillac owner sitting next to me just kept smiling except for once when he looked my way and winked. Flirtation is a funny and subtle thing when you have nothing to gain but the pleasure of mutual understanding. Rachel had finished her acrobatics near the restaurant door and had gone inside. Everyone outside assumed she'd finished but two minutes later she was back for her unrequested encore - microphone and all.














She started to sing that all time favorite song of Broadway musical hopefuls - 'Summertime'. The level of emoting was something extraordinary to see on a city sidewalk and as she got more and more physically engaged in expressing the passion and sadness in the song she got closer and closer to the 1959 Cadillac Eldorado Biarritz, stroking its long sleek lines, tickling its chromed bumper and finally slithering up onto its gleaming white hood where she writhed and moaned out the last lines of the song.. 'So hush little baby, doon't youuu cryayayayy!'

It was a moment to be remembered. Anyone less cool than the man sitting next to me would probably have picked her up bodily and thrown her off the Caddy. He smiled. We said good-bye to all and walked home having enjoyed another fine afternoon on Thayer St.

je me rappelle un chien

If ever there was a dog who belonged to himself it was Garth. Grown up in a time before leash laws and scooping he was happy enough to accompany us on our walks around town but if he sniffed something interesting in the air he'd say his farewells and be off like a shot.

In the early 70's we lived in a fourth floor loft in Montreal. The first person out the door in the morning would find Garth heading downstairs with them. As often as not he'd walk along as they shopped for brioches and fruit to go with breakfast coffee, buying something for him to eat as well. Back at the street door, in typical canine fashion, he'd say 'thanks and goodbye' and would stroll away for his morning constitutional. When he returned he'd stand at the door looking expectant until someone passing opened it for him. He got to be quite well known.

Walking to the top of Mt. Royal Park was something we did just about every day. The paths were wide and tree lined on one side with widening views of the city, the St Lawrence River and old neighborhoods on the other. At one side of the summit is Sacre Coeur Church and a huge metal cross above it whose nighttime lights dominate the city. In the church are canes, crutches and wheelchairs presumably left by people who'd been cured of crippling diseases by crawling up the long stairs. I never saw anyone do that.





































 Closer to our place the park had gardens, tennis courts and playground equipment so it was a favorite place to rest on the way home. Sometimes Garth came home with us and sometimes he'd notice (or nose) something that he just couldn't ignore. It was those times I had to pretend I didn't know him. Who me? My dog? Nope, never saw him in my life before. Other times he would have love affairs, only come home for meals (if that) and I'd have to go looking for him. He never realized his tail gave him away no matter how well he'd hidden himself.





































One afternoon when we were walking along one of the nearby narrow streets a door to an old house built close to the sidewalk opened and an elderly gentleman with a sweet smile beckoned. The man spoke little English and my French was barely acceptable but Garth walked right inside. It was obvious he knew the place and I was quite curious about what was going on so I followed him through the door with the smiling man motioning me to go further along.
 
We went down a long hallway to a broad sunny room at the end where a beautiful female dog was lying in splendor with a litter of black and white, and white and black puppies. The two big dogs nuzzled each other and Garth examined each of the pups. The old man, very proud and happy, told me that when she came into heat Garth was the only male dog he had allowed into his backyard.


Nowadays, I never see a black and white dog without wondering if he or she is one of Garth's descendants. As all of us do he slowed down as he aged but we covered a lot of miles together in a number of cities and parks on both sides of the border and in my mind's eye I can still see the optimistic wag of that magnificent white tail.

hot fashion story

There comes a time in every girl's life when the Dr. Scholl's or the genuine Swedish clogs simply don't provide that certain je ne sais qua required for full enjoyment of modern life. Sometimes you just have to ditch the jeans (or the overalls), put on the cute little dress and step out in something fancy. Let the world know when it comes to style that you set the trends and not by buying the season's latest as dictated by Sears or JC Penney.

Living on the east coast clothes were not the problem. Several times a year my friends and I would head to Filene's Basement Store in Boston early on a Saturday morning. They had clothes from all of the most expensive and exclusive stores in the country with the incredible benefit that the minute an item went on sale there it was already marked 50% off.. and there was a little date sticker on each price tag. Every day the price dropped by another 10% so it was easy to buy a lot of very cool clothes for a small amount of money. We'd dive into the chaos of the double deep Basement with the plan to meet at a particular spot some hours later. To give you an idea how big the place was (and may still be) we hardly ever met each other while there. The other weird thing was there were no changing rooms so you had to try things on in the aisles and hope nobody took the clothes you'd arrived in as a particular great bargain. People (well okay, men) would stand up on the balconies just to watch the women shop. The lingerie department was always well observed.

Shoes, cool shoes, were harder to find and percentage wise as expensive then as they are now. Plus, there were no Manalo Blahnik's or Roger Vivier's even if you were crazy enough or had a serious enough foot fetish to consider spending thousands for a pair. Nevertheless, shoes can make us feel beautiful and when you've just bought a little red silk dress for $15 instead of the original $300 asking price, it would be neat to have a pair of shoes to show it off.

In downtown Providence I found 'Adele's' - a store that had been opened in 1932 - and one look in the window was all it took to know I'd found the holy grail of fancy shoedom.



There were some odd things about the store once you went inside, the most noticeable of which was that they appeared to have shoes dating back to when the place first opened. Shelves of shoe boxes stretched to the ceiling and there were shoes on tables, under tables, in cartons, racks and stacks everywhere. There was even a floor above used as a warehouse for the overload. Two nice young men, her nephews, were always pleased to help but there was something funny going on too. You see, tucked away among the shoe boxes, there was a very old lady sitting on a little platform. If you liked a particular shoe (and you could only ever find one of a pair) one of the men would take it over to her and a quiet conversation would ensue. If the woman liked the way you looked or behaved or whatever, then the guy would go off and find the matching shoe. If you wanted to buy a pair another private conference took place about the price. She must have liked me because I bought a collection of antique shoes from the 30's, 40's and 50's for about $2 a pair. Most were Italian made and a few were snakeskin and alligator - platforms, wedges, maryjanes and 3+ inch heels. I was a tall, sexy lady in those shoes.









Wearing our designer dresses, garters, bustiers, seamed stockings and fine shoes we were a party waiting to happen and happen it did. I have this good friend, really good friend, really really good friend I've been living with for a long time and among his many talents is being a musician and song writer. At that time he'd written some new songs and was planning to perform them in front of a genuine audience - on a stage, with lights, with microphones, with a sound system. I mean REALLY.











For a very brief time we were a band - kind of like a reprise of Dan Hicks and the Hot Licks. We were the Andrews Sisters, Tina Turner and the Lickettes rolled into one tight little group singing backup and playing percussion. Everybody should get to have that much fun at least once.



Like innocent bystanders watching our time go by (I just had to quote my favorite song by Dan Hicks - Moody Richard) we witnessed the day when a local cooking school bought up the block in downtown Providence where Adele's store sat. Deals were done and everybody moved out - everybody but Adele who owned her building and refused to sell. So far as the school was concerned plans were far advanced with construction scheduled, students accepted and one little old lady with a shoe store was in the way of progress.




Funny how these things happen but one night the building caught on fire. Nobody was hurt but the building, shoes and all, was gone by the next morning when the fire marshall declared it a total loss. I've always wondered about those two nice young men..

childhood summer

In 1954, not too long after the end of WWII, with England heavily rationed, hospitals laboring to look after the wounded and much of the country still scarred by bomb craters and debris, my parents decided to move to Canada with their asthmatic daughter.. me. We went directly to cottage country by a little lake 25 miles north of Toronto and that's where I grew up.

Lake Wilcox was close enough to the city that it was a very popular spot on summer weekends. Although you could drive to the bigger lakes further north, doing so wasn't practical back then since the only way to get to them was by two lane roads many of which weren't paved. Going that far was possible but it had to be for a week or two just to make the drive practical. So never mind Sauble Beach on Lake Huron with its miles of white sand, Sunday picnics often meant Ash's Beach at Lake Wilcox and it sometimes seemed as if half the population of Toronto drove in. The cars were filled with irritated sweaty grownups and tons of kids just plain looking for a place to stop. Most of the beaches were private and there were no parking lots so once the park itself was was full the only hope of a spot was a slim chance that someone with a pregnant woman would have to drive to the hospital right that minute. Come to think of it there were likely a few babies born in those circling cars. All was chaos on the weekends.

But there was a roadhouse with beer (except on Sunday when people brown bagged the stuff), pool tables, pinball machines and a good size contingent of bikers usually on hand. Across the road was Ash's booth that sold soft drinks, ice cream, burgers, fries and hotdogs. Next to it was the entrance down the stairs to the beach and next to that was the dance hall - jukebox, jitterbug heaven. I didn't get out of the house after dark to check the nighttime action for years but we knew it could be dangerous.



































Even though the weekends were crazy and the nights could be it was the days that belonged to us kids and the mothers who occasionally paid attention to what we were getting up to. We spent the summers in and around the water. There were artesian springs that fed the lake and we loved finding where they'd sprung up from one summer to another. You could put your arm or leg into what appeared to be a wet hole in the beachgrass and feel the icy cold as deep as you could reach while the sun baked the rest of you. We'd cover each other with wet clay and then go dashing into the lake to clean off. Since I wasn't allowed to swim until July I often had to find other ways to entertain myself and one of my personal favorite places was a very old and decrepit roller skating rink further along the beach. There were hundreds of pairs of old roller skates lining the walls and the trick was to find a pair the right size with unbroken straps you could fasten to your shoes. I liked to spend hours pretending I was a famous skating queen or a magic flying fairy.

Now our own beach was a lot of fun but the cool place to go during the week was Ash's Beach. Every winter big dump trucks filled with sand would drive out onto the lake and dump their loads on the ice of Ash's so there'd be mostly sand under the water and not weeds.. a very big yuck to all of us. There were also things to play on at Ash's - water slides, diving boards, rafts that floated on big empty barrels and the boats. All of them were great places to play pirate and, since every year Mary Martin appeared live on television to do her Peter Pan role, we were all very big fans of pirates.



































Jean Ash, who was also mother to two of the kids, ran the ticket area for the beach. The .25 cent admission was about as much as any of us got as a whole weeks allowance so paying admission wasn't exactly on the agenda. But Jean was very cool, our own local version of Bettie Page who really had seen everything, and she pretended not to notice when we came swimming around the fences that went out into the water. She'd even tell us stories about some of the wackier people who came to swim - like the butch women who demanded to rent men's bathing trunks. None of us knew what to make of that but it was pretty funny.

One of our favorite activities was climbing down the rope that anchored the rafts. The idea was to stay down there holding your breath as long as possible. Strangely enough, me with my asthmatic chest, won those contests more than anyone else.

Then there was the Booth. My friend Rita's mother was one of the women charged with watching me since both my parents had jobs in Toronto and Linda's mother worked at the Booth doing the food preparation and serving the customers. One weekday afternoon Linda and I heard shrieks of laughter from behind the closed shutters so sneaked inside to have a look at what all the fun was about. A lot of ladies at that time were what you might term statuesque, not necessarily fat but big, buxom women who'd given birth to several children. An old brass balance scale was part of the kitchen equipment inside and when we peeked around the ice cream coolers we couldn't believe what we saw them doing. There were five women with their blouses unbuttoned and their bras lifted up or unfastened and they were having a contest of their own to see who among them had the biggest, heaviest breasts. Linda and I sneaked back out without them knowing we'd been there.