Hello World

This is my new nephew Sam.

Say hi everyone.

I'm an uncle!

I'm an uncle! The following is the e-mail sent out by my sister's man, Mark:

Hello Everyone,

Just wanted to give a quick email to let everyone know we have a new addition to the Armitage-Cline clan.

Chelsea gave birth to a little boy Saturday afternoon (~1:33p) while proud papa cheered her on. Our little guy (name not yet ironed out) came in at 7lbs 5ozs, 22.5 inches long. He seems to have a wee bit of a stubborn streak and the doc had to go in and get him. Mom did a great job, and is earning some extremely well deserved rest! Baby boy Armitage/Cline also is getting some well deserved rest! He had a bit of trouble when he first came out, but is flirting with all the nurses in the ICU now. Seems to be quite social. J

We’re all looking forward to seeing everyone in the coming weeks!

PS: Thanks to Uncle Mikey for the fine photograph shots.

Thanks!

Mark.

Sprouts

People of the Bus

The bus. Taking the bus. It’s something I loathe; it’s something I love to do.

I’m on the Saturday morning milk route heading north, up through Barrie and skirting the south shore of Georgian bay on a winding two lane highway. The sky is grey. The occasional patch of rain mottles the windshield. The squeaky wipers start up. This route takes an hour and forty- five minutes by car, three and a half on this bus.

I’m in the front seat watching the world unfold. From here you can see the best possible cross section of rural Ontario-—not just the towns and landscape but the great unfolding of life itself. Freed from the responsibility of driving, you can watch the world scroll by in silence.

You see a big old tree out in the middle of a scrubby field or a driveway piled with junk. The finely spaced rows of green leaves are sprouting up from the heavy brown mud, row on row on row—growing in the same pattern in which the farmer’s tractor passed only a few weeks ago. A pile of cut wood under a blue tarp. A flourish of pink apple blossoms among the maples. A stand of pines. Tangled hardwoods. A golf course. A bonfire pointing a smoldering white finger of smoke into the air and a circle of men sitting around it drinking something cold.

The bus turns east. Factories shut down. Driveways with boats on trailers. “Mr. Ming’s Canadian and Chinese Food Buffet Restaurant.” Homes with two satellite dishes and a car they’ve been meaning to fix up for years under a sheet of plastic. Small main streets that hug the side of the roadway with clothing stores that have “ALL THE LATEST TRENDS”, TV repair shops, grocery stores filled with weekend shoppers.

An OPP officer pulls over a shiny black pickup truck driven by two young men with sunglasses and matching goatees.

Just watch and let your eye wanted from thing to thing. Through that sheet of glass you are like an omnipotent, omnipresent ghost watching without ever leaving a trace. All these scenes become one continuous whole, like a never ending comic strip without a plot or theme. The only thing constant is the power lines rising and falling as it slumps and peaks between poles, like a wave.

The bus stops in small towns you’ve never heard of. Places that have no airport or train station or professional sports teams. Just people doing whatever it is they do. Just living. The bus stops in Elmvale, two husky men disembark and hug a man who’s been waiting for them in the shelter of a gas station. They laugh and smile and walk towards an idling truck. Brothers? Friends?

The bus hums along long enough and you drift off to sleep for a few seconds and wake up again. The eye catches a flag or a sign above a store and hangs onto it: it makes you remember something.

Bus travel is the lowest form of travel. Arrive at the Toronto bus terminal at any hour of the day and you meet the usual assortment of scoundrels, drunks, and hand-blistered roughnecks waiting to get the hell home to someplace way up north where you ain’t ever heard of (and they like it that way, thanks). And the huksters who just need five more dollars to buy a ticket to Oshawa to see his pregnant wife who is locked out of the house and…and… And there are the ones who aren’t going anywhere—the ones who arrived from someplace and stay in the terminal with the people who are going places. They arrive and never leave. The intransient transients.

These are the people who get filtered out by Customs Officers and Homeland security; who never make it into the palaces of flight – the airports of marble and stainless steel fittings. These are the ones who sit beside you in your small space, with liquor on their breath, and tell you the long story of their life.

No, we bus travelers do not pass amongst the clouds and the glide over rails, leaping continents and oceans in hours. We feel every bump, every wobble in the road, through the six big black tires that roll upon the earth. Our washroom swooshes around with enough blue liquid to pickle an entire army. Someone is snoring. A child is crying. A tuna fish sandwich is being eaten somewhere back there.

But for all these discomforts, you get to see life. You creep towards your destination mile by mile, town by town, like coming up from the deep ocean to avoid ‘the bends.’ You are earning your right of passage. To see your home dissolve into a new landscape, one junk filled lot, one swamp at a time. You cut through the world in a horizontal band, not from far above in a plane. And when you finally reach your distant destination—you feel like you’ve already been there hours before.

And it gives you time to write and write about being on a bus. Until the legs start to cramp.

Welcome to my neighbourhood.

Mattress Saved from Sunday Suicide Drama

Toronto firefighters attempt to reach the stricken mattress on Bloor Street yesterday.

MICHAEL ARMITAGE
TORONTO, March 14,

Firefighters made a daring midday rescue in downtown Toronto on Sunday afternoon, blocking traffic while they thwarted a suicide attempt by a elderly mattress. Onlookers watched in horror as the mattress slowly moved closer to the edge of a roof above a popular book store. Police and firefighters quickly blocked the nearby area, snarling traffic on Bloor Street causing traffic headaches throughout midtown.

The standoff lasted nearly an hour as firefighters struggled to raise the hydraulic ladder that had to be retracted several times before it was able to reach the mattress.

"The mattress was saying something about being no good anymore," said onlooker Bill Fernando. "She said she was tired of people just sleeping on her and leaving without even saying goodbye."

Other shop keepers in the area were afraid the unfolding drama was having a negative impact on business -- with Sunday being one the busiest times of the week.

"There is a time and place for this," said Lina McKee of Bloor Mattress Warehouse. "That mattress has been hanging around in the area for a long time. We knew it was going to come to this."

After a tense standoff, firefighter Sam Nugent was able to talk the mattress down, eventually carrying it down the ladder. It was then rushed to hospital for a psychiatric evaluation. The name of the mattress has not been released.

Fire Department officials did not speculate on how the mattress was able to get onto the roof, but they cautioned other mattress from attempting to climb up buildings.

Last year Toronto had 15 matress-related suicides.

New Lens

After weeks of humming and hawing, I finally bought myself the Canon Rebel XT. Expect more pictures to appear on Mikerophone soon!

Sting

I started playing indoor ball hockey again.

This evening I got a slapshot in the face.

And it hurt.

No blood, no bruise.

(I just wanted to share my pain.)

Thanks for listening.

It's all just stupid rock and roll

EXT. BLOOR STREET WEST -- NIGHT

I'm on a chair outside chewing a spicy falafel (a personal favourite), leaning forward slightly so the tahini and hot sauce can spill on the concrete instead of on my lap. Everyone seems to be out tonight: shoppers, drunkards, students, and shoppers. No one needs a jacket. There's a spring buzz in the air and everyone secretly feels it. Watching people is better than watching TV.

A man sits beside me. He's spent a few nights too many sleeping outside. But he's got headphones jammed in his ears and an iPod in his hand. He moves his hands over the dials, brings the display close to his face to figure out how to work the sleek contraption.

"Eh buddy," he says. "Know how to make this play something?"

I explain how, as I chew. He holds his hands over his ears, straining to hear something.

"I can't hear nothing!" he says. "I want some funk."

I give more instructions.

"This thing supposed to cost like four hundred bucks and it doesn't even work," he says.

I tell him to plug in the headphones.

"Ah! now it's working..."

A grimace comes across this face.

"How to you put music on this if it doesn't use CDs?"

I explain you need a computer and iTunes. You need to download it from the internet.

"Oh," he says, crestfallen.

He scrolls through the music. His eyes move back and forth as he tries to recognize the music.

"Ah, man!" he yells. "It's all just stupid rock and roll."

He takes the white head phones from his ears and shoves everything, including an old napkin into his pocket.

"Eh buddy, can you spare some change for a falafel?"

Back in the paddle again

I loaded the cedar canoe into the back of the Dodge and tied the bow down with a big thick rope. I drove 20 minutes down the dirt road to the small bridge that crosses the water. The river was high from spring runoff, the water had spilled the banks and flooded deep into the forest. Big leafless maples sprung out from a temporary pond. The surface of the water was smooth and calm -- but it was running fast. I launched the canoe, stepped into the centre and crouched on my knees. Using my paddle I have a push from the muddy banks and I began my first solo paddle of the year. I went upstream against the current.

The saying is true 'that you never step in the same river twice.' Although I am familiar with the bends and turns of this river, there are always new fallen trees, new silt beds to avoid. With the water calm, the entire forest was reflected on itself including the sky. It was as if I was paddling upside-down on the sky. Being early spring, there is not vegetation, no long ferns or a canopy of leaves to shade the route. A few sprouts of grass had started to push from around the banks. In the shallows, I could see new lilies starting to emerge from the bottom of the river amongst the dead leaves of last summer. In few weeks they would break the surface.

Coming up to the first bend in the river, a beaver pushed a log across the water. Then another beaver. All around they had been busy: small tree trunks cut down to pencil tips. Dead trees were pock-marked with woodpecker holes - you could still hear them banging in every direction. Blue-bellied swallows, always in pairs, darted over the surface for bugs. Two Mallards honked. More hawks swooping. A frog plopped into the water was my paddle skimmed a bed of weeds. Even a raccoon scurried along the banks to see the strange man in the boat. The forest was coming alive.

And then further up, I saw a dark object in the middle of the river. I paddled over and saw a dead duck floating in the middle of the river, anchored by its intestine which was wrapped around a submerged tree branch. A gruesome, sad sight. Its head was below the water, feathers spread out. I used the blade of my paddle to cut the cord, and let it float down the river. Because that's were all of this around me ends up anyway.

Wild Leeks

Saturday afternoon, I got in the car and sped north for a quick retreat to the farm. The drive up was fast, the roads clear. Spring was everywhere. The fields were all ploughed into long brown rows; the first buds were pushing out through the branches. The sun was bright, a stiff west wind pounded into the side of the car as I continued onward.

I arrived at the farm where my mom was busy preparing dinner. She was going to make a leek and potato soup -- but she didn't have any leeks. She told me there wild leeks up in the forest and we were to go dig some up for dinner.

We rolled the ATV from the barn, strapped a spade to the front, and rode up the valley into the forest following the brown dirt road through the trees. Large cravaces and mini canyons slashed through the road from when the snow melted and took it's course to the river. The mud was sticky, splattering the fenders and leaving behind thick tire tracks.

Passing up a steep climb, I parked the ATV by a small creek and turned off the engine. Suddenly, the purr or 100-hp, disappeared and the sound of the forest returned. No cars, no sirens. Just the wind. A few chirping birds. A flock of eagles glided overhead, silently circling in the warm air. There were no leaves on the trees yet, so the sun was everywhere.

In two weeks this same place will be filled with shadows and buzzing business.

We walked into the forest; my mom pointed out the patches of wild leeks that look like tulips. I shoved the spade into the earth and held a clump of dirt up my mother pulled the leeks from their roots. She banged off the excess dirt on a tree and put the stalks in the basket.

"See, they're really leeks," she said. I held one up to my nose.

Then I put one in my mouth and chewed - they we're fresh and sweet enough to eat raw. We worked from patch to patch, making sure we left enough leeks in the ground so they would return next year. In a few minutes we had 50 leeks, each the size of a pinky finger.

We returned to the ATV, strapped the spade to the front. My hands smelled like new dirt.
Suddenly, the sound of a woodpecker knocking echoed from somewhere. For a moment it paused and then continued. It's one of the hollowest and haunting sounds you'll ever hear.

I switched on the ATV, pumbed down the valley, and returned home to cut up the leeks and boil them into a soup.

Standing around the pot, my mom skinned and sliced on the potatos and addedm them to the simmering leeks. There is nothing better than eating food that is grown on the very same soil on which I stand.