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A Beautiful Biography

Posted by :James Howden On : February 6, 2007
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Category: At First Glance

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In my typically timeless style — I’m referring to tardiness, not eternal glory — I missed the Ron Howard film A Beautiful Mind when it won all those Oscars in 2001. (Gracious. Ron Howard has Academy Awards for Best Director and Best Film, and Martin Scorcese doesn’t.) It was just before Christmas, actually, that I finally saw it, and I liked it well enough that I watched it again with my girl a couple of weeks later.

An old friend told me years ago that I should see it, partly because of its cinematic merits but mainly because she’d seen pictures of my Dad as a university grad. “Crowe looks just like your father!” It was true: I was knocked out by Russell Crowe’s portrayal of the troubled mathematical genius, John Nash, but there was an extra thrill of creepiness there. My father was in his 50s when I was a young boy. I caught ghostly glimpses of a Dad I’d never known except in black and white photos from the thirties, forties and fifties. And beside that, Crowe was great. He didn’t tower over a so-so film like Jamie Foxx had in Ray – Beautiful Mind is better than that – but there was a family resemblance. I’d forgotten that it won four Oscars, and its best performance wasn’t even one of them.

I immediately went looking for the Sylvia Nasar biography that had inspired the film, and just finished it. And when I note that the movie version won for Best Screenplay, well, it’s interesting. A Beautiful Mind was based on the Nash bio of the same name, but I was startled by how much “creative licence” Hollywood allows itself in recounting a true story. The love angle, besides being much more central than it actually was, was mainly fiction. Almost the entire depiction of Nash’s paranoid schizophrenia, too, is completely invented. (I guess faithfulness to the book would have eliminated a good role for Ed Harris.) Given the Hollywoodization of life, it’s no wonder how little understanding the public has about mental illness!

But’s let’s concentrate on the book, which was superbly told and incredibly detailed. As a case study of genius, as an examination of psychiatric problems and their effect upon families, and as a recreation of critical times and places in mid-century America, Nasar’s book is a brilliant and compelling investigation. Its detailed description of Nash’s mathematics and of his fall into delusion barely slows down the book. I was engrossed, especially once I gave myself permission to skip the hundreds of end-notes in this densely detailed life history.

It has made me think long and hard about many things: how lonely it can be for our leading minds, how fine the line between creative genius and madness, the courage it takes to be an innovator or to live with one. In our dreamy moments, we sometimes think we’d like to be in the forefront of some great idea or cause, but most of us shrink from the cost. As spookily good as Russell Crowe was in the film, the story of the “beautiful mind” of Dr. Nash is best and most interestingly told – hey, have you heard this before? – in a book. The movie was worth the look, but A Beautiful Mind is a better thing when it’s read.

The Martin Quest

Posted by :James Howden On : February 5, 2007
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Category: At First Glance

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Just before we left the country for a couple of weeks (though I wasn’t aware of it ’til last night), my favourite Martin gave a nice plug for this site on his much more visually dazzling one. Since Martin has given me dozens of hours of help getting this thing going, I must certainly return the favour. Marty subtitles his site “A Growing Repository of All That is Good”, and for my money, he’s actually being somewhat humble when he says that. It’s massive, and it’s very, very good.

He pours a sensational amount of time and intelligence and technical skill into his site. It’s full of news and visuals on his family, his posse and his faith community — Martin is one of the Dynamic Bahá’í Dudes of Ottawa — but also some very thoughtful information and lively discussions on the most important parts of our world conversation (so say I): spiritual enrichment, education for peace, the power of unity and the search for the ultimate set of speakers. There’s always something happening at The Quest.

What Difference Does It Make?

Posted by :James Howden On : February 5, 2007
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Category: At First Glance

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You may have noticed the scarcity of posts over the past couple of weeks, all because of a family trip to Guadeloupe. Computer access was scarce, and there was lots to see. So you can look, over the next week or so, for a flood of reflections on that fine adventure and other things I’ve been meaning to tell you.

The trip has me asking one positively nagging question of myself. It’s another round of a skullbound parlour game that I’ve played many times over the years. I’m getting to be good at it. I’m learning to take the most sneering or self-righteous dismissal, the verbal brutality of a nasty rhetorical question, turn it inside out and tame it. I make it do what I want. Wanna play?

Here’s a question covered in thorns. Who do you think you ARE? Alice Munro made it the title of a short story collection, and she showed the essence of that all too prevalent Canadian attitude: a prim, haughty disapproval of ambition or boldness or extraordinary achievement. I hear that voice in my head, still, almost every time I try to step out of my comfortable furrow. Now, though, I can often turn it around, asking the question sincerely rather than for the sake of making a harsh judgement. When I ask it in that tone of voice, I use it to gently challenge myself or someone else to consider first principles of identity, to get a little more self-aware. Okay, who or what IS a human being, and what does that all mean for me right now? How do you see yourself?

Another of my favourite turnarounds, in the same vein, begins with the incredulous What do you think you’re DOING? We generally use this when we catch someone doing something that we don’t approve of or understand. (My students and my children have heard this blurt more often than I’d like.) However, I like to play Socrates a little – or maybe just fumble about like rerun TV’s detective Columbo. I grind off the sharp critical edge and make the question into a sincere probe. How do you understand your behaviour and the attitude behind it? Do they show some sense of purpose, some higher commitment? Do they help you get where you’d like to go? The examined life is no picnic, but it’s worth living, as the real Socrates said.

Guadeloupe, warm and bright and new to us, suddenly seems distant on a minus-30 northern morning. My tan is already fading. Listen: if you take a trip but there are no lasting results, did it actually happen? I started to wonder, in our last days there and on Air Canada homeward, so what difference did this make? When I was a kid, this question had a bitter, defiant edge. Whatsa DIFF? we would say pugnaciously. It was meant to shut down an argument, and our antagonist, snottily “proving” that his actions and words weren’t worth a damn. (Sometimes, it had a more discouraged feel to it; nothing that I do is going to matter, so why bother?)

So, again, I found myself extracting the poison from a toxic question. What difference does it make became a personal challenge to nurture whatever seeds of usefulness and joy we had planted. There are new friendships to develop, fine memories and educative bits that we can treasure and build on, and the chance to reflect on our work and life back home. (There were times I hated to be away from my work table, but I’m so lucky and glad that I was. I like it here better today than I have for awhile.) My bride and I travelled with our six-year-old, and that furious learning and those wide-open eyes are a spur and an admonition. We’ll see what the difference is. I’ll try to make sure there IS one.

Dyer Straights: A High School Confidential

Posted by :James Howden On : January 14, 2007
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Category: At First Glance

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If a remarkable speaker came to a school and nobody listened, did he actually say anything? (If a tree falls in the forest…) I do the odd suppy teaching gig, and I got thinking about an assembly held in a small-town high school of my intimate acquaintance.

It was the spring of ’02, I think. The principal had booked a speaker; not the usual “you-have-so-much-to-gain-from-getting-involved-so-hey-whaddaya-got-to-lose!” motivational banter from a caffeinated twenty-something with a degree and no job.  This was a lecture on Canada’s place in the world from a greying Gwynne Dyer: historian, writer and commentator on international affairs. (I’m still not sure what he was doing in the Home of the Blue Devils.) The staff had been poorly briefed, and the students didn’t know what was up, but it was a substitute for fourth period, so we trooped down to the auditorium at two o’clock. At least, those of us who hadn’t already escaped to Timmy’s or McD’s.

I was superbly biased: I’d read Dyer in newspapers, seen him on The National, and been wowed by his eight-part documentary film, War. (It made me want to teach history.) He’s a brilliant guy, rumpled and wryly funny, so I was looking forward to hearing him speak. (Yes, I often feel alone. How’d you know?) He spoke for 50 minutes, with two major points to make. He put our present world situation in perspective, apologizing for the role he plays in the media’s portrait of the world as a frighteningly violent and despairing place. (I don’t think he would retract the grimly but clearly optimistic tone he took that day, but his recent book IS Future: Tense — The Coming World Order? His biggest concern there was America’s singular quest to police the world, including this typically blunt Dyer-ism: “The United States needs to lose the war in Iraq as soon as possible. Even more urgently, the whole world needs the United States to lose the war in Iraq.”)

But back then, the end of the Cold War had him arguing the following, in spite of the threat of terrorism: “The world is in better shape than it has been in my entire lifetime” and “World War III has been cancelled!” He argued that the generation of high schoolers he was facing had great reason to be hopeful about the world they were inheriting. Second, he argued that “the single best thing Canadians have done” was the 1967 reworking of the Immigration Act. It has steadily transformed Canada from an inward-looking population descended from northern European settlers, he said, into “a representative sample of the human race”, the most diverse country on earth. Sure, there are problems, he explained, but not only does this diversity make us truly interesting, but it gives us a creative advantage in the global marketplace, and is the key to diluting French-English antagonism and preserving Canadian unity. Whew!  It was a big message for suburban white kids on a Thursday afternoon.

There were twin conclusions to the talk.  One was Dyer’s: “It’s a great country—take good care of it!” The other, after an odd delay — so that our guest could leave the room, I guess — was our vice-principal’s dressing-down of the students for their rudeness and lack of attention. Which message are they going to remember? I wondered. I was moving past my own reaction (impressed) to Dyer to consider what the rest of the crowd got from it. I picked out one red-headed Brain that I’d worked with in class and cross-country running. “Hey, Chris, Canada’s in the world — who knew?” I said, and he smiled. He’d obviously been tuned in; he separated himself from those around him by his unbroken attention and by laughing at Dyer’s subtle jokes. (Mentioning the sexual revolution of the 60s, he had deadpanned, “Pity you missed it”). Chris’s buddy Ryan admitted (well, confessed, actually) that he had understood most of Dyer’s talk, noting a bit sheepishly that “we always listen to CBC Radio and my dad always talks to me about this stuff”. These guys felt a little alone, too.

Most of the students I talked to had more to say about the V.P.’s 30 seconds than about Mr. Dyer’s hour. Pressed to comment on his address, comments ranged (but not too widely) from “It was boring/stupid” to a disgusted “He just stood there and talked” to a more self-examining “I tried to pay attention but I couldn’t follow it, so of course we’re gonna talk a bit…” I was amazed.  We hear all the time about kids and short attention spans and how information needs to be a jump-cutting jolt of entertainment to get through to them. I was facing them daily then, but I was still surprised by how many had surfed to another channel (if not another location altogether) before Dyer had finished his opening comments, or, in some cases, spoken at all. Perhaps I didn’t want to think about how little of my own chalk-stained raving had flown right past bland and pleasant faces…

Granted, we hadn’t been very well-prepared. Students who heard afterwards from a teacher that Mr. Dyer had been shot at several times in the course of his globe-trotting journalism, or spent time as a sailor, said “I wish they’d told me that before!” And we should have prepared the kids much better. It was an afternoon that made high school teaching feel, just fer a second there, like the ultimate tilt at a bored and impervious windmill. But thanks for coming out, Gwynne.

(Hey, my site seems to be working! A condensed version of this piece will appear shortly in my hometown weekly, The Grand River Sachem.)

Chicks Dig the Long Haul

Posted by :James Howden On : January 13, 2007
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Category: At First Glance

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Sprung! There was nobody home and no particular deadline. My bride was on the family road, and Sprout the Last had an after-school playdate with his buddy that promised to extend into the evening. (Mom and Friend of the Year nomination: Josée!) Jailbreak! Run to daylight!

Flee to that beam of light in a dark, dark room: Escape to the Bytowne Cinema! I didn’t much care what was there, but wasn’t displeased to find out that Shut Up and Sing!, the Dixie Chick-flick, was on. I’m not a big country music fan, but it had been hard not to be fascinated by the boiling stew of disgusted American overreaction when the DC lead singer mouthed off in London. So I was interested to see what this documentary made of the mess, and why these Chicks were in the middle of it.

Do you remember? Tanks and troops were massed on the Iraqi border, tens of millions of people around the world were massed in pre-emptive protest, and the DC happened to be in London where a huge crowd had marched for peace, perhaps that same day. “We’re with y’all,” lead singer Natalie Maines told the audience to roars of approval. “And just so you know, we’re ashamed that the President of the United States is from Texas…” And once word got back to the American networks, the if you’re not with us you’re against us neo-con PR steamroller had a gorgeous target. The DC were beautiful, popular, female and sold most of their records in the so-called Red states. And the world of country music is redneck-friendly. (I played the heck out of Garth Brooks’s The Hits for several years, and loved how he had  gradually brought gospel choirs and a social conscience – “When we all can sit / In our own kind of pews / We shall be free…” – to country music. Still, I found it hard, no matter how catchy the tune, to listen to a song like “American Honky-Tonk Bar Association”, which “represents the gun-rack, bare-crack, achin’ back, overtaxed, flag-wavin’ fun-lovin’ crowd…”)

When it came to the “disgusting traitors” who “should be strapped to a bomb and dropped on I-Rack” (people actually said things like that), the country music world spoke with one voice. The Chicks were Satan, and must be destroyed. The film, directed by Oscar-winner Barbara Kopple and Cecilia Peck (Gregory’s girl, I think), follows the DC from the grainy video taken of THE ACT in London in 2003 and throughout their at first slack-jawed, then stubbornly defiant reactions to the uproar. It culminates in the release of a new and very different Dixie Chicks album in 2006. (Cynics might call the entire movie a marketing ploy, just as climate-change deniers devalue Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth as campaign fodder. And hey, the Chicks certainly understand marketing, but they also paid a huge price for their stance.) At the controversy’s height, not a country station in the U.S. played them – they had been for some years the biggest-selling band of any genre – and their record and concert ticket sales went way south. Yes, and there were disc-burnings, public floggings by the likes of Bill O’Reilly, and death-threats both vague and direct. One of the most chilling sequences in the film shows the Chicks before a concert in Dallas, where metal-detectors and 24-hour surveillance were the order of the day. They played their arses off that night. Tough Chicks.

Not surprisingly, they come across well. After all, when you’re in a contest with ignorance and xenophobia and time has shown you to be on the right side, it’s hard not to look good. For example, another strong scene has the Chicks and their spritely manager, Simon Renshaw, meeting with a PR consultant not long after the deceivingly easy early going in Iraq. The audience I was in laughed hard (and bitterly) over lines like these: You’ve got to lay low. The war is going so well, and it’s only going to get better. The President is incredibly popular, and his approval ratings are only going to climb… We were treated to the infamous time-dishonoured footage of the smirking Bush’s aircraft-carrier congratulations on “a job well done” to the Forces of Goodness. The Dixie Chicks were (and, to some extent, remain) a more corporate, commercially oriented act than I generally favour, but I came away impressed. These are talented women: Martie Maguire and Emily Robison, sisters and the basis of the band, are prodigiously talented musicians, and Natalie Maines can flat-out sing. She’s a compelling stage presence, and even in back-stage or hotel conversations, the camera can’t let her go. Neither could I.

She’s so watchable. It’s easy to see how she could become a shit-storm magnet. She is an alpha female: charismatic, funny, bright, tough, principled, and a self-confessed “bigmouth”. (Fluently foul-mouthed, too. I never quite get used to women making as many oral sex references as men might. BJ jokes abound, and all the Chicks join in.) But they are ultimately very appealing. (Shots of the darling seven children and interesting husbands they have among them, not to mention Emily’s childbirth experience, don’t hurt.) The women managed not only to stand together but to emerge, from what I saw and heard, a better and deeper and more interesting band because of their struggles. Heck, they’re even helping to write the songs. Shoot, I may even buy the new album. Shut Up and Sing is a good night at the movies. Not only did it entertain me and interest me musically, but it was a nervy case study of the mass psychology of war and patriotism and the precarious nature of free speech.

And I didn’t pay a dime for babysitting.

Canada in the World

Posted by :James Howden On : January 10, 2007
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Category: At First Glance

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Old and Borrowed, But Far From Shabby

The Howden telegraph runs very slowly at times, and I often like it like that. For example, Big Sister just forwarded to me a fine article that gives a perspective on how Canada is seen (and NOT seen) by the world. It’s terrific and relatively timeless commentary, but the one timely reference told me that it had been written some time ago.

Close to five years ago, in fact, which may surprise you. (It did me.) The infamous “friendly fire” incident, in which four Canadian soldiers were killed by American flyers in Afghanistan, happened in 2002. A writer named Kevin Myers, in the UK Sunday Telegraph, wrote this fine piece that goes far behind the story-of-the-moment to get to what so little of our media diet provides: a deeper understanding of the way things are, and why. It was called “A Salute to a Brave and Modest Nation”, and you can find it here.

Whether you are a proud Canuck or you know little about Canadian history and achievement – and these categories, unfortunately, are NOT mutually exclusive! – you may find this interesting, even illuminating. (It may even feel like a vicarious pat on the back from out of the blue.) It’s well written and worth reading, even a half decade later. The good stuff always is.

Retro Reading

Posted by :James Howden On : January 10, 2007
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Category: At First Glance

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I can’t post extensively here, but I can still work in my weekly quote in the He Said/She Said block below right. This week, it’s back to G.K. Chesterton, with one of a few gems I found in his 1908 novel The Man Who Was Thursday. As a novel, there are unlikelihoods and glitches in the story-telling, though it should be said that he subtitles it A Nightmare.

It’s one of those novels that expects the reader to accept that its characters could have the most astonishingly eloquent, philosophical and lengthy conversations. Once you allow for that, the pleasure of Chesterton’s prose is fine. It’s quite a remarkable book, underlaid with serious intent and ideas and yet told in a witty, sardonic and fantastical way. (With one young man of my dear acquaintance quite fascinated by the tenets of Anarchism, the serious and mocking shots that Mr. Chesterton lobs its way were especially piquant.) In the midst of all the adventure and bon mots, GKC throws in the occasional aphorism like this stealth missile on the glories of old-fashioned monogamy. He’s a quote machine.

Old and Borrowed, But Far From Shabby

Posted by :James Howden On : January 10, 2007
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Category: At First Glance

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Canada Belongs to the World. Really.

The Howden telegraph runs very slowly at times, and I often like it like that. For example, Big Sister just forwarded to me a fine article that gives a perspective on how Canada is seen (and NOT seen) by the world. It’s terrific and relatively timeless commentary, but the one timely reference told me that it had been written some time ago.

Close to five years ago, in fact, which may surprise you. (It did me.) The infamous “friendly fire” incident, in which four Canadian soldiers were killed by American flyers in Afghanistan, happened in 2002. A writer named Kevin Myers, in the UK Sunday Telegraph, wrote this fine piece that goes far behind the story-of-the-moment to get to what so little of our media diet provides: a deeper understanding of the way things are, and why. It was called “A Salute to a Brave and Modest Nation”, and you can find it here.

Whether you are a proud Canuck or you know little about Canadian history and achievement – and these categories, unfortunately, are NOT mutually exclusive! – you may find this interesting, even illuminating. (It may even feel like a vicarious pat on the back from out of the blue.) It’s well written and worth reading, even a half decade later. The good stuff always is.

2006 in Review: Some Pretty Good Posts

Posted by :James Howden On : January 7, 2007
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Category: At First Glance

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Greatest Hits of JH.com

Well, strangers and friends, I’ve caught the New Year bug. [Not to mention the technical cockroaches that have scurrying around my keyboard!] If every sports channel, newspaper and current affairs show can air its highlights of the Old Gregorian Year, then so can I. “I celebrate myself, and sing myself…” as Whitman wrote. (Perhaps easier to say when you’re Walt Whitman, but so far, I’m okay with it.)

If you’re one of those people (and you’re not alone!) who CAN get enough of my writing — if you’re someone who may have resolved to look through those archives for all the gems contained therein, but preferred to make a living instead — then here’s the Coles Notes version, some of the good things (sez me) on JamesHowden.com . It’ll give you a taste of what I’ve been doing, without having to slog through 173 posts.

There are selections from “At First Glance” (my general-interest, whatever-happens-to-be-on-my-mind pile), from the “It’s All About Sports” section of the site (which IS), and from “On Second Thought” (generally longer, more considered articles and essays, although this section has largely been taken over by the “Old Dog Year” (ODY) chronicle of my mid-life quest to play the guitar). So: here comes a list of some of my favourite entries from 2006. It’s pretty random – hard to pick faves among your children – but these are nineteen letters that I wrote to you.

Letters to the Living. Read any that tickle or appeal to you.

NINETEEN: “Youthful Reasons and Dreams” talks about a Saturday night youth-fest at our place, and one evening’s Hopefulness Visible with the next generation. Dynamic, committed young people.

EIGHTEEN: “Four Straight Titles – Does Anybody Hear?” is one of several pieces I’ve written this year about the Carleton Ravens basketball men, one of the most extraordinary stories in sport.

SEVENTEEN: “Buddy Wasisname and the Other Fellers” is a review of a night at the Ottawa Writers Festival, one of the pleasures of my year. (Spring and Fall!)

SIXTEEN: “Twin-Billed Terrorism” is a double movie review of one blockbuster and one little-known independent film. Howdy goes to the movies; both come with a bang.

FIFTEEN: “Class Action, Nash and Klassen” looks at two of Canada’s most brilliant athletes (and people, I think). Mr. Howden Takes a Stand on the Lou Marsh Award.

FOURTEEN: “A Sunday Morning Voice from Israel” recounts an interview with a great writer I’d never heard of. Come to think of it, I never did write my review of David Grossman’s The Yellow Wind, which was the centre of this radio conversation; it was an important and brilliant book.

THIRTEEN: “Paradise by the Carney Lights” has nothing to do with Meatloaf. It’s about a night when faithfulness trumped glitz, at least for a minute. At least for me.

TWELVE: “February Empowers, Brings May Flowers…” is actually the story of a Valentine’s Day date gone horribly, well, right, I guess, though it wasn’t everybody’s romantic ideal. But Elizabeth May was there! We HEART environmentalists…

ELEVEN: “The Heart and the Congo” is a review of the Barbara Kingsolver novel The Poisonwood Bible. Just got around to it this year, and it got me.

TEN: “Just One. So Far. (Thank God. Thank the Cops.)” The Dawson College shootings in September hit me hard. Education, youth, belonging, the way we care for and feed our young men: this is my street.

NINE: “J-MAC and the Miracle: Everything Sport Should Be” is my take on a story that microwaved many hearts: autistic kid gets to be manager of the school basketball team, gets a chance to dress for the final home game of his career, actually gets a few minutes of playing time, and goes on an incredible scoring spree. “I was just on fire,” said Jason.

EIGHT: “Remembering Iran” is an account of an evening with two Canadians who know and love that place, its history, its beauty and its modern struggles. Jean-Daniel Lafond and Fred Reed made a movie, wrote a book, and spoke eloquently about each.

SEVEN: “On the Walrus Shelf” is part education rant, part literary appreciation, and part proud fatherhood. This was an evening when it was great to be on the shelf.

SIX: “Dar at the Noir” recounts another fine evening, this time in the company of folksinger Dar Williams and a few hundred of our closest friends. She’s tremendous.

Ah, we’re getting close now, friends. Countdown!

FIVE is for FAITH: That of Muhammad, in this case. A few dozen of us sat down with a fine scholar last August, and “Another Shot at Understanding: Learning About Islam” was the first of three (non-scholarly, but I think pretty readable) commentaries I wrote on Dr. Lawson’s lectures. We need to know.

FOUR wants MORE: There are several choices I could have made here, but this is a taste of something I’ve written an awful lot about: my “Old Dog Year” (ODY) of shutting down embarrassment and other hesitations and picking up a guitar. I have, for over 130 straight days now, and still no invitations to solo with the Stones. “Words AND Music?” is the genesis of the whole silly, obsessive (and sometimes delightful) project, which I have been ruminating about in “On Second Thought” since August.

THREE is for THRILLING ATHLETES (and how THTUPID they can be): I love sport. There are few things, however, that infuriate me more than athletic excess, when idiocy rules the playground, and especially when foolish or horrid things are done in the name of sport. (Religion isn’t the only institution that is stained by those who love and use it.) “O Zizou, Zizou, wherefore art thou so SELFISH?” is my look at Zinedine Zidane’s infamous Head-Butt Heard ‘Round the World.

TWO is for my HOMETOWN: I don’t have to do as much explaining about where my home and native town is anymore. People have heard of Caledonia now, for reasons sad and frustrating. “A Little Nightmare Down Home” is a bit of a lament for the banks of the Grand and the peoples that share it, and something of a memoir.

ONE is for my MUM: Everybody liked Enid. She was a brave and loving woman and she finally slipped away last fall. I have to put my remembrance of her at the top of this little list. And it’s not really a tale of grief and loss, though there was some of each. She had a wonderful family; it was a wonderful life. So here’s to you, “Enid Mary Elizabeth Howden”.

And that’s all, folks! Thanks for your interest, and have an encouraging 2007…

‘Nuff Waitin’. Let’s Try BLOGGER.

Posted by :James Howden On : January 6, 2007
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Category: At First Glance

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The frustration with the technical glitches of this site have FINALLY impelled me to what now seems like a fairly obvious (even if temporary) solution. I now have a site on Blogger, where I have posted the complete and correct version of the Nash/Klassen article, and where I will this weekend be posting the overdue “ODY Guitarzan” diary (weeks 18/19) and the 2006 “Year of the Howden in Review” (or whatever this look back at a few of my pieces is called).

James Howden Too is the name of the Substitute Creature, and it can be found here.