My Birthday card to all!

October 22nd the beginning of my 77th year.

I am pleased and excited to announce the 5 winners of our Count the Blooms in my garden Contest. It was fun from beginning to end.

To all those fine folks that entered I am only sorry I could not give a prize to each of you.

I am also packing my bags to go to Costa Rica for the winter; to a farm house near Jaco beach. I leave mid November and return mid April. Got to deal with my Lymphoma in a focused way. Hot and warm is what the doctor ordered. I will even be growing my own greens and vegetables.
I hope you all have a wonderful holiday season with everything the way you and your families will treasure.

We are all blessed to be on this world, for if not here where then?

Make every minute count and love every smile you give and get.

I'm smiling now and sending each a big hug.




click: http://www.hollywoodsurvivalkit.com/

LIFE IS FULL OF INTERESTING JOBS!!!

I am amazed at how many blooms there were in my Garden on October the 6th and now I can count them to find out who won a Hollywood Survival Kit Pocket Pack. You can see the pack and its contents at http://www.hollywoodsurvivalkit.com

It is slow work counting...LOL

Doctor surgeon save me now before I come to greater harm.
Take the tests; more ultrasound, the needle biopsy too.
You felt the lumps, called for a mammogram and last of all
yes last of all, the Kat scan to see me through and through.

My weight loss lends to make me know something is amiss
Is it infection or is it cancer is what you must decide.
And then its up to me to hear the path you wish to take
And me decide just how to move what vehicle I’ll ride.

Will I say yes if you say go the route of surgery?
Take the chemo, radiation just like most would do.
Or should I go a natural way, right food and actions clear
And know that path is open and it too can be true..

There are no guarantees in life.
No secret ways of knowing.
But I am master of my path.
Of which way I’ll be going.

We mortals grasp at every straw, maybe it is nothing at all,
The Cat scan says my heart is fine so’re my lungs and liver
Just the armpit finds me doc and makes me a strong believer
Except I don’t pray or maybe I do a sinner hoping to save a fall.

Still more tests to go and they will tell me more
so I live on the edge of an apartment ledge
hoping the wind will be just a breeze
and the worst I will have is the occasional sneeze.

I’ll stay off the coffee and drink ginger tea
Alter the foods that go into me
Guard my body with a mind more sane
Think better thoughts and take care of me.




A leaf needs no strength to live through a storm
It is only a matter of relaxing to the blow.
So it is with all things come to pass
It is not what but how we bend gently.

Yes the biopsy is next with the mammogram and the ultrasound.
There is not telling what the seed of the discomfort is,
enough to know it rests isolated in its space
bigger yes, but not invasive to other parts as yet.

The herbalist said that after diagnosis she can tell
how to fit into a healing shell.
So all wait patiently to hear the longish name,
translated into plants to end the game.



Calmness, grace and inner strength

A way of being to enfold the form

As simple as breathing out

Life is what its all about.

2010 Magic Numbers

Magic is a personal decision and so 2010 is officially magic in my lexicon of numbers. Sounds good doesn't it. Sort of foolish but then what we cannot know we can believe what we want. I can believe what I want.

Is it truer if more people believe it? Not if we cannot know. And yet the human over the centuries has created his belief systems mostly based on what he cannot know. Vast empires of religions have risen and fallen or lie stagnant waiting for a shriveling up and all are based on what we cannot know.

There is lots than we can know. Humans have the capacity to experience and learn from observation. We can store information and have learned to store it even into electronic space so we can gain experience even without experiencing things directly. Thus over time through experiences we can directly learn and know.

I have been one to learn mostly by experiencing first hand. It is only later in my life that words and what they mean have come more to the fore of my mind. My real experiences in life through film making, healing and teaching get me to this point of real confidence in the reality of what I can know.

What I cannot know is of use as well. As I get older I get both more controlled and wilder in my creativity at every level. I explore my curiosity continually for it challenges me at every turn.

I meditate. It helps me stay in charge of my mind more Slowly the wild child is settling down to perform the more serious work of the person I am. The healer, helper and motivator; the artist, creator and activist.

Merry Chriatmas

Such a special time of year. How lucky I am to be able to once again celebrate with my family and friends and my blog.
I am up in Restoule in the country with my brother and his family on their Honey farm. What a hive of energy every day and today is no exception. The turkey in the stove the vegetables being diced for cooking and mashing. The stuffing being made and the gravy stock the turkey neck on the boil.
We all have made different versions of Liptauer and Stef says we are in a Lipoff. 4 kinds including one made by Stephen who is from Uganda and doing research at York. He is helping me to write my stories.
I hope everyone who reads this has a wonderful day enjoying life to its fullest.

I posted my blog about despair and went on to my email site to see if I had any mail. What you read below was sent while I was writing which is serendipity for sure. But it brightened my spirits and makes me sure there is always an angel about to help you get up. Here is what the letter said.

Bad day at work??? This is even funnier when you realize it's real! Next time you have a bad day at work, think of this guy.

Rob is a commercial saturation diver for Global Divers in Louisiana. He performs underwater repairs on offshore drilling rigs. Below is an E-mail he sent to his sister. She then sent it to a radio station in Ft. Wayne, Indiana, who was sponsoring a worst job experience contest. Needless to say, she won.

THIS IS THE LETTER:

Hi Sue,

Just another note from your bottom-dwelling brother. Last week I had a bad day at the office. I know you've been feeling down lately at work, so I thought I would share my dilemma with you to make you realize it's not so bad after all. Before I can tell you what happened to me, I first must bore you with a few technicalities of my job. As you know, my office lies at the bottom of the sea. I wear a suit to the office. It's a wetsuit. This time of year the water is quite cool. So what we do to keep warm is this: We have a diesel-powered industrial water heater. This $20,000 piece of equipment sucks the water out of the sea, heats it to a delightful temperature, then pumps it down to the diver through a garden hose which is taped to the air hose. Now this sounds like a darn good plan, and I've used it several times with no complaints. What I do, when I get to the bottom and start working, is take the hose and stuff it down the back of my wetsuit. This floods my whole suit with warm water. It's like working in a Jacuzzi. Everything was going well until all of a sudden, my bum started to itch. So, of course, I scratched it. This only made things worse. Within a few seconds my bum started to burn! I pulled the hose out from my back, but the damage was done. In agony I realized what had happened. The hot water machine had sucked up a jellyfish and pumped it into my suit. Now, since I don't have any hair on my back, the jellyfish couldn't stick to it. However, the crack of my bum was not as fortunate. When I scratched what I thought was an itch, I was actually grinding the jellyfish into the crack of my bum. I informed the dive supervisor of my dilemma over the communicator. His instructions were unclear due to the fact that he, along with five other divers, were all laughing hysterically. Needless to say I aborted the dive. I was instructed to make three agonizing in-water decompression stops totalling thirty-five minutes before I could reach the surface to begin my chamber dry decompression. When I arrived at the surface, I was wearing nothing but my brass helmet. As I climbed out of the water, the medic, with tears of laughter running down his face, handed me a tube of cream and told me to rub it on my bum as soon as I got in the chamber. The cream put the fire out, but I couldn't poo for two days because my bum was swollen shut. So, next time you're having a bad day at work, think about how much worse it would be if you had a jellyfish shoved up your ar*e. Now repeat to yourself, I love my job, I love my job, I love my job. Remember whenever you have a bad day, ask yourself, is this a jellyfish bad day? May you NEVER have a jellyfish bad day!!!!!

Perseverence- Burning the barn

In life one has experiences that define you. Here is one that defines me. I was lucky enough to be able to Produce Henry and Verlin. It is a wonderful movie about acceptance and takes place in the countryside in 1935. It is about an autistic child, Verlin, and the relationship he has with his mentally retarded uncle, Henry. We shot the film north of Toronto on properties owned by the Government of Ontario and what was to be the Pickering Airport. There were farm house and churches and fields that were sub-rented to people while they waited final site plans and then all would be demolished. The main location where Henry lived was where the director actually lived year round. We rented a nearby 1960s bungalow for our offices and a large house for a cast house which we supplied with a great cook and wonderful wise man. We used a school house to store things and as our screening room so that each evening we could watch rushes. It was perfect. We found one house that was made of bricks and older that would be perfect for the grandparents to live in. There was an old falling down barn behind the house and the script called for a barn burning down and it was perfect. Just perfect.

I went to the Property Manager, two months before we were to go there to open offices and she accommodated all my requests. She made the leases easy and the rates as fair as I could ask for we were not rich. When she came to the "Burn the barn" request she looked up at me and said, "There is no way you will burn a barn down on our properties. No way!" I was shocked by the stridency of her reply. I thought for a couple of seconds and said that I understood she could not give me permission and would she give me her supervisor's number as I wanted to pursue my request. She laughed a bit and said sure and gave it to me.
I called this man the next day and sent him all the information about the film and made the same request, to burn the barn down.

He was more relaxed and not strident at all but said he could not really give me permission. I said I understood and asked if her would give me his supervisor's name. He said he would get back to me.

Two days later a P.R person for the Government called me back and I knew I was going to be dealt with. He said that it was impossible to burn down the barn as it was designated as was the house as historical. He gave me the name of a lawyer who had been assigned to me who would in future deal with me.

I called her and after hearing my story. She said it was impossible as there may be artifacts in the barn that should be saved before anything could even be thought about. She told me there were two Heritage organizations that would have to agree to all this and gave me contacts to each. She said the insurance would have to be dealt with as the Government would want deep coverage. Most importantly the county Fire Department had to respond to the request and be there when we did our barn burning. She was neutral to my plight but open and helpful in leading me toward resolution.

I went through the process with each of the Heritage organizations and they wrote letters to the lawyer regarding my request.
Both letters chastised the Government for not caring for the barn properly since they took over the properties and their inspections could find nothing of value to keep and in fact supported the burning of the building so at least it would not be a hazard to kids who might explore it and get caught in the collapse. The county Fire Department also agreed to attend and protect the main house and those involved.

I put the burning toward the end of the shooting period and now dealt with the difficulty of the insurance. Who would be in charge was a main question as special effects pyro is not for amateurs. By great luck the woman handling the legals was quick to pass things on and we sorted through each detail. We got our final permission the day before we did the burn.

The burn went off without a hitch and the first lady who said never was there representing the Property Management department. She sidled over in the middle of the blaze and shook my hand and said congratulations. It was a fine reward for my perseverance. The lady lawyer became a professor of law and uses my case to demonstrate the road blocks of Government red tape and that if you stick to the work you may get to the resolution you want. Henry and Verlin is a beautiful film to watch and feel and the viewer ends up having two new friends; one autistic and the other mentally retarded. It is a film about acceptance and I am proud to have been a major part of its making.

The next day

Halloween a time for fun

Halloween is gone and the goons and goblins put away in cardboard cartons to await another airing. I love the idea of dressing up and having a different face. It has always been my fun to do so and often on set I dress to my own dress code. I suppose that the strangest incident that brought out this idiosyncrasy was in China when I was there filming MButterfly. It was totally an awesome trip with Jeremy Irons and Jon Lon and of course David Cronenberg and many of our Canadian crew. We even filmed on the great wall. I remember my first visit to the wall when we climbed the steps to the tower we were going to film from. Every step was a different hight and a different depth so you had to look down or you would trip. I could not believe what seemed to me to be very bad workmanship until I realized if I was an enemy I would have to look down on every step to see where I was going and at night it would be impossible to go up without tripping. I guess the Chinese defenders were trained to go up and down blindfolded both forwards and backwards giving them a tremendous advantage in defending the wall. On the day that we filmed we saw about a mile away at the next tower a bright reflecting light. We investigated as it was spoiling the picture. It was a film crew just like ourselves filming a fashion show. Can you imagine the laughter that in the thousands of miles of wall two film crews would be so close to one another. Luckily they were gone in an hour and out scene was as it should be. In Beijing we shot streets and comings and goings which would be used in the film. We did most of our interiors for China in Toronto. That was odd to in that the studio we filmed in used to be Toronto Iron Works and in 1960 one of my last jobs before I went into show biz was as an xray technician at Toronto Iron Works and I worked in the same huge building back then xraying large boilers to make sure their welds were perfect. Shooting MButterfly was the next time I ever went there so it had a certain special meaning for me.
In Beijing we did the play in a local play house. It was down an alley and on first look hard to imagine that a 400 or so seat theatre could be anywhere nearby but then that is the surprises found in the city. So Jon Lon was going to sing with the Opera group and we loaded in and prepared for our first day. We had about 300 extras and the scene was the first time Jeremy sees Jon and is infatuated by him. One major problem we had was that it took Jon about 3 hours to do his makeup. He was trained in classical opera and rehearsed himself tirelessly to bring back the skills he had learned as a teenager and young man so that in the end he could once again perform his own singing. He did not take kindly to the heat and because alll the make up was pancake make up we had to worry about him sweating. After much fuss we were able to get two air conditioners put in the room he was to use as a dressing room. I planned the day to use 4 hours of insert shooting of the other singers and the players to give Jon time to do his makeup without rushing. Everything was going along swimmingly until one of my assistants came to me and said that a spot of white had flaked off Jons cheek and he said he would have to begin again as there was no way to repair it.
I thought for a moment and told my assistant to tell Jon that I would only do wide shots and a small blemish would not be noticed. It was disaster to the day if I could not film him for it would have meant turning all the lights in the other direction to do the audience and Jeremy's side of the scene. My assistant came rushing back and said it was too late and Jon had already begun to strip off his white face. I was distraught to say the least. Not my fault but now my problem to reorganize the shooting to satisfy the bad situation. We all discussed what to do and the orders were given and in a moment of I frustration I ran behind the stage to the large room that the other singers and performers were using as a dressing room. I said I had two minutes to spare and I wanted them to make up my face. It would make me feel better. And they did. Two of the singers came over and after a quick exchange decided on what character they would make me up as. It did only take a couple of minutes to do and for the rest of the day I ran the set looking an odd mixture of things. The Chinese audience laughed when they first saw me but took my orders to watch and clap and enjoy so we accomplished Jeremy's entrance and all his close ups and the day was saved. When I was doing The Bay of Love and Sorrows in New Brunswick it was Halloween and there were some lovely make ups done and the make up lady there did my Chinese face once again for me to enjoy.

Robert Goulet has passed away

This morning I opened up my New York Times and read that Robert Goulet has passed away. It made me think of Atlantic City and the day in Montreal where he came and worked with us as a lounge singer. I was very nervous about it all as the script certainly indicated that the singer was a send up of a lounge singer and my first thoughts were that this famous guy, Robert Goulet would have too much ego to send himself up. I wondered if Louis Malle had actually told him what the part was really all about. You know in life you often have impressions from past suppositions that just are not real. This was one of them. He came, he was gracious, friendly, did great work, wasted no time, understood exactly what Louis wanted and made us all have a great day of shooting. I was so pleased to be there and to hear him for he had a wonderful voice and a great presentation as well. He entertained us. It was easy to see how he captured hearts with his role of Lancelot in Camelot and how he became so popular and one of the Canadian icons of his time. I am sorry that he is gone now but I know he will be remembered by millions of people which he richly deserves.

I remember being at a yoga session and having a Guru say "Life Begins with the first breath in and ends with the last breath out." Simple statement and yet in its own way it led me to understand that, watching my breath seems to ground me. I read in a yoga book about meditation that "Watch your breath and see your life change." Again a simple statement but I can remember once when I was thankful to remember both the statements.

I was working in Halifax on a little TV series called, "Local Heroes". It was about people who were for the most part unsung except for their 15 minutes of local newspaper fame. Some were quite heroic and others just seemed to happen by chance and really be about being someplace at the right moment. Well we were at the end of a small river leading into the Atlantic ocean and the story involved a daughter in her twenties out for a row with her father when the boat capsized. A man on the beach swam out and saved them. Easy to see in one's mind but not so easy to capture in the fall of the year in the Atlantic ocean with tides to deal with and on top of that weather that could be good or just awful. A low budget was also a great impeding factor at times. So we got the two zodiacs (inflated rubber boats) for filming, and found a river that ran into the ocean with a sand beach that went out about 150 feet before it was over your head. Good to do most of the work in shallow water and not drown anyone. Drowning has a lot to do with the last breath out.
What happened in the story was that when the row boat capsized the daughter and her father clasped hands over the keel and yelled and yelled. The man heard them from shore and swam out. We put the upside down boat across a 14 foot zodiac and towed it with our bigger zodiac. Video cables were run from the bigger zodiac to the smaller one where the camera was locked down. The trick was to keep the locked camera with the two people hanging on to the keel in the foreground and the hero swimming toward them in the background. Sounds easy but with the outbound current from the river and the ocean current moving inward it was dicey. I was wearing a dry suit as I had been standing in the water where it was shallow. It was not done up and sealed. We rolled camera and I could see we would not get the shot, the man was not in the right alignment. This meant steering the camera boat a little this way or that to keep him in frame. I knew if we stopped and lined it up again the whole resetting would take 15 minutes or more so I jumped off the stern of the larger boat and got between the two zodiacs. Perhaps a dumb move but I had quickly sensed I could not be hurt by the rubber sides of these two craft squeezing me and I knew exactly what I had to do to keep the boat facing the right way. Perhaps not the job of a 1st Assistant Director which is what I was at the time and still am. But with a tight schedule and no money for overtime, every second saved to spend wisely later is worth it. That is the job to make the seconds count. Tough job.
So I jumped in and grabbed the ropes joining the crafts and delicately steered the smaller zodiac to keep the people in the shot. We got the shot in one take which was great. We broke off the cables and one cable they gave to me to swim the few feet to the large Zodiac that held a dozen people and was very fast and powerful with its engines and propeller well under the keel. It slowly started to pull away and remembering the fun of being towed by a rope in the water I lay on my back about 30 feet behind the craft and enjoyed the trip. In a sense it was a small reward for getting the shot and I knew I had a few minutes to kill before everyone was on shore and we could set up the next shot. I knew the water was shallow and I could stand whenever I let go of the rope so I just was having fun. The zodiac driver was not aware I was a freeloader enjoying the fun of it all. I let go and sank not to my shoulders as I expected but down, down, down about 8 feet. I jumped up off the bottom and popped to the surface and I could not kick with my feet in the dry suit all filled now with water. I was worried and I realized I did not know how to signal that I was in distress. I sank again and this time when I came up I raised one arm which seemed a logical sort of signal for attention. Nothing. I raised both arms nothing. I sank and jumped up once more now panicking that I was going to drown. I for some reason remembered that I should watch my breath and try to get under control. I do not know exactly why this came to mind but it relates directly to those two statements at the start of this story . Well when I watched my breath and I was immediately reminded of laboratory mice used for feeding boa constrictors hyperventilating when they were being squeezed. I was terrified that I would not get my breathing slow enough to really get any air. I was beside myself with fear and panic. There is no other feeling so profoundly debilitating. My arms started to paddle frantically underwater as they did when I was probably 5 or 6 when I was learning how to float on my back and this tiny action kept my head a bit above water and I slowly my breathing slowed down and I regained some control of things. I steered myself toward shore and people came and helped me out. They turned me upside down in my dry suit and I must have had 20 gallons of water in it which made me realize that the joy ride on my back had filled the dry suit with water from the neck down. Everyone laughed as I was deluged with water. I was happy to be alive. It was a lesson and I think the only time I have come close to death and had time to think about it over a minute or so. Fear led me to tense actions and in the end panic. I have experienced accidents but they happen in a trice and you either make the right move or bite the bullet. I have so far made the right moves and each motorcycle and bicycle accident I can remember in minute detail although none took more than 10 or 15 seconds to materialize and come to a conclusion. Each is a miracle of luck for other than a couple of cracked ribs I have never been hurt. Each seemed to go on a long time with many decisions being made mid air or in the moments leading up to the actual contact of the crash. It is amazing how fast the mind really is and how it remembers vividly what takes place in milliseconds. I do not think computers are faster. They just can keep the pace up for a longer time in a narrow simple task.

Life is revelation. Each moment is new and here are some of mine. You will find me in these blogs. My revelations.

I am a survivor. In fact you all are, or at least all of you who are reading the beginning of my blog. It is something I am joyful for as it allows me to experience my life. Somewhere in the early 60s I decided I did not want to Work as a Sales Rep. for Office Overload which was a temporary help agency. I know it was heavy on my mind for several months but I had no skills really and was coping at best. Not everyone knew that for at heart you can tell my mood in a millisecond, but you cannot tell my inner feelings of confidence or the lack of it, even if I claim to be one way or the other. I am a convincing liar to get my own way. I would not consider it malicious lying but just 'staying alive' lying. Since I was 4 I have been considered headstrong. I consider myself curious and just wanting to do what I want to do. After 73 years around here on earth I have to say yes, headstrong is an honest evaluation. It was spring and and sunny warm. I was driving to an appointment in my bosses Lincoln town car which was mine to use when he was not in town. On the radio, CBC was talking about the new Television station that was being built called CFTO, the new television channel is the core of the CTV national network in Canada. They were designing and building all the flats and sets for their regular programs out at some studios in Kleinburg just north west of downtown Toronto on Highway 27. It stuck so in my mind that I got a road map out of the glove compartment and found out were Kleinburg was. I drove there in by business suit, which was standard wear for me. Remember the image of the IBM executive and you pretty well sum up how I looked. I now have suits for weddings and funerals. Well, I went up to Kleinberg and talked to several departments who would only take experienced people but the man in charge of the Art and Paint Department said he would hire me to wash out paint brushes for 50 dollars a week. I said I really, really, wanted the job but I could not pay my bills earning so little. I followed that with "I can manage at 60". He gave me the job and the money I asked for. I remember when I walked out I was excited that not only did I have a new life ahead of me I had also proved myself as a salesman.



As I am writing this in my third floor attic office, I looked up on the wall. I have a framed picture of John Ritter. The caption is "Hey John - Have I told you how I got started in Show Business? Well... It all began as a kid with a dream" He would say that very slowly like the beginning of a long, long story and laugh and then get up; kidding me because he knew I wanted him on set. We worked on a TV movie called Lethal Vows. It was the only time. He was such a nice and thoughtful, happy, person. His vibrations just joined with my own and I am sure with other peoples in a most harmonious way. The whole experience of that movie is etched in my mind and milestones in my life happened during the shoot. It lead me to try a flower remedy for lack of confidence which can overtake anyone, and did me for about a week before I took the flower remedy, called Larch, prescribed for exactly that feeling. I was fine in less than 3 days and aced the picture. I fasted for 12 days during the shoot. Green grapes and water and towards the end of the 12 days some hot water with lemon and unpasturized honey in the evening. We were doing 12 hour days. Solid director, Producer and script with a great cast and an excellent crew. Smooth sailing. The producer Robert Phillips, I have lost touch with was an awesome producer on our project. Such a gentle man who knew his stuff and could and did exert his judgement when necessary. We would drive at night after the days shoot through different parts of Toronto and I would point out the highlights of buildings and houses and parks. It was summer and wonderful to do. I looked forward to them as the perfect way to come down from all the adrenelin use during the day. We talked about politics and life freely together. Very special.