With news of the death of Prince Philip this morning, I thought back to Catherine Hennessey relating the story of the grape scissors on her blog in 2000:

There is a story connected with the Ribbon Cutting at Beaconsfield that I must share with you.

When we knew she was going to cutting a ribbon we wanted to make it quite beautiful and indeed the ribbon was … the scissors were the problem. It is very difficult to find beautiful scissors.

I happened to be in Montreal a couple of months before the event and I searched all the antique shops along Sherbrooke Street etc. no luck, so I reviewed the issue. In one of the shops there were these beautiful looking scissor-like things with sterling handles that seemed worthy. When I asked to examine them I was told they were grape scissors. “Would they cut a ribbon?” I asked and she produced a piece a ribbon for us to try. If you held them at a certain angle they’d work and I came proudly home with grape scissors.

In the picture you will notice Prince Philip bending over the Queen’s shoulder looking perplexed. He is actually mouthing the words “Grape Scissors, she can’t cut the ribbon with those!”

We mumbled something and she did cut the ribbon and on the show went.

Beaconsfield looked lovely that day. There was not alot in it. It looked pristine and it had the most glorious flower arrangments all over. Mary Dolphin had done them and the flowers came from all the best gardens in town! It was a very special event.

Back in mid-March I received an email from Matt Rainnie, personable host of CBC Mainstreet: would I be interested, he asked, in being the “Spin Time DJ” for the show on an upcoming Friday.

Would I be interested? Of course I’d be interested. Had I not been dreaming of this very moment for years!

“Spin Time DJ,” for those from away, is a regular Friday feature on the afternoon radio show where a guest is invited, in 22 short minutes, to relate their life story, punctuated by three meaningful songs. Here’s Ashley Belanger-Birt doing it. And Bill Schurman. And John Connolly.

As a non-Islander of no particular note, I’d long ago given up hope that I’d one day be called up to the bigs. But dreams do come true.

So plans were made to record this morning.

And then the hard part.

Summarize my life in three songs. Not easy, as it turns out.

For a while there I had a strong plan to go completely Kobayashi Maru, and set aside popular music in favour of sounds of Japanese coffee shops and walks in the woods behind my childhood home. Is there not music in nature?

But I pulled myself back from the edge, dug in deep, and came up with three songs I’m very happy with.

Matt and I had a nice chat this morning, backed by the audio engineering prowess of David Rashed, and the segment will air Friday, April 9, 2021 after the 5:30 p.m. news. You can listen live on the radio if you’re near, on the web stream if you’re not, and the episode will be posted to the Mainstreet website on Monday.

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Postscript: Here are the three songs I choose:

1. Jane Siberry and David Ramsden, The Love I Have for You (3:51), from the 1990 cassette “Quiet Please, There’s A Lady On Stage,” recorded live at the Cameron House in Toronto.

2. Shawn Colvin, This Must Be The Place (Naive Melody) (4:01), from the album 1994 album “Cover Girl,” recorded live at the Bottom Line in NYC, August 1993.

3. Karine Polwart, Labouring and Resting (3:14), from the 2017 album “A Pocket of Wind Resistance.”

Mandy Patinkin goes back to work for the first time in a year.

Oliver, in the spring of 2005, outside the wonderful Médiathèques d’Orléans. We were passing through on our way south.

The night before, our first night in France, Oliver was fascinated by what, if memory serves, but blog post left out, was his first observation of a drug deal going down.

This is why we travel.

I was fêted with pre-birthday blueberry pancakes this morning by a dear friend. Among the greatest honours I’ve ever received is a place in her birthday book.

In an ad for a proof press I noticed this reference:

currently located in a basement with 7 stairs to up and out bilco style doors

I’d never heard of “bilco doors,” and that’s because, as it turns out, it’s a regional expression in parts of the US, the “Kleenex” of basement doors, named for the Bilco company known for making them.

Given that I have a 50 year old boiler in my basement that cannot fit up the inside basement stairs, I could use a good set of Bilco doors here at 100 Prince.

Jessica Spengler, on spring loneliness:

It was lonely, sitting at that table by myself, but it was also…tranquil? It was a loneliness I embraced—and undoubtedly somewhat romanticized, as one is wont to do when one is the type to have gloomy Kafka quotes and the final stanza of Dover Beach tacked to the walls of her room. But by embracing the loneliness, I made it mine. It was a choice I was making for myself. I chose to sit out there in the evenings, and I chose when to go inside, and maybe ideally I would have chosen to be sitting there with someone else—but sometimes you have to just sit with yourself. The stillness of those early spring evenings imprinted itself on me, and it has imprinted itself on every early spring evening since then. I welcome these evenings and enjoy them, but always with a certain pensiveness, with the memory of being young and on the brink of many exciting, life-changing days just ahead, but also of being alone and very far away from anything I could call home.

This resonates with me. I’ve not reached her level of peace with the lonely, but I’ve at reached an understanding with it, and sanded off many of its more desperate rough edges.

That’s the thing I’ve found about loneliness: if I run from it, like an marauding plague, it will cut me down. If I breathe, turn, pause, face it, breathe, its power over me is greatly diminished. Which, pleasantly and, in retrospect, ironically, leads to a pathway home.

In the liner notes to Tiny Beautiful Things, the song by May Erlewine, is a pointer to tiny beautiful things, the book by Cheryl Strayed.

Rule number one for a successful life: always follow the lateral connections.

A copy, it turned out, was on the shelf at the Cornwall Public Library. So I immediately hopped in the car and drove to Cornwall to pick it up.

The book is a compendium of pieces Strayed wrote, using the pseudonym Sugar, as an advice columnist.

Of the highest, most passionately engaged order, as it turns out.

From the first chapter, a reply to “Johnny,” who is prevaricating about saying “I love you” to the woman he’s been dating for four months:

I suppose you think this has nothing to do with your question, Johnny, but it has everything to do with my answer. It has everything to do with every answer I have ever given to anyone. It’s Sugar’s genesis story. And it’s the thing my mind kept swirling back to over these five weeks since you wrote to me and said you didn’t know the definition of “love.”

It is not so incomprehensible as you pretend, sweet pea. Love is the feeling we have for those we care deeply about and hold in high regard. It can be light as the hug we give a friend or heavy as the sacrifices we make for our children. It can be romantic, platonic, familial, fleeting, everlasting, conditional, unconditional, imbued with sorrow, stoked by sullied by abuse, amplified by kindness, twisted by betrayal, deepened by time, darkened by difficulty, leavened by generosity, nourished by humor, and “loaded with promises and commitments” that we may or may not want or keep. The best thing you can possibly do with your life is to tackle the motherfucking shit out of love. And, Johnny, on this front, I think you have some work to

But before we get to that, I want to say this, darling: I sort of love you.

The book only gets better from there.