Jeff Healy's dead?????????

My goodness - and I almost killed him mysef over 15 years ago!!

Wow.

Jeff Healy, seminal Toronto rock god and blind guitar great, apparently died in March of this year.

Nobody told me.

I was young, gorgeous, talented (ahhh... the delusions of youth!) and had just written the core songs for my debut album "Open Heart and Cautionary Tales". Of all of them, "Jericho" was my favourite musically, "Shine" lyrically; "By the Sea" harmonically and I just really liked "My name is Jack" because it was a complete Sinead O'Connor rip off, and while I could sing it, I was no Sinead O'Connor.

No, I was sane.

But I digress.

I took the album (recorded at GREAT expense at 3am at the studio used by Toronto's famous-ish "Pardon Beggars") to David Bendeth, then the A&R rep at BMG Music. His father had been our family doctor and friend since I was born, and his sister sold fancy perfume, as I recall.

Well, Dave had wonderful feedback for me, and gave me advice I will never forget: "You suck" was the essential nature of his criticism, and he was right; yet, oddly I left his office tears.

Go figger.

BMG was located in Toronto right at the corner of Queen St. and Much Music (who knows, or cares, what the intersection was, except for the fact that there's a rather nice crepe shop on the opposite corner now.)

Furious with David's lack of vision (hell, he was only the discoverer of the Cowboy Junkies) I ran headlong across the street in the rain into the donut shop to call my then lover, musical collaborator and friend, Patrick, to blame him for my existence, among other things. But there was someone in the way at the intersection. I shoved him brutally aside in my haste to make my phonecall and purchase a double sprinkle Maple Wonder glazed donut; and lo and behold, the b@stard I had shoved into traffic was none other than Jeff Healy - no doubt on his way to see David "You Don't Get It" Bendeth.

Wow.

Small world, huh????

:-D

They are just made of sugar, aren't they??

In a place as "rural" as Samford, wildlife abounds.

We have possums sleeping in the balconies, crows and noisy miner birds handling the lunch morning tea clean-up, wild dogs hunting down and mangling local sheep and horses, and feral cats living in the school drains.

Anyone who knows cats knows they don't like being wet; and today we had a flash thunderstorm. The drains began to overflow, and that brought out the feral kittens in force. They huddled miserably in the drains, hiding in the barely concealed pipes, whingeing and moaning about the wet; and attracting hordes of our young students, eager to know what was making that pathetic mewling sound under the storm grate.

When I first started at Samford, we had a bit of an adventure with our fera cat population: a kitten became trapped under the building housing the infirmary, and eventually the wainscotting had to be ripped off to gain access to the wee thing. The story does, of course, have a happy ending as the kitten was adopted by a specialist teacher; but the wilderness adventure at our school goes on...

As a cat lover, and one who has lived with over 4 kitties at a time, I am at once concerned about the feral cat population at school, and reassured that they are doing just fine. But today, during the sudden and violent rainstorm, the local cats rebelled and attracted quite a bit of attention to themselves.

The kids at school, particularly our grade 5 class (the one outside which the drain in question is located) adopted a whining, well-concealed kitten as their "cause celebre".

In fact, they even lowered a TOY into the drain, stuffed with ham and cheese:






I have to say, these kids at school are a loving, caring bunch of monsters........