the written word

Editor's Note: Instead of critical analysis, Frank writes his celebration of the written word. He takes this approach because, in his view, this is what writing is all about. Besides, he likes to write about new or old books and scripts by his friends and colleagues. To him, these ARE cause for celebration!

"Stories are like spirits," she said, speaking English mixed with a few words of her Australian aboriginal language, Koori. "They look around for a good storyteller, someone like you, to inhabit. Stories are good sorcerers. When a story lives inside you it makes you think that the story is your idea. There is a story lurking around you. It will make its home within you very soon, yea..."

SANDRA B. TOOZE WRITES THE BLUES: YOH! Gold Nibs by the guitar case full to Sandra B. Tooze (That B's gotta BEEEEE for Blues) for her book Muddy Waters: Mojo Man (ECW PRESS in paper 1998). Great story. Tons of pictures. Priced right. One of the finest damn books ever written about music, a music legend, or written period! And if that ain't enough to convince you, there's a forward by Eric Clapton. So...... without further AAAAADOOOOOooooooo... If you love the blues or taut, yet eloquent writing for its own sake... BUY THIS BOOK!!!! It be that simple! And on that note... Had the good fortune to hear Sandra interview Muddy's son Big Bill Morganfield at Harbourfront in Toronto, one year ago. Big Bill, along with some top Toronto musicians, did the blues down right, that night. Not only were their instruments and voices pumped with electronics, THEY were

E-E-E-E-LECTRIFYING!!!!!. Hope to see you in these parts agin, Big Bill Morganfield. And, Sandra.... let us know what you be doin' next!!!! Got bookshelf space awaitin'.

GOLD NIBS TO UMA KRISHNASWAMI: Yep!!!! Two interesting books for children came from her to me!!! Both enlighten one, two, three... many that shall be... about some of the beliefs of other cultures. Try Uma's The Broken Tusk: Stories of the Hindu God Ganesha ( Linnet Books, 1996) and Stories of the Flood ( Robert Rinehart Publishers1994). In Stories of the Flood, Uma re-tells in her clear style tales of the great flood from North Vietnam, China, India, Hawaii, New Zealand, Ancient Sumeria, Ancient Greece, Liberia, and Alabama Quite a range! And for those of East Indian heritage and those from other cultures, The Broken Tusk: Stories of the Hindu God Ganesha brings pleasure! What a character... this Ganesha... "god of new beginnings? Often impulsive, forever generous, the elephant-headed god with the fat belly and (sometimes) four arms, makes mistakes but learns from them. He fills the world around him with laughter." Way to go, Uma!!! Gold Nibs, to you!!! Learn more about Uma's work by visiting the 'Friends' section on my Web Site: www.apocorp.com.

ROBERT J. SAWYER, a Canadian, a Sci-Fi writer, a multi-award winner, a neglected should-be-icon in these parts, gets a Universe-ful of Gold Nibs for his work. Get a List of this: 20+ national and international awards, including the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America's Nebula Award for best novel of the year for The Terminal Experiment (Harper Prism, 1995), a bucket full of novels in print and more on the way, an Arthur Ellis Award for crime fiction writing, AND books translated into Bulgarian, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Polish, Russian, and Spanish. Way to go, Rob!!!! Yep! There's more! MUCH! But, hey! You can visit him yourself! Check out his web site at: www.sfwriter.com . Or, buy his books!!! Or both!!!!

JAZZ!!! JAZZ & MORE JAZZ!!! John Fordham's Jazz (RD Press, 1993) purchased at: Lichtman's, Queen's Quay, Toronto, dances through jazz history, instruments and forms from its beginnings to the 90's. Heavy on pics, heavy on weight, and big on dimensions!!! This big book has a big honking sax hangin' loose and ready to blow on the cover... And it blows through all of jazz with a free an' so easy readin' and lookin' tempo that me be thru it, afore me know it... An' me be smilin' at the end!!! An' fer you writers out there who think music and writin' make strange bedfellows, me thinks you not listenin'. Listen up! Listen down! Hang one in the middle! But listen... This be from Fordham's Jazz.... where Wayne Shorter recalls sax man, John Coltrane, saying his aim was, "...to start in the middle of a sentence and progress to its beginning and end at the same time." Sounds like mighty fine writin' to me... Be it the writing from the soul blowing through Coltrane's horn onto the invisible paper hangin' in the air... Or the paper between a couple buk covers! Dey don't call dem music things "notes" fer nothin' ya know!!! Here's Coltrane talkin to Frank Kofsky and it be good thinkin', be ya a horn blower, a musican of another stripe, or a writer of dem wurd things we read... Coltrane puts it like this, "You can't ram philosophies down anybody's throat. I think the best thing I can do... is try to get myself in shape and know myself." Plays okay by my ear!!!!

STORYTELLIN' CD'S: While we be on the subject of other kinds of notes... the kind played... the kind heard... and sometimes read... but more to do with playin' the sound... than makin buk... Check out on the web or in your local shop the CD's of traditional blues player- teller-of-stories, Guy Davis... and some of the word poetry found in lyrics by Gayle Ackroyd on her CDs... And it goes without saying... Shania Twain... You got the entertainer in ya... Storytellin' minstrel you be!!! And Sarah McLachlan!!! You got the gift from the soul!!! Keep on tellin' it, girl!!!! Folks, all ya gotta do is listen!!! That with your ears AND your.... There be stories in them songs.... Ah..., the written word!!! Be it in the music of air... or in the symbols on a page!!! Gold Nibs to ya all!!!

STILL THE BEST!!! THE ARTISTS WAY!!! Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way (G.P. Putnam, 1992 ) is still the best creato-therapy, get-your-artist-outta-the-closet book on the market!!! Gold nibs by the Creato-basket-case to her... and her publisher. If ya got the artist in ya, and ya be wunnerin' where ta go next... go buy this buk... an' read it... an' do what it says... an' all ya gonna do, need ta do..., an' will do, will happen for ya!!! Guaranteed buy, Ooopps!, by the GOLD-NIB-GATHERING bucketful!!! Second last one ( OFTEN GIFT-BUYS BY ME FOR-FLOUNDERING CREATO-NATURED FRIENDS ) purchased at: A Loft of Books in Alliston, Ontario. Last one purchased at Maggiolly Art Supplies, Alliston, Ontario.

( Harper Collins, 1997) is worth the price of admission. This is a smaller, more-recent-beginnings, ROOTS sort of work, literary in tone, and well constructed. Any Known Blood is Larry's telling of a fictional Canadian story of folks with Negro heritage. Nice work, Larry... A good, night-time, long-savouring-read-time buk!! Gold Nibs be yours!!! By the armload!!!

OLD & RECENT RE-READS!!! Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway, Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck, and The Pearl by John Steinbeck. Three short reads, long on story, long on good writing, long on staying in one's memory. L-o-n-g s-h-o-r-t long short buks! These!

NOW READING!!! Crystal Woman by Lynn V. Andrews, Warner 1987. GOLD NIBS SO FAR.............!!!!!!!

SNIPPETS FROM: The Writer's Life!!! Carol Edgarian and Tom Jenks, Editors ( Vintage 1997). *Purchased at Nicholas Hoare in Toronto, Ontario. Snip! Snip! Snip-Pets! Here you go!!! Listen up!!! "Only intensity matters. Talent - you have it or you don't." Jean Cocteau. "What does education often do? It makes a straight ditch of a free, meandering brook." Henry David Thoreau. "If you wish to have spare time do nothing." Anton Chekhov. "The bookseller showed me to-day several books attributed to me, that I had never even read." James Fenimore Cooper. "I am still so amazed at the brazenness of people who only remember you when you've gone into your fourth printing." Dawn Powell. "Great men are generally more anxious to have the reputation of talents which they do not possess, than to be extolled for those on which their greatness is founded." Washington Irving. "Women deprived of the company of men pine, men deprived of the company of women become stupid." Anton Chekhov. "The truly free man is the one who will turn down an invitation to dinner without giving an excuse." Jules Renard. "I don't belong here, and I've had to turn my not belonging into triumph." Lynn Freed. "When you begin to get good, you'll arouse the haters of life." Theodore Roethke. "Turgenev's brain was the heaviest ever recorded, 4.7 lbs., 3 is average." Edward Hoagland. "W. tells an anecdote of Gertude Stein, who was asked at a lecture why it was that she answered questions so clearly and wrote so obscurely. `If Keats was asked a question would you expect him to reply with the Ode on a Grecian Urn?' " Graham Greene.

"In relation to Gaugin, van Gogh, and Rimbaud, I have a distinct inferiority complex because they have managed to destroy themselves... I am more and more convinced that, in order to achieve authenticity, something has to snap.... But I have protected myself against snapping.... I'm bastard enough to leave something of myself intact." Jean-Paul Sarte. "The forties are the old age of youth and the fifties are the youth of old age." Edward Hoagland. "Well, my birthday is over and I am now fifty-eight, two years off sixty and twelve years off seventy and, lord knows, I should have learnt wisdom by now but I haven't and that's that." Noel Coward.

GOLD NIBS TO JUDITH ENNAMORATO!!! Finally it is here!!! After long years of research, writing, re-writing, and getting it all together, former model, always a native American, and good friend Judith Ennamorato's Sing the Brave Song is available to readers, everywhere. Sing the Brave Song is the heart-wrenching documentation... of Native Canadians forced into the Indian residential school system. Judith uses snippets and sometimes not so snippet-snippets from actual interviews conducted by her to present this absorbing and potent element from Canada's recent history. Let the facts of this horrible trauma inflicted on many Native Canadians unfold for you... Your local bookstore can order from: Raven Press, 501 Main Street, Schomberg, Ontario, Canada LOG 1T0 .... Judith, may every basket in your kitchen fill with Gold Nibs from this one!!! Learn more about Judith and her work by visiting the 'Friends' section on my Web Site: www.frankwestcott.com

THE BARRELHOUSE KING - BARRY CALLAGHAN!!! Yoh! Barry! Thank you! Yep!!! BIG-TIME BARREL-HUGGIN' THANK YOU for this memoir about you and your father, Morley Callaghan. Ladies and gentlemen: BARRELHOUSE KINGS (McArthur & Company, 1998)!!! It is no secret I think Morley was one of the finest writers of the century. Clean in style... Clean... as in seamless. Full as in a blooming rose when the sun is up and high... or... full as the sound of a horn blown over a thick city street of an early morn... That's horn... as in sax... and as in sex... the drive that propels so much of the city.... that town that don't heal... yet one that fostered two writers who can walk in the mist... and still be standing when the last punch has been thrown... and the mist clears... And one can see you and Morley standin' side-by-side, smilin'... Yes... folks... this is one of the best, most intimate, most telling memoirs related to a great writer ever done. It reads like a good novel. And Barry uses his novelist's ear for dialogue and getting the scene write, right, in the telling. And he uses his poet's ear... the one that hears the horn play loud and soft and through the mists of time, wailing and chanting behind, and under, and up-and-over a blues progression.... And he hears this where there is no horn playing... And too... Yes... This... Yes...! Barry uses this poet's ear that can hear beyond... to give his memoir BARRELHOUSE KINGS the essence of the song, the power of the sax's wail, and the juice that makes lovers dance in the dew of the rose. Barry, you have brought tears to my eyes, passion to my lips in song, and joy to my heart with this one. You... brought it all home, to me... this story of you, Barry and Morley Callaghan.... With a wink, a high outside-the-melody chord, and a smile white where there is black, also, I say, "THE #1 GOLD NIB" of this writing goes to YOU!

SECOND SIGHT!!! LASER VISION CORRECTION!!! Longtime friend, Lynn, who writes and works in the field of vision, passed along Laser Vision Correction by Harold Stein, Raymond Stein, and Albert Cheskes (Bochner Eye Institute, Toronto or Ethis Communications, New York). She has worked with Stein for many years. Her vouch, good enough for me! The book tells you all you'll ever need to know about this, as they say, New Age in Vision . The beauty of the book is you and I can buy it, see it, read it, and understand it. Yes... it is for us... ordinary people who may, at some point, decide to pursue vision correction via laser surgery. Seeing is believing!!! Reading about seeing this way... makes you believe... and opens up new vistas for many current spectacle... (as in specs, glasses you don't drink out of) contact lens wearer. GOLD NIBS TO YA, FOLKS!!!!

OTHER RECENTLY READS!!!!WORTH A PEAK!!! Here's a couple... Well a few recently reads... recently enjoyed... Recently learned from titles: Harper's Encyclopedia of Bible Life, Miller/Miller (Castle Books,1996). Harpers Encyclopedia of Mystical & Paranormal Experience, ( Castle Books,1991 ). The Healing Arts, An Oxford Illustrated Anthology, R.S. Downie, Editor (Oxford University Press, 1994).

...The woman Ginevee sat down across from me on my blanket, her hand on the talking stick. "Owls can be stortellers. Owls can frighten people who don't know about the power of stories." Ginevee chewed on a twig with her large white teeth.

"Tell me more, Ginevee." My interest seemed to delight her. Everyone moved closer to listen, their faces --marked with power and etched by time--all as different and mysterious as the ancient cultures they represented. Just then an owl hooted in a tree far off to our left. We all turned to look and I offered a pinch of tobacco to the spirit of the owl. A prickle went up my spine.

"There are many stories that live in the woods and around the sacred places of the world. Every once in awhile they find someone that they like and they come to them, yea. Sometimes they even live in you for awhile."

"Yes. You see, you have a story that has come to live in you. Now you must tell that story."

AND FINALLY... CHEERS!!&! GOLD-NIB- BUCKETFULS OF GOOD READING TO YA! See ya in 2000, maybe!!! Unless, of course me gives up duh writin' about readin' fer more passive forms of entertainment! Or pleasure!!! Or holidayin'!!! Does retirement beckon...??? Or is this just the change of life!???!! Time'll tell, once dem clocks start a talkin'!!! Read well. Read long. Or short. But read. To do so, to be able to do so, places you among the lucky... do not dishonour your luck... lest it dishonour you... read on... read on... read on... even when the lights go out and the stage becomes dark... there is still an act to play, or a play to act... the one in the unseen... where magic and mystery find their genesis... where creativity is born... where we meet on the printed page... To our next meeting!!! Truly, Frank... P.S. Visit my PERSONAL web site: www.frankwestcott.com . Me be there!!! And this, too!!! Yoh!!!

Frank Westcott (that's me!) has taught school for almost thirty years. He is the author of books and the writer of numerous articles, stories, and poems. He is also a musician, singer, and 'Family Entertainment' entertainer. Visit Frank at his Web Site: www.frankwestcott.com

Celebrating the Written Word - 1999! is protected by copyright. Yep! All Rights Reserved. Nevertheless, you are free to download, printout, or make duplicate copies of this article solely for non-sale purposes. Duplication for FREE DISTRIBUTION is quite all right. If it helps sell books, you will have no problem from me. For any commercial use where revenue will be generated through the sale of this edition or from advertising placed with this edition please contact the author for permission and/or rights use purchase. He (me again!) can be reached via his (mine, don't cha know ! ) web site: www.frankwestcott.com. Copyright by Frank Westcott, 1999.

P.S. May the sun be at your back... (especially if you're taking pictures), may the wind be behind you (especially if you're standing) and may snow fall up (especially in your imagination where all good reading... and most good writing occurs).

News, Noteworthy, a Welcome Back, & Gold Nib to multiple award winner, former PEN Canada president, and novelist Nino Ricci. Nino's, just released novel, Where She Has Gone (McClelland & Stewart) is a magnificent culmination to his trilogy which included Lives of the Saints (1990) and In a Glass House (1993). He's back folks! And triumphantly, as I knew he would be. Congrats, Nino. It's a home run.

Two Decades of Gold Nibs to CANSCAIP (Canadian Society of Children's Authors, Illustrators, and Performers). Fall 1997 marks the 20th. Anniversary of this national organization which brings together three distinct groups into one collective. CANSCAIP not only helps keep literature, art, and performing for children alive, CANSCAIP'S membership includes most of the top Canadian professional artists in these fields. Through monthly meetings, workshops, a travelling art display, and a newsletter CANSCAIP reaches out to children, friends, libraries, teachers, schools, and wanna-be-CANSCAIPERS. Way to go, CANSCAIP! May there be twenty-times-twenty more grand years! Now that would be a party!

Hats Off & Gold Nibs to CANSCAIP members and young adult novelists, Linda Holeman and Sylvia McNicoll. Linda's Promise Song (Tundra), Sylvia's Silver Birch Award winner Bringing Up Beauty (Maxwell Macmillan), and her new Walking A Thin Line (Scholastic) are all M-U-S-T

H-A-V-E-S for young adult readers. My YA source, after reading Sylvia's Bringing Up Beauty said, "That's the best book I ever read." A few days later, after reading Linda's Promise Song my pre-teen source blushed and said honestly, "That's the best book I ever read, too!" There you go, folks. Go for the triple! Read all three! Bet I hear your YA readers saying, "Walking A Thin Line is the best..." With writers like these, the Canadian YA novel scene is gloriously healthy.

A Gold Nib to Dorris Heffron whose been having a grand time speaking to adult reading groups using her novel A Shark in the House (Key Porter) as their monthly selection. Toronto reading group aficionados delight in having, Dorris, the "real live" author, there to talk about the novel read for that night. Way to go Dorris! Enjoy! Bye-the-way, Dorris and her H-U-G-E husky, Yukon Sally, spent a couple of summer weeks in the Yukon gathering background info for her current novel-in-progress. Get bit by A Shark in the House folks and keep your eyes on the horizon for Dorris' book-in-progress, working title City Wolves.

A Seasonal Gold Nib to author Linda Granfield and artist Janet Wilson for their award winning In Flanders Fields: The Story of the Poem by John McRae (Lester/Stoddart). Folks, Janet's art speaks for itself. She is one of the finest and truest talents illustrating children's books today. And Linda's grasp for research and the telling of the story behind the story make In Flanders Fields an important and necessary book for all schools, libraries, legions and affiliates in this country and throughout the world. This needed book comes home, to the heart, as we pause November 11 to thank those who defended our freedoms during the two great wars.

A Fascinating Read & Gold Nib to Iris Nowell for her Women Who Give Away Millions (Hounslow). Through interviews and research Iris constructs portraits of Canadian female philanthropists. The criteria for inclusion in Iris' book? Ah..., not much. Individually, these women had to have given away at least O-N-E M-I-L-L-I-O-N D-O-L-L-A-R-S. Iris explores their motivations, their personalities, and their particular causes. This is one highly intriguing book. Thanks, Iris!

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