OUTRAGE FROM THE LEFT

The United States Supreme Court ruled 5-4 to allow corporations to run political ads. Every group from GE to UAW will be able to spend money on political advertising. The Right is delighted. The Left is furious. President Obama, who is proving to be far more conservative than his left-wing supporters believed, spoke against it in his Strate of the Union speech on Wednesday. He was pretty blunt about it, saying tHat free elections should not be in the hands of deep-pocket big corporations. (I am paraphrasing.)

I went into the website of the Citizen’s Coalition to nudge my memory on how our courts ruled on third party political campaigning. I simply forget. I do remember that the Coalition, at that time run by Harper, was campaigning for Free Speech to be extended so that organizations like the Coalition, and I guess private corporations, could openly advertise on behalf of political parties or candidates. Do I remember that they were given limited rights? Their website said nothing – not that I could find.

Keith Olberman on MSNBC simply went ape. He did a long editorial comment at the end of his program the day the supreme court decision came down. The essence of what Olberman said was that democracy would fall apart. We would be ruled by big coirporation s who could spend billions. Knowing that the parent company of NBC is GE, he expressed some concern that he might not keep his job. I didn’t believe him. GE seems to have been a hands-off owner, especially with the cast of often strident lefties who rant endlessly against the Right. I am an old Left myself, but these people are simply too shrill in their defense of the Democrats and their tirades against the GOP.

According to the book “Freakonomics” money does not win elections. Smart money goes to the candidates who have a good chance to win; to candidates who should win but are running behind. Finally, people vote for the person they like.

I agree to a point.. I don’t think that the Supreme Court decision means an end to people’s democracy. I don’t think giving the Citizens Coalition free rein to spend money in support of right wing causes will make a substantial difference. I hated the billboard on Gerrard street in Toronto which, in big letters, asked “How do you like Socialism so far? It was during the Bob Rae days at Queen’s Park.

As the critics predict horror when big labour and big business can spend money in elections, I remind them that it is nothing new. Labour and Business have been spending a fortune to support candidates. The only thing missing is that they are not, at least I don’t think so, writing and airing political commercials.

I am sad that so much political thinking is governed by how much money you have to spend. Obama outspent Hilary Clinton about two to one. Is that why he won the nomination? Have we so downgraded the ability of voters to make choices that we now fear big money making big promises.

Yes, lobbyists do have an effect. Yes, in America certainly, guys like Joe Lieberman reflect the attitudes of his “sponsors.”

I just don’t think it is the end of the democratic process.

TECHNO-IDIOCY

I have a problem. Perhaps my readers, whoever you are, can help me solve it.

It began when the blog first appeared. It was sent automatically to a contact list. It went out once and mysteriously stopped being distributed. I have tried fruitlessly to figure it out.

Yesterday I received an email from someone who wanted to be added as a subscriber. Today a comment came in asking how he (the reader) could contact me.

Unfortunately, I can.t qanswer either question. I pored through Google hoping for an answer but to no avail. The irony is that the man who wanted me to contact him (I presume it was a man who remembers me from CHUM) but since he signed in as "anonymous" I have no idea where to go.

Is there anyone out there who can help me? Would you like to be on a mailing list so my facts and fantasies get to you automatically via EMail?

I would appreciate any help from the wiser (that's everyone) than me.

THE COMMON HERD STRIKES AGAIN

Log on to today’s Globe and Mail (Saturday Jan 23) to read one of the saddest stories (it doesn’t mean to be sad) about herd mentality. I confess, I am going to violate a promise I made to myself, to lighten up on bashing the current generation . But I do save myself because this bizarre behaviour is not exclusive to the current generation of 20-somethings. It has been happening for generations. It is a topic that might have been addressed by Malcolm Gladwell in his best-selling “The Tipping Point.”

The question: what is it that suddenly creates a need to “be there?” What hidden social mechanism propels people, especially the younger and more impressionable, to line up for hours to get into a mediocre restaurant? (According to the story in the Globe “hours” is not an exaggeration.) This is nothing new. I can remember at least thirty years ago, when there were huge line-ups outside a new watering hole. People were attracted by the line-up.In fact, the owners used an old marketing technique: make the product look scarce and everyone will want it. The line-up would be waiting to get in while in fact there was virtually no one in the place. The presence of a visible line-up made it attractive.

Is it simply the herd mentality? Perhaps. Or is there an underlying need to “belong" a need to be seen to be on the cutting edge, to be “where it’s at? The proprietors of popular watering holes know what comes first. It is not quality, It is not price, It is not location. It is “buzz.” (Not all of them of course, there are still restaurants that get by on – are you ready – great food.) At the heart of the herd mentality is an underground system that only the insiders really know about. That is the secret. To be the first to know something that no one else does and to find that single element that will make it a big hit.

The Globe story is about new restaurants (it names many of them) that have suddenly become the place to be. There are characterized by lower prices, and above all - no reservations taken. The story implies that the no-reservations policy weeds out the older, less hip, less cool mom and dad whose presence will throw a wet towel on any kind of real “fun.” In fact, it characterizes the epithet that something fun is: “so fun.”

The paradox is that the younger and often wiser generation will proclaim that: “I do it my way. I’m not affected by advertising. I wear what I want, I go where I want. Which is why almost everyone under 30 has a tattoo.

Lest I point the finger unfairly, let me make another observation. Publicity people for major events know how to create a hot ticket.” It usually means a celebrity somewhere is involved. Movie studios make A mediocre movie a big hit by having a marquee star in the cast. Concerts pack people in if the star is a headliner. My wife and I are avid concert goers. We buy subscription series which include artists no one has ever heard of. There is one superb pianist who is billed as: “the best pianist you have never heard of.” His concerts are heart-stopping. But the seats are never full, often only half a house. If he were a hot ticket – say Bruce Springsteen or Itzak Perlman – people would rush for tickets. And whether the performance was great or not it wouldn’t matter – they were there. They were “where it’s at.” It’s a variation on The Emperor’s New Clothes.

The irony with restaurants is that the very people who "discover" a new place and "put it on the map" are totally fickle. Pity the restaurateur who thinks he has "arrived" because he is feeding turnaway crowds. Tomorrow they'll find another hot place and desert him without so much as a look back.

There are leaders and there are the led. Nothing changes. Only the years go by and we get older. But wiser???

APOLOGY AND MORE

I really should be ashamed of myself for the errata on my "What is - Is' posting. For those of you who are prepared to overlook sloppiness, I thank you. For whoever it was who sent me a page of gobbledegook - thank you for alerting me to the problem.

So, should I start to learn? Should I abandon all hope? Should I continue to rail foolishly about the techno-philes and their hot-wired brains? Should I continue with my quasi-Luddite approach to new stuff? Patience - this all has a purpose.


I am not such a techno-phobe after all. My wife and I read a lot, so when we travel the biggest single weight when we check in, is books. There's a way to get around the weight and the inconvenience, and to have a complete bookstore at your fingertips? You got it - an EBook reader.

At the time Amazon was not selling anywhere but the U.S. Even after they went worldwide Canada was excluded. Something to do with copyright and some other hi-tech problem. Eventually Amazon brought "Kindle" into Canada. But it was too late for me. I had already bought two readers from BeeBook. We load each up with different books so we can trade readers from time to tine.

It looked perfect until "stuff" started happening. First it was downloading. There are many systems that let you download, and every E Book reader is not compatible with every system. Mine happens to use Mobipocket. Without realizing it I downloaded a couple of books from a site that uses Adobe. So I have some books on my computer thn I can't download into my reader. Beginner's bad luck.

Having downloaded several books sucessfully, the next problem came up: the books could not be read because after a number of pages they would return to the menu page and leave me unable to continue. Advice on the problem is scanty and often non-existent. I even had a tech "helper" on the BeeBook site complain to me with: "stop using capital letters in your email responses. It is irritating."
I fired back a sarcastic reply. This is no way to handle the service you advertise.

I have lost contact with the company since I sent them a final angry email asking how I could return the readers for full refund.

Another bump in the road: having downloaded (I thought)two more titles, I was informed that I couldn't read them because I had the wrong PID. (It took a while before my brain realized they referred to Personal Identification number. So I tried to return to the site to enter my account.They rejected the address. No such address is listed. But they sold me the books using that address. I paid for them. What the hell!!

There have now been half a dozen emails requesting help. No response. Not one!

And people accuse ME of being crabby.

WHAT DOES THAT MUCH MONEY LOOK LIKE??

I confess that, as addicted as I am to TV, I have never been attracted to the late night shows like Letterman or Leno. I didn’t watch Johnny Carson but for a while I did watch Jack Parr. I take that back. I remember seeing a brash 19 year old sing kid sing for Carson. She brought the house down. It was Barbra Streisand.

I simply can’t imagine what all the fuss is about with NBC and the late night hosts. I couldn’t imagine in the first place why they would put Leno on at 10 o’clock. He’s a late night kinda guy. And I never could figure our Conan O’Brian. Out of curiosity I watched the show he did from Toronto. It was vulgar without being smutty, it was juvenile without being childish, but it was, in short: adolescent.

For all of that, and because NBC tried playing games with him, he walked away with something over 40 million dollars!! Some of it is to be used to pay severance to his staff, but most of it goes into his pocket, minus what the I.R.S. wants.

I like money as much as the next guy. I like it, not so much to one-up anyone else, but because it is pleasant to look in a shop window and see something you like and know that if you wanted to, you could go in and buy it. Any of us who have had many years of nose-pressed-against-the-glass in unrequited desire for stuff we couldn’t afford, enjoy knowing could if we wanted to.

Frankly my dear, I don’t know what I would do wth forty millions dollars, or twenty million, or even five million. What do I want to have that I don’t have? There’s always stuff like taking Business Class on long flights. My wife hated the 12 hours from L.A, to New Zealand. Even trans-Atlantic flights would be improved getting out of tourist class. But it’s no big deal.

I know at least one person who travels by charter jet when he has to be somewhere.
I know people who have four homes, each at least twice the size of what I dwell happily in with my wife. I like to collect fine art and art glass, but I can’t afford Dale Chihooly or Picasso. I would enjoy having a big boat, but even that doesn’t excite me any more.

I don't know what kind of tastes Conan O’Brian has. I don’t know what long-unsatisfied urges he will satisfy. I don’t know what 40 million looks like, feels like, or spends like.

In a way, I’m like the ordinary guy who wins twenty million in the lottery. He never aspired too high because he couldn’t afford to. Spending a lot of money is something you have to learn to do. The lottery winners fall for the TV commercials that talk about making dreams come true. But do you need 40 million or 5 million to make yours come true?

I don’t envy Conan, but if he wants help spending it – I’m in the phone book.

WHAT IS - IS.

That's one of my son-in-law's favourite expressions. For this posting I want to keep it in mind. Because for me, railing against the "wrongs" of society, indstead of learning to "go with he flow," can sometimes be counter-productive. (But I will not abandon my role as a social critic, which is to see life and want to make it better.)

So today, as the voters of Massachusetts go to the polls, I should be worrying that after nearly fifty years, a Republican could succeed Ted Kennedy. I should write about the disaffection of so many Americans who seem to be angry - angry about Health Care, angry about the deficit, angry about security - and that anger may lead them to vote in protest against the Obama steamroller.

But I won't. I'll take my son-in-law's advice - just this once.

As I weas leaving the Health Club this morning, sweaty and a little self-satified (a little more than usual that is) I noticed a young woman on the treadmill. She was trotting along and she had her cell phone in her hand, I suppose reading some text messages. My first instinct would be to rail at the pre-occupation, as I usually do -but I resist.

Time for a closer look through the eyes that proclaim "Looking Ahead" but spend so much time deploring the current state of affairs.

It's worth musing about. It's worth it for me to assess exactly how I feel in my revolt against fads that masquerade as progress. Whoops - there I go again. Perhaps part of the truth is that I am jealous. I am jealous of her youth, jealous of her understanding of today's technlogy and jealous that she can use the new high tech that I am totally ignorant about.

Perhaps there is more to the generation who walk the sidewalk text-messaging than indifference to civil behaviour. Perhaps they really are engaged. Not engaged the way I am, but that is no crime, nor should it be.

I have two choices: to bring myself up-to-date technologically or to simply accept with good humour that times are changing even if I'm not.

So all hail the woman with the cell phone on the treadmill. All hail the kids who know more about computers than I ever will - who have Iphones and Ipods and I-whatever. My only worry is the incessanty use of the letter "I."

Get 0over it. What is - is.

CLOSING THE GAP

I am writing this from the family room of my daughter's spacious home in the hills at the edge of Austin, Texas. My wife and I are making one of our regular visits to our grandchildren, who go whizzing by us in pursuit of their own youthful ends. They barely stop long enough to acknowledge our presence, except with a perfunctory "Hi papa, Hi Nana - lova ya." And they're gone.

I think about what I wrote in "Don't be Blindsided By Retirement." I hoped that the book would be of some comfort to other retirees trying to give some shape to their lives, but more inmportant, that the grandchildren would want to know what made their grandparents move. What do we care about? How meaningful is life for us?

A year or so ago I told my oldest grandson, now a hulking 21, that if he wanted to know "who" Papa was, he should Google my name. (I am sorry that the Google entries do not begin to tell readers about my life, and contain countless entries about my "career" in film and my years in radio, but precious little about other things I have done. But hey - sic trasnsit gloria mundi.) My grandson gave the Google stuff a cursory look and went on to other things. It isn't that they don't care. They have lives to live and I get the impression that they think I have already lived mine, so what's the big deal?

Sorry if that sounds a bit weepy and self-pitying. The last thing you want in the
"twilight" years, is self-pity.

My best feelings rise up when, as we did yesterday, we went for brunch with our daughter and son-in-law and with their neighbours. He is a wealthy entrepreneur with a "how to" busines sbook in circulation. He spoke as one who is genuinely interested in what i have to say. Because I was, for many years after my public life evaporated, a media trainer, he was especially drawn to my comments about his book and about how he would appear to the general business reader.

Because my wife and I continue to actively pursue new learning and new experiences, we get the sometimes gratuitous but mostly complimentary comment that "You two are remarkably unlike MY parents. You are still alive and ticking." They are especially impressed when they hear of our plans to "live" in Paris for four months, and to improve our fluency in the language. I am sure that behind the praise, there is the puzzling over why, at our age, we want to improve our language skills. The young have the notion that age brings with it a need to sinply "smell the roses." Hell, I know what a rose smells like!

I am not sure what their parents must be like, The truth is that we have friends who are the same age as we are, most a bit younger, who continue to pursue active lives -extensive travel, organized study, and above all, a consuming interest in the world around them. Some continue to work. One who is two or three years older that me, still goes to his Press Council office every day. Another is still seen regularly on television news commenting about the world around us, and still visiting many of the world's hot spots. My very best and oldest friend, (we were highv school buddies and he was best man at my wedding) is now touring India with his wife. They continue to learn, taking university courses and writing essays. He, who was a psychologist with a PhD now produces superb documentary creations. His travels are exciting and he spend hours at his editing suite making his tapes as as professional as possible.

For active older people our interests are current, not of the "I don't know what the world is coming to" type, who seems always to be looking back to when times were better and life was not so complicated.

Why do I continue to write for this blog believing that there must be people who want to share some of my ideas? Exactly that. We have things to say to each other. I can't survive by having my children's generation marvel at my energy. It's simply not enough.

INATTENTION BLINDNESS

Here I go again. Here comes another of those pieces from one of my favourite hobbyhorses: technology and stupid behaviour.

The New York Times today rekindled my anger with a piece headlined “Walking while talking on your phone? Watch out,”

According to the Consumer Product Safety Association more than 1,000 pedestrians visited emergency rooms as a result of injuries sustained walking while talking on their cell phones. (U.S. figures) I’ve seen them. They have the same glazed look as people riding subways have when they are hard-wired to their audio devices. Their eyes are open. The lights are on, but there’s nobody home.

The article is really all about the hazards of multi-tasking. It is about people who walk into telephone poles or other pedestrians while absorbed in a phone conversation. Missing from the article was our own local story from last year about the young woman who was killed when she walked into the side of a moving truck. She was crossing the road while talking on her cell phone.

I am saddened most by the apparent public indifference to the problem. Recently, on one of those “streeters” where a TV interviewer asks people on the street about their behaviour, a woman was asked why she was driving and using her cell phone, given that the province had made it illegal, She said that the law was not yet in effect and she’d keep doing it until she was warned. Such mindless indifference. Not only for her own safety, but for the safety of others with whom she shared the road.

One of our local newspapers ran a story last week about how upset the police were over the rise in pedestrian deaths. The blame seems to be going to the car manufacturers who have put so many gadgets in cars that drivers no longer seem to be using their eyes and ears on the road. Like the urban myth about the guy who had cruise control in his van so he connected it and went to the back of the van and letting the car drive itself. It never happened of course, but it is a kind of cautionary tale.

One of my hobbyhorses is that we have become far too dependant on technology and less able to use our own brains to cope. There is a new reality and it is frighteningly unreal.

We are truly cocooning, which means not only do we put ourselves into dangerous territory, but in a larger sense, that too many people are retreating from reality; too many seem only interested in themselves as creatures who have no relationship with thr world around them.

Seeming to contradict this of course is the very visible fact that people do socialize; that most have do have a circle of friends; that most people congregate socially. However, when it comes to the sharing of what we call public space, we are deficient. As long as you are among friends and sharing the same ideas, you behave as a member of a group. But thrust into a larger world, among people you don’t know, your first instinct is to ignore them.

But that’s another blog entirely – the difference between private comfort and public danger.

ARE THE BANKS BEING "PUNISHED?"

There iS more than enough wisdom going around political circles in he U.S. today about the Obama "tax" on banks: it is using the I.R.A.to "punish" the banks, or -it is purely political because the people are angry at the banks and taxing them is good politics for the Democrats, or - (and this is my favourite) the banks are not to blame, it is the failure of regulatory bodies to step in, or - it the government's responsibility because they let the banks (some even go so far as to say "encouraged") go their own merry way with some of the dodgiest investments ever seen.

I got into it last night with someone who asked me: "What is your take on the Obama move to tax the banks?" I said that I have a sense that some of it is political. From there on in the conversation went toward argument that it as unfair to tax banks when they had already paid back their TARP money all the way to arguments that the move was "socialistic."

I do realize that some of the banks have paid back the money, but the banking industry as a whole is still responsible for the chaos that hit the country back in the Fall of 2008. So bad that the Bush government held their noses and intervened. Hank Paulson set up TARP (Troubled Asset Recovery Program) to save the banking industry and to save the world from a depression that might have dwarfed 1929.
But that's all history.

I find it quite astonishing that the bankers should be offended by the Obama move. Meeting before the committee examining the causes of the 2008 meltdown, the bankers seemed oblivious to reality. There were statements that the meltdown was a once-in-100-years event, sort of like a hurricane or an earthquake.(See Paul Krugman in today's NY Times.) In other words: it just "happened." Are we to bellieve that the bankers do not understand that it was their out-of-control "investment" policies that caused it? That it was the wanton purchase of rubbish like Credit Default Swaps and Mortgage Backed Securities and totally covert derivatives? (covert because no one is really sure how much money is in there or what the derivatives were held against or for.)

Just as galling is the bleat that it was not only the banks fault. It was the regulators. It was the SEC failing to monitor things. (The SEC tried, without success to have banks and brokers selling derivatives and hedge fund companies dealing in wild gambles - to disclose where their nvestments were.) But to haggle over responsibility was nonsense. Does it require a law to stand between good sense and insanity? Does a bank not know that it is risking its depositors' money on shaky securities or betting that the real estate market cannot possibly be a bubble?

Obama's move may have political overtones, and it may be abusing the system to use the IRS to "punish," but someone has to wake up.

One of the great ironies of the "recovery" by many banks was that not only did they receive TARP funds, but they got repaid for those worthless Credit Default Swaps. AIG was the company selling them.Their worthlessness contributed to the near collapse of AIG which got billions to stay afloat. Much of those billions were paid by I.A.G. to banks to honour those Credit Default Swaps. Nice work if You can do it. And they did!

p.s. (posted Feb 15) I am not claiming any kind of prescience. The news of the TARP money being used to pay off AIG's credit default swaps is not news. But just last week, as one of a two part series on PBS news, the issue of Goldman Sachs making profits from repayments by AIG was highlighted, almost as a revelation.

A NEW KIND OF LONELINESS.

I enjoy watching HGTV for its "Househunters" program. Young (usually) couples looking for a new place to live because they have outgrown their present abode. I am amused by the chouices they make, especially by the criteria that seem so superficial. Stuff like hating a "popcorn" ceiling or a "dated" kitchen. Stainless steel and granite are manadatory, de rigeur, don't be caught dead with anything,less! I cook on a regular old white stove and store food in a "dated" white refrigerator. I eat well but apparently that's not enough.

I don't want to carp at other people's taste but I am concerned about one recurring demand: privacy.

Watching tonight I was just a littl bit sad because a couple looking in an Atlanta suburb loved the house but every time they walked by a window they complained that they could see their neighbours.

The larger issue is that as life becomes more and more complicated, more and more people are taking refuge within themselves, they are, and the word, popular a few years ago was "cocooning."

No one wants to have eavesdropping neighbours but this is much more than that. As we seem to disappear into a kind of human seclusion, it saddens me. As we rush from eye contact I am bothered. As we hide behind devices that fill our ears with music while we ride in community with hundreds of people on public transit, I worry that we are losing the ability to be the social creatures we have to be.

I think that part of survival is to recognize and to embrace the realities aound us; to live with the world instead of somewhere outside it; to open ourselves, to let our pores be exposed, to see others and to be seen.

I don't mean we should be literally in each others' pockets. I only think that when you are shy about lookiing out a window and seeing neighbours, you are missing some of what makes the world go round.

We are socisl creatures. I worry that fear and insecurity is changing it all.

PLEASE FORWARD TO MICHAEL IGNATIEFF

I am not sure that any MPs read this blog.Time was, when I had a public platform, I spoke and some people listened. Some even reacted. But today, I am shouting at the bottom of a very deep well.

Never mind. I do not need your sympathy. This is a sort of Open Letter to Michael Ignatieff who is head of the one party that could bring it off. Harper proroguing Parliament is an act of absconding with my rights as a Canadian. I have to leave governing to the civil servants. All proposed legislation dies on the order paper. Nothing happens.

So here’s my idea: Mr. Ignatieff, rent a large ballroom, meeting room, whatever – at the Chateau Laurier. Announce that the Liberal Rump Parliament will be sitting as of – say January 28th. It will have its own version of a Speech from The Throne in which the Liberals can put forward their ideas for the next year. To keep it absolutely fair, there would have to be an open invitation to all other MPs – not just Opposition like NDP or Bloc, but any Conservatives who might want to join in.

Of course, the “parliament” would have no real legitimacy, since it does not represent government. However, it would be, in a way, a kind of open-to-the-public caucus. Bills could be proposed. Issues could be discussed. There could be motions made concerning everything from the Environment to Afghanistan. Maybe Bob Rae, harking back to his old NDP days could propose a new bill of rights for workers, where the government finally comes to grips with one of the oldest unfulfilled political promises of all time: guaranteed annual wage.

I know, this sounds like a kind of juvenile grandstanding. But do you think we could make it happen? Or are the pundits right: there is no real popular concern over proroguing. It is not a huge political issue. It is perhaps at the same level as the “issue” of whether of not the Minister of Defense knew that Afghans were torturing detainees handed over to them by the Canadian Armed Forces. In my opinion, that “issue” is a non-starter. The only place it seems to have any traction is in the media.

Having said all this – what exactly would be wrong with calling, however illegitimate, the sitting of Parliament?

MEMORIES FADE AWAY (which may be why I prefer Looking Ahead.)

A few years ago I started to write a memoir. I mused about how my mother’s world was shrinking. The older she got, the less she seemed to connect to the world around her. It was a literary device to get me started remembering growing up with a demanding mother and an imperious father. I was never sure exactly what I was writing, but as I remembered, small details started to crystallize. But there never seemed to be much more than fragments.

When I think of memoirs I think of Frank McCord and his superb “Angela’s Ashes.” I marvel at how clearly he seemed able to remember, not only events in his rough-and-tumble childhood, but conversations which he rendered up verbatim. I think too of Philip Roth whose memories of growing up in Newark are inextricably bound to his own growing up, and are woven into many of his novels. Of course there are memoirs based on diaries and journals. I always wonder how these diarists knew that one day the world would want to know where they had been and what they had done.

For me it was difficult. I abandoned the manuscript, a disorganized tangle of memories and childhood trauma. It was all bits and pieces – snatches drawn randomly from here and there. Not enough for a real memoir. For example: I remembered that my father spanked me using a hairbrush. I remember the admonition that “I never want you to do that again.” Do what? That’s the problem. To this day I can’t for the life of me remember why I was punished. Not one event pops into my memory.

Today there are friends who insist that I write, if not a memoir, at least a compilation of memories about the hundreds of people I have met and interviewed. “You must have hundreds of stories to tell,” is what they say. After I wrote one of these blog pieces which included a very brief story about Kingsley Amis, I was urged to tell more. Frankly there isn’t a lot to tell.

I watched a superb rendering of Clementine Churchill by Vanessa Redgrave on TVs dramatization of ‘The Gathering Storm.” I remembered meeting and interviewing her sister Lynn and before that, their father Michael. I should be brimming over with memories. Right? Wrong!

I was in New York circa 1975 and Lynn was on a list of celebrities to interview on my half hour TV interview show. She had achieved popularity for her portrayal of the overweight underachiever in “Georgie Girl,”

I remember very little about the interview, except that we talked about her father and about her sister. Vanessa was, at that time, in one of her many and varied stages of political and social activism. She was all over the political map. Lynn smiled and said she was nothing like her sister. It also happened that she was married to an old friend of mine so I remember that part better than the interview.

My wife and I had been great friends of Lynn’s husband and his former wife. I phoned him. It was, I thought, a phone call for “old times.” He had “gone Hollywood.” Barely polite on the phone, he patronizingly offered to have a couple of tickets for me left at the box office. I was stunned. I had hoped we would get together and remember old times. He would have none of it. He had “graduated” to the Big Time. I already had tickets to see Lynn in Shaw’s “Mrs. Warren’s Profession” which starred Lynn and as her mother, the dreadfully miscast Ruth Gordon.

I remembered interviewing the father. Michael Redgrave was one of the great ones. His film performance in “The Browning Version,” assured him a place in the pantheon of British theatre. I was at CBC News at the time and I was assigned to interview him. “Look out,’ they told me, “He’s an awful interview. It’s like pulling teeth. Good luck!”

I was determined to “find a way in” to his memories of himself. (There have been celebrities who have almost seemed to dare me to try to make them speak – like Richard Pryor – but that is another story.)

I did a bit of research. I found the way I though, to untie the Gordian Knot. I sat down with Redgrave, he looking stern and unreachable, and said: “I didn’t know that you would rather have been a poet.” Hs seemed startled. Then he smiled and began talking, and talking, and talking. I don’t remember exactly what he said, but I knew I had found the window in. Of course, he asked me “How did you know that??” (I remember a well-known Canadian interviewer who “dined out” on stories about how people marveled at his ability to get all kinds of inside info.) I never paraded my small skill.

So, you tell me, “There must be a book there.” I don’t think so. Unless, and I suspect it, that the great memoir writers, and biographers, use a lot of research and a lot more imagination, to conjure up their memories. I wish readers would tell me about their memories. A blog is supposed to be where ideas are shared. Maybe I should be using “Face Book.”