... not like the ones I used to know ...

... if you've never heard the song White Christmas recorded in 1965 by The Wailers, with a fresh-out-of-his-teens Bob Marley wailing the lead vocal, I recommend you add it to your holiday programming the next time this season rolls around ... at the very least you'll get to hear the youthful legend adapt the lyrics to suit his tropical experience of the holiest Christian festival ...

... "I'm dreaming of a white Christmas,
not like the ones I used to know"...

... but my 2011 Xmas pictured Irving Berlin's original dream ...

... despite a paucity of real snow in my formative years, there was often plenty of the aerosol variety, and, even as the best-wishes remain the same, the parameters of enjoyment may shift ... to quote another modern Jamaican Christmas offering ...

"I wish for all mankind,

a Warm Jamaican Christmas time,

where there is no snow,

where the good sensimilla grow" ...

... celestial Christmas ...

... wherever you look in the night sky, if the elements co-operate, you can see stars ... it's little wonder then, that humanity has embraced, as iconography, these mysterious distant twinkles ... the pentagram is a universally accepted symbol which achieves ubiquity at Christmas time, partly due to that biblical example of star-as-beacon and partly due to it's graphic design utility ...

... St Paul's Hospital on Burrard St. in Vancouver is festooned with stars for the season supporting the laudable theme of hope ...

... meanwhile, seasonal lighting choices in Toronto's Eaton Centre feature larger-than-life reindeer assemblies, looking for all they're worth like stylized constellations, against the backdrop of a bright-night skyroof, complete with astral streaks ...














... much of the incandescent radiance on St Paul's prominent wall, normally more modest outside the festive season, celebrates corporate donors ... and beneath the mod-vaulted ceiling of      Mr. Eaton's grand mall sits some very seductive merchandising ...

... stars are married to Christmas mythology and stellar marketing is a lovechild of that union ... still, wonderment is our default setting when it comes to the heavens, and in light there is a sense of hope, so we should forgive ourselves if we are given to gape ...

... Happy Holidays from Ackeelover Chronicles! ...

... paradise by the dashboard light ...

... cross country bladers, recreational boarders and avowed winter buffs will take issue with the cliche of paradise as a sunny hotspot, but this year, 2011, found Ontario's Muskoka region atop National Geographic's touted list of summer destinations ...

... even though "paradise" sorta rhymes with "snow and ice," the comparisons end there if you are hot-blooded, thin-skinned or partial to polar fleece and fur ... left unheralded is the under-appreciated, out-of-season visceral beauty to be experienced when Arctic perimeter expands through the area ...

... allow yourself to picture that chilled winter wonderland, warmed by in-seat heating and auto climate-control, dusk and nightfall suggesting the urgent carnal condition Meat Loaf sings of on 1977's "Paradise By The Dashboard Light"... my best guess is - your imagination excludes freezing rain, sludge and road-salt ...

... that said, and in the interest of honoring the grandeur of the universe, I can still make a case for low-temp surrealism ... in this instance, tab snapshots taken in the same evening by you and I, lovers driving separately through unconnected weather systems, hint at a synchronous spark across time and space ...

... inside-out, eerie eye-views speak of the driving conditions ... please note telltale tachometers, indicating the foolish needn't also be foolhardy ...

... build a ladder to the stars ...

                                           ... climb on every rung ...

"... may God bless and keep you always,

may your wishes all come true,

may you always do for others

and let others do for you ..."

"... may your hands always be busy,

may your feet always be swift,

may you have a strong foundation

when the winds of changes shift ..."

"... may you grow up to be righteous,

may you grow up to be true,

may you always know the truth

and see the lights surrounding you ..."

"... may your heart always be joyful,

 may your song always be sung,

and may you stay forever young,

forever young, forever young,

may you stay forever young ..."

                                   

                                                    - Forever Young - Bob Dylan -

... summer street seen ...

... in my world Jamaican Music is a twentyfourseven, threesixtyfive prerequisite, without which life just wouldn't feel right, but sometimes it is seen as mere summertime sound with diminishing relevance as the cooler months set in ... while I strongly reject that attitude in principle, I tend to shelve my objections in July and August when, everywhere I turn, there's a bumpin' bassline or bubblin' beat to keep the vibes level ...

... at the base of the world-famous CN Tower in downtown Toronto, while testing the touchscreen camera app on a new Android Tablet, my attention was drawn to a familiar image on a vending machine ... the resultant snapshot benefitted, quite unintentionally (pinky swear), from a pair of strolling sightseers in my pre-set frame, recalling an early 90's dancehall lick that rocked clubs and looped out of every audio-cassette deck ...

  chorus:

" ... a jus' de Coca-Cola bottle shape a it a run di place,
bruck-out bruck-out gyal, a u have de shape, 

a just de Coca-Cola bottle shape, a it a run di place, 

skin-out skin-out gyal, a u have de shape ..."

   and verse:

"... inna de place, uptown girl have de shape, 

inna de place, downtown girl have de shape, 

inna de place, a London girl have de shape,

inna de place, New York girl have de shape, 

inna de place, Canadian girl have de shape,

a dem have di shape and a give man headache,

a dem have di shape mek man body shake ..."

... you get the idea ... within the genre there is always compulsion to big-up the female form, frequently in illustrative or graphic fashion ... this familiar theme, with attendant effect on the equilibrium of the enraptured beholder, is an eternal spring ...

... here on record (spot the misspellings inspired by yardspeak, a fun-for-all parlour game with reggae covers and labels), figure and bodyline are linked to curvy coke-bottle design and presented over a tuff Bogle riddim, with hooks from the quirky-smirky vocal of self-deprecatingly named DJ, Simpleton ...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRUuGVu_JDM

... Christopher "Simpleton" Harrison (1971-2004), late of  St. Andrew, Jamaica, shot to fame in '91/'92 with this hit ... he reportedly suffered from high blood pressure and died of a heart attack at just 33 years old after releasing three albums ...

... I remember him, and his catchy phrasing, whenever I spy Scarlett Johanssen ... or a retro pop-vending machine ...

... Chevron 7.7 ...

... it's a truism to be sure, but one of the things you gotta do to maintain a career in the public eye is to, well,  appear in the public's eye from time to time ... and I don't mean grocery shopping or a mid-day stroll down Main Street ...

... one could conspire to get nabbed running a traffic signal on Sunset Boulevard reeking of rum, or marry conspicuously with a seventy-two day divorce sequel to slam the dunk, but there are safer ways to rack up stage-time and tally a twitter following ... look no further than actors who've played science-fiction characters ... we, as a species, needn't delve into the charade chest of cheap trix - provided there's no objection to venturing into the lion's den to meet 'n' greet the fanbase ...

... the cool thing about this is that fandom is no respecter of borders or division, chapters of sycophantic adulators spring up everywhere on the globe, perhaps even beyond some say ... and for the most part, the rank-and-file fan is a big-hearted afficionado of the genre who has the chutzpah to bring the proverbial mountain to Mohammed ...

... and move mountains they do ... calling them Conventions, cash is pooled, hotels are inveigled, dealers enticed, punters wooed ... the carrots-on-the-stick are us, performers who've brought characters to life by lending ourselves to the cosmos, and the cause ... on this occasion Northampton, England plays host ...

... there's no call to wear costumes off set ... truth be known, actors don't own 'em anyway and the attendees don't need the competition for their own sartorial creativity ... the interest is in the encounter, the photo-op, the collectormania and camaraderie when common interest binds an admixture of personalities ...

... with judgementalism at minimum, everyone is free to express passions ... whether it's adolescent idolatry, gratuitous hugging, sharing a preferred song with anyone who'll listen, playing Pied Piper to a string of gents while coquettishly sporting sexy new knee-high boots, or paying tribute to fictitious aliens by dressing up and acting out until the bar closes, the field is wide open ...

... but, apart from the common colds which get communicated and the odd hangover proliferated for posterity by phone-cams, there is usually no safer arena for runaway individualism ...

... engaged celeb guests get the most out of such a milieu too ... ego value is inestimable but if you don't take yourself too seriously and can walk the fine line between madness and mission, you'll be able to pull off anything ... I found humility when faced down by a young woman with a soccer ball seemingly glued to her feet, and only regained my pride by rocking a party with judiciously selected oldies, remixes and reggae (from a hard drive that goes everywhere with me for just this purpose) ...

... satisfaction with my own DJ-ing would have been enough to provide a fitting punchline to this exercise in shameless self-promotion had I not been comprehensively upstaged that same afternoon by a macho, mind-reading monkey named Chico ...

... but that's another story for another day ...

... Gladwell and I ...

... the story's been told so often I take it as truth, part of my personal mythology, repetetive support for one of my earliest memories ... indeed, I can see the scenario now without closing my eyes ... being led through the front entrance of the public library on Tom Redcam Drive in Kingston, Jamaica, not long after my fifth birthday, by a purposeful thirty-something mother, isn't the sort of life-experience you'd expect to be emblazoned on the brain, but that day caught us on a determined mission ...

... before I had a passport, or a driver's license to guarantee my adult freedoms, I first had to get a library card, a ticket to a world of possibility and a gateway to an unending avenue of education and reading for pleasure ... for years all was so, until bookishness yielded sway to relatively sexy tele-news and glossy periodicals ...

... my book-reading love affair eventually took a hiatus but the die was cast, I was hooked on words ... the likes of War And Peace remain unfinished but National Geographic, The Economist and TIME subscriptions were faithfully renewed ... dailies were devoured, specialty-mags mined for target info, while Mad honed sarcasm and satire ... Shakespeare, Chaucer, Steinbeck and Miller, sounding like a law firm, were covered academically but my own reading stream was fed by populist tributaries ...

... eventually the book bug bit back, coming full-circle, and again Mama featured in da mix ... on a recent visit she hit me with the question, "Have you read any of Malcolm Gladwell's books?"...

... this, it turned out, was less of a query than a recommendation, to which I wasn't unreceptive, having been exposed to the author via publishing blitzes illuminating his bestseller celebrity, and, I had previously taken note of his pre-eminent New Yorker byline ... plus, knowing what he looked like, I felt a quasi-cosmic kinship not entirely unrelated to politics of hair and heritage ...















... so, God bless 'er, Mom marches me to the nearest bookstore in a manner reminiscent of our library visit in an earlier age ... by the time we exit she has gifted me The Tipping Point, Blink and the fascinating Outliers, Gladwellian pop-philosophy tomes which become my proper introduction to this modern thinker who, like me, has a preternatural penchant for verbiage, and proto-filial connections to Jamaica, Britain and Canada ...

... at this point she sweetens the pot with archival information dating from beyond her own childhood into the days of her father, my grandfather, the late Rhamos Sutherland Taylor ...

... "Teacher Taylor," as he was respectfully known, was a formidable man by nature ... an educator, and one of a legion of unsung nation-builders who, by discipline, tenacity and sense of self, embodied the fortitude of Jamaican identity leading up to and beyond 1962's independence from British colonial rule ...

... a man of average height ... "Saddie"(derived from Sutherland) to his inner-circle, possessed a crisp countenance, garrulous laugh and a passion for tall glasses of ice-water and sweet mangoes ... because of him I learned to peel an orange the skillful way, in one unbroken, coiled peel ... he had quite the insatiable predilection for citrus and fetching fruit was deemed to be one of my primary duties as eldest grandchild ...

... but, more pertinent to this anecdote than his Ortanique habit, is the fact that one of his closest friends and associates was a man I know only by the surname Nation ... fast friends since their days as batchmates at Mico College, Taylor and Nation were cut from similar country-cloth ... Mico, today a University, is a respected teacher-training facility established in 1836, roughly coinciding with the official end of African enslavement in Jamaica ... it survives as the oldest institution of its type in the Western Hemisphere ... nuff tradition, in other words ...














... such tradition is layered with inter-generational markers ... Taylor's pride, my mother Ivy, is one of the first daughters of an Old Miconian to have actually taught there too, a significant gender breakthrough at the time ... one of Nation's twin daughters, Joyce, Malcolm Gladwell's mother, is herself an insightful author, a key strand of her famous son's poly-cultural chromosomal psychology, and his own understanding of it ...

... like their fathers before them, these "girls" are contemporaries from adjacent rural towns ...

... they continue to parlay paternal impetus into lifelong contributions to community and offspring, with strong faith being a common, sustaining thread ... in fact, the other Nation twin, actually named Faith, in her capacity as board member of the Bible Society of The West Indies, is at least partially responsible for a Jamaican patois, audio re-enactment of popular Bible stories falling into my hands ...

... appropriately titled "A Who Run Tings?" in the vernacular, complete with reggae instrumental background music, this work came to me via Miss Ivy's social network ... on listening, it's not difficult to imagine looks of satisfied ('Saddie-sfied?') mirth on the faces of Taylor and Nation, runnin' tings in repose from inside the Pearly Gates ...

... as they gaze upon the vibrant extensions of their bloodlines ...

... almost artificial android autumn ...

... it sure is gettin' tres chilly 'round here ... watch the squirrels, bear and deer,

an' forget undressing bare as you dare ... dip in a lake now, privates disappear,

but, nature's concession thru powers that be ... is color-change on each deciduous tree,

a timely reminder to you 'n' me ... the best things in life are still wild and free ...

... leaves warm the cold,

... rich landscapes, behold,

... my android-tab snaps, to have and to hold ... flash-frozen, in vivid reds, greens and gold ...
magic Muskoka moments inspiring to share ... constant as time, year after year,
the cycle of life goes on ev'rywhere ... reassurance there's really nothing to fear ...