Texas hold ’em, then crush ’em
Mob Rule: Part 33
Jack ponders his place in the deck after a long ride on Lyndon B. Johnson's ranch that ends in a rickety shithouse
By John Armstrong
That night we slept in cool, fresh-ironed sheets while coyotes sang a lullaby through the open windows. I woke up with a smile, ready to eat again and go ride a bull, or perhaps just a horse to start with.
I got my wish. After breakfast Lyndon asked if we’d like to ride out with him and see the house he was born in. His wife, whose name really did seem to be ‘Bird” though the hands called her Miz Johnson unfailingly, packed lunches and filled thermoses with water and tea.
Vanessa was experienced with horses but I had some difficulty actually getting up onto the mine, a big bay named Baldy. Not that he lacked for hair; Lyndon said horses with a white patch on their face were commonly called bald-faced.
I’d never actually seen one in the flesh and it was something else entirely to stand beside one. Do you have any ...
Carol a modern masterpiece
Movie review: Carol
Todd Haynes creates a modern masterpiece that speaks directly to the female experience without words thanks to the silent chemistry between stars Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara
Every Thing Will Be Fine, not great
Movie Review: Every Thing Will Be Fine
German filmmaker Wim Wenders turns the Canadian landscape into a snow globe with 3D technology, and a cast that includes Rachel McAdams, Marie-Josée Croze and the near-omnipresent James Franco
Digging two Pitts By the Sea
Movie Review: By the Sea
Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt look to the black and white classic starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton in this flat, contrived and utterly self-conscious piece of cinema that isn't afraid of Virginia Woolf, or dark satire
Pecans make a Mexican Wedding Cake
Food
Christmas can make anyone a nutcase, but this delicious cookie recipe offers a case in how specific nuts are used in various regional cuisines
By Louise Crosby
We no longer exchange gifts at Christmas in my extended family, except for the little ones. That simplifies things: no need to shop malls, get stuck in traffic, or go into debt. It leaves me, at least, free to get serious about baking.
This year’s baking bonanza started with these powdery Mexican Wedding Cakes from Alice Medrich’s Chewy, Gooey, Crispy, Crunchy, Melt-In-Your-Mouth Cookies. They aren’t actually cakes, they’re cookies, and according to Medrich they go by many names depending on what kind of nuts you put in them: if you’re using pecans, you have Wedding Cakes, or polvorones; if almonds are your choice, you have Viennese crescents or Greek kourabiedes. Walnuts produce Russian tea cakes. I’ve also seen them called Butter Balls and Melt-a-Ways, Snowballs and Sandies. Whatever you want ...
The Man Who Mistook his Life for a Notebook
Books
A cartoonist confesses to an Oliver Sacks obsession that has him flexing his mental muscles in way he never thought possible
By Alan King
I have a confession to make. I’ve read just about every word Oliver Sacks ever wrote and, God knows, the man wrote a lot. Yes, I know it sounds like an unhealthy interest in medical literature — borderline OCD. But it’s not like I’ve read all of Sherwin Nolan or Jerome Groopman or Atul Gawande — just Sacks. I read him endlessly, page after fascinating page.
You could think of it as a mental disorder or a ‘cerebral deficit’ if you like. My doctor certainly does. In fact he has a name for it: florid non-sackistic verbo-dysplasia. It’s a rare, somewhat disabling affliction. There are maybe 50 people on the planet who have it and sufferers typically live only on beautiful, faraway tropical islands, hilltop Tuscan villages or have been institutionalized for decades without ever seeing the outside world.
I’m one ...
Messin’ with the Texan
Mob Rule: Part 32
Jack drinks in acres of bluebells and the sight of expansive ranch lands as he chows down with Lyndon and Ladybird
By John Armstrong
The trip from Kansas to meet Lyndon in Texas was a long, dusty one. We’d done Missouri just before and I had to admire the way Sydney’s staff had finessed the speech writing. A Missourian who heard me talk in St. Louis, Independence, or Joplin would have had heart stoppage if he’d been at the fundraiser a few nights later in Kansas.
Missouri was a border state during the Civil War, never actually seceding but not quite supporting the federals either, and Missourians fought on both sides of the war or sat it out as best they could, as their consciences dictated. I danced around the state’s complex allegiances as much as the writers could manage, but in Kansas, firmly in the union, we made no bones about glorifying their forefather’s brave stand for truth, liberty, and freedom in the Great Conflict and exalting the ...
Searching for the legacy of Al Purdy
When film critic Brian D. Johnson retired, he became a filmmaker himself. His first project: a documentary about the difficult, brilliant (and strangely forgotten) Canadian poet
By Jay Stone
TORONTO — “You can argue whether he was our greatest poet, but certainly he was our most Canadian poet. No one wrote about the land the way that he did. If the Group of Seven was a bar band, they might sound like Al Purdy.”
It’s a warm September afternoon and Brian D. Johnson is sitting at an outdoor table at a coffee place he likes near the Toronto International Film Festival. He’s in the sun, hatless, and there is sweat on his forehead. Furthermore, people keep stopping to interrupt us because Johnson is a pretty popular guy in the film festival district, and also because, at this year’s festival, he’s a bit of a celebrity.
He was the film critic for Maclean’s magazine for 28 years. Now, at 66, he has retired (“I’ve had a career. I’m looking for the sweeter ...
Hiking back in time on Burgess Shale
Travel
The world famous Burgess Shale Slope offers a visually stunning hike that pays off with a teeming selection of rare invertebrate fossils, sealed into the geological timeline by an underwater avalanche of fine mud
By Alan King
FIELD, B.C, -- Science fiction writer H G Wells didn’t know the half of it. Time travel sometimes takes more than imagination and clever engineering; it can take a lot of nimble, arduous footwork, the kind that gets you up to 7,500 feet above sea level.
Unlike Wells’ lucky Time Traveller who was effortlessly transported millions of years into the future where he met some strange life forms, my son Christopher and I went back half a billion years in the other direction to the Burgess Shale -- an ancient fossil bed where the life forms are even stranger. Its location is a swath of scree 11 km up the side of Mount Wapta, a spectacular hunk of geology looming majestically over Field, British Columbia.
The fossils here are from the Cambrian ...
