. TOTALLY DRAMATIC . . It wasn’t just a big-screen spectacular — it was a nail-biting drama! An old brother of ’70s shenanigans flew from Winterpeg to my place in Southern Ontario because I lived on the Path of Totality for the 2024 solar eclipse. We had invites to a big acid test weekend with […]
Eclipse Totality in Bronte Ontario
April 10th, 2024 · 13 Comments · Real-life Adventure Tales
Tags: Bill Graham·Bronte Astronomers·Bronte Ontario·Grateful Dead·Oakville·Path of Totality·Solar Eclipse·toronto maple leafs·Winnipeg
The Chad Allan Story
April 30th, 2022 · 33 Comments · Music, Poetry, Real-life Adventure Tales
The Chad Allan Story . With Chad Allan’s passing at age 80 on Nov 21st, 2023, the CBC called and we did this rockin fun playful jamming live radio interview that you wanna hear — https://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio/1-367-the-weekend-morning-show-manitoba/clip/16027369-chad-allen-drops-writes-song-winnipeg-teen…in-1977. Or they also wrote it up as a story you can read here — although my full account follows […]
Tags: Bob McMullin·Burton Cummings·Chad Allan·Enid Hassett·Jim Kale·Randy Bachman·River Heights·songwriting·The Guess Who·Winnipeg
Finding Kesey
January 29th, 2017 · 13 Comments · Hitchhiker's Guide to Jack Kerouac, Kerouac and The Beats, Merry Pranksters, Weird Things About Me
Finding Kesey . Following the November 2016 election I knew it was time to get my own house in order. A year had been lost to a losing campaign, added to five years of On The Road domino-tumbling madness that had passed since my mother had passed in 2011, and there was a lot of […]
Tags: Grateful Dead·Jack Kerouac·Ken Kesey·Naropa·New York·The Hitchhiker's Guide to Jack Kerouac·Winnipeg
Gary Hart rally 1984 Washington Square
September 11th, 2016 · 12 Comments · New York City, Politics, Real-life Adventure Tales
How Rock Concerts Led To Politics . For most of ’80s I lived in Phyllis & Eddie Condon’s palatial apartment on Washington Square North. The NYU Program Board from where I ran the concerts was in the Loeb Student Center on Washington Square South — about a 3-minute walk away — if you didn’t dawdle […]
Tags: Bernie Sanders·Election 2016·Grateful Dead·Greenwich Village·Hillary Clinton·Washington Square Park·Winnipeg
Don’t be Denied — “Young Neil” book review
October 5th, 2014 · 22 Comments · Music
I’ve been waiting for this book for a long time! As a teenager in Winnipeg in the ’70s, Neil was a god to us. We drove the 500 miles to Minneapolis during grade 12 at Kelvin to see him for the first time — and to our great dumb-luck fortune, it was the Rust […]
Tags: Kelvin·Neil Young·perseverance·Toronto·Winnipeg
A Force of Nature — Enid E. Hassett
September 20th, 2011 · 40 Comments · Weird Things About Me
. Condolences, memories, and tributes to Enid have been coming in from — Indonesia, Vietnam, Nepal, Oman, Switzerland, Austria, England, Mexico . . . Los Angeles, Palm Springs, San Francisco, Lake Tahoe, Portland, Eugene, Seattle, the Olympic Peninsula, Missoula Montana, Colorado Springs, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Rochester Minnesota, Rochester New York, Phoenix, Dallas, Austin, Louisville, Detroit, Key […]
Tags: Alison Myrden·Austin·Brandon·Brian Hassett's mom·Condolences Enid Hassett·Deanna Waters·Enid Hassett·LitKicks·Ralph Stevens·Teri McLuhan·Winnipeg
A Song of Enid, I Sing
August 28th, 2011 · 36 Comments · Poetry, Weird Things About Me
Her father was an engineer on the CPR, so the whole family got to travel all over North America, when virtually no one in their town ever went more than a few miles from home. They had 5 sons, followed by 4 daughters, Enid being the first. They owned the first (and for a long time […]
Tags: Brandon·Brian Hassett's mom·Enid Bennett Brandon·Enid Hassett·Enid Hassett tribute·Gimli·Grateful Dead·Greenwich Village·Manitoba·Mayo Clinic·Walt Whitman·Winnipeg