Two ETAs: First, if you missed it last night and can see it tonight (Saturday the 24th), be sure to catch CBC's The Montreal Canadiens: 100 Years documentary (11 pm Newfoundland Time, 9:30 Eastern). Not only will you see a great show about the best damn hockey team of all time (subjectively speaking), you will also see one of that best damn hockey teams biggest fans.
Second, this video belongs with this entry just as much as all the rest:
Land Of The Second Chance, Russell Crowe (and Alan Doyle) & The Ordinary Fear Of God
I will never hear this song without seeing Alan's foot stomping out the beat as his guitar comes in.
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A quick "business" note: As of this Tuesday (January 27th), I'll be offline for a time, not sure exactly how long - at the most 15 days, but it could be a bit less. During that time, I'm going to shut down the Comments function here because the comments have a way of being gobbled up by the Blogmonster when too much time passes while awaiting approval. This also means those who use the blog instead of my (often full) email account can't get ahold of me here and also shouldn't try the email account because I won't be able to check either for some time. I'll open it all back up again as soon as I can get back online. But if you need to say anything to me now, do it before the morning of the 27th. Unless I am even more disorganised than usual, I should get one more entry up before then.
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For those short on time and long on imagination, this picture says as much as all the words - all my words, that is - that follow after it. And more.
When I can write the story this face tells, the book is done. And bonus points to those who understand this in no way means the book is all about Alan.
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Anyone familiar with Newfoundland and Newfoundlanders already knows that December here is all about Home, as so many of the Newfoundlanders who live Away - no further geographical designation needed to understand all that needs to be understood...Home and Away will suffice - find the means and fight the weather, making their annual Christmas migrations back again. Beginning some time around mid-December, the planes come in fully loaded, then head back out again nearly empty to pick up the next and the next and the next migratory flock...carrying them all Home - for a little while. The Christmas tide rolls in with warmth in the face of the inevitable storm and laughter in the face of the impending departure. It is sweetness and sorrow, delight and heartache, pleasure and pain. It is December in St. John's.
What might be less known to some is that January here is just as much about Home, perhaps even more so, than is December. Where December is about Coming Back, January is about Leaving Again; most of all January is about Those Who Stay. It is thoughtful and wistful, quiet and grateful. Those who stay give the angels thamks, and then they settle in for the long wait until cherised tide rolls in again.
It is January in St. John's, and the wind cuts like a knife. What Russell Crowe had to say in today's Sydney Daily Telegraph in honour of Austraila Day 2009 is as true here as it is beneath summer's sun on the other side of the world,
From the Daily Telegraph
What Australia means to Russell Crowe
By Russell Crowe
January 24, 2009 12:00am

IT WAS a couple of years ago now, but this is how I remember the story. I went to Bill & Toni's restaurant one day.
Ordered a latte and Vegemite and tomato on turkish bread. When I went outside the tables were all full. An elderly man at a table of aged gentlemen gestured to the empty chair beside him.
"Russell, please, come sit to Mario (below)," is how I remember the offer of a seat.
Special section: Australia Day 2009
I was working on a new record at the time. A morning or two previously I had sent to my songwriting partner, Alan Doyle, a photograph of a Charles Blackman painting that depicted a cane cutter, head bowed in the fields, a Florentine dome beyond the sugar cane and three women floating in the air. It was called The Dream Of The Cane Cutter: Passing Angels. For some reason, I thought there was a song in that painting.
"Let's write a song about cane cutters," was the note I attached to the picture.
Alan is from Newfoundland, a member of the Canadian band Great Big Sea.
"What is a cane cutter?" came the reply.
So, there I am at Bill & Toni's an hour or two later and I took up Mario's offer and sat down. We exchanged pleasantries for a while, coffee arrived.
Our conversation got a little deeper. I asked Mario when he had come to Australia.
That was the moment my morning disappeared and I was transported back in time. To the deprivation and lack of hope in post-war Italy, to a town called Luka, outside Firenze and a young man working temporarily in the emigration office who managed to slip his own name on to the list of travellers. Initially the plan was that he and his girlfriend would go together, but her parents got involved and she didn't make the journey.
Soon he found himself aboard a ship, hearing the tall tales about this country of snakes and spiders and heat called Australia; his destination. It was on that ship that he first heard that cutting cane in Queensland was the best-paid job for an unskilled migrant like himself.
He tried Sydney first, things didn't work out and he remembered that shipboard conversation about Queensland so he headed that way.
After his first season he was able to buy a car, he drove to all the places he'd heard Italian immigrants had settled, looking for a wife. He found himself back at the cane fields, alone.
At one point somebody in Rockhampton arranged the marriages of 12 Italian men to 12 Spanish women.
As he said to me, "Spanish is not Italian, but it's close".
He told me he knew the moment he saw the woman allocated to him that their union would be impossible. She was too beautiful to want the likes of him. She made some comments about the stains on his teeth from chewing sugar cane all day and asked how he would feel about her seeing other men socially when he was away working. He told her that this was a new world, that the ancient rules of their European homelands didn't count.
She was very sceptical, and told him his attitude was unworthy. He said to her he would prove his worth in the next harvesting season, working double shifts and he would bring back to her the money that he would make, to show he was good husband material.
When he got back to Rockhampton flush with wealth, he found she had moved on, with someone else.
"A handsome man," he told me.
It was then that Mario got taken up by two of his adopted homeland's favourite pastimes. Drinking heavily and gambling. One time he remembered getting drunk in Queensland and waking up in Sydney.
He took that as a sign, sobered up and got himself a job on a building site.
He made friends with the foreman on the basis that he had a car and could drive him to work every day.
There was a new product around then called aluminium windows. The foreman let Mario learn all about them because he couldn't see the use of them.
A little time later, though, with the advent of skyscrapers across the Sydney skyline, the man who knew all about aluminium windows was in great demand all over town. Mario pointed out to me a few of the buildings he worked on.
At some point he got married, had a child, who had children. The day I meet him, he'd just come back from the dentist with new dentures.
He visits Italy every now and then, but the life he has had, the experiences that made him a man, are Australian experiences. Mario is a product of, and has grown with, his environment.
Mario is Australian.
Once a week, at Bill & Toni's, he'll get together with the men he has known since the 1950s.
A lot of them former cane workers, it's casual, but it's formal enough to be weekly, they sit outside and tell the same stories, drink coffee and red wine out of the same small and sturdy glasses and to a man they thank God for the second chance at life that Australia gave them.
I walked home to Woolloomooloo, stared at the Blackman painting again.
You see, I'm an immigrant too. I understand the feeling and have experienced the gratitude of being blessed and accepted by a country that I wasn't born in.
I call Australia: "The land of the second chance", and that's what I called the song we wrote for Mario.
Russell Crowe wrote for The Daily Telegraph as part of the Australia Day Council's Australian Identity and Culture program.
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The song that Russell and Alan crafted from Mario's story:
Land Of The Second Chance (Crowe/Doyle 2005, My Hand My Heart CD)
He didn’t say her name; he described her with a tear
In 1952 he left that girl and made his way down here
And the ocean raged around him, cleansed his soul and sharpened his aim
He was coming down to Queensland to cut the Sugarcane
Chorus
Burning Field
Bow my head and bend my back and I will kneel
I’ll give the angels thanks
For bringing me here and guiding my hand in this land
The Land of the Second Chance
In ’53 he bought a car with the proceeds of the season
He travelled three States, coast and bush wandering without a reason
He was driving away her memory, driving himself insane
Then he drove back up to Queensland to cut the Sugarcane
Chorus
Burning Field
Bow my head and bend my back and I will kneel
I’ll give the angels thanks
For bringing me here and guiding my hand in this land
The Land of the Second Chance
Troppo is not tropical it’s Italian for crazy in the heat
He got arranged to a Spanish girl but she didn’t like his canecutter’s teeth
That season he tripled his workload to prove he was worthy of her hand
When he got back up to Rockhampton, she’d taken off with a handsome man
Five or six years on a gambler’s drunk, he woke up in Sydney one morning
A thousand miles south of his last night out so he took it as the angels warning
That car got him a job fitting aluminium window frames
Floating above the big city, far away from the Sugarcane
Chorus
Burning Field
Bow my head and bend my back and I will kneel
I’ll give the angels thanks
For bringing me here and guiding my hand in this land
The Land of the Second Chance
Bridge
Forty-five years of married life,
Children and children’s children
He can still point to where he fitted the glass
And smiles when you recognise the buildings
Most of his mates have seen the pearly gates but there’s a few that have survived.
They sit here and drink espresso
Like it’s Florence – “Firenze, prima della guerra” (Florence, before the war)
Back in 1935
On a front table at Bill and Toni’s he told me his story on Stanley Street
A little hard to understand that day Mario got brand new teeth
Fifty-three years he’s been here and he says he’s never looked back
A fortunate find for a lucky guy
The Land of the Second Chance
Chorus
Burning Field
Bow my head and bend my back and I will kneel
I’ll give the angels thanks
For bringing me here and guiding my hand in this land
The Land of the Second Chance
The Land of the Second Chance
The Land of the Second Chance
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I remember Russell holding crowds spellbound with Mario's story on sultry January nights in a land where the moon consorted with unfamiliar companions. I remember Canberra on Australia Day in 2006, standing on the grounds in front of Parliament House with tens of thousands of Australians who were giving the angels thanks while Russell and Alan and the rest of the band performed Land Of The Second Chance. It was the last show of the tour, the last show before the first show of the next tour; it was Alan's last show with Russell and his band.
The road had been hard and long and would soon become harder and longer. I was already weary and bruised and beset by doubt; I could wax poetic and say Canberra was an Act Of Hope, but it would be more honest to say that the only way I made it to Canberra that Australia Day Past was because of a purely stubborn refusal to leave the best part of my heart behind. Then again, perhaps that's an apt enough description of many if not most Acts Of Hope.
Canberra was amazing. Russell and Alan and the band were amazing. Alan was amazing; he made me weak in the knees. I held onto the best part of my heart, and I have never looked back, never regretted, never stopped giving the angels thanks for Australia Day in Canberra.
As well as for January in St. John's.