Happy in Toronto at NXNE

/0 Comments/in , , , /by

For the fourth consecutive year I’ve traveled to Toronto for the North by Northeast festival (NXNE); to see my client ExpertFile.com; and hold some publishing meetings. I am having a great week and have been posting frequently on Twitter and Facebook about the great events I’ve attended, and on the sister blog to this one, HonouraryCanadian.com, where I wrote about comedian and podcaster Marc Maron’s rousing keynote remarks.

Late last night I lucked in to an impromptu show at the great venue the Cameron House w/one of my musical heroes, Matt Mays. He had been invited by frontman Sam Cash to sit in with his band the Romantic Dogs. Matt began by leading the band, and the audience, in Neil Young’s “Helpless.” Matt and I spoke afterward, exchanging heartfelt appreciations. I conveyed my condolences for the sudden loss last year of his bandmate Jay Smith. He thanked me for remembering his old friend. I told him about Honourary Canadian and he told me he was already a reader of the blog. Thrilled to hear that, I gave him my card for which he thanked me and said it would be going in “a special place.” Here’s a shot of Sam and Matt from last night:

I’ll also be posting more here about NXNE after I return to NYC next week.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Read more

Did Allied Bombing of France in WWII Cross an Ethical Line?

/0 Comments/in /by

Are you aware that during WWII, British, American, and Canadian airplanes bombed Nazi infrastructure and installations in occupied France, or that an estimated 57,000 French civilians died from Allied actions during the war? I was not until last night, when I heard an in-depth report by BBC correspondent John Laurenson that CBC Radio carried on their weekend news program. In Laurenson’s story, the transcript of which can be read here, with several illustrations, he added that Free French forces pleaded for a halt to the raids, to no avail. Meanwhile, the Vichy government—cooperating and collaborating with the Nazis all the while—tried to turn the populace away from any sympathy for the Allied cause by decrying the bombardment.

Laurenson narrates that “According to research carried out by Andrew Knapp, history professor at the UK’s University of Reading, ‘Roughly 75,000 tonnes of bombs were dropped on the UK [including Hitler’s V missiles]. In France, it [was] in the order of 518,000 tonnes.’” Incredible, but apparently accurate. Some of the raids—especially the one pictured here that leveled Le Havre, killing 5,000 inhabitants of the city—would under today’s international agreements, probably be regarded as war crimes. More than 1,500 French towns were hit during the war.

DeGaulle must’ve lobbied Churchill, and FDR, to stop the raids that aimed to hit “marshaling areas,” as the Allies phrased it. But it was the conduct of Marshall Petain and his government that most concerned the Allies,. This topic, and the scale of French casualties, was taboo for many decades, with the moral ambiguity that had shrouded the war years in France. According to this report, many French were conflicted about the bombing campaign. They didn’t ‘support’ it, but many were ashamed of the conduct by the Vichy leaders, and hoped the Allies would prevail. In that context, the deaths of civilians was in some ways as expected, if not excused, as that of combatants. It was total war. Along with the above figure on the French casualties, at least 60,500 British civilians died from the German aerial bombardment. On D-Day itself, in 1944, 2,500 Allied combatants died, while about the same number of French civilians died that day.

Though I don’t excuse certain aspects of the Allied bombing, which has been examined and as far as I can tell, convincingly indicted in A.C. Grayling’s important book, Among the Dead Cities: The History and Moral Legacy of the WWII Bombing of Civilians in Germany and Japan, I think I have a sense of some of the priorities and concerns that may have preoccupied all the Allied heads of state (Churchill and FDR, and also Mackenzie King, Canadian Prime Minister during the war, whose fighter pilots also flew bombing runs over France). They weren’t certain the Allies would win, and so believed in, or rationalized, some bombing that crossed an ethical line.  As for the crews who flew those missions they were lethal for them, too, for Laurenson adds about the British flyers: “Almost half of Bomber Command’s airmen were killed in action. Their missions, their commanders argued, would help win the war more quickly.”

In the case of Churchill, in particular, I don’t mean to cut him any slack he doesn’t deserve. I’ve read Nicholson Baker’s Human Smoke: The Beginnings of World War II, the End of Civilization, where Churchill’s belligerence is on display, and in his own words for it’s a book assembled entirely from original documents. And, yet I must concede that he fought the war like he feared the Nazis might win, a possible outcome that would have been even more detestable than the moral crimes he committed, or may have committed.  I recommend you read Laurenson’s story here.

Read more

Taking a Page from Honourary Canadian

/0 Comments/in , , , , /by

As readers of this blog may have noticed, I started a second blog in 2013, called Honourary Canadian: Seeing Canada From Away. After starting this blog in 2011, I was often posting about Canada, and a couple years in, decided to start a second site devoted to Canadian topics, where I’d offer my views of Canada for Canadians and others interested in the country. I aspire to the perspective and the work of Alistair Cooke, who broadcast and wrote knowledgeably and sensitively about America, after moving to the US from England. Like this site, at the new blog I write about Canadian books, publishing, live music, media, and politics, with the cross-cultural perspective of a respectful outsider. I’ve been sharing HC links here from time to time and integrating the two sites one with another, for instance setting up a feed so the latest posts from each site are readily visible and linked to on the other. The two blogs are sort of like siblings, with this one the older brother.

I’m posting here today to let Great Gray Bridge readers know I recently published a new entry at Honourary Canadian called Why I Started This Blog and Call It Honourary Canadian, which explores my lifelong interest in the neighbor to the north. I invite you to read it. It’s a memoiristic piece that chronicles many trips I’ve made in Canada since childhood, beginning with Expo ’67 when I was just twelve years old; authors whose books I’ve read and published; bands I’ve seen live and become friendly with; and reflections on differences between the US and Canada, and the media in both countries. Along with the essay, I’ve included dozens of scenic photographs, book covers, band photos, and scans of letters I received from Canadian novelist Robertson Davies, with whom I had a lengthy correspondence when I ran Undercover Books in the 1980s.

At the top of this entry is a shot of that new post, which will give you a sense of what the new site looks like if you’ve not visited yet. Just as I found a visual touchstone for this blog from a scenic landmark—the George Washington Bridge, aka the Great Gray Bridge, and the little red lighthouse—I found visual inspiration for the new site in a true wonder of the world, the majestic Percé Rock (aka le rocher percé or ‘pierced rock’), a huge rock face on eastern Quebec’s Gaspé Peninsula, a veritable lobster tail jutting in to the Gulf of St. Lawrence where it meets the Atlantic Ocean. Below is a pic of what that post looks like. If you enjoy awe-inspiring scenery, I recommend you check out the whole post, which includes many photos I took during a visit there in 1988. In fact, I invite you to visit Honourary Canadian, and have a look around. 

Read more

Observing Holidays without Exclusion, including this Mother’s Day

/0 Comments/in /by

PT & SylviaI don’t like when holidays became all but compulsory to observe. With religious holidays it’s particularly unwelcome, but even secular celebrations can get that way, carrying the weight of oppressive tyranny by a majority group. It’s like the Supreme Court’s recent ruling on prayer, basically overlooking that in that case, the public meetings in Rome, NY, began with prayers of one dominant faith, over and over again, for years. The plaintiffs documented an almost total monopoly ely Christian benedictions, yet the majority of justices voted to allow these regular observances, as if the exclusivity didn’t matter, or shouldn’t have been seen as contrary to the US constitution.


It was the above tweet by Mona Eltahawy that got me thinking about all this, even as I’ve been enjoying memories of my own mother and my whole family, today. Eltahawy’s an outspoken Egyptian-American feminist I admire, about whom I first wrote in 2011, when she was beaten and mistreated by Egyptian security officials. I approve of her affirmation that a person who isn’t a parent is not a lesser person. Also, let’s remember that many of our holidays are promoted and brought to us by the greeting card industry, the chocolatiers, the florists (in NYC, the cost of flowers is higher on holidays). Those businesses are entitled to make a living, too, but sometimes it all just get to be too much.

With that slightly misanthropic sentiment out of the way, I want to say happy Mother’s Day to all who observe it, and note how grateful we are to our mothers, those who came before and those in our midst still, improving the lives of their children and so many people around them.  Here are pictures of all, or nearly all, the mothers in my life, along with other relations. Included in these pictures are my late mother Sylvia Turner (1921-2006), who married Earl (1918-1994); Sylvia’s father, Louis Shiff (1901-94); Earl’s sister, my Aunt Francis (1922-2009); Sylvia and Earl’s eldest child, my sister Pamela, mother of Ben and Emma; Sylvia and Earl’s middle child, my late brother Joel (1951-2009); me with my mother Sylvia; and Kyle Gallup, my wife and mother of our son, Ewan Munro Turner, a baby in 1996.

Read more

Indie Musical Instrument Store Flourishing 100s of Miles from a Big City

/0 Comments/in , /by


I was delighted to see this article in the New Hampshire Union-Leader, reporting on Northern Lights, in Littleton, NH, where my singer-songwriter son Ewan Turner has gotten one of his favorite guitars, a Fender acoustic. The store was founded by Dan and Moochco Salomon, two friends and classmates from Franconia College, where we all went to school in the 1970s. It’s a good-news article by John Koziol emphasizing how the couple have managed, since 1978, to make the store in to a destination for musicians and avid players. They carry keyboards, drums, and other instruments, and really specialize with a fabulous guitar selection, with instrument prices that range from $100 to $95,000, the latter for a 1957 Gibson Les Paul Goldtop. They operate from a rustic wooden building they own that was erected in 1833, on Main Street of one of the most livable small towns in the eastern U.S., roughly equidistant from Boston, Portland, ME, Burlington, VT, and Montreal, Quebec. They carry many fine guitar brands, including Martin, Taylor and Santa Cruz, which has only sixty authorized dealers in the whole country, and benefit from what Koziol reports is, “according to the April 2014 issue of Music Trades magazine…a ‘golden age’ for acoustic guitars with the market for acoustics costing more than $1,500 up 40 percent in 2013 over 2012.” I would add it seems to me a phenomenon similar to that which is fueling the renewal of vinyl’s popularity as a format for recorded sound.

I’m very happy that this store operated by my friends Dan and Moochco is doing well, thirty-six years after they first opened their doors. It reminds me that yesterday, May 4th, was the thirty-sixth anniversary of the opening of Undercover Books, the indie bookstore chain that I operated from 1978-85 with my sibling and parents, and which still ran as an online book ordering service until my brother Joel’s death in 2009. Congrats to Dan and Moochco, I hope to see them at Northern Lights sometime soon! Meantime, I invite you to see a picture of them in this screenshot from the article, and read it all via this link. Northern Lights

Read more

Possible Photo of Lincoln’s Funeral Procession Prompts Personal Reflections of a Missing Friend

/4 Comments/in , /by


When I had my bookstore, Undercover Books, we stocked and sold a majestic photography book called The Face of Lincoln, which collected every known photograph of Lincoln. It came out in 1979. Face of LincolnA few years later, I gave it as a wedding present to my Franconia College classmate and close friend Robert Henry Adams, who after college in New Hampshire had moved back to his hometown of Chicago where he became a dealer in rare books, prints, and fine art. The third member of our troika of friendship was Karl Petrovich, a dear friend to both of us. A few years after that, by which time I had moved to NYC, Rob gave me an original Lincoln photograph by Alexander Gardner, a contemporary of Matthew Brady. Sadly, Rob died in 2001, a dear friend whom I still miss all the time. Karl died a few months after Rob, early in 2002.Lincoln by Gardner

I thought of Rob yesterday when I heard CBC As It Happens’ interview with a US archivist who believes that a fellow staffer of his recently discovered a photograph of Lincoln’s funeral procession as it passed in front of Grace Church at Broadway and 10th Street in Manhattan, near where Matthew Brady had his photographic studio. It’s a segment that would’ve fascinated him, and he would have had an educated opinion about whether these pictures do show the Lincoln funeral. You may listen to the story about the discovery via this link. Along with pictures of The Face of Lincoln and the Lincoln photo Rob gave me here are some more shots: of Rob himself, with me; Karl Petrovich; his wife Sandra Adams; his sons, Jesse and Sam; and my wife Kyle Gallup. Cross-posted on Honourary Canadian.

Read more

#FridayReads, March 14–Jan Wong’s Memoir of Depression, “Out of the Blue”

/1 Comment/in /by

Out of the Blue


Triggered by a death threat targeting her for a story she wrote, Wong–a career reporter–does a superb job investigating and striving to understand her own illness.

Read more