Pitchers in the Clover

Three wee tykes
In fields at play
They made their pitch for lives ahead
Dreams in clover, dare to tread
Where are they now?
No one can say
Perhaps to dust they have returned
A final rest, well-loved, well-earned
The marks they made in history burned

 

Fanfare for the Unknown Couple

Ba, ba--bum ba ba
Pum pum ba ba bum ba ba
Lum de dum ba pum pum pum
ba, ba--bum ba ba
 

Man and Horse

Man and horse
A symbiosis 
Animal husbandry's
Ultimate gnosis
Strong back, fleet hooves
Domestication
Foundations of the horse-drawn nations
Bit and bridle, tack and saddle
A riding crop to act as paddle
An equal partnership, we say
But what of horse?
"I say thee neigh!" 


 

Two Ladies in Aylsham

That might be my grandmother on the right...or one of her sisters. 
 

Robert Stone Woods on the Farm

Dad's grandfather, Robert Stone Woods, sometime in the 1930s. He looks like a character from The Grapes of Wrath. 
 

Flash Gordon Approaching on a Hawkman Rocketcyle

I painted this model inspired by colours used by Alex Raymond in the Flash Gordon comic strips of the 1930s and 1940s and by images seen in the 1980 film adaptation. 
 

Night of the Nightstick

Here's a policeman who looks like he came straight out of a 1930s Warner Brothers gangster flick. He even looks a little like Ward Bond. 

 

Old-Time Radio

Here's a 28mm-scale 1930s radio, part of the Pulp Figures collection. I can almost hear Orson Welles now...

The Well of Lost Hopes

Robert N. Bradbury's dirt-cheap Western The Lawless Frontier includes a chase scene with John Wayne's generic cowboy of the month chasing the seedy villain Zanti. Unfortunately for the Duke, Zanti is on horseback while Wayne's cowboy is on foot. The chase appears hopeless for Wayne until Zanti needlessly and hilariously handicaps himself by smacking his head on a low-hanging branch while riding under a tree, knocking himself silly and losing his horse. Zanti, dazed, stumbles across the desert while John Wayne follows at a leisurely walking pace. Wayne catches up to Zanti just as the villain is trying to regain his strength and senses by drinking from a pool of water. 

The Duke: "Drink all you want. It's poison."

Camera cuts to a crude sign: "Do Not Drink. Poison." With a badly drawn skull.

Bad guy looks utterly stunned, then dies in the puddle of poison.

It was a beautiful moment in an otherwise forgettable film.  

The Colour Out of Time

The Vampire Bat (Frank R. Strayer, 1933) is an early mad scientist film disguised as a vampire movie, but other than that interesting conceit, there isn't much to distinguish this film from other horror efforts of the decade--other than a short sequence, captured above, where villagers chasing a monster (or so they think) are carrying torches that dance with vibrant hues of yellow, orange, and red. 

At first I thought I was watching some kind of strange experiment in restoration, a modern print of the film with some added CGI. But a little research revealed that the frames with colour were painstakingly hand-painted back when the film was originally produced. The effect is really quite beautiful and striking, and also adds thematic weight to the chase sequence, the hungry flames symbolizing the madness of the mob. 

Grandma and Granddad's Wedding

Way back in 1931, my maternal grandparents were married. Almost 90 years ago! Mind-boggling. 

George and Elizabeth in Saskatchewan

This photo was taken by one of my paternal grandparents back in June 1939, possibly in Moose Range, Saskatchewan. Stepping up to the rail we see King George and Queen Elizabeth I; this would have been shot during their 1939 tour of Canada. Grandma's writing on the back suggests that her brother-in-law, Lawrence Woods (yes, Woods; three brothers married three sisters), is in this photo somewhere; perhaps he's the fellow at the far left?

Pretty amazing they could get this close to the reigning monarch.

EDIT: Not Queen Elizabeth I, of course, but Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother. Elizabeth I reigned from 1558-1603. 

Baffled at the Raffles

Here is a pretty terrible picture of me at the famous Raffles hotel in Singapore in late 1996 or early 1997. It's a pretty nice hotel, although I could not afford to stay there at the time. Actually, I wonder if I could afford to stay now...probably not. I wish I'd been wearing a pith helmet and a bomber jacket. Parvesh was kind enough to take the photo.

This was over 20 years ago now! Good heavens. 

How Fortunate and Glorious!

 Sean bought me Fortune & Glory for my birthday, and today we tried out this game of 1930s derring-do for the first time. It's the perfect game for anyone who loves Republic serials and pulp adventure.

Each player in the game takes on the identity of a hero or heroine and attempts to gain fortune and glory by exploring ancient ruins and discovering valuable artifacts. Along the way, they'll face dangers such as deadly snakes, zombies, Nazis, mobsters and other nefarious menaces. In a competitive game, each player races to accumulate as much fortune (gold) as possible. In a cooperative game, players work together to defeat either the Mob or the Nazis, who of course are trying to take over the world.

In our first cooperative game, Sean and I randomly chose the characters of Jacques Moreau, a tomb raider, and Duke Dudley a British Lord. Each character has special attributes and abilities that will influence the player's approach to winning the game. Duke, for example, starts the game with one Fortune (represented by a plastic gold coin) and one piece of Gear, chosen randomly from the stack of Gear cards. I wound up with a bullwhip, useful as it adds +1 die to combat rolls. Here, Duke and Jaques meet up in Egypt, where we attempt to find the Helmet of Medusa. Each artifact has a danger level associated with it; in this case, we had to pass three randomly chosen Tests, or challenges, before securing the artifact. Unfortunately, we failed to discover the secret of the Ice Caves, represented by a randomly drawn Danger card, and our failure compelled us to flip the card over to reveal its accompanying Cliffhanger result:

Yeti Attack! But just as in the old movie serials, cliffhangers aren't resolved right away; you have to wait until your next turn. It's a great mechanic that adds a lot of suspense and fun to the game.

Meanwhile, the Nazi villains (represented by red figures) were successfully retrieving artifacts, earning infamy on the Villain Track and moving them closer to global domination. And all the while the Nazi Secret Base and War Zeppelin were depositing soldiers across the globe.

Sadly, Sean and I were overrun in our first playthrough, securing only one artifact before the bad guys took over the world. But we played enough to obtain a solid grasp of the rules, which was our chief goal today.

Fortune & Glory is a fun, fast-paced game of strategy and high adventure. It was great fun with two players, and I have to imagine that it would be even more riotous with more adventurers. The wide assortment of Adventure, Artifact, Gear, Villain, Location, Event and other cards provide immense replay value - no two adventures are the same. Supports 1-8 players - yes, you can play solitaire.