cancelled due to losses in stock market 140,000 attendees are large scale but ratio of cost to expenses tipped it into the red. crap. crap.

Ottawa Writers’ Festival Series: Uppal

I’ll be reading from my new novel, To Whom It May
Concern (Doubleday Canada), which is set in Ottawa. (For your interest, I’ve
attached a sheet of current review highlights of the book.) I will be reading
with Chris Cleave who has been flown in from the U.K.

Here are the details:

Thursday February 19th at 7 PM
OTTAWA Writers Festival Reading Series
Priscila Uppal and Chris Cleave

Saint Brigid’s Centre for the Arts and Humanities
314 Saint Patrick Street (at the corner of Cumberland)

The event is FREE. Please feel free to bring friends!
It’s a great place to buy a copy of the book for yourself or as a gift and have
it signed!

Best wishes,
Priscila Uppal

Ok so, my WordPress journal was fine at 1 pm and at 6 pm has no entries, although the database of the comments are intact. Interesting. The backup was one entry ago but still, technology is made of choreographed gnats, isn’t it.

The MySql table of posts crashed. It’s back due to the wondrous hub.

b
start a letter

a letter in
I’m fudged, no.
that’s ambigui

starting a cor
respon-

dance a pho-
neme along
into a thought

perish me I’ve
lost my
place among pen’s –

OSI prompt 48, if I had time and sent along to the next person in the list for the perennial postcard project.

rob’s latest house: a (tiny) memoir reminds me there was a record player. It’s funny I’d forgotten about records existing until recently. and huh, neat stories. And Pooh’s person had a name. Never thought of that.

The record player was and is off limits. Although I snuck a finger at the fabric of the speaker when I was small, but got caught and chided. I was never allowed to touch mom’s record player. It was rarely out from under its bit of spare orange and avocado 70s fabric with ragged edge. Everything in the house was and is covered in remnant fabrics or cut plastic bag with elastic to keep out dust. Silks flowers, picture frames, vases, lamp shades, CD player, dishes, packets of pens, stacks of books. I expect if dad naps too long, one dad he’ll be popped under a plastic.

I had one record Sally Go Round the Sun record my uncle gave mom for me of children’s chants. when I was past the age of them. I remember Charlie Pride and how I wasn’t to move or make sound while it played. Like cakes in the oven, somehow as I understood at the time the music would fall. I wasn’t sure of the mechanism by which I would harm the record. It started flatter than a pancake.

Any bounce she was sure would make the needle bounce.

When it didn’t play, I’d sing “The Snakes Crawl at Night” which my mom found regrettable but unshushable. I liked a song about snakes. Not until high school did I understand the snake was an expression and it was about murder 1.

I got 45s at one point. My Name is Luka. And Karma Chameleon. I went into a record store. I’d never been in there before. I bought them with my own money. My mom disapproved of the expenditure since all money should be for university but she didn’t oppose beyond her first objection.

Was it one trip? My guesstimate was ’85 from the access of the Entertainment Tonight and MuchMusic spots in them but Vega’s song was in ’87 and Boy George’s in ’83. Or did I learn of Boy George’s song only later?