Author: Dan Dickinson

Not almost. Home.

Dan Dickinson2 Comments

Almost exactly one year ago I wrote what was the latest in a number of blog posts about the West Memphis Three. I’ve been following their case for nine years, ever since I read Mara Leveritt‘s book Devil’s Knot. I’ve watched the documentaries. I’ve followed the blogs. I own the t-shirt. I’ve felt personally, if of course distantly, frustrated by what seemed so obviously like a miscarriage of justice. I would get upset when I thought about it. But it drifted to the back of mind and hung out there like a curiosity, not a crusade. For years.

Then this morning, while sifting through tweets from last night on my phone, I saw this retweet from TIFF co-director Cameron Bailey:

@eug eugene hernandez
More on breaking West Memphis 3 story from Arkansas. Will PARADISE LOST subjects be freed tomorrow?? Incredible story: http://ow.ly/679w2

I started to get excited but had to stop myself. It felt like another false signal, like all the others before it…the new DNA evidence, the witnesses changing their stories, the emerging alternative suspects. But then more and more links showed up in my twitter stream. Then there was a hearing called with all sorts of clues…families in attendance, gag orders issues, the WM3 being moved along with all their possessions, and so on. I spent an hour at work, trying to simultaneously write a document, answer emails and watch the live feed outside the Jonesboro courthouse where the hearings were held. Twitter was exploding with news and speculation, as were the newscasters, so much noise and news and then John Mark Byers outside the courthouse like a mad giant ranting about Terry Hobbs, and then…this.

@wm3org WM3.org
Free!

Incredible. Unbelievable. Unfathomable, if I tried for a minute to imagine what they were feeling.

I watched the press conference where they all tried to process the fact that they were out, and free, and now staring down hundreds of cameras. All they wanted to do was go home and hug their families and sleep for a day and drink a beer and eat a Whopper or something, so the presser didn’t last long. No one cared but the reporters. The people who cared about the story wanted to see them walk out of the building. Most of the details about what had happened were already out anyway. Thousands of people who woke up never having heard of an Alford plea had learned the mechanics of how the deal was struck, and knew the technical admission of guilt wasn’t worth shit. But it was so, so moving to watch, just for those few minutes.

It tore my heart out to see Jessie Miskelley sitting there, looking lost. Maybe he didn’t understand what was happening, or was just having trouble believing it was real. Maybe it was all too overwhelming. Jason Baldwin kept rubbing Miskelley’s head, like a little brother, to say it was okay. And it broke my heart to see that, and wonder whether he’ll ever recover. Then Damien Echols thanked Jason, who didn’t want to take the deal but did anyway so Damien could get off of death row, and they hugged. And everyone lost it. Including me, a little. I don’t know these guys, but I felt anger at their plight, and at that exact second I guess I felt relief and satisfaction and, I think…joy.

And if I felt like that, a guy thousands of miles away, who’s never met them, never been in jail, never even been to Arkansas…if I felt all that, I couldn’t even comprehend what it must have been like for them and for their families.

Joy.

Free. The West Memphis Three. Free.

And I thought the other kind of calculus was bad

Dan Dickinson3 Comments

Last Sunday, after a late but enjoyable Saturday evening with friends, Nellie and I were enjoying a nice lazy lie-in, like any other Sunday morning. We didn’t have anywhere to be, so after a few hours we’d probably get up, go find some breakfast, maybe watch a movie, just enjoy the day.

Our plans changed slightly when I was awoken by an excruciating pain in the right side of my back. I’d never felt anything like this…not pulled muscles, not torn ligaments, not a broken wrist. I fell out of the bed, writhing on the floor in pain and generally freaking out because it felt like someone was stabbing me from the inside. Standing up, walking around, sitting down, twisting my back…nothing helped. Nellie, now convinced I didn’t just have a leg cramp or some other silly thing that was unnecessarily interrupting her sleep, was up too, Googling symptoms on her iPhone while I sat, twitching and trying to catch my breath. Nellie guessed kidney stones, and based on the region of the pain I was inclined to agree. Actually, I was inclined to claw that part out of my body, but whatever. A quick call to TeleHealth led us to think we were right, and made it very clear that a hospital visit was required here. I’m not afraid of hospitals, but neither do I enjoy them, so I normally do everything I can to avoid them. However, this was not an avoid-the-hospital scenario. I couldn’t even function.

So, off we walked to the ER at St. Mike’s, which was sure to be a treat on a Sunday morning. Actually, it was quite calm, apart from the kid who’d cooked himself on ecstasy the night before and woulnd’t shut up, and the screaming cursing ranting crazy guy strapped to the bed in the isolation room (who we could still hear), and the wailing meth addict who was admitted right behind us. Just a regular morning at St. Mike’s, I’m guessing, but they treated me as well as they always do. I was quickly on a bed, getting blood drawn and donating some urine, being pumped full of morphine (which didn’t do shit) and Toradol (whoooo!!!!), getting an ultrasound (really never thought I’d have one of those) and finally a CT scan. The doctor’s first guess was confirmed by the tests: yup, kidney stone. Renal calculus. Three of them, to be exact. Small enough, it seemed, to pass without surgery (unlike the dude a couple of beds over, who had one the size of a golf ball!) so they sent us home with prescriptions and best wishes.

We picked up the Percocet and Naproxin along with piles of other stuff at the drug store (never shop whilst high on Toradol), then got McDonald’s for lunch (Toradol: also a bad influence on lunch decisions), then went home to wait the little fuckers out.

That evening, about twelve hours after the Toradol went it, it started to wear off. I took two Percocet without eating anything but half an apple, and promptly puked it all back out. Can’t remember the last time I puked, and certainly not the last time I puked like that. This affliction just kept getting better.

After that I basically settled into two days of pain, nausea and fuzziness. I thought I’d be able to work from home, but I could barely lift myself out of bed when I was drugged and writhed in pain three hours later when they wore off. Seriously, you’d think that two Percocet and a Naproxin every six hours would keep me good and numb, but…nyet. I had just enough energy to drink my own weight in water, emptying and refilling my various containers every half hour or so.

In the wee hours of Wednesday morning, when I was on a ‘sleep for an hour, then pee’ cycle, I felt something…I don’t know, like a bump, in my groin. I looked down, saw a bunch of blood and what appeared to be wine sediment in the toilet, and figured the worst had passed. I did a little silent cheer, went back to the couch, and slept a few more hours. Telling Nellie the next morning felt like the times as a kid when I told my parents I won a tournament or an award at school. SO. PROUD. But mainly, I was just happy that my bladder-y region had stopped the constant spasming. That was weird. On Tuesday Michael (one of our cats) actually attacked my groin under a blanket because it wouldn’t stop twitching.

I spent the rest of Wednesday unfuzzing from the (no longer necessary) painkillers and by Thursday was back to work. Still with some fever and tenderness, but more or less back to normal. As I write this I nearly have my appetite back, I feel very little soreness and it actually seems like a vaguely fuzzy memory…like it happened years ago, or to someone else.

And that is why drugs freak me the hell out. That, and the wailing lady on the floor of the St. Michael’s emergency room.

TOCA

Dan Dickinson1 Comment

Last Friday CBGB joined Nellie and I at TOCA for dinner out, in honor of my birthday. But really, in honor of being out for dinner.

We chose to try the new Tom Brodi restaurant TOCA, in the Ritz Carlton. We met first in the TOCA bar, where we were greeted by a particularly awesome bar snack: candied bacon. I’ll say that again in case you were unclear about the awesomeness: candied fucking bacon. The bartender also kept us well supplied with some excellent wine (and cocktails for GB, because he’s like that) and pushed the Ontario selections, which made us happy.

Dinner was quite good, I thought. I had the TOCA Caesar with the B.C. spot prawns (and bacon tuile) and 50-day-aged Angus Beef ribeye. GB had the Dungeness crab marrow (which everyone raved about) and venison loin. Nellie and CB split the “fancy fish & chips” (beer-battered Yarmouth lobster) and then split the east coast scallops and Wellington County petit mignon for their mains. Somewhere in there was some awesome Yukon pomme puree and some asparagus. And all our wine (except the Amarone Nellie had for dessert) was from Ontario.

Speaking of dessert, it came in two stages. First was the cheese plate, and this is where TOCA has a very cool feature: a glassed-in cheese cave right in the middle of the dining room. We were able to take a quick tour and ask some questions in between courses, and get to know the cheese that came before our dessert: warm sticky toffee pudding. Delicious, even if there wasn’t quite enough of it. Nellie had another glass of Amarone, whilst GB and I had some Stratus dessert wine.

It was a very, very tasty night in a beautiful spot. Happy birthday to me.

No thieves, fakirs, rogues or tinkers. No skulking loafers or flea-bitten tramps.

Dan Dickinson1 Comment

This past weekend we partook of an Toronto tradition: braving northbound traffic to spend a night or two in nature, then braving the same traffic again heading back toward the city. Thankfully our friend’s cottage is on the right (right) side of Lake Simcoe so we avoided the worst of the weekend traffic and instead just got to enjoy the cottage and their company.

There was food and drink (the latter mostly VQA!) in our 24 hours there. There was kayaking and sitting on docks. There was sunshine and turtle-catching. There was peach pie and a Nova Scotia flag. Most importantly, there was beautiful weather and relaxation with friends.

Traffic can suck it.

A tale told by an idiot, etc., etc.

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

I’m listening to both the US Congress and US Senate debate the deal to raise the debt ceiling, and shaking my head. What theatre. What grandstanding. What utter bullshit.

You don’t have to search long to find opinions condemning the entire exercise as political masturbation and a display of leverage by a vocal minority of the American body politic. CNN alone has posted two opinions on their front page in which a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton criticizes the entire situation, while David Frum — yes, that David Frum!! — slams the Republican party itself for letting itself become hijacked by an extremist arm.

Perhaps the best summary I’ve heard of the whole mess, and of the consequences likely to follow — is another CNN contributor: Fareed Zakaria.

“My basic point is that this is a crisis that we have manufactured out of whole cloth. We have created a circumstance in which the world doubts our credibility, rating agencies are thinking of downgrading our debt and the dollar’s role as the world’s reserve currency could be jeopardized.

Please understand that none of these things are happening because the United States is running deficits. There was no indication – by any metric – that the United States was having difficulty borrowing money one month ago. In fact, the world has been lending money to the United States more cheaply than ever before.

We face downgrades and investor panic not because of our deficits but because we are behaving like deadbeats, refusing to pay our bills, pouting while the bill collector waits at the door.”

I urge you to read (or listen to) the entire piece. It gives some indication of the potential consequences looming in the distance, still blurry and hard to hear what with the political cacophony going on in Washington. Not just for America, mind you; we shouldn’t be surprised if some of that sound and fury radiates out to the rest of the world.

Side note: if by chance you feel like throwing up your hands and completely disavowing any faith in humanity, I urge you to read the comment section of that — or nearly any — CNN article.

Clap for the wolftrap

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

Despite it being nearly three days shorter than I’d intended, the trip to Nova Scotia Nellie and I just wrapped up was a pretty good one.

We arrived in good time Wednesday night, and spent Thursday catching up with family whilst enjoying sunshine, taking walks, observing hummingbirds (more than a dozen frequent my parents’ kitchen window), playing catch, scratching dogs and eating everything in sight. We were also quite glad we were not back in Toronto for the 51-degree heat.

That evening many people stopped by the house to say hello and catch up with my parents and brothers. My friend Adam came, and we caught up for the first time in years.

On Friday some of that Toronto heat made its way east to us, and we had to take shelter from the sun and humidity as best we could. That meant crib, playing catch in the shade and (naturally) more eating. We couldn’t escape the heat entirely though, as we helped our dad make three batches of maple cream and bottle some syrup while the ladies were off at the spa.

That night we drove into the town where we went to high school and met up with a few of my brother’s old classmates. We soon switched locales from the old tavern to Bare Bones, the lone decent spot in town as far as I can tell, where they had live music (Jenny MacDonald, on this particular night) and better wine. It was there that I had a completely random bump-into with a friend from high school, who I hadn’t seen since he graduated in 1992. But we recognized one another right away and, in the few minutes that we had to catch up, realized that we share a favourite beer: Maudite. It’s a small, tasty world.

Saturday morning we got up early and drove back to Halifax. Along the way we saw a deer walking along a riverbank, a young bear running into the woods and five cattle running down the Trans Canada median. I can’t explain that last one; I just know what I saw. Our family and our sister-in-law’s family had a get-together planned for the afternoon, but our early appointments at the airport (approved for Nexus passes…woot!) meant we had a few hours to kill, so we checked in to our hotel and found a spot on the Hart & Thistle patio. We’d been meaning to try out the new gastropub since we heard it opened. The food was nothing to write home about, but the beer was good — we each had a brewed-in-house Preacher Man’s Daughter hefeweizen to start, followed by a Propeller hefeweizen. It was just a hefeweizen kind of afternoon, apparently.

Rain hampered the family get-together somewhat, but we piled into someone’s lovely home to catch up and break bread. It brought back memories of France four years ago, when we were all together last, and the times we had there. Except with kids this time. Nellie and I said our goodbyes to everyone just after dinner as we had plans with friends, plans that involved me finally having a couple of drinks after so many nights of being on medications and/or acting as designated driver.

Another new Halifax joint we wanted to try out was Obladee wine bar. Four friends joined us there, and we perched in the window (the same table as the ladies you see in the picture on their website) trying several glasses of very yummy wine. I had an Alsatian Riesling whose name I can’t recall right now; a Bonterra organic Chardonnay; a Domaine Bernard Beaudry Chinon; an Arboleda Carmenere; The Wolftrap, from Franschhoek South Africa; and a Luigi Bosca Reserva Syrah. All were terrific, even the Riesling which was — as advertised — bone fucking dry.

It’s too bad we were stuffed from the family do — they had lots of charcuterie and cheese on offer too. Ah well; next time.

All in all it was a great, if abbreviated, getaway. Lots of family time, a few old friends, some excellent new finds in Halifax and, maybe most importantly, a gentle reminder that I really did grow up someplace beautiful.

"This isn't going to have a happy ending."

Dan Dickinson1 Comment

Yesterday Roger Ebert made his case for Se7en (imdb | rotten tomatoes) to be designated a great movie. There was a question? It’s been one of my all-time favourites pretty much from the day I saw it, but Ebert — naturally — does a much better job of describing why it’s great than I ever could. He made me remember all the things I love about it. Sure, the obvious elements like acting and script are there, but it’s little things, side things, nuances, style. Things like:

  • R. Lee Ermey, who had auditioned to play John Doe but instead wound up playing the captain, and thank god. He’s amazing, and the lone spot of levity* in the film: “Wake up, limber twins!” and “This isn’t even my desk!”
  • Mills is a terrible dresser, because of course he is. He’s just moved from a small town and has no money and so his ties don’t match and his jackets and pants are old. It would have been easy for Brad Pitt to insist on looking dapper for the movie, but I’m glad he didn’t.
  • The way Mills tells his impromptu tipster “You eat something. You eat.” with all the hopefulness of a cop who hasn’t spent much time around crack addicts.
  • The way John Doe says “Detective…detective…DETECTIVE!!!!!!” and the ~20 seconds that follow.

I’m watching it again as I type this, and I actually saw something new. Something I’d never noticed in the dozens of times I’ve watched it. In the dinner scene in the Mills’ apartment, when Somerset asks Mills for a glass of wine Mills bring about a quart of it in a highball glass. Somerset is engrossed in the case file and doesn’t pay attention until a passing subway makes everything shake; when he reaches for his wine to keep it from spilling, he realizes what kind of glass Mills has brought him. His expression makes a perfect transition from “What the hell?” to “Sweet Jesus, this kid is an idiot.” in the space of about a second. It’s brilliant.

The whole film, goddamned all of it. Brilliant.

* Except for one line from Mills: “Heeeeee’s aaaaaaa nutbag. Just ’cause the fucker’s got a library card doesn’t make him Yoda.”

Sweet Feeling

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

These are the songs which will make up a new CD I’m going to bring home for my dad:

  1. Robert Plant . “Central Two-O-Nine”
  2. Rogue Wave . “I’ll Never Leave You”
  3. Joshua James . “Mother Mary”
  4. Band Of Horses . “Bartles + James”
  5. Basia Bulat . “The Shore”
  6. Uncle Tupelo . “Satan, Your Kingdom Must Come Down”
  7. Sharon Van Etten . “I Wish I Knew”
  8. Black Rebel Motorcycle Club . “Sweet Feeling”
  9. Low Anthem . “The Horizon Is A Beltway”
  10. Camera Obscura . “Country Mile”
  11. Fleet Foxes . “Sim Sala Bim”
  12. Sufjan Stevens . “Chicago”
  13. Wanda Jackson . “Shakin’ All Over”
  14. Junip . “Don’t Let It Pass”
  15. Soulsavers . “You Will Miss Me When I Burn”
  16. Decemberists . “January Hymn”
  17. Middle Brother . “Blood And Guts”

My predictions: he will love Robert Plant, Uncle Tupelo and Wanda Jackson songs, and possibly the Fleet Foxes as well. He will not care for Junip or Basia Bulat (though my mom might, as there’s autoharp involved) or Sufjan Stevens. He will want to like The Low Anthem but he will hate the guy’s voice too much.

Note to self: buy "iPus" trademark

Dan Dickinson2 Comments

I should be on a plane right now. I should be flying home to my family’s farm, to join my parents and my two brothers (one of whom flew in from Sydney on Saturday night) and their families. But I’m not. I’m still in Toronto. I changed my flight from this morning to Wednesday because I’ve been sick since last Monday, and showed no signs of being able to fly today. My head, she would have asploded.

This is, without a doubt, the sickest I have ever been. I had strep throat (wtf?) and a sinus infection at the same time. Sneezing, coughing, dry throat, severe headaches, dizziness, fever, and — the pièce de résistance — pus coming out of my eyes. For serious, people, eye pus. Oy.

Anyway, last night — for the first time in a week — I slept for more than a couple of hours, and today I feel a lot better than I have. Still not 100%, and certainly my sinuses would not have tolerated a 3-hour flight involving two descents, but it’s improvement. At this point I just want to feel normal again, and then go see my family.

On the plus side, being at home this much has allowed me to read the first two Game Of Thrones books, and I’ve just started the third. I don’t think I could have done that on a backlit screen, what with the headaches, but Nellie got me a super-awesome early birthday gift: a Kobo eReader touch. Thank the gods, I’d have gone mental otherwise.