Good evening,

Thanks again for this opportunity to participate!

Russell Hoban’s birthday began, in White Rock, British Columbia, Canada, with a menacing darkness squatted defiantly over Semiahmoo Bay. My yellow paper had been wrapped in plastic, as always, to protect it from an inevitable rain coast pelting – and subsequent melting – of Mr. Hoban’s words, but the particularly unwelcoming weather kept me inside until early afternoon …

At 2:00 PM Pacific Standard Time, on Russell Hoban’s naming day when he come 86, the dark clouds parted and the sun shone down. I headed down to the beach with my lovely wife, yellow paper in hand.

It was left on the best bench. Close to the water but distant from the action. A peaceful yet powerful spot. The wind was still whipping up the water. The gulls like that.

I am proud to once again represent for White Rock. I hear that, as of this year, I’m no longer the only Canadian contributor to SA4QE. This makes me proud as well. Here’s what’s written on my paper:

Reality is ungraspable. For convenience we use a limited-reality consensus in which work can be done, transport arranged, and essential services provided. The real reality is something else–only the strangeness of it can be taken in…

Russell Hoban
The Moment Under The Moment, Foreword

My best to all members of the Kraken Community …

And Thank you again, Russ, for the joyous mystery and the mysterious joy

Happy Birthday!

All best

Ra McGuire

Luckily, for the first time ever, Gogo took photographs at every show this summer from his place at the keyboards – so you can get an idea of what my life’s been like for the past few months. Many of these shots necessarily involve the back of my head, but all of them show the party in front of us. Short of standing up there yourself and feeling the palpable love that overwhelms us every night – it’s a stage-side look at what we did this summer. Three of the shows (Parksville, Olds and Cochrane) have two pictures each (Cochrane, so that the collection wouldn’t end on an odd number) but the rest are individual shows and roughly in the order we played them. Every show we’ve done since Canada Day is represented here except for the private one we played for our multimillionaire buddy in Muskoka.

Gogo’s full set of pictures from the tour, including autographed body parts and tour bus exposés are here and I encourage you to check them all out. I thank my rock and roll brother for documenting our experience every night. It’s the first time anyone’s ever done it, and seeing all of them together like this is quite moving for me. Hopefully you enjoy it too.

Debbie can lay-in a bit while I do my last minute packing. This morning I retrieved my Canada Day clothes from the dryer, folded them and added them to a suitcase that already contains enough clothes for a week. Re-packing for just one show would take a lot longer than just leaving them all in there, so I just zip up the bulging bag and bang it down the stairs behind me.

We allow an hour for the airport run, but it never takes more than 40 minutes. Except for those very few times when my blood began to run cold and I frantically texted ahead about the highway standstills we found ourselves in the midst of. Even those runs probably took no more than an hour, but I just don’t like rushing to catch a flight.

I slept on the plane from Vancouver to Calgary. I read comics on my iPad during the two hour Calgary lay-over. I slept again on the flight from Calgary to Regina. It’s 3:09 PST now and we’re in our rented Buick SUV passing through Yorkton, Saskatchewan. There are conflicting opinions about how long this drive to Dauphin, Manitoba will take. Opinions range from three hours to five. Most likely it will be some increment in between. Like I said to Debbie in the text I sent from the Yorkton Tim Horton’s … there’s only one way to find out.

We play the Dauphin CountryFest tonight at midnight. Tomorrow we repeat this travel itinerary in reverse. In the meantime, the weather report calls for “Thunderstorms” for this evening. So the summer tour has begun in earnest!

Dauphin in the Distance:

We are all in great spirits after our massively successful and love-filled Canada Day show in Parksville BC two days ago and primed and ready for the adventures that no doubt await us.

I joked with Monty on Saturday night that I was hoping to use Dad’s approach to finish my submission for this year’s Three-Minute Film Festival. My rough cut had timed in at over an hour. I simply needed to carve away all but three minutes of that.

Monty laughed, but I could see the look of concern in his eyes.

Last year my film “Three Random Minutes” was exactly the correct length. As luck would have it – and it was dumb luck – my script had timed out perfectly. Possibly because of my rigid adherence to the festival’s format, I had wrestled the coveted Delores Award from my 3-minute film-making arch-enemy and two-time Delores winner Scott Milligan.

I had no script this year. My bold plan was to film reality unfolding in real-time, in the hopes that I could glean three entertaining edited minutes. The filming resulted in over two hours of uninterrupted and extremely engaging material.

Once I had logged the collected good bits, depression began to settle in. On Twitter, I wrote: “In any creative endeavour, exhilarating hopefulness begins to diminish near the ceiling of imagination and expertise”. I pretended for a day that I wasn’t making a film.

I hacked and slashed all the next day. I prayed that the heart of the film was not lost somewhere in the digital blood covering the virtual cutting room floor. When I reached the twelve minute mark I stopped to brag about it on Twitter. It took another full day to attain the six minute mark. It took another to admit that the film was as short as it could be.

Cindy and Monty’s Three Minute Film Festival is the best party of the year. We dress up, we organize into ‘magazine’ reviewer groups and post our reviews and votes on a big board on the living room wall. If you don’t bring a film you have to bring an appetizer. Most of the films are surprisingly awesome, but some are less than stellar. Sometimes they’re silly or in questionable taste and sometimes … like my film this year … they’re over three minutes long.

I’m sure Cindy and Monty will forgive me.

Here’s a link to my film from last year: “Three Random Minutes”

Here’s a link to the “Cindy & Monty’s Three Minute Film Festival” web site. (Please notice that the actual festival is by invitation, and for friends and family only)

I’ll post my new 6 minute film here after it’s had its debut next week.

Later, eating my lunch, I paged through the beautifully produced publication. On page thirteen I noticed a familiar photograph. Under the shot of an eagle perched atop a Prince Rupert totem was the photo credit: Ra McGuire.

I received a request months ago asking if a few of the pictures I’ve posted at Flickr could be used, for free, in a Suzuki Foundation promotion. I said sure – and then forgot all about it.