JJ

Sto­ries and mem­o­ries of my dad, Jim “JJ” Johan­neson.

Top and tail

Posted on by Patrick
Dried flowers tied with a ribbon

Here’s the first thing in my cur­rent WiP, “Dried Flowers”:

Ded­i­cat­ed to my dad, JJ, the way I want to remem­ber him.

He intro­duced me to some of my favourite authors, most­ly by for­get­ting to send back the “no I don’t want the Selec­tion of the Month” card to the Sci­ence Fic­tion Book Club[1]This is how I first encoun­tered, among oth­ers, Michael Swan­wick and William Gib­son..

And the final thing in “Dried Flow­ers” (don’t wor­ry, it’s not a spoil­er; just a post-text epi­graph[2]Post­graph?):

I have always imag­ined that Par­adise will be a kind of library.

—Jorge Luis Borges

…and now, back to writin’.

Foot­notes

Foot­notes
↑1 This is how I first encoun­tered, among oth­ers, Michael Swan­wick and William Gibson.
↑2 Post­graph?

Memories of JJ, 9: The Beard

Posted on by Patrick
My dad with a beard

Hav­ing noticed the aus­pi­cious anniver­sary, I was think­ing a bit about Dad. I thought I’d told this sto­ry already, but I could­n’t find it in a search of my site. Maybe it was just in my eulogy.

For most of my life, Dad had a beard. If you dig out the real­ly old SRCI year­books, you can find pho­tos of him clean-shaven. I think he grew the beard in about 1980 or so, and he must have liked the way it looked because he kept it for a long, long time.

He told me once that his plan was to win the lot­tery, do all the nec­es­sary pub­lic­i­ty, cash the cheque, then shave his beard off and become invis­i­bly rich.

It was a sol­id plan, too. If you saw a pho­to of him pre-beard next to one of him with the beard, you might be hard-pressed to say the two pho­tos were the same per­son. JJ : Beard :: Super­man : glasses.

Then one year, when he was work­ing up in Lac Bro­chet, he and Mom came out of the north for the sum­mer and… he was clean-shaven.

The first thing I asked him, when I saw him, was, “Is there some­thing I should know?”

Posted in JJ.

Sabotage (Memories of JJ, #8)

Posted on by Patrick

Dad loved cop shows from the ’70s and ’80s. He was­n’t a big fan of ’80s and ’90s music, though. So imag­ine my sur­prise, one day, when, home for a week­end, I heard the dul­cet tones of the Beast­ie Boys com­ing from the TV that he was watch­ing. It was such an odd occur­rence, in fact, that it took me a moment to rec­og­nize what I was hearing.

Then it clicked: it was the break­down in “Sab­o­tage”.

I came out of my room just in time for the lyrics to start up again, and Dad, real­iz­ing he’d been tricked, switched the channel.

I get it, though. It sure does look like an ’80s cop show.

An evening out with the stars

Posted on by Patrick
Aurora Borealis

With some of the mon­ey I inher­it­ed from my dad, last year, I bought an 11–16mm f/2.8 lens for my cam­era. In plain Eng­lish, it’s a nice fast lens with a nice wide field of view, which means that it’s great for astrophotography.

Tonight, the stars aligned for me, as it were. There was almost a 50/50 chance of some auro­ra sight­ings, per SpaceWeath­er. The tem­per­a­ture was a balmy ‑1°C, which was a pleas­ant change from the ‑25°C and ‑35°C nights we’ve had for the last cou­ple weeks.

Long sto­ry short, there was a faint haze to the north. Edit­ing with Gimp brings out quite a bit more than the naked eye could see.

As my cam­era clicked away, I leaned back against the car. At one point I thought of Kurt Von­negut’s quote: If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.