Coffey Times

Cheerfulness Breaks In

2012-02-01T00:04:00.001-05:00

Never have I looked so hard for a copy of a book, calling and visiting libraries in Toronto and Ottawa (the latter city offering me an intercity loan..alas, I asked too late); faraway friends scattered about seeking out copies from local booksellers; a kindly gentleman in the nation’s capital advising me that the last two copies he sold went for $125.00 and $150.00; Indigo apologizing for an out-of-print impossibility; Amazon offering it up for exorbitant fees; fellow readers borrowing and re-borrowing from the Toronto library but leery of relinquishing it up, unfinished, to those of us (i.e., me) who could read it in two days and hand it back before the scheduled book club date this Sunday.

I confess, I am afraid that Cheerfulness Breaks In feels antithetical to my mood, which might also have something to do with Rogers’ cable and Internet kaputting en masse (no Parenthood! no email!), with no promise – if Rogers can ever be deemed promising – of a remedy for at least 48 hours), and the fact that the waiter at the Yonge and Dundas Pickle Barrel Restaurant took one hour to retrieve our dinner this evening (he was a mess in almost every aspect, perhaps having been thwarted in his search for a library book).

Add to this (literally) a gain of 1.4 pounds in one week (I found a carb calling card this past weekend while I was away); the enormous elephant plant de-rooting itself; the typical 90-minute drive home from Elmira (we went there yesterday to look at a stove) taking four and a half hours, all of the beautiful snow melting this morning in 7 degree temperatures. It’s enough to try anyone’s patience.

Anyway, if there is someone out there who knows where I might find a copy of Angela Thirkill’s Cheerfulness Breaks In, and is willing to lend it to me, along with some speed-reading techniques (I am completely occupied otherwise between late afternoon Friday through Saturday night, as well as Thursday 4:30-9:30 PM), I would be deeply grateful – so much so, in fact, I might be tempted to follow Angela’s tome with a sequel – Cheerfulness Breaks Out.

Note: Loan as a verb is standard English, especially business English, in the United States [close enough] but not in England ~ Funk & Wagnalls Canadian College Dictionary

Note 2: Seconds after writing this entry out by hand, the Internet was back and, with it, a notice that someone had returned a copy of the book, which will be available in my name for pick-up tomorrow at the library (or, in Mayor Ford’s word, liberry). Therefore, Cheerfulness Breaks Out might have to wait until at least next Tuesday. Apologies.

The Loneliness of the Long Distance Underpants

2012-01-28T00:49:00.001-05:00

How long do we have to keep old underwear before we are willing to relinquish them? You know—those yawning, gaping, over-stretched, wrinkled, seam-weak, faded underpants—the ones you loved so much when you purchased them you wished you had bought two of everything? The purple-striped ones, the pink ones with the balloons, the elegant black ones with the tiny diamond shapes? What happens to our preferences? Where do they go?

I'm not talking only about tired underwear, but about things we desire one day and dislike the next. For example, last week I spread out, over the dining table, the white lace tablecloth, thinking how beautifully it went with the white picture frames and the bookcase; how summery the room seemed; how clean. But today when I went downstairs the first thing I saw was the stark white tablecloth, granny-looking and a bit prudish, lying on the table as if it had taken the room hostage.

I don't know. Is it me? It used to be that I could put something in its place—a picture, a chair, a lamp—and I would love it exactly in that place for decades. The wall colours I chose would be the most perfect colour choices in the history of wall paint, and the alignment of the couch and chair/s was always absolutely exactly perfect. I remember standing on the stairs on my way up to bed and admiring, over my shoulder, the configurement of it all, marvelling at my ability to place things just so.

Well, not any more. What I love Tuesday is not what I'll want by Thursday, and I have no idea why. My only saving grace, my only hope, is that as I sit here typing I can see, in my peripheral vision, the straw garbage container that holds three pair of my old panties—one purple, one yellow, one white. And as I take a sideways glance, I can at least remember, somewhat vividly, the excitement with which I bought them; the sweetness of their touch; the surety that I would love them always, no matter how faded, torn or undesirable they might become. And here, for a little minute at least, I miss them.

<:^)

Archived Monday, August 17

Posted by Jennifer Coffey at 5:05 PM

And the winner is but maybe shouldn’t be…

2012-01-25T12:34:00.001-05:00

I don’t think I have been ever less interested in the Oscar nominations.

George Clooney in The Descendants? (The best part was watching him run in flip-flops. He is such a good actor, but not so much in this banal film.)

But not Shailene Woodley—the only good thing in The Descendants?

Meryl Streep as best actress? (I can’t even look at the ads without laughing.)

Tree of Life practically unnoticed? (The film was poetry in motion, which is likely what plagues it.)

Albert Brooks utterly ignored?

No Michael Fassbender? Shame, shame, shame.

Nothing for Rhys Ifans? Am I the only one who thought he was splendid in Anonymous?

Ryan Gosling – not even for Crazy, Stupid Love? What’s wrong with you people?

And where is Charlize Theron? And Spielberg for TinTin?

And what about Mia Wasikowska as Jane Eyre?

Or Phil Ochs: There But For Fortune (released in early 2011)?

And why does Leonardo remain, once again, without a nomination? I haven’t seen the film, and am, in this case...forgive a pun...merely projecting. But I feel he is too-often snubbed. He is great in everything.

Woody Allen for anything but prison? (I liked the movie, but can’t bring myself to choose him, ever.)

Two songs? TWO?

And where’s Take Shelter? Taking shelter?

It could largely be because Sarah is not here that I feel such disinterest. And it could be in part that one of her friends who used to vote has betrayed her in such horrible ways I am losing hair simply typing this. (It is all I can do to keep myself from writing a separate diatribe here.)

Of course I look forward to the evening gathering in numbers small or smaller. I hope to take a break from worries and wistfulness and sit back in my big comfy chair and overeat and chat with friends about haute couture (okay...fancy dresses) and plastic surgery; listen to the speeches, and wait for the best fiddle dee dee moment/s (which shouldn’t disappoint, given the best actress nominees alone). (Frankly, I wish they would give it to Glenn Close, but I am not so stupid as to believe an Oscar in this current conventional climate will go to a woman playing a man.)

While I know, too, that there isn’t room for everyone on the list, the number of people left off is higher than an elephant’s eye and could make for an extremely dull-on-set evening.

That said, I am very happy for four of the best actress nominees (the four who won’t win); delighted for Melissa McCarthy in a transference sort of way (but I have not seen the movie); thrilled for Terrence Malick; pleased by the riveting A Separation; relieved for Gary Oldman (good work, Colin Firth, ensuring your talented friend’s nomination!), and mildly surprised, but not unpleasantly so, for Janet McTeer.

Thank God there is something to look forward to, because I don’t think I am much interested in seeing many of the nominated films, despite several potentially spellbinding performances.

Anyway, when it comes to voting and Oscar pools, may the best wo/man win. All I know is that this year it won’t be me. I can’t be bothered with the odds, let alone the odd choices. Uh uh. Instead, you’ll find me in a corner of the living room smothered in potato chip crumbs and slurring, just a little, on my wine.

All the odds are,

They’re in my favour,

Something’s bound to begin...

It’s gonna happen,

Happen sometime,

Maybe this time...maybe this time...I’ll win!

Kander and Ebb

In Memory of Joe

2012-01-24T15:42:00.001-05:00

Dogs have given us their absolute all. We are the center of their universe. We are the focus of their love and faith and trust. They serve us in return for scraps. It is without a doubt the best deal man has ever made. ~ Roger Caras

Moving Days

2012-01-23T14:08:00.001-05:00

It isn’t only about friendship. If that were all, then the problem—the heartbreak—wouldn’t seem so big.

It’s about the little lies, too; the lies we tell ourselves to make our way through these lonely days; the fibs that say we matter more than we probably do—the notion, the fantasy, that we will be missed more than we could possibly know; the fear that we won’t be missed at all—and about all the projections these thoughts become or are made manifest.

And, of course, much of this is symbolic, those manifestations reminiscent of my daughter, who thought she would get better; who thought she would survive to see her daughter grow; who thought that certain people cared more deeply than, as she so strongly stated, they ultimately didn’t. (“Is it better to know, darling?” I asked her. “It is, Mum. It is.”) She kept her eye and her heart where they mattered: on the people who loved her. But oh, how it broke my heart.

Of course, in life (where else if not in life?) one broken alliance leads to the fear, and to the reality and possibility, of another: this first one in the form of friends who once lived together and now, out of necessity and loss and reclamation, have parted ways and are casting their nets further asea. (Bad metaphor, but I am upset today and cannot be held accountable. Besides, Jesus would appreciate the reference, given that one-half of this lovely couple is a carpenter, the other a caregiver.)

These friends have provided, among other abundances, a strong physical link between me and my daughter, partly because they knew and deeply loved her, and partly because I know and deeply love them.

Life without them, therefore…life without their proximity…breaks my heart.

It wasn’t even about all the porch visits, the dinners (birthdays, holidays, personal celebratory days, ordinary days), the adventures here and there; the art lessons, the house repair, the clink of toasting glasses; the conversations; the laughter, the laughter, the laughter.

It was about so much more.

Waving hello from the balcony (much of which the carpenter built.), haling with our plastic Pepsi bottles held high up in the air.

Standing in the middle of the street, gossiping about the neighbour’s missing cat, the ant-ridden trees, or the horrible fact of Rob Ford.

Shouting plans across the road, question marks, and exclamations (which I otherwise detest), ricocheting in ways that made, where real friendship makes, my head spin.

End-of-June parties lying on the outdoor daybed underneath the stars.

Exchanging gifts purchased on big and little trips.

Pop-in visits to sample new couches, carpets, glassware, design magazines, artwork, ideas, historical journals, cookies, patterns, bicycles, concerns, second-hand finds, music, movies, plants, stories, kitty collars and all the things that good friends share.

I know that everything changes. How could I have lived this life and not know that everything changes? I know that, sometimes, what goes around comes around. I also know that occasionally good things come to those who wait.

But I also know that bad things happen to good people and that, unlike what most people will tell you, there is not a reason for everything. I know that good friends are hard to find, and keep, and that it is going to be a long time before I am able to reconcile the fact of their physical absence; their separation.

I also know that I tend to see a half-empty glass (inevitably tinged with arsenic) when once in a while the glass is half-full, and I always know that, for good or for ill, tomorrow, as Scarlett said, is anuthah day.

Yes we are [friends] and I do like to pass the day with you in serious and inconsequential chatter. I wouldn't mind washing up beside you, dusting beside you, reading the back half of the paper while you read the front. We are friends and I would miss you, do miss you and think of you very often. I don't want to lose this happy space where I have found someone who is smart and easy and doesn't bother to check her diary when we arrange to meet. ~ Jeanette Winterson, Written on the Body, 1992

Mergers & Acquisitions

2012-01-20T00:46:00.001-05:00

This message arrived in my email yesterday, courtesy of my friend Joanne:

For all of you with any money left, be aware of the next expected mergers so that you can get in on the ground floor and make some BIG bucks.

Watch for these consolidations in 2012:

Hale Business Systems, Mary Kay Cosmetics, Fuller Brush, and W. R. Grace Co. will merge and become Hale, Mary, Fuller, Grace
Polygram Records, Warner Bros. and Zesta Crackers join forces and become Poly, Warner, Cracker
3M will merge with Goodyear and become MMMGood
Zippo Manufacturing, Audi Motors, Dofasco, and Dakota Mining will merge and become ZipAudiDoDa
FedEx is expected to join its competitor, UPS, and become FedUP
Fairchild Electronics and Honeywell Computers will become Fairwell Honeychild
Grey Poupon and Docker Pants are expected to become PouponPants
Knotts Berry Farm and the National Organization of Women will become Knott NOW!
Victoria 's Secret and Smith & Wesson will merge under the new name TittyTittyBangBang

Here, for Joanne and for those of you who like to keep on top of business news, are the remaining mergers, which I learned about this morning over coffee:

Shell Oil and Out Magazine have joined forces to become Shell Out
Adobe Systems and the Hutt Brothers have merged as Adobe Hutt
Hard OCP and Stryker Canada have become Stryker Hard, although title disputes are expected/warranted
HA Kidd and Company Ltd. hooked up with Cisco Secure Network to become the Cisco Kidd
The Canadian Council for the Arts have united with Kraft and are now known as Arts & Kraft
Mountain Dew linked up with Telus to become Dew Telus
KISS Radio and Intel are newly named KISS Intel
Gray Line and Nexen Inc. have merged as Nexen Line
Business Sell Canada and OUTtv are now Sell OUT
Apple Inc. has united with Betty Crocker and Brown University and consolidated as Apple-Brown-Betty
HOMES Magazine has merged with Mobil and renamed themselves Mobil/Homes
Grinn.net Software has united with Bayer to become Grinn & Bayer IT

…and finally, in an act that some speculators are calling downright unearthly,

Venus Systems’ founder R.U. Thayer has broken its previous merger with Mars Inc. and Jupiter Research to become R. Solo System

Blue Monday

2012-01-16T18:16:00.001-05:00

The third Monday of January has been declared the most depressing day of the year. Blue Monday was identified in 2005 by Cardiff University lecturer and psychologist, Cliff Arnall, who chose this day as the saddest of all based on calculations of “gloomy weather, post-holiday debt and low motivational levels.”

I remember the third Monday in January as the saddest of all, too. I can still see—will forever see—the hundreds and hundreds of crows circling the grey afternoon courtyard, the doctor in my periphery telling me that a scope at this stage was impossible.

I went into the holding room and stood over Don, his eyes opening for the last time as he commanded, “Get me out of here,” recovering in time to smile briefly at the nurse who, rightly so, was not privy to our familial intimacy.

I always loved him for things like this...that Hansel und Gretel quality of our relationship that set us apart from a world with whom we were not always aligned (which had become our choice, in most instances).

He never wavered in illness, either, always recognizable as humble, humorous, passionate, funny and protective. One morning on the elevator he put his head down on Noam’s shoulder, and once he let me rub his feet (finally), but this was as close as he came to letting the people he loved take care of him.

He was as sick as a person can be in the last eight weeks of his life, wasting away while an incompetent oncologist glibly overlooked a simple diagnosis, despite the roadmap laid out for him. Admission to hospital and treatment, in fact, began a short five days prior to Don’s death, chemotherapy too late to do more than whiten once-coffee-stained teeth; days too late for the scope.

He died later that evening, his family sitting around him, his dutiful, loving daughter devastated, and his sons disbelieving.

Eight years later I sit here without him, missing him, remembering the crows, remembering the darkening sky, remembering the sound of his breathing and the sound of it—the sound of him—gone.

Blue Monday hardly fits a description of the day for me. Maybe I should call it Devastating Monday, Irrevocable Monday, Inconsolable Monday, a day when gloomy weather, post-holiday debt and low motivational levels are followed by immutable longing and the jarring certainty that life will never, could never, regain its once effervescent, conspicuously tender, forever redemptive sweet glory.

Meryl Streep: Fallen Angel

2012-01-13T11:33:00.001-05:00

Meryl Streep is an uncanny mimic, but she no longer seems to inhabit a role the way she used to (The Deer Hunter; Kramer vs. Kramer; Out of Africa; Sophie’s Choice; A Cry in the Dark): authentically; credibly; moved by the part she is playing rather than moving the part.

Truth be told, I found her close to dreadful as Julia Child in Julia & Julia, and Mamma Mia—and Meryl in it—were horrendous. Neither was I taken with her in It’s Complicated or, sad to admit, The Hours...all of which is to say I think she has ultimately lost herself in her own ego, no longer vulnerable enough to capture a role in the magnificent and powerful ways she used to.

Despite the raves she is winning for Iron Lady, the few clips I have seen show a brilliantly studied actress who nevertheless seems outside of the soul of the character she is meant to portray. Like Rich Little, Meryl Streep is a preternatural impersonator. But an Oscar nod ought to require more that this.

What first alerted me to the who of who she is was the fact of her (giddy revelations about her) friendships with a group of pretend-philogynists who, insiderishly and misogynistically, call other women “broads” and who pride themselves on being special; set apart from and above other females—the very group with whom they claim to be utterly sympathetic.

Her gushing (television interview) acclaim of Amy Adams (a much-younger-than-Meryl actress who poses no ultimate threat) in Doubt, and her patent absence of praise for Phillip Seymour Hoffman (who was brilliant) in the same film, left me pressed into my chair, thinking, “Ah, so that’s your game. Clever.” (Clever since so many non-vigilant viewers would never see the nuance/s or therefore understand her undermining intentions.)

Today on Ellen, when reminded that she (Streep) is the sure upcoming Oscar winner, the actress removed her glasses, covered her face with her hands, smothered giggles, and quickly launched into the phenomenal Best Actress competition list for 2012—who, me?…among them?…how is it possible?—swiftly adding the names of the greatly gifted competitors that Ellen had forgotten. Fiddle dee dee, I said to myself. And then, again, out loud, “Cagey.”

Mostly, I don’t care. I know that Streep is talented, quick-witted and savvy. But I also think she is subtly disingenuous, and it is the degree of subtlety that makes me cringe when I see her. Moreover, I think this has been coming on for a long time. I don’t suppose for one second, for example, that she accidentally left her newly-won Oscar on the back of a toilet. Neither do I believe statements such as, “[I] can't pick out people because then I'll leave somebody off the list and it'll feel terrible."

I also think that I am a little annoyed with myself because for a long time I was so sure that she was a woman I would want to know; someone I could be friends with if she lived next door. Her relationship and what seemed her profound tenderness toward John Cazales assured me of her generous heart, unaware as I was that she would eventually be taken in by her own press and then, worse, pretend that it—her super specialness—was not so.

Furthermore, when Streep is handed, carte blanche, the title of World’s Greatest Living Actress (a claim she always seems to ‘umbly brush off and at the same time accept), I cannot help but think that I like these other women, as actresses, better:

· Cate Blanchett (whose name is eerily close to carte blanche)

· Jessica Lange

· Kristin Scott Thomas

· Jennifer Connolly

· Vanessa Redgrave

· Charlize Theron

· Judi Dench

· Carey Mulligan

· Alfre Woodard

· Glenn Close

· Elisabeth Shue

· Julianne Moore

· Helen Mirren

· Michelle Williams

· Patricia Clarkson

· Marion Cotillard

· Marisa Tomei

· Diane Wiest

· Keira Knightley

· Halle Berry

· Kate Winslet

· Maggie Gyllenhaal

· Emily Blunt

· Joan Allen

· Sigourney Weaver

· Kirsten Dunst

· Glenda Jackson

· Catherine Keener

· Nicole Kidman

· Hilary Swank

· Frances McDormand

· Holly Hunter

· Juliette Binoche

· Emily Watson

· Viola Davis

· Julia Ormond

· Barbara Hershey

· Shirley MacLaine

· Robin Wright

· Marcia Gay Harden

· Hope Davis

· Eileen Atkins

· Reese Witherspoon

· Kathy Bates

· Audrey Tautou

· Rachel Griffiths

· Minnie Driver

· Emma Thomson

· Claire Danes

· Gabourey Sidibe

· Helena Bonham Carter

· Mira Sorvino

· Maggie Smith

· Laura Dern

· Annette Bening

· Anna Paquin

· Mia Wasikowska

· Samantha Morton

By better, I mean more fluid, consistent, never parodying, emotive, and moved by the role (rather than mimicking a part and a person, which—although superior skill is required to emulate—can leave me a little cold).

And yes, I take your point about overkill, although you might be missing my point that there is not one, and it seems there never can be merely one, best actress. (If you believe there is, I think you ought to re-read The Emperor’s New Clothes.) More, if Meryl Streep indeed once merited this rare endowment, she no longer does.

Without expansive emotional generosity, genius, like patience, is eventually exhausted. Oh, the irony!

Coffey Shop Talk with Blue

2012-01-12T11:31:00.001-05:00

We meet every few weeks at a coffee shop in Ottawa. He comes in with his Dad, the two of them always smiling and waving. Like his father, he is a golden boy...brightly reflective eyes, white-blond hair moving into wheat, glistening teeth. And like his father, he is bright.

For example...

D: Sing a song of sixpence

B: Pocket full rye

D: Four and twenty blackbirds

B: Baked in pie

D: When the pie was opened

B: Birds began to sing

(and so on)

And like his father, he is firm, friendly, and fondly teasing.

For example...

When I say to him, “I love you, baby,” he says, “No! I am big boy!”

When I ask him if he knows who Gramps is, he shifts his eyes slyly, sweetly, toward Mary. And when I ask him, “Where’s Grammie?” he looks at me and grins so widely all of his teeth show. How he remembers us so distinctly shocks me and renders him the most edible grandson in Ontario.

He sits on his father’s knee and asks politely for peanut butter or jam or whatever he wants from the table for his croissant. He drinks his juice eagerly, smiling out at the world, willing to accept anyone who is kind.

He gives fist pumps, high fives, and go lows, and laughs out loud when he misses.

He frowns half-pensively when considering a problem, which at two years of age can mean anything from a cookie choice to a loose button.

He asks about the park and confesses he is a little tired, recovering as he is from a bronchial virus, but he is affectionate and uncomplaining, a squat little cherub in snow pants.

If there is any joy greater than being a grandparent, I do not know what it is. If there is any lovelier boy than this boy, I don’t know who he is.

Little boy Blue, come blow your horn…the sheep’s in the meadow, the cow’s in the corn.

Redrum, Redrum, Redrum

2012-01-11T00:16:00.001-05:00

Well, I know how we came by the red couch, considering we wanted an accent piece and that this sofa is, after all, a love—that is, a more compact, less imposing—seat. A little touch of crimson seemed just the right note to offset the biscotti-tinted walls.

The curtains, of course, had already been purchased: white from Easter to Thanksgiving, the trade-off red for the cooler months.

The red leather reclining chair purchased over a year ago was a completely unexpected but (as it turns out) necessary adjunct to my challenging lower back. It’s quite lovely besides, when not covered with pillows and red napkin cum armrest covers, all used as cat repellents.

And we couldn’t resist the red hutch, its deeply stained wood richly resonant along the stairway wall—or the One of a Kind red dragonfly dish (that matches the red glass candle shade), which now looks beautiful sitting on the glass-topped coffee table.

But the once predominantly green cloth chair that came home today newly recovered in predominantly red cloth was a bit of a shocker. I love the pattern and the hue that we chose, but oh my god, when I stood in the centre of the small room I felt as if I were trapped inside a hothouse tomato.

Of course the red-topped Singer sewing machine and the red front door have been addressed in an earlier entry, but it would be dishonourable to ignore them in this account dedicated to the ruby rouge room we–okay, mostly I—seem to have created.

I am just not sure how it all happened, despite what I have written here. I only ever meant for a little hint of decadent cherry, not a bloodbath. All I know now is that when I turn around and glance in the mirror, everything looks the same forward as it does backward.

Red room, redroom, redrum, redrum, redrum.

bloodshot, blooming, blush, brick, burgundy, cardinal, carmine, cerise, cherry, chestnut, claret, crimson, dahlia, flaming, florid, flushed, fuchsia, garnet, geranium, inflamed, infrared, magenta, maroon, puce, rose, roseate, rosy, rubicund, ruby, ruddy, rufescent, russet, rust, salmon, sanguine, scarlet, titian, vermilion, wine

Letting Bygones Be Bygones

2012-01-10T09:17:00.001-05:00

The winds are blowing the snow sideways across the front of the window, reminding me of Dorothy flying about in her house (well, she wasn’t flying about exactly, the house was) in The Wizard of Oz. I am often captivated by blowing, slanting snow, although if there are patches of tarmac in the picture, not so much, as this reminds me of difficult childhood days and visiting my mother in hospital. Still, I will look no matter which way the wind is blowing, whether the pavement is bare or otherwise. Funny, too, how weather can conjure up all sorts of images. In fact, the sky is my best reminder of times gone past.

Actually, I become emotionally tired and more than a little annoyed when people start harping on people who harp on the past. Don’t these complainers understand that without a past a person has no future? Don’t they get that without looking backward we can’t make our best assessments about moving forward? What is it they’re afraid of? The Boogeyman? Pain? Truth?

If it’s a deeper, darker past you’re wanting to escape, the most efficient way to do that is to look over your shoulder and introduce yourself to your ghosts. “How do you do? My name is Jennifer Coffey, and I would like to say that you look ravishing in white. A little pale, you say? Perhaps I am – but surely not as pale as you.”

Earlier this week, Craig Ferguson interviewed Jeannette Walls, the author of The Glass Castle [ISBN-10: 074324754X ISBN-13: 9780743247542] – a memoir detailing Ms. Walls’ childhood/familial dysfunction, eccentricity, and homelessness. Ferguson, of course, shares his autobiographical experience in American on Purpose [ISBN 13: 9780061719547 ISBN 10: 0061719544]. The two authors commented how readers sometimes associate memoir-writing with a poor-me-pity-me attitude, when nothing could be further from the truth. And I, speaking from the experience of what some might call (albeit occasional) confessional writing, agree with them entirely.

Looking at those difficult times and events is a way of learning, expanding, helping others, and of celebrating the past. What’s the difference between saying, “I grew up in a household where we used coloured markers on our skin to camouflage the holes in our pants” and “I grew up in Liberia where, as children, we were handed guns in order to protect ourselves.”

Why is one person’s story more valid than another’s – more palatable, more acceptable, embraced? Why is one kind of looking back commendable and another relegated to self-pity? I will never understand that. I will never be comfortable in a world where individuals are afraid to be honest about what has been hard for them. I will never figure out how it is that vulnerability somehow becomes equated with weakness when, in fact, the opposite is true.

I wonder, too, if looking into the past weren’t such a useful exercise, why is our children’s literature, and our adult fiction, filled with backward longing? Why did Dorothy, after melting the Wicked Witch of the West and making friends with all of those wonderful creatures, so desperately want to return to the places, and to the memories, that she knew?

You might tell me that sepia remembrances of bucolic farms and windy porches are nothing to sneeze at and cannot be compared with family dysfunction and abuse, but I say to you – it’s all the same thing. We all come from somewhere and someone. We all need to go home, at least in our heads, at least sometimes. We all have to root through the attic and unbury the dead.

Posted by Jennifer Coffey at 2:10 PM

[Archived] Friday, February 26

Labels: Op Ed, Writing Works

Music

2012-01-04T21:27:00.001-05:00

I'm not always sure why people who can't sing well are so touchy on hearing that news. It's as if you had just told them that they had three stomachs. (Wait a minute. Someone did tell me that once and I have to admit the experience wasn't very pleasant.) Anyway, I had a sister-in-law who was not only tone deaf, but who loved to sing, full volume, along with the car radio. Her name was Betty and she came to live with us for one summer when she was seventeen. She fell in love with her brother's boss's brother, a French boy named Luc, who had a motorcycle and who taught her how to catch King Crab at the beach. That summer Betty sang along to all the songs that she heard on the stereo -- America, Judy Collins, Taj Mahal, Joni Mitchell, Loggins and Messina, Patsy Cline, Shawn Phillips, and so on. The more we teased her, the louder she got.

Two and a half years later, when Betty was home in Buck's County for Christmas on military leave (she was by this time a paramedic nurse), and because she had been remarking on episodes of mildly blurred vision, her mother took her for a visit to an ophthalmologist. One week later, Betty was in a Bethesda, Maryland hospital having her right eye removed along with a retinoblastomic tumour. The next day, in hospital gown and housecoat, she unhooked her I.V. and coerced her father into taking her out to the parking lot so she could practice driving. Her father said everything was fine right up until he turned on the car radio and Betty began to sing.

Seven years later, home again for Christmas on military leave, Betty mentioned that she had been having a recent pain in her right side. Again, her mother accompanied her daughter to the doctor's office. Seven weeks later Betty died of secondary liver cancer. She was twenty-seven.

Do you remember when you were a kid and mixed up lyrics? I've laid around and played around Thistle Town too long? I still do that. I sang Two Below, Honey instead of Tupelo, Honey for years before someone corrected me, and only last week I misinterpreted Emmylou Harris and Mark Knopfler's I went down to Donkey Town for I went round to Honky Tonk (which might be closer to Donkey Town than you think). I imagine that by now everyone knows about Gladly, The Cross-eyed Bear and There's a Bathroom on the Right (which jives well with my childhood memory of ...when I get to that Swami's door).

I could sing along the whole day through, whether I know the lyrics or not. Lyle Lovett, Cheryl Wheeler, Arvo Pärt -- bring it on. I'll sing in the shower, the car, the basement, the grocery store, the laundromat, the hardware store, everywhere but a doctor's office. (I'm an extremely anxious patient.) I'm pretty sure I even sing in my sleep. I'm not a great singer but I'm passable, and I have an appreciation, and patience, for a variety of styles and ranges of vocal talent as well as non-talent. But whenever I hear someone sing who is radically tone deaf and buoyantly chanting along in whatever key she or he can grab hold of, happily oblivious, or impervious, to those within earshot, and whether this happens when I am at the laundromat, grocery store, hardware store, or in a car, I think of Betty in the parking lot and I laugh out loud.

This is for all the lonely people thinking that life has passed them by.

Posted by Jennifer Coffey at 1:13 PM

[Archived] Friday, March 13

Auld Lang Syne

2012-01-01T09:21:00.001-05:00

Sigh. I wrote this entry three or four years ago. How many times am I going to have to reprint it before I learn that I have to improve, behave, be consistent, try harder, move more, swim more, think more, do more, aim higher, walk faster and eat less?

Oh my. It's that time of year again. Resolutions. What to keep, what to throw away? Now, at my age and girth, I have no options when it comes to food choices. It's do or die, and I mean that too literally. You cannot know how sad it makes me, though, to have to part with so many things that I love -- foodstuffs that have sustained me through the cold and lonely wintry nights. (Okay, so I'm exaggerating in a Dickensian sort of way just a little...but what's a fat romantic girl of thirty-seven to do?) So here I go, my chubby fingers clutching the edge of my seat as I type out my farewells...

Good-bye guacamole dip made with just the right amount of fresh garlic and black pepper, and served on tasty Farmboy tortilla chips! Sayonara, too, to sesame crackers smothered in roasted red pepper spread. (I hate when they call it spread. You can literally see the fat content shoot up before your hungry eyes.) Bis dann brown sugar cookies baked in shapes of little moons and stars and served with hot cinnamon tea, and ta ta tahini-laden pita! A culinary kunda hafiz to over-salted crunchy crackers served in tiny pieces on a festive Christmas plate, and a sad sad adios to chocolate-peanut-noodle armadillos, tastier than anything you could ever imagine and so utterly delectable at night. Bye bye beer in special cans of burnished colours served up with zesty hummus (a special hwyl goes out to you), and a solemn beannachd leibh to Beef Wellington, my runny-nosed parting from puffed pastry a true lament to the succulent filet mignon that lay in wait beneath your velvety surfaces. A softened selamat pergi to crustless sandwiches everywhere -- tangy tuna and exquisite egg eyeing up at me from pretty painted platters -- and a lingering le'hitraot to lovely little lemon meringue tarts who I am sure called out my name...eat me, Jennifer, eat me...just before they disappeared forever. A swift and painful tschuss to maraschino cherry chocolates -- all three boxes of you -- washed down with a tschau and another bubbly bottle of Cuvee Speciale...good bye Cuvee! good bye!...and paalam, oh paalam, to my tiny pigs-in-a-blanket, your darling stubby feet tucked up cosily beneath your steaming shawls, sitting silently there next to your cranberry brie sisters -- my fir melenge to filo pastry everywhere a testament to my loyalty and my love. Zai Jian three-cheese lasagna served up with homemade Caesar (et tu, Brute?) salad and two fearless crusty loaves, and a half-felt hejdo, hazel nuts, and all your brethren kin. Sampai jumpa double-helping Atlantic salmon with a side of buttery potatoes and caramelized carrots, and finally, most tragically, arrividerci cheese-laden baked-stuffed potatoes and - dare I say it? -- ciao ciao ciao chocolate-chocolate pecan layer cake made with one cup whipping cream and equal parts brown sugar! And oh my god, I almost forgot! Pirmelenge my precious praline cheesecake, your nutty-coated chewiness sticking happily to the sides of my shiny-faced veneers.

I dare not look back to see what I have forgot, lest I hurry down (these too too sullied) stairs in search of more. Who can know how long I'll keep my steadfast promises, up here in my weeny wind-chilled garret? But speaking of weenies...

Please Sir, can I have some more?

<:^)

Posted by Jennifer Coffey at 1:53 PM

Labels: Health Matters, Holiday Issue, In The Kitchen

Letting Go

2011-12-31T00:06:00.001-05:00

It has to be done, whether I want to or not. And I have learned that, the more complicated one’s life, the greater the need.

So here, at the end of 2011, is why, and to whom and to what, I am saying goodbye:

1. A young woman in whom I was far too long and deeply invested, and re-invested, wanting to ignore a key feature that could never work for me or for us together. I loved her indisputably and dearly—she was, and is, so bright and pretty and funny—but we suffer a core, key, difference that I can never surpass. Mostly, lately, I seldom think about this loss, but today as I write this I feel sad, especially in the wake of Sarah’s death. We often grieve what we thought we could have; what we hoped for. And my grief is not exceptional.

2. A young woman I foisted onto Sarah…Sarah who appeased me and in whom I ought to have trusted. I have no feelings of loss in this woman, but am terribly sorry that I ever tried to change my daughter’s mind. I saw Sarah wrestle with so many egregiously painful truths in her final months, and I know, because she told me so, that ultimately the truth was more important to her than any enabling fiction. Still, I suffer on behalf of my girl, who knew all too well who had taken what from her, and why.

3. The fact that I am never going to be slim. I can and expect to lose weight, but slim is out of the question. Besides, mostly what that means now are face craters and globs of hanging cellulite. Still, I am sorry I waited so long.

4. Procrastination about finishing my novel. How many people have to die before I realize that deadlines are ever encroaching? Besides, I am eager to begin to write that book that Sarah asked me to; the one I have earned claim to.

5. My homophobia. I have been living with Mary for several years, and still I make jokes about my lesbian partner. While this might seem funny to some—even to Mary and me—there are wrong reasons why I do this (that have nothing to do with my ~~family members~~…okay, my sister…who told me I was not to touch Mary in front of her or her adult children), and I had best get at the root of my fears and prejudices now...just as many of you have to.

6. Expecting blood from stones. In other words, really knowing I can’t always or even often or maybe ever make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.

7. Pepsi, which is already a few weeks (okay, mostly) gone.

8. Potato chips...ditto.

9. My %$#(*&)%$#@ fear of flying. Curses on that PEI pilot, stewed as I know he was loop de looping over the Northumberland Strait, the patchwork quilted crops cutting out at odd (all) angles. Paris awaits, and I have Don Ives’ broken cookies and red balloons to consider.

10. Resentment against people I don’t care enough about in the first place. I love that line that Carrie Fisher quotes: “Resentment is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.” Really, though, have you ever noticed how much time we waste on people who mean next-to-nothing in our lives? Besides, I expect Sarah and her father to come from their place beyond this planet and get these ass***** once and for all—and if you think I’m kidding...guess again. (You can see I have to work on this one a little harder.) (Also: see #5.)

Anyway, maybe you are one of those rarely fortunate people who hasn’t anything or anyone of which or whom to let go. Sadly, this is not true for me. The one thing I have going for me, though, is that once I make up my mind, I am often successful...except for the pop and the chips part, which is why I gave them a head start.

My best wishes to you all (minus the few of you who read these entries for prurient reasons. To you few, as my friend Wilfred likes to say, “Piss on yaz all!”).

Happy New Year

Year End Liquidation

2011-12-30T00:01:00.001-05:00

Okay, this right-handed typing is becoming more than irritating. Worse, I have switched from Children’s Chewable Tylenol to Children’s Liquid Tylenol. And now I know why they call it liquid. My brains are sloshing about like pea soup in a bread bowl, splashing left to right and right to left, then back again, taking my eyes with them so that the cats are streaming by in a blackgreywhitebrownspottedstriped blur.

As I lie here, my spongy thoughts are these:

I wish I could read my new Christmas present novels, but I am afraid. As it is, looking at these typed words is a challengechallengechallenge. Oopsy.

Taking a ship across the Atlantic instead of an airplane is probably not the good idea I thought it was.

Whee! I’m a clothesline!

Why are you all getting dizzy?

Vitameatavegamin

Would you care for a peanut butter and clam sandwich?

One foot on the floor; one foot on the bed. One foot on the floor...

Movies to avoid: Under the Volcano; The Days of Wine and Roses; The Hangover; Barfly; Vertigo; Animal House; Arthur; The Lost Weekend; Withnail & I; Arthur II: On the Rocks; Leaving Las Vegas; Sideways; Moby Dick; Arthur: The Remake

Genetics! Genetics! Genetics!

When I was 17, it was a very good year...

Are you unpopular?

We're on a carousel, a crazy carousel
And now we go around again we go around
And now we spin around, we're high above the ground
And down again around, and up again around
So high above the ground, we feel we've got to yell
We're on a carousel , a crazy carousel

“You’ve got to climb Mount Everest to reach The Valley of the Dolls. It’s a brutal climb to reach that peak. You stand there waiting for the rush of exhilaration. But it doesn’t come. You’re alone and the feeling of loneliness is overpowering.” And later, “Look. They drummed you right outta Hollywood! So ya come crawlin' back to Broadway. Well, Broadway doesn't go for booze and dope. Now you get outta my way, I got a guy waitin' for me.”

Do you poop out at parties?

Elwood P. Dowd: “Harvey and I sit in the bars...have a drink or two...play the jukebox. And soon the faces of all the other people…they turn toward mine and they smile. And they're saying, "We don't know your name, mister, but you're a very nice fella." Harvey and I warm ourselves in all these golden moments. We've entered as strangers - soon we have friends. And they come over...and they sit with us...and they drink with us...and they talk to us. They tell about the big terrible things they've done and the big wonderful things they'll do. Their hopes, and their regrets, and their loves, and their hates. All very large, because nobody ever brings anything small into a bar. And then I introduce them to Harvey...and he's bigger and grander than anything they offer me. And when they leave, they leave impressed. The same people seldom come back; but that's envy, my dear. There's a little bit of envy in the best of us.”

Do you really think that all that booze is going to make you straight?

But now the days grow short
I'm in the autumn of the year
And now I think of my life as vintage wine
from fine old kegs…
from the brim to the dregs

Holiday Fare

2011-12-29T12:19:00.001-05:00

Every Christmas is the same and every one a little bit different.

Behind me on the treadmill stands a procession of gifts that we will be taking away with us to Ottawa. Downstairs, other gifts sit wrapped, ready to be delivered on Christmas Eve. Still others hide in the closet (oh oh...), waiting to be unleashed on Christmas morning.

From here on my cushioned chair I can hear Rita MacNeil and the Men of the Deeps singing out from the old Panasonic TV, and I wait for the song about Cape Breton, and think of my mother. I love the seasonal chorus, but I lament the dearth of Christmas classic movies, and wonder why I don't just up and buy them and keep them for this holiday occasion.

I hear Mary sneezing as she wipes away the dust and cat hair from five colourful little beds, beds they hardly ever use but that are theirs all the same. They must be tired holed up in the bedrooms, waiting for the grout to dry.

I wish I could get into the kitchen and make myself a cup of tea, or, better still, pour some wine. I almost never drink, but because I know that I am going to want more than my share of wine over the next four nights, I want some now. I'm funny that way.

Tomorrow, I have a lot of work to do around the house. I have to get the kitchen back in order, and dust away the chalky residue that has risen, and fallen, everywhere, coating everything. That is the nature of new tiles.

I have never had new tiles at Christmas before. Come to think of it, I have never had new tiles ever.

And I have never shared Christmas Eve dinner with Mike and Stephan, but I am looking forward to the evening with great pleasure. Mike is making green lasagna, and undoubtedly I am going to eat too much of it and too much bread. Afterward, we will go to Eva and David's for dessert, and then to the downtown late-night Christmas concert.

Add to this that I have never had Christmas dinner with Sarah's other family, but I look forward to that, too [this never happened, in fact] -- especially because I do not have to cook (shame on me) and, if I am lucky, will not have to do a lot of dishes because I am a gracious and most dignified guest. (Ha!) Mind you, doing dishes can be a lot of fun, especially if I'm washing.

I think back now to Christmas Day in Ottawa, when Don was alive and the boys were at home, and how they, the boys, would push themselves away from that table faster than you could say, "I'm not doing dishes!" And they never did. (They left that to their sister and to me.) They did other things -- played Christmas music, ate cookies, cast shadow puppets on the kitchen walls. We laughed a lot, always, and I thought -- I hoped -- that Christmas Day would always be the same.

But that is not the way that real life is, at least not for the majority of people that I know, and certainly not for me.

For people I know, as for me (and as I said), every Christmas is the same and every one a little bit different. I think that's because the people that I know and admire tend to live life in harder ways...taking risks, loving broadly, stepping up or down accordingly, sometimes unwittingly, making room for letting go and urging in.

Whenever I have lonely moments at Christmas -- whenever I lament what might have been -- I think of all the Christmas cards and letters, the family and the friends, the dinners and the concerts, the gifts that sit waiting on the treadmill, the sweet lisping sounds of Rita MacNeil leading the harmony of Cape Breton voices (their esses held too long, their tees too hard), and I know that nothing, and that no one I have loved, is far behind me, and that through every change the steady sameness sweetly follows me.

Posted by Jennifer Coffey at 12:15 AM

Labels: Holiday Issue

[Archived] Tuesday, December 22

Lake Superior State University 2011 List of Banished Words

2011-12-28T14:09:00.001-05:00

VIRAL

"Often used to describe the spreading of items on the Internet i.e. 'The video went viral.' It is overused. I have no objection to this word's use as a way to differentiate a (viral) illness from bacterial." Jim Cance, Plainwell, Mich.

"This linguistic disease of a term must be quarantined." Kuahmel Allah, Los Angeles, Calif.

"Events, photographs, written pieces and even occasional videos that attracted a great deal of attention once were simply highly publicized, repeated in news broadcasts, and talked about for a few days. Now, however, it is no longer enough to give such offerings their 15 minutes of fame, but they must be declared to 'go viral.' As a result, any mindless stunt or vapid bit of writing is sent by its creators whirling around the Internet and, once whirled, its creators declare it (trumpets here) 'viral!' Enough already! If anything is to be declared worthy enough to 'go viral,' clearly it should be the LSSU Banished Words list for 2011!" Lawrence Mickel, Coventry, Conn.

"I knew it was time when the 2010 list of banished words appeared in Time magazine's, 'That Viral Thing' column." Dave Schaefer, Glenview, Ill.

"I didn't mind much when 'viral' came to mean an under-handed tactic by advertising companies to make their ads look like pop culture. However, now anything that becomes popular on YouTube is suddenly 'viral.' I just don't get it." Kevin Wood, Wallacetown, Ont.

"Every time I see a viral video on CNN or am asked to 'Let's go viral with this' in another lame e-mail forwarded message, it makes me sick." Lian Schmidt, Bandon, Ore.

EPIC

More than one nominator says the use of 'epic' has become an epic annoyance.

"Cecil B. DeMille movies are epic. Internet fallouts and opinions delivered in caps-lock are not. 'Epic fail,' 'epic win', 'epic (noun)' -- it doesn't matter; it needs to be banished until people recognize that echoing trite, hyperbolic Internet phrases in an effort to look witty or intelligent actually achieves the opposite." Kim U., Des Moines, Iowa.

"Over-use of the word 'epic' has reached epic proportions. Tim Blaney, Snoqualmie, Wash.

"Anything that this word describes in popular over-usage is rarely ever 'epic' in the traditional sense of being heroic, majestic, or just plain awe-inspiring." Mel F., Dallas, Tex.

"Standards for using 'epic' are so low, even 'awesome' is embarrassed." Mike of Kettering, Ohio.

"I'm sure that when the history books are written or updated and stories have been passed through the generations, the epic powder on the slopes during your last ski trip or your participation in last night's epic flash mob will probably not be included. This may be the root of this epic problem, but it seems as if during the past two years, any idea that was not successful was considered an 'epic-fail.' This includes the PowerPoint presentation you tried to give during this morning's meeting, but couldn't because of technical problems. Also, the ice storm of 'epic proportions' that is blanketing the east coast this winter sure looks a lot like the storm that happened last winter." DV, Seattle, Wash.

FAIL

One nominator says, "what originally may have been a term for a stockbroker's default is now abused by today's youth as virtually any kind of 'failure.' Whether it is someone tripping, a car accident, a costumed character scaring the living daylights out a kid, or just a poor choice in fashion, these people drive me crazy thinking that anything that is a mistake is a 'fail.' They fail proper language!"

"Fail is not a noun. It is not an adjective. It is a verb. If this word is not banned, then this entire word banishment system is full of FAIL. (Now doesn't that just sound silly?)" Daniel of Carrollton, Georgia.

"When FAILblog.org went up, it was a funny way to view videos of unfortunate people in unfortunate situations. The word fail is now used by people, very often just to tease others, when they 'FAIL.' Any time you screw up in life -- a trip up the stairs, a bump into a wall, or a Freudian slip, you get that word thrown in your face." Tyler Lynch, Washington, Iowa.

"Mis-used. Over-used. Used with complete disregard to the 'epic' weight of the word. Silence obnoxious reality TV personalities and sullen, anti-establishment teenagers everywhere by banishing this word." Natalie of Burlington, Ont.

"It has taken over blogs, photo captions, 'status' comments. Anytime someone does something less than perfect, we have to read 'FAIL!' The word has failed us all." Aaron Yunker, Ishpeming, Mich.

WOW FACTOR

"This buzzword is served up with a heaping of cliché factor and a side order of irritation. But the lemmings from cable-TV cooking, whatever design and fashion shows keep dishing it out. I miss the old days when 'factor' was only on the math-and-science menu." Dan Muldoon, Omaha, Neb.

"Done-to-death phrase to point out something with a somewhat significantly appealing appearance." Ann Pepper, Knoxville, Tenn.

A-HA MOMENT

"All this means is a point at which you understand something or something becomes clearer. Why can't you just say that?" Audrey Mayo, Killeen, Tex.

BACK STORY

"This should be on the list of words that don't need to exist because a perfectly good word has been used for years. In this case, the word is 'history,' or, for those who must be weaned, 'story.'" Jeff Williams, Sherwood, Ariz.

BFF

"These chicks call each other BFF (Best Friends Forever) and it lasts about 10 minutes. Now there's BFFA (Best Friends For Awhile), which makes more sense." Kate Rabe Forgach, Ft. Collins, Colo.

MAN UP

"A stupid phrase when directed at men. Even more stupid when directed at a woman, as in 'Alexis, you need to man up and join that Pilates class!'" Sherry Edwards, Clarkston, Mich.

"Another case of 'verbing' a noun and ending with a preposition that goes nowhere. Not only that, the phrase is insulting, especially when voiced by a female, who'd never think to say, 'Woman up!'" Aunt Shecky, East Greenbush, NY.

"Can a woman 'man-up,' or would she be expected to 'woman-up?'" Jay Leslie, Portland, Maine.

"Not just overused (a 2010 top word according to the Global Language Monitor) but bullying and sexist." Christopher K. Philippo, Glenmont, NY.

"We had to put up with 'lawyer up.' Now 'man up,' too? A chest-thumping cultural regression fit for frat boys stacking beer glasses." Craig Chalquist Ph.D., Walnut Creek, Calif.

REFUDIATE

"Adding this word to the English language simply because a part-time politician lacks a spell checker on her cell phone is an action that needs to be repudiated." Dale Humphreys, Muskegon, Mich.

Kuahmel Allah of Los Angeles, Calif. wants to banish what he called 'Sarah Palin-isms': "Let's 'refudiate' them on the double!"

MAMA GRIZZLIES

"Unless you are referring to a scientific study of Ursus arctos horribilis , this analogy of right-wing female politicians should rest in peace." Mark Carlson, Sault Ste. Marie, Mich.

THE AMERICAN PEOPLE

"These politicians in Congress say 'the American People' as part of what seems like every statement they make! I see that others have noticed it, too, as various websites abound, including an entry on Wikipedia." Paul M. Girouard, St. Louis, Mo.

"No one in Washington can pontificate for more than two sentences without using it. Beyond overuse, these people imply that 'the American people' want/expect/demand all the same things. They don't." Dick Hilker, Loveland, Colo.

"Aren't all Americans people? Every political speech refers to the 'American' people as if simply saying 'Americans' (or 'people') is not enough." Deb Faust, Sault Ste. Marie, Mich.

I'M JUST SAYIN'

"'A phrase used to defuse any ill feelings caused by a preceded remark,' according to the Urban Dictionary. Do we really need a qualifier at the end of every sentence? People feel uncomfortable with a comment that was made and then 'just sayin'' comes rolling off the tongue? It really doesn't change what was said, I'm just sayin'." Becky of Sault Ste. Marie, Mich.

"I'm just sayin'...'I'm not sayin'''…Actually, you ARE saying…A watered-down version of what I just said or intended to say….SAY what you are saying. DON'T SAY what you aren't saying." Julio Appling, Vancouver, Wash.

"Obviously you are saying it…you just said it!" Catherine Wilson, Granger, Ind.

"And we would never have known if you hadn't told us." Bob Forrest, Tempe, Ariz.

"When a 24-hour news network had the misguided notion to brand this phrase as a commentary segment called, 'Just sayin', I thought I was going to retch." Casey Conroy, Pleasant Hill, Calif.

FACEBOOK / GOOGLE

as verbs

"Facebook is a great, addicting website. Google is a great search engine. However, their use as verbs causes some deep problems. As bad as they are, the trend can only get worse, i.e. 'I'm going to Twitter a few people, then Yahoo the movie listings and maybe Amazon a book or two." Jordan of Waterloo, Ont.

LIVE LIFE TO THE FULLEST

"It's an absurdity followed by a redundancy. First, things are full or they're not; there is no fullest. Second, 'live life' is redundant. Finally, the expression is nauseatingly overused. What's wrong with enjoying life fully or completely? The phrase makes me gag. I'm surprised it hasn't appeared on the list before." Sylvia Hall, Williamsport, Penn.

Crosswords, Puzzles and Games

2011-12-26T20:27:00.001-05:00

I came downstairs this morning to find Sneakers dealing what was apparently another round of cards in what was apparently a bridge game that was apparently interrupted by bouts of rose-snacking. I know this for a fact because just as I hit the bottom stair I heard Galoshes call, "You can't trump me!" and when I turned the corner I noted that Slippers was lying on her back and downing rose petals much the same way you or I would chow down on a bag of jujubes or heavily salted popcorn. Her lips were bright pink and her purring could be heard all the way across the street at the corner store (more on that another day).

I decided to sit there quietly for a few minutes, incognito as it were, as I had not yet before seen them all together like this over a card game. Other things, yes -- skiing, snow boarding, all the water sports, and of course the winter sled team, but never at a table in an attitude reminiscent of those awful velvet paintings. I don't know much about the trump games, either, and I have a hellish memory for cards that have already gone before my eyes in any given game. Mind you, after watching that bunch I'm not sure I figured out anything.

They seemed more preoccupied with social niceties than with actual learning. Sneakers, in fact, was dootied up in his silk bathrobe, reminding me a little of a portlier Orson Welles, and oh my god -- the cigar smoke! (And all this at eight o'clock in the morning. No doubt this was a holdover game.) He kept belching into his lapel, then grinning maliciously at Galoshes, who was himself quite a spectacle, his goggles draped around his neck like Howard Hughes and his back legs up on the table -- crossed. I don't typically think of Galoshes as arrogant, but I have to tell you, he cut quite a pose there at the dining room table.

"You can't trump me, I said!" he said, at which point Boots squished up his triangular face (and I can't even repeat who he reminded me of) and hurled an epithet or two toward his partner.

"Do you even know the rules of this game?" asked Boots (which were the exact words I had in my own head), at which moment Ralph interrupted, "Let's be adults about this, shall we, and get on with the game."

I could hear that he intended this as a command, too, not as a question.

Slippers rolled over beneath the arching baby's breath, practically cooing, and Galoshes yelled at her: "Haven't you any sense of decorum?" and Sneakers, who had by now gone into the kitchen and come back out again, carrying one of those bowls from the 1960s meant for chips and chip dip in which he had somehow concocted an Orange Bavarian Cream, shouted, "Heads up!" and I had no idea what he meant until I peeked through the rungs of the stair railing and saw a mittful of mandarin flying over the poker chips (do you need poker chips for trump games? I asked myself) landing in Galoshes' lap.

"Quit picking on me, all of you!" Galoshes yelled back, "and let's get on with the game."

Heavy smoke filled the air, and I coughed quietly into the sleeve of my nightgown and missed half of what Sneakers was saying -- something about synthesis, whereupon Boots roared, "For gawd's sakes -- are we going to have to sit through another dialectic diatribe from you? Thesis. Antithesis. Synthesis. Who bloody cares? I'd be happy if someone at this table knew how to play this game properly, and to hell with philosophy!"

Ralph interjected, "Speaking of philosophy, how do you feel about being written about? I had a look at one of the short stories which she claims is for the baby, but you know as well as I do that there are other venues and other babies and yeah, sure, it might be that this is all intended for a modest audience, but you know how those things go."

"I, for one, certainly do." Boots hissed spit as he spoke. "I have been the subject -- or should I say victim? -- of some of her other so-called work, and it's none too pleasant being depicted as an anal retentive bore."

"If the catheter fits," muttered Galoshes, and Slippers sat upright, several shiny petals falling from her tiny mouth. "I think you mean enema bag," she said, and Boots hissed again. "Whatever," he said. "Whose deal?"

I sat there, my arm going numb from leaning into the railing, wondering why they seemed so angry with me and why I hadn't shaved my legs in so long. Hadn't I done my best for them? Had I not taken them in off the streets when no one else wanted them? Wasn't I timely with food and water and treats? Hadn't they slept on my face for all these years?

God knows what I had had to sacrifice in the wake of their dilemmas, and yet, clearly, they didn't seem to care. I tried not to feel hurt; to understand that here in the early morning they, at the very least, were spongy tired and likely hungover (fully aware as I was of Sneakers' penchant for brandy and Ralph's longstanding [and some would say kindred] relationship with Austrian beer).

The next thing I knew one of them had leaned over and had turned on the stereo and they were humming along to Carly Simon's song about the Carter family -- and then I found I missed her... mor-or-or-ore...than I'd ever have guessed -- and I peeked through the bars and saw Boots chucking Ralph under the chin and Sneakers handing a cigar to Galoshes. "She's not so bad," Boots said, and I thought, "Ah, there's synchronicity for you," and I looked again and saw that Slippers had lain back down under the roses and seemed to be counting the remaining petals.

The dog, apparently, slept through the whole thing.

<:^)

[Archived] Tuesday, December 22

Posted by Jennifer Coffey at 9:38 AM

Labels: Puzzles and Games

Gadgets

2011-12-24T08:46:00.001-05:00

At the rate I am going I will be addicted to Children’s Chewable Tylenol by next Tuesday. Here, for now, is another archived entry. Ho ho ho!

I was downstairs mopping the floors about an hour ago, the television humming in the background along with the cats and the dog. (The cats were humming Christmas carols, but I'm not at all sure what that tune was issuing from the dog. The words belonged to How Much Is That Doggie In The Window? but whoa...talk about off key!) Anyway, as I continued to spruce up the floors with my new Swiffer mop (my mother is spinning in her grave), I began thinking how much the world has changed in my brief thirty-seven years. A quick scan of the Internet, in fact, tells me that during this—or any—holiday season you can, for anywhere from 10 to 50,000 dollars, pick up any number of the following items: multiple-style robot kits, cousins to the more specifically useful Roomba Vacuuming Robot (how does it know?); automatic golf tees (for those of you who can swing, but not low) (comin' for to carry me home); revitalized Etch A Sketches (my brother was given one of those, along with a Slinky, when he was four years old, and he used to let me play with these toys on the stairs with him); a bells and whistles Rubik's Cube (I couldn't figure out the old one, and I don't think any number of accouterments are going to help me); a gyroscopic wrist exerciser (burn, baby burn...disco fever!); a ropeless jump rope (huh?); a remote control middle finger (my kids would love this one...which reminds me of the time, after years of teasing them with this same gesture, my two older children hauled me off to a late-night karaoke bar in Ottawa where they performed a duet and, while singing, raised their middle fingers—along with everyone else in that bar—in my direction. I think I might have actually blushed); a staple-free stapler (which would alleviate me of I don't know how many septicemia scares); a digital voice recorder pen (does it speak or does it write?); a desktop light therapy box (which has to be better than any therapist I ever encountered) (or encountertransferenced); a digital picture frame; a light-up umbrella (which I can do on my own quite nicely, given the right meteorological conditions); a—get this—grill alert talking remote (it would have to be remote) meat thermometer. (I see before me a roast beef yelling from behind closed oven doors, "I'm done! I'm done!") (and when we get behind closed doors...); picture-taking binoculars (great for you condominium dwellers); a Giant Swiss Army Knife (85 tools with 100 functions, all for a mere $999.00. Geeze, I can do practically all the same things, and I charge way less than that); a touch free soap dispenser (perfect for the Howard Hugheseses in your life), and a wireless weather station. (Do you remember the Kate Bush Cloudbusting video she made with Donald Sutherland, who, by the way, is beginning to look more and more like my father?).

No no no no no. I'm with my mother on this one...or close enough to stop her shrieking from beyond the grave. My notion of gadgetry reaches its technological limit at squirting floor mops, and prior to these sorts of Dust Buster-style advances, includes nutcrackers (also know as psychotherapists); manual corkscrews; letter openers (not without my daughter); voice mail (now this is an advance); Phillip head screwdrivers; fluorescent fly swatters; toothpicks, quartz battery-operated watches; paper clips; four cylinder engines; pencil sharpeners; scissors; tire jacks; shower caps; watering cans; nightlights; glow-in-the-dark toothbrushes; bobbin threaders, and non-giant Swiss Army knives. I am perfectly content to continue going about things in an antiquated fashion, mopping the floors, the t.v. on in the background, the cats and dog humming in their sweet old-fashioned ways.

How much is that doggie in the window? (arf! arf!)
The one with the waggley tail...
How much is that doggie in the window? (arf! arf!)
I do hope that doggie's for sale.

<:^)

Monday, December 29

Posted by Jennifer Coffey at 6:05 PM

Labels: Home and Garden

Science & Nature

2011-12-23T08:51:00.001-05:00

Bob, this one's for you:

I have never been much of a science student, which in my day meant Terry Mazeika trading my English skills for her expertise in biology in order for each of us to pass. While I struggled away with ions, protons, neutrons and electrons, Terry toiled with metaphor, allegory, bathos (which she thought meant drowning in sorrow), and, bathos's cousin, the mock heroic. I just realized I wrote the mock heroic, which is so insiderish—like when I lived in Port Credit and we used to say, "We're going to the Dixie Plaza." [Mind you, it was Bob who first pointed out this regional habit.]

Anyway, I have never been good at science, and had to ultimately drop out of both physics and chemistry. (The only thing I remember about either is the word oscillation, and that's because someone showed us oscillation in action.) I do recall more from my biology classes, however, like the day we were dissecting fish and how I opened mine up and began squealing, "My fish swallowed a pen! My fish swallowed a pen!" (At least a week went by before I realized that I had been set up.) My best friend Sandy cried, too, when we had to dissect frogs, and in fact she got up from our double desk and left the classroom for the rest of the period.

When I finished high school, despite having done well enough in most other subjects, I still felt stupid because I had been such a complete failure in the various areas of science. How fortunate for me, then, when I found out that George Brown College held night classes in astrology. This I was sure I could do, having devoted so much of my young life in the Seaway Restaurant matchmaking people of all ages and interests based on their signs. (I didn't know anything about sun signs in those early years, and now that I think about it, I have forgotten most of what I eventually did learn.) It didn't hurt, either (or at least not yet) that I had fallen for a Toronto astrologer (of whom mareseatoats later asked, "Mystic, or mistake?"), and what with the combined charts of his Leo/Cancer/Cancer and my Aries/Aries/Scorpio producing a bouncing Gemini/Pisces/Gemini ("Quadruplets!" I shouted), everything seemed in perfect alignment.

I shall leave that story for another day and instalment (there's only so much stomach-churning a person can abide in one afternoon), but I can say with certainty how buoyantly I left my shift at the knives and scissors counter at Eaton's Department Store and headed off twice a week for my class, dreaming of a life with my new boyfriend (who, unbeknownst to me, was producing all kinds of astrological babies all over town), the two of us living in a third floor walk-up in Cabbagetown (which was then merely Cabbagetown, and not the well-preserved heritage pocket it has since become).

What I have been able to do, which I think is rather astute if not exactly Scientific American material, is produce analyses of sun signs based on their relationship to words (i.e., in other words, the best and worst of how people write). I don't want to reveal here the full results of my hard work, as I am sure one day I will win great accolades for my current work-in-progress, Behind Every Great Wordsmith Is A Sun Sign Just Waiting To Leap Out, (or my alternate working title, When Your Solar Plexus Vexes), but I can give you a little taste so as to whet your zodiacal appetite, as it were (and is). Here are some of my findings. (I offer up the zenith and nadir of each):

Aries: dogmatic/passionate
Taurus: imperious/judicious
Cancer: prurient/energetic
Gemini: ponderous/humorous
Leo: vain/vibrant
Virgo: disparaging/innocent
Libra: acerbic/benevolent
Scorpio: stinging/sweet
Sagittarius: callous/joyful
Capricorn: cruel/loving
Aquarius: bombastic/witty
Pisces: covetous/intelligent

Anyway, the subject of astrology came up last night, and I was taken back (in my head) to a time in Prince Edward Island when a day or so before my twenty-fifth birthday I had to have a laparoscopy. How surprised was I, then, to come home from day surgery and discover that my husband had arranged a special birthday party for me. At least twenty people were crammed into the tiny living room of our thin-walled turquoise house out on the old Cottontown Road, and apart from the bubbling abdominal gas, I sat almost comfortably in my chair, having a splendid time. Someone —I think my boss's daughter, who was likely the only person there who could afford one—gave me a pink-flowered Keepsake Azalea (which I wasn't able to keep very long, given my, as you would have expected, botanical challenges), and Michael M. sat in the corner in his grey and burgundy Velcro shirt and khaki pants, being especially funny, and funnier, as he drank down his bottle of Jack Daniels.

About mid-way through the party I went to the bathroom. As I sat on the toilet, I thought I ought to look down and make sure nothing untoward was coming from me, given that I had just had surgery in my tender bits area. How shocked was I to discover great swirls of steam rising from the toilet bowl? I stood up, hanging on to the wall to regain my balance, terrified. I came out into the living room, and asked an acquaintance named Crystal (whose last name —no lie—was Cross, as in Criss Cross) if she would come into the kitchen for a little minute. (I thought it easier to break the news and therefore remain calm in the presence of someone I did not know well.) I told her I had a medical emergency, and I asked her if she could spirit me over the bridge to the old Charlottetown Hospital. We conspired briefly and, telling everyone we were off on a cigarette run, we dashed as fast as her 1962 Mustang would take us.

Fortunately the waiting room was not busy, and I was whisked in fairly quickly because I had just had that laparoscopy. The doctor had me hop up on the gurney, and he asked me what my trouble seemed to be. I told him, as calmly as I could, "Spontaneous combustion." He said, "What?" I said again, "Spontaneous combustion." "How do you think that is possible?" he asked. "Doctor, I do read," I said. "I might not have a scientific mind, but I know what steam coming from my vagina means. Furthermore, I have two young children, and it is my birthday, and if you want me to live to see another one—if you want my children to know their mother—I think you ought to get on this right away."

"I'll tell you what," he said. "There's a woman down the hall who believes that whenever there's a full moon, as there is tonight, she grows hair on her chest and her feet, and becomes a werewolf. We are just now waiting for an ambulance to come and take her off to Unit Nine. If you would like to go with her, I will make arrangements. If, on the other hand, you would like to go home and enjoy your birthday, you have (here he looked at his watch. A person never forgets these things) ten seconds to leave my hospital. Before you make your decision, I would like to fill you in on one small detail: when warm urine hits a cold toilet bowl—and tonight is a chilly enough night after all—it produces steam."

Who knew?

I left.

The only memories I have about the rest of the night are that Crystal and I bought cigarettes on the way back home; I told no one about the incident for at least a dozen years, and, later that night, when Paul offered Michael a peanut butter and clam sandwich, Michael projectile vomited across the entire living room and all over my Keepsake Azalea.

I'm just burning doin' the neutron dance
I'm just burning doin' the neutron dance

<:^)

[Archived] Thursday, August 13

Posted by Jennifer Coffey at 11:41 PM

Labels: Personals

Coffey Talk

2011-12-22T13:12:00.001-05:00

My arm is still out of commission. Ironically, this is the first (older) entry I happened upon:

I was speaking with a young woman – by young I mean late twenties, early thirties – on Thursday when she happened to mention something about small talk and her mother. This woman said to me that she doesn’t understand why her mother wishes they could talk more often on the phone.

I asked this young woman what the matter would be in giving her mum a little of what she wants, and the reply I got was, “Small talk! All she wants to do is talk small talk.”

It hit me at that moment that my daughter and I had spoken no fewer than six times by phone yesterday. I admit that this might be some kind of record and that typically my daughter and I speak maybe four or five times per week, but yesterday we were discussing the earthquake and tornado and their occurrence in the midst of the G-8 and G-20 Summits, and exchanging ideas about paint colours in her new home.

I expressed to this young woman that in fact Sarah and I had spoken several times that very day, and she asked me why. I said something like, “Well, we live in different cities, which likely accounts for some of the calls, and my daughter has a daughter, which accounts for some more.” I met with warm but puzzled stares.

So for the rest of the evening, I thought about this notion of small talk, aware that I am as guilty of it as anyone. I asked myself how much was too much; what constitutes small talk, and was I bordering on the symbiotic? Here’s what I ultimately decided:

Small talk only works after the big talk has been done. In other words, if you have unresolved issues, small talk is likely going to feel extremely uncomfortable. Small talk, then, is what comes when two people feel safe with one another and when they care deeply enough to want to know all the ins and outs of that person’s day.

I love when my daughter tells me, for example, that she is making spaghetti sauce for dinner. I picture her standing at her kitchen counter, admiring the flowers she just planted in her garden, answering her small daughter’s questions. I want to know about paint colours – what she likes, why she is choosing those colours, what they mean to her. I love her sweet and funny stories about work and friendship and baseball, and I want to hear what makes her angry or afraid. And I am pretty sure she loves the same things about me.

I can’t even imagine her ever criticizing me for small talk, instead saying, “Ah Mum, it’s that thing about less being more.” And she would be right. I don’t know what I’d do without our chitchat; without our comparisons of who should be the next American Idol, or why Stephen Harper insisted on holding the G-20 Summit in this city whose people he seems to loathe. (Aha!) I can’t imagine what I would do without all the commentary we seem to conjure up in a day, or worse, what it would be like if the only things we talked about were what many people here consider “important.”

Not to agree, ever, with Stephen Harper, but it’s a little to do with that thing I have said about Toronto; about the intellectual snobbery in this city where people have no idea what it means to know everyone on your street and to have friends of all ages and to never find a discussion about weather boring. No. It’s the small things that make life rich; that keep me interested and invested; that make me feel important enough. And I can tell you this: when I am no longer on the planet it is that very small talk that my daughter is going to miss about me most, and about our lives together.

Posted by Jennifer Coffey at 12:22 AM

Saturday, June 26

Labels: Humour, Personals

Christmas Wish List

2011-12-20T12:50:00.001-05:00

People say, “It’ the same thing every year,” but if you look closely, you will see that it’s not the same at all.

Here, then, is a re-issue, with one notable change, and exchange:

I stood over their letters this morning, having come down early for tea, and found myself laughing and crying over how reflective their words are of the deepest parts of their natures. And for once they all did as I asked, which in this household is tantamount to a small miracle. In case any of you is, or are, interested, I reproduce their wish lists for you now.

Dear Santa Claws,
Mostly I have been a good girl. Except for the incident with the marbles I can't think of a single bad thing I did all year. Here's what I want. Help me get it please. I want a Brat doll and an Easy Bake Oven and a pink glitter bracelet and a box of Smarties. You can pick any Brat doll you want but the Smarties can't have any blue ones because I don't like them. They make my lips blue and the last time I ate them someone thought I needed a defibrillator and that wasn't very much fun at all. Only just now my chest fur is growing back in. Besides the bracelet please can I have something shiny? It can be anything. Some cutlery, a small saxophone, a medallion, a Swiss army knife, a hubcap, or a razor blade. I don't care. Also I want a copy of Constance Heaven's The Fires of Glenlochy because it's the only one I haven't read. Thank you Santa and please come again next year. Love, Slippers

Santa Clause I was asked to write a letter to you for what I want for chrismass but I can't think of what I want except a culligan water cooler and a milk thermus and maybe my very own bag of lays wavy potato chips or some smart pop popcorn and if you can't come that's okay because I can mostly get all this if I wait by the couch long enough. Your friend Ralph

Dear Santa -- This year I would like to buy school supplies for twenty children; three goats, one pig, and four chickens; seven soccer balls for kids who never had a chance to play soccer; medical aid for five families; enough books to fill a village library, and one night when no one had to be afraid. Oh yes, Santa. Please make it snow. Gratefully yours, Galoshes.

Mr. Claus,
It has been inappropriately brought to my immediate attention that I must succumb to the tedious task of assigning items to a fraudulent list yet again. Far be it from me to argue with anyone who is going to use my response -- or lack of it -- as leverage against what is suddenly "no longer affordable." Although this Conrad Black-mail might work with white middle-aged Fascista femmes it seldom works on me...unless, of course, there is mention of a crisp Cuban cigar or an ample jar of sweet and smoky port or a block of barrel-aged cheddar or a generous handful of pimentoed olives...or perhaps, I suppose, and quite easily the most important of all -- a spanking new grey-and-burgundy silk smoking jacket. Otherwise, Mr. Claus, piss off and leave the big boys to fend for themselves.
Sincerely yours,
Sneakers

Christmas List

1. Ralph Lauren zebra patterned cotton sheets, queen, 600 thread count
2. Mountain Co-op high powered dual action stainless steel binoculars
3. Season One: Hey Paula!
4. Old Spice Aftershave, extra scent
5. Celine Dion Sings Steamy Shower Classics
6. Four rechargeable Panasonic 9-volt batteries
7. Three cans Beatrice Real Whip Cream, chilled
8. Ten cans St. John Sea Salt Sardines
9. Playboy's Playmate Pets Extravaganza
10. Ten Little Pussies and How They Grew, first edition

Jeeves (Ho Ho Ho)

I hope there is a Santa Claus (because I know there is a Vaginia), and that he will read these letters and, except for that very last item, will try his level best to accommodate them.

<:^)

Imprints

2011-12-18T15:52:00.001-05:00

The tree is waiting in the stand; a beautiful balsam, about six and a half feet tall...taller than my sons and my father, and taller, physically, than Don. We will leave it two days, its branches relaxing naturally as it adapts to the unnatural heat of the house and thrives, so green and full—how long before we, so selfish perhaps to want a real tree, will watch its needles wilt and die.

When the children were children, they helped decorate the tree. I am sure they tired of my ponderous routine—tape-deck carols sung mostly by people thirty or more years dead; cupsful of scorching hot chocolate; mum making ‘practical suggestions.’ (I wasn’t permitted to help decorate in my father’s house, and I had too few Christmases with mum, and therefore was never sure enough how tradition/s should be set.)

But it’s that time of year. Trees, decorations, succulent meat, mulled wine, shining stars, and chocolate.

Speaking of chocolate, yesterday one of my wonderful former students sent me the most glorious basket of chocolate I have ever laid eyes on—all the way from Brazil: toffee, pretzels, cookies, biscuits, coffee—it’s unbelievable. I cried for ten minutes straight, for Sarah and for this benevolent young woman who not only understands, but who always made me feel valuable as a teacher, a writer and as a human being.

Today, a friend of mine sent out a Facebook message, grateful for her annual Christmas card ritual—she licked something like 103 envelopes—I don’t even know 103 people—and right now on television Ringo Starr is crying in memory of George Harrison who offered, on his death bed, to accompany Ringo to Boston to the bedside of Starr’s daughter, who was suffering from a brain tumour.

I had a son with a brain tumour, and I have some idea what that means on behalf of one’s child. But (Mary and Sarah and) I have never been welcome in his home at Christmas, or at any other time of year, and as time goes by dominoes will fall into place, while others right themselves.

Sarah, who loved decorating so much, will not be here this year, either. “I am coming to Toronto next Christmas, Mum,” she said, with that look of fierce determination. She was also fond of the Beatles, as was I, and along with her youngest brother bought me many Fab Four CDs. More than anything she cherished gift-giving and planning surprises, and I am so, so sorry that I am not able to do either for her this year.

If I were one of my students, right about now I would be asking me about the absence of thoughtful transitions in this entry. But this entry is only (only? that’s funny) about impressions, and for once I am freed from the burden of over-thinking. Besides, my arm is compromised, and writing is not such a good idea today.

Mary has just this minute called from the grocery aisle. She said she phoned because it seemed to be what everyone was doing. I laughed, and then she sang, loudly, “I just called to say I love you....” Jesus. It wasn’t enough for her to sing one line, either. She felt compelled to go on. Funny woman. (Weird woman.) (Weird in a good way, though.) (That’s what I tell people, anyway.)

So these are my traditions. Mary. Noam when he is able. Noam when he is unable. Have Gun Will Travel, is all I mean. Lainey, never yet on the day, but we are adaptable. “Gramps, when I come to Toronto, will there be presents?” Blue, vicariously, plus in the park and over at the coffee shop. “Gammie...” Delicious food. A lovely tree. Friends. MCC on Christmas Eve. (Don’t bother to come rob us, either. We have attack dogs.) Movies, including documentaries. Email. Zach/Joanne/Sheila, and like that. Cards (but not 103. To be fair, I know well-loved and loving people who don’t send any cards, but this friend is from Newfoundland, which explains about 67 of those messages, along with the sentiment.) Music. Memories. Don. And Sarah. Always Sarah, who, like our noble Christmas tree, will live a life too short, but light up every corner of our world, gloriously.

Sarah, who always laughed whenever I quoted EB White’s, “I pine for you, I balsam.”

On the Other Hand…

2011-12-17T01:08:00.001-05:00

I have never written an entry like this, using only my right hand. Pity for me, too, because I am left-handed, which is where the problem began and begins, culminating in a rotator cuff injury combined with a history of bartending/ophthalmic/chalkboard bursitis.

Tonight, I want to see if I can write and (ultimately—if it proves necessary—right) a right-handed entry. Otherwise it could be days before I page-purge.

Anyway, while I waited on the leatherette seat in Eaton’s Centre this afternoon, my shopping bags too heavy to carry without assistance, I spent my time watching the passers-by, trying to determine the various types of shoppers.

Here, then, is what I saw:

Gawkers and gapers

Screamers and talkers

Wall-huggers, bee-liners,

Downtrodden walkers

Models and laggers

Knee-bending picture-takers

Smilers and tag-teamers

Loungers and Quakers

Wheelers and dealers

Gum-chewing gadabouts

Blackberry-/cell-phoners

Lost in their whereabouts

Eaters and drinkers,

Pushers and shovers

Hand holders, toters

Sistas and bruthas

You take my point. Although I should clarify that by wheelers I include chairs, skateboards and fancy kids’ sneakers. As for pushers, I’ll let you be the judge.

The people who sat next to me were far more interesting, but that story is better left (-handed?) for another day. Or as Paul used to say when his hockey team won, “Right arm!” (And people wonder why I left left left him.)

Anyway, as I used to hear over and over when I was a child, “Never let your left hand know what your right hand is doing.”

The Elephant in the Room

2011-12-14T22:39:00.001-05:00

Hills like white elephants

Elephants and grandchildren never forget.

I have a memory like an elephant. In fact, elephants often consult me.

Well, the big elephant in the whole system is the baby boomer generation that marches through like a herd of elephants. And we begin to retire in 2008.

For shame, doc. Hunting rabbits with an elephant gun. Why don't you shoot yourself an elephant?

Nature’s great masterpiece, an elephant; the only harmless great thing.

One morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got into my pajamas I'll never know.

Shallows where a lamb could wade and depths where an elephant would drown.

I get an urge, like a pregnant elephant, to go away and give birth to a book.

Women are like elephants. I like to look at 'em, but I wouldn't want to own one.

The elephants were being slaughtered in masses. Some were even killed in the vicinity of big tourist hotels.

My roommate got a pet elephant. Then it got lost. It's in the apartment somewhere.

Love will draw an elephant through a key-hole.

Helmet was joined to helmet, and spear to spear, and jewels, baggage, and elephants without number went with them, and you would have said it was a host that none could understand.

God is really only another artist. He invented the giraffe, the elephant, and the cat. He has no real style. He just keeps on trying other things.

Pointless...like giving caviar to an elephant.

Prince, a precept I'd leave for you/coined in Eden, existing yet/skirt the parlor, and shun the zoo/women and elephants never forget.

We already live a very long time for mammals, getting three times as many heartbeats as a mouse or elephant. It never seems enough though, does it?

[Alas, it never does.]

A special thanks, in no particular order, to Noel Coward, Dorothy Parker, Richard Leakey, Pablo Picasso, Samuel Richardson, William Faulkner, WC Fields, Stephen Fry, Bugs Bunny, Ernest Hemingway, Andy Rooney, David Brin, Stephen Wright, Lindsey Graham, Matthew Henry and Groucho Marx.

And special love to the elephant in the room.

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

2011-12-12T14:26:00.001-05:00

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark, and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

Robert Frost

A Manual for Mourners and the People Who Love Them

2011-12-08T22:23:00.001-05:00

Bereaving: From Middle English bereven, from Old English berēafian (“to bereave, deprive of, take away, seize, rob, despoil”) and Old English berēofan (“to bereave, deprive, rob of”); both equivalent to be- +‎ reave. Cognate with Dutch beroven (“to rob, deprive, bereave”), German berauben (“to deprive, rob, bereave”), Danish berove (“to deprive of”), Norwegian berove (“to deprive”), Swedish berova (“to rob”).

I found myself somewhat irritated a few days ago, wasting my psychological time over someone who isn’t even a friend. Typically I wouldn’t give her a second thought, but when I know too well how calculatedly indifferent she is to the loss of Sarah, and to our loss of Sarah, I find I can easily lose my emotional equilibrium.

So I went to the Internet in search of people who have had similar experiences following the death of a loved one, momentarily forgetting the many truly compassionate friends I am remarkably fortunate to have.

Searching online, I was saddened to find threads from several individuals—people who seem loving and forgiving—who have lost family members and friends to death, and who, dumbfounded by the degree of cruel abandonment, are reeling in the aftermath of their losses.

So I said to myself, Jennifer, you keep a blog: why not write an entry about bereavement: what people in mourning need and what people who love them can do to help.

I am not an expert by any means but, like most of us in middle-age, I have lost people I love. And if you were to come to me and ask me what you, as someone in mourning, could do to be helped, or what you could do to help someone you love, here is what I would tell you:

Empathize Imagine you are out skating on a frozen lake and someone you love has just fallen through the ice. What would you expect of them? Would you expect that they would be able to shout out; ask for help; get out of the water without assistance; walk away unscathed; tell you all that they need; continue their everyday conversations with you?

And what would you expect from yourself? That you would merely stand over them silently, not hurrying to find blankets, warm clothing, or assistance; a little bit puffed up, lofty in your position above them, knowing that they are depending on you for their life?

Put your hypothetical self in their situation, and figure it out if you have to. But don’t just hover there, doing nothing.

Be intuitive When you are grieving, don’t let everyone tell you, “It’s you.” Some people behave very badly toward people who are in mourning, often jealous that the attention they once received from you is going elsewhere. While it is true that a grieving person is going to be heightened from time to time, don’t discount that the same is true for some of the people around you.

Like Attracts Like Stick with the people who, although they may talk tough, treat you well. Avoid their opposites. Small-minded people are never solutions for big problems.

Bereavement groups are not for everyone Nothing against the volunteers and social workers (and all those) who run them, but I know more than one person who has been sorely disappointed by a bereavement group. (If you need an example of how these groups might, or might not, work, rent Rabbit Hole. And always remember the credo: They teach best what they most need to learn.) Moreover, if it is your nature and tendency to behave as a caregiver, you might find yourself deflecting, turning away from your own emotional turmoil as you spend all of your time trying to help others, instead of seeking help for yourself.

Arm yourself Be prepared to let some people go, and be happy that you can. If a person is not willing to or capable of lending an ear or a hand, say a quiet, inward good-bye and move on.

Be equally prepared to accept new people into your life, and be extremely happy that you can. I have been shocked and beyond moved by the people who have come into, and back into, my life since Sarah has died. I could not have got through these past months without them.

Ask If, after a few months you find you are still stuck, seek professional, one-on-one help. Nothing mitigates so well as finding, and hanging onto, perspective.

Think Every time you want to drown yourself in a river of self-pity, remember that you at least are alive, and that as someone still living you do have resources.

Make Alternative Plans Christmas is fast approaching, and I have been dreading the absence of my daughter. So we are making new plans: Christmas dinner in a different (for us) setting, and a few days experiencing some new kind of fun. There will still be holiday cards and a tree and the Christmas Eve service and one or two parties (traditions are necessary to good health and sharing), but we need to find fresh ways of viewing, enjoying, and remembering the world.

Keep Moving This has been the biggest challenge for me, as I struggle to make my way down the stairs, through the house, out the door and on into civilization. Obligations and plans help me, as does warm weather (some days), but overall I need to find strategies that will help pull me away from this room.

Mind What You Eat The worse I eat, the worse I feel; the worse I feel, the worse I eat; the worse I eat, the worse I feel. I have deleted soda pop and potato chips from my diet, along with white foods and most breads Monday through Friday. I drink more water and enjoy added fruit and vegetables.

Be Kind To Yourself Read books; watch movies and favourite television programs; travel when you can; enjoy a glass of wine; listen to beautiful music.

Reacquaint Yourself with your Loved One Periods of detachment are healthy and to be expected, but I have found great solace in looking at old photos, wearing certain items of clothing, reading our favourite poems and writing about Sarah. I love having her as close to me as I can. Rather than making life more painful, Sarah’s presence is profoundly reassuring.

Don’t Forget to Laugh And don’t feel guilty when you do.

Time does not heal all wounds, and, as far as I have ever been able to tell, there are not reasons for everything. But good friends help. Know who they are and get rid of, immediately, anyone who makes you feel bad about yourself and even worse about what, and who, you have lost. Don’t waste time on the wrong people. Instead, move forward toward the people, and toward the types of people, who genuinely care

In Memory of My Mother

2011-12-07T01:29:00.001-05:00

Some people wonder why, and how, I can love my mum the way I do, knowing her predilection toward addictive substances. In fact, sometimes I wonder myself, knowing how horrified I am by parents who watch their children’s lives go by in a blur.

But my mother wasn’t like that.

My mother was a tender-hearted romantic who placed magic beans under my pillow on Friday nights; blew bubbles with me from our third-storey apartment window; read Elizabeth Barrett Browning poems to me when I was five years old, and scotch-taped my hair so that I could have kiss curls.

My mother was a generous woman whose skirts sailed out behind her when she walked. Her culinary skills—homemade oatmeal-molasses bread; radishes cut into the shapes of roses; baked stuffed pork chops; Dutch potato salad; German chocolate cake; Orange Bavarian Cream; crispy bacon; cookies carved into hearts—called me to the table as quickly as her cheerful Cape Breton voice. “Come heeere, deeear.”

My mother was a caregiver whose heart broke whenever she saw anyone in need. When I was thirteen, I had to give over my bed for several months on behalf of a young woman whose Roman Catholic family were unaware that their Nova Scotia daughter was about to give birth up in Ontario—this sort of quiet munificence ordinary in our household.

My mother was a scholar and an educator, spending innumerable late-night hours reading (politics and biography her favourite, followed closely by fiction that had been written in and about foreign lands); insisting I stay up later on Saturdays to watch movies she thought were valuable and relevant (Moby Dick; The Children’s Hour; Splendour in the Grass; Great Expectations; Hud; The Bells of St. Mary’s; The Browning Version...); engaging in radio debates (arguing in the kitchen with Pierre Berton and Charles Templeton in ways that made me laugh out loud). Indeed, my mother was the first Canadian woman to work in a university insectory without having previously obtained a degree.

My mother was industrious, often working two jobs; tending to the church library; scrubbing the walls and hallways of our apartment building to earn extra money; growing prizewinning roses along the thirty-foot fence; vacuuming; dusting; starching, sprinkling and ironing; polishing windows, glass-topped tables and hardwood floors.

My mother was a fashionista, locally famous not only for the cut of her own cloth, but because I was the best-dressed child in my school—cuffed, hemmed, collared, belted, hatted; gloriously shoed and coated—the envy of the grade seven girls who wished that they, too, had a one-inch heel on their winter boots.

Years earlier, too, I spent every sober Saturday in the barber’s chair, my hair cut to precision. And there was no shortage of bath bubbles, sweetly scented soaps, barrettes, pretty gloves, hair ribbons and smocking—everything a young girl needs to feel fit and alive.

Indeed, my mother lavished me with soft dolls, hardcover books, handmade blankets, lipstick-stained cheeks, glass-beaded bracelets...all those things she thought would help me feel safe.

My mother was comical, passionate, devoted, energetic, and soothing, always reminding me, by example, to try and be the same. She nurtured me, rocked me, held me, hugged me and kissed me, instructed me, laughed with me, delighted in me, loved me.

At other times, however, my mother was sad: depleted, worried, endlessly (sometimes painfully) charitable; completely intolerant of her own shortcomings. It was then that she drank, one drink begetting another and another, and eventually another, with little hope of ceasing.

In due course, my mother died by her own hand, devastated by irretrievable guilt and shame; remorse shattering her, overwhelming her even more profoundly, more unremittingly, than the alcohol and pills she used to snuff out her life.

And yet, as I sit here in the long, long wake of her death, what I remember most about her was how she exemplified mother, and how, despite all that she was unable to complete, she left me with a richly vivid, indelible picture of what it meant, what it means, to be utterly, perfectly loved.

Oh, Christmas Tree!

2011-12-05T18:35:00.001-05:00

I’m never entirely sure about the ethics of this, but I picked up what seemed to me invaluable information for anyone who is planning on having a Christmas tree this (or any) year.

Gardening expert Owen Reeves was on a television show last week, describing the various types of holiday (in the Christmas culture) trees and which ones are best suited to what. I don’t know about you, but this sort of blueprint information tends to excite me.

While I think I might have known to shake the tree before bringing it into the house, I did not know that a tree should be set in the stand into fresh water and left upright for two days before decorating. This way the tree can thaw and properly hydrate, and the branches have time to separate, which means your decorations will better lend themselves to it. (Or do I mean that the other way around?)

Ensure, too, that the fresh cut is 1-2”, and feel free to add preservatives (the kind you get from the florist, although I always find that an Aspirin a day or some Seven-up does wonders).

Nordman Firs are the longest-lasting and densest tree, hanging on, poor dears, for about six weeks indoors. The Nordman is an ideal tree for anyone having multiple Christmases (people with large families; sentimentalists; over-eaters; bigamists, depending on where you do the bulk of your entertaining) or longstanding guests, or for those of you who will be away for awhile but want your tree to be full and lovely upon your return.

Fraser Firs are native to the mountains of the eastern United States and are closely related to Balsams. (“I pine for you, I balsam.” EB White) They are best for large or heavy ornaments because of the generous space between their branches. They last up to four weeks.

Balsam Firs are popular in the Maritimes, where they are sold alongside free cases of Schooner beer (okay, that’s not true), probably because they are the most affordable. (Have you ever worked your way through a Maritime winter?) They are the most fragrant tree and, of the firs, have the softest needles. (I wonder now, as I type, if that’s the variety of tree Bruce Mc_____ stole, fully decorated, from the front yard of the Charlottetown YMCA back in the late 1980s.)

Scotch Pines are more traditional. They are extremely fragrant (think Pine-Sol), give me a two-day headache (allergy), have sharp needles, and last less long than any of the trees listed. Still, many people love them, and they are readily accessible.

*Note: beware sharp needles. Not to break patient/technician/all-the-responsibility-no-authority assistant confidentiality, but I know three people who suffered severe eye damage on account of Christmas tree needles.

Potted Trees last up to one week. Make sure you have a ground-hole prepared prior to purchasing, so the tree is assured of a long/er life. I have entertained thoughts of a potted tree, but figure as long as there are children and grandchildren about, a bigger tree is indicated. More, I don’t know how we would find room for the 1,479 ornaments and our ethereal but not so tiny white angel.

Artificial Trees (notice I am going out on a limb here, branching bravely into the area of proper nouns/categories) should have metal hinges and a high tip count for maximum quality, although I might have learned more had all that water I’ve been drinking lately not hurriedly urged me out of the room and away from earshot of the television.

So there you have it...everything I stol-know about Christmas trees. I leave you now with a few bars from a fitting carol, Germany’s own, O Tannenbaum.

Thank you…

2011-12-04T01:05:00.001-05:00

Sexy Sadie

P.E.I. age three

Kissing her Ma good-bye pre-shift

Exploding with happiness

The Carter farm

Bathing Beauty

We laughed all the way to the fish & chips store

Sarah turns 12

At Michael’s on Canada Day

North Rustico

At school

On the P.E.I. ferry

Hamming it up at home on Gilmour

Our house on Gilmour, the boys a little bit tipsy

Making my birthday cake

Christmas in Toronto

Pensive in Hull

Remembrance Day with Mum

Back yard in Toronto with her mums

Two best girls

The same two girls, each with sunglasses

The two girls left behind

And her wonderful Dad, who’s with her

...for making yesterday doable

You Born Today

2011-12-03T00:39:00.001-05:00

A child of bright impetuosity and irresistible charm, you born today run headlong into life as if there is no tomorrow, forever understanding—and forgiving—irony. Flashing eyes and a gut-rumbling laugh set you apart from your peers, a group composed of individuals either eager to make your friendship or keen to be like and be liked by (and in some case, to be) you. Who could blame them? (But that’s another story, better saved for more expansive fare.)

You, however, are unmatched, your fierce determination and stalwart loyalty broken only when betrayal—an inevitable fact in the life of every strong personality—from others demands.

A devoted mother, daughter, sister and friend, you born today are vibrant, giving and passionate; a true risk-taker. You love and loathe with equal ardour, justifiably, because you cannot bear to see an injustice cloud the lives of the people you love.

The hallmark of your character—your courage—is unrivalled, and this in a world filled with brave, gritty individuals. Armed with humour and uncanny perception, you march forward into life, undaunted by the troubles that beset you, your fearless tenacity stunning by everyday comparison.

When family and friends remember you, they conjure up a mix of Pollyanna, Joan of Arc, Annie Oakley and Madeline Kahn, your laughter ringing eternally in the hearts of everyone you touch (namely, everyone you meet), your sharing, happy nature infecting the world around you.

No one loved as well as you loved. No one is loved or missed more.

Your loss, our loss of you, will remain unsurpassed.

Happy birthday forever, you born today.

Invictus

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

William Ernest Henley (1849-1903)

Elaine Overholt

2011-12-01T12:09:00.001-05:00

She came up to me at the coat rack and made a friendly comment, but I am so shy and awkward (which is why I am far more comfortable alone with my keyboard), I barely muttered hello. More, she was so strikingly resonant of an ex-friend (a woman I not so long ago worked for, which is what ultimately killed the friendship; a middle-aged widow of a lovely man who died too young from cancer, who used to say we were connected at the cellular level...BIG sigh), I nearly fell over.

Elaine Overholt is described by Maple Music as having “established herself as one of North America’s most respected and treasured singers, voice coaches and vocal producers. Her diverse musical training in classical piano, classical voice, gospel, theatre, and rock music led her to a deep understanding of all styles of singing.

An extensive performing career has allowed her the opportunity to work with titans of music; Ray Charles, Tina Turner, opera star Richard Margison, Dionne Warwick, Anne Murray and Chubby Checker amongst them. Ms. Overholt has performed as a soloist on world stages, major network television, albums, films, thousands of jingles and has recorded two albums with a number three single on Billboard.”

And last night, the venue (I hate that word) was free, part of a generous workshop offer from the CNIB, where I volunteer.

The room was packed, the side table cookies still oven-steamy, the mood pre-Christmas jubilant. And while it is not for me to repeat and, given my memory, misreport Overholt’s techniques, suffice it to say I learned more in three hours about breathing, relaxation, microphone technique/s, tone and resonance than I have learned in my albeit brief thirty-seven (please humour me) years. The anecdotes were fun, too, and her final Georgia performance, inspired. (Why oh why didn’t I go with Ruthie MacDonald to see Ray Charles, also for free, in the Charlottetown horse arena?)

Anyway, throughout the evening various volunteers were called up to help with demonstrations, each one of them engaged and comical—natural born hams—with glorious tones and cadent rhythms.

At break, Elaine Overholt spoke to me again, this time over at the treats table, the two of us ogling the cookies. (Well, truth be told, I was sniffing for walnuts, weighing the aroma against my epi-pen kit.) And again, I muttered something inane and stumbled off. (You’d think with all the writing and talking I do.…) I did find the courage, however, to catch up with her and ask a practical question about my over-nasality, whereupon Ms. Overholt suggested she ought to bring me up after the break as an example. I shuddered.

Sure enough, near the end of the session, up I went (“If you want to” she said, surely having sensed my insecurity-bordering-on-rudeness), whereupon she asked me to read something so she could demonstrate. I sputtered out a sentence, after which she suggested that my problem seemed less based in over-nasality than in carrying my pitch too high in my head. She asked me if I had trained as a classical singer when I was young.

Now here is where everything gets interesting.

You know in the movies where a character is asked a motivating question and then dozens of thoughts and images simultaneously haunt her psyche? Well, that’s what happened to me.

Here’s where my head went, all of a sudden:

Classical training? Would that be in laundry? In dishwashing? In scrubbing the floors? In getting my head bashed in every day by that bitch of a stepmother? In having been silenced for five years straight when I was so young? In calling the ambulance for my mother, again? In having to go to work full-time at age twelve? In visiting my mum in the hospital—they called them asylums for good reason—year after year? In fending off my stepfather, who broke my mother’s limbs how many times?

Instead, though, I only said, “No. I sang in choirs.”

But talk about therapeutic. I mean, imagine someone asking you a simple, innocent, intended to be helpful question, and this is where your big cheesehead takes you. Add to that an evening where my neck relaxed for the first time since Sarah has died; I half-figured out what a diaphragm is for (no, not that kind of diaphragm); I actually enjoyed a large crowd; I risked eating a home-baked muffin, and I made eye contact. This is my version of success.

Not only that, Elaine Overholt made me feel special by not making me feel special, if that makes sense. I felt as if I were standing up there with my once-friend chatting in informal ways about what I needed to do to make my voice more resonant. No big deal, but lots of laughter and enormously helpful.

I am glad I attended the session and gladder still that I bought her CD. In fact, I might even honour that decades-long promise that Sarah and I made to take voice lessons. If one night of group endeavour can give me so much release, imagine what multiple sessions could do. Besides, it would give me a chance to justifiably sing.

Me me me me me me me me me.

But no matter what I do or don’t do, for any of you looking for excellent, inspired, humorous vocal coaching, Elaine Overholt couldn’t come more highly recommended by me me me me me.

Okay. I get it. Enough said.

http://www.maplemusic.com/artists/eov/bio.asp

http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/television/article/835285--elaine-overholt-the-voice-is-big-the-ego-isn-t

Christmas Catalogue

2011-11-29T20:44:00.001-05:00

Math was never my strong suit and, in fact, had I not babysat for and done a handspring in my gym glass in front of my math/gym teacher, Mr. Renton, that 37.5/113 on my grade eleven trigonometry winter term exam might have held me back a year (or at least meant a final test in June).

So for all of you calculating aficionados out there, please give me a wide margin for error. I did the best I could with these percentages, but did not feel any compunction about dusting bits of figures away from around the edges (so that some of the 8s might look like 3s, and so on).

That said, I do have a thing about mentally adding columns of numbers and looking at statistics. Today, for example, after I filled out my Christmas card envelopes, I decided to take a look at some of the characteristics of the people I call my friends. (If that sounds a little distancing, it has the opposite effect on me.)

I was curious to see the ins and outs of my life choices—and theirs—and I was captivated by what I chose as viable categories. I mean, there are so many options from which to choose (occupations, hobbies, gender, birth weight)—why did I select these?

I have to additionally say that I was especially fascinated by the absence of children (two of the women with children-at-home were friends of my daughter’s); the number of volunteers, and that little statistic in red down at the bottom.

I should also add as an almost-aside that there would be another non-Canadian resident on this list had I not discovered last winter, while googling my first steady heartthrob and longstanding friend, Homer, that he forgot to tell me that he remarried several years ago. I can’t imagine why he didn’t tuck that information into the basket of fruit he sent me last Christmas, or thread it into the vaseful of holiday flowers that came via courier the year before, but perhaps he thought the information would rot with the fruit and all of that plant water. (It does explain, however, why he was vague those times we spoke on the phone and I played matchmaker.)

Anyway, boyfriend/s aside (no kidding), here are my Christmas card statistics based on 37 individuals:

· Canadian citizens 34 (92%)

· Other 3 (8%)

· Single men 7 (19%)

· Single women 5 (14%)

· Married long-term 14 (36%)

· Married less than a decade (and counting) 3 (8%)

· Married with children at home 4 (11%)

· Divorced [some have remarried and are also represented in those categories] 7 (19%)

· Heterosexuals 28 (75%)

· Homosexuals 9 (25%)

· 20s [age] 1 (3%)

· 30s 9 (25%)

· 40s 10 (26%)

· 50s 10 (26%)

· 60s 5 (14%)

· 70s 1 (3%)

· 80s 1 (3%)

· Cat lovers 18 (49%)

· Cancer survivors 5 (14%)

· Laugh-out-loud funny 12 (32%)

· Volunteers 16 (43%)

· Writers, paid and otherwise 25 (68%)

I suppose I can’t claim gobsmackery over that red figure, given that I am forever attributing the like attracts like theory to great friendships. And it is true, and don’t I always also say, that many many many many many many thousands of people write well.

No matter, I was pleased when I saw this bold figure. These people aren’t merely good writers, they are, for the most part (maybe in all parts), spectacular writers—funny, generous, perceptive, quick, smart, informed and just about as brave as people come, which works really well for me at this particular time. More, when you consider the span of ages, marital status (stati?), and mix of homos and heteros, I couldn’t be more pleased to put my tongue to that glue and seal away.

Or as they say at the starting line in sight hound lure coursing, “Tally ho!”

Lost and Found

2011-11-28T16:28:00.001-05:00

I just wrote a blog entry and, with no idea how, lost it all.

I wish I had Don’s eidetic memory so I could replicate every word, the way he once did with seven pages of a typed essay. He got it back, word for word (or close enough that it looked like word for word to him, and he ought to have known).

I am superstitious enough to wonder where my entry went. I saw it, hit copy, and pasted what turned out to be one short sentence from something I had copied and pasted earlier today.

I then went ahead and tinkered so much that if the entry had once been retrievable, it no longer was.

As I said, I have no idea what I did wrong. But I do wonder if this is a sign not to post the entry I had typed up...which doesn’t make sense since I have addressed this issue before (and in fact, made vague reference to it earlier today on an online site, which was what prompted the retelling).

Rather than waste your time, and mine, I am therefore going to try and semi-replicate, this time in one as brief as I can make it sentence, in case there is something in the anecdote that will have meaning for you.

Earlier today I commented on a site that made reference to a television producer/writer/comic who, vicariously or otherwise, once stole something of mine without asking, paying, or apparently thinking twice, given that he had heard this story second-hand from my best friend whose (romantic) partner was head writer and producer of this man’s show and who, as it turns out, was fed all kinds of comical tales that had been taken directly from people’s lives—people like me who thought that entertaining her friends with anecdotes from her neurotic past in the safety of their home/s would ensure privacy—stories that lo and behold turned up on his television show, which might have made my family and I proud had we at least been notified, but instead made Don angry enough to suggest lawsuit (which now makes me wonder about the statute of limitations, especially since this extremely arrogant and very rich man and his wife have been taken to court by at least one other woman on charges of plagiarism), and which I generally manage to half-smile about until I see him or hear reference of him or am told how funny he is (he is?) when the rabies story, while practically identical in the hands (and mouth) of his female lead, undoubtedly leapt from my history to their ears to her pen to his pocketbook—how did I know that a cat scratch couldn’t give me rabies? (although I am secretly gleeful that my story predates the inception of their program by years, as my medical files can attest) (I had to ask my doctor; I had to know) and my other, better, friends, who kept my worries and jokes about my worries to themselves or within the confines of their family encampment, which leads me back to my mother’s favourite aphorism, consider the source, which he ought to have done, frankly, and screw the framed ‘rare’ autographed photo, which I packed away today because I can’t stand the sight of him, which was brought home last week when I saw him co-hosting a talk show, his nasal, over-stressed vowels hammering my eardrums, leaving me wondering how it is possible that anyone can stand a man who feels this degree of entitlement and who, or so it seems to me, appears more lost than found.

Little Douse on the Prairie

2011-11-24T21:14:00.001-05:00

Holy Henna! What gives with the girls’ curls and colours on Little House on the Prairie? I flicked on by the program—well, that’s not true. The Waltons ended and, given that today is Thanksgiving in the United States and that most of their channels will be taken up with American football, what better for the romantic diehards (or in this case, dyehards) than an afternoon run of nostalgic pioneer spirit sap?

I shouldn’t talk, having given up the earlier part of my day to snippets of Meet Me in St. Louis (speaking of hairdos and Vincent Minnelli), Little Women (June Alison’s bangs) and Miracle on 34^th Street (...here comes Santa Claus, here comes Santa Claus). And I pretty much know every Walton episode by heart (although I lost interest in the series when I discovered that the saga is not based on a real family).

Anyway, I haven’t seen Little House since Sarah was two, her chubby baby thigh pressed into mine as we waited for Paul to come home from the salt mines (euphemism for tavern). In fact, I forget most of the show’s thread except that one of the daughters—Mary—loses her eyesight, and that some of (much of?) the acting was wooden, like their floors, which the mother was endlessly scrubbing.

Oh wait now. Here is a coincidence. The girls have just been handed parts for Little Women, and Nelly is talking about getting a wig for her acting debut. Synchronicity abounds.

Anyway, I only wanted to say that the hairstyles in this show are dreadful, little girls running around with either stiff, peroxide bobs that look more like something Carol Channing would store in a hatbox for emergencies—their hair is so white, feta pales by comparison—or mopsy-flopsy auburn curls cascading heavily onto tiny shoulders, a lot of the mess covered up with over-sized shower-cap bonnets.

Nothing gives a bad (or what would otherwise be a good) piece of work away like a hair style. I don’t know how many period films I might have given myself over to completely if the women (Julie Christie, Elizabeth Taylor, Barbra Streisand…) had not all looked as if they had just walked out of a 70’s salon. (Aside: I just remembered Working Girls…oh my God, although the wild feathering was at least true to those times.)

Speaking of, here comes Laura wearing a floor mop on her head (she has been given the role of Beth in Little Women), decrying that Nelly has all the lines and all the hair. Laura’s parents are laughing at her, telling her she looks like Medusa. (Medusa would be a step up.)

Oh my God. Now one of the children has cut and sold her hair to buy her mother a new dress (shades of Alcott mixed with O’Henry) and she still looks like she’s wearing a chewed off wig. The man who wants to marry her mother calls this child “Little ‘un,” which should give you some idea of the overarching disarray.

(I have to say, even the Waltons look more in keeping with their times.)

As for me, I am off to find a more evocative program...something that lets me jump right back in without any hesitation. Let’s see. What have we here? Oh yes. This is much better. And…bonus! I know all the words.

Give me down to there
Shoulder length or longer hair
Here baby, there mama
Everywhere daddy daddy...

November

2011-11-22T13:23:00.001-05:00

There is wind where the rose was,
Cold rain where sweet grass was,
And clouds like sheep
Stream o'er the steep
Grey skies where the lark was.

Nought warm where your hand was,

Nought gold where your hair was,

But phantom, forlorn,

Beneath the thorn,

Your ghost where your face was.

Cold wind where your voice was,
Tears, tears where my heart was,
And ever with me,
Child, ever with me,
Silence where hope was.

Walter de la Mare

The Descendants: Heir to Misfortune

2011-11-20T12:55:00.001-05:00

There is so much wrong with The Descendants, I hardly know where to begin except to say that the proportion of people lauding the film is downright frightening—perhaps the most frightening aspect of all. Once in my life have I exited a film early, and that was way back in 1492 when I was a teenager. If leaving the theatre tonight had not meant having to lug my popcorn and large Pepsi on a sore foot up the long, dark aisle, I might have legitimately escaped any time after the first minute or two when George Clooney began his monotone voice-over. I knew then that something about this film was dreadfully wrong.

Clearly, the writer/s of this mess, Kaui Hart Hemmings—to be fair, she wrote the novel, and a novel is often notably divergent from its screenplay, a screenplay that, in this instance, was written by Alexander Payne—how is this possible?—Nat Faxon and Jim Rash—have either never lost anyone they deeply loved or have never really felt that loss in any but a detached, Hollywood way.

How pat, then, to attempt to write in (so-called) humour, none of it dark enough (their circumstances and lack of emotional range hardly allow for that) to resonate for those of us who understand dark, and none of it attached enough to affect the gigglers in the audience, who would much rather laugh than feel anything—most especially, what a pile of drek this film is.

While the Hawaiian backdrop is lush and captivating, the absence of emotional through-line is underscored by the clunky vignettes where what ought to be (what is actually deemed) real feeling is replaced by inanely comedic moments—George Clooney running off through the neighbourhood...no, I cannot say it; I will be accused of homophobia (especially by the people who thought this was a good movie); a ranting grand/father who launches into a protective familial tirade that is so poorly acted I lost popcorn, the small white kernels falling from my gaping mouth; father and daughters disappearing to another Hawaiian island, utterly ignoring the by now well-known fact that their wife and mother could die at any second.

Which brings me to the most egregious offence of this film. For anyone who has ever actually sat—wondering, worrying, waiting—with a prematurely (as in, young) dying loved one, what is funny, or potentially funny, comes only in the absence of any possible light; in those small seconds when you know that if you don’t laugh, you, too, will die. No one seems to understand that in this film. Not the writers or actors; not the audience. (Mind you, I recognized a few bewildered viewers departing the cinema and knew, then, that we weren’t entirely alone.)

At one point in the film, Clooney is standing with his two daughters (ages 10 and 17) while the camera pans the majestic land mass owned for generations by his family (Clooney is, conveniently, trustee) and in prospect of being imminently sold, and he turns to his girls and elucidates in ways that caused Mary to whisper in my ear, “Have they met?” I laughed out loud—the only time throughout the movie’s 115 tedious minutes that I did so.

Really—what is wrong with people? Is it as simple as the fact that we no longer teach phonetics, grammar and literature (in this, I include poetry) in our schools [I just said this to a friend this very morning] and that people, therefore, are happy to see that they are not the only uneducated, unthinking, simplistic writers, thinkers and critics? Or is it that in this complicated world we go to movies not to get in touch with our feelings but, rather, to escape them?

No matter, The Descendants is one of the worst pieces of lazy, stacked-with–devices films I have sat through in eons—and that’s saying something—for once making me glad that I hale from a small and dwindling family.

Rating: 0/5

Farewell Regis Philbin

2011-11-18T10:56:00.001-05:00

Sometimes when I feel ancient, I realize that Regis Philbin, who said goodbye today on his morning show, spent as many years on live air—twenty-eight—as it would take me to reach his current age. In other words, were I to live that long, I could do a twenty-eight year show and not be much older than Regis is now (he who, vaulting into his eighties, still plays tennis, and falls, acrobatically, off motorcycles).

Not that this should be relevant, but I don’t think Regis is someone who would have ever been my dating cup of tea. One of his best friends, after all, is Donald Trump (oh the wayward wind is a restless wind) (okay, how about hair today, gone tomorrow?), and he pooh-poohs certain things (that are close to my heart) in annoyed and dismissive ways that make me nervous.

But this morning, as Regis made his pre-show way toward the stage (stopping to pick up a weepy Kelly Ripa from her dressing room), I found myself tearing up, remembering the countless mornings I have clicked over to the show, often finding myself laughing off a long late-night bar shift; forgetting, momentarily, sleepy-eyed children who, during that hour, were coming to life in their classrooms, and for one fat hour ignoring the mountain of chores awaiting me.

I can’t help but wonder how much his departure will remind him of his mortality and the fact that none of us gets to live forever (as far as we know). I heard him say yesterday that he was growing tired of the program’s daily routine, but one wonders how hard some habits die. In fact, I spied a fleeting crease of fear as it shot across his stoic brow, and I thought...no wonder.

Still, I know I am projecting. Perhaps he is kicking up his heels and downing a glass of Dom Pérignon as I type, wiggling his argyle-socked toes in delight, relieved to be rid of that pre-noon blast of rollicking Ripa in his ear. (Sorry. I’m projecting again.) Who, but he, can say?

No matter who replaces him (God forbid Jerry Seinfeld), I doubt I will be watching the program again. Regis made his co-hosts palatable (at least to a manageable point); misogyny moderately tolerable, and New York City familiar. I will miss his shouting, his face-palming, his willingness to go anywhere and try anything, and his constancy. I will miss the way he made me feel young.

Farewell, Regis Philbin. May peace be with you.

If Wishes Were Horses

2011-11-12T15:40:00.001-05:00

I am sitting back on my bed on another golden afternoon, thinking about Sarah and all of the afternoons she lay bedridden with not even an option of having a shower or going for a short stroll. I remember helping her into the wheelchair and taking her for small walks throughout the hospital—sitting in the banquet hall overlooking the river and talking about Lainey, rolling into the bird room so Sarah could chat with the budgies (she loved the birds) and eat vanilla ice cream. The staff would come by and say a quick hello, and Sarah, ever brave, would see how far she could hoist herself up on the leather couch without my help...the two of us laughing. It still stuns me how much we laughed (at all sorts of things most other people probably wouldn’t find funny).

I will never forget the look on her heartbroken face as she realized—so many things—that she would never be well again; would never walk; would never go anywhere with Lainey. I can hear her sweet voice calling my name, asking if we could have Chinese food again for dinner, worried, as if I had to walk to Singapore instead of just around the corner. I think, too, of how she hated to have me out of her sight, this feeling deepening for both of us as her illness progressed.

I cannot explain how much I miss her. There is no one to tell, of course, because the people who know how I feel don’t need to be told, and the rest of the world doesn’t matter. But if I could speak to her again, lie back on the bed this very minute, I would hold her face between my hands and remind her how much I love her. I would kiss her tender forehead and remark that Ralph the cat, who hasn’t hopped up onto the bed in over a year, has leapt up today and is lying here between us in the glistening afternoon light. And Sarah would smile and she would say, “That’s true, mum, isn’t it?” And I would say that yes, it is true, and we would tell each other how lucky we were to have one more afternoon with each other—all these cats here beside us—Jeeves among them—and Sarah would point toward the balcony door and remark on the beautiful day.

If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.

Remembrance Day

2011-11-11T09:15:00.001-05:00

Memorials

Deep cut the tomb atop which Fénelon

In effigy reclines. His hands describe,

As though they were soft brackets carved of stone,

His sweet thoughts, poured out that we might imbibe.

But Fénelon is gone; though in the day,

The tomb, bathed in variable light

That stains the Sanctuary at Cambral,

Breathes and changes with each hour. At night

His tomb is dark, and dark, not far away,

The dead of Bourlon Wood, as well unknown,

And dark, between them, Fénelon’s valet,

And all their causes now are overgrown.

As soon will ours; for that, no logic gives

The reasons for the heart’s imperatives.

Don Ives 1998

Parenthetical Aside

2011-11-10T13:57:00.001-05:00

I think people think I am being nasty when I talk about punctuation and its misuse. But actually, I am talking about the significance of clear communication that fosters understanding. This is no small feat, of course, but is essential in our day-to-day lives and throughout those extraordinary events that make up our history.

The homogeneous-enhancing computer has thrust us into a type of international grammar usage—a sort of grammatical patois—which is in some ways wonderful in and of itself, but also threatens the nuances, as well as some of the core essentials, in our personal and global communication.

I am driven particularly mad by three perpetual Internet habits:

1. Over-use of the exclamation mark

Exclaiming should be reserved for that over which it is worth exclaiming: (imperative) emergencies and certain interjections—and is used to indicate powerful feelings and elevated volume. While I appreciate the excessive use of exclaiming for the purpose of humour, a good joke, for example, shouldn’t need a string of exclamation marks, or, to put this another way (and as we have heard about so many things in life), less is more.

The most powerful writing is writing in which words, not punctuation, express more fully the intent and emotion. I love you has so much more depth of meaning than I love you!!!! (Frankly, I would reserve the latter for individuals who have not yet reached adulthood, and sometimes not even then.)

If a person learns how to use punctuation effectively, an exclamation mark can prove highly effective. I won’t be going means something quite different than I won’t be going! And given that the Internet seems to be our excuse for careless punctuating—the eternal cry of, “But if I don’t write that way, you won’t know how I really feel, which could cause problems between us”—think of how much more valuable clear communication could prove in maintaining happy relationships.

As with many people in our culture who have not been raised on an understanding of healthy and appropriate boundaries, punctuation has (as a result of this blurring, I think) spilled across the borders of good writing into a morass of babble that renders many smart people completely ineffective. And if you don’t believe me, examine some of the world’s most influential writing, and writers, and see what I, and (more, what) they, mean.

2. Words written in all-caps

Today I received a series of photos of sweet animals worthy of forwarding to people who enjoy sweet animals. (I am among this group, imagining these snippets and pictures of furry critters a microcosm of the human world.) At the end of the snapshot diary, however, a message read (something like) IF THESE AREN’T THE CUTEST ANIMALS YOU HAVE EVER SEEN THEN WHAT IS???!!!???

So irked was I my fingers curled, as several thoughts steamed through my brain:

· I don’t need you or anyone to tell me what is cute.

· I can’t bear the word cute.

· How patronizing.

· Let me judge for myself.

As with the exclamation mark, so go the screaming capital letters. Save them for a time when you are feeling extremely ______ and then go to town. But be discrete. I once received an all-caps email from an angry individual, but this person’s intent to make me feel that anger had no effect on me and, instead, made me laugh (although not entirely unkindly, I hope) out loud. The all-caps seemed to be coming from a foot-stamping child rather than from an intelligent adult.

3. Common nouns turned into proper nouns

I have had a lot of fun with students from all over the world. There is something distinctly warm climate about turning common nouns into proper ones. I love You. I Love you. Never leave Me. The Sun shone so beautifully across the sparkling Water. A reader can immediately see the writer’s romantic intention; his need to convey his most profound feelings.

I explain to these students that they have to learn to trust their own writing as well as their readers. I remind them that “The sun shone beautifully across the sparking water ” has even greater import because the reader is not distracted by the weight given certain words (and by the mistake). The capitalization of common nouns is an immediate indication of an immature and uninformed writer, which is not the outcome any writer wants or intends.

Worse to me than a good-natured ESL student making an innocent mistake are those Anglophonic writers who simply don’t care. If they want their love to be more pronounced than anyone else’s, then grammar—and therefore inclusion—be damned.

We already have far too many hierarchical hiccups to create more with bad writing and, in the end, the person who deems himself above these rules will find himself left behind in critical ways.

It’s an odd world to me, too, people running around so puffed up and defensive. While I am learning to become a more effective writer (which is a never-ending endeavour and process), I am always thrilled to accept criticism from reliable sources, which can include friends, teachers and resource books.

I am not saying a person should never use these forms of communication but, rather, that they should learn to use them correctly. Only in this way will anyone deem your writing, and therefore you, viable.

And if you think this is a small matter, you don’t know the first thing about misunderstanding, which can and does and will lead to broken friendships, lost careers and credibility, heartache and, as has been well documented, war.

Montreal Revival

2011-11-09T00:00:00.001-05:00

What happened to old Montreal? I don’t mean Old Montreal, I mean old Montreal—the too cool for school, joie de vivre, spit on your shoes, who-do-you-think-you-are-you-English-person-looking-at-me-as-if-you-dare? Times have changed. And for the better.

The new Old (and not Old) Montreal is, in the main, courteous, responsive, helpful, talkative and downright warm. In fact, I don’t think I have been anywhere where handsome men my age actually looked at me (I mean looked at me) not only once but, often enough (and I was counting), more than once. I was t-h-r-i-l-l-e-d. And every single time I hopped onto the subway, a man stood up and insisted—insisted—I take his seat. I haven’t seen anything like this in Toronto (or Ottawa, for that matter) since I was in my twenties.

The rudest people I met—two young men in the service industry—were both Anglo, and seemed more like suburban/Scarborough residents than downtown dwellers.

Most everyone else was wonderful—engaging us in conversation: asking real questions; commenting; conjecturing and (sometimes but not too often) complimenting.

I suppose the unseasonably gorgeous weather and the 16^th century architectural stunners might have put a spring in anyone’s step, and it didn’t hurt to trot around town for half an hour in a horse cart (I used to find this sort of thing cheesy) or stroll downhill as the wind swept around us up the street. (There’s nothing like a little breeze swirling around a girl’s skirt to give her, if you’ll pardon the pun, a lift.)

Still, this friendliness was not even close to what I was expecting. Back in the early eighties the nearest thing to Montreal affable was a Gitane-puffing Jacques Brel wannabe (and really, why?) blowing smoke in your face as he whipped his twelve-foot knitted scarf around his carotid-bulging neck. Nothing—good or bad—felt real.

I have no idea what has changed. While it could be that the world takes more kindly to a woman of a certain age (think: fish, wine and Camembert), I am more apt to believe that a far more homogenous world (affordable travel + Internet) is the chief cause of the city’s conviviality.

Whatever, nobody seemed to care that my French was faulty, my questions ordinary or my pocketbook moderately frayed. I, for one, cannot wait to return to this remarkably striking metropolis. In fact, I think I’ll buy a subway pass and spend the first day seeing how many attractive men stand up for me.

~ Bi Lines ~

2011-11-07T22:40:00.001-05:00

Heirloom

My father bequeathed me no wide estates;
No keys and ledgers were my heritage;
Only some holy books with yahrzeit dates
Writ mournfully upon a blank front page —

Books of the Baal Shem Tov, and of his wonders;
Pamphlets upon the devil and his crew;
Prayers against road demons, witches, thunders;
And sundry other tomes for a good Jew.

Beautiful: though no pictures on them, save
The scorpion crawling on a printed track;
The Virgin floating on a scriptural wave,
Square letters twinkling in the Zodiac.

The snuff left on this page, now brown and old,
The tallow stains of midnight liturgy —
These are my coat of arms, and these unfold
My noble lineage, my proud ancestry!

And my tears, too, have stained this heirloomed ground,
When reading in these treatises some weird
Miracle, I turned a leaf and found
A white hair fallen from my father’s beard.

A.M. Klein

The Precision of the Short Distance Walker

2011-11-04T00:21:00.001-04:00

I have promised myself daily exercise, which for me means thirty minutes of walking per day. For sure this is not Pilates, Bikram yoga (which I tend to call steamy yoga) or a trek up Mount Everest. But it’s something, and it’s a start.

The trick is that I prefer walking out-of-doors versus on a treadmill (although, with the snow coming, I am grateful that I have either option). Still, finding the exact time limit is tricky. I cannot walk fewer [this is a great opportunity for a less/fewer argument with countable versus concept] than thirty minutes per day. I am committed to at least one-half hour. But when I walk much longer/farther, my knees and lower back begin to give way, and I risk my next day’s exercise.

Three days ago, I decided to walk to Carrot Common to check out their low-sugar flavoured waters. Cutting through Riverdale at dusk, I was able to enjoy the remnants of Hallowe’en—rooftop ghosts and tiered graveyards (one tombstone honouring the death of a favourite hockey team, another Mayor Ford’s dead sense of humour...although one might argue whether Ford ever possessed one of those given that a sense of humour requires a certain [basic] intelligence).

So enraptured was I by the mystery of the neighbourhood, I overshot the cross street altogether and ended up on Broadview, gaping over at the panoramic view of the downtown core. In the end, I walked a little over an hour, and had to make change for the subway because my ankle was beginning to ache.

Yesterday I set off for City Hall, thinking I would hop on a streetcar after I had consumed my entire thirty minutes. But wouldn’t you know, the day was glorious—18 degrees Celsius in November—and one thing led to another, in every way, and before you knew it, Paint Depot, Eddie Levesque’s Kitchen, Downtown Toyota, the Don River, The Berkley Church, St. Mike’s Hospital, The Bay, and about twenty-five streetcars had passed me by (as I had them).

The trip took 80 minutes, which at my short-legged speed equals about eight kilometres, which I know as five miles...50 minutes over my desired limit and past double what I had set out to do.

I woke up this morning in pain. My feet ached even before they touched the floor. I wondered how I was going to follow through today without resorting to the treadmill. Then it occurred to me: I had to go to the liquor store to buy an imbibable gift for a friend’s birthday. I had no exact idea, but I figured the walk would come close to the desired time frame.

I hobbled down the front steps, panted through the park, struggled past the friendly boys at the high school who were waiting for a ride home, cut up through the laneway near the street where my grandmother lived (and died, too young) in the 1930s, limped on by the old movie theatre, crossed the busy intersection, shuffled by the beer store and trundled into the liquor store. In all of this, I did not lose (or gain on) my typical speed.

As I headed over to the rum section I checked my watch. Exactly 15 minutes—right down to the second. I couldn’t believe it.

I spent a few minutes in the store, asking four (clustered) clerks what they thought, quality-wise, of Mount Gay Rum (made in the Barbados and destined for a friend who is from Trinidad and whose partner is a man—the staff found this all very funny, which was nice), bought something different, and hurried off (in a second-guessing mode) as best I could to make my way home, checking my watch as I headed out the liquor store door.

Back I went through the busy intersection, ambled past Tim Horton’s, picked up a bit of downhill speed at Hakim Optical (irony in triplicate), gained even greater speed in the alley where an energetic off-leash Doberman eyed me and my package as if we were five o’clock dinner, strode by the three still-waiting boys (now swinging on a wide gate), lumbered through the park, chugged beneath the train overpass and the woman sneaking (I could just tell) a cigarette, and headed up the downhill street for home.

As I got to the top of the stairs, I set my purchase down on the porch chair and checked my watch. Fifteen minutes—exactly.

So here’s the thing. To hell with low-sugar beverages at Carrot Common! Fie on personal missions at City Hall! In keeping with my family, I am going to become a low-level alcoholic. I will drink just enough Cuvee Speciale to keep myself in need of a daily thirty-minute trip to the liquor store and just little enough to make sure I can get there, and back, in exactly thirty minutes. Wine can’t possibly have as many carbs as most of the things I ingest, and the dehydration ought to be good for a few calories.

The moral to this anecdote is never give up. For every conundrum, there is a remedy. For every challenge, there is a solution. For every left hand, there is a wine glass.

Sceptres and Spectres, Alive Alive Oh…

2011-11-01T02:19:00.001-04:00

Mary and I sat on the porch tonight watching all the trick-or-treaters veer around the corner and down the street that intersects ours, scurrying on their way to watch a flame thrower—a daring young man who every year stands with a fire-stick in the front yard of a neighbourhood realtor who is so tidy she vacuums her lawn. (Okay, I’m lying about that last part, but she’s neater than Nurse Ratched, and that’s the truth.)

Across the street from her house someone had strung dozens of orange lights in their sweet front yard tree, and up and down the row moody pumpkins grinned back at me in the dark. Still, I longed for more children to turn a corner—that corner—and come on up onto our porch.

It would have been better if Mary had been able to find her piano keyboard (I really missed her wacky playing) or if, while I waited, I hadn’t, sitting right in front of me, a few dozen of my favourite things: Old Dutch potato chips, miniature Coffee Crisps and Kit Kat bars, and one especially tall bottle of Pepsi.

We talked about Sarah and Lainey, of course, as we always do, and wondered how Lainey was getting along on Leonel’s tractor, and if she loved Hallowe’en—since when did people stop apostrophizing Hallowe’en?—the way her mother had when she was a little girl...although I am fairly certain I know the answer to that question.

Mike—who decorates for the holiday in prize-winning fashion—came over and chatted for a few minutes before he and Stephan went off to a party where everyone had committed to wear black and whose host was providing his guests with lady bug hats. (Gay men and Hallowe’en parties go together like spicy red pepper jelly on French mini toasts.)

And Ron, who lives on the corner and who smokes too much for his health, made us laugh—he always makes us laugh, mostly because he laughs even louder at our comments, which I think is kind—reminisced about his 30-some years celebrating Hallowe’en (when they spelled it correctly) on this street.

I also ran into the woman who lives on the other corner (there are four, after all) when I was peering down the street at the fireballs. Her black cat, now missing for three days (I saw the notice posted on a telephone pole), has a flea-bitten belly and a heart condition, and she (the woman, not the cat) wondered if somebody took him as part of a prank. Some joke.

Eventually, the older kids from a few blocks down came up the street, making their tired way up the porch steps. Their mostly angry parents stood down on the sidewalk mostly arguing with one another, while Mary put extra candy into their kids’ bags, knowing that this was no compensation for a shitty life but that for one night some extra candy might help.

In the end, it was a Halloween like every other Halloween except for the obvious, which was maybe why I opted for Pepsi and not a glass of wine. Some things are just too painful for alcohol consumption and, given my family’s track record of Hallowe’en mishaps and sorrows, I didn’t want to make life any sadder than it already is.

Anyway, while we sat on the porch peeking out through plastic skeletons and flickering candlelight, I imagined that Sarah was busy in Ottawa, riding along on the tractor with Leonel and Lainey, laughing at all of the marvellous costumes and fixing her daughter’s hair in the moonlight.

I was sufficiently clear-headed not to expect a phone call—I have missed so many since Sarah has died—but muddled just enough to know that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in my, or Horatio’s, philosophy.

After all, if a young man can stand on a reticent realtor’s lawn every year, eat fire and not get burnt, I am willing to hold out hope that Sarah is wherever she needs to be, walking through this world like a Hallowe’en ghost, invisible and unafraid.

All Hallowed Eve

2011-10-31T01:56:00.001-04:00

I wrote this poem a decade ago following a magical Halloween evening with my daughter in which we walked through the Glebe, an Ottawa neighbourhood located on the (much) more expensive side of the (Queensway) tracks.

Mostly because Sarah was absolutely beautiful and entirely electric, and partly because the night was unseasonably warm, we had so much candy thrown our way we could barely hang onto it all. (I was in potato chip heaven.)

I have never been much of a poet, but Sarah was always completely moved by anything I wrote. (“I love the rhyming ones Mum.”) I am solemnly grateful now, these ten years later, that I penned this simple poem (ironic in a way that only Sarah and I and our family would understand) for her in memory of one of the myriad magical times we shared together.

Along the boulevard they walk
down through the years entwined,
The lamp-lit amber leaves of fall
With starry night, combined.

And all around incadent blend
Of whoops and shrieks and yells,
Where fairy queens and gypsy kings
Enraptured tales foretell.

~

Along the boulevard their hearts
In merry tandem, one;
Enchanted by the children who
Brush past them, as they run

Called up to stately mansions where
The safe and sure reside:
Untroubled hearts and sterling souls ‑‑
What sins or pain to hide?

~

Along the boulevard, their words
Unspoken; arm in arm.
Swept up the leaves and mirthful sounds
Light holy, mystic charm.

Clatter of the children standing
Out against the forms
Of stately mansions; quiet pride,
Small smiles, free from harm.

~

Beyond the boulevard they walk
Among the costumed crowd,
And usher out the warmth of night;
The hallowed, safe with God.

The Best Is Yet To Come

2011-10-29T18:37:00.001-04:00

At least once a day, if I am home, I check my site meter to see who’s been on my blog. I don’t always know the person behind the IP address although, after a time, a person (in this case, me) becomes cannily intuitive. Sometimes, of course, names of companies/schools/networks show up, and always I can locate the search engine and country and, generally, the city or town in/from which the blog is being read.

If I had more energy I might investigate further—the tools are all there—as I have done a few times in the past. But typically, I am happy to see the various search words and countries because they indicate to me that some of my former students are out there reading—in English.

In all of this writing time, people come and go, some reading more than once a day, some every week, some every month or so. Others come on for special occasions: birthdays; in memoriam dates; statutory holidays. The statistics and seekers are reliably variable and variably reliable.

Right from the blog get-go, however, I have had one remarkably consistent lunchtime reader. So consistent is she, in fact, that I am made aware of her holidays by the absence of her IP address on my counter. Occasionally, when she has not been on my blog for a few days, I worry that something might be wrong in her life.

Over the years this woman has become my, and our, friend. We met a year or two before I began writing these entries, and she has been keenly supportive in all of my writing endeavours, and especially kind to us when life has been difficult. For all of the people who deeply cared about Mary and me, or didn’t, after Sarah died, Michelle has never wavered in her support and her love.

Tonight as I type away, however, this diligent peruser is undoubtedly conked out (or close to it) following an evening of celebration. After more than two decades working as a translator for a national news corporation, Michelle was feted out the door today with a farewell package and a down-sized good-bye.

While her departure might seem less menacing in light of her recent—and ultimately victorious—battle with cancer, I can imagine the weird devastation...what Michelle referred to in a mid-afternoon email as “sitting in a bare office waiting for 4pm to roll around.”

We used to live in a world where there were some (real...I don’t mean monetary) benefits for having done a fabulous job; a sunset remuneration at the end of a proverbial day, where we could put up our feet and rest assured that we could rest assured. While there seems to be an awful lot of talk nowadays about “the end of the day” and the “journeys” we all seem to be on, the clichés cannot do justice to the reality of our everyday, and our not so everyday, lives.

I am, of course, veering off topic because I find myself angry (wasting my anger on anyone younger than fifty). And to say “it isn’t fair” doesn’t quite cut it either, because we live in a tumultuous culture where any notion of fair is long past discussion. The best any of us can hope for is an apathetic, rhetorical, “What’s fair?” and I suppose there is a kind of ironic justice in that.

What I am mostly trying to say is that when Monday rolls around and I pop onto my site meter, someone significant is going to be missing, and I am going to feel sad. My lips will curl down in mock defence of my long regret, and I will feel an ache for an encouraging friend who was present in my life almost every day, throughout all of the ups and downs. I will momentarily wish that I weren’t quite as selfish and that, like Michelle, I could be more outward looking, saying, as she also said at the end of today’s email, “It feels a bit surreal, but I know the best is yet to come.” With an attitude like that, she has to be right.

While I wait, I will keep my fingers crossed—there is translation work out there for sure—and in the meantime keep peeking in through the little green electronic window, hoping for my constant reminder, that kind-hearted friend, who has been here for me through every noon hour—through all of my various opinions—making me feel, always, as if I have something valuable to say.

Guess Who’s Turning Five Today?

2011-10-28T00:19:00.001-04:00

The Little Doll

I once had a sweet little doll, dears,
The prettiest doll in the world;
Her cheeks were so red and so white; dears,
And her hair was so charmingly curled.

But I lost my poor little doll, dears,
As I played in the heath one day;
And I cried for her more than a week, dears;
But I never could find where she lay.

I found my poor little doll, dears,
As I played in the heath one day:
Folks say she is terrible changed, dears,
For her paint is all washed away,
And her arm trodden off by the cows, dears,
And her hair not the least bit curled:
Yet for old sakes' sake she is still, dears,
The prettiest doll in the world.

~ Charles Kingsley ~

Happy Birthday to Lainey Louise, the sweetest girl in the world. Google-blacks love from the Grammies XOXO

You Are My Sunshine, My Only Sunshine

2011-10-27T01:43:00.001-04:00

There has been a lot of TV chatter this past week about parents not merely playing, but naming, favourites, as in, “I like Child A more than I like Child B.”

Anderson Cooper tackled the subject a week ago, followed by Kelly Ripa and her husband, Mark Consuelos, on The Rachael Ray Show, covered finally by the tag team over at The Talk.

Mind you, a good topic—like anything that is deemed good these days—will be stolen at the drop of a hat (November sweeps hunkering just around the corner), but I have to tell you, this is one subject I wouldn’t tackle with a twenty-foot pole, most especially if I, like Kelly and Mark apparently, could actually name a favourite child.

I mean, really—who does that? Who feels this way in the first place and then, worse, who broadcasts these feelings for people—for one’s children—to hear?

I was gobsmacked.

I know how my mother felt about her children, and I know why. She loved each of us for different, and not so different, reasons. I also know that my father told me I was his favourite, but he was the sort of man who would arbitrarily spin alternating theories depending on his mood.

I have three children, which is no secret to any of you who read this blog. And I have (had) three remarkably separate, unique, distinct, singular, complex, matchless, discrete relationships with each of them.

I can’t begin to imagine how a parent could possibly delineate, let alone actually decide that one child is preferential to another. While some days are clearly better than others (and the same can be said of one’s children), and while some children cannot hide their parental preferences (they are children, after all), it is a weird and weary world when a mother or father can point a finger, definitively, and say, “You! You’re my favourite.”

Frankly (and in this I speak from experience), there is something quite frightening hearing these words; something that leads a person to wishful thinking, as in, “Dear God, please make this gene with which my father is afflicted skip several generations.”

I have all kinds of complicated feelings about the people in my familial universe, but when it comes to my kids, I have loved them all (while not always as well as I might have hoped) to the same degree, which is as deeply as I can possibly love anyone, ever.

You make me happy when skies are grey, you’ll never know, dear, how much I love you...

The Canadian Tenors On Sale Today At Noon

2011-10-24T14:09:00.001-04:00

Apparently the Canadian Tenors – all four of them – are for sale at Roy Thomson Hall on December 22 and 23 at 8PM for only $89.50. I know this is true because this message was sitting in my inbox when I got home from the dentist.

And yet the ad also reads: “Just announced. On sale today at noon!”

So which is it?

And when the advertisers say, “home for the holidays” do they mean home as in Toronto, or my home (for example)?

Are the four tenors being sold separately or as a unit?

And do they know they are being sold, or is this some kind of Christmas surprise?

Do they all come with unbuttoned shirts, as pictured, or are ties included?

Is it first come, first served, or will there be a lottery?

Is there a discount for the short/er one? (I notice he is the only one wearing a neck chain and, with his non-smile, looks a bit like a cross between Peter Falk and Mark Ruffalo.)

Will they sing about the house unbidden, or will their owners have some say in this?

Why are they being sold? Is there something we don’t know but ought to?

Do we have to pay insurance or tax/es on them?

The ad also reads, “The Canadian Tenors have become one of Canada’s most exciting and sought-after exports.” But if they are Canadian, and they are coming to Roy Thomson Hall where they are to be sold, are they now to be considered imports? And if so, from where? Should the headline read instead, Exported Imports Reimported?

Will the owners have rights to the tenors’ hand gestures ?

And is the conveyor belt on which they seem to be standing part of the deal?

Is dry cleaning included? (Of their clothing, silly – not them!)

Anyway, these are just some of the questions that are rolling through my brain, although I see, from looking at the clock, that these have become moot points. It is now 2PM, and I have missed the sale by two hours.

Just my luck.

Cassandra and The Gift of Prophecy

2011-10-19T01:16:00.001-04:00

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In Greek mythology, Cassandra (Κασσάνδρα, also Κασάνδρα, Κεσάνδρα, Κατάνδρα, also known as Alexandra) was the daughter of King Priam and Queen Hecuba of Troy. Her beauty caused Apollo to grant her the gift of prophecy. However, when she did not return his love, Apollo placed a curse on her so that no one would ever believe her predictions. She is a figure both of the epic tradition and of tragedy where her combination of deep understanding and powerlessness exemplify the ironic condition of mankind.

I am neither the daughter of a king nor of a queen (although I had an uncle who was a little bit queenly). I am not Greek (although I love souvlaki). I am not beautiful (although the people who love me think I am, especially when I wear my hair a certain way).

But I do have the gift of prophecy. (And such a gift it is I have decided to give the pronouncement its own paragraph and parenthetical aside.)

While some people perpetually pretend they don’t believe (in) my predictions, I get into enough trouble with these people because, actually, they know darn well that I indeed know darn well.

And yes, I do possess deep understanding and am old enough to say so without it seeming like bragging. (Fools!)

I confess, too, that sometimes I test things out just to be absolutely certain that I know that what I know is true.

Some of you might ask – why would anyone take that risk? to which I would reply – it isn’t a risk at all. It is always – always – better to know what side of your side someone is on (the wrong side and the right side being the only two choices). Also, being well fortified by friends and family helps.

[Mind you, by the time I am obliged to test the theory (at which I have become masterful), I have already had plenty of proof as well as experience.]

How does one acquire the gift of prophecy (you might ask)?

Well, I can tell you. There is a recipe:

Age + trauma (= hypervigilance) + plenty of smart people in your corner, which is better known in psychological circles as (why are you all getting dizzy?) A+T(=H)+PSP=GOP

You cannot have the gift of prophecy without any of these three ingredients, I am sorry to say (especially to those of you who are 3/4s of the way there) (life is cruel).

What does the gift of prophecy allow a person to see (you might also ask)?

Well, without delineating endlessly, I will give you a partial list of the sorts of things I/we can see:

Gay people who are pretending to be straight (although I have an edge there)
Bisexuals who are pretending to be straight (I have a bigger edge here)
Selfish people who pretend to be giving
People who are engaged (ironic word, that) in shenanigans
People who are inherently cruel
Dupers and fiddle dee dee’ers [Hint: there is typically a fairly constant physical manifestation: eye widening, speech affectation, shoulder shrugging and so on]
Prurience
People who scapegoat others, and why they do so
Insincerity
Liars (physical ones included)
Thieves (emotional, psychological, moral, financial)
Jealousy, which is often astonishingly well-hidden
False flattery
Users; the mercenary
Magnanimity
Straight people who are pretending to be gay/bisexual
Loyalty
People who could never be cruel
Honesty
People who could never be inauthentic
Earnestness
Wisdom
Courage
Fearlessness
Humility
Compassion

I could hammer this list (home) with the power of a Papal bull, which now reminds me of the Minotaur, which takes me right back to Greece and, indirectly, to Cassandra.

What I often don’t count on, however, is that bad people are sometimes justified in their dislike of others. I have too much Pollyanna in me [is that a mixed metaphor?] to keep that in my head, although eventually it all, like dust in a westerly wind, comes rolling back.

What I also often don’t count on is that good people always – always – always – come forward, in all shapes and guises, tattered and torn, heeled and hemmed, hobbling and striding and (in the case of the more athletic) running to the rescue. En garde!

In the meantime, back here in prophecy land, I am stuck...part Cassandra, part Jennifer...a little bit gay, a little bit straight, a little bit bisexual, a little bit jealous, a little bit prurient (come on! Cape Breton genes, people!), a little bit selfish, a little bit proud, a little bit afraid, occasionally unwise...but a lot loyal, direct but not cruel, stupidly earnest, never a thief or a user, and always authentic.

Like Cassandra, I believe I am deeply perceptive and generally powerless. And like Cassandra, I sometimes feel cursed. But unlike Cassandra, I live in the age of computers and, while it is true that no one might ever (ever ever) listen to me or believe me, I have a blog...oh yes I do...where I can announce to the world my ironic condition among mankind.

And if that doesn’t sit well with any of you, you can just call me Sandy and leave it at that.

No Reservations

2011-10-16T12:20:00.000-04:00

Yesterday, after a luxurious afternoon in Stratford with Harold Pinter’s The Homecoming, St. Jacob’s Stone Crock turkey buffet never looked more delicious. In fact, I am still bloated from succulent turkey, creamy mashed potatoes, garden-fresh peas and carrots, home-baked bread slathered in real—real—butter, a modest helping of gravy (unwise for the lactose intolerant) and a triple-threat dessert: pumpkin and lemon meringue pie and a scoopful of peach cobbler.

Sinful, really, but always comforting to people who, like me, grew up on the edge of starvation.

Still, I have had decades to recoup my losses which, judging by my girth, I have done admirably. I do not stint when it comes to second helpings, an over-abundance of carbohydrates or a late afternoon Pepsi. While I know the multiple challenges faced by overweight people, I have not yet learned how to push myself away from the table. This is what childhood starvation does: a person always feels hungry, even when she’s full.

Today is Blog Action Day and this year’s theme, as you can undoubtedly guess, is food. While I could write at length about the subtle and less-than-subtle effects of (physical = emotional = psychological) starvation, I have learned that there is only one way, if there is any way at all, to help make a difference: being direct.

Approximately 815 million people worldwide are undernourished, with over 16,000 children dying per day from hunger-related causes.
In the Asian, African and Latin American countries, well over 500 million people are living in what the World Bank has called "absolute poverty."
Every year 15 million children die of hunger.
For the price of one missile, a school full of hungry children could eat lunch every day for 5 years.
Throughout the 1990s more than 100 million children will die [have died] from illness and starvation. Those 100 million deaths could [have] be[en] prevented for the price of ten Stealth bombers, or what the world spends on its military in two days.
The World Health Organization estimates that one-third of the world is well-fed, one-third is under-fed and one-third is starving. Since you've entered this site at least 200 people have died of starvation. Over four million will die this year.
One in twelve people worldwide is malnourished, including 160 million children under the age of five. United Nations Food and Agriculture
The Indian subcontinent has nearly half the world's hungry people. Africa and the rest of Asia together have approximately 40%, and the remaining hungry people are found in Latin America and other parts of the world. Hunger in Global Economy
Nearly one in four people, 1.3 billion—a majority of humanity—live on less than $1 per day, while the world's 358 billionaires have assets exceeding the combined annual incomes of countries with 45 percent of the world's people. UNICEF
Three billion people in the world today struggle to survive on US$2/day.
In 1994 the Urban Institute in Washington DC estimated that one out of six elderly people in the U.S. has an inadequate diet.
In the U.S. hunger and race are related. In 1991, 46% of African-American children were chronically hungry, and 40% of Latino children were chronically hungry compared to 16% of white children.
The infant mortality rate is closely linked to inadequate nutrition among pregnant women. The U.S. ranks 23rd among industrial nations in infant mortality. African-American infants die at nearly twice the rate of white infants.
One out of every eight children under the age of twelve in the U.S. goes to bed hungry every night.
Half of all children under five years of age in South Asia and one third of those in sub-Saharan Africa are malnourished.
In 1997 alone, the lives of at least 300,000 young children were saved by vitamin A supplementation programmes in developing countries.
Malnutrition is implicated in more than half of all child deaths worldwide—a proportion unmatched by any infectious disease since the Black Death.
About 183 million children weigh less than they should for their age.
To satisfy the world's sanitation and food requirements would cost only US$13 billion--what the people of the United States and the European Union spend on perfume each year.
The assets of the world's three richest men are more than the combined GNP of all the least developed countries on the planet.
Every 3.6 seconds someone dies of hunger.
It is estimated that some 800 million people in the world suffer from hunger and malnutrition, about 100 times as many as those who actually die from it each year.

Taken from http://library.thinkquest.org/C002291/high/present/stats.htm

Statistics, however, aren’t always enough of a reminder that we are not doing, or giving, our share. I, for example, am not always as moved by statistics—where human lives are reduced to numbers and equations and where it therefore becomes that much easier to slough off personal responsibility—as I ought to be.

But put me face-to-face with a human story and I am often guided to my better self.

I think now of a woman I met in the mid-1990s...a nurse who, in her mid-sixties, had come back from Rwanda to Canada for cataract surgery. She was in Ottawa at the clinic where I worked (it was my job to measure the length of her eyes so that accurately-sized implant lenses could be ordered) at a time not long after the Rwandan 100-day genocide had eradicated close to 800,000 lives (about 20% of the country’s population), its remaining citizens left struggling to survive.

I sat there facing her, unable to accurately imagine what life would be like in Rwanda, and I felt shame because I knew, and had asked, so little.

The woman leaned over the A-scan machine and touched my arm, anxious to know how long the surgery and recovery time would take, in a hurry to return to her work, which, if I am pressed to compare, seemed more like com/passion…an obsession to do whatever she could to save lives.

I sat there, taken with this woman who, clearly past retirement age, was so eager and still able to perform the harrowing task she described:

She slept five or six hours a night in a hut

and spent the other eighteen hours standing behind a table, where she sorted and selected and doled out bits of food to the mostly orphaned children,

many of whom, she said, died before making their way to the front of the line.

I sat there horrified.

It is one thing to live without sustainable amounts of nourishment—my school friends were often spiriting me lunches, and sometimes my father would drive over to the schoolyard to sneak me some change—but I was dumb-stricken by the notion—the reality—that children at the back end of a line would never make it to the front.

For a second, in fact, I wanted not to believe her. I wanted to believe that I lived in a world where people wouldn’t let this happen; where, singly and collectively, we would be moved, at the very least, to make waves. I wanted to believe that I lived in a world where I, a well-fed woman of forty, was not only better informed, but had equipped myself to make a difference.

But I had done nothing. I hadn’t even bothered to know.

I will always remember this woman, her eyes shining despite the milk-white hue of her cataract eyes, and I will always be grateful to her for sharing her world with me and for gently helping me realize that there was something I ought to be doing to help.

So here it is, a few years later, and I am wondering what else, what more, I can do, we can all do, to help stop world hunger. And really, in this, I already know.

Imagine, for example, if all of those already wealthy Hollywood actors donated the money they make in the name of having their names on a bottle of perfume; if working adults gave one percent of their income to assist people in poverty, or if every Canadian citizen donated one dollar per week…imagine what we could do.

We could still line up at holiday buffet tables and heap on extra helpings of potatoes. We could drool over a pizza commercial and order out for an extra large. And even though we shouldn’t, we might sneak in an extra weekend-Pepsi or two.

We can’t all be the example of this magnanimous nurse who gave up her time and her life so that others could live.

And yet the cost is no more than a newspaper a week; a half-cup of coffee; three-quarters of an apple. The cost is no more than whatever we choose it to be…minor, miniscule, unnoticed.

If we do not take it upon ourselves to feed the hungry, we are no better than, and in fact are the people, who keep the poor hungry.

Today is Blog Action Day and the subject is food.

Invite the world to your table.

You Born Today

2011-10-15T21:51:00.001-04:00

You live in a cobalt-hued glass bottle

on the window ledge

the sun pouring through the

smile of you whose favourite colour is blue.

You live in an elegant pewter flask

on top of the piano

the notes singing up through the

heart of you whose favourite pleasure is scotch.

You live in a simple wooden box

in a chest of drawers

the scarves wrapping round the

face of you whose favourite season is fall.

You live everywhere –

In the sun and the seasons and the songs

In my heart.

Jennifer Coffey

In memory of Don Ives, October 15, 1952 – January 19, 2004

Presents: Past and Future

2011-10-13T15:48:00.001-04:00

I was walking through the Sheraton Hotel today on my way to the bank when I remembered I needed to buy a birthday card for a friend. (Toronto is nothing if not convenient, and I am nothing if not giddy near a plaza.)

I love buying gifts and greeting cards. In fact, purchasing presents and pretty paper products is one of my pet pastimes. (Okay. I’ll stop.) Everywhere I look, I see people I love: a wristband for Mary, a shirt for Noam, toys and books for Lainey and Blue, silver bells for the cats, and so on.

Every now and again, and less and less as the years go by, I think of the son I no longer know. Something will pop out at me – today it was a red necktie – in a store window.

I think about how much he loved colourful ties – even the vintage ones (I bought him a Coca Cola tie years ago) – and I will, as I did today, stop and touch it, run it through my fingers, imagine him wearing it with a grey shirt and one of his beautiful dark suits. I will feel a small catch in my throat and my heart will pump a little bit harder.

I will linger a minute or two and then, just as I did today, remember (the point of) the birthday card. Then I will move along. There is nothing else to do; nowhere else to go. In the end you have to move on, because that is what life – that is what living – forces you to do.

NBC’s Parenthood

2011-10-12T03:03:00.001-04:00

Susan Faludi [as I already knew in part, and just read in whole from a website] is “a Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist and the author of the bestselling Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women [which won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction],” a tome that argued [as I read elsewhere, no source cited that I could find], that “feminism and women's rights were undermined by the media and corporations—just as the previous wave of feminism lost ground to a previous version of backlash, convincing women that feminism and not inequality was the source of their frustration.”

Faludi’s work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, and The Nation, and I know, from what I have perused in Backlash, that she is smart in the way I find Fran Lebowitz smart…which is far smarter than I am.

(For example, what I mostly key into is that Faludi is an Aries and Lebowitz a Scorpion, and that it is this sort of absence – my absence – of true knowledge/perception/intelligence that might explain the following entry.)

Nevertheless, I shall push on.

Faludi contends in Backlash—well, I ought to be careful here, because my recall skills are equal to my culinary talents (woe are we)—that Parenthood (I forget whether she was speaking directly of the film or of its first short-lived television offshoot, although the two are essentially the same) falls under the category in which women are betrayed, gulled into believing that our path to true happiness is located in equivocal sources.

I think now of the scene at the end of the movie—all those happy new babies and family women either in, or close to, labour (Faludi might have referred to this scene in her book), and I cannot help but be reminded of sprawling Mormon or Amish clans, their female members sitting in sepia-toned maternity waiting rooms crocheting pink and blue nursery caps.

Nevertheless, I have been hooked on this second television series of Parenthood from its onset, and wonder, despite those parts that might feel offensive to some, why the program and its enormously talented cast have been bypassed, as far as I can tell, at every awards show.

I don’t think there is a weak actor among the entire crew, and the script is so well-written that I find myself fastened to my chair every Tuesday night, my eyes locked and my ears highly attuned.

While it is true that I sometimes also find myself mildly irritated by the Braverman tribalism, the program reminds me week after week of the relevance of family and of—within and without that standard—the meaning of and constant need for patience, forgiveness, humour, acceptance, compassion, honesty, loyalty and flexibility. (If you think these are simple qualities to remember, attain and act upon, you ought to look around and pay some hard attention to detail and fact.)

More, the show makes me laugh out loud—a lot—and I don’t think an episode has gone by where I have not cried, moved by pressingly real stories of alcoholism, adultery, job loss, romance, career, surrogacy, triumph, love, homelessness, education, failure, friendship, pregnancy, celebration, aging—in short, all of the things that have affected my life and the lives of the people I love.

And given that I am a person who longed all of her life for a ‘real’ family; whose second favourite word is gas-lighting, and who could easily bear some resentment of same (especially knowing firsthand how exclusive and tendentious so many Westernized families are), I feel fairly safe in proclaiming that Parenthood is a program for everyone—even for those feminists who have been unfairly blamed by other women (and men) as a source of frustration.

There are so few well-written, splendidly acted, considerate themes on television, and I can only hope that this will be the year that viewers and critics alike will take notice of Parenthood and will finally, as my mum always said, give credit where credit is due.

Today’s Weather

2011-10-11T12:17:00.001-04:00

October 11, 2011: A mix of sun and cloud. High 25. UV index 5 or moderate. (Judging from the view, and the haze that is poring through the upstairs bedroom door, which is wide open, the Martians are coming.)

High of 25.

That’s 77 degrees Fahrenheit. Three degrees away from 80.

In 1963, the Toronto average daily mean temperature for October was listed as 10.6 C/51.08 F (with an average deviation of 1.5); the daily maximum as 13.8, and the daily minimum as 7.3 (with an extreme maximum temperature of 30). Thirty is the extreme maximum, however, not the average daily temperature.

I have been so hot overnight for the past ten days I regret having put the fan away for the season. The bedspread has been kicked off repeatedly, and the cats are as flat as if we were enduring high summer heat. In fact, just yesterday Sneakers begged me to make lemonade.

It has been so hot that we entertained the notion of a weekend swim, chatting about lake possibilities as we sat [anagram for sweat] on the porch in our shirtsleeves, drinking wine, at 2 AM.

On the one hand, I’m not complaining. (Well, I am often complaining; that’s not what I mean.) I absolutely love strolling down Queen Street in October in shirtsleeves and jimmy pants. I feel exhilarated as I step around scaffolding, men fifteen feet up in the air painting storefront signs. And I couldn’t be more taken with pre-school-aged children who are standing with their mothers in the shade of an awning eating ice cream, hoping it won’t melt too quickly.

Still (still still) as I look through this window, I wonder. If the average mean temperature in October, 1963 was 10.6, and the average mean temperature in October, 2011 is 20.6, does that mean that the average mean temperature in October, 2057 will be 30.6 (which in my childhood days read as 87.08)?

I continually hear people say that the notion of global warming is a crock. I think those people should rethink their assertions. Because as easy breezy as it is to sit outside (now year after year) in the warm evening air on Halloween [which I stubbornly persist in spelling Hallowe’en], feet planted on the railing as I fan myself with a newspaper, something about the warmth feels weird.

As if Ontario winter is going to disappear.

As if the planet is eventually going to burn right up.

As if the Martians really are coming.

For Sarah at Thanksgiving

2011-10-08T12:06:00.001-04:00

The turkey sat on the backyard fence

And he sang this sad, sad tu-u-une...

Thanksgiving Day is coming, gobble gobble

And I know I'll be eaten soo-oo-oo-oon

Gobble gobble gobble gobble gobble gobble gobble

I would like to run a-wa-a-ay...

Gobble gobble gobble gobble gobble gobble gobble

I don't like Thanksgiving Day!

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone. XO

Giving Thanks

2011-10-07T14:28:00.001-04:00

Galoshes looked up at me an hour or so ago and said, “Okay, what are you thankful for?”

“What are you talking about?” I asked. “You mean because it’s Thanksgiving?”

“My new argyle collar,” he said, paying no attention to me. “I really do like it. At first, I wasn’t sure about the pale blue—it didn’t seem manly—but the more I look at it, the more Harvard scholar I feel.”

“Terrific,” I said.

But his question did set off the thankful wheel in my head, which is difficult to look at given, and in, the absence of Sarah.

So…what am I thankful for?

Well, the cynical part of me is thankful for discovering who my friends aren’t, which ties in with those who feel superior because they are heterosexual, blessed with large, happy families, and have great group plans for the weekend.

Come on Wilfred—help me! That’s right. That’s it...piss on yaz! Who needs your big fat homophobic turkey dinner and your smug...

Wait a minute.

It’s Thanksgiving. Thanks giving. Yes.

Well, then, let me tell you what I am thankful for, and this part is easy.

Mary

Noam

Lainey

Blue

Family members, who know who they are

Old friends, who know who they are

New friends, who know who they are

Sarah’s friends, who know who they are

Galoshes, Sneakers, Slippers, Ralph, and Jeeves

Mary T and Jenny

People who email regularly and keep me occupied and laughing: Sheila, Zach, Joanne, Mike, Peggy, and all the rest of you who put up with me

My beautiful and soon to be more beautiful home

Books and the people who discuss them with me

Flowers

Swimming and especially the two lakes

Television programs that make me laugh, think, feel. (Some people would argue that there is no distinction between think and feel, but I beg to differ)

Clichés

Volunteering

My ability to walk 8k/5m downtown and in such glorious weather

Road trips

Movies and film festivals

Sweet things that shine (especially when they’re made of glass)

Harold Pinter in Stratford

Turkey buffet in St. Jacobs

Blue

Lainey

Noam

Mary

And always always always—Sarah—gone now with her magnificent father and my beautiful mum.

Galoshes is still sitting on the sewing box, in the sun. I just heard his little bell jingle as he looked over at me. He’s getting up now, ambling over to give me a hug. He’s like that. He gets things. He misses Sarah, too. He is thankful for her. (She found him, after all. )

He reminds me that there is always so much to be thankful for, even in the absence of the people we love most. Even if it’s an 8-inch blue argyle collar, a little pale for sure, but scholarly nonetheless.

Tiny Talent Time

2011-10-06T02:56:00.001-04:00

_{Do you remember years ago...watching a Sunday afternoon TV show (I think it was produced in Hamilton) called Tiny Talent Time? The evangelical host would kneel down really low and ask the nervous boy or girl, “If you had one wish, what would that be?” and the anxious child, coached at home by mum and dad, would typically answer, “World peace.”}

_{Then the talented knee-socked youngster would take off across the stage tipping and tapping or singing a lively song, and I would think, “World peace? Couldn’t you have asked for a million dollars or a barge holiday on the Seine?”}

_{Anyway, last week on youtube I saw two singers performing an Adele song, and they sounded terrific. Today, the duo turned up on Ellen DeGeneres where we learned later that the talk show host had signed them to her record label.}

_{A week ago, I saw another talented singer, also signed by Ellen, on Ellen.}

_{In fact, it seems every time I tune into Ellen another allegedly phenomenal singer is taking the stage.}

_{Tonight I am half-watching the X Factor—not to be confused with American Idol, where dozens of fabulous musicians show up every season—and I keep hearing, over and over, “Wow...she is the best young singer I have heard in ages!” and “Oh my God, I haven’t heard anyone sing like he can, not in forever!”}

_{Although my ears disagree with some of their choices, I also find that many many many many many many many many people sing really really really really really really well.}

_{When you add in The Voice, The Singing Bee, America’s Got Talent and how many other vocal shows I don’t know about and haven’t looked up, a person begins to wonder...who can’t sing?}

_{And then, after you include all the runway designers, supernova rock stars, slam poets, stand-up comics, top models, hip-hop salsa rumba cha-cha tango tap ballet contemporary dancers, apprentices, chefs, bakers, ventriloquists, magicians and flame throwers, well, it’s fairly depressing. At least if you’re me.}

_{I can sing, but not well enough for youtube. I can dance, but only drunkenly at weddings. I can bake, as long as I don’t have to make a crust. I can cook, as long as the recipe isn’t complicated. I can do one—one—magic trick, sling a few poems (but never slam), repeat a joke (if you don’t mind that half the words are missing) (and sometimes the punch line), and maybe once in my life I was able to throw my voice halfway across a very small room.}

_{In short, I am spectacularly devoid of talent.}

_{My friend Zach, just for one example, is home tonight tinkering and toying in and between and among song-writing, guitar-playing, oil painting, drawing, and finishing his novel. And he works full-time besides.}

_{And my friend Sheila, who also emailed tonight, can write stories, songs, and poems; play guitar; sing; hang-glide; cook; make preserves; garden; separate the Tudors from the Plantagenets, and so on.}

_{This sort of list/ing holds true for almost everyone I know. It’s fairly sickening, in fact, especially when I turn on the television and see that everyone in the free world seems to be a quintuple threat.}

_{Everyone, that is, save me.}

_{I wonder, then, as I sit here in envy...if I hadn’t made fun of those kids wishing for human harmony; had I not thought that a few dollars or a river holiday wouldn’t beat all...if I had invested my time in practice instead of procrastinating, would I be able to sing?}

_{I’m marginally too old for knee socks, and I was never photogenic, but, maybe, if I buy a big hat that will cover my face and run down to the dollar store and pick up a harmonica, I could make my way onto youtube and maybe, just maybe, one of those talent scouts will come upon me. And if I should happen to make my way onto the Ellen Degneres Show and she asks me what it is that I want out of life. I know what I’m going to say.}

_{World peace. Definitely. World peace.}

Cellphone Call Limits Suggested By Health Canada

2011-10-05T11:10:00.001-04:00

The Canadian Press

Posted: Oct 4, 2011 5:07 PM ET

Last Updated: Oct 5, 2011 8:38 AM ET

Parents should encourage children under 18 to limit the time they spend talking on cellphones, Health Canada said Tuesday in new advice on mobile phone usage.

The guidance is a nuanced change from previous advice, which suggested that people could limit their use of cellphones if they were concerned about an unproven suggestion the devices increase one's risk of developing brain cancer.

"Really it's more proactive in encouraging cellphone users to find ways to limit their exposure, and … to empower parents to make healthy choices to reduce their children's exposure," explained James McNamee, division chief for health effects and assessments in Health Canada's bureau of consumer and clinical radiation protection.

MAP Driving and dialing bans across Canada

The new advice, a response to a World Health Organization report issued in May, reminds people they can reduce their exposure to radio-frequency energy by limiting the length of their cellphone calls and substituting text messages or chats on hands-free devices in the place of phone-to-ear cellphone calls.

Radio-frequency energy is the type of radiation emitted by cellphones. It's also given off by AM-FM radios and TV broadcast signals.

Canadians own and use an estimated 24 million cellphones. Worldwide it is estimated that five billion people owned cellphones in 2010.

Cellphone users can take practical steps to reduce exposure, such as replacing cellphone calls with text messages. Mario Anzuoni/Reuters

There have long been questions as to whether the devices increase a user's risk of developing brain cancer. Despite the fact that dozens of studies have looked at the question, there is no clear answer.

But a statement issued in late May by the International Agency for Research on Cancer — the cancer arm of the WHO —classified cellphones as a category 2B risk, meaning the agency acknowledged mobile phones are possibly carcinogenic to people. McNamee sat on the panel that took the decision.

Health Canada says more research needed

Health Canada says the data suggesting the link is far from conclusive and more research is needed.

But in light of the shift, the department decided it should tweak its advice on cellphone use, especially as it relates to children.

"We want to make people aware that there is some uncertainty in the science, particularly for children. Because there have been no long-term studies, or very, very few long-term studies with children," McNamee said.

"They are often more sensitive to a variety of agents than adults. They're not little people, in essence. Their brains are still developing, their immune systems are still developing. So you can't say the risk would be equal for a small adult as for a child, per se."

Little change from status quo, industry says

Still, the department isn't advocating set limits or changing the safety regulations for cellphones. In fact, an industry spokesperson interpreted the statement as little change from the status quo.

"It would be a slight shift in messaging, I suppose, but I believe that the updated information from Health Canada is simply a reminder to Canadians about the state of science on this topic, and any steps that individuals, and their children, can take," Marc Choma, director of communications for the Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Association, said by email.

"I think Health Canada is reiterating that, to date, the science has not shown a link between cellphone use and health concerns, but that more research is recommended. The industry has always supported any calls for continued research that is deemed necessary by the international scientific community."

Health Canada did not appear to want to hit the message too hard.

McNamee objected to the suggestion the department was "urging" parents to restrict cellphone use by their kids. The tone the department is trying to set is more accurately reflected by the word "encouraging," he suggested.

"It's not urging. Cellphones can certainly be beneficial for parents and for children. And they're a convenience."

"Not much has changed," McNamee added. "The advice to Canadians is largely the same. The science hasn't really changed. Health Canada's just being a little more proactive on this, in a nutshell."

[I am not sure this is worthy of reprint, given the hedgy tone of the article and the fact that people – me among them – tend not to listen. But in case this helps someone, here it is.]

Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star

2011-10-04T00:51:00.001-04:00

I have to write this before the pain sets in, and I can already feel the grip taking hold and the pressure building up in my face. What price beauty, yes?

It would not be an exaggeration to say that I was challenged by a wicked combination of several negligent parents (over the years, I had many) and (too many: two extra) bad teeth. One of my teeth was so crowded, in fact, it peeked through and sat on my upper lip, even when my mouth was tightly closed. (How and where I had that one removed is worthy of a short story.)

Another tooth grew out of the inside of my cheek, ultimately resulting in a diagnosis of osteomyelitis and a refinement of my lower jawbone. If I live to be 110, I will never forget the foot-long needle filled with adrenaline. But that, too, is another (longer) short story.

My teeth were so crooked and crammed that people actually stared into my mouth, probably wondering why of those many parental figures (my well-heeled father, for example) none were interested in or capable of making repair.

Over the years I developed a horror of dentists, not only because freezing was unheard of in my childhood, but also because I spent countless hours, hands over miserably pained face, my teeth rotting out of my head and my propensity for abscess (14 thus far) showing no signs of letting up.

Add to this my skin graft hemorrhage in my family dentist’s office in Ottawa – who knew I had an artery at that particular spot in my palate? – and you can see why I suffer some anxiety.

It was with great trepidation, then, that I found myself a few years ago in a new (to me) dentist’s chair in Toronto. Apart from my history and the long explanations (the veneer, the pins and posts, the bridge, the artificial tooth, the empty spaces, the abscesses, my allergy to epinephrine and cotton – all those new toothpastes and cotton wadding have bleach in them), I didn’t think I could face this straightforward, no nonsense professional who clearly must be wondering why, at my great age, I had not taken better care of my teeth.

It didn’t matter that I had obviously had some good work done and that I had an A1-A2 colour rating, because the gaps from missing molars were impossible to ignore. (When I smile widely I look like a Halloween pumpkin.)

This is all to say that in the past few years, along with another abscess and subsequent root canal (I have had so many root canals I am afraid I might need a sump pump), I have had several crowns/caps (is there a difference? Probably not), fillings and refillings, cleanings and reminders to floss.

No matter how bright and cheerful the office and staff – and it is and they are – I never get used to going to the dentist’s. My last appointment two weeks ago was therefore no different.

I went in, following a routine cleaning and exam, for some bonding...a need to tidy up darkening spaces near my upper gum where it looked as if I had food stuck permanently between two of my teeth. (Garbled explanation...I apologize.)

While I was lying back in the chair, my dentist and her lovely technician – the staff really are exceptional – were chatting over my head (I mean that both ways), stopping occasionally to ask me about my veneer (when and why) and commenting on my (now only one) persistently crooked front tooth.

I had no idea what was going on until the word ‘liner’ cropped up. Liners, in case you don’t know, are those marvellous see-through retainers that act as modern-day braces. (I might not have this description exact, but I think the comparison is close enough for my purposes here.)

Long story less long, it turned out that my dentist had been entertaining the idea of straightening this tooth but, alas, cosmetic dentistry is not covered on my plan. (Is it covered on anyone’s plan?) Long story even less long, I could not (cannot) afford the asking price, which begins in the four figures.

So I wasn’t sure why the conversation continued along as if no one had heard me say, “Oh, that’s a fair bit of money,” or noticed my eyes rolling so far back into my head that I had to jiggle myself to right them again. Not even my accelerated breathing or the sweat beads forming on my brow seemed to alert anyone to my anxiety and, in fact, these two dental professionals continued to smile broadly.

Well, if you have come this far in the story you might by now have figured out what took me that much longer to understand. The liner was being offered for free.

As in no charge. As in on the house. Complimentary. Gratis. At no cost. Out of the kindness of her heart. Generously. Munificently. Compassionately.

I have been the recipient of kind deeds throughout my life. I could fill pages with details of Christmas gifts given to me by Ottawa ophthalmic patients. I could talk on and on about the extra tips people left me throughout my bartending years. And the outpouring since Sarah has died, in hard fact, has been remarkable.

But for all that I have received, no one has ever made an offer such as this.

When I asked why, her answer was that she just (just) wanted to do it for me; she wanted me to experience the pleasure of straight teeth. She made a sweet comment that I could mention her – thank her for my beautiful smile – on my book liner when I win the Giller Prize.

Anyway, you can see why this entry is especially long. Good deeds deserve some sort of recognition or reward, even if it is merely a deeply appreciative thank you.

And if you are wondering why my dentist remains, here in this entry, anonymous, this is only because I am averse to releasing her name should readers think that she is somehow available to offer everyone free service/s. Conversely, for anyone who wishes to know more about her – she is an unusually skilled dentist, after all, and she is taking new patients – you can reach me through this blog.

As for me, you will know me anywhere. I’ll be the middle-aged woman strolling the streets and grinning like the Cheshire cat, the sun glinting happily off of my front teeth. And if you come really close and listen extra carefully, you will hear what they are saying...Ping! Ping ping! Ping ping!

Then the traveler in the dark,
Thanks you for your tiny spark,
He could not see which way to go,
If you did not twinkle so.

Twinkle, twinkle all the while, brightened by my brand new smile.

Remodelling

2011-10-03T02:09:00.001-04:00

I read today that Martha Stewart’s daughter reveals in her memoir – I hope you are sitting down – that her mother leaves the bathroom door open – open – when she uses the toilet to urinate!

I know. I can’t tell you how shocked I was, either.

When I read this, it made the part where her mother made her daughter wrap her own Christmas presents (with the admonition not to look) seem somehow less weird. Besides, I know a thing or two about anaesthetized behaviour, and some things I am willing to forgive even when they’re none of my business.

Fortunately (I think) the two women are still close.

It all seems so ass backwards (no pun intended) to me, though. All of these healthy sons and daughters running around griping about their parents, even when their parents are lovely, decent people and not Martha Stewart...not that she isn’t her own version of lovely and decent (that’s not what I mean).

I mean that I miss Sarah. I miss my girl who consistently made me feel like a million dollars. I miss my daughter who always said thank you no matter what it was for: buying her a Pepsi, telling her she was beautiful (and oh, she was beautiful), helping her work through a problem.

I miss that lovely young woman who thought I was the smartest, funniest, kindest, warmest mum on earth, even when she was annoyed with me, which, fortunately, wasn’t often.

I miss the person I could call on the phone and say, “Oh my God – did you read that Martha Stewart’s daughter wrote that her mother left the bathroom door open when she peed?”

And oh, how I miss the howling that would have ensued, as Sarah and I recalled her father walking around the house in nothing but his navy blue Stanfield underwear, or the time I called her into the bathroom – I was soaking in the tub – to yell at her because I thought my eyebrow pluckers were burnt from you-know-what (and not, as it turned out, because her brother had a mild pyromania problem).

I can’t even begin to imagine anyone less likely to write a bad word about me, no matter how many times she might have griped about me to her friends. (Let’s be honest: what daughter doesn’t gripe? The kind of daughters who can’t afford to.)

But having a moment about your mum to a friend is not the same as writing a diatribe for the world to read. (Trust me, if it were that easy, this blog would look a lot different than it does. I had a violently abusive stepmother, after all.) And to do that while you’re having a reasonable relationship with one another is beyond me.

I understand what Cindy Crawford did. After all, her mother was dead. Besides, abusers should be outed. And difficult behaviour should be revealed, too, if the revelation is going to help other people work through their own messy stuff. I don’t have any problem with that.

But I do wonder as I sit here late night after late night, what I wouldn’t give to bring my daughter back: the person who would have handed me the toilet paper if I had asked or dashed off to bring me some more, standing there afterward chatting with me about what we were going to have for dinner.

I mean, if that’s one of the worst things someone can say about her mum, then a person needs to rethink her priorities. Because to complain about nothing tends to invalidate the valid criticisms a person has.

For example, what good would it do for me to say that my stepmother tried to kill me with a metal stool (a block of wood, poison, whatever) if I also say she sometimes stayed in her nightgown until noon?

And what good does it do Martha Stewart to have a daughter who needs to talk about her mother’s bathroom habits?

The world would be so much richer if mothers and daughters who have even a half-decent relationship would spend more time focusing on the good half. Because let me tell you, when you no longer have your lovely mother or darling daughter at your side anymore, all you are going to remember is what was wonderful about them and all that you miss.

My friend Peggy reminded me the other day that in this life we don’t “get” to do anything. We have it, we do it, we don’t do it, we don’t have it, but whatever it is, there is no guaranteed tomorrow for anyone.

So if you’re going to complain, make sure you understand the repercussions. And if you’re going to love someone, make sure you do it well.

BOYCOTT THE NATIONAL POST

2011-09-30T01:05:00.001-04:00

I will never buy another copy of The National Post again. Ever. It isn’t shameful enough that we have Rob Ford as Toronto’s mayor, but now this? And if this ad isn’t tantamount to a hate crime, what is?

From Section Two of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms:

A law will be found to violate the freedom of expression where the law either has the purpose or effect of violating the right.
A law's purpose can limit the right either through limiting the content or form of expression. Limits on content are where the meaning of the expression is specifically forbidden by the law, such as hate-speech law, and is the most easily identifiable form of limitation.Limiting the form of the expression can often invoke section 2(b) as it will often have the effect of limiting the content as well.
Where a law does not intend to limit the freedom of expression it may still infringe section 2(b) through its effects. A law will be found to restrict expression if it has the effect of frustrating "the pursuit of truth, participation in the community, or individual self-fulfillment and human flourishing.”

Furthermore, in Canada, advocating genocide or inciting hatredagainst any identifiable group is an indictable offence under the Criminal Code of Canada with maximum prison terms of two to fourteen years. An identifiable group is defined as any section of the public distinguished by colour, race, religion, ethnic origin or sexual orientation.

If this ad isn’t inciting hatred against any identifiable group, what is it doing? And why is the (self-labelled Christian) perpetrator of this garbage allowed to spew this hatred without suffering legal repercussion? And why is the National Post not being held legally culpable for printing the ad?

Perhaps the newspaper editor is hedging bets, counting on the current climate of ultra-Conservatism to win some votes in next week’s election.

If the responses I have received today (to quote: disgusting, reprehensible, sad, hateful, regressive, depressing) are any indication, I feel safe in saying that the National Post is very, very short-sighted.

Remembering When

2011-09-28T20:50:00.001-04:00

Do you remember when...

politicians intended to keep at least 6% of their campaign promises ✔
talk show guests came on to chat and not merely to promote their projects ✔
grocery stores weren’t open 24 hours a day, including holidays ✔
drivers signalled before changing lanes ✔
marriages lasted longer than seven minutes ✔
people said excuse me when they banged into you, cut in front of you, and stepped on your toes ✔
doctors worked on Fridays ✔
children acknowledged their parents ✔
getting ahead wasn’t dependent on who/m, but rather what, you knew ✔
a cup of coffee didn’t cost $9.95 ✔

buying new shoes meant getting your feet x-rayed ✔
sunbathing lotion consisted of butter and baby oil ✔
it wasn’t safe to say that you were, let alone be, homosexual ✔
your grandmother kept a can of bacon drippings next to the sink ✔
breastfeeding mothers smoked cigarettes ✔
a person was ostracized for not going to church ✔
mixed neighbourhoods didn’t exist ✔
unhappy couples stayed together at any cost ✔
parents ignored their children ✔
there were no such things as C-T scans, MRIs or angioplasty ✔

It is a world of checks and balances. Or as Bart Simpson would say, ‘A little from column A....”

Still, I don’t know how I feel about these monumental changes.

On the one hand, I am relieved that I live in a (part of the) world where it is generally safe to be one or more letters of lgbt; where I am able to say pretty much what I want, anywhere I want; where I have access to modern medical equipment and 2000 television channels (that include TCM); where I can contact anyone anywhere in the world within seconds; where I am able to find any type of food (colour, texture, culture) at my grocer’s; where I can have my teeth straightened with a liner, and where I live in a mixed neighbourhood.

On the other hand, I miss the days when children—even if they didn’t—at least pretended to be interested in their parents (mind you, I was terrifically spoiled by Sarah); when I could buy a week’s worth of groceries for under $100.00; when the scent of a wooden pew lingered all day in my nose and in my heart; when a can of bacon fat (it was my mum who kept one, not my grandmother; I didn’t know her in those ways) meant baked stuff pork chops, pan-fried potatoes and apple fritters; when a good job could be had because someone thought I was smart and industrious, and when streetcar riders stood up to let a pregnant woman sit down.

In the ways of the world out there, I think we are currently more fortunate. But when it comes to the inward ways—the ways of home and hearth and family—I think we are more often disconnected and lonely.

It could be me, as I said. It could be the upcoming holiday, Thanksgiving perhaps the hardest one of all. It could be the number of people who don’t sit down to Sunday dinner at all any more, or call home once a week to say they’re okay. It could be any number of things...my age, my condition, my outlook, my losses, my regrets. It could be the mugginess of the evening or the fact that I’ve put on three pounds.

But when I look around me I wonder...this or that? in or out? now or then? And ultimately I come back to the same old conclusions, which is maybe why I spend so much of my time remembering when.

Potato, Potahto?

2011-09-27T15:12:00.001-04:00

I don’t know.

I have (at least three) friends who not only disdain chronic television-viewing, they don’t own a TV. (I guess the italics express the degree of my surprise.) When I am with any of these people, I feel more than a little bit guilty, especially because I spend so much time glued to the screen.

For example, right now I am watching Anderson Cooper, who is discussing eating choices: what they are; why we make the ones we do, and how we can change our eating patterns. Anderson, for example, is a “selective disordered eater” (attached to being thin and losing weight, sometimes leading to death through anorexia). Anderson’s father died young of a heart attack, and Anderson is afraid that he, too, will succumb to a cardio-vascular accident. His dad died when Anderson was ten, and his (Anderson’s) eating patterns began when he (Anderson...sigh) was eleven.

This explains my love of mashed potatoes, boiled potatoes, hickory sticks, pan-fried potatoes, potato chips, roasted potatoes and French fries. Hello mother!

Oh – coincidence, as Anderson tells us we are about to meet a woman who has spent fifty years subsisting on nothing but French fries and hash browns. I can’t wait to hear what we’re going to learn about her, this woman who never eats vegetables and has never (ever?) tasted meat. Apparently, she has been this way all of her life.

Her diagnosis?

Potatoes are often comforting, sedating foods. Serotonin in the brain is mostly carbohydrate, and helps us distract from those things that make us nervous. We feel soothed and calmed when we eat these foods. There is also a physiological part to this woman’s eating patterns, which the specialist knows because of early pattern origins.

Fortunately, the diagnostician says, the body is adaptive. It can take a little and make it go a long way. But ultimately, the body will break down if we do not introduce new foods.

Anyway, I am digressing, but I do think the above illustrates what I can get from watching television. (Paranoid and guilty.) (I’m so funny.)

Speaking of humour, I once read that the best disease preventative is laughter, and that a person who laughs one hundred times a day is far healthier than the person who doesn’t. I tune into The Big Bang Theory every day for this express purpose, a sitcom that is good for at least 25 laughs per episode. And I watch other programs (Modern Family; Ellen; South Park; French and Saunders; Little Britain; Newhart; Jon Stewart; Raymond) for the same reason. They make me happy. They make me laugh.

And yes, I know I could be reading instead. And I do read. I volunteer at the CNIB, in part so that I have to keep reading. I am in a book club for a similar purpose. But when I pick up a great book, I cannot seem to put it down. I spend the entire day, and night, turning page after page after page. The cats don’t get fed, the chores don’t get done, and even the time I typically take to dash to the potato chip store at the corner is cut into. (Bad grammar, but I blame that on angst.)

As for writing that book that I have been chipping away at forever, yes, I could be doing that instead of scribbling (okay, typing) another blog entry. But let’s face it: if it’s readers I’m after, I have plenty right here (thank you so much). And if it’s about messages and meanings that I ought to be sharing, I have had generous feedback that reminds me I am not wasting my time here today.

Novel-writing (not to be confused with novel writing, which is not the sort of novel-writer I am), when based on what we know (and what novel-writing isn’t based on what we know?) takes time. I simply cannot bring my thoughts and heart to the page in those ways every day because I find it too emotionally difficult. More, I tend to do a lot of my writing in my head...which is why (coupled with genetics) my head is gigantic.

Anyway, you see where I am headed (no pun intended). One man’s feast is another man’s famine. While you are out climbing Mount Kilimanjaro—getting healthy, seeing the world, experiencing life— I am here laughing, learning and lounging. Who is to say which life is better than another?

You like potato and I like potahto,
You like tomato and I like tomahto;
Potato, potahto, tomato, tomahto!
Let's call the whole thing off!

George and Ira Gershwin, from Shall We Dance (1937)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7sYNptYjsE&feature=related

On The Nature Of Friendship

2011-09-26T00:01:00.001-04:00

Peggy asked us at lunch on Saturday about friendship/s, a topic that always gives me long pause.

First, we had to explain about the couple down the street – one of them never looking at or acknowledging me in any polite way throughout the three years we knew them, the other looking at and acknowledging me a little too often (which had to have been fairly prominent in order for me not only to have noticed but to say). (Granted, everyone noticed.)

Next, we felt compelled to talk about another couple – one-half of the pair a longstanding friend of Mary’s from high school days – whose hypervigilant partner made it abundantly clear that there were ample issues that prohibited close friendship (the word jealousy springs to mind, but there was a hierarchy there, too, a social order to which we did not quite conform and one that therefore kept us off their primary invitation lists). They moved to California, in fact, and we never heard from them again, not even after they learned about Sarah’s death (which is a bit of a gob-smacker, I confess).

Then we recounted to Peggy the story of a woman we knew – an aggressively staunch lesbian (her students would tell you this, too, and I say this with some fondness and only a little irritation/frustration) – who recently enough married a lovely man to whom she claimed to be offering refugee status (not true: she really loves him...anyone can see this, but no one knew in the beginning) and who lopped us off lickety-split for not taking a $3000.00 plane ride – I have not been on a plane since 1989, and wouldn’t get on one for Jesus’ sake – to celebrate an afternoon event she claimed – she kept insisting – would be undone as soon as legally possible.

Anyway, I went on to say on Saturday, at lunch, that in spite of these kinds of small and not so small disasters, I have kept friends from (all of the) various points and ports of my life...some friends more deeply engaged than others, perhaps, but there just the same. Early in the Christmas season, for example, when I look through my address book, I find plenty of names of people I can’t wait to send cards to, and in this last year alone, I have made three – Peggy among them – quite remarkable new friends, two on account of Sarah’s illness, and one as a result of my interest in writing...three people with whom I am in regular contact.

So what is it that makes some friendships last and others fall apart? And can anyway ever give any or all the reasons, or know exactly why?

Three of the five women I spoke of in the first four paragraphs are individuals I would have bet my life on, swearing up one side of the street and back down the other that I would know them forever. In fact, if you were to ask any one of them today, I would even hazard a guess that they would say the same thing about me. And yet here we are...miles and memories apart. Alternately, I have other friends I couldn’t beat off with a stick (thank God).

A man I once (once once) knew spoke of relationships as organic, stating that, like all living things, they have their own way of thriving, peaking and dying. I didn’t want to hear that at the time, and stood beside him staring sombrely at the impatiens and hostas that were flourishing in our shaded garden, knowing that soon they would wither away. Despite the clear-cut evidence laid bare in my own history, I shrugged his assertions off, determined that he should be wrong. I wanted to believe that all good relationships were set in stone, bound to last forever. I wanted also to believe that I would never be the one to end them, but that has proved equally untrue.

Of course, we also talked at lunch on Saturday about some of the friendships we made when we were younger and how they didn’t carry (the same) weight because we didn’t bring the same weight to them. And when I look back and add up the people I got about with when I was in my twenties and thirties – some of whom were not good for me, and maybe...likely...for whom I was also not good – it is a blessing that we have moved on and apart.

Sometimes, though, I am envious of those lively, lovely women who seem to have held on to everyone they have ever crossed paths with, Dawn French springing to mind, the photos of her lifelong friends beaming back at me from the pages of Dear Fatty.

But for people like me who grew up in so many houses and homes, without the stability of constantly loving parents (and worse), I don’t know if that sort of outcome is possible. I imagine that people like Dawn French grow in special gardens with long-living like-minded flowers, but that the rest of us are relegated to communal plots of land where the variables and the stakes (no pun intended) are higher.

Other individuals, of course, thrive in symbiotic gardens where they are dependent upon one another’s weaknesses and foibles. Stunted and weed-ridden, they are unable and unwilling to change, resistant to fertilizer or any new seeds. While they often look pretty from a distance, when you move in closer you can see that these are not welcoming gardens and should be avoided at all costs.

On top of that, a person must not forget about climate, allergies, thorns, visiting wasps and soil conditions.

Still, when I look around at the friends that I love, I hang onto the hope that we shall be friendly forever. While the facts of my life don’t support this (and given all that I continue to learn, and unlearn, and relearn…), I nevertheless hold onto a faint glimmer of hope that should we all live for another thirty or so years, I will find no new lines drawn through the names of the people in my address book – those kind-hearted people I love deeply and think of as my friends.

Toronto City Councillors Beware: One More Cut, Amalgamation or Compromise and You Are Doomed

2011-09-25T18:01:00.001-04:00

I swear to God, if City Hall votes for one more ridiculous Ford proposition, even if, or when, it comes under pressure from the upper echelon of Toronto’s elite, city councillors are going to pay with their jobs.

I have talked to so (so so) many people who are saying this isn’t just irresponsible – it’s nuts! Cut this, chop that, close this, you say? Well, we can all play at that game.

Here is the latest article I have nabbed from a growing series of articles naming Ford and his brother for what they are: lying, tendentious bullies who have no business in the front offices or back rooms of Toronto government.

While he may have saved the “liberries” for the moment, be prepared to reel in the aftershock of more diabolical proposals whose ramifications he is either too stupid to understand or proposals he is hoping to sweep past the councillors for whom, obviously, he has no respect. (Depending on how these employees are swayed, however, in this instance he might be right.)

Disgusting!

Toronto city councillors be warned: you too, can – and will be – replaced.

By Enzo Di Matteo

Recognize any of these 14 lies Rob Ford has told since taking office?

1. The promise during the election that there’d be no service cuts has followed a familiar trajectory for the pathological exaggerator. First he said there’d be no cuts, “guaranteed.” Then that there’d be no cuts in 2011. Then no “major” service cuts. Of course these were all lies. The city manager has identified 50 for council’s consideration September 26.

2. Ford said on election night that he would work hard to earn the trust of those who didn’t vote for him. Instead, he’s completely shut them out of the decision-making process – and hasn’t stopped the knuckle-dragging gorillas on his executive from demonizing his political opponents as “communists.”

3. He invoked William Lyon Mackenzie in his inaugural address, promising to fight against privilege and for the “little guy.” Guess that big social housing sell-off he’s orchestrating is for the “little guy” and not his development friends. The horrible truth: the Ford administration is the Family Compact all over again.

4. Ford promised “respect for taxpayers.” Made it his campaign slogan. Yet he’s abolished dozens of citizen advisory groups, and his single-minded obsession with cutting the size of government is leaving tens of thousands of Torontonians behind. On that “respect” thing, the mayor’s giving us the finger.

5. Ford promised to stop the “gravy train” at City Hall, but it turns out there is no gravy unless you happen to be his friend. In which case, you might be in line for a six-figure gig like the ones handed buddies Case Ootes and Gordon Chong, members of his transition team.

6. He promised transparency in government and no more backroom deals but put locks on his office doors and has spent most of the first year of his tenure hiding from the press. Has there been a more secretive and paranoid administration? As we learned recently, he’s been backroom-scheming with brother Doug, the councillor from Ward 2, to sell off publicly owned port land to his developer buddies.

7. He made much of his business background during the campaign, saying the city would be run like a business. Barely 24 hours into his term, Ford announced Transit City was dead, thereby throwing away some $4 billion in public transit improvements. He’s traded in shortsighted retail politics from the start, opting for symbolic one-time savings (see councillors’ office budgets and the vehicle registration tax) over the city’s long-term financial health. Simple math: he entered office with a $300-million-plus surplus, and now we’re supposedly facing a $774 million deficit.

8. Ford followed up that Transit City doozy by promising that not a cent of public money would be spent on building his Sheppard subway extension. Now he admits there’s a funding problem. There he was a few weeks back doing what he’d pledged never to do – go cap in hand to the province for money for his Sheppard subway.

9. During the campaign, Ford was fond of trotting out the old Tea Party line that the city doesn’t have a revenue problem – it has a spending problem. That doesn’t explain why he jacked up user fees in his first budget. But back to the point at hand. The city now has a revenue problem thanks to Ford’s ditching of the vehicle registration tax and the zero property tax increase delivered in 2011.The $100 million from those two sources alone would have made many of the massive cuts now being contemplated unnecessary.

10. Ford pledged to achieve staff reductions through attrition, but it’s now clear the plan all along was layoffs and buying out hundreds of city employees.

11. He promised to hire 100 more cops, but the police services are now contemplating a hiring freeze and buyouts for several hundred officers. We mention this not because we necessarily agree that we need more cops, but to illustrate the fact that Ford was prepared to say anything to get elected, even to BS the law-and-order vote.

12. Ford made a big production during the election about not being homophobic, complete with photo-op apologizing to one person with AIDS for his past ill-considered remarks about gays. But then he refused to attend any Pride events while threatening to cut funding to the organization. He was also the only one to vote against accepting AIDS education funding from the province.

13. He said that when he was mayor the city would be a fun place to live where everyone is happy. Remember that? Now it’s just a place where grass isn’t cut in parks, kids don’t get gifts for Christmas and libraries are shuttered.

14. He promised to make customer service priority number one at City Hall. Reality check: just how is laying off thousands of workers going to improve customer service? Ever tried to get hold of your local councillor only to get that automatic email reply?

NOW | September 15-22, 2011 | VOL 31 NO 3

loco parentis

2011-09-22T16:31:00.001-04:00

A million million hours I’ve spent with you

Whose eyes I do not know

Or heart to keep,

Unburdened by a complicated view,

Somnambulance recoiling into sleep.

And who are we, as half-to-face we glance

Reflecting what, alone, I’m bound to do?

The mirrored light, the meteoric chance,

The distance marked in separateness of two.

And so we raise ourselves

essentially

In tenderness and hatred thrust apart,

And set our hands upon the glass to free

The sorrow of the undivided heart.

~ Jennifer Coffey

Purgatory

2011-09-20T02:40:00.001-04:00

It’s 1:30 AM, and I was just cleaning the bathroom sink with Comet, plugging my nose with two fingers and trying to avoid inhaling. I don’t know why I continue to use it...old habits die hard, I guess.

Takes me back a long way to my stepmother, and trust me: this is not a place any of you would want to go. She was a harpy if ever there was one, minus the wings. “That which snatches” says the dictionary. (More like, “that witch snatches.”) Harpies: noted for their ugliness, which in the Maritimes means soulless.

Truly, if you knew her you would think I was being too kind. She makes Gloria Vanderbilt’s childhood look easy breezy. Joan Crawford was a saint, in fact, standing next to her (speaking of Comet)...even with a set of wire coat hangers in her (Crawford’s) hand.

And speaking of cleaning bathrooms, oh the stories I could tell about the rooming houses I lived in when I was young; the hours I spent scrubbing the bathtub for Jesus. I don’t know where that tenant came from, or what made him so wildly unwell, but everyone fell in line when it came to polishing taps and tiles and tub, because to do any less was to incur his wrath and a detailed description of the hell to which we were all emphatically going.

Had Paul not changed his mind and decided it was me he wanted to marry and not Kim (she was far prettier than I was, and, as coincidence would have it, came from Ajax) (you know—as in the cleanser), I might still be there on my hands and knees, retrieving bobby pins and small earrings from the drain.

Alas, I exchanged that sunny room on Howland for another on Brunswick Avenue, where Paul and I lived in dewy matrimonial bliss for about three or four weeks before hitchhiking to Fredericton in a heat wave. We made one stop only—at the Royal York Hotel—where in those days only little people (we called them dwarves and midgets) were hired as Royal York porters, and where beer was still relatively cheap.

But as usual, I digress.

I have cleaned many bathrooms in my day—the worst being the men’s washrooms in those PEI bars (The Dispensary and Hogan’s hold a tie record, although the only thing that makes them outstanding is the degree) (you don’t want to know), although this is truly not a complaint but, rather, a light-hearted memory. It was all part of a job and a somewhat lucrative career that, in the main, I loved.

In fact, I have an affinity for water sports, so anything to do with H2O is fine by me: tending to houseplants, washing dishes, cleaning windows, rinsing out a sink...it’s really all okay. There is something cathartic about it...cleansing, which makes its own obvious sense. And with the exception of toilets, I have never much found need for rubber gloves (the kind my mum used and left draping over the kitchen faucet after a hard day’s work).

Anyway, it is now 2:12 AM, and I have spent a good forty minutes ruminating on the subject of cleaning. And frankly, as much as I love writing, I don’t know which I prefer—scouring out a sink and making it shine, or putting the polishing touches on a paragraph.

But should you decide to ask anyone which I do better—well, please don’t, because I might then be relegated to swabbing sinks for the rest of my life, and a person grows tired of scrubbing the bathroom…even for Jesus.

On, Comet! On Cupid! On Donder and Blitzen!

OPI Spells OPI

2011-09-19T17:09:00.001-04:00

I painted my toenails with OPI nail polish close to one month ago, and you won’t believe me when I tell you, unless you are a converted OPI user, that the polish is still intact...no scratches, chips, picks or pockets (or pickpockets). It’s stayed on so long and so well, as I was just saying to my friend Sheila (whose also-purple toenails inspired this entry), it’s darn right creepy.

Sitting here, I am trying to think what other polish products I know that hold up to their promise as well. In my experience, Essie, Sally Hansen and Revlon don’t even come a close second, third and fourth and, memory serving, I don’t recall any product that has pleased me the way OPI has.

Certainly, no mascara has ever held up to its longer, fuller, non-clumping, waterproof promise/s, and there is no lipstick save Mac that has been true to its no-bleed, long-lasting assertion.

I shouldn’t gripe, though, especially when I think back to my teen years of training brassieres (my mother called them brazz, rhymes with has) whose stuffing morphed into off-putting crunchy-tight crumbs within weeks; panty hose (we called them nylons) hoisted on garters and snagging within seconds of wearing, and sanitary napkin contraptions that would baffle an architectural engineer.

I felt an odd wash of relief the other day sitting on the streetcar admiring the style solutions of one, then two, then three young women who separately boarded the car, bra straps deliberately in view. I couldn’t even begin to imagine what they would do suffering garters and girdles and such. (Mind you, I suppose they spend their time worrying about injections and peels and weight loss solutions. Can a woman win?)

Anyway, I only meant to say that I have been won over by OPI, and I am excited to try a selection of colours. The only thing I worry about and wonder is how am I going to get the stuff off? I mean, given its resistance to abrasions, is there a polish remover that can do the job, or am I going to have to resort to something quite frighteningly caustic?

Thus, ladies...the small price of beauty.

Slow Cooker Sunday

2011-09-18T14:03:00.001-04:00

Sarah bought me a slow cooker a couple of years ago, which is the best sort of gift for a mother who is not a great cook to begin with. (How did that happen, I ask myself, given that my own mother was fit to make meals for the angels.

I used to come to the dinner table and find radishes cut in the shapes of roses; succulent pork chops stuffed and strung together with spiced rope; home-made apple pie that peaked (and peeked) higher than eye level. Had my mother been in good health, she might have become a world famous chef years before television made fine cooking ultra popular.)

But as time and dinner wait for no wo/man, and because autumn brings with it seasonal flu and prohibitive mould allergies, here is my slow cooker Sunday recipe, the creation costing me today no more than seven minutes of preparation time in the (still half-finished) kitchen.

· two cans of Stag Vegetarian Chile (high in sodium and fibre, low in fat)

· one 16 ounce jar of Portobello mushroom spaghetti sauce

· four washed, sliced white potatoes

· one large washed, sliced carrot

· one really large (or several small) washed, sliced mushroom/s

· one teaspoon of minced garlic

· ½ diced onion (which I forgot to put in today)

Set the temperature on low and let simmer for five hours.

You might not believe me, but this is one of the more delicious meals my cooking endeavours have realized. (Mind you...)

In fact, one of the last times I concocted this dish was a year ago this very weekend when Sarah was here…the last time Sarah was here…with us, to enjoy it. You would think I had prepared a feast, but that’s the sort of person she was. I could have offered up a cardboard sandwich, and she would have said, “Oh mum, this is delicious.”

Food is, inescapably, much less palatable these days, but every time I see that slow cooker I think of my daughter and of the wonderful gift – of all the wonderful gifts – she gave me...of the wonderful gift she was.

Suzanne Gardinier: Ghazal # 9

2011-09-17T03:26:00.001-04:00

From Today: 101 Ghazals

I've lost my shoes Have you seen them
The winged ones that used to carry me

I've heard that when people die they remember
their mothers and call in the night Carry me

When my son used to say I can do it myself
He was whispering Could you carry me

When the quick rain soaks the shoulders of my shirt
it's saying Just for now Carry me

There's a tenderness around your eyes
Have enough tears said Carry me

All day in this new dream I walk on gravel
And the words you didn't whisper carry me

When my mother arrives at the end of something
It's to faint in my arms and say Carry me

I've known how to walk since before I was born
It's useless to try to carry me

What the dazzle of light says as it touches
the wave swelling Cresting Breaking Carry me

What the secrets say as they line the edges
of my eyes Your eyes Carry me

What the shoeless stammerer doesn't say
as she doesn't step into your arms Carry me

Suzanne Gardinier

Rob Ford Is A Disaster: Why Is Anyone Surprised?

2011-09-16T12:19:00.001-04:00

Robyn Doolittle Urban Affairs Reporter

One of the biggest polls ever conducted in Toronto shows residents from every corner of the city are overwhelmingly against Mayor Rob Ford’s cuts.

From Doug Ford’s ward in Etobicoke to budget chief Mike Del Grande’s in Scarborough, the results will serve as a sobering warning to councillors within the Ford voting bloc.

A Forum Research telephone survey of nearly 13,000 people reveals that more than three-quarters of Torontonians want their local councillor to protect services rather than comply with the mayor’s wishes. And only 27 per cent of residents say they would vote for Rob Ford if an election was held tomorrow.

More significantly, because of the poll’s size, Forum was able to provide the first authoritative assessment of support on a ward-by-ward level.

Forum’s poll, which was paid for by CUPE Local 79, one of two major unions at city hall, questioned 12,848 Toronto residents on Tuesday using a random dial, push-button response, phoning system. The margin of error is plus or minus 0.9 per cent, 19 out 20 times.

Some of the strongest opposition to the current direction at city hall is in the wards of executive committee members.

For example, in Cesar Palacio’s Davenport region, 81.2 per cent of residents want him to fight Ford on cuts. In Willowdale, 82.9 per cent of David Shiner’s constituents are against cutting services.

With a “mushy middle” of councillors emboldened by Ford’s sinking approval, losing even a handful of those previously locked-down votes could tip the scales at council against Ford.

“He’s asking these councillors to put their careers on the line,” said Forum president Lorne Bozinoff. “These councillors are potentially exposing themselves and their careers to challenge in three years from someone who comes along and says: ‘Vote for me, I’ll restore those cutbacks.’”

As for Ford’s low approval rating, Bozinoff said one theory is that the mayor is embarking on typical political strategy: get the controversial stuff out of the way fast, allowing enough time for the numbers to rebound by the next election.

“But in this case, his numbers are already low and we’re just talking about cutting services,” he said. “This is not likely to improve for him when he actually carries out some of this stuff. . . I think if the cutbacks are really of the magnitude (being discussed) it could hit him even harder.”

Ford was elected by a landslide last October and — bolstered by the popularity of his “Stop the Gravy Train” message — the mayor has enjoyed a slim but solid majority on council.

A number of councillors within the Ford fold, most of who have been rewarded with high-profile positions on committees or boards, have quietly grumbled over the administration’s constant vote-whipping, intimidation tactics and procedural trickery.

Despite the unrest, Ford’s uncompromising leadership style had been able to keep his supporters in check. Even mushy middle councillors have so far sided with Ford on controversial votes.

But as anger continues to swell over the Pride snub, KPMG consultants, Margaret Atwood fiasco, waterfront power grab and most recently, proposed cuts to libraries, daycares and Riverdale Farm, some councillors have felt emboldened to speak out.

Most recently, Councillor Jaye Robinson (Ward 25 Don Valley West), a member of Ford’s executive, publicly announced she would not support the administration’s waterfront plan.

TTC chair Karen Stintz has been distancing herself from the administration in the past few months and was one of the first to speak out against library cuts. On Thursday, she revealed she would also vote against the mayor on his waterfront plans.

The show of defiance has had many at city hall questioning Stintz’s political future. But if the Forum poll is any indication, Stintz had already sensed the changing political winds.

George Smitherman edged out Ford in Stinz’s Eglinton-Lawrence ward last October. Today, 52.4 per cent of residents say their opinion of the mayor has worsened since the election, 76.6 per cent want Stintz to fight service cuts and 65.4 per cent said they would not elect Ford for a second term.

The Questions

Respondents were asked the following questions:

How has your opinion of Mayor Ford changed since the election? Improved: 17%; Hasn’t changed: 29%; Grown worse: 54%.

If an election was held tomorrow, would you vote for Rob Ford for mayor? Yes: 27%; No: 60%; Don’t know: 13%.

How much do you agree that your councillor should vote in the interests of protecting city services in your community, even if it conflicts with the wishes of Mayor Ford? Overall agree: 77% (59% say they “strongly agree” and 18% say they “agree”. Overall disagree: 14% (“strongly disagree, 5%; disagree 9%). Don’t know: 9%.

Note: the Star combined “agree” and “strongly agree” answers for the purposes of this article.

[end of article]

The Sound of the Trees

2011-09-14T14:20:00.001-04:00

I woke up today to the sound of chainsaws. The massive, lush, gorgeous tree on the corner, the one occupied by hundreds and hundreds of ants, is being cut down today, it’s full life finally over.

I crept into the bathroom with my camera for one last shot, regretting the candle wax that stains the window and blocks my clear view. (I had a secondary regret – as I am sure he had, too – when the man in the bucket caught me in my underwear.)

I threw on some clothes and ran down to the street in semi-disbelief despite the chained sign that has, these past few weeks, marked the tree like Hester Prynne.

“Nooooooooooooooooooooooooo!” I cried to myself. “Don’t cut it down!” I screamed inwardly, trying to hold back tears as a friendly neighbourhood woman stood next to me on the corner in quiet lament.

Apparently, she too has a doomed tree, and has begged for a year’s mercy and an arborist. The city complied. But we also commented on the similar (century-old) age of a number of these massive trees, three of them gone in the past month.

When we first saw this house in its B-pocket neighbourhood the first thing I noticed – that anyone would probably notice – were the trees, tall and broad, reaching out to one another across the tops of so many tattered roofs.

Even as I sit here and type I can see them through my bedroom window, bowing and waving, shaking hands and nodding gaily to one another. In fact, at this very minute and despite the wind, they seem to be calmer than usual, their heads bent down in mournful posture, a few end leaves flickering like sad little fingers saying goodbye.

Oh, I hate this. I wish I could make the tree cutters stop. And I can’t help but wonder what the tree is feeling...and what it won’t be feeling soon.

While it is impossible to ignore the obvious metaphor, for as long as I can remember I have had this lively, lovely relationship with trees. I see in them faith and hope and sustenance, loyal bystanders in a world too often filled with menace and betrayal. They whisper to me at night and hum with me as I meander down the street. They are my friends.

Our house will never be the same without the shadow of this tree, and I will never feel the same about this street...the hot sun blazing down on me, my fair skin unprotected.

The Sound of the Trees

I wonder about the trees.
Why do we wish to bear
Forever the noise of these
More than another noise
So close to our dwelling place?
We suffer them by the day
Till we lose all measure of pace,
And fixity in our joys,
And acquire a listening air.
They are that that talks of going
But never gets away;
And that talks no less for knowing,
As it grows wiser and older,
That now it means to stay.
My feet tug at the floor
And my head sways to my shoulder
Sometimes when I watch trees sway,
From the window or the door.
I shall set forth for somewhere,
I shall make the reckless choice
Some day when they are in voice
And tossing so as to scare
The white clouds over them on.
I shall have less to say,
But I shall be gone.

Robert Frost

Midnight Sail

2011-09-12T00:39:00.001-04:00

I feel odd not having posted an entry for September 11, but thought I would wait closer to midnight and the actual time of my parent’s deaths, although my mother’s death was harder to place exactly. I still find it remarkable that my mother and father died so close to the same hour all those years apart. And I don’t know why I can’t get away from the anniversary girl part of me, but thus I seem to be made.

It’s hard to fathom all that has happened in the past ten years – Don’s death; Lainey’s birth; Blue’s birth; Sarah’s death – and I am surprised this week to be finding my way out of the house to attend the film festival...that I dare make my way into the world where it is easier to, even momentarily, forget.

Yesterday, then, as I leaned against a railing while waiting in an upstairs line at Paramount, Roger Ebert walked by with his wife, the two of them strolling through the crowd as if they were out for a mere Saturday matinee. I have been so moved by Roger Ebert’s courage in the face of his gruelling both with cancer, and, in light of my valiant daughter who so loved hearing all of my TIFF tales, seeing him felt a little magical, reminding me yet again that life is an odd and confounding expedition.

In fact, a person hardly knows what to expect around any given corner (which is also part of the magic), but the crescendo of coincidences and confluences that have been occurring these past months astound me. (Later, if mood and time permit, I can expand on this, although I am not sure anyone but my friends and family would be interested.)

Still, I have no words to properly commemorate all those who have died. I cannot find the poem or essay or song that feels right; that expresses exactly in tone and meaning what the deaths of my mother, my father, my husband, and daughter – three of them decades too young to die – mean to me or to anyone who loved them. And I am hardly in a place to claim to know what to say for those lost to September 11, 2001.

Instead, I will say this:

The other day, when I was scanning all the email sent to and received from Sarah – hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of letters (I have kept every one) – a thought occurred to me...an incidence I wanted to share...something that ties together my meandering thoughts.

We were out on the deck at the cottage: Mary, Noam, Crystal, Sean, Lesley and I, and it was very late...sometime after midnight. The children were long tucked in and asleep, and the air was clear and warm. In all the years we have been going to the cottage, I have never before sat out on the deck that late. A fear of bears, in fact, has always kept me indoors. (Besides, I spent so much time scaring Sarah with the possibility of Boo-Boo that we always locked ourselves in shortly after dark.)

So there we were, lying back gazing at the stars; talking, laughing, lamenting, when all of a sudden we noticed a light in the form and size of an elegantly shaped sail flashing from across the lake.

At first we blamed a faulty timer, figuring something or other had triggered the flash. But as we watched the flickering...on and off and on and off and on and off, its beautiful arrhythmic heartbeat...Mary and Sean confirmed that even an electrical timing glitch would have some metered rhythm to it. Even a tripped wire would take a few seconds before tripping itself up again (so to speak).

So I sat there and stared some more, reminded of all the peculiar electrical events that have taken place since Don died and that have escalated since Sarah’s death in April. And I wondered.

I don’t know who it was who said it first or whether I simply asked the question, “Do you think...?” but I know that I kept hearing through the night, “It’s Sarah. Yes, it’s Sarah. Of course, it’s Sarah.”

Mock us (gently) if you will, but if you had been there you would have seen it too. And like us, you would have wondered. We sat there hour after hour in the dark, the sail blinking and nodding, glowing at us in the pitch black from the other side of the small lake. I have looked across that water (indoors, blinds up, Yahtzee dice in hand) every night for six summer’s worth of cottage seasons and never once have I seen anything like this.

In fact, no one saw the light the previous night as they sat around the camp fire near the water’s edge, and although we all checked for the rest of our stay, the light never came on again.

I don’t know what happens to us when we die. I don’t think anyone knows. And for all my hocus pocus tarot/rune reading fun in life, I am as close to an atheist as any agnostic can be without falling over into the godless abyss entirely.

But there is something to it – to that light – to the confluences and coincidences and magical appearances – to all of the saved email – and I am as sure as a person like me can ever be that Sarah was signalling to us across the water, waving hello, sending her love, reminding us to be loving and faithful and mindful.

I can only hope that for everyone who grieves the loss of someone they love, there is a midnight sailing ship just there on the horizon, twinkling its radiating light. Sometimes we need not wait for a crack to let the light come in; sometimes all we have to do is believe.

In memory of my mother and father, of Don and Sarah, and of the 2,976 who died on September 11, 2001.

Eat, Prey, Love

2011-09-08T11:34:00.001-04:00

*The following excerpts are taken from http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Michael_Gutemberg

Everyone has some idea about Anaconda snakes. Most will know that [this] reptile is a giant snake, lives in marshlands, and is a deadly hunter. However, most do not know how big or long an anaconda really is.

To the naked eye the Anaconda appears to be 20 feet, and the average [weight] is 550 pounds.

The body of a full-grown Anaconda is extremely muscular with smooth scales.

[E]yes and nostrils are on [the] top of their heads. This makes it easier for them to breathe [underwater].

Anaconda snakes stay under water for just over 10 minutes and usually they use the trick of staying under water to catch their prey. They hunt during the night mostly in swampy areas. Their skin acts as a camouflage and helps them to merge with the surrounding areas of the swamp.

The[ir] smooth scales help them to move through the waters with great agility and speed, like a shark [in] an ocean.

Because of the color of their skin, these reptiles are difficult to spot in the wild. Once in a while, when the cold wind blows one can see them out in the land basking in the warmth of the sun.

Of course it is true that snakes do not have to be large to be deadly.

“Death adders are very viper-like in appearance, having a short, robust body, triangular-shaped heads and small subocular scales. They also have vertical pupils and many small scales on the top of the head. Their fangs are also longer and more mobile than for most other elapids, although still far from the size seen in some of the true vipers. Despite their name and appearance, they are not vipers at all. This is a case of convergent evolution.

They normally take 2–3 years to reach adult size. Females are generally slightly larger than the males. They can also be easily distinguished from other Australian snakes because of a small, worm-like lure on the end of their tail, which is used to attract prey. Most have large bands around their bodies, though the color itself is variable, depending on their locality. Colors are usually black, grey or red and yellow, but also include brown and greenish-grey.

Unlike most snakes, death adders do not actively hunt, but rather lie in ambush and draw their prey to them.

When hungry, death adders bury themselves amongst the substrate. This may be leaf litter, soil or sand, depending on their environment. The only part of themselves they expose are their head and their tail, both generally very well camouflaged. The end of the tail is used for caudal luring and when wiggled is easily mistaken for a grub or worm. An unsuspecting bird or mammal will eventually notice the 'easy lunch' and attempt to seize it. Only then will the death adder move, lashing out with the quickest strike of any snake in the world. A death adder can go from a strike position, to strike and envenoming their prey, and back to strike position again, in as little as 0.13 of a second, about the duration of a blink of the eye.”

*Taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acanthophis

I am not sure what led me to the subject of snakes today, except that Sarah (who I think of constantly) and I used to spend moments of our leisure time talking about the similarities between people and animals. In fact, we often labeled various friends and family members, trying to come up with the animal that matched the person exactly.

We called up bears, turtles, dogs, housecats, otters, eagles, giraffes, monkeys, wolves, tigers, horses and so on.

Seldom, however, did we equate a human being with a snake.

Sitting here today and wondering about why this is so—how we overlooked the obvious—I am drawn to the conclusion that we generally missed the connection because snakes tend toward the subtle. Quick, unexpected, often devious, camouflaged, swamp-hidden and lethal, it is hard to imagine a person this suddenly vicious and venomous.

Perhaps we miss their intentions because, as so eloquently stated above, once in a while when the cold wind blows, one can see them out on the land basking in the warmth of the sun.

Who, then, could imagine anything so ostensibly laidback as something so deadly? Who would ever conjure that this S-curved beauty, glinting in the noon-day sun, could harbour such poisonous—in some cases, malevolent—harm?

In the end, maybe it is better to only look for the good. The problem with that is, however, bad things can happen when your back is turned, and snakes, as all the articles say, are able to hide right in front of you, blending casually into the sun-drenched carpet that tickles the bottoms of your feet.

Contact Lenses

2011-09-07T15:11:00.001-04:00

Speaking of deleting email address (and of tangents), I was all set to write an entry today about problems of communication in the current world—a diatribe on the irony of a younger generation that prides itself on lickety-split texting, Facebook and Twitter response but who, generally, can neither respond to a phone call or email in a timely way (by timely, I mean ten or twelve months), if at all, or who, when they do respond, forget to spell- and grammar-check, and generally answer in coded, abbreviated language that requires a university prerequisite.

Okay, so that’s not entirely fair or true, and obviously (to me, I mean) does not include all of the people-under-forty that I know. There is the rare exception. In fact, I can name one as I sit here and type, but I don’t want to embarrass him or call him out as generationally odd. (And yes, I am as relieved as you are that I did not make comedy my career.)

I was also going to expound on the virtues of making oneself clear; the value of making one’s message meaningful (as in, full of meaning); the merits of meretriciousness. (I have no idea what that means, but it sounds nice.) Oh. I looked it up. That’s not what I mean at all.

I was even going to excuse myself for what might seem to you like needless repetition (for example, I have used the word making twice, and the root word mean three times, in a previous sentence/paragraph), but what I know as/is designed for clarity. And if my mood had slipped, I was then going to launch into a declaration against disingenuousness (not mine, in this case); a cry against correspondence that is calculated for selfish purposes and has nothing to do with the recipient (in this case, me).

But that was hours ago, before I got lost in letter-writing, and comical email exchanges with my neighbour and friend (and my contemporary) (that is, to you, young enough), and sending (okay, selecting/preparing) dozens and dozens of photos to forward to my handsome son, and basking in my Sheila epistles, and saying howdy to the people in my age group (as I said, young enough) who communicate regularly, and posting an article to my not-to-be embarrassed friend—and so on.

Indeed, at this very moment I am grateful that I have had no more to write or reply to than is on my current plate. (Also on my plate today have been oatmeal, rye toast and organic cheesies.) As it is, I have a blog entry to finish, a novel to complete, and a dozen-dozen photos to send off, and I can’t get to all that until I return those phone calls and answer my email in, say, February, 2012.

Coming Home

2011-09-06T12:49:00.001-04:00

Every year after returning home from the cottage I reprint an entry about homecoming. But this year, of course, is different, and I have no desire or interest in making my way through previous years in these ways. (And for this, I am sure you are also grateful.)

It is enough for me to say, and to know and remember, what Lainey and Noam being there meant to us all and most especially to me, and almost enough to try and imagine what this would have meant for Sarah. But to say more would feel in some ways sacrosanct and in others superfluous.

I think, too, that Sarah’s friends who were with us shared something splendid in her memory, and will always look back on their 2011 holiday as a tribute to someone they deeply loved.

Today, back at home, I am lounging with Jeeves, who has not left my side since our return. I ought to be working but instead am catching up on Joy Behar’s marriage (after all these years, how lovely); sharing a morning of email, most especially with my friend Sheila; nursing a tired ankle; wondering every few minutes how Lainey’s first morning of senior kindergarten is going and whether she is sitting next to her boyfriend, and enjoying the wind and the clouds.

And as I do every so often, I went through my email contact list and deleted the names of those with whom I am seldom, if ever, in touch (or want to be) (kidding) (sort of), having decided a year or so ago to be ever-honourable to the like-attracts-like ethos. Otherwise, my friends know who they are and are as stuck with me as I am to them, and that is pretty much that.

More, a person learns as she ages that deleting, or being deleted, is not painful but, conversely, restorative and essential. Or as Leo Tolstoy said, “All – everything that I understand – I understand only because I love.” There are gifts that come with growing (slightly) older, although this is one gift I would not have believed possible when I was young: knowing that by taking courage we promote and prompt encouragement.

I also find that today, rather than the lingering backward glance, I prefer savouring the best and the blessings that came from my time away and am therefore looking forward. (I am just as surprised as you are that this is so.)

In fact, when I look into my crystal (who I also love, but with a capital C) ball, I see the following:

the film festival and at least seven new movies, with copious opinions following
Stratford with Peggy and Mary
a completed novel...finally
cable splicing and a date with a treadmill
our next book club dinner
fall travel
Tafelmusik
the Toronto Consort (happy birthday to mlm)
a tarot evening with Michelle
dinner/s and outings and correspondence with friends
a completed anthology...finally
Lainey and Noam and Blue (I always save the best for the last)

Maybe tomorrow I will find myself lost in the protracted past but, as it stands, this hour I am glad for cooler weather, greyer skies, the changing season, and unmitigated memories of those I love.

Jack Layton

2011-08-26T10:03:00.001-04:00

Toronto Pride 2008