Thursday, July 25, 2013 Williams Lake, Canada
I sing of Huns and trees, but not of Huns in trees, nor of their descendant German children in trees in the film The Sound of Music, nor of Huns holding parts of trees to sneak up on a castle, as in Shakespeare's play Macbeth; but the Huns of whom I speak are English, fighting the Irish, close colonial cousins of the Scottish, who populate Macbeth. A castle, Dublin Castle, does enter into it, and the British entered into it in 1916, in a city of many dead and dying Irish patriots.
Yes I have been reading the poetry of John Donne and the Ulysses of James Joyce, but this is less conceit, more stream of consciousness; but with more punctuation, orality having declined so much since Thomas Carlyle that the word seas of Joyce would drown more than direct readers in our day, including many of the sturdy few who dare to read my words. You know who you are. You readers are my heroes, such as Carlyle wrote of in On Heroes and Hero Worship.
Joyce wrote
"If you see Kaye...
Tell her...
See you in tea."
Heroism-cum-whorism?
Williams Lake is the third part of the yet-unexplained title of this writing. "Williams Lake's got talent," to use the opaque, ungrammatical formulation. Beware ungrammatical formulations, their flashing eyes, their floating hair, as Samuel Coleridge wrote in "Kubla Khan," a hero to the east of the Huns, and Juliet is the sun.
To the Huns' west lay the British Isles, a contentious conundrum.
Tonight, Williams Lake's talent showed up in Boitanio Park, a "green and pleasant land," in the words of William Blake, no relation to Williams Lake. Although young women, this talent was unlike the whorehouse talent in Joyce's Ulysses. Under the frying sun, several young women sang in turn. One turned to "Foggy Dew" but did not sing the line, "Britannia's Huns with their long range guns"sailing in from the foggy dew to blast away at Irish independence. Erin go Bragh, "Ireland Forever."
She left the stage, British imperialism intact, and got a smoothie at a table selling such. She walked past me yon and hither, but someone else was singing, so I didn't ask about the omitted line.
I thought of ribs, that is, of a scene in the documentary Standing in the Shadows of Motown. The guitarist who invented the opening notes of the song "My Girl" was aged and sitting in a California restaurant.
As the server walked up to our ancient musician's table, the opening notes of "My Girl" played. His eyes lit up, met the young woman server's eyes, there was a pause, and he said, "I'll have the ribs."
"Why didn't you tell her that you invented that famous opening music?" his partner asked.
"Who'd believe an old man?" he replied.
Old man I didn't accost the "Foggy Dew" singer, nor her teacher, who had accompanied on piano.
Instead, I watched children climb a tree on the other side of the stage. I remembered "the climbing tree" near my childhood home near Edson, Alberta. All those "nears" are "almosting it," but that's a Joyce of a different portrait of the artist as a young man. Many times I climbed that tree, alone or with friends. From above the power lines, I could see the Rocky Mountains to the west.
These children would need to perch 300 metres above the ground the see out of the Williams Lake valley. These children were mere metres above the ground, the tree shorter than my childhood tree.
These children. Ah, these children. I was "These eyes are crying" nostalgic, and Guess Who sang that?
Oh, childhood, where is thy sting, Donne in, fallen to safety from the delicious danger it once was.
The vast, distant prairie horizon stimulates the imagination, I read somewhere. Does the narrow, close, mountain horizon diminish the imagination? I grew up in neither, so am I imaginatively challenged? "Imaginatively challenged" is a phrase full of potential, energy, but it is kinetic energy that children produce by falling from trees.
No sooner did I finish pondering horizons than a matronly woman rose from her lawn chair on my side of the stage. So did Venus rise from the foamy waves. This Venus walked toward the tree.
I was sore afraid for the barefoot gossins at their tree, Galway Bay or no.
For I recalled neighbor women yelling at us children to get off the water tower, but I remembered none every yelling us out of the tree. "This is no place for old men" or women, to embellish Yeats;
but I don't pretend to polish Yeats. The tree: no adults allowed. Tell Adam and Eve.
I feared, ancient music mariner I, I and I if I were a Rastafarian, that this woman would command the children out of the tree. Medea spoil the fun, but no children die. I watched. She merely stood below as they climbed above. Inwardly I commended her.
As I rose to leave the outdoor concert, having heard the young singers but not planning to stay for the country gospel band to follow, I screwed my courage to the sticking post and approached first the "Foggy Dew" singer, then the tree woman. The first did not sing like Sinead O'Connor. The second did not look like an Avatar heroine, nor like Venus, but Williams Lake's got talent.
And Brutus is an honorable man, as Mark Antony said at Caesar's funeral in the Shakespeare play.
A writer from the United States, which has the minimum daily requirement of them, named Michael Parenti, wrote The Assassination of Julius Caesar a few years ago, to trumpet the porous leader's democratic intentions and refute the tyranny that mainline history has fixed on him.
Mainlining history might be better than mainlining drugs, but revisionism rocks. Ask the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist Leninist), which helped make one tiny party into two tiny parties 60 years ago, their splinter venerating Joseph Stalin. Every cult has its saint. Don't drink the Kool Aid in the Gulag, nor the Kool Ag in the Gule Aid.
"Did you omit a couple lines from 'Foggy Dew?'" I asked the young chanteuse.
"Yes," she baa-ed sheepishly.
"About Britannia's Huns? My granny came from Ireland."
"Yeah." Yeah what, I wondered, Huns or Granny, neither of whom I ever met.
"Good job, though," I said.
"Thanks."
It seemed that she meant to sing of Huns. I worried that her teacher and piano player edited the song to improve the image of the English. This is, after all is said and shot, the "British" Columbia province of Canada. I worried for nothing, but I suppose I could worry for something else. There's always reason to worry, usually without reason.
Singer accosted and flattered, I approached the woman who had approached the tree of children, an interesting image aesthetically, evolutionarily, and wily. Perhaps one could use the tune of the country song "Sea of Heartache" and change the words to the theme "Tree of Children."
"When I saw you walk to the tree, I thought you were going to tell the children to get down," I said. "I'm glad you didn't. I grew up climbing trees."
"I'm responsible for two of those children," she said, seeming to agree that children may, dare I hope should, climb trees. "I didn't want them to fall out of the tree."
Our contrarian culture begged the riposte, "Oh, and I did want them to fall out of the tree," but more later on the utility of children falling from trees.
Her dutiful response left open the possibility that she cared for the handful of other children in and around the tree. Presumably, one of them falling would concern her. Watching her catch one or two falling children would have added athletic aplomb to the musical evening.
Catch a falling child and put it in your pocket. Save it for a rainy day.
"Children can fall out of trees and not hurt themselves," I said. "I fell when I was a child," but as I said that I realized that falling out of a tree might have made me weirder than I had been. Such are the "shocks the flesh is heir to" as Hamlet would say, falling out of resolution, but not out of trees; although falling out of a tree might have enhanced my character. I heard that pain enhances character. Ask the Irish, with or without shelling from Britannia's Huns, in Dublin in 1916 or in Canada in song in 2013, 97 years later.
Falling out of a tree at my age would merely break body parts that I'm still using.
I therefore didn't join the children in the tree, but I climbed in spirit. I doubt that the semi-dutiful woman would have caught me, had I fallen from the tree. I'm sure her husband would disapprove.
Up a tree, I end where I begun, Donne.
Thursday, July 25, 2013
Wednesday, April 10, 2013
What is Home?
Today, Wednesday, April 10, 2013, I am home, after a winter in exile. Are you home or in exile? What is the difference? For me, home is a familiar, affordable, appropriate place where I know people.
Edmonton, Canada, where I spent the winter, is less familiar and affordable than when I lived there earlier in my life. That city of a million was appropriate for university, from 1979-81, from 1983-85, and for work from 1985-86, when it had half a million. My siblings are there but I know few others. They saw me more frequently this winter than during any of the past 20 years.
Williams Lake, Canada, population 11 000, 900 kilometres west of Edmonton, felt more like home when I reached it as winter ended. I first came there to teach in a nearby rural school in 1991, after I graduated from McGill University in Montreal, Canada. I know Williams Lake better than I know Edmonton. Williams Lake is a more appropriate place to live as I age. I need sell fewer of my hours as labor to survive here. As I age, time eclipses money in importance. My spouse and our daughter are here. Many people welcomed me back.
Home.
Edmonton's streets, river valley, university, theatre, films, swimming pools, and public transit made exile fun; but Williams Lake's trails, hills, lake, and relaxed culture suit me better now. An Edmonton winter confirmed that I belong in Williams Lake, a smaller place. I grew up near Edson, then 3 000 population, 200 km west of Edmonton. Edmonton's university broadened my mind, but a rural childhood opened my mind, gave me the courage to aspire, to learn, to go to university. After a liberal education, I was at home anywhere. I have more time to read in Williams Lake than I had in Edmonton.
Time.
I am a country boy at heart. In Canada, 80% of people live in cities. I feel privileged to live in the country. My brother lives in the country outside Edmonton. My two sisters live in Edmonton. May they be as happy, as at home there, as I am here.
My love of the rural glowed this month in Anaham, my spouse's community of 600, 100 km west of Williams Lake. It glowed during an early morning walk to the Chilcotin River, across the valley from her house. The night stars, the bluebirds flitting among fence posts, the breeze, the quiet, and many other experiences, remind me that my home is here. My home is the country, the land, especially my spouse's indigenous land. I am her lucky, happy guest.
Dare to find home. Be home and rejoice.
Edmonton, Canada, where I spent the winter, is less familiar and affordable than when I lived there earlier in my life. That city of a million was appropriate for university, from 1979-81, from 1983-85, and for work from 1985-86, when it had half a million. My siblings are there but I know few others. They saw me more frequently this winter than during any of the past 20 years.
Williams Lake, Canada, population 11 000, 900 kilometres west of Edmonton, felt more like home when I reached it as winter ended. I first came there to teach in a nearby rural school in 1991, after I graduated from McGill University in Montreal, Canada. I know Williams Lake better than I know Edmonton. Williams Lake is a more appropriate place to live as I age. I need sell fewer of my hours as labor to survive here. As I age, time eclipses money in importance. My spouse and our daughter are here. Many people welcomed me back.
Home.
Edmonton's streets, river valley, university, theatre, films, swimming pools, and public transit made exile fun; but Williams Lake's trails, hills, lake, and relaxed culture suit me better now. An Edmonton winter confirmed that I belong in Williams Lake, a smaller place. I grew up near Edson, then 3 000 population, 200 km west of Edmonton. Edmonton's university broadened my mind, but a rural childhood opened my mind, gave me the courage to aspire, to learn, to go to university. After a liberal education, I was at home anywhere. I have more time to read in Williams Lake than I had in Edmonton.
Time.
I am a country boy at heart. In Canada, 80% of people live in cities. I feel privileged to live in the country. My brother lives in the country outside Edmonton. My two sisters live in Edmonton. May they be as happy, as at home there, as I am here.
My love of the rural glowed this month in Anaham, my spouse's community of 600, 100 km west of Williams Lake. It glowed during an early morning walk to the Chilcotin River, across the valley from her house. The night stars, the bluebirds flitting among fence posts, the breeze, the quiet, and many other experiences, remind me that my home is here. My home is the country, the land, especially my spouse's indigenous land. I am her lucky, happy guest.
Dare to find home. Be home and rejoice.
Saturday, March 23, 2013
Edmonton Public Transit
Saturday, March 23, 2013 Woodcroft Library, Edmonton
Edmonton's public transit system has been useful to me during this winter away from my home in the Chilcotin, 1 000 kilometres to the west. I collected maps of various bus routes and the train route. Today I shall return these to the transit map shelves of the downtown library, and go to the nearby farmer's market for a cinnamon bun.
A single ticket costs $3.20, a book of 10 costs $24.00. I bought 11 books this winter. Each ticket allows 90 minutes of travel anywhere that the Edmonton Transit System goes, by train or bus. One exception is the $5.00 cost to ride the bus to the Edmonton International Airport, 20 kilometres south of the city. This bus is new since my last time in Edmonton, in December-January, 2011-2012: then, I paid about $18.00 for a ride on a hotel-based bus from the airport to Edmonton.
Here are the bus maps I collected, and which routes they describe:
1-West Edmonton Mall-Meadowlark-Jasper Place-Downtown-Capilano
2-Lessard-West Edmonton Mall-Downtown-Highlands-Clareview
3-Jasper Place-Downtown-Cromdale
4-West Edmonton Mall-University-Capilano
5-Westmount-Downtown-Coliseum
6-Mill Woods Transit Centre (TC)-Lakewood-Millgate-Southgate
7-Jasper Place-Downtown-University
8-Mill Woods Tc-Lakewood-Millgate-Downtown-Coliseum-Abbottsfield
9-Southgate-Downtown-Kingsway-Northgate-Eaux Claires
10-Coliseum-Belvedere-Clareview
12-Northgate-Wellington-Kingsway-Downtown
14-West Edmonton Mall-Jasper Place-Downtown
15-Mill Woods-Millgate-Downtown-Kingsway-NAIT-Eaux Claires
23-Mill Woods-Century Park-Leger-West Edmonton Mall
30-Mill Woods-Century Park-Leger-South Campus
31-Leger-Southgate
34-Southgate-Leger
45-Century Park-Southgate
52-Southgate-82 Avenue-Government Centre-Downtown
54-South Campus-University
57-University-Whyte Avenue-Downtown
70-Mill Woods TC-Lakewood-82 Avenue-Downtown
94-Capilano-Bonnie Doon-University
100-Lewis Farms-West Edmonton Mall-Downtown
106-University-South Campus-West Edmonton Mall-Lessard
111-West Edmonton Mall-Jasper Place-Downtown
112-West Edmonton Mall-Downtown-Capilano
113-West Edmonton Mall-Jasper Place
114-Winterburn-Mayfield Common-Jasper Place
115-West Edmonton Mall-Westmount-Northgate
120-Jasper Place-Downtown-Stadium
125-Jasper Place-Westmount-Kingsway-Downtown
128-University-Westmount-Calder-Castle Downs
136-West Edmonton Mall-Lewis Farms-The Grange-The Hamptons
137-West Edmonton Mall-Northwest Industrial-Northgate-Clareview
150-West Edmonton Mall-Jasper Place-Westmount-Northgate-Eaux Claires
180-Abbotsfield-Belvedere-Eaux Claires-Downtown
181-Clareview-Londonderry-Belvedere
310-Rio Terrace-Meadowlark-Jasper Place
317-Winterburn-Mayfield Common-Jasper Place
319-Westview Village-Winterburn Industrial
LRT (Light Rail Transit)-Century Park-Southgate-South Campus-University-Downtown-Stadium-
Coliseum-Belvedere-Clareview
I probably rode about half of these routes, some quite often, 1 and LRT most often. I lived two blocks from Jasper Place Transit Centre, noted in many routes above. This centre, about three km northeast of West Edmonton Mall, and about five km west of Downtown Edmonton, is 15 bus minutes from the mall and 25 minutes from downtown. Bus 1's eastern terminus at Capilano is about five km east of downtown.
Route 1 is not Edmonton's longest route; 23 is, according to one bus driver I met. Edmonton has many long routes, longer than those it had when I last lived there, in 1986.
The LRT extends from Century Park, about eight km south of downtown, to Clareview, about eight km northeast of downtown. It was most useful for getting to the University of Alberta, across the North Saskatchewan River from downtown.
Other buses I often rode are the 7, 14, 111, 120, 123, and 125. Bus 125 got me to this library near Westmount Mall, today, for example. Other malls on bus lines, besides West Edmonton and Westmount, are Meadowlark, Kingsway, City Centre, Capilano, Londonderry, Northgate, Southgate, and Mill Woods.
Edmonton transit is good, considering how low Edmonton's population density is. Even neighborhoods of single detached houses, which sprawled onto the surrounding prairie in the past two decades, have buses. Bus 136 got me within a kilometre of my Edmonton employer's Christmas party at River Cree Resort. That glitzy resort is on the Enoch Indian Reserve past the city's western edge, beyond the Hamptons, a new, low-density neighborhood.
Still, the private vehicle dominates Edmonton, as it dominates other North American cities. This unecological, uneconomic policy direction makes these cities expensive to inhabit and service. The 2008 United States banking crisis left whole US suburbs of empty, foreclosed houses. Grass grows through the street cracks in Camden, New Jersey, where RCA Victor once brought prosperity in the postwar era of progressive taxation and union-built infrastructure. Happily, urban gardeners jackhammer away derelict mall parking lots and grow food in many US cities, as the Post Carbon Institute and general relocalization movement encourage.
Some people discard their cars and walk or use public transit. The average number of kilometres annually driven in private vehicles in the Canadian province of British Columbia (BC) declines annually. My downtown home in Williams Lake, BC (12 000) allows me to walk to work, shopping, and recreation. Williams Lake boasts that BC's most-utilized public transit among cities its size.
Montreal writer Yves Engler's book, Stop Signs: Cars and Capitalism, explains the decline of public transit and rise of private vehicles in North America:
http://yvesengler.com/yves-books/
Business investment and government policy, not social or even business efficiency, made this vehicle-dominated landscape.
Walk, share vehicles, ride the bus and train, travel less, enjoy it more, and change the landscape, including the landscape in your head.
Edmonton's public transit system has been useful to me during this winter away from my home in the Chilcotin, 1 000 kilometres to the west. I collected maps of various bus routes and the train route. Today I shall return these to the transit map shelves of the downtown library, and go to the nearby farmer's market for a cinnamon bun.
A single ticket costs $3.20, a book of 10 costs $24.00. I bought 11 books this winter. Each ticket allows 90 minutes of travel anywhere that the Edmonton Transit System goes, by train or bus. One exception is the $5.00 cost to ride the bus to the Edmonton International Airport, 20 kilometres south of the city. This bus is new since my last time in Edmonton, in December-January, 2011-2012: then, I paid about $18.00 for a ride on a hotel-based bus from the airport to Edmonton.
Here are the bus maps I collected, and which routes they describe:
1-West Edmonton Mall-Meadowlark-Jasper Place-Downtown-Capilano
2-Lessard-West Edmonton Mall-Downtown-Highlands-Clareview
3-Jasper Place-Downtown-Cromdale
4-West Edmonton Mall-University-Capilano
5-Westmount-Downtown-Coliseum
6-Mill Woods Transit Centre (TC)-Lakewood-Millgate-Southgate
7-Jasper Place-Downtown-University
8-Mill Woods Tc-Lakewood-Millgate-Downtown-Coliseum-Abbottsfield
9-Southgate-Downtown-Kingsway-Northgate-Eaux Claires
10-Coliseum-Belvedere-Clareview
12-Northgate-Wellington-Kingsway-Downtown
14-West Edmonton Mall-Jasper Place-Downtown
15-Mill Woods-Millgate-Downtown-Kingsway-NAIT-Eaux Claires
23-Mill Woods-Century Park-Leger-West Edmonton Mall
30-Mill Woods-Century Park-Leger-South Campus
31-Leger-Southgate
34-Southgate-Leger
45-Century Park-Southgate
52-Southgate-82 Avenue-Government Centre-Downtown
54-South Campus-University
57-University-Whyte Avenue-Downtown
70-Mill Woods TC-Lakewood-82 Avenue-Downtown
94-Capilano-Bonnie Doon-University
100-Lewis Farms-West Edmonton Mall-Downtown
106-University-South Campus-West Edmonton Mall-Lessard
111-West Edmonton Mall-Jasper Place-Downtown
112-West Edmonton Mall-Downtown-Capilano
113-West Edmonton Mall-Jasper Place
114-Winterburn-Mayfield Common-Jasper Place
115-West Edmonton Mall-Westmount-Northgate
120-Jasper Place-Downtown-Stadium
125-Jasper Place-Westmount-Kingsway-Downtown
128-University-Westmount-Calder-Castle Downs
136-West Edmonton Mall-Lewis Farms-The Grange-The Hamptons
137-West Edmonton Mall-Northwest Industrial-Northgate-Clareview
150-West Edmonton Mall-Jasper Place-Westmount-Northgate-Eaux Claires
180-Abbotsfield-Belvedere-Eaux Claires-Downtown
181-Clareview-Londonderry-Belvedere
310-Rio Terrace-Meadowlark-Jasper Place
317-Winterburn-Mayfield Common-Jasper Place
319-Westview Village-Winterburn Industrial
LRT (Light Rail Transit)-Century Park-Southgate-South Campus-University-Downtown-Stadium-
Coliseum-Belvedere-Clareview
I probably rode about half of these routes, some quite often, 1 and LRT most often. I lived two blocks from Jasper Place Transit Centre, noted in many routes above. This centre, about three km northeast of West Edmonton Mall, and about five km west of Downtown Edmonton, is 15 bus minutes from the mall and 25 minutes from downtown. Bus 1's eastern terminus at Capilano is about five km east of downtown.
Route 1 is not Edmonton's longest route; 23 is, according to one bus driver I met. Edmonton has many long routes, longer than those it had when I last lived there, in 1986.
The LRT extends from Century Park, about eight km south of downtown, to Clareview, about eight km northeast of downtown. It was most useful for getting to the University of Alberta, across the North Saskatchewan River from downtown.
Other buses I often rode are the 7, 14, 111, 120, 123, and 125. Bus 125 got me to this library near Westmount Mall, today, for example. Other malls on bus lines, besides West Edmonton and Westmount, are Meadowlark, Kingsway, City Centre, Capilano, Londonderry, Northgate, Southgate, and Mill Woods.
Edmonton transit is good, considering how low Edmonton's population density is. Even neighborhoods of single detached houses, which sprawled onto the surrounding prairie in the past two decades, have buses. Bus 136 got me within a kilometre of my Edmonton employer's Christmas party at River Cree Resort. That glitzy resort is on the Enoch Indian Reserve past the city's western edge, beyond the Hamptons, a new, low-density neighborhood.
Still, the private vehicle dominates Edmonton, as it dominates other North American cities. This unecological, uneconomic policy direction makes these cities expensive to inhabit and service. The 2008 United States banking crisis left whole US suburbs of empty, foreclosed houses. Grass grows through the street cracks in Camden, New Jersey, where RCA Victor once brought prosperity in the postwar era of progressive taxation and union-built infrastructure. Happily, urban gardeners jackhammer away derelict mall parking lots and grow food in many US cities, as the Post Carbon Institute and general relocalization movement encourage.
Some people discard their cars and walk or use public transit. The average number of kilometres annually driven in private vehicles in the Canadian province of British Columbia (BC) declines annually. My downtown home in Williams Lake, BC (12 000) allows me to walk to work, shopping, and recreation. Williams Lake boasts that BC's most-utilized public transit among cities its size.
Montreal writer Yves Engler's book, Stop Signs: Cars and Capitalism, explains the decline of public transit and rise of private vehicles in North America:
http://yvesengler.com/yves-books/
Business investment and government policy, not social or even business efficiency, made this vehicle-dominated landscape.
Walk, share vehicles, ride the bus and train, travel less, enjoy it more, and change the landscape, including the landscape in your head.
Sunday, March 17, 2013
Saint Patrick's Day Greeting from Edmonton
Sunday, March 17, 2013 Mill Woods Public Library, Edmonton
Happy Saint Patrick's Day, readers, from the Edmonton Public Library (EPL) branch in Mill Woods Town Centre Mall. Patrick is centuries old. EPL turned 100 this month:
http://www.epl.ca/
This year's library memberships are free, not the usual $12.00. Last week I renewed the annual membership I got in September, 2012. I thought it would then last until March, 2014, but it will last until September, 2014. I will move from Edmonton this month, but I will still be able to borrow electronic books.
As my return home to British Columbia approaches, I rejoice at this city's libraries and pools. As of today, I have been in all branches of each. This morning I was in the city's wave pool:
http://www.edmonton.ca/attractions_recreation/sport_recreation/mill-woods-recreation-centre.aspx
I type in a busy library, packed with people of all ages minutes after it opened at 1:00 this afternoon. Many patrons are South Asian, whose people came to this southeast Edmonton suburb decades ago.
Edmonton is more multinational than it was the last time I lived here, in 1986. I have met people from many countries: Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Kenya, Burundi, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Somalia, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Ghana, Senegal, Gambia, Congo, Nigeria, Spain, France, Germany, Italy, England, Ireland, Poland, Ukraine, Romania, Serbia, Bosnia, Azerbaijan, Russia, China, Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, Japan, Philippines, Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, Chile, Peru, Colombia, Brazil, Venezuela, Guyana, Jamaica, Guatemala, El Salvador, Mexico, and the United States.
Perhaps children growing up here will accept other cultures, and bring peace to a fractious world.
Meanwhile back in Ireland, Saint Patrick died centuries ago; but his emerald isle exported so many people to America that 20-50 million there have Irish blood in them. My dad's mom was born in Ireland, came to Canada in the 1910s, and died a year before I was born.
I drank green beer on Friday: looked like lime juice, tasted like beer.
In a couple weeks, I'll drink springwater from the Chilcotin Region, home, 1 000 kilometres west of this multilingual city of a million on the edge of the Canadian Prairies.
Happy Saint Patrick's Day, readers, from the Edmonton Public Library (EPL) branch in Mill Woods Town Centre Mall. Patrick is centuries old. EPL turned 100 this month:
http://www.epl.ca/
This year's library memberships are free, not the usual $12.00. Last week I renewed the annual membership I got in September, 2012. I thought it would then last until March, 2014, but it will last until September, 2014. I will move from Edmonton this month, but I will still be able to borrow electronic books.
As my return home to British Columbia approaches, I rejoice at this city's libraries and pools. As of today, I have been in all branches of each. This morning I was in the city's wave pool:
http://www.edmonton.ca/attractions_recreation/sport_recreation/mill-woods-recreation-centre.aspx
I type in a busy library, packed with people of all ages minutes after it opened at 1:00 this afternoon. Many patrons are South Asian, whose people came to this southeast Edmonton suburb decades ago.
Edmonton is more multinational than it was the last time I lived here, in 1986. I have met people from many countries: Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Kenya, Burundi, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Somalia, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Ghana, Senegal, Gambia, Congo, Nigeria, Spain, France, Germany, Italy, England, Ireland, Poland, Ukraine, Romania, Serbia, Bosnia, Azerbaijan, Russia, China, Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, Japan, Philippines, Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, Chile, Peru, Colombia, Brazil, Venezuela, Guyana, Jamaica, Guatemala, El Salvador, Mexico, and the United States.
Perhaps children growing up here will accept other cultures, and bring peace to a fractious world.
Meanwhile back in Ireland, Saint Patrick died centuries ago; but his emerald isle exported so many people to America that 20-50 million there have Irish blood in them. My dad's mom was born in Ireland, came to Canada in the 1910s, and died a year before I was born.
I drank green beer on Friday: looked like lime juice, tasted like beer.
In a couple weeks, I'll drink springwater from the Chilcotin Region, home, 1 000 kilometres west of this multilingual city of a million on the edge of the Canadian Prairies.
Saturday, February 16, 2013
Michael Pepper's Reporting Retrospective
It was 30 years ago today, Michael Wynne quit writing for pay.
He's gone in and out of style, his life many a mile.
So may I introduce to you, the hack from long ago,
Whitecourt Star reporter Michael Wynne,
Paid by Lynard in Leduc,
Manual typewriter Michael Wynne,
Who for this job school forsook.
Agriculture student,
University of Alberta,
Underpaid wordsmith Michael Wynne
Twas wonderful to be there, twas certainly a thrill,
Dodge wagon, lemon car
To Mayerthorpe, Blue Ridge,
Greencourt, Sangudo.
Eight hundred bucks a month.
Five thousand words a week.
Whitecourt Star reporter Michael Wynne,
Features, news, sports, and more,
Canon AT1-toting Michael Wynne,
Darkroom, layout, delivery chores.
He saw a lovely ad put up,
Would be a writing pup,
Bussed there on his birthday,
Bussed back CP Style Book,
Of Canadian Press in hand!
Scrounge-for-living writer Michael Wynne,
A year earlier at Carleton U,
Mere months hence departing Michael Wynne,
Left copy 'nough for weeks on through.
I don't really want to stop the screed,
Tinturn Abbey it ain't, you see;
But I thought you might like to know,
That the writer has scribbled along,
Until he conjured this song.
So may I introduce to you,
The ink-stained from bygone years.
"What would you think if I wrote this for you,
Would you stand up and tell me, 'Oh, gee?'
They lent me their press and I scrawled along,
From September to February,
Oh, I got by and tied up some loose ends,
I was wry during work hours, no end,
I gave a try, and to you I this send.
I nigh starved slaving. Never again.
Did they need me for five months?
They needed someone to work cheap.
How'd I eat for those five months?
Mayerthorpe Co-Op each week.
Dodge traded for Toyota, soon died,
Lease over March 31 I relied.
March again soon, a lease I soon end,
Westward, homeward, I me send.
Got by with a little help from my dad,
Buried sister and to school I soon flad.
Career died, thirty years ago today,
February 16, 1983, I say.
He's gone in and out of style, his life many a mile.
So may I introduce to you, the hack from long ago,
Whitecourt Star reporter Michael Wynne,
Paid by Lynard in Leduc,
Manual typewriter Michael Wynne,
Who for this job school forsook.
Agriculture student,
University of Alberta,
Underpaid wordsmith Michael Wynne
Twas wonderful to be there, twas certainly a thrill,
Dodge wagon, lemon car
To Mayerthorpe, Blue Ridge,
Greencourt, Sangudo.
Eight hundred bucks a month.
Five thousand words a week.
Whitecourt Star reporter Michael Wynne,
Features, news, sports, and more,
Canon AT1-toting Michael Wynne,
Darkroom, layout, delivery chores.
He saw a lovely ad put up,
Would be a writing pup,
Bussed there on his birthday,
Bussed back CP Style Book,
Of Canadian Press in hand!
Scrounge-for-living writer Michael Wynne,
A year earlier at Carleton U,
Mere months hence departing Michael Wynne,
Left copy 'nough for weeks on through.
I don't really want to stop the screed,
Tinturn Abbey it ain't, you see;
But I thought you might like to know,
That the writer has scribbled along,
Until he conjured this song.
So may I introduce to you,
The ink-stained from bygone years.
"What would you think if I wrote this for you,
Would you stand up and tell me, 'Oh, gee?'
They lent me their press and I scrawled along,
From September to February,
Oh, I got by and tied up some loose ends,
I was wry during work hours, no end,
I gave a try, and to you I this send.
I nigh starved slaving. Never again.
Did they need me for five months?
They needed someone to work cheap.
How'd I eat for those five months?
Mayerthorpe Co-Op each week.
Dodge traded for Toyota, soon died,
Lease over March 31 I relied.
March again soon, a lease I soon end,
Westward, homeward, I me send.
Got by with a little help from my dad,
Buried sister and to school I soon flad.
Career died, thirty years ago today,
February 16, 1983, I say.
Sunday, January 27, 2013
Pool-Library Distances and Features in Edmonton
Sunday, January 27, 2013 Idylwylde Library, Edmonton
Some city pools and libraries are closer together than others, I have discovered by bus and foot in Edmonton. I think the two I visited today are the closest: I can see the Bonnie Doon pool building across the field outside this library windows. Even on Sunday, buses are adequate: Bus 1 took me downtown and Bus 8 took me to the pool within an hour today.
Most pools are within ten blocks of a library: Jasper Place Pool and Jasper Place Library, Peter Hemingway Pool and Woodcroft Library, Commonwealth Pool and Sprucewood Library, Hardisty Pool and Capilano Library, Confederation Pool and Whitemud Crossing Library, Londonderry Pool and Londonderry Library, Kinsman Pool and Stanley A. Milner Library, Scona Pool and Strathcona Library, and Mill Woods Pool and Mill Woods Library.
A few pools are more than ten blocks, from a library: Terwilligar Pool and Riverbend Library, and Grand Trunk Pool and Calder Library.
A few pools are not close to any library: A.C.T., Eastglen, and O'Leary.
A few libraries are not close to any pool: Abbotsfield, Lois Hole, and Castledowns.
I have been to all pools but Scona and Mill Woods, and to all libraries but Londonderry and Mill Woods.
My one-year pool pass for low income people gets me in free at all city pools. My $12 annual library fee gets me free internet access and borrowing at all city libraries. Had I gotten the pool pass first, it would have given me no-fee library use.
Each pool has unique features. Most are part of recreation centres which also have fitness centres and perhaps a skating rink. Terwilligar has four skating rinks. Eastglen and Confederation are saltwater, the latter a larger pool. Kinsmen is the biggest: two 50m, 8-lane pools. Commonwealth and Terwilligar have beach entries, the latter pool larger. Bonnie Doon and Peter Hemingway have large bleachers, the latter pool larger. Londonderry and A.C.T. are family-oriented, non-rectangular, the latter pool smaller. Hardisty and Jasper Place are about the same size, the latter's hot pool bigger, the former's steam room bigger.
Jasper Place's pool, the closest to where I stay, 14 blocks away, has a 5m platform. Most pools have diving boards. Some have ropes. Many have waterslides: Terwilligar's is the longest, Jasper Place's and Commonwealth's the steepest, I recall.
Bonnie Doon's steamroom, with three levels, is the hottest I found. Its saunas are in the change rooms, unlike other pool's saunas. Kinsman has no hot pool, and only a small sauna.
Each library has internet access. The most crowded are Stanley A. Milner and Jasper Place. The least crowded are Whitemud Crossing and Lois Hole. I can almost always get online within minutes of walking into a library.
The biggest library is Milner, the smallest Jasper Place, temporarily housed in an office building while a new library goes up a few blocks away. It reminds me of the Edson Public Library in the basement of town hall until Edson's new library went up in the 1970s. I'll be home in British Columbia before Jasper Place's new location opens in 2013.
Music and booksales are two remarkable library features I have found. I have borrowed a bewildering variety of compact disks. A pre-Christmas weekend booksale in the downtown library, Milner, formerly Centennial, charged $10/box of books and cds on its last day. An early February sale will do the same. I bought 20 cds and 20 books for $10.
If I keep visiting pools, and walking hither and yon, here and back in British Columbia, then I might live long enough to read all those books.
Some city pools and libraries are closer together than others, I have discovered by bus and foot in Edmonton. I think the two I visited today are the closest: I can see the Bonnie Doon pool building across the field outside this library windows. Even on Sunday, buses are adequate: Bus 1 took me downtown and Bus 8 took me to the pool within an hour today.
Most pools are within ten blocks of a library: Jasper Place Pool and Jasper Place Library, Peter Hemingway Pool and Woodcroft Library, Commonwealth Pool and Sprucewood Library, Hardisty Pool and Capilano Library, Confederation Pool and Whitemud Crossing Library, Londonderry Pool and Londonderry Library, Kinsman Pool and Stanley A. Milner Library, Scona Pool and Strathcona Library, and Mill Woods Pool and Mill Woods Library.
A few pools are more than ten blocks, from a library: Terwilligar Pool and Riverbend Library, and Grand Trunk Pool and Calder Library.
A few pools are not close to any library: A.C.T., Eastglen, and O'Leary.
A few libraries are not close to any pool: Abbotsfield, Lois Hole, and Castledowns.
I have been to all pools but Scona and Mill Woods, and to all libraries but Londonderry and Mill Woods.
My one-year pool pass for low income people gets me in free at all city pools. My $12 annual library fee gets me free internet access and borrowing at all city libraries. Had I gotten the pool pass first, it would have given me no-fee library use.
Each pool has unique features. Most are part of recreation centres which also have fitness centres and perhaps a skating rink. Terwilligar has four skating rinks. Eastglen and Confederation are saltwater, the latter a larger pool. Kinsmen is the biggest: two 50m, 8-lane pools. Commonwealth and Terwilligar have beach entries, the latter pool larger. Bonnie Doon and Peter Hemingway have large bleachers, the latter pool larger. Londonderry and A.C.T. are family-oriented, non-rectangular, the latter pool smaller. Hardisty and Jasper Place are about the same size, the latter's hot pool bigger, the former's steam room bigger.
Jasper Place's pool, the closest to where I stay, 14 blocks away, has a 5m platform. Most pools have diving boards. Some have ropes. Many have waterslides: Terwilligar's is the longest, Jasper Place's and Commonwealth's the steepest, I recall.
Bonnie Doon's steamroom, with three levels, is the hottest I found. Its saunas are in the change rooms, unlike other pool's saunas. Kinsman has no hot pool, and only a small sauna.
Each library has internet access. The most crowded are Stanley A. Milner and Jasper Place. The least crowded are Whitemud Crossing and Lois Hole. I can almost always get online within minutes of walking into a library.
The biggest library is Milner, the smallest Jasper Place, temporarily housed in an office building while a new library goes up a few blocks away. It reminds me of the Edson Public Library in the basement of town hall until Edson's new library went up in the 1970s. I'll be home in British Columbia before Jasper Place's new location opens in 2013.
Music and booksales are two remarkable library features I have found. I have borrowed a bewildering variety of compact disks. A pre-Christmas weekend booksale in the downtown library, Milner, formerly Centennial, charged $10/box of books and cds on its last day. An early February sale will do the same. I bought 20 cds and 20 books for $10.
If I keep visiting pools, and walking hither and yon, here and back in British Columbia, then I might live long enough to read all those books.
Saturday, January 19, 2013
Pool Passionate Intensity and Reasons to Live
Saturday, January 19, 2013 Woodcroft Public Library, Edmonton, Canada
I found a crowded pool changeroom at 7:30 this morning. I went to relax. I seemed to be a minority of one. The men of all ages and shapes in that change room busily changed into and out of swimsuits. "I got here at six," one told another. "You slept in!" was the reply, in a tone of good-humored chastisement.
Out on deck, I saw each lane, "Slow," "Medium," and "Fast," occupied by at least one swimmer. I limbered up, backswam four 50-metre lengths in a "Slow" lane, and went first to the steam room, second to a deck chair to read from my latest New Internationalist ( http://www.newint.org/), third to the whirlpool, fourth to read on deck again, and fifth to the change room.
In the change room, I overheard two young men lamenting "poor Vancouver," where one's friend had trouble finding a job before he relocated to a job in Kamloops. "It's only 130-140 hours per month. I want to work more," the man's friend said. I think of the words I heard years ago from a Catholic priest who later left the order for a woman and children: "At the end of the rat race, you're still just a rat."
Earlier this month, I met a Filipino woman who lives in a new housing development in southwest Edmonton. She complained that she did not know her neighbors. "We all just get up, go to work, and go home. That's not life," she said. She explained the community gatherings she remembered from Philippines, where neighbors knew one another. I suggested that she post a sign for a potluck dinner or other gathering.
A fall, 2012 Edmonton newspaper article said that speakers of Tagalog, a Filipino national language, number 495 000 in Canada. Tagalog is Canada's fastest-growing language. Arabic is second. Canada is a multinational country, a model for a combative world.
Someone told me that people in Edmonton's outlying neighborhoods "only stay about five years." Then they move toward the centre of Edmonton. Presumably life is livelier closer to the centre. Strathcona, her central neighborhood, seems to her too lively on weekends, "When Sherwood Park comes to town." Sherwood Park is an Edmonton suburb, much of it similar to the Filipino woman's southwest Edmonton neighborhood.
Before I met the Filipino woman, I met a man born and raised in downtown Edmonton. Now retired, he lives in Castledowns, in north Edmonton. He told me that his downtown childhood was in a community where people lived and worked, gathered for social activities, and knew and helped one another. His current community is less social, he said.
Many themes run through these situations, these lives, these laments. these memories.
First, the intense swimmers yearn to live healthier and therefore probably longer. Life is short and death is eternal, despite religious delusions. Multidimensional universe theories seem like sounder sects: somewhere you live and choose what you did not live and choose in this life. Perhaps compost is the surest immortality. We are made of organic molecules: immortality via decomposition, and absorption into other life forms.
So people swim furiously on Saturday mornings. Who would argue against longer, healthier life?
Second, one who works, eats, and sleeps, with minimal social activity travels an uncertain road to happiness. Canada has a higher rate of mental illness than Kerala, a poor state in southern India. Does a mundane, materialistic lifestyle with minimal social activity contribute to this? Is such life why "Sherwood Park comes to town" on weekends? Not everyone in inner neighborhoods lives a happy life, either. Perhaps they should socialize with Sherwood Parkers: exude civility, imbibe fun.
Indeed, inner city neighborhoods, stalked by police, burst with the many social and personal problems that such neighborhoods' poverty produces. As this city booms, and rents and prices outpace wages, material security diminishes, as do physical and mental security. Freedom declines, too.
The comfortable and the reactionary, groups that overlap some but not all, whine for safer neighborhoods. They belittle the social and economic forces that make neighborhoods unsafe, and people unhappy. They preach individualistic solutions to collective problems. They lock their doors and trust the police to hold back the poor. Police buttress the system which makes the poor, makes the crime, makes the unhappiness that creeps into nice neighborhoods, through locked doors.
When fascism comes to the United States, it will come wrapped in a flag and carrying a Bible, US political eonomist Michael Parenti wrote. Canadians, now as in the 1930s, welcome fascism more than they admit. Alberta's 1936-1971 Social Credit government ruled well for the war industry and postwar oil boom. Socreds promoted Christian fundamentalism, whose socially-choking legacy endures. Alberta's 1971-present Progressive Conservative government continues to serve the oil industry, and rant propaganda against the rising worldwide call for ecological sense and against the tarsands. "NATO's gas tank," I call Alberta.
Third, leaving a dull neighborhood helps it remain dull. Instead, stay and enliven it. Similarly, people who lament inferior public schools should help improve them, rather than move their children to private schools, which everyone cannot afford. Bridges, not walls, enhance civic life. A Czech proverb says that good neighbors are better security than good fences. Such neighbors enhance each other's freedom, too.
Everyone cannot afford to live in inner, older, livelier Edmonton. Nor has everyone the time and money to swim to fitness in a pool. Anyone can offer kindness and comfort, not "the cold hand of charity" but real attention and care, to those struggling to be happy via, or despite, the pursuit of material security, of wealth. Talk to your neighbors. Make it a neighborhood. Walk together. Eat together. Be together. Together we are stronger. Together we can design better ways to live. Perhaps together we can save our species from killing itself by killing its environment, physical and human.
I think people should organize their lives around living, not around working to pay bills and buying what others tell them will make them happy. This lifestyle can lead them to expensive, unfulfilling thrills such as gambling, drinking, and shopping.
Perhaps you, like the 1700s English poet Alexander Pope, think I "should hold my piece nine years." That is, I should not write such things. Perhaps I add to the sea of ill-considered speech that floats online, like the garbage that floats on the oceans. If you have a piercing insight or two to offer, I welcome you to shine it through what garbage you find in my words. Perhaps we can join dialectically to enhance life, above and below sea level.
I found a crowded pool changeroom at 7:30 this morning. I went to relax. I seemed to be a minority of one. The men of all ages and shapes in that change room busily changed into and out of swimsuits. "I got here at six," one told another. "You slept in!" was the reply, in a tone of good-humored chastisement.
Out on deck, I saw each lane, "Slow," "Medium," and "Fast," occupied by at least one swimmer. I limbered up, backswam four 50-metre lengths in a "Slow" lane, and went first to the steam room, second to a deck chair to read from my latest New Internationalist ( http://www.newint.org/), third to the whirlpool, fourth to read on deck again, and fifth to the change room.
In the change room, I overheard two young men lamenting "poor Vancouver," where one's friend had trouble finding a job before he relocated to a job in Kamloops. "It's only 130-140 hours per month. I want to work more," the man's friend said. I think of the words I heard years ago from a Catholic priest who later left the order for a woman and children: "At the end of the rat race, you're still just a rat."
Earlier this month, I met a Filipino woman who lives in a new housing development in southwest Edmonton. She complained that she did not know her neighbors. "We all just get up, go to work, and go home. That's not life," she said. She explained the community gatherings she remembered from Philippines, where neighbors knew one another. I suggested that she post a sign for a potluck dinner or other gathering.
A fall, 2012 Edmonton newspaper article said that speakers of Tagalog, a Filipino national language, number 495 000 in Canada. Tagalog is Canada's fastest-growing language. Arabic is second. Canada is a multinational country, a model for a combative world.
Someone told me that people in Edmonton's outlying neighborhoods "only stay about five years." Then they move toward the centre of Edmonton. Presumably life is livelier closer to the centre. Strathcona, her central neighborhood, seems to her too lively on weekends, "When Sherwood Park comes to town." Sherwood Park is an Edmonton suburb, much of it similar to the Filipino woman's southwest Edmonton neighborhood.
Before I met the Filipino woman, I met a man born and raised in downtown Edmonton. Now retired, he lives in Castledowns, in north Edmonton. He told me that his downtown childhood was in a community where people lived and worked, gathered for social activities, and knew and helped one another. His current community is less social, he said.
Many themes run through these situations, these lives, these laments. these memories.
First, the intense swimmers yearn to live healthier and therefore probably longer. Life is short and death is eternal, despite religious delusions. Multidimensional universe theories seem like sounder sects: somewhere you live and choose what you did not live and choose in this life. Perhaps compost is the surest immortality. We are made of organic molecules: immortality via decomposition, and absorption into other life forms.
So people swim furiously on Saturday mornings. Who would argue against longer, healthier life?
Second, one who works, eats, and sleeps, with minimal social activity travels an uncertain road to happiness. Canada has a higher rate of mental illness than Kerala, a poor state in southern India. Does a mundane, materialistic lifestyle with minimal social activity contribute to this? Is such life why "Sherwood Park comes to town" on weekends? Not everyone in inner neighborhoods lives a happy life, either. Perhaps they should socialize with Sherwood Parkers: exude civility, imbibe fun.
Indeed, inner city neighborhoods, stalked by police, burst with the many social and personal problems that such neighborhoods' poverty produces. As this city booms, and rents and prices outpace wages, material security diminishes, as do physical and mental security. Freedom declines, too.
The comfortable and the reactionary, groups that overlap some but not all, whine for safer neighborhoods. They belittle the social and economic forces that make neighborhoods unsafe, and people unhappy. They preach individualistic solutions to collective problems. They lock their doors and trust the police to hold back the poor. Police buttress the system which makes the poor, makes the crime, makes the unhappiness that creeps into nice neighborhoods, through locked doors.
When fascism comes to the United States, it will come wrapped in a flag and carrying a Bible, US political eonomist Michael Parenti wrote. Canadians, now as in the 1930s, welcome fascism more than they admit. Alberta's 1936-1971 Social Credit government ruled well for the war industry and postwar oil boom. Socreds promoted Christian fundamentalism, whose socially-choking legacy endures. Alberta's 1971-present Progressive Conservative government continues to serve the oil industry, and rant propaganda against the rising worldwide call for ecological sense and against the tarsands. "NATO's gas tank," I call Alberta.
Third, leaving a dull neighborhood helps it remain dull. Instead, stay and enliven it. Similarly, people who lament inferior public schools should help improve them, rather than move their children to private schools, which everyone cannot afford. Bridges, not walls, enhance civic life. A Czech proverb says that good neighbors are better security than good fences. Such neighbors enhance each other's freedom, too.
Everyone cannot afford to live in inner, older, livelier Edmonton. Nor has everyone the time and money to swim to fitness in a pool. Anyone can offer kindness and comfort, not "the cold hand of charity" but real attention and care, to those struggling to be happy via, or despite, the pursuit of material security, of wealth. Talk to your neighbors. Make it a neighborhood. Walk together. Eat together. Be together. Together we are stronger. Together we can design better ways to live. Perhaps together we can save our species from killing itself by killing its environment, physical and human.
I think people should organize their lives around living, not around working to pay bills and buying what others tell them will make them happy. This lifestyle can lead them to expensive, unfulfilling thrills such as gambling, drinking, and shopping.
Perhaps you, like the 1700s English poet Alexander Pope, think I "should hold my piece nine years." That is, I should not write such things. Perhaps I add to the sea of ill-considered speech that floats online, like the garbage that floats on the oceans. If you have a piercing insight or two to offer, I welcome you to shine it through what garbage you find in my words. Perhaps we can join dialectically to enhance life, above and below sea level.
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