July 31, 2013 Williams Lake, Canada
Czech writer Franz Kafka stayed at his sister's place in rural Zurau in 1917-18. He had tuberculosis, which would kill him in 1924. While at Zurau, Kafka wrote thoughts on more than 100 pieces of paper, each 14.5 x 11.5 centimetres. Kafka's friend Max Brod disobeyed Kafka's wish to destroy his writings after his death, instead publishing much of them, including, in 1953, these thoughts.
Decades later, Roberto Calasso found the pieces of paper in Oxford's New Bodleian Library. Translator Geoffrey Brock and poet Michael Hofmann translated from the original German. Calasso published them in 2006, in the order in which Kafka wrote them, unlike the order that Brod used. What Brod called Reflections on Sin, Suffering, Hope, and the True Way Calasso called The Zurau Aphorisms.
I write because the aphorisms reminded me of much I have seen elsewhere. I lack Kafka's scholarly and literary talent and output, but I offer my thoughts to show how stimulating Kafka remains. Perhaps his words remind you of other things: literature becomes classic by pleasing and teaching different people and eras. Tell me what the aphorisms below stir in you.
Here follow various of Kafka's aphorisms and my responses. Please respond and criticize.
16. " A cage went in search of a bird."
This is the only one I knew before I read the book.
22. "You are the exercise, the task. No student far and wide."
I recall Marshall McLuhan's idea that the medium is the messsage, his pompous plagiarism of an idea of fellow Canadian Harold Innes.
24. "Grasp the good fortune that the ground on which you stand cannot be any bigger than the two feet planted on it."
Editor Calasso writes that Kafka was reading Soren Kierkegaard at this time of his life. My paltry reading of Kierkegaard arises as I read this proto-existentialist insight.
34. "His exhaustion is that of the gladiator after the combat; his labor was the whitewashing of a corner of the wall in his office."
This reminds me of the saying, "Mighty labor bringeth forth a mouse" and my 1986 Edmonton job experience. I worked for a consulting company that wrote grant applications for wage subsidies for businesses, who then gave the company a percentage of the awarded grant. Businesses thought we were hardworking geniuses, but I knew that we merely knew what to write, and to whom. Two of us recent business school graduates worked for this company, owned by one man, who also employed a receptionist. One day, I told the other grad, who had played junior hockey against Chris Chelios in Saskatchewan but that's another story; one day, I told Doug, "Doug," I said, "Those business guys think we're taming lions, but really we're chasing mice." Kafka didn't like mice in his rural bedroom, but he watched them in the Zurau fields. Calasso wrote this in an afterword essay. Unlike the aphorism man, Doug and I weren't exhausted, so perhaps this Kafka aphorism reminded me of something dissimilar, not similar to Kafka's meaning.
50. "A man cannot live without a steady faith in something indestructible within him, though both the faith and the indestructible thing may remain permanently concealed from him. One of the forms of this concealment is the belief in a personal god."
This paradoxical pronouncement hints at a cynical view of religion and contempt for the idea of a personal god, contempt that Albert Einstein shared. Kafka here opposes my view that religion weakens more than it strengthens., that religion is unnecessary at best, harmful at worst. I'm happy to live a mortal life, a brief consciousness of existence before I disappear back into the void.. According to Calasso, Kafka rarely wrote of religion elsewhere, but he wrote plenty in this book.
54. "The world is only ever a constructed world; what we call the sensual world is Evil in the constructed world, and what we call Evil is only a fleeting necessity in our eternal development."
"With a very strong light, one can make the world disappear. Before weak eyes it will become solid; before still weaker eyes, it will acquire fists; and to eyes yet weaker, it will be embarrassed and punch the face of anyone who dares to look at it."
The first part of this two-part passage reminds me of the debate between Plato, who said that reason compels us to do good, and Aristotle, who said that reason gives us the choice to do good or not. I read this so long ago that I might misrepresent both philosophers. Evil as developmental necessity is an idea older than Dante, as old as the Garden of Eden, of which Kafka also writes in this book.
The second passage reminds me of 1700s Irish philosopher Berkeley's notion that, examined closely enough, reality is illusory. Again, I might misrepresent Berkeley; I'm a long time out of academia, and I read Berkeley on my own, not under a professor's tutelage.
56. "There are questions we could never get past, were it not that we are freed of them by nature."
This reminds me of contemporary English zoologist Richard Dawkins' idea that we evolved at the mid-scale, and that we are therefore less able to comprehend the large scale, such as cosmic distance or the small scale, such as the microscopic.
58. "The way to tell fewest lies is to tell fewest lies, not to give oneself the fewest opportunities of telling lies."
As well as contradict the Catholic dictim about avoiding what leads to sin, this recalls English poet John Milton's idea that the mind itself can make a hell of heaven, a heaven of hell; that is, evil can pass through the mind and not corrupt it.
60. "Whoever renounces the world must love humanity, because he is also renouncing their world. Accordingly, he will begin to have a true sense of human nature, which is incapable of anything but being loved, assuming, that is, that one is on the same footing as it."
This reminds me of Kant's categorical imperative, to act in such a way that it can be a universal rule, to wish for all what one wishes for oneself. Kant has long been a socialistic brake on my aspirations for wealth and fame, aspirations now closer to expirations. Still, I like this aphorism's anti-materialism view that people are naturally good and lovable.
64/65. "The Expulsion from Paradise is eternal in its principal aspect: this makes it irrevocable, and our living in this world inevitable, but the eternal nature of the process has the effect that not only could we remain forever in Paradise, but that we are currently there, whether we know it or not."
Feel the wind, the sun, the rain. Hear children's voices and laughter and tales. See a deer beside the road, as I do at least once a week here in rural Canada. Sing a song, your eyes twinkling. Hug someone who needs it. Find your needed hug. Read a great poem. Grasp these and you grasp paradise, I thought as I read this, with or without Plato's and Carlyle's argumentative help. "Heaven is right here and now, not beyond the stars" came to mind from a 1976 song I learned young:
http://www.shariulrich.com/DSC10.php?offset=0&entry_id=2
http://www.canadianbands.com/Hometown%20Band.html
Good old Shari Ulrich and the Hometown Band, West Coast music. If I live in Lotusland am I a lotus eater? "If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels," am I Saint Paul? I digress too far from Kafka, a good Jewish boy whose bible was complete without St. Paul's help.
Bear, and I see the odd bear hereabouts; bear another brief digression to The Louvre, where my time was oh so brief. My younger sister not only brought me, ever grateful, to France and the Louvre in 2011. She, who can read Kafka in the original German, also mailed me this Kafka book, which arrived today, with a Louvre postcard. As I read the book, I noted on the postcard the aphorisms I'd comment on here. Alas, by aphorism 64/65, the card was full of my notes, huddled around my sister's words. I therefore continued my notes on the free newspaper, worth that much, that also came my way today.
Get a glass of schnapps and we'll resume, with a long entry, not to be confused with the long entries, wink wink nudge nudge, retold in Molly Bloom monologue in James Joyce's Ulysses, written during Kafka's era and finally re-read by me this summer, after my original, youthful, naive, 1981 reading of it.
66. "He is a free and secure citizen of the world because he is on a chain that is long enough to allow him access to all parts of the earth, and yet not so long that he could be swept over the edge of it. At the same time he is also a free and secure citizen of heaven because he is also attached to a similar heavenly chain. If he wants to go to earth, the heavenly manacles will throttle him, if he wants to go to heaven, the earthly manacles will. But for all that, all possibilities are open to him, as he is well aware, yes, he even refuses to believe the whole thing is predicated on a mistake going back to the time of his first enchantment."
Goethe's Faust, a tale I know better as Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faustus, Byron's Manfred, Shelley's Prometheus Bound, Don Quixote's tilting at windmills in that best novel of the millenium, I heard, all these come to mind as I realize that many people seek the edge, the limit. Still, heaven remains our habitation too: secure, peaceful; but still we're chained from the time of first enchantment. Eden? Milton's Paradise Lost starts with disobedience, the devil its most alluring character. Did the devil cast off his chain, to be freer, but never to know peace or security again?
72. "The same person has perceptions that, for all their differences, have the same object, which leads one to infer that there are different subjects contained within one and the same person."
Ulysses has a chapter in the form of questions and answers about the main character, Leopold Bloom, and his youthful, one-day sidekick Stephen Dedalus. One of the chapter's themes is differing perceptions, between the two and within each character. In A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, which I last read when I first read it, in 1981, Stephen replies to someone who says he saw him last week, "That was another me." You cannot put your foot in the same river twice, because it has flowed between the two times of contact, the Ancient Greek Heraclitus wrote. We're the river, not the stepper. Further, we're diverse at the same time. It's nice to read that someone else thinks that "I" is "We." Or are the subjects within us, an inversion of The Matrix? To the idea that all can be an illusion and that our senses therefore lie to us, 1700s English writer Samuel Johnson said that when he kicked a stone his foot hurt. I could be mistaken about this aphorism. Your thoughts?
74. "If what was supposed to be destroyed in Paradise was destructible, then it can't have been decisive; however, if it was indestructible, then we are living in a false belief."
I wrote that this reminded me of 64/65 but now I can't remember why. Older and tired more than sadder and wiser, I think I'll resume later. I hope I remember what I meant to say about the many other aphorisms I noted, given that I can read my notes.
August 1, 2013 Williams Lake, Canada
Perhaps it's the absolutism of 64/65 and 74 that made me equate them. Perhaps it's the mention of us, in Paradise now in 64/65, but not in it, or in a false belief, in 74. What do you think?
76. "The feeling: 'I'm not dropping anchor here,' and straightaway the feeling of the sustaining sea-swell around one."
The English poet John Keats wrote of "negative capability" as being at peace despite chaos and indecision.
81. "No one can crave what truly harms him. If in the case of some individuals things have that appearance, and perhaps they always do, the explanation is that someone within the person is demanding something useful to himself but very damaging to a second person, who has been brought along partly to give his opinion on the matter. If the man had taken the part of the second person from the outset, and not just when the time came to make a decision, then the first person would have been suppressed, and with it the craving."
My note equated this with 54, but my 54 note of the Plato-Aristotle debate over whether we naturally or consciously choose good seems little relevant to 54, but more relevant to 81. This aphorism seems closer to 58, choosing not to lie rather than avoiding situations that tempt one to lie. I'm surprised to find the deliberative Kafka write of cravings, and of their rejection, a moralistic theme.
82. "Why do we harp on about Original Sin? It wasn't on its account that we were expelled from Paradise, but because of the Tree of Life, lest we eat of its fruit."
My note mentions 54 and 81, because 54 says that experience, even of evil, develops us, and because 81 judges the virtue of different experiences. Perhaps gaining knowledge is wrong because it begins by disobeying God. D.H. Lawrence's The Rainbow venerates learning by doing more than it judges the virtue of what one does.
83. "We are sinful, not only because we have eaten of the Tree of Knowledge, but also because we have not yet eaten of the Tree of Life. The condition in which we find ourselves is sinful, guilt or no guilt."
Knowledge doomed us, but life redeems us. Had we eaten of Life before we ate of Knowledge, would we have stayed in Paradise? Or does eating Life end in death? What was our state before we had life? Were we in that Greek/Jewish "Hall of Souls," which gives a soul to each newborn, "trailing clouds of glory," in William Wordsworth's words?
84. "We were created to live in Paradise, and Paradise was designed to serve us. Our designation has been changed; we are not told whether this has happened to Paradise as well."
I like this one a lot: even Paradise changes, and is perhaps destructible, as 74 posits. In 64/65 Paradise seems unchanging. William Godwin's 1790s anarchist book Enquiry Concerning Political Understanding argued that anarchism will improve the human condition, after an initial dip into danger and disorder due to past conditioning toward hierarchy and away from freedom. Godwin's anarchist revolution won't end, but rather continue to elevate us. We were created for a Paradise of our own making?
86. "Ever since Original Sin, we are basically all alike in our ability to know Good and Evil; even so, this is where we seek a particular advantage. Actually, it's only after knowledge that the real differences begin. The appearance to the contrary is provoked in the following way: No one can be satisfied with understanding alone but must make an effort to act in accordance with it. He lacks the strength to do so; therefore he must destroy himself, even at the risk of not receiving the necessary strength; it is simply that he has no option other than to undertake this final effort. (This is the meaning of the penalty of death for eating of the Tree of Knowledge; it may also be the original meaning of natural death.) The effort is daunting; one would rather reverse the original knowledge of Good and Evil; (the term 'Original Sin' refers to this fear) but what was done cannot be undone, only muddied. To this end motivations appear. The entire world is full of them, yes the whole visible world may be nothing more than a motivation of a man wanting to rest for a moment. An attempt to forget the fact of knowledge, to make of the knowledge an end in itself."
Kafka wrote this on a 14.5 x 11.5 cm piece of paper! Others say less with more words. I note knowledge as an end in itself, whereas Thomas Aquinas would call knowledge a means to God. Knowledge and God seem less compatible to Kafka, but the man at rest, avoiding action, which destroys him, seems to long for the time before the Fall, before knowledge.
93. "No psychology ever again!"
Short, pointed, unlike long 86, this makes me think of the material universe as all there is. Kafka saw an impenetrable black box long before psychologist B.F. Skinner coined the phrase.
94. "Two tasks of the beginning of life: to keep reducing your circle, and to keep making sure you're not hiding somewhere outside it."
My older sister once told me that we make mental boxes, live in them, and then bemoan that life. Kafka's containers shrink, and we disobey by hiding outside of them. Happier inside or out?
97. "Only here is suffering really suffering. Not in the way that those who suffer here are to be ennobled in some other world for their suffering, but that what passes for suffering in this world is, in another world, without any change and merely without its contrariety, bliss."
In mortal life, we see "as through a glass darkly," not clearly, as we'll see in the afterlife, Saint Paul wrote. Christ answered a question about who in Heaven would be the husband of a woman married more than once on Earth by saying that such situations aren't contradictory in Heaven. Earthly suffering doesn't change but doesn't hurt in Heaven, a cosmically different frame of reference.
98. "The conception of the infinite plenitude and expanse of the universe is the result of taking to an extreme a combination of strenuous creativity and free contemplation."
The English physicist Arthur Eddington wrote that the universe is not only stranger than we imagine, but stranger than we can imagine. Aphorisms 97 and 98 connect.
104. "Man has free will, and of three sorts:
First he was free when he wanted this life; now admittedly he cannot take back his decision, because he is no longer the one who wanted it then, he must do his own will then by living.
Second he is free inasmuch as he can choose the pace and the course of his life.
Third he is free in that as the person he will one day be, he has the will to go through life under any condition and so come to himself, on some path of his own choosing, albeit sufficiently labyrinthine that it leaves no little spot of life untouched.
This is the triple nature of free will, but being simultaneous, it is also single, and is in fact so utterly single that it has no room for a will at all, whether free or unfree."
In a University of Ottawa lecture hall in 1988, I was in a crowd to whom the late Canadian author Robertson Davies said that we have no free will, so determined by circumstances are our lives. Kafka's collapsed categories deny free will, but singly they uphold it. The first notes that the act of choosing will limit future choices, the third notes the limiting obstacles along any path, and the "inasmuch" in the second implies that choice exists but is limited.
Thus end the aphorisms on which I comment. Editor Robert Calasso's afterword essay, "Veiled Splendor," discusses much, including the mice that rattled Kafka. I trapped many mice while I grew up near Edson: I remember watching one sniff at, then die in the trap. Mice infested my teacherage trailer in Alkali Lake, and my teacherage log house in Kluskus. I trapped mice, didn't fear them. Sometimes I see a mouse gallop across a road, its legs so small that it seems to slide rather than run.
Kafka wrote that a cat could chase away the mice, but that he'd then need to chase away the cat.
Calasso says that Kafka rankled at Brod's description of Kafka as "successful and admirable." Kafka was both, but his irritation came from resistance to conformity, not from false modesty, I think.
Kafka wrote that his literary creations were "unquestionably within" him. Ever feel that yourself?
I do, but usually I rest until the feeling passes, like the resting man in aphorism 86.
Calasso doesn't like Brod's title Reflections on Sin, Suffering, Hope, and the True Way, but both agree "that these slips of paper constitute the only text in which Kafka directly confronts theological themes." Is Kafka a materialist? I doubt it, because Kafka admired Pascal, who was religious.
Canadian poet Earl Birney concludes "The Eskimo Woman" with "Then she had rest." It seems she died, unlike the man in aphorism 86, who merely rested. I'm done. Now you and I have rest. I hope my words neither left you dead, nor left you wanting me dead.
Thursday, August 1, 2013
Thursday, July 25, 2013
Huns and Trees and Williams Lake
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.
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.
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.
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