One Journey

Migrating to a New Blog

2009-04-28T21:34:00.004-04:00

Well my friends, the time has come. I've been trying out the WordPress interface and it's really really good. So, the time has come to migrate this blog there. I'll leave this one here, with all my past posts. But, if you've enjoyed popping in here from time to time, or you've got this one on rss, I invite you to pop over to my shiny new WordPress blog!

Sadly, WordPress doesn't allow me to use my own design (rather--they will, but for a price and for now, I'm liking "free" better than "fee", so I'm just going with their designs instead). But in general the interface is slick and integrated and much easier to use. And so, alas, goodbye blogger. *sniff* I'll come back and visit sometimes, but my new blogging home is WordPress for now.

Hope to see you there!

Celebration of colour

2009-04-28T10:40:00.002-04:00

Beautiful!
http://www.desinuts.com/2009/04/06/celebration-of-colors-captured-by-poras-chaudhary-28-pics/

Shopping Teams

2009-04-13T14:10:00.005-04:00

This pretty much sums up Tom's and my shopping style. Depending on the product, we're either "good" or "very bad". From xkcd.com.

YouTube Symphony Orchestra @ Carnegie Hall

2009-04-11T16:36:00.003-04:00

They'll be playing on April 15th! Fascinating.

The video below features some of the musicians who will be performing in it. The entire orchestra was recruited via a call for video auditions/submissions. There were great resources at the website that included scores for all the different instruments, recordings of both the specific instrument's part as well as full orchestral recordings with said part missing, so musicians could practice their part with the larger ensemble, plus pieces to be learned for the audition.

The work to be performed was written by Tan Dun, who wrote a cool opera we saw a couple of years ago, called The First Emperor. It is about the nigh-legendary and highly controversial first emperor of China, who united the separate nations under his rule (same chap as was portrayed in the Emperor and the Assassin and, I believe, in Hero as well).

The Rise of the e-PODs

2009-03-30T16:55:00.007-04:00

Exciting news for all those indie magazine printers--or wannabe magazine printers out there! I know I'm excited by the notion of what this cheaper-than-photocopied, printed and bound glossy magazines implies about the democratization of the press. Reading this article makes me want to think up a magazine right here, right now, pull it together, upload it and poise myself for distribution:

H.P. Lowers Bar for Printing Glossy Color Magazines - NYTimes.com.

Now, on the one hand, this print-on-demand stuff means that writers are likely to be facing an end to the days where they could just write and send books to publishers who would give them a small percentage and then do all the work of marketing and so on for them, having invested hugely of their own money to put the book out(and therefore having lots of incentive to sell copies).

But, on the other, I see the beginnings of a new model emerging, with print on demand at its core. And with it, the emergence of editor/publisher/marketers who will, for a fee or for a large cut, clean up your book, put it out there and then keep a percentage of the profits. Like a publisher, but less investment up front on the part of the editor/publisher/marketer. Kind of a publisher and agent rolled into one--someone with a strong, somewhat diverse, skill set who can get out there and sell your book, or add your book to their established line of books, with the plan of building their own brand. This is what we're seeing variations of with e-publishers already. I suspect that's where we'll be going.

The prominent e-publishers are generally lean and savvy. They know their markets, and they know how to make things work with the merging of e-publishing and POD technologies. They are also very straightforward about their pricing: a goodly cut to the author, a smaller cut to the editor, a cut for themselves and then a flat rate, as one of the few fixed costs, to the artists for the "cover" images. For e-publishing, I expect that's the nature of the division--or something close to it. And then they simply add their fixed costs to the top, for printing and distribution, in the case of those readers who want to buy a physical copy of the book and own it for themselves.

The big, ponderous publishers haven't figured out the sense of this model yet. I hope they do soon--it annoys me to pay two dollars less for an e-book than I would for a print book, knowing they're saving a hefty amount on distribution (esp. if I buy the print book at a bookstore, which generally keeps up to half of the cover price for their own overheads) and printing. Presumably the big publishers are pocketing the difference--or, for now, using that difference to offset the cost of the big print runs they're putting out and possibly losing increasingly large amounts of money on, until they update their presses to some kind of large-scale system that can move between the POD paradigm and the large print-run model (for the initial shipments of new releases to bookstores) as needed.

The smaller e-POD publishers are also savvier about being fair to authors. With POD, a book need never be out of print. In the old model, it's only after a book falls out of print that the rights revert to the author, who can then resell or do what they want with it. BUT, the big publishers want to keep their rights in perpetuity now, because of that old model and the whole never-going-out-of-print issue. The e-PODs instead offer fixed-term contracts (e.g. 7 years), after which rights revert to the author, who can choose to renegotiate with the original publisher, or to sell the book somewhere else.

Way to go, e-PODs!

A Muse, a Genius, a Daemon

2009-03-24T10:55:00.009-04:00

My friend Candice embedded this link in FB a few weeks ago, I believe--and another friend, Tamara, linked to it yesterday. I finally got around watching it today.

I'm still processing the implications, but it brought tears to my eyes. I love that it acknowledges the drudgery of the the creative process--and the notion that showing up every day, and going through the motions, does count for something, as you wait for your muse, your genius, your daemon to visit, in all its energizing, powerful, transcendent capriciousness.

My post on creative chaos also ties into this notion--in a way, it's a variation. What I call chaos--the muse of fire--is what she calls the genius or the daemon.

Death of the Professional Writer Greatly Exaggerated?

2009-03-14T14:16:00.016-04:00

My mum forwarded me this sad little eulogy to the era of the professional writer. The argument would appear to be that as we move from print culture to other forms of entertainment, the place for professional writers will be swept aside in the democratizing freedom of the internet (which democratization itself, the article concedes, is a good thing). Suddenly, with blogs and other venues, where people are willing to do for free what others were once paid to do, writing as a profession will soon be gone in the way of the dodo or the typesetter.

There's a lot of truth to this observation, I agree. I've been thinking such thoughts and wondering about such questions myself over the last while as I agonize over my next steps.

Moreover, there's a lot of this going around these days--downturns and cutbacks have meant that a flagging industry will be streamlining further, and will possibly begin to initiate whatever transformations it will require, to survive and meet drastically changing demands, all the sooner.

In addition, there has been a profound shift in our culture. For one thing, people have less use for paper. It's bulky, it feels wasteful when employed for single use purposes and it is starting to feel less relevant to us as we transition to other formats. Similarly, reading is a slower undertaking, and given the choice, many will choose to play video games, watch t.v. or avail themselves of all the other entertaiments available to us.

And yet, this eulogizing reminds me a little of the outcry that came about when printing first emerged as a new technology. People denounced the new medium, feeling that it took the personality out of books, made them cheap and valueless, and also represented a death knell to all the copyists who had previously been surviving on their skill in creating beautifully-penned and illuminated manuscripts.

Admittedly, some of those copyists--those who didn't take to typesetting, one might speculate--might not have done too well in the new environment. But yet, the printing press ushered in a period of rising literacy, as books became affordable and the needs of society changed to accommodate the new, widespread availability of information.

It's not a perfect parallel, but there are similarities. The situation now is more complex, which is also why I would argue that it's not as hopeless as some claim. It's about adaptation and change. Society and individuals will adapt to the new circumstances. Things will shift around. And when the dust settles, a new situation will emerge--one that is not necessarily devoid of hope for the professional writer. As I say, it's about adaptation. After all, could those denouncing the printing press have ever anticipated bound and printed books in the grocery store, or the fact that almost anyone walking by said books could read their covers at a glance? It ushered in a change, but the full repercussions of that change could never have been anticipated. And admittedly, the copyists lost their jobs, and yet, the era of typesetters began. Those copyist able to put their literacy to good use and learn to typset no doubt did well enough by the transition, as the demand for books grew and printing presses began churning them out.

So, here are some of my reasons for thinking that reports of the professional writer's death may be exaggerated:

--I would guess that with the internet, people might actually be reading more now than they have been in recent years. Articles, ideas, information, are all just a few clicks away--and available on the go, via laptops, phones and pagers. Much of it, at this point, is admittedly supplied by enthusiastic hobbyists (*ahem*) who don't expect remuneration, but are, instead, glad to share their meticulously acquired knowledge with others. Still, I suspect that as thing settle, there will be a growing demand for gatekeepers--people who ensure some baseline quality control and levels of accuracy, particularly in the case of non-fiction. This was previously the role of the publisher. The new gatekeepers might be different--and the information might be regulated in other ways. But it's likely that people will start requiring accuracy and things like small subscriptions to wiki-based knowledge databases, in which the facts are actually verified, will become valid (it's a model that's already in place--and people are willing to pay for the time saved in having ready-made, reliable information compiled for them). At that point, it becomes worth it to pay people to write those entries and check those facts.

--We have always loved story. Good, well-told narrative has compelled us. Sure, people are watching t.v. and playing games more these days. But multi-level, narrative-based video games and award-winning, compelling films and t.v. shows don't write themselves. People talk about lax standards--even the article linked above mentioned something about intellectual entropy. Hey--just because something is different and adapted to the period in which it is created, doesn't make it worse. Try renting a season of Dexter, or any of the other well-made shows out there. It's tightly-written and amazingly well done. Play through Okami. Pick up some graphic novels. These are all story. They are ways of engaging with narrative. And not a one of them sprang, fully-formed from the brow of Zeus. They were all written by people. People who were paid to do it.

--There is still demand for books, even if they are in e-format. Having discovered how uneven the quality of free e-books can be very quickly made me ready to pay money for ones that had been selected and vetted by editors, from e publishers I trust. I don't imagine I'm alone in my willingness to do that. As an aside, I will admit to being annoyed when the ebook is priced the same as the print copy (any good arguments for that, anyone?), considering it costs a fraction of the price to sell as it does to print, bind, distribute etc. the print versions. I do feel that e books should be considerably cheaper--and can be. The margins can remain the same for the publishers and the royalties the same for writers (or can even go up a little) and the reader can still get a deal out of it, with a cheaper cover price for the eformat. The epublishers get this, while the print publishers who are starting to offer eformat books are slower to catch on. But the demand is there--and with good ereaders like Stanza and devices like the Kindle, I can only see it increasing. I have over a hundred books on my ipod. I can whip it out anytime and read it--even in low light, because the screen is lit. I like print books better, but find myself turning to my ipod for reading more and more often these days instead of lugging around print copies.

I suspect there are many other ways in which the role of the professional writer will morph to suit the changing demands of readers--ways I could not begin to anticipate. But, I have little doubt that the roles of fact-gatherer, ready to compile and distribute accurate information; of discerning, skillful observer who is able to phrase things in precisely the way we wish we could and who thereby expands our perception of the world; of storysmith and insightful visionary, whose narratives are impossible to abandon once we begin them--all these roles will still be required by society, as they always have been in the past.

The professional writer is dead. Long live the professional writer, say I.

House of Spirits: The New Musical?

2009-02-17T16:20:00.002-05:00

Intriguing... Though more Brechtean than Lloyd-Webberesque, from the sounds of it. I'll be most curious to read the reviews. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/17/theater/17spir.html?th&emc=th

Schroeder's Beethoven

2009-01-14T08:22:00.005-05:00

Apparently, the musical fragments that would often be poised above Schroeder's head as he played, in the Peanuts comic strip were far more intentional than I previously suspected (I did figure they were random). Charles M. Schultz was an avid fan of Classical music and there's a new exhibition up, celebrating his portrayal of it through the years, in Peanuts.

In the eyes of Schultz, those excerpts actually served as part of the dialogue, adding facets and nuance to the comic. Not that it was particularly lacking nuance in the first place... A lot of really strange stuff going on in there (the dysfunctional relationship between Charlie and Lucy, as seen with the football versus the advice stand, for instance. Why did Charlie keep coming back for more?! Then there were those slightly monstrous aspects, like the kite-eating tree, which always reminded me of those evil trees around the Witch's castle in the Wizard of Oz).

The NYT Article

You Tube Symphony Orchestra

2009-01-12T10:38:00.004-05:00

Calling all Classical musicians... YouTube seems to have launched the equivalent of American Idol for Classical musicians with its YouTube Symphony Orchestra. A rather interesting, collaborative concept in music, I'm really curious to see what emerges. So often the original intention kind of fizzles out but there are all sorts of other serendipitous and often extraordinary results with such initiatives and undertakings. It'll be interesting to see whether that happens with this one.

I like this project all the more for it being not altogether motivated by commercial interests. Hopefully it will help add relevance to classical music by enhancing its presence within the online community. I'll certainly be following its progress and seeing what comes of it!

The NYT article.

Mediating Chaos: The tension underlying creativity

2009-01-10T09:56:00.003-05:00

The notion of chaos has really be intriguing me lately—perhaps in part because I have felt so blocked, creatively, of late. I have felt stagnant and held still. And suddenly, the motif of chaos has been rearing its head in all sorts of different contexts.

There are two sides to the chaotic: the positive, creative and procreative aspect and the negative, destructive, violent and dark aspect. I’m mostly going to be talking about the positive side of it in this post.

See, the thought that recently came to me was that creativity is like a conduit into the chaotic. It breaks us out of the stagnation of routine and the everyday (order). It keeps us fresh and alive. Of course, if that conduit gets too wide, then the chaotic does turn destructive. Those too caught up in the wilderness, the lack of structure, the anarchy of the chaotic can all too easily lose themselves to it. That’s how I can see many artists, musicians, writers and innovators moving into madness, substance abuse and so on. Their creative conduit into the chaotic was so wide that they lost themselves to the potency of the anarchy. Some were frightened by it, some wanted to lose themselves to it, some simply couldn’t reconcile the power of the chaotic coursing through them with the everyday, the structure of life in mainstream society.

As a slight digression, I think children are directly tapped into that chaotic element. They don’t see the need for order and structure (though they are comforted by it, and consistency in routine helps lull and soothe them) because they are so recently emerged from the chaotically unformed. The process of socialization is a process of providing kids with the tools they need, on the one hand to navigate the structures of society, but also to see the patterns and structures in life itself. Just as children’s visual cognition creates chairs and tables and toys out of lines and colour and shadow, and their ears begin to hear words and pitch and tone where before it was just sound (a process of ordering the chaos), at the social level, they are also learning to make patterns and predictable rules out of the chaos around them. This sort of pattern recognition and grasp of how things work allows them to learn and discern when it’s safe to cross the road, for instance.

So, it occurs to me that life is all about holding that balance between order (safe but boring) and chaos. Most of our great—and many of our not-so-great—stories are about the predictability of order and the everyday being disrupted by one or several unpredictable/chaotic elements. A young man, crossing a field, finds a severed human ear in a park; a young girl raised in Africa must brave the challenges of an American high school; a man enters prison in order to rescue his brother from death row. They’re all part of the archetypal journey—the call to adventure, answered, and the crossing of the first threshold, into the other world. In each case the person’s life is changed. Nothing is the same again, as the everyday devolves into something altogether different.

That’s the chaotic--or at least a fragment of it, thrown into the everyday. Suddenly, those predictable rules don't apply, or no longer apply in a consistent way. New rules must be learned if the hero wants to survive and be successful in his or her quest.

For many of the rest of us, the chaotic is a little less wild. We greet it via our different creative outlets and hobbies—gardening, quilting, painting, woodwork and so on. Or, we encounter it through children and the energy, movement and antidote to stagnation and the everyday that they embody.

If the chaos gets overwhelming, we begin to feel things slipping out of our grasps and our control over our everyday structures start to waver in ways we often find unpleasant and destabilizing. The destructive side of chaos, in the case of wars and social anarchy, is one of the extreme manifestations of this. Suddenly, all the rules we previously understood are gone, and we have to find new ones, and quickly, if we want to survive.

On the other hand, if we don’t have enough creative/positive chaos in our lives—enough outlets—then we can sometimes turn to other facets of the destructive side of the chaotic. Drug and alcohol abuse as well as other forms of destructive behaviour often emerge in such cases—it’s a refuge from the mundane. Sometimes it begins as something apparently benign or fun—a few social drinks to loosen up (and don’t get me wrong—in many cases, it stays that way). But as with that artistic conduit, chaos can be a dangerous thing, and the conduit can begin to widen without volition. Before you know it, it’s flooding in and turning everything upside down—reaching out beyond the safe boundaries you thought you’d established and wreaking widespread havoc in your life.

A’course, I don’t want havoc. I just want a teensy, tiny little conduit into the chaotic—a slim little cable that can supply me with a decorous feed of creative chaos that I can shape into something that entertains me while I work on it. Barring that, a Muse of Fire that would ascend the brightest heaven of invention would not go too far amiss either. I’m taking applications. Please include resume and a cover letter describing relevant experience.

Dangerous Roads

2009-01-09T09:55:00.005-05:00

The photos start relatively tame, but keep scrolling and you get to some rather more extreme ones. Some of these roads really are nutso! Yeesh!

The City of Words by Alberto Manguel

2008-12-27T11:55:00.005-05:00

I’m reading City of Words right now, by Alberto Manguel—it’s one of the Massey Lectures. The one from last year—this year was Margaret Atwood’s timely talk on debt, which doesn’t necessarily interest me much, unless someone tells me something about it that piques my curiosity.

I really like some of Manguel’s concepts and imagery, but am getting a little frustrated with his presentation. His writing doesn’t strike me as all that organized. It meanders somewhat, which I tend to dislike in non-fiction particularly. I love good, evocative non-fiction, certainly, but I feel like, for my tastes, it should actually have some purpose, and that should be clear from relatively early on. So, his second chapter, “The Tablets of Gilgamesh” is somewhat interesting, talking about the notion of the Other, but he only really gets to his core point 2/3rds or 3/4ths of the way through the chapter (before that it really does meander through anecdote and example).

Far too late, in my opinion. I feel like he ought to have begun with the evocation, then moved into some version of his overall point, before returning to the idea of the evocation. It would have required some skill, I admit, but that’s kind of the point, isn’t it?

Writing for publication is about skill and structure and being able to convey your point, evocatively but also skillfully. That’s what communication is about, really. And it’s ironic, because certainly the first chapter of his book is a paean to communication via the written word. Ironically, it is rather opaque in its prose, for all that it poetically celebrates writing and narrative. I also found 3 or 4 typos/grammatical/stylistic errors in 27 pages. It feels like he got the final draft to the publisher at the very last moment and they chucked it into the workflow and printed the books up because they no longer had time to do up proofs. Wacky!

I did, however, enjoy many of the ideas that it dealt with, including the metaphor of Cassandra. He talks of how the most important truth-tellers (Manguel cites Alfred Döblin’s Berlin, Alexanderplatz) are able to speak this deeper, and often horrifying or unwelcome truth via fiction—and yet, because it is fiction, people are able to dismiss it as mere story. And so, like Cassandra, such visionaries are often met with disbelief and disdain.

NaNoWriMo Formula for Success

2008-10-25T13:06:00.003-04:00

Well, it's rather foolhardy, given all else that's going on, but at least on this side of the timing, I'm looking forward to the challenge--so, I'm going to enter NaNoWriMo again this year and try to cross that 50K mark once more. If I succeed, it will be my third year of completing the challenge: write 50,000 words in a month.

Since I also have classes, readings and exam prep to contend with, it should be rather an interesting month!

Fortunately, this year, I have come up with a winning strategy, which I will now share with any other NaNoWriMo intrepids out there:

1) Come up with a brilliant premise
2) Develop it and add complications enough to sustain 50-100K words (I'll have to write only half, if I want to actually complete a publishable novel)
3) Write 50K words of it in one month.

How could I lose with such a brilliant plan under my hat? :-D Yeah, if only it were that easy. Oh yes, and it begins Nov. 1st, so I have exactly one week to come up with the story premise and outline. Between now and then, I also have an essay, a mid-term and an application to complete. *gulp*

It should be an interesting five weeks.

"Guantanamo North"--landmark ruling sets a potentially troubling precedent

2008-09-26T15:21:00.005-04:00

My friend Rob's new book, _Guantanamo North: Terrorism and the Administration of Justice in Canada_, which was only just released, has been getting some exposure lately because of the recent ruling on terrorism. It's a disturbing landmark case, and it strikes me that the release of his book could hardly be more timely.

The questions raised by these developments are complex and problematic, though I suppose in many ways, it boils down to the old dichotomy between safety for the many (or at least, measures that provide the *appearance* of safety, even if they're not actually as effective as one might hope) and liberty/civil rights (and its curtailment, be it for all, or for certain targeted demographic groups).

There have been times when we could have the luxury of both relative safety and relative liberty, here in North America. I suppose for me part of the question is--to what extent is its current curtailment a bid for increased power and consolidation of power (which could be for many reasons--deterrent, the show of a strong front to potential terrorists, etc. as well as for the usual, evil reasons we often associate with such moves to consolidate power) and to what extent is it truly justified as one of the only ways to protect the citizenry? Which, of course, just scratches the surface.

Here are some news articles about the ruling. It's great, at least, to see that Rob gets a mention in the coverage:

http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20080926/terror_law_080926/20080926?hub=Canada

http://www.torontosun.com/news/canada/2008/09/27/6899181-sun.html

http://www.680news.com/news/national/more.jsp?content=n092669A

And some links to the publisher's page, and a direct, frames-removed link to Rob's book:

http://www.fernwoodpublishing.ca/

http://www.fernwoodpublishing.ca/pages/search_book.php?RECORD_KEY(titlelist)=f_isbn_10&f_isbn_10(titlelist)=1-55266-279-9

Chatting Cats

2008-09-20T17:20:00.003-04:00

These cracked us up.

Some conversing cats:

Click on this, if you can't see the original: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3U0udLH974

... and the translation:

Hyperlink, if you can't see the original: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1JynBEX_kg8

Osbert Chung, a.d.c. to HRH

2008-09-18T17:44:00.011-04:00

We have a number of concierges/security folk who sit at the entrance desk to the building. Usually, Tom or I just pass by with brief pleasantries or a wave, a smile and a greeting.

But, I was recently chatting with one of the fellows on duty there--Bert, an extraordinarily youthful-looking septuagenarian (or thereabouts--he told me his age once, but I've forgotten it). He began telling me a little about his life and it's certainly a fascinating one.

He began his life in Jamaica, the son of an Asian couple from China who spoke only Cantonese.

"I was fourteen before I got my first pair of shoes, and I lived in a mud hut. We were so very poor--our entire village. But my father always said that we should shoot for the stars. And we all did. We believed in ourselves and we all succeeded, my brothers and sisters. One of my brothers became one of the world's best pilots. And as for me--when I was a child in Jamaica, I always used to say 'Someday, I'm going to live with the Queen of England!' And do you know what, Susan?" A pause. He leaned forward and lowered his voice. "I did just that."

Well! Of course, this was a story I simply couldn't resist. Never mind the streetcar and getting to class on time (I was way early anyway, so I wasn't greatly concerned).

"Really!" I said. "You lived with the queen?"

Bert is a consummate storyteller. He'd hooked me. He wasn't about to let me off that easily, with some quick answer.

"That's right! The children used to tease me when I said that as a child. Even my parents got a little worried and took me to see the doctor. But the doctor said 'he's just a dreamer. Let him dream!' But no-one took me seriously. And then, you'll never guess what happened. I worked hard and was admitted to the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst, in England. That's where all the royal princes have trained, not to mention the Sultan of Brunei, David Niven, and even Ian Fleming, who wrote the James Bond books. And me--I got in, from my poor little village in Jamaica."

"And no shoes till you were fourteen!" I agreed, admittedly impressed, though at the same time wavering on the edge of doubt. Was Bert bullshitting me? I mean, seriously. It sounded a little unbelievable. But I do love a good story, whether it's true or not. So I kept listening.

"It was when I was just finishing at Sandurst that I was invited to serve at Buckingham Palace, working for Queen Elizabeth's aunt, Alice, the Countess of Athlone." A pause, and he looked off into the distance. "I remember that first day I arrived at the palace, and Sarah Ferguson's father, Major Ferguson, greeted me. He showed me to my room--and Susan, I was in shock. The bed alone was worth fifteen thousand pounds--it was a far cry from the mud hut, that room!

'Don't unpack yet,' he said. 'We have to go and meet the Queen, first.' And he took me to the room where she, her mother and Prince Philip were sitting. And I shall never forget her first words to me. She said,

'Welcome, Bertie--' everyone else calls me Bert, but she always called me Bertie, though I only found out why later on. It was because her father was called Bertie. He, too was a military man, you see, and she said I reminded her a little of him."

Bert gave me a smile. "She's a wonderful woman, the Queen, though my favourite was her mother. I was so sad when the queen mother died, I tell you. But at that first meeting, she said to me, 'Welcome, Bertie. In thanks for your loyal service to us and our country, we would like to invite you to serve, here at Buckingham Palace.' And of course, I accepted."

This wasn't the end of Bert's extraordinary story--as you may well imagine. He then told me of how the Queen decided that she wanted to see the little mud village where Bert grew up.

"'But Your Majesty,' I said. 'There isn't any kind of accommodation there that's fit for royalty! My village is very, very poor and humble.'

"'Nonetheless, we shall go there for a visit. You have six months to find something and make the plans.'

"At first, it seemed an impossible task. I didn't know what to do. But then, one of the people I had put the word out to gave me a call and said, 'A wealthy Canadian has just built a vacation home not far from the village. Maybe he'd be willing to host the royal entourage.' And so, I found myself calling Mr. Loblaw from Buckingham Palace. 'Mr. Loblaw,' I said, "how would you like to host a visit from the Queen and the Royal family, at your Jamaican home?'

"He said, 'Is this a joke?'

"'No sir,' I said. Of course, he agreed. And so, six months later, we all flew into Jamaica and went to visit my village. And as the Queen got out of the car to pay homage to a fallen soldier monument in the village, everyone was staring and watching and calling out. They had recognised me, you see. And they were saying, in the patois 'Him say he gonna live with the Queen, and look--there she is!'"

Nor is that the end of Bert's extraordinary story. After his stint with the queen, she apparently sent along accolades to Prince Rainer and Princess Grace of Monaco, and so that was the next place he headed off to work as Aide-de-camp. Queen Elizabeth apparently also passed along the news that a visit to Bert's village in Jamaica was well worthwhile, because he soon found himself calling up Mr. Loblaw once more and asking whether he'd be willing to host the royal family of Monaco! After that, he apparently served as a.d.c. to two different Governer-Generals (of Jamaica and of Canada). And so, it was one precedent after another that he broke--he was the first Jamaican to serve as a.d.c. to the Royal Family in Buckingham Palace, and the first to serve the same position for two Governer-Generals. He even stood in as acting Governer-General on a few occasions, when the necessity arose.

Quite an extraordinary story, I'd say! Almost too extraordinary. And so, when Bert said he had kept all the memorabilia, I leaped at the chance to see it all. Documentation--the budding historian in me was delighted. He brought it in today.

And there it was: The pictures of him with a young Prince Charles and Princess Anne and Queen Elizabeth, in Jamaica. Him walking down the stairs and standing with Princess Grace and Prince Rainier. Another of him with the Governer-General of Jamaica (and newspaper clippings of that same shot, with the caption, mentioning him by name). A photo of him hosting a state dinner for the UN Security Council, circa 1968. And so on. Truly amazing.

And this time 'round, I was clever enough to leave plenty of time--so I wasn't even late for class!

(this was the only one I could find on the web. It's from http://www.jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20070902/lead/lead4.html)

UPDATE: February 14, 2011

This blog post of mine has received a wonderful amount of attention--and Bert is thrilled! I am so glad that people have found and been able to read this wonderful story of an extraordinary man. I've also been told that some people have submitted the piece to publishers seeking stories about people who have triumphed over adversity and have come a long way from their humble beginnings. Bert certainly has done that, and more, and so this is truly wonderful news. I hope his story inspires many.

Please note, however, that this piece of writing is under copyright. If, however, you wish to reprint it, you do so with my blessing, as it is a story worth spreading. I only ask that you give me a byline and send me an email, at diva [dot] nat [at] gmail [dot] com to let me know of your intention. Similarly, if you change or edit it in any way, please ask permission before publishing the piece with the changes. These are the only conditions--though of course, if you wish to pay me for the time I spent working on it and writing it up, I won't refuse!

If you do not wish to attribute the piece, then you are also welcome to write your own version of Bert's story! Facts are not under copyright and so if you write about his life in your own words, then you can do with it what you will. It is often a courtesy to cite your sources (if Bert was your source, as he was mine, then no worries--that will be clear from your piece. But if you consulted this piece, then a courtesy citation would be appreciated, but is not obligatory).

For some more of Bert's adventures, check out my latest post about his extraordinary life!

La Vida in Vitro, Part 4

2008-09-16T17:52:00.004-04:00

The Crying Game

Well, there you have it. Close, but no cigar(s) to be handed out in approximately nine months or so.

Thanks so much, everyone who's been sending along good wishes and thoughts.

We're both pretty upset--though that's possibly an understatement. For me, I'm actually closer to being devastated. The part that we thought wouldn't work, worked. The part that I really did believe would work--no problem with implantation last time--didn't.

We had a pretty good clue last week, when the spotting I was experiencing (Implantation bleeding? Implantation cramps?) turned into a veritable tsunami, so to speak (i.e. not so implantation-ish). But, we wanted to get the official word, from the official pregnancy test, before we announced it.

So we're still dealing with the grief, the questions (is there anything that could have been done differently in the course of the entire procedure/protocol? Anything that could be tweaked, that would yield a statistically significant better chance of success?), and the next step. Going into this IVF, I had figured this was my last shot at the fertility stuff. My body, it seemed, just didn't want to get pregnant or be pregnant--as had been demonstrated and reinforced again and again over the past several years. But now that insidious grain of hope has been planted. If the thing that we didn't think would work, worked, then is there a chance that doing it again might, just from the perspective of probability, yield better results?

Hard to say.

So, I'm poised--torn between saying "got the message, thanks" to my body (this was one of the most physically painful periods I can recall having experienced, like that endometriosis was giving me the finger for having the temerity to try and sidestep all the damage it had wrought to my reproductive apparatus over the years and actually get pregnant)--and saying "nope, I think there's still a chance, and I"m going to take it"--and spending the $10,000 for another cycle, while keeping my fingers crossed.

Or, we could put that $10K towards the cost of adopting a baby. I believe a domestic adoption (if it's not through Children's Services) is around $10K. International adoption is even more.

But for now, it's time to grieve that possible path that hovered tantalizingly before me, before it suddenly reached a dead end. The one nice thing is that the other path remains open--I have almost a full-time roster of classes, and so at least, I have something to occupy my thoughts, rather than brooding, when I'm supposed to be trying to do some writing. Busy is often very, very good.

Thanks again, everyone! It's over and out, for now.

La Vida in Vitro, Part 3

2008-09-09T08:21:00.008-04:00

The Waiting Game

At this point, the roads haven't yet diverged. They're still running in parallel--a full-time course load on the one hand, and a pregnancy, on the other. Though now, I've gotten into two upper level courses, so I've got a half course-load, which I hope to keep, even if I get pregnant.

For whatever reason, I found it difficult to write about the treatments as they were going on. I suppose part of it may be that as a fiction writer, I like to know what's going to happen next in the story--that's the only way that you can craft in foreshadowing, and proper setups with characters and situations.

But, given that I actually still don't know the outcome--whether or not the treatments worked--there may be more to it than that.

It might well be that the process was taking its emotional toll. See, the funny thing is that I'd reached a certain stage of resignation with IVF, back when we were entering into the cycle. I figured there was a good chance that it wouldn't work. So, I felt pretty equable and unruffled about the whole thing. But sangfroid only took me so far, and after a few days of doing my injections, the hope began to seep in.

I managed my hope in the same way I've managed my physical and sometimes emotional pains in the past: via meditation, though such a notion may sound odd. Manage hope in the same way one manages pain?! It's true. That's because hope, if it's subsequently disappointed, can be just as devastating--or much more so--as expected pain and loss. It is, after all, a kind of loss, when you dream of a certain future and then learn that it will not come about. And, you're starting from a higher emotional point than you would be, if you had no hope, so there's a far steeper, more precipitous, fall.

And so, while I was both happy and surprised to find that tendril of hope creeping in--it felt good--I also knew that I couldn't lose myself to it. Not with the stakes this high, because if things didn't work out, I'd be all the more bereft by the end. I'll still be bereft if it doesn't work, but there are degrees of bereavement, degrees of desolation.

I suspect the ultimate consequence of this all was that while I remained pretty calm for the most part (aside from the occasional meltdowns that I attributed to the hormones I was pumping into my body each day), I think there may have been a hidden toll exacted, and that manifested as a deep reluctance to write about the treatments while they were happening.

So, a few updates.

Within a few days of starting, as one of the eggs started getting really large, they had me start injecting a second hormone to prevent that one big one from ovulating. It brought my grand total of daily injections up to $475 per day (none of it covered by our--or any other--drug plan we could find).

There were two other, smaller, ones they were hoping to grow large enough to use as well. It took about two weeks. But, for much of that two weeks, there was doubt about whether to go ahead with the retrieval or not. Usually, they like a minimum of five--four at the very least, in special circumstances. Otherwise, they call it off and start again. We were able to sway them to proceed by pointing out that we didn't have that option. We had gone forward at maximum, so calling this off and initiating a second cycle with the same protocol--maximum dosage--wasn't likely to yield different results.

I suspect they could have insisted, but they were kind enough to let us see it through.

Thirty-six hours before the retrieval--which I sometimes refer to as "the harvest", where they go in with a big ol' needle and drain the eggs out of the sacs in which they were growing--I had to inject another hormone that would trigger the final maturation of the egg and stimulate ovulation. The idea is that they go in just before ovulation and take the eggs out themselves. Then, the party in the petrie dish begins.

At the retrieval, after the three sacs were drained, they found a fourth! This was greatly exciting for us, increasing our chances by a significant amount.

Three of the four fertilized. Given my age and precedent, they agreed to put all three back in. They also took a lovely picture of our three little zygotes and printed it off for us. It's pretty cute.

It's one of those things that will be really adorable and funny if this all works out, and unbearably poignant if it doesn't--rather like the fuzzy, early ultrasound we have of the little fetus I miscarried before. Somehow, it feels so much more real with the images in hand. That tiny, curled little creature would have been a baby, then a toddler, then a child, and so on, if things had worked out differently.

But, I'm really glad to have those pictures. They're an affirmation--a testament to the fact that we hoped, and we tried, and to the fact that those little zygotes, like our little fetus, existed, even if they never reach a stage of development in which they'd be viable and able to survive in the world. After all--it's a struggle for all of us, sometimes, isn't it?

Lastly, they are a record. These attempts may be the closest I ever come to being a biological mother. And that alone is worth cherishing.

The Way We Are from CTR Press

2008-08-31T14:16:00.006-04:00

The Way We Are, the latest release from CTR Press, is out! It's an anthology of writings by and about Anglo-Indians, and concerns the directions their lives took after the post-Independence diaspora.

It features a short non-fiction piece I wrote called "Inheriting Remembrance".

Here's an excerpt:

...Everyone else would already have eaten, and so my grandmother and I would sit, and she would take out a few of her memories so that I could have a peek at them. I cherished those afternoons, for they provided me with a privileged glimpse into a present that is now long gone--a present that I would never have access to otherwise.

She talked of how she used to discuss the day’s menu with the cook in the mornings. Then she would see to her correspondence at her desk. In the afternoons, she would call on friends and have tea. Hearing those stories, I thought of the English classics, like Pride and Prejudice, and the lifestyles they depicted--except that every now and then, I’d be reminded that this was, most assuredly, not England at all.

“It would get so hot that you’d have to leave the windows and doors open. But then you had to be careful. I remember going into our bedroom at dusk. This was in Chunar--there was no electricity up there in those days. I saw a long, thin object on the bed. I assumed it was one of grandpa’s ties, so I reached out to pick it up--only to scream when I touched it.” She grinned at me. “It wasn’t a tie, it was a snake--a karait--that had slithered inside, to get away from the heat.”

Or,

“Our compound in Guwhati was right above the Brahamaputra river, and so on sunny afternoons, crocodiles would climb out and sun themselves on the stone steps leading to the water.”

Or,

“Your mother was off on a trip with her friend. They arrived late at the dak bungalow they had booked into. They were exhausted, so they settled in for the night with minimal fuss. As they were drifting off to sleep, they felt something dropping on the thin sheets they were using as covers. Your mother turned on her flashlight and said, ‘Oh, it’s just baby scorpions,’ then turned it off and went to sleep.”

“Baby scorpions?” I was horrified.

Granny shrugged. “They don’t develop venom until they’re older, so there was no danger.”

Snakes, scorpions, crocodiles: not quite the usual components of an English comedy of manners.

La Vida in Vitro, Part 2

2008-08-22T19:00:00.001-04:00

Two Roads Diverged in a Yellow Wood...

It's rare that the metaphorical crossroads in life loom so clearly and in such close conjunction as they seem to be right now. We came into London on Thursday night, all set for our first day of tests, ultrasounds and injections, all of which would determine whether or not I will be able to conceive and bear a biological child.

But, I will be getting up at 6 a.m., because that is also the morning that my registration for classes at U of T opens. So, from six to six-thirty, I will be trying to sign up for classes for the coming nine months, after which, I'll out for my first day of tests, which will determine whether I will have a child in the coming nine months.

I've been at crossroads before, and have had to make choices, but there is a peculiar resonance to this close a juxtaposition. Two roads before me, not necessarily mutually exclusive, but very likely to be (because of different other physical complications, it's very possible that if I get pregnant, I'll be ordered to bed rest pretty early on and will have to give up on the idea of classes). This particular morning, I'll be taking the steps I need to advance along two widely divergent paths.

It will be several weeks of following this particular road, before the fork comes--but for now, it's a matter of, on the one hand, trying to work out what classes I'll be able to register for, which ones I'll be wait listed on, and how I can get off waiting lists and into the classes I need to qualify for a Master's, and on the other, doing the injections and blood tests and trips to London.

In a few weeks, this uncertainty will be resolved, and I'll be advancing along one or the other route. But for now, there's this odd sense of irresolution and doubled lives, like two possible transparency overlays, where there's a map, and if you put one transparency over it, it shows one route, but then if you put a different transparency over it, a totally different route--with maybe just a few roads in common--gets highlighted.

I'm trying to be positive--there are exciting prospects along either path. After all, it's up to me to try to get the most out of my life, regardless of the path it takes. I might not have much control over how many eggs my ovaries are going to produce, nor whether any of them will fertilize as a result of some candle-lit dinners and one-night stands in the petrie dish/test tube. Then, there's the question of whether one of those that does fertilize, once back inside, will implant and start growing into a baby.

None of that is much in my control. The one thing that I can control is how I look at the situation. This is the end of the line for us, from the fertility perspective. My body has been damaged and sliced up by the surgeries. I'm working with essentially half an ovary, in total (my other ovary, which has also been reduced to half its size, is apparently inaccessible). I'll be injecting the maximum dosage of drugs, in the hopes of getting *something* cooking in there. But it simply may not happen.

Given that, I have to be very careful about the kind of hope that I'll allow myself to experience. Throwing all my eggs (so to speak) into one basket (ovary?)--the biological child route--is dangerous, because it's entirely possible this won't work. And if it doesn't, and I'm totally invested in it emotionally, it will be devastating. I have to focus instead on the ultimate outcome--a child, someday, somehow. In Vitro is one possibility--a route that for now is still worth exploring. But there are other ways, and I'm open to them.

Still, fingers crossed, for now.

La Vida in Vitro, Part 2 - Follow-up

2008-08-22T18:58:00.004-04:00

Update for the first day:

IVF:

The young resident administering the ultrasounds (who looks startlingly like Jonathan Crombie, who played Gilbert Blythe in the Anne of Green Gables t.v. series starring Megan Follows) says that we've got a few "potentials" sitting about in my left ovary (the one they can see and will be working with). He's going to recommend maximum dosage to the doctor and discuss whether that's worth doing, given how little they've got to work with--and the fact that I'm a poor responder to boot. You go, Gilbert! Next time I see him, I'll have to ask him how Anne's teaching career is progressing. I expect he'd really love that--if he actually even knew what I was talking about.

U of T:

In the mean time, ALL the courses, in the faculties that interest me, are overenrolled. They've all got waiting lists. I'm #111 on one of those waiting lists--and can only sign up for a maximum of two. So--no classes, two waiting list rankings.

So far, it looks like IVF is in the lead! Wahoo! It also looks like my injections, at max dosage, will set us back about $360 per day (uninsured). Well, as they say, go big or go home.

La Vida in Vitro, Part 1

2008-08-21T19:28:00.012-04:00

A couple of years ago, I learned, as a result of some pretty conclusive exploratory surgery, that I am infertile. More than that, without the recent innovations in fertility treatments, I would have been deemed sterile. Salt-sown-in-the-ground barren. It's only thanks to the In-Vitro Fertilization technologies--resulting in the famed and so-called "test-tube babies"--that there's even the remotest chance I might be able to have biological children.

I actually wrestled somewhat with the idea of "coming out" on this topic. It's one that's still cloaked somewhat in mystery and shame, though I don't really understand why. As friends whom I see somewhat regularly know, I'm actually very open about it and if asked, I'm happy to answer any questions people have.

My hesitation in posting about our adventures actually came from the knowledge that others aren't as comfortable with the topic as am I, and so, some people might feel squeamish or like I'm just giving way too much information--though I have no plans to go all gory and graphic about it. If you happen to feel that way, feel free to read no further. I'll title all future posts on the topic "La Vida in Vitro, Part #", which should serve as an easy marker for steering clear of them--and I respect that choice.

So, as I say, I wrestled with the idea of posting on this topic, but finally decided in favour of it for three reasons:

1. There are family members and friends who are curious about our progress and our adventures as we try to grow our family, and this is a good way to keep people who want to know up to date.

2. There may be people out there who are curious about the details, but shy to ask. Don't be. But, this will provide some background on the day-to-days of it.

3. As I mentioned above, this is a topic that still seems shrouded in mystery and, worse, in shame. The temptation is strong, when the diagnosis come through, to blame oneself or to hate oneself, though most people who aren't infertile or sterile might be puzzled as to why. Others might well be able to understand such reactions, but are also quick to point out that such feelings are irrational and make little sense (which reminders I actually do appreciate, since it keeps things in perspective on the darker days). It's true. They are irrational--they don't make sense. It's an emotional thing and has little to do with logic.

And so, such difficulties are often kept as dark secrets. There are tons of anonymous blogs about it out there. Fair enough, I respect that. Not everyone is able or willing to go public with their difficulties and heartbreak. Sometimes, the honesty is so dark and raw and wounded that I can understand why they don't want their names associated with it.

But, I also think that the best chance that people have of coming to terms with that shame and self-loathing is if those who have such experiences and feel ready to share them, come out and talk about them openly, without the mask of anonymity. It's hard enough, coming to terms with the thought that you may never be able to bear biological children, without also feeling ashamed, like you have some horrible secret, and second-guessing whether there was anything you could have done differently, that might have prevented such an outcome.

This is the most compelling reason for me--the hope of adding another individual voice to those of other women who have chosen to be open about their infertility, in the hopes of reducing the stigma associated with it. That's the reason that I decided to go for it. After all, I can always give updates to friends and family in person or in private, and those who are curious but shy could probably do a quick web search and learn more than they ever wanted to about it all.

For this first post, I figured I'd just fill in a bit of the background.

I learned that I was infertile, conclusively and without any chance of conceiving naturally, at the beginning of 2005. The biology of it all is irreversible and irremediable. Short of a deity descending to lay healing hands upon my uterus, it's just not going to happen.

I went through a couple of IVF cycles at the time. The first one didn't complete, because I'm a "poor responder" (i.e. I didn't produce enough eggs, despite my daily hormone injections). The second one, with far higher dosage, resulted in a pregnancy that featured a week-long hospital stay, and ended in miscarriage, a few months in. A few weeks after that, I had a cancer scare and went under the knife. The years since 2005, I've been under the knife ~3 or so additional times. It seems as if each time that my body was deemed ready to go through another IVF cycle, the doctors would have a last look and discover some further impediment. So then, the wait for a surgery date would begin again and the timer would be reset for my next treatment.

Now, after a long wait, I'm back to the IVF days--the days of injections, of blood tests and of condom-covered ultrasound wands. Of dizzy spells, nausea and bloating.

But these are minor, as is the fact that I'm administering my own injections.

I'm not afraid of any needles--nor ultrasound wands, for that matter! Bring it, I say--and Lay on, Macduff!

So yes, the joy of it is that it's a go! A go! After all these years, all this waiting, this fact alone feels miraculous.

Now... to find out if my sliced up, "poor responder" ovaries (each surgery pared away at one or the other of them--half here, a third there, and so on) are up for the challenge!

And so, we begin!

La Vida in Vitro, Epilogue to Part 1

2008-08-21T18:00:00.005-04:00

La Vida in Vitro, Epilogue to Part 1

An Urban Myth for the Infertile

I have many friends who, over the years, have told me innumerable stories about how "a friend of a friend was struggling, just like you. But then, she and her husband gave up and started taking steps to adopt a child/had just adopted a baby/had given up on having children. And then, guess what? She got pregnant!"

I know this is true. I know people who have lived this very phenomenon themselves. Actual friends, who share this with me as their experience. It's a beautiful thing--and what a wonderful event, to be blessed with such a bounty of love and children. This is their experience and their reality.

But, it seems that if someone hears you're infertile, or sterile, this is the often the standard panacea, told by someone with no direct experience of infertility, concerning the friend of a friend. (I'm inferring the lack of direct experience in many cases, just because if they'd struggled with it themselves, they'd likely have learned how complex and varied the different causes of infertility can be.)

Everyone, without exception, who has told me this story has done so with the best of intentions, no doubt because they don't realise (and haven't asked, or given me the chance to explain) that in some cases, infertility can be conclusive and irreversible. They're doing it to cheer me up, to give me hope and help me feel better. At first, when this used to happen, I'd smile and thank them. Sometimes I'd try to explain that for me, this is a biological impossibility, while touching on the whole deities and healing hands bit.

But this is one of those memes that's as robust and tenacious as those albino crocodiles in the sewers. And, because I don't like being coy, and saying,

"Oh yes, well, I have some ahem, medical stuff coming up"

or lying outright and saying,

"We're uh, just not ready to um, start a family right now",

it's entirely possible that a question like,

"where have you been all this time?" or

"what will you be doing next week?" or

"so, when are you and Tom going to start working on a family?"

will result in some mention of my infertility. And then, often as not, The Story will, once again, rear its grim and gossamer head, and I'll smile wanly and mumble something like, "well, that's lucky. Good for them."

See, it's not that I call it an Urban Myth because it's not true. I call it an Urban Myth because it's Out There, and because for many people who are infertile, depending on the nature of our condition, it could never, ever, apply to us. And so, for us, it truly is a myth--one that we hear depressingly often, and which serves as a reminder of the kind of pleasant surprise we're never going to experience for ourselves.

The Song of the Open Road

2008-06-27T17:36:00.003-04:00

O highway I travel, do you say to me Do not leave me?
Do you say Venture not-if you leave me you are lost?
Do you say I am already prepared, I am well-beaten and undenied, adhere to me?

O public road, I say back I am not afraid to leave you, yet I love you,
You express me better than I can express myself,
You shall be more to me than my poem.

I think heroic deeds were all conceiv'd in the open air, and all free poems also,
I think I could stop here myself and do miracles.

From Walt Whitman's Song of the Open Road

So--we're off on our road trip eastward tomorrow or possibly Sunday (and how about them high gas prices--especially for diesel!! Damn them all!!!). I'm going to miss the cats most of all, I suspect. They'll be staying with Tom's parents for the duration (thanks again for taking care of them for us!! :-D)

But, I imagine it will be a fun adventure. I'm really looking forward to seeing some of the Maritimes, after having heard so much about them.

We've also been well armed with suggestions, places to stop and take note, and restaurants that are worth planning to be hungry for.

Similarly, we've been warned off certain stops--e.g. Magnetic Hill, which is apparently overrated and not worth the stop. However, I'd still like to go. If I'm going to practically be there anyway, I'd like to see the wee optical illusion, overrated or otherwise. I don't insist that spontaneous levitation or immolation be on the roster, so I'm hoping my expectations will be suitably low-key.

Wish us luck, in the mean time! I'll post updates as and when I can.

Mum on CBC Radio, aka, you know you're famous when...

2008-06-26T18:03:00.005-04:00

... someone calls you up from the CBC and asks you to prepare some comments about what life might be like if gas prices remain high and flying becomes too expensive for the average person.

Mum is a pundit! How cool is that?! And she consulted Tom and me about what we thought the future might look like under such circumstances, which I guess makes Tom and me pundits to the pundit. Not bad... ;-)

Of course, chortling over mum's latest coup aside, I hope that doesn't happen--that gas prices do settle and so does life. Though I'm well aware of the environmental impact of flights, and so on, it would sadden me to see the horizons of our worlds grow narrower and more circumscribed. The cultural impact of those greater distances between places and people is worrying, particularly given the rise of other trends, to do with dogma and fundamentalism. It's partly those smaller distances between diverse locales, and the resultant ability to see how others live--or to change the way we live (e.g. via immigration)--that, while it creates some frictions in the short term, has allowed us to develop insight into each others' differences. It's a big factor in what has helped us dispel at least some of our assumptions and the mystification of the "other." We have a long way to go, and if the distances between us grow larger, I fear that culturally, we may regress.

The thought of all those distant lands becoming once more inaccessible for most--and that our children might not have the opportunities we have had, to see so much of it, with such relative ease--is a sobering one. I'm hoping that those alternative energies come on line soon and that we're able to make the transition without too many bumps and skips. I don't really know if that's actually plausible, but as I say, one can hope!

The show will be broadcast tomorrow at 9 am (local time, I assume), if you want to check it out. Or, I assume one will be able to download or listen to the podcast at this link.

Update: Mum's broadcast has been moved into next week--either Wednesday or Thursday, I believe.

How a notion becomes a meme, or, your Morning Smile

2008-06-24T10:07:00.003-04:00

I saw this on Jorrie Spencer's blog this morning and had to post it as well. It's one of those ads that just too loveable to resist (Stride gum sponsored a world tour for Matt Harding, who then produced this bit of fun).

The other recent bit of advertising that I also really liked was "Paint," created for Sony's Bravia. It was made in Scotland, and it apparently took days to clean up the paint (with extravagant bits of lovely, mad and utterly showy bits of ephemera like this, I adore that it has been done for the sake of it--just to create a marvellous spectacle. But I'm also very happy to hear that everything has been cleared up and set to rights afterwards).

"That's an arcane question": Prentice on the Copyright Act

2008-06-19T17:57:00.009-04:00

I listened to the podcast on CBC's Search Engine a few minutes ago. As the interview progressed, I found myself shaking with the strangest combination of hilarity and outrage. I was laughing at the absurdity of Prentice's responses while at the same time feeling a rising anger, as he again and again responded to commonplace scenarios with claims that the questions were very "technical" and "arcane."

Just for some context, the "arcane" and "technical" instances he referred to were scenarios like: "My grandfather had a large collection of vinyl standards. He then bought them on cd. Some of those cds are locked but it's easy enough to break the copy protection so I can load them onto an ipod for him. Given that he's already purchased them twice, would we be liable for breaking the copy protection so he can listen to his music? Does he have to buy the same music a third time, just because the technology has changed yet again?"

and

"If I go to another country and get my phone unlocked, so I can use it there, is that considered illegal?"

For the first question, I think Prentice blustered that it was very "technical," also indicating that there aren't too many copy protections on cds anymore.

Right, Prentice, but what about the dozen or more cds I bought a couple of years ago that are copy protected? Given that I suspect that most of the cd-owning public has at least one or two cds whose copy protection they'd have to break if they want to listen to it on their portable players, I don't see how the question being "technical" makes it any less pertinent or worthy of a straightforward answer (which, incidentally, he never gave--because it would be damning, or because he didn't know the legislation he's putting forward well enough? He did, after all, make several references to the fact that it's a very long and technical document. Either way, it doesn't look good for Minister Prentice).

The second question, Prentice felt, was "arcane." Because after all, so few of us travel abroad and want to be able to call ahead to hostels and pensiones using a locally-purchased SIM card rather than paying the astronomically high rates charged by our carriers here. It just NEVER happens.

The bottom line of that, btw, seemed to be that if we unlocked it here in Canada, we were potentially liable for the $20,000 in Statutory Damages (because that's totally different than a "fine," as he was careful to spend several minutes pointing out--though regardless of what you call it, our bank accounts will still be short $20K). If we wait till we go abroad, then it's just fine and dandy.

Prentice blustered and dithered further (and this on obvious questions that all of us are facing--and are the very reason we're fretting about the proposed legislation in the first place!), before citing a meeting and hanging up on Jesse Brown, the interviewer, who never did get a chance to ask the key question: "How exactly is any of this going to be enforced? Will ISPs have the right to monitor and report traffic to the government or other regulatory / watchdog groups?" etc.

Aw shucks, Prentice. Just when it was gettin' interesting...

Seizures induced by music

2008-06-15T09:00:00.003-04:00

This I found absolutely fascinating. What a terrible predicament for this woman--to develop a condition whereby hearing certain kinds of music causes you to have uncontrollable seizures. It began with only one or two songs--or types of music--but eventually, the seizures were triggered by everything except jazz and classical music, neither of which forms she particularly liked.

She couldn't work, couldn't go to college (in both cases, people's cell phones, with personalized ring tones featuring excerpts from songs would trigger the seizures--which also meant she couldn't go to any crowded public places, like subways, etc.). She couldn't go shopping, because malls and grocery stores have piped-in music. She basically became a shut-in--and couldn't even listen to her favourite tunes to help while away the hours.

Imagine how difficult life would be without music!

Brain surgery was eventually the only thing that helped. Now, apparently she's back at school and things are much better.

I had a friend who had a fragrance allergy, which made me aware of the ubiquity of fragrances. Reading this piece made me realise how widespread music really is, in our everyday lives!

Musicophobia: When Your Favorite Song Gives You Seizures: Scientific American

Art made from Edibles...

2008-06-14T00:00:00.001-04:00

Chewing gum art, if you can believe it (and oddly, I actually could. There are more things in Heaven and Earth, and all that...)!

PASTIFICIO CERERE FOUNDATION - ARTISTS AND INDUSTRIAL ARCHEOLOGY

Or, if chocolate is more your thing, then here's a great assortment of wacky chocolate shapes, plus jelly beans, chewing gum packs and a variety of other toothsome treats!

Dark Roasted Blend: The Tasty Art of Chocolate & Candy

Japan legislates waist size; Canada legislates Big Brother

2008-06-13T10:30:00.002-04:00

An article in the New York Times today really disturbed me (well, many articles I read, in a given day, disturb me). You may need to sign in to see the article. In a nutshell, they seem to be legislating a waist size in Japan. 33.5 inches for men and 35.4 for women. The onus would seem to be on employers to enforce it. You have to get measured, and if you are over the above maximums, then you have to lose the weight. If you don't eventually do it, then the company gets fined.

Kinda nasty, IMO. It's hard enough to lose weight--or to arrive at a positive self-image, at whatever size one happens to be. Somehow, I don't think getting fined will help. I can see the argument (that old chestnut) that everyone should be healthier and that carrying extra weight means a heavier toll on the health care industry (though as a side note, apparently a relatively high percentage of adults in Japan smoke, but no-one seems to be fining employers for all the smokers who work for them--which makes the "it's for good health" claim ring a little hollow). Why not just encourage exercise and healthy diets, but let people choose how they want to live, rather than fining people who don't conform to a certain, exact measurement? And in the mean while, I can just see the trickle-down effect.

Peer pressure and prejudice are already bad enough--imagine how much worse, if you start getting the evil eye from your employers because they're getting fined, thanks to the metabolism you've been cursing for much of your adult life already! Legislated discrimination, anyone?!

Japan, Seeking Trim Waists, Measures Millions - NYTimes.com

The other thing that's got me up in arms these days is, of course, the new proposed copyright act, here in Canada. Here is the site of an activist against it (so, admittedly, he's going to be somewhat biassed). I haven't yet tracked down the actual wording, but general coverage seems to be highlighting some pretty freaky aspects of it. What I'm reading as a bottom line, though, is that it's either unenforceable, or would require something of a police state in order to pull it off.

Essentially, you can get fined for watching an out of region DVD (like those European releases that aren't available in North America?!). There are some reasonable facets to it, but ultimately, it will either mean that you lose some of your rights to privacy (as ISPs are forced to pass along information to the government or watchdog/Big Brother) or it'll make not one jot of difference (if you manage to retain your privacy).

A side point that Tom brought up is that right now, we also pay a tax on all digital media purchased (blank CDs, DVDs etc.) which goes towards compensating artists, because of the widespread piracy taking place right now. Fine--even if you don't pirate, you're paying for those who do.

If this law is put in place, they'd presumably have to remove that tax, or, as Tom says, it would be like taxing illegal activities. But that's just an aside. The real issue is that I'd frankly rather pay the tax on the CDs and not be spied on.

This is particularly problematic, since I suspect the actual result will likely be somewhere between "unenforceable" and "police state". It will be selective prosecution, based on other factors (scapegoating, crackdowns, extortion or worse come to mind). Nasty stuff.

I'd be open to any counter-arguments or mitigating factors for either of the above pieces, BTW. I'm reacting based on what I've read. If you've got another angle or can complete the picture in a different way, I'm open to hearing it!

Edo period-style Pac-Man fanart - Boing Boing Gadgets

2008-06-12T22:49:00.001-04:00

This just gave me a smile. But it's also quite lovely!

Edo period-style Pac-Man fanart - Boing Boing Gadgets

BMW: Gina, the Fabric-covered car

2008-06-11T09:30:00.002-04:00

Gina? Don't they mean Christine? I mean, it's really pretty cool, but then those blinking eye headlights kinda took it over the line into creepy for me. That and the way it bends when the doors open, so it looks like flesh. What do you think?!

From Slashdot today.

Double Spaceship Sighting Alert | Universe Today

2008-06-11T08:00:00.002-04:00

Two for the price of one! I don't know if I'll get around to checking it out, but it's pretty freakin' cool, all the same! That's tonight, BTW, that they'll both be visible. Cool, no?

Double Spaceship Sighting Alert | Universe Today

Rushdie's Reading and Q&A

2008-06-10T08:49:00.005-04:00

A lot of things surprised me at the reading, in some cases for the better and in other cases... not so much.

1) The theatre (Danforth Music Hall) was full or very close to it. I remember seeing the film "Capote." There was a scene in which he read an excerpt from his much-anticipated but as yet incomplete novel _in Cold Blood_, and the theatre in which he read it was packed. And I thought "wow, if this was accurate, then times have changed. In our multi-media culture, with so many things clamouring for our attention, I cannot imagine such a good turnout." Well, now I've seen it.

Urban Culture + Really Famous Writer = full theatre, apparently. Nice to see, that. And the Capote scene was in NYC, so be proud TO, that we could fill a theatre with enthusiastic literati types, so eager to hear what a respected author has to say and read that we pay for the privilege (I could see it if it were a discussion of some general but intriguing topic--but it's nice to see this for just a reading and a Q&A as well).

2) He is not a very good reader. I'm not sure if this is just the start of the tour, but alas, he was not particularly riveting. He read too quickly and with little inflection. He had an extraordinarily long and complicated explanation/lead in to the passage he read (why not just choose an excerpt that requires fewer introductions, or test it on someone and see whether it stands on its own?). This is especially odd, given that people have not only given up their evening to go and listen to him speed through a dizzying reading, but they have paid $20 + any books they bought at the front desk. So surely, knowing that all these people have paid in time and money, you'd want to be somewhat rehearsed and interesting in your reading from the book they've just dropped another $32 + tax to purchase (I didn't buy the book--I was waiting to hear whether the content would sufficiently pique my interest. More below).

It was funny, too, because during the Q&A the question came up about his interest in acting--and he revealed that yes, he was most interested, and he has been doing some acting recently. So why not act a little as you read? Why not use a slightly different pitch, tone or intonation for the dialogue? etc. It felt rather like he hadn't read much before at all (which I can't imagine would be the case, given his reputation), and that he hadn't bothered to go over the passage he had selected to read before going up on stage last night.

3) He seems like a nice guy. Not surprising in itself, but one always feels somewhat curious about the personality underlying the talent. His seems rather professorial. Pleasant, knowledgable, and with a slight tendency to wax over-enthusiastic about topics that interest him, and lose sight of whether his audience is actually engaged or completely following what he's talking about (this, I would say, is common to many people. I'm that way for sure--I can still wax enthusiastic about the Cuban methods of farming, if you can believe it. I found what I read of it to be fascinating and, mystifyingly, few people I have spoken to share my enthusiasm. ;-D What's better still is that I'm not a gardener).

At any rate, I'm not totally convinced that this latest book will be much of an improvement on what I read of the previous one, Shalimar the Clown. I may go back to that one, as perhaps I just didn't get far enough (~100 pages or so) to really have it start to gel together. It still felt like it was in the setup and I was waiting for the linking of the narratives--or at least, for an inkling of where we were going (also known as a sense of momentum. It's the point at which you're getting the links and connections at an unconscious level and become eager to turn the pages because things are coming together in an interesting way. 100 pages, and that hadn't yet happened for me). The prose, too, was largely undistinguished, and certainly didn't have the burgeoning, playful, almost carnivalesque energy of his earlier works--it felt fairly blah and banal and functional, with the occasional interesting forays.

And yes, his choice of excerpt from The Enchantress of Florence also seemed so-so. Kind of neat, but more of a "get it from the library" than a "I've got to own it now!" reaction from me. I am, however, very intrigued by his portrayal of Fatepur Sikri, since that ghost city has fascinated me ever since we visited it, so many years ago, now.

So, that was my impression of the Rushdie talk. I don't know that I would recommend going, if he comes to a town near you. I don't generally have high expectations for such things--a good writer does not necessarily a good (viva voce) reader make. But I was curious about how he would be on stage and how he would present himself and all.

I also prefer it when a capable interviewer does the asking/mediating. Q&A's can be bothersome because often the questions that seem to come up are odd or fatuous--with the occasional, rare exception. This seems to be particularly the case at events like this, where there's an element of adulation/Cult of Personality or Talent involved--people are overwhelmed at the thought of speaking with the man. While I think they should be proud of what they did in going up there and asking their questions, as paying audience, I just don't find the content all that interesting. I'd rather be out, sipping coffee and chatting about the talk with Tom than sitting through tedious questions and tactful, somewhat belaboured answers. Last night, there were few exceptions to the fatuous rule, alas.

Still, interesting to see the grace and tact with which Rushdie responded to them. He handled it well. Lots of practice, I imagine. Now, if only he devoted a little time to polishing his reading skills....

Composite of Arecibo and Antennae makes for interesting results!

2008-06-09T08:00:00.000-04:00

Arecibo Joins Forces with Global Antennae to Simulate 6,800 Mile Telescope | Universe Today

A fascinating article. We went to Arecibo a couple of years back--kind of bizarre, in a way. The roads to get there and back were often these narrow little dirt roads--or ones that were, in some distant past, paved--that were practically one way. It really was remote. But worth the trip, if ever you're in Puerto Rico!

Favourite word in the article: interferometer.

Women interviewed about Infertility

2008-06-08T08:47:00.000-04:00

This was in the NYT today. Most interesting indeed, to hear about the different journeys each of these women have taken.

Mediated Culture

2008-05-10T14:38:00.006-04:00

My friend Rob and I have been enjoying a lengthy and wide-ranging email correspondence. He sent me this link in one of his recent emails.

http://mediatedcultures.net/mediatedculture.htm

I thought the first video (above) the most fascinating and widely-applied, in part because of the ideas it expresses, and in part because of the way it expresses them. The concepts behind what is shown are complex and nuanced in implication, and I thought it amazing that they could be expressed so eloquently and with such compactness in just a few minutes.

The second video (above) is more specific and applies to a whole re-ordering of the way we look at research and cataloguing in a virtual world.

The third (found at this link) was an interesting statement on the status of the classroom and the interaction of people.

The fourth I found to be the most simplistic and the least powerful of them. Interesting, but not quite as nuanced, complex and well-constructed. The message seemed a little reductive and didn't account for some of the freaky things that show up on you tube as well as the good.

't Hooft's lecture on Science Fiction & Reality

2008-05-07T21:30:00.006-04:00

I just got back from Gerard t' Hooft's lecture on Science Fiction and Reality.

First, his credentials (taken from the Perimeter Institute's website) and the lecture's blurb (feel free to skip to the end of the blurb if it doesn't interest you):

Dr. Gerard 't Hooft, Nobel Laureate, Utrecht University
Science Fiction and Reality

In the recent past, rapid scientific and technological developments have had tremendous impact on human society. Notably, the personal computer, internet and mobile telephones changed the world and shrank our planet. These developments are vastly different from the forecasts by science fiction authors who promised us space travel and intelligent humanoid robots. Could real scientists have done a better job in forecasting the future? What can we say about the future now?

Many science fiction fantasies will never materialize. Some will, but only over time spans of millions of years rather than a couple of centuries. Nature's laws are very strict and forbidding but also show gaps that might promise fantastic possibilities for a scientific future, even within our lifetime.

Gerard 't Hooft was born in 1946, and raised in the Netherlands. He studied theoretical physics at the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands, completing his thesis work in 1972, under the supervision of Martin Veltman. For two years he continued his research at the European particle physics laboratory CERN, Geneva. After lectureships at Utrecht and in the USA (Harvard, Stanford), he was appointed full professor at Utrecht University in 1976. Among his many honours, he and Veltman were awarded the The Nobel Prize in physics 1999, "For elucidating the quantum structure of electroweak interactions in physics", which refers to their joint work in 1972. More recently, ‘t Hooft became a member of Perimeter Institute’s highly esteemed Scientific Advisory Committee (SAC).

His research brought important new insights showing how to use quantized fields to describe sub-atomic particles, such as renormalization, magnetic monopoles, quark confinement and the physical effects of instantons. Later he turned his interest to the quantum aspects of gravitation and black holes. Dr.'t Hooft also supports educational outreach activities and considers the communication of fundamental science to the public as one of his most important duties.

-end blurb-

Ultimately, an interesting lecture, not because of the content so much as because of what it revealed about the speaker himself.

On the one hand, as the blurb would imply, he entirely misses the point of science fiction, which at its best isn't about trying to predict the future and "get it right" by any means. It's more about ideas and the scope of human behaviour. It's less about whether we can and more about whether we should.

It's certainly true that there is some science fiction that is about either entertainment or psychology and so the "science" is a device--hand waving, and as unprovable as the magic used in fantasy. But there is also a massive body of writing that is rigorously scientific, based on our ever-evolving knowledge, taken to beyond its outer edges. But the stuff that stands out is the stuff that tells us how humans react and develop in the midst of this technology.

To me, Neuromancer is not remarkable because it predicted something like the internet. It's remarkable because it foresaw people whose psyches were so deeply interwoven with technology that they only felt fully-realised in a virtual world. In that virtual world, they were heroes and kings (or cyber cowboys, as it were)--legends among their peers, such that, once denied access to the virtual world, they felt like amputees, and as if they had lost an essential part of themselves. Hmmm.

Similarly so with the other prescient works of SF.

't Hooft's lecture missed this point entirely, and instead focussed on the science. This may be because he wanted to show the impressionable young people in the audience that SF really isn't always tenable, but I suspect that may be stretching things.

At any rate, I was fascinated because for the whole early portion of the lecture, as he described what science might be able to do very soon, I felt deeply disturbed--in part because his explication was so purely scientific and without value judgement at all.

He seemed disturbingly excited, or at best neutral, about ideas that freaked me out--ideas like tweaking DNA (you'd think that the whole issues around GM seeds and chemicals surrounding the Green Revolution would give one pause)... stuff that's so morally dark grey that it's another post entirely. At other times, he spoke with absolute equanimity about the idea of an advanced AI robot of some sort running for president. Maybe it would do a better job than W or any fallible human--or maybe it would become a creepy dictator--that's a side issue. My point here is that he brought this up, while admitting that we probably wouldn't be able to accept the idea of an AI governing us. In this case, it was his air of bafflement that got me. As a culture, we've been fighting about our right to freedom and self-choice ever since Eve decided she wanted to try some of that yummy-looking fruit up on the tree, but he didn't seem to get that.

And so it was as if he couldn't see the potential abuses to so many of the ideas he put forward.

This to me is the kind of mentality that was so effectively critiqued in the Terminator films, for instance (I'm thinking of the second one in particular, here, though it's ultimately a common motif in SF, going right back to Frankenstein). It amazed me that here was a man who so fit a certain paradigm, standing up at the front and critiquing SF. Yet, in the process, he was displaying a mentality that so many SF works sympathetically reveal as the most frightening of spectres: a person of visionary science, with a complete lack of perspective and understanding of human nature. Here was someone so fixated on the fact that we might be able to, that he entirely lost sight of the fact that in many cases, we really probably shouldn't.

The most revealing moment in the lecture, for me, came in the question period, when one of the audience members asked "Of all the things you discussed today, which idea scares you the most?"

His answer: people. He didn't understand people at all, he said. He didn't understand why they behaved as they did, thought as they did, and did what they did, to themselves and each other.

And I thought: Ah. Yes. And that's why he doesn't understand SF.

Steampunk your mac

2008-04-25T18:35:00.004-04:00

Steampunking is the process of taking modern items--things that are clearly contemporary like computers, cellphones etc. and crafting them to look as if they were made in the Victorian/Edwardian era.

Here's a fabulous website that compiles all the beautiful things that do-it-yourselfers and hobbyists are creating in the funky steampunk tradition.

This is just gorgeous. A fellow made it for his bride as a wedding gift. It's a mac mini, keyboard and screen. Exquisite. I'd never want to throw it away--even once it was totally obsolete! New tech marries old-fashioned workmanship.

Craziest review so far!

2008-04-23T12:17:00.001-04:00

St. John Passion on Good Friday
Likely the craziest circumstances under which I've had to write a review, bar none--so far. And hopefully, the craziest ever. I arrived a little later than usual, only to learn that the room at the back, beside Terry, the lighting guy, had been co-opted by the CBC to record the performance. I guess national media trumps local media.

BUT, it turned out the viewing room, with the t.v. monitor that they used to have set up back stage for the Record reviewer was no longer there--they'd renovated, realised no-one was using it and ditched it. A frantic call to the Record revealed that they were expecting the review and had reserved the space for it.

So, I ended up in the lobby, watching the review on tiny monitors--that didn't actually show the multi-media presentation (I had to ask someone in the lobby during the intermission about that--what were the paintings and how well they went with the text/narrative. It seemed like they were closely matched). In additon, the sound was faint, and the two women at the vending stalls were gossiping about something or another, and so I could barely hear the soloists--one or two of them sounded strong, but I was in no position to judge nuance.

As well, there was no access to the surtitles that they projected in the theatre--the monitors didn't include those, and even if they did, they likely would have been unreadable. Thank goodness, at least, I am able to get onto Terry's wireless network and from there, the internet. A quick search and I was able to track down a copy of the libretto in German, with English translations beside it. Because I couldn't hear any of it properly, only barely making out the words because the sound was so faint, the moment I lost the thread of what was being sung (i.e. the chatty refreshments servers spoke more loudly or started laughing), it was impossible to find my place. So, I just read through the libretto, and wrote from there.

Hence, the focus on thematic motifs. I felt I gave short shrift to the performance itself, alas--but there was little else I could do. But, I did speak to the editor who has followed up and ensured that we will be forewarned of the future presence of the CBC, so we can make alternate arrangements in the future. Whew!

Recent reviews

2008-04-22T11:56:00.004-04:00

A couple of my most recent reviews for any who might be interested!

A symphonic adaptation of Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon

This one was rather interesting to write: I was in the room at the back of the auditorium, watching the show through the glass and hearing it over the speakers as usual (rather than live--not nearly as good, but the only way possible, given the constraints).

Also as usual, I had slightly less than two hours in which to write it: the show starts at 8 pm and the filing deadline is 10 pm. The extra challenge was that the visual artist was also in the room, controlling the multi-media presentation--as was the guy who organized the show and the general manager of the the KWS--plus, of course, Ron, the projector guy (who's pretty quiet). Terry the lighting guy was in the adjacent room, as well as his daughter--but he was kept busy with the complex light show that was part of the concert. So it was mainly the other three guys who were all chatting and it was like a private box with a party going on--they were commenting on the show and so on. It was rather nice to see how really and truly excited they were by it--justly so, as it was excellent. But, it was also extraordinarily difficult to write a coherent 550+ word review in two hours with all that going on! I ended up filing four minutes late (yes, at 10:04), so it only made about half of the print editions of the paper. *sigh*

But I do actually enjoy the challenges, and usually I'm on time. I'd say, because of the amount going on, this was a bit of an exception.

The Wellington Winds' latest concert: Soft Vocalise & Mystic Spaces

This was more straightforward. I had until 3 the next afternoon to write this one, and it wasn't in a venue where I could have whipped out the laptop and clicked away at the keyboard--it would have disturbed the other viewers. So, I just took notes and then wrote it up the next day. Yesterday, that is. I wasn't as inspired as I like to be--it was a good concert, but review-wise, I like it best if I can manage to present some kind of unified thematic motif... something I can start with and then return to at the end. There's a nice symmetry then, I feel. But yesterday, this was somehow the best I could manage!

And now presenting...

2008-03-13T23:26:00.002-04:00

The Illustrated Cuban Journals! (link) See the [bath]room with a view, the bare bulb in our room, and the lack of dead dogs on the beach! Wahooo! And yes, please do stay tuned for the rest of the Cuba trip--Havana. My favourite part. I will get to it. Soon. Very, very soon!

The Cuban Journals: Post- Trip

2008-02-22T12:32:00.006-05:00

We left for Cuba on February 14th, for a week. We got back late last night. It seems like we've been gone much longer--though that's often how I feel when I step out of my daily routine.

It makes sense, really. In the everyday scheme of things, we're often on autopilot and only encounter a few new elements (the world news, perhaps, or an overnight snowfall we have to drive through on our commute).

By contrast, as soon as we're in a different place, our brains are forced to begin processing a multitude of new elements--everything from getting our bearings, through responding to differences in nuance, body language and culture, to the busy onslaught of taking in the sights, visiting historical monuments or trying to fit each element encountered into the bigger picture. No wonder, then, that each day feels much longer and bursting at the seams with new experiences when we're on holiday.

I didn't take my computer nor my alphasmart to Cuba with me, as I didn't want the hassle and worry of lugging them around. So, I just made notes in my journal. Over the next several days, I'll transcribe exerpts, then back date them as relevant.

So, feel free to browse the entries as they're posted, to scroll back to the 14th, start at the beginning and read up through the days to the most recent one--or to skip it altogether, as you will. The choice is yours! :-D

The Cuban Journals: Soap, Milk and Chocolates

2008-02-17T15:23:00.014-05:00

It is our last full day in Varadero. We usually divide our time here between walking around the town and sitting on the pleasant but crowded beach, with its white sands and clear water, stretching out into the distance in ever-deepening bands of turquoise. We've both managed to get a lot of reading done (I'm not much of a beach person, as I'm not athletic, only occasionally frolic in the waves and am not big on suntanning. I swear, I'll be coming back from a week in Cuba almost as pale as I was when I went).

But, though the town is cut off from the rest of Cuba--and I'm growing increasingly frustrated by this isolation and more intrigued by the question of what it's like beyond the tidy streets of Varadero--we've had a few interesting encounters and experiences over the last few days.

* * *

On our first day, we walked through the town to get our bearings and purchase our Via Azul bus tickets to Havana. Via Azul is the tourist bus line (there are separate buses for tourists and locals--I don't know enough to speculate about whether it's to keep people from telling outsiders what Cuba is like, or whether it's simply that tourists might want a more luxurious travel options than the regular inter-city buses). The town seemed well-maintained. Though there were some run-down places, I was most especially struck by the lack of litter. No cans and bottles strewn on the grass patches--everything was strikingly clean. Ontario, after the thaws--not to mention other places--Japan, Italy, etc.--had far more litter strewn by the roadsides.

And so, we wondered, as we walked through, how much this was like the rest of the country--were Cubans exceptionally civic-minded?

Later that afternoon, we were sitting on one of the slightly offputting rattan chairs in the lobby area, right beside a sign that said "Careful--wet floor". They had placed it right beside a pool of gungy water that had accumulated due to a leak in the ceiling, and Tom chuckled and said, "I guess it's easier to put up the sign than to actually fix it."

A few moments later, a burly, bearded man started taking photos of the sign. When we made eye contact with him, he grinned and said, in accented English, "Easier to put the sign than fix. I'm taking a picture to show people back home, or they might not believe it."

Of course, we started chatting. He and his family are from Poland. "For my wife and me," he said, "this is our past--this place, this kind of society. For my daughter, it's history--textbook stuff. We are here to show her what it was like for us."

We learned that they had been here several weeks, staying in Varadero, but touring around, taking buses and taxis into nearby towns, chatting with people. As he spoke, he grew angrier and more passionate,

"A man heard us speaking Polish. 'You are Polish?' he said and he took us aside. He is a school teacher. He told us of how things are. Only household with children under seven can get milk. Any families with older kids--no luck. This is the rationing. They only get one cake of soap a month. One tube of toothpaste. I said to him, 'Is there something I can give you to help? Some money, something to buy?' He said, 'Only take back the word and tell them how it is here.'"

His wife and daughter came over as he was speaking with us--smiling politely and touching his shoulder and he shook himself, then chuckled. "It's okay. I get carried away. We will see you later, perhaps."

* * *

We had read that it's best not to drink the tap water in Cuba. Two different women at CAA warned us of the dire consequences of drinking tap water--or of even using it to brush our teeth. Even on the bus over from the airport, the representative said, "We drink our water here in Cuba and it is good water. But there are minerals in it that do not agree with your stomachs. Rather than get sick, it's best to stick to bottled water."

Imagine my dismay, then, to learn that our hotel doesn't have bottled water--neither as a giveaway, nor available to purchase. Upon making inquiries, we were told that the tap water was fine, but to be safe, we each had a thermos (which did not appear to have been washed much, and had an interestingly earthy smell to it) in our rooms and we could come down and have those filled from the bar, which contained filtered water. Once again, we were told the tale of these mysterious "minerals" that would upset our stomach, and this time, I began to wonder whether the minerals in question might not bear a suspicious resemblance to the bacterias which live in the water of every other country whose water we delicate North Americans can't drink. Could it possibly be some kind of strange way of saving face, to blame "minerals" rather than bacteria? An interesting question.

At any rate, I wanted to get a water bottle that we could refill on the beach, and we were told to go to the grocery store, which was two blocks away, in the opposite direction than we had previously wandered.

We made our way through a crafts market--all the stalls sold variations of the same crafts, at fixed prices. At one point, a woman offered to braid my hair. When I declined, she started asking if I had any soap, shampoo or anything at all that I might give her. Since I had given my extra soap to the woman who cleans our room, I wasn't able to help her with that, either. Even the pencils and erasers we had brought to give to the kids we had forgotten to bring in our bag that day.

At the grocery store, which consisted of two, narrow aisles, it rapidly became evident that this groceria was primarily for tourists--the prices were high, even by our standards, while the clientèle consisted entirely of people from the resorts in the area. Most of the goods available were imported--either from other parts of Central and South America, or from Canada.

The chocolate bars were all kept at the front, and when we asked the woman at the desk about one that contained cashews, she said, "Oh yes, that one is very good." It cost about 2.35 pesos, which translates to about 2.50 CAD--but it was for one of those big chocolate bars, so it wasn't too outrageous.

Later, we spotted a restaurant selling food in another part of town that Cuban folk would be more likely to frequent. A hamburger was .80 pesos, and a plate of spaghetti was 1.35. If that's the average cost of a meal for someone from Cuba, then 2.35 for a chocolate bar would have been ridiculously luxurious and expensive.

"I wonder if the woman at the store had actually even been able to afford to taste that chocolate bar," Tom said ruefully as we looked over the restaurant prices. That was when I remembered another key detail. The chocolates had been in a glass case at the front by the cash register, much the way valuables are stored: in display cabinets, under constant supervision.

The Cuban Journals: Mas Frijoles Por Favour (More Beans, Please)

2008-02-16T13:11:00.011-05:00

The hotel continues to fascinate.

In order to not feel too bad about paying $750pp for a week here, given that the price dropped by so much the day after we booked (but even what we paid was cheaper than the airfare to Havana, I remind myself), I have decided that we have paid this sum for a taste of what it is like to vacation in a country where Communism, embargoes and pre-existing widespread poverty have combined to produce a place like our Hotetur.

It's not just one factor but a combination, I'm sure--and presumably, since others who have been to four and five star resorts haven't seemed to have noticed these things, there's also something to do with management and tight margins at play here.

One of the most striking things, outside of our dingy room, which is at least clean (if you don't include the bedspreads and the curtains, which are also brown-tinged by dust), is how run down and, in some cases, filthy, things are here.

One or another of the two, tiny elevators seems to be perpetually out of order, and on our first night, we were told by one of the other guests that the elevators, for some reason, do not stop at the fifth floor, so she always has to walk up to her room. The mirrored walls of the elevator are scratched and marked up by lines of cellotape adhesive. The tape and whatever it affixed is long gone, but the glue obviously remained behind and collected bits of grunge.

We've started taking the stairs.

The front lobby is funky in that retro-kitsch way, though I'm not convinced it was retro when the place was originally built. The colours are bright, the fonts are funky ("Reception" is spelled out with wooden cutouts, but the "c" has come half unaffixed and tilts drunkenly). There are potted palms all over, and the design of the vast, elegant seating area of the lobby--which doubles as a cafe/hangout for guests--is ingenious. It features open windows lining the top, and a lowered ceiling in the middle, which channels the cross drafts into the lobby, and provides a cool, breezy respite if the afternoon heat proves too much.

Still, like much of the hotel, upon closer examination, all is not as elegant as it seems. The comfortable, inviting rattan chairs all feature grimy, stained cushions that are often a little damp and unpleasant to sit on.

The main restaurant is the same. At first glance, it seems nice enough, but the devil is in the details. Presumably, it is either:

a) too expensive to have the table cloth covers laundered,
b) too expensive to have a second set of table cloth covers available to alternate, while the other set is being laundered,
or
c) too expensive to have someone who is in charge of removing and replacing the table cloth covers and getting them laundered.

A final possibility is that no-one working there cares much about the table cloth covers, one way or another.

You may be wondering what I mean by "table cloth covers." I don't know the official term, but often at restaurants, you'll see an underlying table cloth (often white linen), and then a second, smaller, often contrasting, table cloth laid over the first, at an angle. Usually, it seems like it's partly expedient--the contrasting colours don't stain as easily (because they're usually a darker shade), they add flair to the tables, and they're easy to strip off and replace with fresh ones regularly, then bundle off to the laundry.

Well, this place has such table cloth covers, in a pale purply-pink, fleur de lis pattern. But, the person in charge hasn't seemed to have cottoned onto the idea that they need to be washed. In consequence, they are filthy: spotted with stains and blotches that are no longer remotely identifiable (though I don't know that I'd feel better if I could actually name the kinds of foods that caused the stains). They're so dirty that, under any other circumstances, I wouldn't place my cutlery on them. But, alas, instead of having the usual bin of cutlery that buffets often feature (right beside the plates), here, the waiters and waitresses lay the tables with the cutlery, so it's already sitting on the stains.

Being the polite Canadians that we are, we just accept this, try to ignore the filth, and eat our breakfast/lunch/dinner.

The food is equally interesting. My joke about the beans, as it turns out, is not so far off. Most meals do feature beans--and tasty ones too, often as not. I had to laugh about lunch today: it actually featured three separate dishes containing different kinds of beans in various preparations, often mixed with pork or bacon bits.

I don't know what the standards are outside of the resort, but I have read enough about Cuba itself to know that while this might not be fare that I'm accustomed to--and there may only be one or two dishes that, with my rarefied tastebuds, I might actually be able to eat (i.e. my dislike of chewy, fatty or gristly meat--in fact, I've started avoiding the meat altogether whenever possible... hence, my newfound love of beans in all their glory), there's more food, and more variety, here than many people in this country get access to.

Fifteen or so years ago, after the collapse of the USSR, and the consequent disappearence of subsides and financial aid to Cuba, the daily food intake of everyone in the country dropped by an average of 1000 calories a day. Their entire economy and approach farming had to change to accommodate the sudden loss of Communist markets willing to purchase their sugar at a subsidized rate. In addition, the US tightened their embargoes, certain that Cuba's regime would collapse any day, after the changes.

Instead, they restructured their entire approach to agriculture. They diversified, instead of growing vast monocultures of crops. The lack of gasoline (again because of the embargoes) forced them to return to older methods, and their dwindling oxen population was suddenly brought back into action to help with the tilling of the fields. I think at the beginning of the so-called "special period" the oxen population was at ~50K. In recent years, it's up to almost half a million or so.

Because fertilizers and pesticides are expensive, they had to go back to older methods of managing pests and helping things grow. Cutting-edge research (education is free in Cuba and many people have advanced degrees--and agricultural sciences is a popular subject) created ever greater refinements in pest control and the use of methods of crop rotation and the like.

Now, all these years later, most people have regained that 1000 calories per day.

But, some things are unchanged. Meat--especially beef--is still rare, because of the extraordinary amount of resources required to raise even one head of cattle.

Much of the beef we get at the resort is stringy or gristly, but it's likely more than most people in the country have access to. Since I hate the idea of the people clearing the plates away--who perhaps have families without access to anything but the most basic supplies--seeing large chunks of wasted meat on my plate because I end up gagging at the crunchy and chewy bits, I figured it's wiser to just avoid it.

At any rate, though, the food is plentiful, and Tom and I have both learned our lessons: don't take large helpings the first time round and avoid the meat whenever possible. If something is good, you can always go back for more.

Many of the dishes, both at the main restaurant and the pizzeria, are interesting because they seem to be distant echoes of some dish we might recognise. The pizza, for instance, tastes like no pizza I've ever had before, in North America or Europe. It's as if it were made by someone who is just following a recipe and has never actually tasted either the North American or European varieties of pizza (as, indeed, is likely the case) and who is, perhaps, missing key ingredients and substituting others out of both necessity and a lack of awareness of how different it will make the food item taste.

For instance, the kinds of cheeses available here are limited--I think there might only be a couple of varieties. Certainly, the cheese that's used on the pizza doesn't taste remotely like mozzarella, or the three cheese blends we get in NA. Ditto the tomato sauce. The crust is more bread-y than any other pizza crusts I've ever eaten.

The same goes for the desserts. The frostings on the little cakes glisten and appear oily. They taste nothing like the frostings we get in North America--I'm guessing that maybe whipping cream or some other key ingredient is hard to come by, so maybe they use oil and egg? A dessert square tasted basically like flour and sugar, which made me wonder whether vanilla essence is hard to come by. And so on. It also brings home to me how much we take for granted with regard to the kinds of ingredients we can get in NA--the idea of not being able to get hold of vanilla essence (even if that's not the taste I'm missing) has vast implications, as a powerful reminder of how supply chain, international trade and infrastructures enhance our daily lives in small but cumulative ways.

It's very interesting to try to guess at what difference in ingredients causes any given food to taste so different here. I'm starting to suspect this resort is in some kind of no-man's land. I don't know that the meals feature anything like actual Cuban food--more likely, they're trying to cater to our tastebuds, but don't know how, or can't quite pull it off because of limited resources.

The Cuban Journals: A [bath]Room with a View

2008-02-15T13:34:00.014-05:00

To sum it up: it would seem that we have managed to find an authentic place--a real taste of Tropical Communism, in a hotel replete with kitsch character. It's the kind of place, brimming with art-deco, retro furniture and faded glory, where I imagine Communists with Connections, in years past, may have vacationed.

Our hotel room is a prime example. The yellow paint on the walls, and the sloppily ironed yellow curtains (the latter are deeply creased, as if the person ironing or pressing them couldn't be bothered to smooth out the wrinkles before applying the heat, so that instead of getting the creases out, it has entrenched them into the fabric) make a valiant attempt to offset the dinginess of the accomodations. There's a strange front area--a semi-room--with a divan (funky art deco design, but the green upholstery has seen better, cleaner, days) and a t.v. that is placed half-way out of the room at an extraordinarily awkward angle. There is no place in this little half-room from which you could comfortably watch the television--no angle from which you could actually sit and enjoy your show without developing a crick in your neck.

Right beside the divan is a large, white panel that has been affixed to the wall with screws that have long grown loose in their sockets. It's easy enough to remove the large board, which reveals a large, dusty utility space with three small tubes inside. If the space had been fashioned to actually fit the size of the tubes, the room would be at least a third more spacious, but alas...

The beds are firm and comfortable, and the sheets are mercifully crisp, clean and fresh smelling, though sadly, not as much could be said for the bedspreads, which are grungy, the colours dulled by a resolute accumulation of dirt on the fabric.

On the bedside table is a lamp with a bare, low-wattage bulb. Who knows what has become of the lampshade, but it certainly isn't anywhere in our room. When we switch the light on, it starts flickering madly, with spasm-inducing speed. We tried to swap it with the lamp in the demi-room, but both are, unfortunately, inextricably fixed to the wall.

The bathroom, however, is the piece de resistance. We have two small, threadbare but clean towels, a tiny, single, unwrapped cake of fresh soap and a roll of tp, placed on the tank of the toilet because the tp holder is broken. The sink leaks at the bottom, but that has been masterfully offset by a drain, placed just beside it, though on a slight upward incline, so the water doesn't always quite reach it, and instead simply pools on the floor.

The shower is our favourite part. There is a window that begins at about waist height and goes to just above my head. The bottom pane of the window is frosted. But the top one is not. And so, while we shower, we are able to look upon the outdoor corridor of the rooms alongside ours, watching as people come and go. We can also, by crouching down and looking up, see the balcony of the floor above us--and those who might happen to be looking towards us can, of course, see our showering selves. I tried turning the hot water on, in order to fog up the window and acquire some privacy, but between the water pressure only allowing for a sporadic, summer drizzle of a shower and the inadequate seals on the window in question, we've had very little luck in fogging it up enough for privacy. So instead, as we shower, we've just kept an eye out the window and ducked wildly whenever anyone walks by, on their way to their room. So far, no-one has spotted us.

The Cuban Journals: No Dead Dogs

2008-02-14T10:15:00.005-05:00

We leave for Cuba this afternoon. I really have no idea what to expect.

The Background:

TCN (aka Tom) has the week off, starting today, because it's Reading Week at Humber. So, he fashioned the notion of a week-long getaway to a place that has a lively music scene. The choices he honed in on were New Orleans and Cuba. We were slightly more in favour of Cuba (despite our ambivalences about the Castro regime and effectively helping to support it by going there, etc.) because we were really interested in seeing--even if it was a limited glimpse, through a glass darkly (as it were)--what life might actually be like there, after almost 50 years of Communisim.

A quick look around revealed that it would be cheaper to book a package tour at an all-inclusive (~$700pp for food, accomodation etc. at the resort) than it would be to flight straight to Havana and back on the dates we required ($1500pp). So, we figured on a few beach days, before setting out for the city.

Tom exhaustively researched the mid- to low- end all-inclusives, and we settled on a 3-star called Hotetur Sun Beach. After reading reviews of many of the other mid-rage places in Varadero, this seemed to be a winner. Other 3-star hotels in Varadero featured such ringing endorsements as (loosely paraphrased from Trip Advisor):

"there was a dead dog on the beach in front of our hotel that no-one bothered to remove for over five days"

and,

"a furry critter that ran across our covers one night. We had a laugh about that, but weren't laughing when, the next night, the creature bit my fiance's hand"

Sun Beach, by contrast, featured largely neutral or slightly positive reviews. It was clean, at least. No dead dogs. The food, most people concluded, was mediocre and not especially tasty, but no-one reported getting sick. People also agreed that the place was somewhat run down and could use a freshening up of paint, etc. Other comments suggested we ought to make sure we brought our own shampoo, soap and toilet paper (for when we left the hotel, rather than at the hotel itself). Gifts (e.g. dollar store items, like pencils etc.) for the maids would be rewarded with extra attention to our rooms.

So, with cautious optimism and the price climbing ever higher as we started to make the booking--it went up by $50 dollars between our deciding to do it and our going on line to actually reserve it--we took the plunge. Inevitably, the next day, the price dropped by almost half. *sigh*

But now, armed with soap, shampoo, tp and light, summery clothes, we're off! I was joking with Kelly that, after the reviews, I half expect the meals to consist of a dollop of beans and pork rinds, served at some bleak, Communist-style canteen by an ageing, dour-faced Che lookalike. She assured me that on their trip to Cuba, the buffets were very nice and the food was tasty--with nary a bean in sight. Of course, they stayed at a 5-star place on their visit...

Cy-Borges

2008-01-13T13:07:00.001-05:00

Apparently, it's the name of a new collection of essays dealing with how Borges prefigured the Internet in his short stories. Here's the article from the NYT.

And here, too, is the letter, in which the respondent adds another story to the list of Internet precursors to be found in Borges's extraordinary oeuvre of short fiction. What can I say? Borges Rules!! And I have to agree--the metaphors are apt and resonant, IMO, in the same way that Tennyson's Locksley Hall excerpt "For I Dipped into the Future" describes, in a metaphorical way, the events to come. Nothing literal and there's no claim that Borges actually envisaged the internet as it would appear, but The Book of Sand, the Library of Babel et al. really are beautifully eloquent evocations of the Internet in all its profusions.

Latest Review: KWS Season Debut Concert

2007-09-15T14:31:00.001-04:00

Here it be!

Someday soon, I hope to start doing m' blog again more regularly. But all this will wait till the latter portion of next week, when I hope that the frenzied rush will die down at last!

Is Precise Historical Accuracy Desirable in Fiction?

2007-08-02T12:57:00.000-04:00

I'm not convinced of it, though I imagine it would depend on the genre.

The bigger question--can we ever *be* historically acurate?--is a related debate. After all, if two people were to write about the here and now, they'd portray it differently. Different minds pick up different things and so we might have completely different portrayals--each accurate in its own way, in the same sense that two different painters' versions of a landscape are both accurate--of the same scene.

So too with history, no? Two people read the same book, look at the same pictures, deal with the same materials--they'd still write totally different reports on the information they've taken in. So, perhaps there's no such thing as historical accuracy in that sense.

But, laying aside the question of subjectivity, is it desirable to portray historical settings and so on with as much accuracy as we can muster, based on the information available? Some might say yes--I once asked the question of a panel of historical fiction writers and they all seemed pretty admant. Which didn't necessarily stand up to the work they were writing, IMO (at least in the case of those whose work I've read).

I'm not naming names--and this may just be my own bias about the gritty reality of history versus the desirable escapism that is fiction--but it seemed to me that these writers had to bend in certain ways. For instance, the attitude towards holding slaves (which I brought up and the answer to which was "Don't go there if you can avoid it or unless the book is specifically about that"). The ugly reality is that many historical novels would take place in a period where slaveholding was commonplace and most people didn't even question it.

A few people did. But, it's remote enough a chance that one of the two protagonists would hold abolitionist views--it's even more remote a possibility that another character, met at a social gathering and ultimately meant to be the love interest (and who therefore must be sympathetic), would hold similar views (unless that social gathering were the annual abolitionist bbq ;-D). Nor would most people--especially women, given their role and status--be able to put their feet down and say "I couldn't possibly be involved with someone who is pro-slaveholding."

Women were non-persons in so many different ways at so many different times that treating them with respect was a purely discretionary thing--and respect often meant something rather different to what it means now. What I suspect would have been considered respectful at the time would now be thought of as hopelessly patronizing (even books written in the 40's and 50's--I'm thinking some murder mysteries I read a while ago--have the hero giving the heroine a great compliment by saying something like "Why you little darling. How terribly brave you must have been to have walked all the way here on your own like that" or words to that effect).

So that's how it was--with notable exceptions, of course. Jane Austen's Elizabeth Bennett is of course one of the prime examples. She was an exception--and considered a bit of an eccentric by those who knew her. Her various sisters were all far more typical of the feminine types--boring, pedantic and sanctimonious (Mary--the prototypical bluestocking), silly, frivolous and idiotic (Kitty and Lydia) or lovely, sweet and not particularly bright (Jane). Elizabeth was an Original even within the context of her own family.

Most other Regency-era books we read these days (and I include my own books in there too) feature heroines who are grounded and sensible in a very contemporary way--and whose immediate friends or closest siblings are the same way. We all do it to some degree (while writing a few paragraphs of background to explain why this might be and justify it for the period) because the reader has to find the heroine sympathetic and this is the easiest way to accomplish that.

And so, I get to my point--costume dramas are really what most readers are looking for, IMO. The writer's duty is to make the seams between contemporary views and historically appropriate portrayals seamless (either by creating a backstory that justifies a nonstandard view or at the least, by leaving out contemporary slang/supplanting it with a dusting of period words or syntax, and working within the prevailing conventions as much as possible, so that those who know a little bit about the time don't start groaning).

As always, it's the story that comes first, but that story should fit its context, or something's gonna give out. Either it will be the story (that must be changed to fit), the context (to be re-staged in a different period)--or the readers (when they your book down and buy a different one instead).

Do Self-Help Books Really Work?

2007-07-24T16:34:00.000-04:00

The common sense answer would be "no." As with the weight loss industry, the self-help industry continues to thrive--where, one would imagine that it would be a shrinking market if each book were truly the panacea it claimed to be. But, as with any genre, there are those who read self-help books (guilty) and those who do not--which would reinforce the notion that the books do not work, for the related reason that those who read them keep coming back for more.

But, as with the weight loss industry, the question is not a simple "does it work or doesn't it?" Because there might indeed be a small subset of clients for each who are able to follow the principles of one or another program and who are duly improved and move on to healthy, productive lives. Others may follow them but enjoy "top ups." They would therefore return to their favourites, or to new ones that that provide different spins on the same ideas.

But the issue is bigger than that, also. I think it has to do with our prevailing attitude. I'm as guilty as anyone in, at some level, wanting a quick fix--a true panacea. Though most of the books state, over and over again, that the ideas they promote *will* work if they are applied, practiced and learned with some considerable measure of persistence, few of us are willing to commit to that kind of persistence. We read the book, apply the ideas for a few days, then fall back into our old habits and complain about how nothing works (read: nothing works well enough to jolt us out of our quick-fix mentality, to make us persist and push through without any evidence of results. We've lost our sense of short-term deprivation for long-term gain).

The big new trend seems to be the Cognitive Behavioural Therapy approach. The theory is that instead of targeting behaviour (e.g. a task-oriented book on lists and organizing life strategies for combatting procrastination), they target thought and attitudes (e.g. *why* don't you want to do this? If you don't get to the root of the question of where your resistance lies, no number of lists or goals will help you--you'll just fail to meet them and feel all the worse). It makes sense--never mind that this too is not a new idea.

But it doesn't address the widespread sense of entitlement--the attitude that says "I should be able to lose weight *and* have that McDonald's supersize meal with an extra sandwich on the side." Ahem. It's that whole matter of facing the fact that some things that need to be done simply aren't fun, but they *have to be done*. It's not negotiable.

So, it becomes a chicken and egg questions. Is it that self-help books don't work, or that people don't stick to them long enough to discover whether the methods outlined will actually address their issues? And if that's the justification given, it's ultimately irrelevant where the method breaks down ("If you had followed my method and persisted with it, it would have worked like a dandy. But you didn't--so how can you expect results?" And, on the part of the reader: "the ideas are great, but the book didn't motivate me to follow through--maybe this next book will resonate with me more deeply"). In which case, the answer to the question is reduced, once again, to a simple "no." :-)

Now I'm off to read my self-help book about ceasing to procrastinate by becoming more self-confident. It worked for today, at least. And for that, I can be very glad indeed. :-)

Autumnal

2007-07-20T15:58:00.000-04:00

Today has been decidedly blustery and autumnal--but the sun is lovely. I have no news for today, other than that I hope to go for a walk later this afternoon. It's a zen kind of day, in that sense.

Story by Robert McKee

2007-07-18T13:05:00.000-04:00

Today, I've set aside time to go through Robert McKee's excellent articulation of the elements of effective narrative. I figure, it's a good reminder, as I want to start working on Inanna next. I think I'll need to "storyboard" it out in order to make it the most effective. It will likely be a few weeks of planning and working out the details and the arc of the scenes, sequences and acts (so to speak). Of course, my storyboards don't include drawings--but I do use a whiteboard and coloured stickies. It's nice to have that visual expanse to refer to--or so I found when I was working on _An Immodest Proposal_. It really made a difference in keeping things tight and focussed.

The McKee book is called _Story_ and while it's ostensibly aimed at screenplay writers, many of the principles apply to prose as well--particularly since the movement is towards more scene-based narrative in novels. The current aesthetic--conditioned by film, I suspect--parses exposition as less readable, direct and engaging, and scenes/action/movement as more engaging. And so, I've been working on that--trying to minimize exposition and narrative summary and have more active, relevant scenes instead. It's a lot harder that way, and when there are word length constraints, it's not always possible (e.g. the story I'm working on right now, for a contest. The word limit is 5,000 and so I've been dancing around that--add a bit, take out something elsewhere--for the last while. The result has been more exposition than I'd like. Still, that's often the challenge--creating interesting characters and a story that's layered, complex and full, but also doing it within a reasonable word limit).

The other thing I'm doing today is working on the aforesaid story, and trying to add stronger closure, while staying within the word limit. So--back to that!

Tesseracts 11 Update and Road Trip Pics!

2007-07-17T18:31:00.000-04:00

Well, the page is up! Tesseracts 11. Of course, perhaps this whole pseudonym thing is overrated, since it seems to cause some confusion: Susan Deefholts on one page, Khria Deefholts on the other. The same thing happened with the Anglo-Indian anthology too. I ended up as Susan Nagy on one credit and Susan Deefholts on another (I think the cover promises a piece by Susan Nagy, while the actual book only delivers one by Susan Deefholts). Likely, I was the only one to notice the disparity, in that instance.

So, though I'd like to go for the "it's now out there and I have nothing I can do to change it" distancing effect of a pseudonym, perhaps that's just not meant to be. But, hopefully, they'll send a galleys (and I also hope this posting on their website is the preliminary mockup with the content roughed in, since there are a few typos. I don't want to be the one to point that out to them, so I can only hope that someone else does, or they pick up on it themselves!).

Here, too, is the link to the pics from our road trip! I loaded them in Facebook, but the link should still work.

Album 1 (From our initial departure to our visit to Princeton)

Album 2 (Woodstock and the Finger Lakes).

In other news, our screen door is broken as a result of persistent efforts on the part of the furniture delivery guys. They tried really really hard to get the thing in, but even with the laws of physics slightly bent and the bohemoth mostly in the door, something had to give. Better the ~40 year-old screen door than the new, leather, sofabed couch, destined to save us oodles of cash and help reduce energy consumption on hot days, when we can sleep in the basement rather than turn on the AC.

KISS their Love Gun

2007-06-01T00:29:00.000-04:00

My review of KISS.

I actually had to do a lot of research and listening and prep for this, as I didn't feel comfortable going in blind--especially since I don't think this is generally the kind of concert that's got a lot of appeal to people who aren't fans. So, the article really should be to the fans who are thinking of going--and if others are intrigued, great. Other concerts are more general, IMO and can be directed to a wider audience, including those who might not be familiar with the music they're going to hear. But KISS isn't like that--KISS is kind of niche. Like, say, a symphonic Depeche Mode concert, for instance--not everyone is going to be flocking to that, I suspect. So it's important that a reviewer have some sense of context and also of the originals, to know how this performance differs.

The only three songs I knew of theirs before beginning my preparation were "Rock and Roll all Nite," "I was made for lovin' you" and "God gave Rock 'n Roll to you". I didn't specifically know that any of those were by KISS--and didn't realise which song "God gave..." happened to be until they started playing it in the encore. Then, it was with a start of surprise that I realised I knew it. Afterwards, Tom and I were walking out of the theatre, and I learned, to my astonishment, that he didn't know it--the only KISS song I knew that he didn't! Thanks, Bill and Ted. Or at least, I think that's where I heard it--the end of B&T's Excellent Adventure (though I couldn't tell you which one was Bill and which was Ted at this point. Kinda like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern). Wacky.

At any rate, the post-review, longer-term result of my research: I now can sing along to KISS's song "Strutter"--and likely a few others besides. Pretty impressive, no?

Which Tarot card are you?

2007-05-26T13:07:00.001-04:00

I assume they're just looking at the Major Arcana...

You are The Lovers

Motive, power, and action, arising from Inspiration and Impulse.

The Lovers represents intuition and inspiration. Very often a choice needs to be made.

Originally, this card was called just LOVE. And that's actually more apt than "Lovers." Love follows in this sequence of growth and maturity. And, coming after the Emperor, who is about control, it is a radical change in perspective. LOVE is a force that makes you choose and decide for reasons you often can't understand; it makes you surrender control to a higher power. And that is what this card is all about. Finding something or someone who is so much a part of yourself, so perfectly attuned to you and you to them, that you cannot, dare not resist. This card indicates that the you have or will come across a person, career, challenge or thing that you will fall in love with. You will know instinctively that you must have this, even if it means diverging from your chosen path. No matter the difficulties, without it you will never be complete.

What Tarot Card are You?
Take the Test to Find Out.

Tesseracts 11 Cover Treatment

2007-05-22T21:07:00.001-04:00

This is apparently what the cover will look like for Tesseracts Eleven,

which will include my short story "Persephone's Library". Exciting or what?! You can even pre-order from Amazon!

I'm a footnote in Wikipedia!

2007-05-07T12:46:00.000-04:00

Here's something kind of cool. I was looking up Angela Carter's novel _Wise Children_ just now. The first link is to the Wikipedia article.

One of the article's notes (on Shakespeare) links to the relevant section of my interpretive reading on Margin.

The "External Links" section sends readers to the beginning of the article--and it's even the first link! Am I ever chuffed about that! It's the first known time that a Wiki article has been linked to one of my pieces--and of course the point is to not have done it oneself or asked someone else to do it. Some reader somewhere on the net concluded the article was of some worth and put in the link! Waaay cool! :-)

I'm almost as excited as I was to be linked from the article on Angela Carter at the Modern Word--listed right after Salman Rushdie there, no less.

I figured that's going to be one of the few times a link to my stuff is *ever* likely to appear right after one that goes to something of Rushdie's!

Next milestone: to have an actual article in Wiki. But of course, that could be something of a mixed blessing if the article says nasty things or somesuch.

Latest Review: Da Capo's Daybreak

2007-05-07T11:21:00.000-04:00

Another excellent concert from Da Capo. Again, you have to scroll down to the bottom of the page--mine is the third of three pieces on there.

The choir was, as always, excellent. The Latin stuff didn't quite work for me--or at least some of it didn't. The stuff that incorporated Latin rhythms and the like somehow didn't suit the choir or the way it was conducted, or perhaps even the accoustics of the venue. It was well-sung, but not particularly earthy and latino.

The other stuff was great--especially the Eric Whitacre stuff. There's a photo of him on the page in which he looks a little like Eric Stoltz, of Pulp Fiction vintage.

Latest Review: Tosca

2007-05-05T10:16:00.000-04:00

Marvellous. I especially loved the villain. :-) And I got a nice big colour page, with my review at the top of it! Gorgeous!

Daedalus Quartet and Bela Bartok

2007-04-16T18:53:00.000-04:00

This concert was way cool (as before, scroll down to see the story). These four were amazingly together and the music was intense, passionate, compelling. I was exhausted when I entered the room (a full day seminar on editing will do that to you) and energized when I emerged.

Gotta love it when that happens!

Abbey Road!

2007-04-12T11:13:00.000-04:00

Here's the latest (you have to scroll about halfway down the page to get to the review). It was a fun concert. It was also another one of those "watch the concert while I write about it." It engenders an interesting kind of performance anxiety on my part (and extra sympathy for the performers up on stage!!)... at least with the other reviews, I've got a few hours afterwards to think about it, come up with an angle, and then jump into the review. This... well, it's nutty! The concert goes by extraordinarily quickly, and the intermission is one of the few times when I can go back, review what I've written with few distractions and try to pull together my thoughts for what's to come after!

And of course, there's the worry that nothing will come this time and after two hours' of frantic writing, I'll read back to discover that all I have written is "all work and no play makes Susan a dull girl" over and over again... :-)

But, thank goodness, that hasn't happened yet. And the upside is that I hit "send" at 10 pm and it's done. I walk out and don't have to worry anymore. Even if I'm not totally happy with the review, it's too late to change at that point!

In general, though, it was a nutso day yesterday--partly in a fun way. I got a copy of one of my pieces that had been reprinted in the newspaper "India abroad." I had the impression that it was only a couple of excerpts that they printed, but it was actually the whole thing (or close enough to the whole thing that I didn't notice what they would have left out). Way cool! It didn't pay, but it's another thing to add to my cv at least! It's nice to have a diversity of publications to list, IMO.

I also had to do minutes to a meeting we had a while ago, plus the agenda for the next one, which is today. I also had to work on some other documentation for that. Whew! Then off to the review (didn't even have a chance to make notes on it ahead of time!). And after that, we went to a local restaurant where they have jazz jammin' every Wednesday. Tom and a co-worker had the plan of jammin together with the guys (Sy, his work friend, plays the baritone sax). It was fun. It's always interesting to see who shows up.

The next few days also promise to be busy, with the culmination coming this weekend--an editing seminar on Saturday (should be really interesting), followed by another concert that I'll review that night. I'll have the next day to work on the review, BUT, I've got committments at UU the next morning. Crazy!! Then, Sunday night, I'm hoping to get out to TO to pick up the other car, as next week is also gonna be busy, and may well be "we need two cars again if possible" busy.

Off to work!

Tesseracts 11

2007-04-06T23:28:00.000-04:00

I just had word today that my story "Persephone's Library" has been chosen for inclusion in Tesseracts 11, an anthology of Canadian SF. Wooohooo! Contract to follow, etc.

I'm totally excited! I love that it'll have a longer shelf life cause it'll be in a book rather than a periodical. I love that it's an anthology, so the pressure's off in a way, since it's just one of many stories included--so I don't have to stress as much about questions like "what are the sell-throughs" (as I would be stressing with a print book that was just mine and mine alone). And I kind of find it amazing to imagine that the editors are Cory Doctorow and Holly Phillips--and that they actually read my story and liked it enough to want to include it. It's a tres cool thought.

Here's an excerpt from "Persephone's Library" (the opening passage):

This morning, I walked up past the new subdivision to the end of the
world. Or at least, to the beginning of the end, just at the edge of
the mud flats.

It's deceptive, when you stand there, where the asphalt breaks off in
that jaggedy line and the flats begin. They look like they spread out
forever, but actually, it's just a couple of hundred yards. And then
the world ends.

They've set up patrols along the edge at night, so people don't wander
out there accidentally and fall off. They also try to catch the
jumpers when they can, but they don't always succeed. People still
slip through.

Take this morning, for instance. I mean maybe I just got lucky, but
there was no-one in sight when I walked up. Even the watchers in the
houses along the edge weren't around. I could've just kept right on
going and maybe even jumped if I wanted to.

But I didn't. I just wanted to see the flats.

They look a little like I imagine a beach must have looked, back in
the day, except of course there would have been ocean, instead of
nothing.

Wallace Wu and Cynthia Dale

2007-03-24T10:46:00.000-04:00

I found this concert, with orchestra@uwaterloo and Wallace Wu strangely moving. I think it was partly because he was so young and so good. I thought about the work and the dicipline needed to get where he had gotten with his skill level and talent. I'm finding myself very moved by the poignancy of youth, these days.

Cynthia Dale's concert was pretty good. I wasn't blown away, but it was fun. It was just her rendition of "When I Grow too old to Dream" that moved me. Of course, I was writing the review as I watched, which didn't lend itself to getting really engaged by the concert and the performance. But I actually managed to finish the review for the 10 pm filing deadline. I was really astonished at myself for that. The concert wasn't even completely over (they were in the encores). It's a lot of pressure and kind of exhausting, but also a nice feeling to come home after (feeling exhausted, as mentioned) and not have to think about writing a review on top of everything else. So there's definitely a good night to having to file by 10 on the night of the concert. It would be more difficult for classical, I think.

Covering Joel with Perfect Pitch

2007-03-23T10:55:00.000-04:00

Yippeee! My latest review. I am currently (even at this moment) working on another one, to be run in tomorrow's paper. And then I'll be doing one tonight, for a Cynthia Dale concert at Centre in the Square. It's another of those rather stressful "write it as you watch and file it before the show is even finished" concerts. This will be my second--the previous one being the Billy Joel tribute I've linked to here. Nerve-wracking indeed.

New cover design

2007-03-15T16:52:00.000-04:00

Giselle suggested that I use one of the Waterhouse paintings that I had incorporated into a little calendar I made a while ago in my design of a new cover. It's a great idea--particularly since Waterhouse's work is now in public domain! Yippee! (You can click on the image for a larger version of the picture--but you may have to do so more than once, because it seems to want to take you to the first photo I posted on blogger instead. At least it does when I first click on the images. So then you have to go back to the blog and click again and it seems to work. I'll have to look into why this happens at some point).

Of course, once I created the original layout and design for the cover, it wasn't too much more work to use some other Waterhouse images that are somewhat appropriate in order to create the other two covers as well! So, I did. Now I just have to clean up the actual books for which the covers can be used.

I actually suspect that Waterhouse used the same model for the first and the third image. The middle one is actually an Ophelia painting and may have used a different model, but I had been playing around with it in Photoshop (trying to figure out how it works, but without any manuals or guides. Gotta get me some of those), so her face is less defined and could concievably be the same character. Heh. I think the protagonist's hair is red at the moment, so I'll have to change that for this "edition" of the books. Maybe make her eyes a different colour instead...

I haven't figured out how to use Photoshop yet (which is annoying. I'll get to it soon), so I designed it in Photodraw, which doesn't allow you to figure out or specify what dpi you want (at least, not that I could find). Frustrating also. So, I'm not sure how it will look in print (they recommend a 300 dpi file--I'm guessing this is well below that).

At any rate, I don't intend to order print/proof copies yet, since I'll wait till the others arrive first, go through them and make the appropriate fixes and corrections to the content. Then I'll order my proofs from that and see if the cover renders all right or not! But I do like the overall look of this new cover, at least.

Je me souviens: Houston

2007-03-08T18:51:00.000-05:00

What can I say of Houston? I found it a bit of a drag. It was very car-oriented, but all the highways seemed to suffer from twin afflictions: construction (ugly) and congestion (frustrating), with the result that traversing relatively short distances involved rather long waits. But, it was also not a city that seemed to have a great setup by way of public transit or pedestrian-friendly areas. We parked at a park and walked to part of the museum district (literally a block or so away), in the process taking our lives into our hands crossing the roads because in every direction the pedestrian lights seemed to take you about half way. Then, when you were marooned in the middle of the intersection on a vulnerable little island with cars hurtling by at breakneck speeds, you'd be faced with a traffic light-less, multi-lane roundabout you'd have to fling yourself across during a rare break in the onslaught.

This added to the impression of an unwelcoming city. That may not be true of the place once you scratch the surface, but between ugly piles of dirt and broken concrete and streets that didn't lend themselves to walking, it felt very isolating--a culture that encouraged everyone to stay in their own little private, motorized boxes--and certainly wasn't in the least bit tourist-friendly (or we didn't find the area that was--and you'd think that if anywhere, the museum district would be designed for ease).

Compare with San Antonio, whose streets (even outside of the riverwalk) were easily navigated and where you could actually cross the streets without a clear and present risk to your life. It doesn't have to be like Houston--city planners everywhere have proven it again and again.

The other really unpleasant result of all this lung-clogging and visually offputting car orientation was that the drivers were really agressive. You got the feeling as you tried to cross the street that they were gunning for you (it wasn't much better in a car--there was still the sense that they were out to get you). I was reminded of the scene in Bowfinger when Eddie Murphy is asked to run across eight lanes of high-speed traffic. That was Houston, and any way you sliced it, it was pretty gross.

We did eat at a couple of yummy places, though. One seemed to be part of a chain and was under the Art Gallery in the downtown core; the other was a family business--a hole-in-the-wall Mexican place with great food that we just chanced upon as we were driving past the endless strip malls on one of the highways.

Two other interesting things: the many, many churches--some giant, and others (many of them) just thrown into random strip malls, beside various retail shops and restaurants. The second interesting thing was the ads. You learn a lot about the place from the advertising. This trip really brought that home to me. Consider (click on the photo to link to a larger version):

and .

From the latter, I must infer that I am not the only one who would find Houston and its environs (this was taken in Galveston, though the ad was also on the highway leading to Galveston) unwelcoming. :-)

An Experiment

2007-03-06T17:00:00.000-05:00

Well, my curiosity overcame me. I've been thinking of ordering from lulu for a while now.

This is a book I shopped around to various publishers and agents and had no luck placing. At this point, I feel like I no longer have any perspective on it (in the context of trying to revise it again into something publishable), but it's a story that's been with me for so long and I love it so much, that I thought it would be nice to see it in print sooner rather than later. :-D

But for now, I think this will give me some closure. When I have time between other projects, I'll work on cleaning up books two and three and adding them to the site. Then, the trilogy will be in print in some form at least and I'll be able to hold them in my hand and read them, even if at this point they're not place-able with a regular publisher. Other books, I'll keep marketing through normal channels, but this is a nice way to get closure on those books that I've put lots into, but that I've worked and reworked so much that I don't know how to fix whatever it is with them that isn't working. Also, I've ordered a couple of proofs and I'm excited to hold them in my hand and look through them. Yippee! :-)

Da Capo Review and other things

2007-03-05T09:45:00.000-05:00

First of all, here is my latest review! I only realised that I had somehow left out the word "the" in one sentence this morning, as I read it in print. But, the nice news is that it was the first Arts link this morning on The Record's main page (previously, my reviews were only featured on the second arts page). One is tempted to say that this is because, perhaps (haven't gone out and bought the paper yet, so I can't say for certain) there is only one arts page today. But still, it's nice that mine is the first link people can click on under Arts on the MAIN Record page! Yippee!

I'm about to head off to buy a few copies of the paper, as the way the story was laid out makes it difficult to print cleanly. I'm instead just going to go the old fashioned way and literally cut'n paste the piece on a sheet of paper and photocopy it. :-)

Yeesh!

2007-03-01T22:11:00.000-05:00

My, but it will be a busy few days!

Tomorrow, I am slated to meet with Carolyn to discuss her manuscript (which is really good, IMO). Then, I may be going over to Lee's place to learn how to update the UU website. I also need to fit in plenty of singing practice and potentially a duet practice with Vicky (whom I haven't heard from with regard to whether she's interested in joining me in the evening).

In the evening is the coffee house, where I may be singing with Vicky as well as solo--or maybe just solo. I'll also be singing with the women's group. Whew!

Saturday, breakfast with Karen, then the Kitchener market, followed by Cafe Conversation. Maybe an afternoon free, and then an evening concert that I'll be reviewing for the Record. Sunday, UU (maybe--depends on how late I'm up Saturday working on the review), and makin' music with Judith and John in the evening. That should be way fun!

.... and then it's au revoir weekend. We hardly knew ye!

Latest Review: Wellington Winds

2007-03-01T09:08:00.000-05:00

Here be my latest review for the Record, of a Wellington Winds concert! It was a really lovely concert. My next concert is Saturday night. It should be fun! I am very intrigued by the concept behind it, which is the theme of midnight (each one in the series is a different time of day--the final one is on dawn).

The Thirteenth Tale

2007-02-19T22:12:00.000-05:00

Revisions finally completed. Now I just have to tidy up my cover letter, print it all out and send it off! At last. It's nice to have it done, even if I'm not as optimistic as I'd like to be. There's still something not quite sitting right with me about the latter part of the novel, though I'll admit it's much much much better than it was. Ah well, at this point, I'm just dragging it out, I think. I hate that there's something stumping me and it's making me drag my feet about it.

In other news, I recently finished reading _The Thirteenth Tale_ by Diane Setterfield. I expected something a little more "literary," which it wasn't, IMO. But that might have been the hype, all of which seemed to point that way. Certainly, it's a paen to books in general, novels more specifically, and 19th century novels in particular. The two main characters are both lovers of books, and _Jane Eyre_ is both implicitly and explicitly evoked again and again. To me, though, it read more like a cross between _Wuthering Heights_ and _the 1001 Nights_ with a bit of Garcia Marquez thrown in--and lastly, a generous dose of the Gothic novel as a form to season it all. Of course _Wuthering Heights_ does fall under the latter category, but this was more generalized. It reminded me also of some of those Victoria Holt type gothics.

It was a fun read, and it was nice to see that the form isn't totally dead--it seemed to have disappeared for a while (or at least, I wasn't finding it), which I regretted because it's something I'd love to sink into writing someday and it seemed a pity that apparently, there wasn't much audience for it anymore. But perhaps that's not the case after all...

At any rate, I wasn't super impressed at the beginning--and throughout, it seemed implausible to me that someone of Vida Winter's background (which seemed sheltered and limited) would be able to write so very compellingly about such a diversity of experiences that she would be lauded as the most famous writer alive, with sales figures to rival the Bible. This is particularly incongrous considering that she doesn't seem to have had much of a life in general and her relationships all seemed to be limited, restrained and/or dysfunctional.

Certainly, a good imagination will take you so far--and Vida is also shown to have shaped much of herself from books and narratives she has read--but I'd think in order to reach such exhalted status in the eyes of readers everywhere, that would have to be tempered with actual experience in the real world. And she even says, at the beginning, that after the fire, her life stopped and the rest is filler--which also implies that she never really had any wider experience in the world that actually would have changed or affected her in any deep way.

But, that implausibility aside, it was neat to read. The nested narratives, as well as the crazy, larger-than-life characters of the early part of Ms Winter's tale, and even, nominally, elements of the plot, were strongly reminiscent of _Wuthering Heights_. But then later, the _Jane Eyre_ motifs became more evident. I did also like the way she played with the idea of the thirteenth tale--which we learn at the beginning is Vida Winter's most famous short story even though no-one has read it. When her first compilation came out in its first edition, it was called _Thirteen Tales of Loss and Despair_ (or something like that)--but this was an error, as she hadn't managed to complete the thirteenth tale, and she therefore hadn't submitted it. The wrong cover treatment was sent on the edition, so it was recalled (the compilation was later just called _Tales of ... etc._). Only one copy escaped--one copy, and the story of how there were supposed to be thirteen tales. So everyone has since wondered what happened to the final story.

The way she implicitly deals with that is tres cool (later it is more explicitly resolved as well).

At any rate, the book itself never purports (that I could tell) to be anything more than a tribute to books and a good old-fashioned Gothic tale. It is very sordid at times, but sordid in a way that is particular to the Gothic form--both ferocious and ugly while still somehow being romanticised (think Heathcliff's treatment of Isabella, or later, of Hareton and the reduced and sordid circumstanced Heathcliff forced on him). And while it isn't, IMO, particularly literary, it is most assuredly Gothic, reminiscent of those old novels I used to read--and lots of fun.

Latest Review

2007-02-17T10:13:00.000-05:00

My latest review, of a symphony pops' tribute to divas of the '80's is now in print! Yippee! It is towards the bottom of the page.

Details of our wonderful trip to come soon, I hope! It's just been a crazy week. I have started posting photos, though. More of those to come as well.

Here's a pic of Tom at Mission Control at NASA, re-enacting the "Houston, we have a problem" sequence as a tableau fixe.

From 2007 Jan Feb ...

The Queen

2007-01-31T22:05:00.000-05:00

Air Canada has this funky feature now (at least, on a few aircrafts, like the one on which we flew--which was virtually empty, so Tom and I were also able to stretch out a bit). On demand film that you can order up on your personal screen (fitted into the back of the seat of the person in front of you).

I ordered up "The Queen" (with Helen Mirren. Tom watched "Driving Miss Daisy" from the "classics" section). I thought it was excellent. Mirren's performance is masterful, restrained and deeply empathetic. It's strange seeing an enactment of such relatively recent events, involving high-profile, public figures, without their explicit consent. But the film itself, I thought was wonderfully done.

Elizabeth as played by Mirren is a woman who is deeply shy and reticent, shaped by public life into one who is deeply and profoundly devoted to duty and to her role and its responsibilities. One gets the sense she cannot understand someone like Diana, who is so ready to kick up the traces for personal enjoyment or fulfillment--and who is so indiscreet in her speech, so undignified in her manner.

Because Elizabeth is by nature so shy, she seems to retreat behind her facade of propriety--it's not that she doesn't feel deeply (we're not in doubt that she feels) but more that she is so buried in her role and so devoted to her responsibilities--and what she sees as the correct way of fulfilling them--that she had sublimated those emotions. She has used her passion to shape herself with immense discipline into an embodiment of what is right and proper.

I felt the portrayal was a very compassionate one--she misread the public sentiment in the aftermath of Diana's death because her whole sense of the monarcy was shaped by an outdated sensibility. But we never doubted her passion for what she had dedicated her life to. There were also some wonderfully played, cathartic moments--Tony Blair's outburst, for instance--that articulated exactly what I had begun to feel. And, too, there was a sense of genuine importance to the whole thing, even though it ended up being a flash in the pan event. During those moments, that week, for the characters involved, it felt as if the repercussions might be wide-ranging and profound. That was part of the power and urgency of it.

I also enjoyed the wry wit of the queen mother, as well as some of the behind-the-scenes outbursts of the various characters, who, despite their high status, seemed to live lives that were as routine as anyone else's--unspectacular and banal, even. The idea of the three royals (Elizabeth, Philip and the queen mum) sitting around watching the news to hear the latest about the Diana story and how it was all developing--as well as to learn about the prevailing climate among their subjects--was bizarre (one always imagines they have some sort of inner pipeline) and yet it also makes perfect sense. Why wouldn't they sit about watching the news, like everyone else?

I think the portrayals were ultimately sympathetic--Charles probably got the worst of it, with Philip a distant second. Everyone else--even Cherie Blair, despite her current unpopularity--really got a fair shake and a voice in the film. And even Charles, I suppose, had some element of sympathy to him--he seemed weak and under his mother's thumb, but he speak out for Diana and recognise what his mother could not.

There was one possible moment/motif where maybe they crossed the line into something more obvious--for thematic reasons--but even that is a niggle. All in all, a wonderful, beautifully crafted and nuanced film. Helene Mirren inhabited the role--the glamourous actress disappeared and there was the Queen in her stead. A Queen that I for one came to really care about and respect deeply as an incredibly strong, dignified and loyal servant of the people, even when they themselves didn't appreciate the depth of her devotion and her sublimation of self to the role she had to play. Assuming it's anywhere near to the truth (it certainly felt marvellously convincing--if not true, then a terribly good guess), it's a powerful and passionate portrait.

And I thought Mirren did a wonderful job as the first Elizabeth! That, I think, was the easier task because we don't have any live-action presence for Elizabeth I with which to compare Mirren's portrayal. With this, we do, and yet, she still managed to pull it off with grace and empathy.

Welcome to Sunny Houston!

2007-01-31T21:45:00.000-05:00

Or rather, welcome to cloudy and 7 degrees celsius Houston. it was raining when we landed, so this marks an improvement. But still, after minus 10 or so temperatures, this is actually rather pleasant. I am typing this from the hotel "business center" workstation. It a slow connection, but I guess one can't really expect otherwise. They do offer wireless for free and a number of other amenities. In fact, I'd say it's generally a nice place. Plus, there's free breakfast, which I always like, since that means that we can stop downstairs, eat and then get on with our day with minimal side-trips once we're out the door (no need to stop somewhere or do a drive through or whatever). Also, it's a breakfast buffet, so that means one at least generally has some measure of control over what sort of choices one makes in the morning.

All in all, not half bad! There's also a pool and a fitness centre, so that's nice, esp. since Houston doesn't seem much of a city for walking in. Of course, I don't think I'll be doing much walking tonight. I have a headache for some reason (might just have been how I was sitting on the plane) and am generally achy.

We went to a Mexican restaurant for dinner. Lupe Tortilla or something. It wasn't bad--very much of a "for white folks' consumption" kind of place. The menu had items like "cheekin enchilalada". In fact, they never spelled it "chicken". It also always used the words "con" and "y" in place of "with" and "and." The food was pretty good but it was still kind of strange bing in such a "for white folk" kind of environment.

Maya Allusions

2007-01-30T14:46:00.000-05:00

We leave for our trip tomorrow. I'm excited and I'm looking forward to taking in some rays. Today was the first sunny day we've had in a little while and even that is fab. It's also not as cold as it has been in previous days--only about minus 10 or so. Better still--I actually was able to get out for a walk, which has done my disposition an immeasurable amount of good. I am now going to turn my attention to finishing as much as I can of the Maya book so I can return it. Then, I'll start packing. It's funny--I love going away, but I hate packing (of course, I dislike unpacking even more!).

Ah well, a little bit o' packing and then we're off tomorrow. Houston, here we come!

Aside: a funny coincidence. I'm doing a duet with another woman who takes voice lessons from the same instructor. I suggested she and I get together to practice before the next rehearsal with our instructor (though after our vacation, of course). It turns out she lives about a block away. Funnier still, it turns out that she and her husband offered for our house! They walked through and saw it the same day that the previous owners here accepted our offer. Wacky!

Exhausted and defeated

2007-01-29T09:53:00.000-05:00

I'll get my book done before we go (I'm truly really in the final stretch) but I won't be sending it out. As I said to Tom, I think it would be far less professional to send out a mss with multiple, sloppy or oversight mistakes rather than to send one a couple of weeks later. I'll take a print copy with me to mark up, and if I have computer access in Houston and on the ship (only if it's free, of course--I know they charge for internet, but I don't know if they'd charge just to use the computer workstation sans web connection), I'll put the changes in there if I get time, so I'll have something ready to ship out when I get back.

Otherwise, it will be maybe a day or so after I get back to put in all the fixes--no biggie. As time before departure shortened and I still had to finish the rewrite, I became more and more aware that it would be stupid, after spending all this time fixing it up, to send out what would essentially be an unproofed or partially proofed mss. So, I'll do my usual fine tooth comb read through (and of course, things will still be missed, but far fewer that if I hadn't done that).

I feel better about this decision, ultimately. I'm annoyed that I wasn't able to get it done within my timelines (gonna have to work on that when I get back), but I'd feel silly sending this out without having been properly proofed.

Saw another silly movie (I saw it because it was silly--I wanted a break with something fluffy and mindless): BloodRayne, starring Kristanna Loken (of Terminator 3 fame). It was wafer-thin, it seemed, in worldbuilding, characterization etc. But I really did just want an action, kung-fu, straightforward, escapist film and this fit the bill. I was never deeply engaged, but then never expected to be.

In other news, I'm exhausted. I'm not sure if it's all this pressure I've put on myself with this book (it's a long one--in page-count derived word count, it's over 100K at this point. But I still don't know which kind of count they want. It ultimately seems meaningless to me. Also, I may end up cutting other stuff in my revision.) or if it's the various antibiotics and the like that I'm on combined with a long car ride with sub-optimal back support yesterday. My back was really bad last night and it seems to have transferred to my neck this morning. I can barely turn it.

Maybe it will get better as the day progresses. Now, I'm going to scare up some breakfast and coffee while I think about the final scenes I'm going to write. Mentally prepare, and all that... :-)

Rhymes With Camera: On magical thinking

2007-01-25T22:54:00.000-05:00

A cool post by Tamara! I've been thinking about such things recently myself.

Rhymes With Camera: On magical thinking and using Sabian Symbols for inspiration

I think that I've lately been moving more into a kind of nexus that makes use of certain forms of magical thinking. It's a fascinating--and, I daresay ubiquitous--notion, though it's interesting to see it articulated in this way. Certainly, I think myths and patterns help us to parse reality. Whether there actually are underlying patterns or not is (arguably, of course) secondary to the notion that by uncovering those patterns (even if they are artificially imposed), we are able to derive meaning in our lives. Storytelling is, in one way, about precisely that--uncovering patterns of event and happenstance and drawing them together into a meaningful narrative arc. A fascinating notion.

More to ponder on this later. For the nonce, another deep breath--and back to revisions!

Down to the Wire in 1491

2007-01-25T13:06:00.000-05:00

Again, not too much reading of late, though I have been dipping into 1491 during breaks in my attempts to revise the final pages of my novel.

And indeed, I am in the final stretch. I've decided that my Susan Deefholts blog will document my writing travails. In other words, it will be where I post all my angst-ridden rants about how I'm stuck, or hitting a road bump and unable to continue. For now, it will be stuff that's of less interest to anyone else, but may be of some interest to me.

It's interesting--Tom raised the question a few days ago about whether my blogs had now supplanted my journals. It's true, in a sense. I still journal from time to time, when I'm at a cafe and without a computer. I also find that paper is often necessary for making notes about books, characters and plot points when I'm trying to break through a block.

But, between my various theme blogs (reading, writing and general--the latter being this one), it seems as though it has, indeed, supplanted my journal in certain contexts. It just seems cleaner and better organized to be able to air my musings on a given topic in a blog than it is to jot them down in a journal. It's also so much easier to find past comments on a given subject when the headings are conveniently posted in the archives, sorted by date and accessible via a searchable index.

All those advantages, I think, have ultimately led to a gradual migration on my part from journaling to blogging. It certainly wasn't overnight, since I had issues with the question of how public I wanted to make my thoughts (I still have "secret blogs" and instances where I just save my posts but don't actually publish them, if they're a way of keeping my own counsel). But ultimately, this particular form of technology has prevailed--in part because it makes it logistically easier for me, and in part because I can then air my thoughts on a given topic and subsequently direct a friend (for instance, my brother) to a post, and move into discussion from there.

Cool stuff. It feels almost Elizabethan (they way they used to circulate manuscripts and then discuss them). Make it "Elizabethan for the techno age" then and we'll have done.

La Neige

2007-01-19T16:11:00.000-05:00

Well, winter has, indeed, arrived. I'm housebound for the day, but it hasn't dimmed my capacity for procrastination any. Alas...

WOW! A New Blog Layout!

2007-01-19T15:06:00.000-05:00

Well, having spent far too long setting up a new layout for m'blogs, I'm now posting an image to test how it works on this particular blog layout format. If you enlarge the post and notice Loki's eyes look a bit odd, don't worry--it's completely artificial. The flash made them look even stranger, so I popped the image into Photoshop and retouched her eyes. It was a quickie job, though, so they don't look natural when the image is full size. And now, of course, anyone who sees the pic will want to enlarge the photo just to see how odd her eyes do indeed look...

I'm liking this new format, though. Thanks to Blogskins and the talented designer of this layout! I wanted something simple but different from the standard templates that you see on most blogger websites. I.e. I wanted a personalized look, but didn't want to have to design it myself.

Thence did it become an idee fixe for me, and so instead of working on my book--which I'm about to start doing... I promise--I ended up personalizing all the blogs from downloaded skins I found there. *Sigh* So now all my blogs look cool and personal and my book still isn't any closer to being finished. Perhaps I'll report back on this issue again later today.

Good Omen: No Titanic

2007-01-18T23:57:00.000-05:00

I didn't get into the Titanic, but I figure that's likely a good omen, since we're going on a cruise in a couple of weeks. It might be inauspicious to be cast in a show about the most spectacular shipwreck in history just before leaving for a nautical journey of our own on a luxury liner...

I'm also not surprised, given my previous comments. I get the impression there was not shortage of auditionees, and so a flubbed audition in which they wouldn't have gotten a particularly good sense of my singing etc. couldn't have been a big draw.

My only disappointment is that I held off on registering for bellydancing and drumming because of this, and now I suspect it might be too late. But I'll look into it and see. Of course, I'll be away in a couple of weeks, and then Mum's out visiting, so it might not work out. But we'll see. Or I noticed they had a drop in option, so I might see about that...

And I'm sure I'll contrive to keep myself busy regardless. I have masses of articles to write, now--with another review slated for February 15th. Fun! I also have Carolyn's poetry book project to edit and I'm excited about that as well. I think she's pulled together a really strong selection of pieces and I'm looking forward to spending more time with them.

Back to the Regency... I'm in the middle of the big scene between Julian and Sophie where they're basically going to discuss one of the central conflicts of narrative. It's pretty heavygoing--and after this, they'll have a few, halcyon days, having negotiated a short-term compromise. And then, the next incarnation of the conflict will rear its ugly head and I'll have to work out a good counterbalance of external conflict to go with this internal issue so that it all comes together in one climactice finale. Ahem. Did I mention I want to send this out by the end of next week and I'm basically rewriting the latter part of the novel because I've realised it doesn't work? On the other hand I did write 50K words in a month... so there's no reason this shouldn't be do-able!! Unless, of course, it isn't. Or my muses decide to head off for an early vacation (please, please don't do that!!)

:-)

My First Review for the Record

2007-01-15T13:44:00.000-05:00

Here it is, in all its newsprint-formatted glory (complete with an obligatory mispelling of my last name, of course! ;-) But of course, I know those folk have a deadline, and they probably just went for it really quickly... It's not really a biggie--though hopefully it will be correct next time). It's the article with the photo of the actor beside it, entitled "Reader's passion gets us battle-ready." I was tempted to suggest "Muse of Fire visits KWS" as the title. Perhaps I should have done so--though it's a bit cheesy, I think it reads better than the one they decided on.

But hey, we're all still learning, right?!

If the above link no longer works (not sure how long it's available before it goes into the archives and is accessible by subscription only) then here is a link to the .pdf version at my website.

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly of my weekend...

2007-01-14T19:04:00.000-05:00

Well, it has certainly been an eventful weekend!

Friday night, Tom had a gig--and so did I, in a sense! I was off to a concert for which I was slated to write a review for the Record. I knew that it would be a test of sorts--so the editor could see if I was capable of writing something appropriate to their needs.

So, off I went. Lucky me, I was close enough to the front that I could actually see my page as I made notes, so they remained reasonably legible afterwards. The concert itself was great! I had a fab time--though the latter portion was a little nerve-wracking because it was less programmatic and so it wasn't as easy to figure out how to write about it.

I went home and tried to stick to about two hours in writing up the review because I understand that that's often how long one has before submitting the story. Since I had the luxury of time in this case, I didn't submit it right away, so that I could tweak it a bit once I had some distance. I sent it in the next day and then waited. The editor liked it!! Yippee! So hopefully I'll be doing other reviews in the future. That's exciting.

Another cool thing we did this weekend was see the opera "the First Emperor" by the Chinese composer Tan Dun. It's part of this wonderful undertaking by the Met and various partners: they broadcast a Met production every week in high definition to movie theatres around the world. So, we went to the local Galaxy cinema and watched a wonderful Met production! The show itself was really engaging for the first half or so. I was drawn in by the music and it really held my attention. I found the second act (it was only two acts), post Intermission rather static--it really dragged, unfortunately. It also felt repetitious and a little slapdash, as if he was in a rush to finish it, and so kind of threw things together. The final climactic twist seemed a bit of an anti-climax to me, and not much of a twist--at least not one that most people wouldn't have seen coming even without reading the synopsis. But still, it was thrilling, and the calibre of the first half made it worthwhile for me.

And next week is Julie Taymor's Magic Flute!! I'm so excited. I love her work and I'm reasonably fond of the Magic Flute (I probably wouldn't see it again at this point--unless it were being done by someone like her or Robert LePage). It's the same day as the Cafe Conversation meeting, but that's at 11 and the show is at 1:30, so I figure two hours should be enough at the cafe. Plus, I'm going to see if anyone there is interested in joining me for the show (though of course, it has little to do with French).

The Bad (though ultimately good in a makin' lemonade kind of way) was my performance at the Dream Auction. This was the first time that I actually had some kind of "set" that I was doing: five or six songs. And I think for that reason--because I had more than one piece to do--I got nervous. Also, I think it was because I didn't start off quite where I wanted to be with my voice, and so that eroded my confidence for a couple of subsequent songs. And man, I gotta practice more with a mike--it always sounds so different that I have to get used to that shift. Note to self on that one: practice with a mike at home if I'll be using one in a performance. At any rate, my voice cracked a couple of times and--worse, IMO--I didn't pass it off with bravado, but actually winced a couple of times and in one case, broke off during the song. Another factor was that I didn't rehearse enough. It was pretty last minute and I had heard it would be background music--but then everyone sat and actually listened as if it were a show! All the same, it was a great learning experience, and the audience was both forgiving and appreciative--which is the best kind there is for such significant "first times!"

The Ugly!! My audition for a community theatre production. Yes, it was ugly--a miscalculation on my part. I should have done it a capella. Instead, I brought the music, and since the accompanist seemed fine with the prospect of playing it, I thought it might be okay. It really, really wasn't. It was very noble of her to make the effort and I give her full kudos! But, it was unreasonable of me to expect anyone to read that piece totally by sight (she was also great with the other pieces I heard--just as another testament to her skill and the difficulty of my piece).

So, while I think I sang well enough (not quite in the right place--I wanted to sing it in my head, but instead I sang it in my throat and chest. A typical reaction when I'm thrown off or nervous, and something else I'd like to work on)--and I wasn't even all that nervous (more thrown off), it ultimately sounded awful because the piano was doing something rather different to what I was doing. I could see it in the faces of the auditioners and almost wanted to laugh. After all, they had been warned it was Sondheim, and they had these frozen, polite expressions on their faces as if they were thinking something along the lines of "Is it supposed to sound like this because it's Sondheim or has something gone terribly wrong?"

At any rate, because I didn't freeze up and felt pretty good about my own performance there, I'm not devastated that I'll likely not get in. In fact, it was pretty funny and I'm still chuckling as I think about it--and about their expressions as I was singing.

I can just chalk this up to experience and figure that if I use this song again (I likely will because I love it, it's unusual, a great character piece and demonstrates a knowledge of musicals), it will be a capella, with perhaps just a starting note to get me going.

Audition... And the Tipping Point

2007-01-12T11:39:00.000-05:00

BTW, I am auditioning this weekend for a community theatre production of Titanic: The Musical. Colour me freaked.

In fact, it's a busy weekend all 'round: a concert tonight and a review to write for The Record, the Dream Auction at UU tomorrow, at which I'm singing and Tom is playing, and then the audition on Sunday.

And I'm still frantically working on the mss. ACK! Freaked indeed. :-(

Time to go meditate.

The Tipping Point

2007-01-12T10:53:00.000-05:00

Thus far, The Tipping Point is interesting. As mentioned before (in my other blog), it appears to be about those memes that reach a certain stage of saturation, so that an idea, phenomenon or trend suddenly goes from being the domain of a small group to being a widespread social reality. He essentially argues (as is the case, I believe, with the meme argument) that these ideas or social phenomena behave in the same way as do epidemics, following a similar pattern of transmission and spread.

It is also interesting to contrast this book with Gladwell's next work, Blink. Although I was complaining a few days ago about the sense of slick packaging and catchiness that seems endemic in this sort of popular non-fiction, it would seem that The Tipping Point was on the leading edge of such packaging trends. It therefore only has it in to only a minimal degree (in the form of the catchiness and intrigue of a concept like "the tipping point"--far more interesting-sounding than "Memes: Survival of the Fittest" or something like that, IMO). It's funny to realise that the past six years (or so) have seen such a sea change in the way that popular non-fiction has been packaged and marketed.

And yet... here it is. The Tipping Point is far less readable. It plods somewhat. It has neat ideas, but few personalities. It stays within the realm of stats, ideas, discoveries and (so far, at least) doesn't put faces to names or images to places mentioned. Blink, by contrast, demonstrates a major change in Gladwell's style and method of presentation. It very much falls into the category of "creative non-fiction." Usually, each chapter or section in which an interesting experiment or breakthrough is discussed begins with a description--either of a place or of the person associated with these experiments (e.g.--not an excerpt--"John Doe is a retiring man of slight build. His eyes glance away when he shakes hands, and so his voice comes as a surprise: rich, deep and commanding." Or "on the surface, it seems like the kind of playground you'd find in any neighbourhood that had once seen better days. But this place is different.").

Of course, the latter style is far more compelling. He also tends to insert more direct quotes into his explications, breaking up the presentation of concepts through this sort of variation. Lastly, he dramatizes. So for instance, in The Tipping Point, he'll make the point about epidemics by saying (again, these aren't direct quotes cause I'm too lazy to go and get the book, but this is the general idea), "X number of people used this clinic and it was determined that of those people, only Y number of them were actually in a position to transmit the disease."

In Blink, he'll begin his point about how, during states of heightened tension, we move into a more reactive, less reflective mode that is dangerous and mistake-prone in high stakes situations like this, "When Joe Bloe arrived home that night, he was exhausted. He ate a weary meal and then decided to step out onto the front stairs for a breath of fresh air. It was a beautiful, clear evening..." etc. Eventually, the anecdote winds around to, say, a tragic shooting--but we still don't know where he's going with it. The pages that follow explain why--according to his interpretation--the shooting took place (e.g. what the physiological and psychological reactions might have been under the circumstances), and now we begin to see why he began with the story, how it all ties in and so on. We also have higher stakes in understanding how this phenomenon works, because we're emotionally engaged and horrified and eager for insight into how such a terrible thing could have happened. It's undeniably effective.

So yes, though I feel irritated--and often manipulated--by some elements of the "creative non-fiction" approach to packaging and promotion, in the case of newer non-fiction trendy reads ("Rogue economist" working at the University of Chicago, hey?!), I have to admit, I do like the greater degree of readability. I'll give 'em that, at least. ;-)

Doesn't taste the same, it is the same: Syrup and Blink

2007-01-09T14:55:00.000-05:00

A while ago, Tom read a book called Syrup by Max Berry (Barry?). It's about a bunch of marketing people at Coke. After he told me a bit about it, I decided to read it as well. Kind of a Gen X but even catchier, more sound-byte oriented and, IMO shallower. I haven't yet decided whether I felt the book was shallow or simply the characters (including the first person narrator). Certainly, the book is satirical, but my internal jury's out on whether it's fluffy and superficial satire or whether there's some remote chance that there might be some depth hidden in there. I'm tempted to conclude that there isn't.

Still, it's an amusing and clever read (though many of the bigger resolutions are of the "we have an insurmountable challenge so we'll just do [list of impossible to accomplish tasks, presented as if they're the easy part of the scheme--a mere twitch of the nose] and then everything's good" variety). It's about the advertising industry.

A few examples of clever dialogue:

Guy invites his style-conscious dream girl out for dinner at a dive-y joint in the uncool part of town:
Her: Isn't that a country and western bar?
Him: Yeah, but it's secretly ironic.

When discussing a new product put out by Coke, called Coke White (IIRC. Btw, this was before Coke released their product Bl:ak):

Her: It's the same product, but in a white can--for our upscale market, so it costs twice as much.
Him: So it tastes exactly the same?
Her: No, I didn't say tastes the same. I said it is the same.

Which gave me a chuckle. Still, I didn't devote a lot of time to this idea, writing it off as a flippant half-truism. But then today, while reading Blink, I was reminded of this point because Gladwell talks about studies that have been conducted that seem to show that this is precisely the case. The packaging of a product actually affects how we perceive it tastes. So, when they changed the shade of green (adding more yellow to the dye) on some "test market" SevenUp cans, people who were given it to taste in its can actually said stuff like "No, this is more lemony--I like the old SevenUp better, so don't start messing with that like you did with the New Coke."

It was exactly the same recipe in the can, yet for some reason, it seems that packaging imagery and style gets conflated with the product within. Doesn't taste the same indeed.

My two-sentence summary of Blink: Your eyeblink impressions of people and situations often have a lot of validity--except when they don't. So, trust your instincts, except in those circumstances where they're leading you up the garden path.

A lot of interesting little notes and experiments, but not quite what Gladwell promised in the intro--which was something a little more useful, like how to make those instincts work for you.

Aside:

I notice that this is the latest trend (part of the catchy packaging of non-fiction)--the "teaser" introduction, following this approximate structure:

1) outrageous, mysterious or puzzling anecdote or trend

a)"how is this possible?"

b) quick hint of why, with promise of deeper and more profound enlightenment later

2) second, diverse but similarly astonishing anecdote or trend

a)"how is THIS possible?"

b) a further hint about central idea.

3) a couple more hooks and tantalizing ideas to keep you reading.

I suppose this works well enough, but I have to admit, I found Bevin Alexander's old-fashioned "here is my central thesis and approach" introduction, followed by his book's worth of specific examples quite refreshing by comparision. My feeling was "THANK YOU for getting to the point, rather than trying to keep me dangling with these irritating and catchy little tidbits." But presumably that's just me, because books like Blink and Freakonomics have spawned countless memes and are chart-topping bestsellers, while few people have heard of How Great Generals Win.

Sketching and Syriana

2007-01-06T21:28:00.000-05:00

I took a class in sketching today. It was neat. It once more showed me that I am not necessarily gifted with the patience and devotion to the craft that would be required for me to get somewhere with it. It underscored that it really is just developing that skill--learning to eyeball distances and perspectives and to measure them in meaningful ways that will serve as useful shortcuts for transposing life into image. I suspect I will still dabble. I did realise that if I applied myself I would, at least, be not too bad and possibly even pretty good at it. Perhaps not an innovator, but technically proficient and able to do a few decent piece to hang on my wall.

But, I also realised that at this point, I'm not willing to commit the time that I'd need to developing that skill. I'll try for five-ten mins per day, for a slow progression, but that may be it for the nonce. It did, as I otherwise hoped it would, further add to my respect for those who are accomplished with such things--and underscored that the reason someone like Carrie Greber can toss off a saleable canvas in a day or so is because she spent years working on colour, line and image. Years, developing her eye and her sense for how one shade of colour blends into another. It always seems so effortless and therefore so inaccessible to me as a skill, and so today for probably the first time, I could see the stretch of work and self-application required to reach the stage of apparent effortlessness. I might even be able to get to that point, but it would take a while.

Not that I hadn't been aware that this was the case--just as my ability to formulate sentences or write a short story in a day (or several hours) isn't a skill that has been just as diligently acquired from years of work. I know that. But today, for the first time, I saw that I might actually have the potential to get there, if I'm willing to commit a stretch of hours comparable to what I spend with the writing stuff. And honestly, I cannot imagine having as much fun with the drawing (it's hypnotic to be sure, but feels limited to me) as I do with the writing. Ergo, until I start thinking about it in a different way, writing will be my primary commitment of that sort and drawing a very very distant second.

We also saw Syriana today.

It was kind of neat; kind of confusing. It wasn't a big revelation to me and I thought it could have been more clearly and suspensefully done. Ultimately I liked it, but didn't love it. It's not like unmasking the corrupting was some deep insight, but I did like that there was no one specific villian of the piece, and most people were shown to be acting in what they felt was a reasonable way, in the context if his situation. It wasn't one of those "heh heh heh, what evil can I wreak today? I know! I'll scapegoat some lackey as a sleight of hand gesture in order to consolidate my big business and lotsa money position--and just cause it's a rotten thing to do." Each of the characters really did feel he was the hero of his own story and we saw them walk that tightrope of moral compromise (or even fall off) all the while believe that he did so for a bigger, better cause (family, country etc.). Nice to see that balance without any kind of attendant glorification.

Something Cool....

2007-01-03T23:18:00.000-05:00

Under Tuesday, November 28, on Robert J. Sawyer's blog. I actually got a mention. I'm rather chuffed about that. :-)

It's like the time I found out that there was a link to my article about Angela Carter listed right after a link to Salman Rusdie's piece about her on The Modern Word. I figured it was the only time my name would ever appear in any proximity to Salman Rusdie's. Also, I'm a big fan of The Modern Word website from back when it was the Libyrinth--so it was way cool to learn that someone there knew I existed, too.

Capote

2007-01-03T12:44:00.001-05:00

An interesting film--made all the more interesting after viewing the short documentary about the actual Capote.

Hoffman (sp?) played Capote as a petulant, self-absorbed egotist who managed to gain entree into the lives and confidences of the people of the town by virtue of his previous writings as a novelist (the main investigator's wife was star struck). There didn't seem to be a strong rapport and Capote didn't seem to have a lot of compassion for anyone except himself.

It was difficult to see why people would like him--why he would have an attractive and likeable lover and why Harper Lee would voluntarily spend any time with him except on those occasions when he paid her to be his P.A.

As a film in itself (rather than something based on real events), there were a number of interesting elements that made it intriguing. First was the parallel between Capote and Perry Smith, one of the murderers. Capote at one point says that he and Smith could have been brothers, growing up in the same house, but "Smith left the house from the back door and I left from the front" (pardon any misquotes--unlike Capote, I do not have anywhere near 94% recall of conversations--nor have I tested myself).

And this is carried through. If Perry Smith's actions in murdering the family seemed to be in cold blood on the surface (but something darker and far more complex once one looks deeper), then the same could be said of Capote's actions in manipulating everyone in order to get the information he needed to construct his narrative. There is a calculation to him that feels almost sinister. He feels like an anti-hero.

There were a few really great moments--the big turning point between Perry and Capote during the latter's interviews. Also, the final face-to-face encounter between Capote and the killers, in which Capote faces his own monstrosity (based on his previous acts or lack thereof, and his desire for a clean resolution) in the face of the killers' understanding and compassion of him. It was powerful, IMO.

All the same, it was difficult to understand how a man like this fictional Capote could have won over the confidences of all these people and then have transformed those confidences into the ground-breaking, insightful final product (as described in the film; I'll confess I haven't read the book, but now am intrigued to do so--in fact, aside from having seen the film Breakfast at Tiffany's, and knowing Capote existed, I knew little about the man going into the film). He seemed far too self-absorbed and self-obsessed to be able to develop any insights into anyone else, as played by Hoffman.

But, this presented an interesting contrast to the vivid portrait conveyed of Capote in the brief documentary that was included as a bonus feature on the dvd. That Capote, while sharing some of the physical traits and peculiarities affected by Hoffman for the film, was an altogether different figure, as described by those who knew him.

Also self-absorbed, egotistical and undoubtedly sullen at times, when the peculiarities were placed in the context of the man himself, suddenly they made sense (in a brief clip of an interview with him). Suddenly, the charm became visible--a kind of likeability in his manner and quirks, he seemed like someone who would make you smile, even if you might think him a bit of a self-absorbed jerk at times. There was also an earnestness and a vulnerability to the man that Hoffman's portrayal didn't include.

And though his books might have gained him some initial sort of entree into the community, friends and biographers alike seemed to feel that he was a man who was deeply interested--and indeed fascinated--by people. That he was one of those people who, when you caught his interest, was so engaged that he made you feel like you were the only person in the room. They also seemed to agree that he became deeply attached to everyone involved with the case--that he genuinely cared about them.

Very little of this came through in the film, though I bought the idea that his fame and his manipulations were what allowed him to learn things, whereas the glimpse provided by the documentary of the real Capote seemed far more intriguing--a blend of self-absorbtion and kindness or compassion.

And so, I'll be adding Capote's work and perhaps his biography to my "to look into someday" list. :-)

1421: The Year China Discovered America

2006-12-31T13:45:00.000-05:00

By Gavin Menzies.

Two words: trained otters?!?

I've other notes on it in my "reading and viewing" (gotta think up a catchier name than that) blog, but it is getting more and more farfetched--or perhaps the implausibilities are merely building upon each other and piling up into a tottery house of cards.

Still, the claim that the Chines of the early fifteenth century employed trained otters ("working in pairs to herd shoals into the nets ...") as part of their exploratory fleet to keep everyone supplied with fresh fish and balance out the diet does seem to verge on the fantastical--as do a number of the other claims.

I am enjoying the book however, in the way that I enjoy Borges's fiction masquerading as a documentary commentary on a given, utterly fantastical subject (though Menzies's work is less bibliothecal). The details and evocations are skillfully presented, though we are also afforded the occasional glimpse of the man behind the curtain (in the form of utter implasibilities, wild leaps in logic and rather odd inferences). All the same, reading it as a work of imaginitive fiction is still very entertaining (I am after all, a fan of Borges).

I suppose the problem is that he passes it off as fact--and is apparently somewhat litigious in nature, so that for a while, scholars and historians were reluctant to speak out against him. But, that reticence seems to have faded, and now there's even a website dedicated to debunking Menzies's claims (because the book has been so popular).

It's funny--books have come to be regarded as the more definitive source, in contrast with the internet these days (though it's always a case of caveat emptor and "don't believe everything you read"). So here we have a wee reversal in the form of a website discrediting an erudite-looking (but also popular and accessible) tome. What fun!

Kazuo Ishiguro's _Never Let Me Go_

2006-12-29T17:50:00.000-05:00

I just finished reading Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go and was really moved by it. I didn't think I would be--though the character of Tommy was always reasonably endearing despite his problems. But it ended up being a nuanced portrait of relationships and girl politics (which was interesting in itself, to see such precision and articulation in the documentation of such interactions) as well as an interesting character study. It amuses me that this is called Science Fiction, because aside from the premise (alternate history--that's all I'll say), if that's accepted, it's a portrayal of the lives of three people and their relationship to each other.

It was lovely in many ways (though the narrator was not prone to flowery evocations) and deeply wistful or nostalgic, like a watercolour that has been left out in a brief rainfall--the images are still discernible, but there is also the evocation of what it (in this case, Kathy's life) once was, as well as a sense of speculation and longing for what it might have been.

The style was definitely reminiscent at times of the descriptions in The Unconsoled, but for the most part, it was a different narrative. And though I normally don't mind knowing a lot about a book before I read it (often that will be what gets me reading it in the first place), I think the experience of this book might have been richer had I not known the premise--so I'm not going to go into any detail here, should anyone be curious to read it. Knowing what the background was meant that I was able to guess the big reveal at the end, long before the characters did, but I wondered whether, had I not known, it would have been more powerful, since the early clues that allowed me to infer what was to come might have been obscured by the other mystery, which I already knew the answer to.

At any rate, highly recommended, but not an uplifting or happy read. Make sure you're in the mood for it, and then let yourself sink in.

Babies!

2006-12-24T23:18:00.000-05:00

We had an eventful day, beginning with an alarm that went off later than we expected. Thence, a headlong rush into Toronto, to drop off Tom's parents' car and on to a friend's place for a "meet the baby" celebration in the wake of her naming ceremony (which was an intimate gathering that took place yesterday). Little Emily Lauren is just lovely! She's about two weeks old in this photo, but the day after she returned from the hospital, her mom was featured in a photo (lighting a menorah) that was published in the national paper--Emily and her dad are visible in the background, and so she was not even a week old when she got national coverage! Not bad at all!

After a nice visit, we headed back to Waterloo and carol singing, some of which was by candle light, which was fun! I can never say no to any opportunity that involves singing, after all!

So, once that put us nicely in the Christmas spirit, we went to see Apocalypto, which featured, in graphic detail, pillage, rape, cruelty and human sacrifice. It was an interesting film--and I really wished there could have been more sequences in the city just for the fascination of watching the worldbuilding.

The story itself was not unpredictable--you could kind of tell where it was going, though from time to time, I wondered whether there'd be some kind of twist. There were none, however. There were a few bits where I liked the ingenuity of his methods, but otherwise, no surprises. Still, there were some really engaging action sequences--though I could probably have done with less graphic detail. The argument in favour of the horrors would, perhaps, just be that then we have a teeny tiny glimpse of how awful such situations are--situations that continue to happen in places around the world today, where ethnic cleansing, wholesale slaughter, rape and displacement still happens. So seeing that perhaps is a reminder to those of us in our comfortable, secure ivory towers.

Overall, it was a fairly straightforward morality tale. I suppose I would rather have had all that energy, work and industry go towards giving us more glimpses of that world in which it was set--and recreating some version of the cities that we read about but have had little exposure to by way of re-enactment (we've all seen so many re-enactments of ancient Rome or Greece, for instance, that we're fairly familiar with what it probably was like, when it comes to general look and feel--this gave us a tantalizing glimpse of another culture in that way, and I would gladly have had more). I think meso-America (pre-Europeans) has a fascinating history and I'm glad that there's been some attention given to it in such a high profile way, even if it ends up being a flash in the pan rather than a new cultural meme.

I also would have loved to have seen it in a more everyday context, rather than as it was portrayed, which was from the point of view of guys who have just seen their families slaughtered, and have been dragged to the city in captivity, to be offered up as human sacrifices. Namely: frightening, violent, exotic, decayed, angry and horrifying. Though some argue that this shows the city and the civilization in a negative light, I do think some consideration should be given to the fact that it is being shown from the captives' point of view, rather than an omniscient one--presumably a choice made by Gibson to heighten the emotional intensity of the situation. Showing a more balanced perspective of some happy people living out their lives while others are miserable or angry would rather undercut the urgency of the story and the captives' fear, IMO.

And, despite the negative portrayal, I felt a dawning sense of wonder when I realised that after all the jungle we had seen they were now actually in a city.

Of course, I knew going in that there were inaccuracies (e.g. the village as it was would have been was from a different, later era than the city they showed, which was earlier in the cycle of the civilization, according to wiki)--but despite a few juxtapositions of diverse elements and periods (sometimes borrowed from other meso-American cultures, presumably to create a sense of visual interest), no-one seems to be objecting too much to the overall look and feel of the styling and the culture. And that's really the important thing, I'd think--to introduce us to a culture (or several) that we're simply not accustomed to seeing or observing, with its general tendencies, fashions and ways of life. And that, to me, was mesmerizing.

Environmentally Friendly Bombs

2006-12-24T00:26:00.000-05:00

I recently read a peculiar article about how there's a company (well, at least one) that is working on developing environmentally friendly bombs (i.e. ones that do not emit harmful radiation after they have been triggered. Most bombs contain heavy metals and therefore continue to poison their surroundings for years after). The rationale, of course, is that if there are going to be bombs used, then better they just serve their intended purpose, then have additional harmful characteristics that cause extended damage.

It's kind of creepy, but I guess if there have to be bombs, then it would be better to have environmentally-friendly ones. Still, it freaks me out to think in those terms. It must be so difficult in a way--a very special kind of doublethink required--to say "let's create something that can maim or kill its target but which will not, in addition to that, also cause long-term damage to the environment and others who suffer from the radiation."

I guess this is because I naively assumed (without having given such folks' morality much dedicated or nuanced thought, I'll have to admit) that people who make bombs have a certain moral compass--be it "us vs them" or even "someone has to do it so why not me?"--something fairly black and white, in that they either think in binary or in amoral terms. But this adds an unexpected twist to the scenario and touches on how complex morality is. And that is a disturbing thought, in certain ways, because it hints at nooks and crannies in the human psyche that are elusive and troubling.

It makes me think of the Ralph Fiennes character from Schindler's List, who played with notions of forgiveness and the like, trying them on for size as if they were as superficial as garments he wore. It was a chillingly portrayed character. I have similar feelings towards that film The Last King of Scotland or somesuch--I'm curious and yet I dread seeing it, for what I imagine will be its depiction of a sociopath of a dictator, marked, as such figures seem to be, by quixotic gestures of clemency that seem to hint at the possibility of goodness. Yet these are likely nothing more than the exercising of a certain kind of power (namely, the power over life and death, which is pointless, unless life is also sometimes granted for no better reason than because it can be).

This was also what haunted me in Lord of War--not just the Iago-esque villainy of the Nicholas Cage character (absolutely horrible, and you want him to get his comeuppance, but he also forges a peculiar connection to the viewer because of his asides and confidences, in the form of a voice-over narrative), but rather, the portrayal of the African dictator and the dictator's son, to whom the protagonist sold arms.

Oh yes, and happy Christmas Eve. :-)

Battlestar Galactica

2006-12-23T19:32:00.000-05:00

Quote of the day: "I base my fashion sense on what doesn't itch."

Appropriate enough, given my choice of casuals for the day. :-)

We've been dividing our time between Battlestar Galactica (the new television series) and Prison Break--the latter at Glenn's recommendation.

BSG took a little while to get off the ground, IMO, despite all the kabooms and explosions at the outset. I wasn't pulled in immediately. But it has gotten more interesting, though I do find it exasperating that the humans are always the underdogs. I really don't get how they survive at all, given that the Cylons (originally man-made machines that developed self-will and now look exactly like humans) always seem about ten steps ahead of them.

The opposition between humans and Cylons, in thematic terms, seems to play out a little sumpin' like this:

Cylon= monotheistic, intelligently designed, homogenous (there are only twelve models of Cylon... again, the reasons for this are unclear. If they can create a human-like creature from the ground up, then having a wider variety of them would seem a no brainer--at the least, you'd think they'd be able to do cosmetic surgery on them so that they'd look different and be able to infiltrate the human ranks more effectively. You'd also think they would age and so there would be some older looking versions of Cylon models as well as young ones)

Human= polytheistic, evolved, pluralistic

The humans appear to be relying on some kind of prophecy, but the Cylons appear to know far more about the prophecy than do the humans (e.g. a Cylon led the humans to the site of one of the significant turning points). If that's so--if the humans are so outmanoevered (and at every turn they seem to be), then it feels pretty fatalistic--like the Cylons are just sitting around letting the humans mess everything up for themselves because they can afford to?

All the positive turning points are extremely minor victories or else they are resolutions (usually with some very high level of compromise or sub-optimal solution) of problems that have been created within the story arc being depicted.

E.g. key character is shot and ends up in a coma. Lots of negative turning points ensue and stuff gets really, really bad. The positive turning point then is that the character regains consciousness--everyone's greatly relieved--but much of the bad stuff has irrevocable consequences and everything is far worse than it was before the shooting.

This pattern seems fairly typical--three steps back, one step forward. It gets rather wearing after a while to keep watching more and more bad things happen and to know that any victory will be pyrrhic at best and non-strategically significant at worst (e.g. Cylons infiltrate key outpost and learn stuff they shouldn't and the BSG folk are just barely able to contain the damage at a very high price and still have a compromised system; elsewhere, two characters who had a falling out in an earlier episode make up and decide to be friends, which is our feel-good moment and meant to make us imagine that somehow things have turned out all right after all).

Once in a very rare while, they throw us a bone in the form of some possibly strategically important victory, but often as not that's followed by our learning that some Cylon is sitting around watching the whole thing and allowing it to happen for his or her own nefarious purposes.

I've lately begun suggesting to Tom that I would actually welcome one of those "remember those fun times we had on Capricon" kind of episodes with a bunch of people sitting around laughing at a series of past hijinks--you know, one of those benevolent little "character development" episodes which *doesn't* involve some tragically killed boyfriend and the resultant emotional scars' consequences in the present. I might even welcome one of those flashback shows, depicting the fun and zany times, using clips from previous episodes, that always seem like "the writers had their week off so we're filming a flashback show". I'm that desperate to break from the largely downward spiral of the story.

I do like the characters, but will admit I'm getting rather tired of the show and the relentlessly negative overarching storylines (at least Stargate Atlantis, of which I saw a couple of seasons, had some fun episodes too).

I also admit that I rather like the Cylons, but they don't make a lot of sense to me. I'd like to see an episode (maybe there's one ahead) of the Cylons hanging out on some average day. What do they do? What to they talk about? Do they play poker with each other, and if it's the same model playing against itself, would one win, or would each recognise the small body language cues that would give away the bluff? In their cities, what do they do with their time? Hang out? Go for coffee? Have day jobs? Let the less-human-looking machines wait on them? What's the infrastructure? etc.

Me 'n Ella

2006-12-21T18:15:00.000-05:00

Yes, I took the picture myself, and yes, alas, it is kind of blurry. But I feel that Ella is under-represented in our various portrayals and depictions of our cats. Loki always seems to be grabbing the limelight. So I'm going to even out that disparity at flickr in the near future as well by uploading many pics of Ella and only a few of Loki.

I also went for a walk today. It was very pleasant out, and my muses helped me out by giving me a bit of a breakthrough on what direction I might take on the Regency. I guess it won't be in the mail before Christmas, but I'll have something to do over the holidays. :-)

Kelly Link

2006-12-21T10:16:00.000-05:00

Speaking of short stories (see below), here's a writer whose work makes me feel like a rank amateur. Just amazing stuff.

I've got her book Stranger Things Happen out from the library. It's also available for free download from her publisher's website. If you have the time and the interest, I recommend it highly. I'm actually going to buy a copy (wow), which I'm sure happens often enough after the free download--and it's not even a completely altruistic move of good faith (they're letting me download it so I'll ante up).

It's actually a helluva an amazing book (haven't finished it yet--I'm only a couple of stories in--but I'm already convinced) and so I want to have a copy of my own that I can take with me places and read at my convenience without a computer. I've even bought her second book (all that was in at the bookstore).

So, it's a short story anthology. I'm not usually a big short story person, but some of these images from the first stories I read are already haunting me. It's slipstream or surreal or what have you so if that's not your bag, maybe these stories wouldn't work for you. But wow--do they ever resonate for me. It's her amazing ability to imply. And her astonishing way of bringing together disparate elements in a fascinating and totally functional way, then adding in an element of chaos that keeps you on your toes, but works within the dream-logic of the narrative, so there's never (not so far anyway) any sense of deus ex-machina or some "out of left field" twist.

I think the last time I discovered a short story anthology that so fascinated and enchanted me was with Angela Carter's The Bloody Chamber and Black Venus. These are similar in that they are original, packed with vibrant, bold imagery and possessed of a unique voice. But otherwise, they are quite different in style, density and so on. I'd say Kelly Link is masterful at implication.

There's also a wonderful specificity of evocation. Two examples: "Eight Chimneys is as big as a castle, but dustier and darker than Samantha imagines a castle would be. There are more sofas, more china shepherdesses with chipped fingers, fewer suits of armor. No moat."

And: "Mr. Coeslak can tell the twins apart, even if their father can't; Claire's eyes are grey, like a cat's fur, he says, but Samatha's are gray like the ocean when it has been raining."

But ultimately, it's her way of connecting elements of the story implicitly, so they seem to resonate or make sense at a level that isn't quite articulated, which is most fascinating to me. If downloading the whole book seems too much commitment, she also has a short story (more urban fantasy, whereas the first book seems more informed by surrealism) from her latest collection up on her website.

Persephone's Library

2006-12-19T22:42:00.000-05:00

Well, I finished a short story today, tentatively entitled "Persephone's Library". I really like the beginning, but I'm not sure if it gets too heavy-handed after that. Still, I kind of like the idea behind it--and I do think I muddied the issue later on. Ultimately, it's pretty discusssion-oriented. It's also a character piece, where the SF premise just sets things in motion in the first place.

I'm going to let it sit for a few days, then hopefully send it off either on Friday or early next week to the Tesseracts anthology. I don't know if it's really up to par for that, but I might as well, since entering the anthology (deadline Dec. 31) was the impetus behind writing the piece in the first place. And I'm pleased to have managed to choke something out at all, given how stuck I've been (yet again!) on the Regency. I'm hoping to get tons done on that tomorrow, however. :-)

Last Minute Crafts and Other Adventures

2006-12-17T00:00:00.000-05:00

Well, today has certainly been eventful:

a quick swing through a host of errands, from reserved book at the library pick up to drawing cash for the craft fair...

then, Toronto, and the last minute craft fair, organized by Erin.

Tom's mom was also there, at one of the tables, selling her lovely necklaces and beadwork.

We shopped around and I got quite a bit of funky gear, including a set of five buttons that were the first five letters of the Ghastlycrumb Tinies (that's all Erin has made, so far and I've got 'em all now! She made them into magnets. They're now on the fridge, and boy, are they tiny!). I find that particular tale deeply unsettling but oddly enchanting and charming at the same time. Go figure.

I also got a spider box (i.e. a box with a nice spider painted onto it). The image is on his website as available but now it is mine! Muahahaha. I do like spiders, after all. Looking at his website, I also like his "spooky box" and trees, but he didn't have any of those there, alas, or I would have bought one for sure. But I'm very happy with the spider box too.

How novel--an illustrated post, with all the bells and whistles. Guess who recently got a new camera? Though the spider box photo wasn't even taken by my camera. It's just a bonus.

We also ran into Mark and Sarah--and their daughter Thea. The last time we had seen Mark and Sarah was about a year and a half ago, and Thea wasn't yet born, so it was lovely meeting her for the first time!

After the craft fair, we rushed to pick up a tree for Tom's mom, then head back to Waterloo because Tom has a gig tonight. Which is where he's at right now! I went for a bit. One day when I'm feeling adventurous, I'll go figure out youtube and then load up a few video clips onto there, since someone's new camera can also do those and despite being a cynic about such features, I'm finding it surprisingly fun. I've filmed a few of the cats already.

Then tomorrow, I have choir practice first thing and on down the list and through the day. Lots and lots to do! No further revisions yet accomplished. I'm hoping to do some tomorrow, even if they end up just being line edits. I figure that will at least be a start. If the harder stuff isn't yet coming, I'll work on the easy stuff--and hopefully something will fall into place for the more challenging bits. *sigh*