What I Did On My Summer Vacation 2 comments

My family didn’t go on vacation. Ever. So the concept is quite foreign to me. Oh, I “get” it, intellectually. We all need a break, blah blah blah. But it isn’t in my programming, really.

I think my Mom would have been a traveller, given half a chance. She famously (well, famously to me anyway) hitchhiked across the continent with her best buddy, Charlotte, after they both graduated from nursing school. Whenever they ran out of money, they stopped and got nursing jobs for a few months, then carried on. What an adventure that must have been, exploring North America in the late-40′s, post-war era. They traveled together for over a year, I think.  Across the prairies to Vancouver, down the coast to LA, through New Orleans and back up through New York City. That’s my Mom.

But … was it a vacation? Not really. It was an adventure. Soon, she married my father and started having babies. When I was four, and Mom had been married almost 20 years, she took me to Florida. We stayed for a week with my aunt and uncle in their trailer. That was the only vacation we ever took, and I only vaguely remember it.

Actually, now that I think of it, I remember being told something about a camping trip to the Pinery Provincial Park when I was still in a wicker bassinet.  Hardly an experience that would have left an indelible mark.

My father used words like “tomfoolery” and “lazy bastards” whenever anyone took a day off work, so the concept of taking an extended break was certainly not in his programming, either. Those words also applied to Christmas and birthday celebrations but I think I’ve managed not to let his severe case of the grumps spoil my fun on those days. I’m not sure if it is a family farming culture thing – no time to rest! – or just my father’s peculiar inability to let go of his Protestant work ethic. But we didn’t go anywhere as a family, or plan anything like a trip or a “vacation”.

That makes it sound like we didn’t have any fun – we certainly did. There was card-playing, board games, lots of horsing around and activity with my brothers, including building our own ice rinks, fishing the local creeks, swinging from ropes into piles of straw in the barn, and breaking windows with errant baseballs. I spent a significant amount of time begging my mother to buy me, or let me buy, a mini-bike. Later, for me, there were organized sports (hockey, softball, swimming), music lessons and theatre projects. But … no vacations, per se.

My life looks a bit like this now, in fact. Busy – a lovely balance between work and play in my day-to-day life. However, now that I am better at recognizing the signs and appreciating the rhythm of modern life, I am faced with the indisputable fact that I Must Go Away From Time To Time And Shift Gears. The signs are clearer to me now than they once were: emotional exhaustion, lack of motivation, mild depression, disinterest, disorganization, lack of creativity. The rhythm, particularly of my primary job as a professor, couldn’t be clearer. This great gaping maw of time stretches from mid-June to late August, begging to be filled with interesting distractions.

What do I typically do? This year, my official obligations ended with my institution on June 18, a Friday. My first client meeting was scheduled for – wait  for it – June 21, Monday. Now that I really think on it, there is something almost obscene about this. As with other years, I have sort of puttered through the summer, not really planning much, doing some work for clients, sleeping in, trying to relax and be less structured, spending some lovely time with friends, letting things unfold. But it doesn’t feel very “vacation”-like. I’m terrible at planning vacations in advance – I have no training, role-modeling or examples from my past to guide me – and I shudder at forking out the dough. Check with anyone I’ve been involved with for any length of time … they’ll confirm this in spades.

How does someone like me really go on vacation? I have learned that I can trick myself into it. In 2008, I took off by myself to Barbados and justified it as a “strategic planning retreat” for my business. I found a bed and breakfast with high speed wireless and spent a portion of every day drumming up new ideas and documenting a business plan for the next few years. Of course, I also got a tan and swam in the ocean a lot. This compromise – a working vacation – is about as close as I’m going to get to the real deal.

So, what have I done on my summer vacation at this last-minute cottage rental? I have:

• Developed a workshop (powerpoint and materials) on recruitment best practices for a client. First time I’ve prepared a session to be delivered by someone else. Very liberating.
• Developed a bio for a client to be included in a bid for a significant chunk of work. I love spin.
• Completed the first edit on the script for Fundy Boy: Back to Broadway. The original gang is re-assembling, I’ll be directing/lighting/running around. Rehearsals start late August for an October 1-2 staging. Be there!

Still to be completed:

• Working out operational workflows for two specific processes for a client, mapping out and justifying the recommended changes in processes.
• Creating a workplan for my two weeks of prep prior to classes starting at Centennial. Lots to do … very little time to do it!

Oh … I have also …

• Slept like a rock
• Gotten up early, with the mist on the water, and spent hours fishing on a silent, still lake, absorbing the sound of the loons
• Dozed on the floating dock, listened to audiobooks and gotten rather a lot of sun
• Re-connected with dear, long-time friends who also have a cottage on this lake and eaten steak and – mmmm – mashed potatoes and s’mores
• Gone swimming
• Spent some glorious time with Knotty Girl when she dropped by
• Bailed out the boat, in the pouring rain, so I can get back to shore for supplies (this was actually kind of fun although I’m very glad it had stopped raining by the time I’d returned)
• Pondered blogging and a re-entry therein

Still to come:

• More hanging out with Knotty Girl, and two more joyful and lovely fishing buddies who are arriving for the weekend
• More dozing on dock
• More fishing and swimming
• Some yummy cottage meals when the gang is here
• Perhaps some live action Scrabble playing and Balderdashing
• More blogging?

So, this business of tricking myself into vacationing actually works. As long as I feel I’m accomplishing something, I’m good to go. I think of it as the Protestant-work-ethic-work-around.

OK – I need to think about workflows now. Well, shortly. First, a dip in the lake … I may have gotten a sunburn writing this.

Motherhood 1 comment

Once again, Mother’s Day rolls around and I find myself in a pensive, reflective sort of place.  Looking back, or down as my colleagues would say from my standard perspective of 50,000 feet, a pattern emerges. Early May is always the end of two long semesters, and that always feels like the end of a marathon, emotionally. This year has been especially challenging, with the stress of a potential strike, and the sense of powerlessness one has to do anything at all, individually, to affect the eventual outcome. The deeper frustration at having no ability to affect the systemic issues that would cause such a disruptive and disturbing action to even be considered.

All that aside, teaching is a kind of parenting, I think. I recognized a while back that I engage with my teaching practice as a sort of parent/guardian/mid-wife/mentor/coach. I’m not interested in lecturing and I have no confidence at all in such a dynamic resulting in any “learning” of any kind. I’m constantly scheming about fun ways we can get groups of students involved in classroom activities that help them learn and practice their communications skills. Sometimes I think these are more fun than my students do. Also true of parenting, perhaps.

Where teaching – formal teaching – and parenting are different has to do with evaluation. In my experience, healthy parents love their children unconditionally. Without reserve as to their actual level of skill or knowledge. And here is where it gets emotionally tricky for the parenting teacher, because it is our job to evaluate, to judge. To assess whether skills and knowledge have actually been acquired and successfully demonstrated. Unlike some of the more quantitative skill sets, evaluating communications skills is tricky and somewhat subjective. There are some very good communicators who are not so good with funky details of applied English. There are extremely poor communicators who managed to ace all their quizzes and any assignments that did not involve eye contact, and thus will pass the course.  There are students who hate anything to do with communicating who cannot understand why this is important or relevant in any way.

As a “parent” figure, I get a little attached to them all – and herein lies the danger for me. I don’t want to fail any of these, my pseudo-children. I feel affection for them – I find most of their quirky, undisciplined, messy, “sense of entitlement” selves endearing. I want them to succeed, to feel like they are successful. I hate being the judge. But I am. And, this past term, it was my job to fail roughly 20% of my communications class. It simultaneously breaks my heart and makes me angry.

I challenge anyone who thinks that teaching is a cushy, over-paid  job to actually do it, full-time, for two semesters running. Then, we’ll talk.

I had an awesome good news story this term, though, and it taught me a lot. In the Fall 09 semester, a student came to me mid-point in the term and explained that her parents had arranged for her to get engaged in Dubai during the last three weeks of term. This young woman has aspirations of becoming a journalist someday and so she knew that this communications course would be important to her. However, her actual ability in this area was proving to be rather weak. Not “failing” weak, but weak. As it happens, the last three weeks of this course involve working in a team to research and deliver a presentation. Thus, if she was going to be out of the country, it would be impossible for her to complete the work.

We worked out a compromise. I gave her an “Incomplete” and offered to have her return to my class in Winter 10 (this past term) to complete the team project with another class. She did so, contacting me exactly on schedule and arriving in class exactly as I had asked her to. There was a change in her. In the intervening three and a half months, she had matured and she was clearly able to demonstrate and use the communications skills I had been mentoring her class through the previous term, even though her average at the time she departed was around 57%. Her team, under her leadership, rocked the final presentation. This was a revelation to me – that students, even weak ones, continue to “learn” the material AFTER the course is over. This makes me feel better about the 10 or 15% who SHOULD have failed, but didn’t because of the strength of their quizzes, the mid-term or their group effort. Maybe some stuff will sink in and re-surface later. One can only hope.

I’m sure I’ve told this story before – here it is again in a slightly different context. I’ve always been a bit of a language nazi. Good writing makes me swoon and bad writing makes me gag. This has been true since about Grade Six, I think. So, I was well-entrenched as the self-appointed language police in my household from an early age. When my oldest brother was living in Saskatchewan for a time, lightyears before the age of the Internet, my mother would pain-stakingly write him one page, hand-written notes, usually weekly. She would sweat and labour over each phrase. Her letters wound up reading a bit like this:

Dear Ben,

Harvest todday again, beans. Almost done here, going to Thomas place tomorrow. Combine jammed but it is ok now. Mae brought kool-aid, cherry, and a pie. Too hot but can’t wait. Bails dry soon but no time. John Deere had oil. Leaky again but Aubrey had the right hose and fixed. With clamps. Charlie got a new radio, Fred Woods says new fridge back-ordered. Made cookies. How are you?

Love, Mom

Once, when I was about 16, I came upon her writing one of these, with her face wrenched up in serious concentration, the clicker end of her pen in her mouth as she thought. I scoffed, rolled my eyes and generally behaved like a 16 year old know-it-all who could critique the mechanics but missed, entirely, the depth of communication and love that was being successfully poured into each note. I feel ashamed when I think of this incident and I note, ruefully, that I do not have any such letter from my mother, even though I moved permanently away from home when I was 18, and 20 years would pass before her death. She would not bring herself before the language police again, and I don’t blame her.

But what I wouldn’t give for one of those letters.

I remember this incident often and it helps me be a better teacher. Clearly, for some people writing is extremely difficult. For others, it is easier. Put another way: some very good, talented, valuable, smart people are terrible writers.  Being a good writer does not necessarily translate into being a good person. My role, my job, is just to teach a skill. Try to help each individual express themselves a bit better when they leave my course than when they started.  If they reach a certain external standard, I have to let them move on to the next challenge. That is the best I can do.

Thanks, Mom … Happy Mother’s Day!

Of Eggs, Forks and Comfort 2 comments

I ate breakfast late today. I know I’m not supposed to do that, but … there it is. I had a big pub outing after hockey last night and just felt unable to introduce more protein until after noon. Today’s egg creation involved frying mushrooms, onions, red peppers and ham together and then dumping eggs beaten with many kinds of cheese and a few dashes of Worchestershire sauce on top, stirring until set. The WWBA and I call this “Scrambled Eggs with Stuff”. The radio was on as I was doing this and Stuart McLean was reading one of my favourite Dave and Morley stories, Holland, about when Dave and Morley met.  In that story, Morley made her version of “eggs with stuff” and they were not to Dave’s liking, nearly contributing to the end of their very young marriage.

Somehow, I’ve acquired two small kitchen whisks in the past number of years and I’ve started to use them, exclusively, for whipping eggs for “eggs with stuff”. That is what they are for, after all. Whisking things. Usually, I plop the eggs on top of some cottage cheese and maybe some romano, pelt the mixture with some Worchestershire sauce and get the whisk going. It sounds like it does on the cooking shows. Busy and thoroughly important, accented with high tinkly sounds of the metal strands hitting the glass. Today, however, I had a sudden aversion to making one more kitchen implement dirty for this task and, instead, used the fork that I’d already used to dish out the cottage cheese. My mother never had a whisk, after all, and this is how she whipped eggs for the pan. For that matter, this is how I did it until I got all cityfied and started using a whisk.

Beating eggs with a fork, in a glass mixing bowl, sounds totally and completely different than beating eggs with a whisk in a glass mixing bowl. I’d forgotten. There is a deep, gurgling, plopping sound caused by the fork lifting and dropping the mixture that is missing from the more treble sound of the whisk. There is still metal on glass, yet it sounds somehow more aggressive and forceful with a fork than with a whisk. It is, for me, a nostalgic sound, reminding me of my mother being both consciously instructive with me in the kitchen (“watch for egg shells in the mix, here, use a spoon to get that out.”) and unconsciously instructive as she tried to do as much as possible as quickly as possible. Scrambled eggs with stuff was fast, nutritious, cheap and tasty. Thus, also popular.

On a day like today, after a week like this week, the simple sound of eggs being whipped in a bowl to create “eggs with stuff” was profoundly grounding to me. A short plane ride away, a scene of unimaginable devastation is unfolding as a bottleneck of well-intentioned assistance sits, waiting to be deployed. It is gut-wrenching.

At work, the results of a mid-week strike vote have definitively answered precisely nothing, for anyone, on any side of the table.

As privileged and fortunate as my life is – and it is – I am aware that I am powerless in both of these situations. Once the donating and the voting is done, there is nothing I can directly and personally do to affect either of these outcomes. Sometimes I catch myself imagining jumping on a plane and taking control of the airport, directing the flow of traffic, or building quick on-the-spot teams for aid deployment. Or, bursting in on the negotiating teams with some new revelation that will solve all the threads of distrust and mis-information that have sprung up over years between management and the union. But, wistfully, I put those things away back when the day came to put away childish things.

So, I make eggs. And I remember that my good fortune springs not from my “stuff” or acquisition of “stuff”, but from all that I have learned and continue to learn, and all the mistakes I’ve made and continue to make. And I hope for the best. For everyone.

Catz 1 comment

Meet Sophie. Isn’t she adorable?

Having Sophie around takes me back to two other times in my life. First, when I was little, I remember being “in charge” of the barn cats on our farm. This was a self-appointed position. I was probably four or five when I became kitty maven. I adored the semi-feral creatures and routinely spirited saucers of Mom’s precious Carnation Evaporated Milk, normally reserved for use in coffee, out to the shed for my furry friends. My Dad and brothers tried to discourage this, saying that hungry cats could catch more mice and rats in the barns, but I paid no mind to this absurd perspective.

There were usually between 10-20 cats at a time on the farm. The population would fluctuate. Cat Matriarch at the time was Sandy, an orangey-ginger cat who was likely mama to many of the others. She was pretty ragged around the edges, often appearing in the mornings with a chunk of fur missing, or a kink in her tail, or another scar on her ear. As rough as her non-domesticated life appeared to be, she was always, always, gentle and sweet with me. Immeasurably patient, never scratching or hissng or behaving aggressively, even if I got too close to any of her newborns. My main visual memory of Sandy is of her looking at me, sighing, and sort of half closing her eyes with a combination of exhaustion and resignation. She could always manage a purr for me, and some kneading.

Every year, there were several batches of kittens to be ooh’d and aah’d over. They would be born in the hay mow, well-hidden by clever cat mamas, to be discovered only after hours of patiently following the distressed-sounding mews. Or, sometimes, they would be born in a tool shed or implement shed, or in the garage behind the house. I was always on a mission to find the kittens, somehow thinking, god-like, that they needed my intervention. Not surprisingly, I also have very clear memories of cat mamas carrying their babies to and fro by the scruff of their necks, moving the latest kitten batch to a more secure hiding place, away from all self-appointed god-like creatures.

I decided, when I was five, that little wee tiny kittens don’t “meow”. They squeak out a syllable that sounds like”at”, like they are trying to say “cat” but can’t quite get the whole word out. If you listen to a wee kitten, you’ll hear it, perhaps – or maybe your inner five year old will be able to. I sat with multitudes of cats and kittens, for hours. They were my friends, out there on the farm, miles from other five year olds. I adored their serious expressions, their oddly squared-off noses. How some cats always look shocked or surprised or vaguely scandalized by the activity around them. Some will relax, some never do.  The behaviour that I interpreted, as a child, as “playing” is really “learning how to stalk and kill things.” I liked being greeted by a flurry of upright tails. Watching a kitten transform from a cumbersome, innocent, slightly stupid fluffy ball into a sleek hunting machine was an amazing thing.

My Mom was very clear – farm animals, like cats and dogs, are not allowed in the house. Ever. Period. This wasn’t even up for discussion. The closest the cats and kittens got was the attached rickety garage out the back door of our house.

Some kittens lived, and some did not. Some were born strong, some were not. Some cat mamas were very good at raising their young. Some were not. I’ve buried a lot of cats, from new born to very aged. One of our cats, JB, a calico, got hit by a car. My Mom and I discovered this at twilight one summer’s evening as we returned from a dip in the pool at the local conservation area. Her body was intact and had stiffened but her face had contorted into a grotesque almost aggressive expression before she died. I felt responsible for getting her off the road and buried, so I forced myself from my state of shock and sadness into action, fetching a sheet of plywood veneer from the shed, sliding it under her body and carrying it carefully to a hole I’d dug behind the garage. It felt necessary, respectful, dutiful, sad … I remember I also felt scared, a bit, this one time. Something about the unexpected sudden death and the painful last look on her face.

I saw that same look again, some 20+ years later, when I had to have my beloved cat soulmate, Sid, euthanized. I understood, then, that this is just what happens to muscle structures in death and that it was my own anthropomorphizing that projected unwarranted meaning onto the expression.

Sid, like Sophie, was a child of the streets. A kitten foundling from my first summer in St. Catharines, we bonded. Our initial bonding probably had to do with me tucking him into my shirt to take him to work with me on my moped. (I was trying, unsuccessfully, to conceal from my university roomies that I had taken a kitten in.) He would peek out, just under my neck.  He was an ornery guy, a sort of one-person cat. He grew from a tiny kitten into a 21 lb behemoth. It should be noted that at 21 lbs, he was not “obese”, just very large. A huge tom-cat head, giant paws. An industrial strength purr that could be heard throughout two floors of almost any house. The many adventures of Sid probably deserve their own blog posting, but safe to say that once he was gone, I found it really hard to imagine having another cat. He died in 1998, after we spent almost a year battling feline diabetes. He was quite done with the insulin shots and dietary restrictions, I think. He was 15.

In the intervening 11 years, I think I’d forgotten much about these creatures. I also think that my tendency to excess analysis and thought needs to be reined in by the presence of a creature whose needs are more clear, immediate and lacking in alternative agendas entirely.  Needs for food, water, cleanliness, affection, attention and stimulation.  These needs snap me back into a concrete reality because, suddenly, I am the sole source of these for this one fur-person. No analysis required.

I think Sophie is part dog. Last night, after falling into bed exhausted and turning out the light, I heard quite the commotion downstairs. None of it sounded damaging in a permanent way and I was too tired to get up to investigate. There were some crinkling sounds which I presumed originated from the crinkly bag I put on the floor for Sophie to enjoy. Then I heard some bounding up the steps and felt her land on the bed, still making crinkling sounds. “Whaa …?”  On went the light. There she sat with her bag of treats in her mouth which she then dropped, pointedly, in front of me. The messaging was clear and unambiguous. “WANT TREAT NOW – PAY ATTENTION – PLAY WITH ME”.  I wish all the humans in my life were this clear!

Memories of My Father 3 comments

Fedoras and three piece suits.
Suspenders, always, and collared shirts.
An undershirt, even on the hottest August day in the middle of harvest.
Sweat stains.
“Heeeyy??” ~ loudly and with a steadily rising inflection. An indication he had not heard what was said.

Not a day off in his life (according to him).
“Christmas … tomfoolery. A waste.”
Torching the Chrismas pudding with rye whiskey. Smiling. The best part of the day for him.

The pen game ~ me, stretched over his lap as he drew letters and eventually words on my back with the top of a ball point pen. Guessing made me giggle. Made him giggle too. Our only shared game.

That funny walk, head down, lurching forward.

The one kiss I witnessed between my parents, as seen from the back seat of the car. We were at the airport. A peck goodbye. Goodbye.
Then there was the time he left and went to England, without luggage, and without mentioning anything about this to us.
No goodbye that time.

The newspaper, the London Free Press, every night. Blackened fingers.
The cough.
Steak and kidney pie with that fluffy flakey pastry on top.
Port.
Old cheddar cheese.
Butter, always.
Colts.
Rye whiskey.
Chewing rather than smoking cigars. Spitting.

Me holding the worklamp for him under the tractor/combine harvester/truck he was fixing late at night. “If you can see, I can see.”
Those peculiar English turns of phrase:

• Use the business end.
• You needing to look after Little Mary?
• Put a little English on it.
• My head is here, my ass is comin’.
• Ass over tea kettle.

Teaching me to drive a tractor before I could properly reach the pedals. Letting me run the harrows over a field. In fourth gear. Laughing.
Letting me park the combine harvester, driven with levers and pedals rather than a steering wheel, in the implement shed. A huge machine. A small opening. He thought I could do it. He was right. I was 9 or so.

Sometimes you have to kill your own food. My father did, being at the tail end of a generational succession of butchers.
Carving knives and sharpening steels, wielded.

The broken ankle as he tried to unjam the combine harvester.
The severed finger in the post hole auger.

Long involved stories over lunch. Or dinner. Fables, frauds and embellishments.
No eye contact with my mother, ever.
Disparaging under his breath.
Indulgent glances at me as I attempted to participate in adult conversation at dinner. Especially the “how do we fix the cultivator?” conversations. Smiling.

Not remembering my name.

Taking me to the horse races. Teaching me how to read the racing program. A useful life skill, surely.
Dozing off, prone in the backseat, no seat belt. The swerving of the car as he dozed off, too, felt like rocking.

Playing cards. The sweet plastic smell of a fresh deck.
Five card stud. Seven card stud.
Straight draw, one-eyed jacks are wild.
Rummoli.

That funny walk, head down, lurching forward, saves my ass as he fails to notice the huge hole I ripped in the hood of the pick-up truck when I drove it into the corn header on the combine harvester. My brothers take the fall, only because they saw me do it and nearly kill myself. I was 10 or so and following my father’s instructions to pick him up in the field. Had just been taught how to drive “three on the tree” the night before, by my father. I couldn’t reach the clutch, or the brake, properly.

Fewer stories.

Not remembering my brothers’ names.

The auction, selling off equipment and land. Mud, too many people, confusion. He let me hold the cheque at dinner. The house and shed remained. Father did not.

Erratic absences. Extended absences.

The phone call from the hospital. “Your father was run over by a snowmobile.” “How is this possible? It is June.” Shrugging. Another story to tell.

Not remembering anyones’ name. No one mentions this.

The phone call from the hospital. “Your father was hit by a train at the level crossing.” A longer stay this time as trains are bigger than snowmobiles regardless of season. Another story to tell.

Disappeared. Silence. No stories. Years pass. Shrugging.

The sudden return, with the announcement that the house and shed were now on the market too. No one is upset about this but me.

Being yanked out of class in high school to go look at houses “for your mother”. Because they did not speak.

Packing. Finding:

• a drawer full of prescriptions, years worth, unfinished
• a drawer full of dentures and dental plates
• a drawer full of hearing aids and batteries
• a drawer full of cigar boxes

Uprooting. No goodbye. Bitter.

Disappeared again.

Hitch-hiking in a fedora and three-piece suit. On Hwy. 81. In July. He does not recognize either my brother or me. He makes small talk and asks to be dropped at a major intersection in London. This is even weirder than being hit by a snowmobile in June, o those many years ago.

Found by my brothers in squalor. Removed to Highbury Hilton for assessment. A nursing home is found. Nasty, frightening place. Personal items stolen. Smells not in the slightest of sweat, port, cigars or whiskey.

Remembering nothing, fragments of stories, like tape loops, get triggered from the middle, often, and have no beginning or end. Fuzzy eyes.

Gone. No goodbyes. No more stories.

Small World 1 comment

It looked like a nice night for a fire in the firepit last night. My last night of solitude here at the cottage. So, after dinner, I cleaned the BBQ and started to assemble a few things at the firepit. Paper I’d been saving up as firestarter, kindling, a few containers of water, guitar, book, citronella candle, glass of wine … I noticed the two women with dogs that I’d noticed earlier in the week, walking by towards the municipal docks. I don’t know why gaydar works at a few dozen paces, but it seems to. I decided to keep an eye for them walking back and invite them over for a glass of wine by the firepit.

It didn’t take long for them to wander back up the road. I waved them over and suggested they stop by for a bit. The dogs were keen, one large, grey-muzzled black lab (Alice) and a smaller, puppy-like mutt (Maggie, six months old). I greeted the dogs first then looked up to find one of the women staring at me intently. She said, “Don’t I know you?” I looked more closely at her. She said, “High school?” Oh, my god – yes!

So, here I am, not in the middle of nowhere, but slightly off centre of nowhere … just standin’ here … and who should arrive on my doorstep but two lovely women, one of whom was an acquaintance in high school lo these many years ago, and her partner, equally as friendly and sweet.

We had a really lovely time, catching up over the fire and wine. Several hours of chat. Turns out they live up here full-time, just up the road. They suggested the local house that seems the centre of all community stuff here as a place I might check to see if my “lost/stolen” fishing gear might have been turned in. Also, these two women operate a little shop in back of their place and I’m going to check it out later today. We also might wind up going to the Serena Ryder concert together in Peterborough later on.

Wow – small, interesting world, isn’t it?

Tetrazini 3 comments

My mother had to feed 12 people three meals a day on a rather skimpy budget. When I think back on it, this was really quite a feat. Although I learned a lot from being in the kitchen with her, I wish I’d paid a little more attention to her creative resourcefulness in stretching her food budget, keeping food interesting/healthy, and not being wasteful.

It was a big deal for me, last Christmas, to feed eight people in my small abode. That one meal took a lot of planning, and I got a lot of it wrong. I had enough food for an army, as it turns out. An army considerably larger than eight. There were leftovers.

Mom was creative with leftovers, or whatever was at hand. Part of the trick was, of course, making sure that the right basic stuff was on hand. And, honestly, when feeding 12 people, casseroles made from opening a tin or two of this or that never did generate complaints. Therefore, one of the “must have” cooking ingredients was a supply of Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom soup.

Food snobs poo-poo recipes that include the instruction “Open a tin of Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom soup” as being well below acceptable standards of cuisine. On most days, I consider myself a bit of a food snob.* Except today. And, wouldn’t you know it, I didn’t have a can of Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom soup on hand, just when I needed it.

Usually, Sunday dinner involved a large, roasted dead creature. My father, a Brit and a butcher/farmer by trade, would call any roasted dead creature “a joint” and I, for the life of me, couldn’t figure out why. Most popular beef roasts do not involve a part of the anatomy anywhere close to a joint. When the “joint” was not beef or pork, there would be poultry – either chicken (several) or a turkey, which was my favourite.

Turkey was my favourite primarily because turkey leftover options involved a few of my all time leftover favourites, all of which also involved Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom soup. Something heavenly happens when you combine leftover turkey gravy with Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom soup. These favourites included:

- turkey a la king (creamed turkey with veggies, served on toast)
- turkey pot pie (my all time, bar none, favourite leftover meal – essentially, turkey a la king in pastry)
- turkey tetrazini (somehow different than creamed turkey on toast and I’m not sure why)

So, tonight, staring at a fridge filled with well-enjoyed, but nearly about to go off meat and veg, I embarked on a slightly more health conscious version of tetrazini, which I dubbed “Three Pork Tetrazini” or by its Swedish name “Pork Pork Pork!!”

First, I had to go to the general store to fetch the requisite tin of Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom soup. I spotted a coyote on the way back from the store. I am, truly, where the wild things are.

But, I digress … the rest went as follows:

1. Boil water for whole wheat pasta of choice. Prepare to desired doneness. Drain.

2. While the pasta is doing its thing, chop four slices of bacon into one inch squares and toss in fry pan @ medium-high. Follow this with:
- garlic
- chopped onion
- chopped peppers
- mushrooms (lotsa mushrooms)

3. Stir the fry pan mixture around a lot. If bacon isn’t providing enough grease, add oil of choice – either butter or olive oil will do.

4. Pour glass of wine.

5. When the bacon is looking almost done, add chopped leftover pork loin and chopped lean ham. Keep stir frying.

6. For heaven’s sake, don’t over cook the pasta!!!

7. Add several handfuls of baby spinach carefully picked over for mushy leaves and those weird skinny non-spinach leaves that always seem to sneak in. Keep stirring this up.

8. When the spinach has “melted” and incorporated into the mixture, add the tin of Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom soup. Stir to blend in and let heat through.

9. This recipe has both BACON and tinned pseudo-food. DO NOT add more salt at any time. That is just silly.

10. While the soup heats through and blends in, grate some old cheddar. Sprinkle that on top and stir until incorporated. The whole mix may take on a brownish tinge. This is desireable.

11. Add the drained pasta (hope you started with a big enough pan!) and keep folding until the pasta is fully covered in the sauce.

12. Pour another glass of wine. Serve.

The observant amongst my readers will note that this recipe does not have to be made with pork or, indeed, any dead creatures at all. Any combination of stuff stir-fried in garlic and oil, coated in Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom soup and glued together with old cheddar and served over pasta is going to be pretty yummy.

And it was. AND … if you serve it with enough wine and call it “tetrazini”, your guests may just believe you!

*I was called a “coffee snob” the other day. I can’t imagine why.

SubText 2 comments

September, 1982. I was 18, about to turn 19 in moments. A kid off the farm, starting undergrad in a decidedly urban discipline (theatre) and being completely and utterly naive about everything, including myself.

I attended one of those small Ontario universities that sprang up in the 60′s as an almost counter-culture response to the staid, traditional schools like U of T, Western or Queen’s. Permanent buildings were not funded until the mid-70′s and, as such, had that horrid 70′s concrete slab look to them. Garbage receptacles were concrete. Even the “furniture” in the halls were concrete – I kid you not. Between classes, students lounged about on concrete slabs covered with naugahyde cushions in varying shades of purple, orange, and amber. The lecture halls themselves were decked out in orange and amber plastic “chairs” and were steeply raked, so that the instructor stared up at what appeared to be a near-vertical wall of students. There was even a slightly theatrical element to the design that was, wisely, rarely used by professors. You really could enter stage right, or left. Most profs just came in the huge double doors way up in the “theatre” and picked their way down the stairs with the rest of us. In any case, the buildings had vaulted high ceilings supported by vast grey walls, and were the antithesis of “welcoming”.

As with most majors, there was a selection of mandatory courses and a handful of electives. I had to take one science and, like most of my science-fearing confreres, I picked Astronomy as being, possibly, the easiest to swing. I wonder if the very sweet, stereotypically corduroy-jacketed prof ever clued into the little troupe of Fine Arts majors that wound up in his intro class every year?

One other popular elective was Intro to Film. I mean, really, how hard can that be? Watch movies and write about what you liked or didn’t like, right? If there was popcorn, I was “in” for sure.

I’ll never forget the first class in Intro to Film. Students were assembling in the mid-sized lecture hall that seated, perhaps, 250 people. Minutes before class was to begin, a person entered the class. I didn’t notice her until she was receding away from where I was sitting, appearing to float regally down the wide concrete “stairs” that led to the lecture area. She seemed to have layers of diaphanous material that floated around and behind her … I realize now that this was some kind of scarf or pashmina or some such. She walked slowly and deliberately, carefully muss-coiffed reddish hair and this purposeful gait drawing our eyes, collectively, to her. She may have been wearing some kind of designer boots or something – I remember, eventually, tuning into the sounds her footfalls were making. It took her some time to get to the lecture space at the bottom/front of the room, by which time the room was effectively silenced. I’m not sure if anyone in the room had seen any person like this person – I certainly hadn’t, and I hadn’t even seen her face yet.

These lecture halls were outfitted with portable blackboards on wooden frames with wheels. Still not facing us, Professor picked up a piece of chalk and slowly, deliberately, with care, wrote the following on the blackboard.

B – I – R – D

She put the chalk down and wheeled to face the now quite attentive room. Quietly, firmly, she said, “If anyone here has signed up for this course anticipating that it is a ‘bird’ course, please leave now.”

And then, she just stood there, staring at us. Inspecting us. Maybe daring us. We were all frozen in our seats, of course. No one dared move or scarcely even breathe. After what seemed like an interminably long time, she gave a quick nod and began to talk about what this course meant. Thus began my journey into visual literacy, and my connection to Professor.

Professor is, of course, a real and intensely private person whom I’ve had the pleasure of being connected to, on and off, ever since that first day of Film Studies. If she allows, I may be able to publish her real name here but, until then, Professor will do.

Is it sacrilegious to suggest that, of all the courses I took in my four years in the snug embrace of fine arts academia, Intro to Film was the most valuable and has had the longest-lasting effect? I often wish I’d followed my gut at the time and switched my major to Film Studies, but I was too well-trained to finish what I’d started. Also, Film Studies majors had an air of elitist intelligentsia about them. Pale-skinned (perhaps from a lack of natural light ), always wearing black, sitting in outdoor cafes, smoking hand-rolled cigarettes and morosely debating the use of chiaroscuro effects in German Expressionist films of the early 20th century. The pre-goth goths. The Visu-Goths. Only other Film Studies majors understood what the hell they might be talking about and I guess I’m just too proletariat for that.

Actually, as I think about it, I’m a huge hypocrite. I remember wearing a lot of denim and getting into screaming fights over nachos at the London Arms about Brecht as a precursor to the Open Theatre Movement in Argentina. Nonetheless, I can’t deny that I revelled in where Intro to Film, and Professor’s insistence on disciplined critical thinking, took me.

Off we went, on a journey through D.W. Griffith, Potemkin, Caligari, Fritz Lang … later, Truffaut, Godard (often shortened to GOD) … eventually Canadians like Snow and Wieland. We were challenged to observe the relationship between how a message was conveyed and what the message was. How does this communication really work? What are the conventions, the signifiers? Can we identify the language? How do our brains, and our varied cultural perspectives, interpret the visual? What does dark “mean”? What does light “mean? Why? How does cultural context change meaning, especially meaning we take for granted? What does movement, gesture, positioning do to our interpretation? What can a shifting camera angle do to these very things? Who are we, the viewer, beside the camera? Who are we intended to be? What is our perspective?

We looked at print and television advertising. This is not, strictly speaking, “film”, but incredibly accessible as a way of teaching visual literacy. Tableau, shape, positioning, colour, gesture. Who are we, the intended partakers of the images? How do the creators’ assumptions about us, the viewers, drive their decisions? At what point is the advertiser’s understanding of the viewer so profound that the use of image, text and subtext becomes manipulation?

Professor was the first seriously smart person who reassured me I could write, and think critically. I remember one of my first submissions in this course. We were given a strict page/word limit and, try as I might, I couldn’t stay within it. I edited, cropped, trimmed … I was really worried about this. Frankly, Professor scared the bejesus out of me. I don’t recall how far over the limit I went, but I recall adding a hand-written note apologizing for the excess length. The paper was returned, with a B+ or an A- or thereabouts and a hand-written message, saying, “I don’t mind reading over-limit papers when they are of such calibre.” Whoa. This woman, who took this discipline of study so seriously, who clearly took her own intellect and intelligence seriously, was prepared to take me seriously, too. That was astounding to me.

Learning from Professor didn’t end after this particular course, I’m thankful to say. Although she wasn’t formally my instructor for any further courses, she was part of a circle of creative types that I was also grateful, over time, to find myself part of. Her bearing and clarity of purpose, always confident and almost regal in nature, still inspires me. I recall her repeating some advice she received when it was her turn to take over the quasi-management role of Department Chair for two years. She was told to “always respond – never react”. I can see this fitting her perfectly and, I must admit, it has served me well, too, in many scenarios.

Understanding subtext, and context, and, for that matter, text are Professor’s main gifts to me, and no doubt to hundreds of other students who signed up for her B-I-R-D course. Dig deeper … look inside the messaging … ask questions … analyze the “how” of the message being conveyed with as much, if not more, rigour than the “what”. View from all perspectives. I now teach communications, and work directly with communications tools and techniques in my consulting work. I really don’t think I’d be doing any of this, at least not doing it with any level of applicable understanding, without Professor’s incisive insistence that visual literacy is Important and Useful.

Breathe 3 comments

It was 1988. I was two years out of undergrad, after majoring in a field of study (theatre) that I realized I couldn’t “major” in for real. (At least the other major, English, has been profoundly useful.) There I was, in my first job out of school – a management job. I had a lot to learn, and yet I seemed to have a knack for some of the basics.

For reasons out of my control, and ultimately out of my employer’s* control, the job ended. Abruptly, it felt, but I know now that this was a most gentle release back out into the work force, compared to some of what I’ve witnessed in the meantime.

I remember feeling really distraught over this job coming to a close – what would I do? What did I want to do? How would I pay the rent? Do I have ANY marketable skills? The world stretched before me, more like a gaping maw than a smorgasbord of opportunity. I was 25 and completely clueless about how to proceed. I felt paralyzed with options, none of which appealed particularly.

We had a few weeks notice to wind things down in this office. We sublet office space from a commerical real estate specialist, Bob, whom I’d gotten to know reasonably well over the course of time sharing space. He became a sort of “big brother” figure, listening and gruffing/lovingly asking me the pointed questions I needed to consider. Still, I felt like I was twisting in the wind, and time, she was a-tickin’.

One day when I was in a particular twist, Bob sat me down, looked me in the eye and said the following. “Ultimately, all you have to do is breathe. That is all you have to do to sustain your life. Nothing else matters. Just breathe. That is it. That is all you *have* to do.”

I had been all caught up in my perceptions of my life’s requirements (“I *have* to pay the rent”), my expectations of myself and success (“I *have* to get onto a career track that brings money and prestige”) … and all of the other “have to” inner monologues. They were all MY monologues. I could shut them off entirely, if I so chose. All I had to do, my only requirement, was breathing.

I could do that. It was a brilliant starting point, like throwing all the “have tos” out the window and starting from scratch. Once I’d landed, emotionally, in that beautifully expansive spartan place where only breathing is required, I could add back in the pieces that I felt I could handle, one-by-one. The decisions I was prepared to make, I made, one at a time. Any decisions I didn’t feel ready for, I deferred. One step at a time. Everything slowed down to the pace of my rising and falling chest. All I really had to do, after all, was breathe.

I don’t always remember this lesson as quickly as I should. I’ve had other times when circumstances have left me similarly paralyzed. But, at some point, after twisting around in my discomfort for a while, I remember – all that is really truly required of me is breathing. Everything else is gravy. And, truthfully, the fact that I have choices beyond breathing makes me a very very lucky girl. I live my life in an abundance of nourishment, both of my soul and my body. Opportunities. Choices. Amazing Friends. Health. Music. Love. Activity. Good Food. Coffee . When I need to slow things down to the pace of my breathing, I can. All of the richness of my life will remain, even if I slow down to appreciate and understand it more.

*Gosh, this was 21 years ago, now. And I haven’t written the long overdue post about this job and one of my life’s most important mentors, this very special employer. Do stay tuned … it’s a good one.

Stuff 2 comments

Yesterday morning, as I was making coffee, before I put the clean dishes away out of the dishwasher, I noticed I had only one decent-sized coffee mug available to me for my morning java. It is a shiny, yet old, metal Starbucks mug that was given to me by my former partner’s daughter, back in the day when she was a barista. This was, by my calculation, about 14 years ago … ? There it sits sturdily on my shelf, well and regularly used, still. I thought at one time that the lid might need replacing but it has hung in there all this time.

I really like this mug. I like the history of it, the weight of it, the longevity of it. I have a few other mugs that people have given to me at various points in my life, or that I’ve bought for specific reasons. There are very few mugs that I use daily that don’t have some reason for being on my shelf.

For months, perhaps years now, I’ve felt strongly that I have too much stuff. Scaling down has been a theme of mine for some time, not only of my own physical person, but of my physical impact, my “footprint”, on the earth. I have a basket of things here on the main floor that I put things into when I want rid of them, and then I occasionally stumble across someone who needs something out of my basket of things. Currently, it has more garage-sale type items like jigsaw puzzles and old sunglasses. Next weekend, I hope to empty this basket out at a friend’s yard sale. I also make regular use of the “freecycle” option right here in my own building. Useful things get left and then snapped up out of the garbage room with great regularity. Freecycle, the real version, is a wonderful option for larger items.

Yet, I am as susceptible as anyone else in this consumerist North American society to the lure of the purchase. Of the new and shiny. I “consume”. I buy new things. I’m just more careful, and I hope more thoughtful, than I once was. I bought a watch (actually two watches, one of which I promptly lost and mourned for) last year. It is shiny and “new” but feels, to me, “old” in that it seems to belong on my person in that snug old sweater kind of way. It pleases me to think this is the only watch I’ll ever need.

I’m down to two pairs of shoes for regular daily non-snowy use. I have a few pairs, maybe three pairs, of “good” shoes. And a pair of those water slipper things for swimming in lakes with rocky or yucky bottoms.

So, over time, as I struggle with the tension of “too much stuff” vs. “precious and useful stuff” vs. “new stuff”, I’ve tried to come up with some criteria for the comings and goings of things in my world. I’ve not tried to write it down before … but it would go something like this:

1. Do I still use / enjoy this? Have I really used / enjoyed it in the last year?

2. Is it precious to me in some way, and thus irreplaceable? (This is the trickiest category because, depending on my mood, EVERYTHING might be precious to me in any given moment.)

3. Do I have more than one of these already? Do I really need more? (i.e. shoes, coffee mugs, t-shirts etc.)

4. Can someone else get more use / joy from it than I can right now?

Books are tricky items, as are CDs and DVDs these days. I like the tangibility of CDs, especially ones that contain music of importance to me. Yet, about 60% of my CDs are now on my hard drive so this begs the question of whether I really need the tangible piece anymore, especially since my hard drive gets backed up weekly. When music gets transferred to my hard drive, about half the the CDs wind up heading out the door. About half, I just can’t seem to part with.

I’ve purged my books a few times, with mixed results. There are books that have gone out the door that I now dearly wish I’d kept. I can’t find them now – old editions of film theory texts from my university days are like missing teeth on my bookshelf. I can see, almost feel, their absence.  Yet, there are books on my shelf that I haven’t read, or opened, or even considered in years. The line around books is pretty fuzzy, really. I like “lending” books, usually with the tacit understanding that I might not actually see those books again. I also like doing things like pulling books off my shelf and just giving them away on the spur of the moment. Taking them, or sending them, as surprise gifts.

One of the things that I don’t think we do enough is honour the things we already possess that are serving us well and that may have done so for some time. Things that Do Not Need Replacing, Upgrading or Augmenting. The act of purchasing or acquiring something new is invigorating, often rewarding. What if we got into the habit of celebrating things we already own that totally rock? Would we buy less? Would we take care of the things we own more if they felt less disposable?

Here is a list of ten things that I use / enjoy regularly that I can’t imagine replacing.

1. My mother’s quilt(s). There are two of these, one of which is pretty ragged. The other is a quite lovely summer weight cover. While at the market the other day with J, I briefly considered upgrading to something schmancier, but have since decided that what I have is quite lovely, thanks very much.

2. Wall art. Original paintings / drawings. The signed Stephanie Rayner poster of a diving loon.  The Pam Morris print, . Almost everything has a story, a history.

3. The Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary. Complete with magnifying glass for viewing.

4. Blundstones.

5. The old, yet still shiny, Starbucks coffee mug.

6. The world’s ugliest winter coat. I have a nearly full length winter coat, now six sizes too big for me, that is in the same colours as the Edmonton Eskimos CFL team. That is to say, bright green and bright yellow. It is about 15 years old now. It is profoundly unfashionable. It also keeps me utterly warm during those storms that challenge all other coats. Invaluable.

7. The flamenco guitar. It isn’t old, but it will not ever get replaced.

8. The sofa. Now nearly 15 years old, it has survived storage, mold/mildew and pet abuse. Still the most comfortable pull-out couch I’ve ever sat on.

9. My mother’s valise. If my memory serves about this, when one worked as a nurse in the 1940′s, there were overnight shifts that required an overnight “bag”. My mother used this hard-shell case – it has her initials (maiden name) stamped near the handle. It is now where my sheet music is stored and transported when required. It smells of must and mothballs a bit … and, thus, so does my sheet music!

10. Travel Trunk. I have an old, hard-sided 1940′s era travel trunk, a big blocky cumbersome thing. Right now it stores stuff in my bedroom closet but, in its history, it has been a bookshelf, a prop in a play, a useful thing to move linens in, and, now, a storage unit. It has years of usefulness yet.

So … over to you … can you name 10 items that regularly appear in your world that will not be replaced anytime soon by the shiny and new?