Reiterative

Learning again that too much is not enough. Too much is not enough. Too much is not enough.

Srsly.

L

Happy birthday!

Happy birthday, Bruce! Here's hoping today's festivities mark a year of happiness, fun, and laughter to come.

love,
Leslie
and
Zak

So glad that's over

The site visit was overall a success. And we finished homicide free: a bonus!

Now back to my regularly scheduled chaos.

L

Poetry Isn't Commonplace

But my blog is. From Apostrophes VI: open the grass.

Whatever you have held —
not roses but the air that they exhale that is a breath inside
your breath — that is the hush that rises there, the sound of it the sound
of nakedness and nothing more, every moment of a life
surrendered then, the asking that is in the light, the stance of trees,
not asking but the what of what we are, birds turning at night.

— E.D. Blodgett, "Turning"

Saturday Poetry

Because no-one can mark for twelve hours in a row!

There are three kinds of teachers, you said.
One who teaches by making you afraid,
one who makes you angry.
The third makes you love him.

— Anne Michaels, "The Day of Jack Chambers"

Eleven Things

This evening I gave my Creative Nonfiction students a very difficult exercise: to write two pages of concrete or demonstrable facts about their individual pasts. I generally try the exercises I ask my students to do, but haven't had time to do many of the exercises for this course. Tonight I thought I'd give this one a go. Here are my first eleven facts.

• I was born in the Royal Alexandra Hospital.

• My maternal grandfather was Scottish and was a fur factor for the Hudson's Bay Company.

• My maternal grandmother was French-Canadian and was a nurse in Manitoba.

• I have one sibling, a brother, who is younger than I am.

• I once learned the entire libretto of "The Pirates of Penzance" by memory.

• My first hamster was named Maurice, after one of the Bee Gees. The hamster was female. I didn't listen to the Bee Gees.

• I was once given detention for writing a personalized verse of the camp song "At the Quartermaster's Store" for each member of my Grade 6 class. I ran into trouble for rhyming with Chris with piss.

• My son was born in the Misericordia Hospital, directly across the street from West Edmonton Mall.

• I learned to slam dance on a choir trip to Saskatoon.

• The first CD I owned was Prince's "Purple Rain". I still have it.

• My first radio was a hand-me-down. It was pink. I no longer have it.

You probably think it's easy to make a list like this. Not so! Give it a try -- and then share it with me!

L

Because I want to remember this

Hello hello,

Such a long time since I've written. But time is beginning to resume its regular course again. In the meantime...

"The hand is a much more reliable and durable instrument than anything that has yet been proposed to replace it." — Robert Bringhurst, January 2010

L

Breakthrough!

Suddenly the reason that I've been teaching mass communications for the last three years snapped into focus.

Look out, doctorate. Here I come.

L

All abuzz

When did you last think about bees? Bees probably aren't top of mind with most people, but they should be. According to Dr Reese Halter, in the last three years more than 50 billion bees have died. This loss affects humanity in many profound ways, perhaps most importantly in that more than one-third of the food we eat depends directly or indirectly on the pollinating work of bees.

What can we do to make the world hospitable to bees once again? Dr Halter provides a list in his charming book, The Incomparable Honeybee and the Economics of Pollination:

• Buy organic foods
• Buy organic cotton
• Buy local, organic honey
• Do not use herbicides, pesticides, fungicides, or miticides in your home garden
• Grow a wide variety of native wildflowers
• Grow a pollinator garden
• Provide a living space for bees in your yard, such as a bee block
• Provide clean water for bees
• Get involved in nature watch and conservation programs.

The international loss of bees has been in and out of the news in the last five years. There is no cause identified at this time, but Dr Halter's book explains some of possible — and possibly intersecting — causes. We are all implicated in the loss of the bees, and therefore we are also all implicated in working for their survival and recovery — and with a few small changes, we can all make a positive difference.

This little gem of a book (you can get it here) is worth your time and attention. Bees — yes, bees — deserve your consideration: now.

L

Good news from the academic world

The paper I proposed for the Book Conference in Switzerland was accepted. Looks like I'm going to give my first international paper in November 2010. w00t!

L

Reading Canadian Living (that'll teach me!)

Am I the only person in the world who finds the Charmin campaign "You can't pass mom's inspection with little white pieces left behind" (involving bears and toilet paper) more than a little sick-making?

Huh. Just me, then.

Strange days indeed.

L

Back to school, day 2

"Suppose someone shot you with an arrow, right in the heart. Would you spend your time screaming at the archer, or even trying to locate him? Or would you try to pull the arrow out of your heart?" — Alice Walker

I guess we'll never know

67 Street & 121 Avenue: Was it the first time our paths crossed?

December, middle of finals

"River" - Joni Mitchell

I wish I had a river
I could skate away on
I wish I had a river so long
I would teach my feet to fly

Sigh.

Music-palooza

Bought a bunch of these old-fashioned thingies called CDs. Woo! Can't wait to dig in.

• Brandi Carlile, Give Up the Ghost: Previewed this on her site after hearing her interview with Jian and it pulled strongly. It's on now and I'm digging it. More songs in the vein of The Story but with new inflections and sounds. I enjoy her register — she's an alto who's not afraid to use the upper range — and the humanness of her singing. Heart-on-sleeve really works for me.

• Metric, Fantasies: Actually a gift from Allia, who calls it one of the best of 2009; other reviews are similarly enthusiastic. I have an on-again, off-again relationship with Metric, so I'm looking forward to hearing this one.

• Imogen Heap, Ellipse: Previewed this on iTunes after watching a video demonstrating Heap's recording process. I love her sound! I enjoyed her previous disc, although it did tend to fade into the background after a few listens. This new one was really yummy in preview — super electronica! Looking forward to this one, too.

• Modest Mouse, Good News for People Who Love Bad News: Hooked by the single "Float On", which always makes me smile. MM has a fanatical following. Perhaps I'm about to become part of it.

• Green Day, 21st Century Breakdown: The first single, "21 Guns", caught my ear and has been on my iPod regularly for the last few months. So few mainstream artists are making anything resembling political music these days. I have hope for this disc — and have deliberately not read any reviews. I want to hear this one fresh.

• MGMT, Oracular Spectacular: Not new — this one came out last year, and I dislike the lead single "Time to Pretend". (That's a great endorsement, right?) But I adore the follow-up singles "Kids" and "Electric Feel", so this one should be OK on balance. Again, Allia strongly recommended this disc, and I have developed faith in her recommendations.

Noe Venable, "The World Is Bound by Secret Knots", "The Summer Storm Journals" and "Down Easy" (as the Noe Venable Trio): On Ecto, the mailing list I am still subbed to after more than a decade, Noe Venable is regularly hailed as an emerging goddess. Her sound is girlish — a high voice, sometimes quite thin and soft, with sensitive lyrics and emotional delivery. Not poppy in any way. These discs have been in the changer for the last three weeks and are growing on me, although I can't say Ms Venable grabbed me instantly. Pleasant, but a little background-y.

Lately I've been into a little more drama in music, a la Marina and the Diamonds. Marina's iTunes singles have been on my iPod almost daily for the last three weeks. I wish I could get the disc in Canada!

I've also been listening to the Yeah Yeah Yeahs' new disc It's Blitz! frequently, although I've had it for a few months. Still have to dive into Grizzly Bear and White Lies, both of which I've also had for a while. But time, you know? Well. These can go into the changer next.

There are few things in this world I cannot resist. Two of them are books and music. And since I'll be pounding the books pretty hard for the next two weeks, I'm glad to have some music to go with them.

L

Just supposin' I'm proposin'

And the thought for today is this:

"... it's hardly surprising that most citizens should increasingly withdraw from public life: why should the practice of citizenship seem worthwhile when politicians and corporations alike seek to infantilize the people, reducing them to consumers confronted with the most trivial of choices?" — Alex Callinicos (The Resources of Critique, p. 253)

Wow!

The vault of lost lyrics, chapter 9

Such a wry and melancholy song.

**

"The Dangling Conversation" (as recorded by Simon & Garfunkel)

It's a still-life water color
Of a now-late afternoon
As the sun shines through the curtained lace
And shadows wash the room
And we sit and drink our coffee
Couched in our indifference
Like shells upon the shore
You can hear the ocean roar
In the dangling conversation
And the superficial sighs
The borders of our lives

And you read your Emily Dickinson
And I my Robert Frost
And we note our place with book markers
That measure what we've lost
Like a poem poorly written
We are verses out of rhythm
Couplets out of rhyme
In syncopated time
Lost in the dangling conversation
And the superficial sighs
Are the borders of our lives

Yes, we speak of things that matter
With words that must be said
"Can analysis be worthwhile?"
"Is the theater really dead?"
And how the room is softly faded
And I only kiss your shadow
I cannot feel your hand
You're a stranger now unto me
Lost in the dangling conversation
And the superficial sighs
In the borders of our lives

The vault of lost lyrics, chapter 51

A wistful voice-and-piano recording. Despite the negative aspect, this song portrays resilience and optimism — important qualities these days.

**

"You Can't Win" (as recorded by Murray McLauchlan)

When the good times come at last
Is only when the bad times rest
Someday they're going to lay you down
Even though you did your best
All the heroes of the wars
Forgotten in the rain
Old soldiers and memories
Make them young again

You can't win
You can't win
You're just someone who plays the fool
You can't win
You can't win
I don't believe that life's so cruel

I'm going to wear my finest suit
Go walk around the town
Strangle out this emptiness
And smash it on the ground
I'm going to watch the faces on the children
While they play
Try and find the child in me
And never have to say

You can't win...

Monday Commonplace

"And what if memory itself is a foreign object which the body longs to be rid of?" — Douglas Glover

Pay attention, people!

This word is pronounced "ca-SHAY". It's spelled cachet. As a noun it refers to prestige.

This word is pronounced "cash". It's spelled cache. As a noun it refers to a hiding place or storage place.

These two words are not the same. Somewhere in the US this morning, a copy editor should be hanging her head for missing this distinction twice on a single page.

Oops.