Filed under: Uncategorized
My son is 17. He has decided to take his earnings and go to Edmonton for the week before Christmas. If we are lucky, he will and back here at YYZ late Christmas eve/ in the wee hours of Christmas morning.
I get it. Christmas is hateful. Teenagers most want to play amongst themselves from about 17-20 and don’t want to be bothered with family pressures to be happy for the holidays. Teenagers, it seems, also universally despise whatever they get for Christmas, regardless of how hard we work to get something we think they will like. So, not having to endure their sullen crap is in a way a blessing, seeing as many of us still have to face the pressure from our elder families to behave as though we like each other. Every Christmas I have to pretend, for example, that my in-laws don’t think I’m the nasty slut who ruined their son’s precious potential. And I can look forward to receiving another cat themed piece of kitsch — because after 22 years the depth of their knowledge of me still extends no further than, “she likes cats.”
OK… so if I could run away from home for the holidays that would be excellent. Wish I could join the kid.
That said, for many years, the kid was my greatest joy at Christmas. Now he’ll be away, and my greatest joy will be missing. I won’t have him around a corner to share a sly witticism with.
Please, please, universe; don’t let it turn out to be a disastrous mistake to be letting him go on this adventure to the suburbs of Edmonton with my least favourite of his friends. Please, please, universe. Let that mum out there be able to prevent them from sneaking out in the car and smashing themselves to kingdom come. Please, please send my boy back to me happier and wiser for having taken his trip.
And please, please, universe… send him back to me safe and sound, without an albatross around his neck.
That’s all I want for Christmas.
It’s been a good week.
I’ve stayed on top of the work rather than racing to be a step behind and I’ve even managed some down-time too.
On Monday my grad students impressed my socks off with their great research paper proposals. I’m really keen on the end of term reading I’ll receive from them.
Tuesday found me in Toronto to visit a dear friend who was over from Bristol. I actually landed at the central bus terminal right at the point when the local SPCA was rescuing a deer that had wandered into downtown Toronto and found herself disoriented and endangered. Though the take-down wasn’t pretty, she is apparently resting and under veterinary care and doing fine. Much better than had she been hit by a car. Certainly we are not accustomed to finding deer at Dundas and Bay, but on that morning we heard from many sources that the deer from both valleys that run N-S through Toronto can find themselves in the centre of the city because the roads are still pretty quiet in the wee hours, and in the fall when the deer are on the move all it takes is a little thick fog for them to wander right into the centre of things.
Anyway, my friend, Nath, who now lives in the UK picked me up at the terminal and we trotted all over town. Ezra’s Pound for coffee in the annex; Fragipane for some ginger molasses cookie treats for my boy (who recognized the bag on the counter when he came home late Tuesday night and took it upstairs for himself with a knowing grin; Curbside cycle to look at bikes for my honey for Christmas (he thinks he wants TWO new bikes — one similar to mine for commuting, and a road bike for I’m-not-sure-what) and to pick up a new front-mount basket for the blue beauty; the AGO to see the Tutankhamen exhibit (which was disappointing) and then a tromp back to the terminal to ride home on the Greyhound. Along the way, Nath and I shared many stories, good laughs, the comfort of an old, established friendship and the excitement of two folks who don’t get to see each other much.
My Wednesday wasn’t so exciting… just academic advising and other administrivia, and a tumble on my steps in the day meant that my walk to the speciality store for Montreal style bagels took about double the expected time. The bagels, however, were worth it, and it was a pleasant walk. The evening was glistening from earlier fog and rain, so the lights sparkled and reflected off pavement and windows in a cheerful way.
Yesterday was a grant reading day. OK… so that’s not so much fun. I like readng the proposals, but I hate knowing that there isn’t enough money to fund everything. That means that I end up feeling like I’m working in a triage unit. Thankfully, none of these decisions is ever taken alone, but I hate making my priority list. I find it often comes down to a question of whether $$ denied would mean a project in process would be aborted, in which case the entirely worthy and excellent proposal for new work must be denied. Arg.
Today I went out on the Blue Beauty to run some errands. There’s great buzz about a California wine (and I’ll grant that when Napa and Sonoma get it right, they REALLY get it right), and my dear spouse consumed a bottle with his brother in Toronto last night at some swanky advertising affair (yes, it’s really like Mad Men and I’m glad it’s my brother-in-law who works in it, not my spouse). So…. I went to see if I could get us some for less than the $100+ per bottle they were charging at the steakhouse in T.O. Short answer: yes. Two bottles purchased and tossed into the front basket.
Thus I found myself uptown, so I took my bike in for a little servicing. The rear lamp isn’t working. My bike repair guy could not figure out why. Anyone else had difficulty with the rear lamp on a dynamo on their Old Dutch???
While the bike was being serviced, I picked up a winter coat ON SALE — down filled, with a faux fur collar, removable hood…. $49! Woot! I also picked up some winter boot/trainers from Puma. They are like a trainer that goes 2/3 up the calf. Lined, winter-worthy, and with great grips for riding through the winter. Very pleased! And while I was out I found jeans and a knit -t-shirt for the boy. I’m so proud of the way he’s been handling himself lately…
Let me throw in some pics… and wish you all an excellent week-end.
ps: I’m hating the new image insertion feature on word-press. I really didn’t mean to have 2 copies of me reading files… I just want to get this post up and done so I can head out on the blue beauty to runa few errands before night falls.
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- Reading applications
Filed under: Get outta town!, Hop on the bus Gus, comments around town, commute by bike
‘K. My month has been one long laundry list of stuff to do.
Read through and judge the merits of dozens and dozens of grant applications.
Assess a small boatload of graduate research proposals.
Deal with the sale of my grandmother’s house, the movement of her stuff out of the house, and (we hope) settling her into a nursing home in December if she survives to that point. She’s currently in hospital (where she has been since the 36-hour heart attack at the end of August).
Deal with the impending loss of my grandmother… about which I’m alternately accepting and enraged.
Join and participate in the campus cycling committee.
Take our ‘monthly’ trip to the St. Lawrence market for the first time since September.
Adopt and get my grandmother’s 11-year-old Siamese cat settled into our house.
Try to help my mother deal with all that is going on while her husband is on a 3-week long trip in the US with his family of origin.
Settle accounts on my research grant. I swear that next time I need to build in funds to pay a CPA. Arg.
And then there’s the continuing saga of settling into the new house. Let me sum up with this: may I *never* have to set foot in an Ikea again in my life.
But on my tag points let me say the following:
I’ve been getting loads of comments around town on the silk flowers I have woven into my bike basket. I’m not sure if they encourage drivers around me to relax, take a deep breath, and enjoy the day, but as I go about my business, running my errands hither and yon, the flowers and the basket do make people seem more cheery.
Commuting by bike is becoming popular enough on my campus that it seems we are slated to get a covered rack to park at least 20 bikes in a central location. That means that there are enough of us who ride in the snow to make the structure a feasible budget expense. We’ve also persuaded the physical plant people to stop dumping the ploughed snow onto the bike racks in winter.
Commuting by bike is always practical and made my life in the borderlands of town more bearable, but now that we live in a central location, I find that cycling brings me tons of joy. I’m on my bike now more than ever, not just to and from work. I can easily hit 4-6 places with a distance of a few kilometres between each, but nothing long, dull and lifeless like the ride that used to take me across the North end of UW campus where there was nothing but empty, bleak space, people’s back fences, and cars. Now, I regularly run into friends, and walk or ride part of the way home. It’s just really, really nice.
Getting outta town remains one of the ways the living here is still bearable. If I lived in a town that wasn’t within an easy VIA or bus ride to a major cultural centre, I’d go bonkers. Tomorrow I’m going to head into Toronto to meet with a friend who is over from the UK for a few days to take care of her mum post surgery. We’re going to sneak off for some time at the AGO, and do our bi-annual catching up.
But my favourite thing about this month is that my long-time friend of 31 years is going to come visit me on Thursday. She’s a surgeon in Toronto. People tend to think that surgeons drive fancy cars. My friend has a morning surgery to do and when she’s finished, she’s going to hop on the inter-city bus to come to visit me for the day. I can hardly wait, and I love that it just blew my 17-year-old son’s mind when I told him that my friend was coming and that she’d be taking the bus. Some day he (and the rest of the world) will wrap their heads around the fact that we don’t all want to isolate ourselves in cars, that we don’t measure our freedom by the ability to drive, and that we like public transit.
Last week in my graduate seminar, we were reading Arviddson’s “From Counter Culture to Consumer Culture” about the marketing of the Vespa in the post-war period through to the 1970s in Italy. On the heels of that reading, my students asked whether there were any ‘real’ counter culture’ movements current.
I’m not convinced that there is a critical mass movement in the sense of anti-war and anti-capitalist movements of the late 60’s to mid-7o’s, or of various early twentieth century intellectual and political movements (eg: when it was a legitimate if counter-cultural stance to call oneself a ‘communist’ in 1920’s North America and Europe).
That said, I do think that contemporary ‘commuter bike culture’ is part of a ’slow’ movement that runs against the grain of more, faster, bigger, cheaper. Like many counter-culture movements before it, this is a reformist movement. I do not think that any of us is seeking to remain on the fringes as a subculture movement. I know I dream of a future in which my city looks more like Amsterdam or Copenhagen, or Prato, Pistoia, Viareggio (or any of a host of other Tuscan small cities where bicycles and pedestrians rule the centre of town). That is, I want to see more people on their bikes, and I want it to be practical for them. I want us not to have to shower when we get to work, and not to have to keep a change of clothes in the office. I want a future in which we cycle at a non-sweaty pace in our every-day clothes, on comfortable bicycles built to last.
That’s my present-tense, and I love it. I love the way that my bike compels complete strangers to strike up conversations with me. That (now common) phenomenon helps me to feel like I live in a hospitable city (hat-tip to Derrida) with a community of people around me, connected to each other, not running about like disconnected atomistic drones.
Since I started using the bike as my primary means of getting around in this semi-urban town, I’ve lost 18 pounds. My back and hips feel better, and I also feel much more independent, not having to wait for a taxi or a bus to get where I want to go. I also find that on my bike I’m much more inclined to stop in at a few places along the way in my day. As a result, from my local favourite pastry chef I’ve learned tricks about using a super-hot oven for pastries, and I’ve met many more people in my new neighbourhood, I’ve discovered a bread bakery that uses an honour system to take payment, and I’ve found that I can run errands without waiting for my spouse to take me across town to do them.
And the thing is that although the things I enjoy are decidedly bourgeois, my bicycle lifestyle is extremely economical. I paid $860 for the Blue Beauty and saved $1300 in bus and taxi fares in the first year that I had her. In year two I bought a beautiful seat that cost me about $200, and I had her tuned up twice, once for spring and once for winter, total cost: $150 in service. And the Blue Beauty will save me at least $1300 in transportation costs again this year. My point here is that even if I weren’t a fairly bourgie person, the bike would be extremely economical. And I can do as I please with the difference between maintenance costs on the bike and transportation money saved.
So: is the “cashmere commuter” a counter-culture advocate? I think so. I think that we are doing things that end up privileging small, local businesses (because they are more fun to pop into than big-box conveyor belt type places) when we are out and about on our bikes. We certainly are not buying into the petroleum industry. Our mode of getting around is pretty ‘democratically’ priced — even if our own personal bikes are fairly expensive on the initial outlay. Our bikes are certainly part of a dirty manufacturing industry, but when we choose to buy bikes intended to last through decades worth of winters outside (like the Blue Beauty), we are making a commitment to less consumption rather than more.
The thing is I also think we are hoping that these choices will become less ‘against’ and more in-step with what the rest of the culture is doing. I’m definitely hoping more people will join us as we meander through town rather than racing from stop-light to stop-light.
That said, my old punk-rock self remains inclined to tell the creeps who cut me off to go fuck themselves. There are a few really aggressive drivers on the streets here in mid-town, even though most people are pretty cool and biking in the city centre is much more relaxed than biking in the suburbs with their speedways from strip mall to strip mall. So, I’m going to reserve my right to unleash my inner rebel sometimes. My biking culture amabassador self is on call about 98% of the time, but sometimes an asshole really needs to be called out for what s/he is.
Filed under: Uncategorized
I had a big post… but deleted it.
In the writing and deleting I decided that I prefer to spend my afternoon today prepping for my son’s 17th birthday tomorrow than to set myself up for an emotional tear-down with him at a therapy session scheduled for this afternoon.
I’m not biking across town in the rain to get emotionally and mentally pummeled. He can work out his own stuff. I’ll bike in the rain to get the provisions to make his birthday a better one than he’s anticipating. Why? Because even though he is beastly, I am his momma and I love him. They tell me that’s the parent’s burden in the teen-years: to love someone who hates you. Sometimes I wish I could be just a little more “Animal Kingdom” about it and beckon the hyenas. But when he’s sleeping, I go all Robert Munsch… and love him forever. Arg.
I wish that we could do as they do in Sleeping Beauty and put all teenagers to sleep for 100 years and have them awakened only at the point when there is someone else to step-in and take care of them.
Filed under: Uncategorized
The weather has been remarkable for the past few days: neither rainy nor frigid, but very pleasant: just cool enough for riding to be pure pleasure. I have a few routes to and from work now, and on my Tuesdays and Wednesdays, I always break up my ride with a stop for a café-au-lait at my favourite patisserie. It turns the ride into 2 8-10-minute sections with a little socializing at the mid-point. It’s a very civilized way of doing things.
I’m also enjoying some respite from the three (!) rounds of viral illness that have hit me since we moved house on the last week-end of August. I think that since moving I’ve been sick about 50% of the time…. so being out and about on my bike feels really great.
Among the things I’m enjoying doing on my rides now is surveying the residential architecture in my new neighbourhood. It’s largely folk victorian, but I’m fascinated by the various additions people have put on to their houses, and by transformations of what used to be summer kitchens into full-year kitchens. I like to look at people’s gardens; there is a general movement afoot to get rid of grass, and to plant perennial beds on the boulevards in front of the houses. I’d post pictures, but I’m not comfortable posting shots of *other* people’s homes.
I *will* post photos of the new quasi public space that forms the commercial courtyard at the base of the Bauer lofts up the road from where I live. The project is more than 2 years overdue, so there’s been much anticipation. The region’s best specialty grocer will finally be able to move into the new space, and there will be a florist as well. But there’s also what promises to be a moderately sized piazza type courtyard in the middle that is accessible and useable space for all who go into the shops, i.e.: it’s not just for those who live in the lofts. I like that.
When they have it officially opened, I’ll post some shots of that. I hope the view will be suitably autumnal and not positively hibernus.
Filed under: Uncategorized
Not me. Just the Blue Beauty.
We had a nasty windstorm about a week ago, and while BB was parked outside, she was blown over and landed so hard that the front brake lever was snapped in half. I’ve since had her all tuned up for winter and the lever repaired, but now I’m thinking about getting one of those double-sided kickstands with a base (kind of like what I’ve seen on a few Pashleys). So I’m hoping readers might have some suggestions. BB is heavey, but also can catch the wind because of the coat-guards on the rear wheels, the saddle-bags and front panier, each of which can function rather like a sail in the wind.
So, readers? Any thoughts?
I’m also taking suggestions on favourite riding gloves. It’s been frigid here for the past week, and I’ve been wearing gloves, but I’m thikning that this year I want a better solution than last year (in which I put neoprene and goretex riding gloves on over my slender dress gloves for 2 layers: one warm and the other waterproof). But if I could please find for this year something stylish that is also warm and waterproof in *one* pair, I’d be thrilled.
Again: taking suggestions.
Filed under: Uncategorized
I can’t stand reading fiction. When I was young, I read all kinds of fiction — mostly 19th to mid 20th C. with large doses of the Russians, French, and Irish writers. My ‘trash’ reading leaned toward John Irving and Milan Kundera, both of which really twisted up how I thought about the world for a long time. In my late 20’s I found I had no stomach for fiction anymore. I’d get the newest big buzz book and find that I was bored to tears within three chapters. I’d skip forward to see if anything was happening that I hadn’t already guessed would happen, find I’d guessed correctly and abandon the book.
A few years ago I returned to ‘pleasure reading’ when I discovered that I prefer to read non-fiction prose. These are not precisely autobiographies, but personal observations and experiences saturated by the qualities that come of living a life embedded in some kind of cultural-production world. Ruth Reichel’s books are among my favourites in this genre.
But now David Byrne (of the Talking Heads, yes!) has a book about cycling coming on the market. I’m going to pre-order it today. I hope it will arrive in time for the end of classes so that I can read it over the December holidays. Bicycle Diaries, I think, must be a tribute title to Jim Carrol and so I’m already hooked. But the subject matter — a rock-icon’s view of the globe from a two-wheeled perspective promises to be riveting. And what I like about these kinds of books is that they don’t have a particular narrative arc, no formula; the writer often writes about things s/he had not expected to happen (and so as a reader I don’t get bored). Real life is harder to predict than scripted lives are.
On the NY Times website today there is a video segment with Byrne in which he discusses, for example, the surprise that it’s neither Copenhagen nor Amsterdam that he has found to be most bike friendly, but the many smaller towns and cities of Northern Italy. Interestingly, I found the very same thing a few years ago when we were in Tuscany. City centres were pretty much car-free, and people of all ages rode on bicycles to get where they were going. I have some great photos on my old computer and I’ll dig them up and post them here later.
Y’all might want to cruise over to the NY Times and check out the video with Byrne. It’s on the homepage for the ‘paper’.
Filed under: Uncategorized
Wow. I don’t have the coordinates yet, but I’m just gob-smacked in the most happy way that a lovely person I met over the summer is so keen on my work that zie’s arranging a book launch for my new collection to take place early in the new year. The venue is to be determined, but we are aiming for a place that welcome both general community and academic community folks. There are some obvious candidates, but until we have the details settled, I won’t name potential locations (as that just seems inappropriate for a fairly public place like a blog). What I am just blown away by is the sheer number of people who want to see a formal launch (you know, with wine and cheese and books for sale, etc.) happen and who are helping to do the coordinating.
I am really very blessed.
It’s only too bad that I’ve spent most of this week in bed with the flu and haven’t been able to get out at all. I’d love to be riding around town in the crisp autumn air.
Ah well, at least I’m fortunate enough to have the world coming to me!
Anyone who is interested in the book I’m all excited about launching can check it out here:
Critical Intersex on Amazon
or directly at the publisher’s site, here (where you can download selections from the book):
On a completely unrelated note, I modified a recipe from the NY Times tonight and made tomato-cheese eclairs (made my own pastry, made my own cheese filling from blue cheese, pecorino and pressed yogurt with a hefty amount of garlic), and roasted plum tomatoes in olive oil with sea salt and rosemary. Oh. My. God. Yum. I highly recommend this as a side, as an alternative to salad, or as an amuse-bouche for parties. The original recipe and other similar ideas can be found at: A Hearty Appetite
I love that my new neighbourhood has a family-owned grocery that is a short walk away and permits me to do these culinary experiments on a moment’s notice.
Filed under: Get outta town!
We ran away from home for the week-end so that I could present a paper at the Society for Medical Anthropology at Yale, in New Haven. Dear Spouse and I rarely get away together, so this was an especially cherished conference jaunt. I did a fair amount of work, intaking the wisdom of several plenary presentations, being choosy in attending sessions, connecting with new folks and re-connecting with colleagues from long ago.
There will be loads of developments that arise out of the week-end, no doubt.
However, I’m first going to have to get over the flu that I seem to have picked up from the coughing jerk on the plane. I had to leave my grad students to their own devices with a film and email comments yesterday while I tried to sleep off much of the fever, hacking, sniffling etc. Thanks mister.
[Side note: I am so grateful I do not live somewhere that the desperation levels are so saturating the general population that purchasing cold medication requires handing over my passport and having my purchase logged onto my passport.]
Anyway, it was a great trip. We flew into Newark and rented a car (because it was cheaper and gave more freedom for two people than if we had just taken the shuttle to New Haven). We drove along the coast on Saturday and got in some time on the seaside, and a stop at a roadside clam-shack. We also did a little shopping and I was delighted to get a new Dooney & Bourke canvas tote. I’ve nearly worn my old one out; it’s threadbare at all the edges.
We had some really horrific food on the night we landed. It was one of those situations in which you pick what’s close to the hotel. It was a step back into the heyday of 1970’s steak and seafood. An iceberg wedge with Ranch dressing was part of the meal!
Far better were the deep fried clams up the coast.
In town, however, for the duration of the conference we did manage to get well acquainted with a Yale institution: Claire’s Cornercopia, a vegetarian café. Claire’s was great, though I’d say that it still adheres to the general principle that everything in the US needs to be bigger, sweeter and/or saltier. I’m thinking of getting some Claire’s recipe books, but if I do, I’ll cut the sugar and the salt by half.
We had dinner with colleagues at Thali Too, a lovely Indian restaurant behind the Yale bookstore. I think, however, that I’d have been less likely to get hit with the flu if we’d not been sitting outside on a fairly chilly night.
Finally, Dear Spouse and I had dinner at a little place on the Green called ‘Zinc’. Zinc restored my faith in tortellini. Neither tough nor mushy, the tortellini were filled with savoury local cheeses, and served with a parsley and walnut pesto that was divinely flavourful. And astringent braised plum, with frozen plum mousse and fried pastry crême was a lovely desert for us to share. I was only disappointed by the wine selections — mostly middle-range and predictable wines from France, California and Italy. I love all those regions, but I want to have the good stuff with a good meal. I also think that Canada produces some gorgeous wines now, and there wasn’t a single one on a list that was 2 pages long.
Anyway, I enclose some photos from the trip, including one of an Electra outside Claire’s. Dear Spouse thought the Electra pretty adorable, and I admit it’s got a very cute styling to it, so even though I don’t generally find the Electra’s worth the money (IMHO, they are overly pricey bicycle-shaped objects, built for visual appeal rather than the long haul). On the upside, at least *someone* in New Haven is riding a commuter bike instead of driving everywhere. And that’s my last observation from our trip: it’s nearly impossible to get from a-to-b by foot or by bike in many US cities — even if they are short distances apart. Expressways cut off pedestrian routes, sidewalks may be completely absent, and public transit is made marginal in the grand ideology of the middle-class. New Haven has the potential to be a beautiful walking-city and cycling city, but for now, it isn’t.
