July 22, 2011

In search of a cool breeze

Yesterday, when the temperature “felt like” 50 degrees Celsius, I kept thinking about Booky, and her depression-era family, and this one vivid scene I remember in which they had to close the drapes, and everybody slept in the front room where the fans were. We are depression-era in that we don’t have air-conditioning, though this usually isn’t a problem. Our second and third floor apartment is ensconced high up in the branches of several enormous trees that shade us, and a breeze flows through our three big front windows out the wide-opened kitchen doors. No one wants the 50 degree Celsius breeze however, so yesterday I countered all my ideas of common sense and shut all the windows, closed the blinds first thing in the morning, had the fans going in every room. It worked– we came home after lunch yesterday, and our house was much cooler than the outside (though this wasn’t really saying much). It was a bit like living in a dark and windy cave, but not sweltering at least. By bedtime, however, the heat was uncomfortable.

But when Harriet woke up for something at 4:30 this morning, I came down to check on her and then noticed the blinds at the front blowing in a breeze, and I could feel it, and it was lovely. I went into the kitchen and opened up the doors (we don’t have a window in our kitchen. It’s the doors or nothing) and suddenly air was flowing through the house again, and I was in a quandary. I couldn’t possibly close the doors, but I also couldn’t go back to bed and leave them open, though I longed to, but I read someplace once that we’re not meant to leave our doors wide open in the middle of the night. I decided that one would be unlikely to rob us, however, if one arrived at the doors to find me asleep on the kitchen floor, so that’s what I did, with just a pillow for comfort (and the company of several moths).

It was kind of glorious, and from where I lay, I could see the moon. The breeze was nice. I didn’t sleep so soundly, however, as the kitchen floor is as uncomfortable as it is filthy, so once the birds had brought the sun up with their incessant singing, I decided the time from robbery had probably passed, and returned to the comforts of my mattress.

July 20, 2011

Support the Toronto Public Library

I can’t bear to talk muncipal politics here, because it absolutely breaks my heart. Must urge anyone who hasn’t yet, however, to sign the petition supporting Toronto’s incredible public library system. I’ve never been shy about my love for Toronto’s libaries, mostly because they saved my life once, and I think that it’s tragic that some of our fellow citizens don’t know the value of the treasure in our midst. If you do know the value, however, I urge you to make your voice heard. (And then our voices will be dismissed because we’re a weird fringe special interest group of librarian patrons who, with our library cards, have a conflict of interest anyway, and no right to impinge our beliefs on the taxpaying majority. [Sob])

July 18, 2011

On Victoria Glendinning's biography, and my own journeys with Elizabeth Bowen

I’d never heard of Elizabeth Bowen until I read Susan Hill’s Howard’s End is on the Landing when we were in England in 2009. Hill refers to Bowen as “one of the writers who formed me” and writes about how her novels are difficult but not obscure, and so when I had a ten pound note to get rid of at WH Smith at the airport, I sprung for a gorgeous Vintage Classics edition of Bowen’s The House in Paris. I read about 25 pages on the plane journey home (a fantastic achievement, actually–I had a five month old at the time) and it dawned on me that I hadn’t read a decent novel in ages, that I’d forgotten what literary was, what it meant to be challenged (in ways other than those presented by five month olds).

Back in Canada a few weeks later, I picked up Victoria Glendinning’s biography Elizabeth Bowen: A Writer’s Life. There it languished on my shelf until last summer when it was joined by two of her novels which I knicked (for a small fee) from a dying woman’s house. I finally read one of them, The Heat of the Day, during the last few days of 2010 which I was ill and didn’t want to be challenged. By the end of the novel, I was convinced of its worth, but the convincing had been hard-won and the book was so weird in inexplicable ways. And then I mightn’t have ever read Elizabeth Bowen again, except that I’m reading my shelves in alpha order now, and Bowen starts with B. And then The Last September was so extraordinarily good, that I couldn’t wait to get to the Glendinning G, and my anticipation was not for nothing.

I don’t read enough literary biographies, and should really change that, because what a remarkable way to discover a writer who’s still new to me. To get a sense of Bowen’s historical context (Glendinning writes, “She is what happened after Bloomsbury; she is the link which connects Virginia Woolf with Iris Murdoch and Muriel Spark”), and to get also a context for her weirdness, the weird convolutedness of her sentences and the daringness of her subject matter (she was just totally weird. But also amazing). And to understand her wider context too, which I’d begun to learn through reading The Last September–the Anglo-Irish tradition, and what that meant, and how it changed with the 1920s.

Anyway, I’ve come away entrenched as a Bowen devotee (what Susan Hill started two years ago!). I am looking forward to rereading The House in Paris, and Bowen’s The Little Girls, and some of her short stories. I’ll be keeping my eye out for more Bowen at the college booksales in the Fall. And for more Victoria Glendinning biographies too, and also Hermione Lee, who I’ve never read before.

Two important things about the Elizabeth Bowen bio: this was first published in the late ’70s, reprinted in the ’90s with an author bio explaining that Glendinning is married to “the Irish writer Terence de Vere White”. Which was kind of weird because White is referenced several times in the book, never in familiar terms (obviously) but so often that it was sort of conspicuous. I consulted Wikipedia later to learn that Glendinning wasn’t married to White at the time she wrote Elizabeth Bowen’s bio, and all’s I can say was that anyone could have seen that they were going to end up together.

Also, that the Igor Gouzenko case features in Elizabeth Bowen’s lifes story! (Bowen was close to the novelist John Buchan, who became the Governor General of Canada, and through him she met her lifelong intimate friend Charles Ritchie, who was a Canadian diplomat.)It would have better had Glendinning and her editors known how to spell Ottawa, but this last is only the one small point that sullied my reading of this wonderful book.

July 18, 2011

More Camilla than Kate

Many of you will no doubt recognize this dress as the dress I wore to *your* wedding!

With my usual knack for doing it wrong, I am more Camilla than Kate, but I like my hat anyway. It’s how I represent my English-ness (via marriage) at weddings. And this wedding was particularly extraordinary as we left Harriet at home and went away overnight (and then Stuart spent the wedding being barfed on by someone else’s baby, and I kept hiding in bushes in order to stalk another wedding guest who was exactly Harriet’s age, save for one week). We had criminal amounts of fun, the wedding was fantastic (with no actual wedding component, but with lobster, chicken wings, cupcakes, a live band and swimming), and Harriet had a time just as splendid with her grandmother. And in the twenty-four since we returned home, Harriet has appropriated my hat, clutch purse and high heels, and I don’t think she’ll be returning any of these items anytime soon. (And congratulations to our friends Erica and Alex who sure know how to throw a party!)

July 17, 2011

Wild Libraries I have known: The Southern African Wildlife College Resource Centre

In what is no doubt the wildest installment in the series yet, Valli Fraser-Celin brings us The Southern African College Resource Centre (and a lion):

The idea of a “wild library” has extra meaning for me, since since I work in a library that is literally in the wild. I work at the Gold Fields Resource Centre at the Southern African Wildlife College (SAWC), which is situated in the Kruger National Park in South Africa. We are surrounded by hundreds of thousands of hectares of wilderness and a large quantity of wild animals including lions, elephant and rhinos (amongst many more). The SAWC trains natural resource managers from all over Africa by developing their skills in areas such as anti-poaching, animal studies, conservation management, ecology and environmental education. The extensive range of courses allows students to return to their workplaces with a greater knowledge of how to protect the valuable parks and reserves they work in.  The Resource Centre supports their curriculum through conservation management focused materials and provides a space for students to work and study.

So, how did a Canadian librarian end up in this African wilderness?

Well, I’ve always loved traveling and after having traveled to Africa a couple of times, I became obsessed with returning to this beautiful continent. While completing my Master degree in Library and Information Studies at McGill University, I continually searched for ways to combine librarianship, travel and opportunities to experience different cultures. One of the ways I did this was by joining the Librarians Without Borders McGill student chapter, of which I became the President in 2009. In 2010, the first service learning trip to Guatemala was organized to help the Miguel Angel Asturias Academy develop their school library. This was my first experience with international librarianship and just as I imagined, I really enjoyed it! Although I loved volunteering in Guatemala, I desperately wanted to go back to Africa, so when a volunteer opportunity became available at the SAWC, I grabbed it.

Living in the African bush is such a special experience; I never get tired of hearing lions roaring and hyena and jackal calling at night, seeing beautiful African sunsets and starry night skies. The Resource Centre is really a pleasure to work in: we have huge windows that look out onto the bush, we can hear birds singing outside everyday and we have bush babies living in the roof. Not only is our collection full of materials about the environment and conservation but we also have novels and games for those who need down time from their intensive work schedules. We also have a movie area with beanie bags so that students can watch educational movies and a computer lab where they can work on their assignments.

Working in a “wild library” has made me want to enter the field of environment and conservation, but through establishing environmentally oriented resource centres for organizations that focus on environmental education and research. I doubt that after this experience I’ll ever be able to work and live in a big city again. Being in a place where nature surrounds you and is a part of your daily life becomes addictive and I know I’ll always be striving to work in another “wild library”.

My blog: http://whereisvalli.wordpress.com/

Blog posts can also be read at A Hopeful Sign: http://ahopefulsign.com

Librarians Without Borders: http://www.lwb-online.org/

Twitter: @vallifc

July 15, 2011

On books, sharing, communal toys, and the playground

I am really not very good at sharing. Giving, I’m all over that, but sharing makes me wary– too often, the things I’ve shared have come back to me quite battered, and usually these things are books. Which is why now if you ask if I will lend you a book, I will tell you no. I will feel terrible about this, embarrassed at being socially awkward and ungenerous, but not so embarrassed that I could be persuaded to change my mind. I like to have my things where they belong.

Which is why I sort of understand when my daughter doesn’t do so well at sharing either. There were two watering cans in the pool yesterday, and she insisted on playing with the red tin one that Margaret was using. And I could understand why because the green plastic can is obviously inferior. The green plastic can is the one she will “share”, and the red tin can will stay with its rightful owner. (Thankfully, dear Margaret [who has been Harriet’s best friend since she was two days old] was civilized enough to go along with this plan). I’d like it if Harriet were a more easy-going person, but I can usually understand the reasons why she isn’t. She’s fierce and feral, but she makes a lot of sense to me. Sometimes “sharing” seems a lot like having Goldilocks come to visit, and while I want Harriet to learn to be a good host and a good friend, where’s the fun in that?

Stuart and I got called out by one of the terrifying mothers at the playground on Sunday. We’d brought a bucket for Harriet to play with in the pool because Harriet insists on having a bucket at all times, and one of the communal buckets might not have been available. (Moreover, the communal toys at the playground are crap because nobody bothers to take care of them, but that’s another story…) Some kid came up and took the bucket from beside where we were sitting. “It’s Harriet’s bucket,” we told the kid, who gave it back, no problem.

But his mother behind us said to our friend, “The boys never understand when they go someplace and everybody has their own toys. They just go up and take them, and the other kids get upset, but parks are supposed to be communal. I mean, that’s the whole point.” (Man, would I ever make a really bad socialist. For someone who doesn’t own any property, I’ve sure got a lot of views about private ones.) So we considered ourselves chastised, and I was feeling badly about this, wondering if we were approaching the whole thing wrong. And then the annoying women’s two children (who were named Cashton and Thorston) started assaulting their friend with shovels, and the annoying woman yelled at the boy, “Walk away, Siegfried! Walk away!” while poor Siegfried got battered. So think that she might not have all the secrets to raising children after all.

It’s a tough call, and I’m still not sure how I feel. I know that I don’t like sharing my books though, which is something. We share snacks, we even share ice cream cones, we’d share a skipping rope if Harriet were capable of jumping. We take turns on the swings, we don’t rip toys out of kids’ hands, if there is a communal toy we want to play with in the playground, Harriet waits her turn. If we were at Margaret’s house and Harriet wanted Margaret’s prized watering can (as you do), I’d have to tell Harriet, “Tough luck.” To me, this is sharing.

We brought our bucket to the playground again on Monday, and a little girl picked it up, hurled it to the ground, and the handle broke off. Is this sharing? Because if it is, sharing sucks. But I don’t want to be a person who thinks that sharing sucks. And I actually appreciate all the communal toys at the park, but everything doesn’t belong to everyone, and I don’t think that’s a bad thing…

So no conclusions. But this is the kind of philosophical issue that I’m grappling with these days. I’m still not lending you my book though.

July 15, 2011

No best books: our library haul this week was lacking

This month, we’ve been going to toddler movies at the Lillian H Smith Library on Tuesday mornings, watching 1980s film strip adaptations of picture books, which are wonderful. (A Boy, A Dog and A Frog is awesome and you can watch it here. We’ve also seen The Three Little Pigs, Paddington, Angus Lost, and Curious George.) Anyway, we didn’t get to the library before the movie on Tuesday in enough time to allow for our usual high level of book scouting, so we just threw a few into our bag and hoped for the best. Didn’t go so well.

Our books this week were some serious duds (save for the books we have out every week, like one from the Knuffle Bunny saga, and some Shirley Hughes, but these are our old standards, and to count them as Best Books would be cheating). And so no Best Books this week, though Harriet might tell you otherwise– she has fallen in love Curious George via a substandard Curious George post-Rey rip-off book.

Fortunately, we visited Spadina Road Library this morning to take part in their toddler program, and supplemented our crap books with a few others. I picked Curious George Goes to the Hospital so Harriet can see what that curious monkey is really about, and a few others that seem pretty good.

Should be enough to get us through the weekend…

July 14, 2011

Monoceros by Suzette Mayr

Suzette Mayr’s Monoceros takes place in an alternate reality, albeit a reality that very much resembles our own–high school is a nightmare, students are bullied to death for being gay, men and women can lose their jobs for being gay, teen girls are vicious, adults are just as lost as the kids are, and the only difference between the two is that the former have given up searching for meaning. Where the world of Monoceros becomes a fantasy, however, is that the bullied student’s death actually happens for a reason, that his death becomes a catalyst for those he leaves behind to change to their lives. Also, there are unicorns,  fairy godmother drag queen called Crepe Suzette, and a belching prophet called Jesus.

Crepe Suzette wears the costume of Colonel Shakira, heroine of a campy sci-fi show that is important to nearly every character in Mayr’s novel– it’s the favourite show of Max, the closeted school principal; the dead boy had been a fan, and so had been his boyfriend; the unicorn-obsessed high school girl is attracted to its unicorn imagery, and Crepe Suzette is actually her uncle, her Uncle Suzie. In Uncle Suzie’s day job, she’s a waiter, and one day, unknowingly, she serves the dead boy’s mother. She also performed her drag show for the dead boy’s English teacher, who was in the restaurant with her ex-husband, her marriage having ended so recently that they still had tickets for events together. It’s Suzette’s car that Max plows into while driving distracted because his husband has just left him, his husband the school guidance counsellor who (like everybody else after the boy kills himself) is stunned by his own self-absorption and lack of regard that left him so incapable of helping the dead boy.

The multiple points of view are dizzying, but well-realized, and serve to propel the plot along. Mayr has her characters linked in all kinds of surprising ways, and they’re all  carrying their own burdens, which only become heavier with the death of a boy none of them really knew. Each one is wholly invested with life, even the dead boy, who, we discover, didn’t take his taunting passively, and had some marvelous come-backs to his tormentor that hit her right where it hurt. Though she doesn’t hurt much, this girl, Petra Mai, who bullies the dead boy when he isn’t dead yet because the boy she loves loves him instead. And with Petra, Mayr has created a character who is hilariously vile, the smart girl, the girl who plays the cello, the girl no one would ever expect had caused so much harm. She barely notices it herself, so intent upon her own story, celebrating her four month anniversary with her boyfriend and daring to think ahead to how they’ll celebrate the fifth. She’s the only one in the novel who never really changes.

As the novel progresses, focus narrows upon Max and Walter, the principal and the guidance counselor who’ve been a secret couple for seventeen years. Mayr’s depiction of Max’s ambivalence about his relationship and sexuality makes for fascinating narrative tension, which is taken in unexpected directions when Walter abruptly refuses to keep going along with their charade. We also witness the English teacher rebuilding herself from the shattered pieces of her marriage, and the dead boy’s mother who is just shattered, but still manages to build something out of the pieces of her son (who she once begged to promise her that he wasn’t really gay, and urged upon him that it was just a phase. This is the kind of thing she has to remember).

The subject matter would suggest otherwise, but Monoceros was a joy to read. The writing was fresh, strange and edgy, the humour sharp, and the teenage characters in particular were startlingly real. The dead boy was its point of origin, but the book becomes much more about life than death, which serves to finally set the others in the direction of actually living their own lives.

July 14, 2011

Barbara Pym for afters

We’ve invented a new dessert! Or rather, we’ve re-christened a very familiar one. This all came about because Harriet had taken to walking around the house screaming, “Barbara Pym!” Which is a bit weird, because Harriet and I don’t talk about Barbara Pym a lot, but I must talk about her to other people enough that the name is known (and I shouldn’t be surprised– Harriet has had her photo in the Barbara Pym Society newsletter after all).

One night a few weeks back, when Barbara Pym mania was at its height, Harriet was coerced into her chair at the table with the promise that we were going to be eating Barbara Pym for dessert. Dessert turned out to be berries with ice cream, which has since become the Barbara Pym that we eat almost daily. Splendid local raspberries tonight with maple ice cream made this particular dish of Barbara Pym delightful.

Here is a photo of the world’s dirtiest child devouring hers, having just completed her first course, which was mostly ketchup.

July 13, 2011

The world was upside down

“‘I don’t know why you’re laughing,’ said Aunt Irene. ‘I don’t see anything to laugh about. Everything strikes me as rather worrying.’

‘I’ll make a cuppa tea,’ said Mrs. O’Connor. She made terrible tea, very slimy, strong and tooth-stripping, but there was no denying its restorative powers.

‘If it does this to one’s cups,’ said Aunt Irene when Mrs. O’Connor had gone home to make tea for her boys, ‘what must it be doing to the lining of one’s stomach?’ She rubbed at the stained inside of the porcelain teacup. ‘I can’t be too rough,’ she said. ‘All its little gilt flowers will come off. They were designed for China tea. No one ever imagined Mrs. O’Connor would cross their path.’

The world was upside down. On the whole, this pleased Aunt Irene as much as it angered Mrs. Mason. It was more interesting that way, but it was hard on the porcelain.”– from The 27th Kingdom by Alice Thomas Ellis