April 12, 2006
On Grace Paley
I want to write a bit about Grace Paley. I first learned of her through this post at Maud Newton. She came into my life next at the beginning of March when I was shelving her Collected Stories at the library. I took the book home with me that night (what a wonderful job it is to be handed books all day, I must say) and absolutely fell in love with her work, and, through it, with the short story itself. And now I’ve finished her collected non-fiction book Just As I Thought, which has left me awfully enamoured of the woman herself. After fifty years as a anti-war, pacifist, anti-nuke, feminist activist, I think Grace Paley would be quite right to look back on it all and say, “I was right all along.” Though what she was right about, I don’t imagine would bring her great joy.
In Just As I Thought, Paley recounts her years in the peace movement, the women’s movement, and also as a writer. “The Illegal Days” is an excellent piece on abortion. But my favourite piece in the book was “Imagining the Present”, in which she writes about imagination in the same way that so many writers look upon the novel as a means to empathy. Paley sees imagination as a tremendously potent force. She writes:
First of all, we need our imaginations to understand what is happening to other people around us, to try to understand the lives of others. I know there’s a certain political view that you mustn’t write about anyone except yourself, your own exact people. Of course it’s very hard for anyone to know who their exact people are, anyway. But that’s limiting. The idea of writing from the head or from the view or the experience of other people, of another life, or even of just the people across the street or next door, is probably one of the most important acts of the imagination that you can try and that can be useful to the world.
I am so glad I read this book.
April 12, 2006
Yea!
Pickle Me This has finally become gainfully employed for the summer, at neither call centre nor kiosk, though it’s not yet confirmed whether the walls will touch the ceiling. After sleeping poorly for two months worrying about this, the news comes as a great relief. In other good news, Essay 1 of 2 is three and a half pages underway, and I completed a short story last night. There is a mug of lemon tea on my desk. And therefore, today has already been a very good day- and it’s not even noon yet.
April 11, 2006
Creepy Japanese Kewpie Doll Spaghetti Ad
The internet is marvelous. I was trying to find the website for The Walrus magazine, and found this instead. I’ve not looked at any content beyond the main page here. But I couldn’t believe what I found! When we used to do our grocery shopping at MaxValu in Japan, this would constantly play on a loop in a display for spaghetti. It is the scariest pasta commericial I have ever seen, and to this day can’t make any sense of it. Take a look, and discover for yourself that Japan is truly the strangest place in the world.
April 10, 2006
More for your pleasure…
Hear Beverly Cleary on NPR! (I was referred by Maud Newton.) I am also obsessed with the website for The Tea Guild in the UK. Today I pulled rank and got my mitts on “Mean Boy” by Lynn Coady before it even got on the shelf. Of course it now joins by ToBeRead pile. Watch this space. Intriguing question of the day: has Bloomsbury misjudged Gary Barlow’s currency? In fun trivia news, courtesy of “Six Words…” by Katherine Barber, the origin of the world “rhubarb”- something like “rhu” was an old name for the Volga, and “barb” as in “barbarian”, for this fine fruit (it is a fruit?) began in the land where dragons be!
April 9, 2006
Spending April 8th
Nearing the end of a fun weekend, which include dinner party hilarity at the most craftastic Ms. Smith’s, and Sunday brunch with Carolyn and her man Steve. In between, I spent April 8th. April 8th is my favourite day of the year, mainly because I like the “eh” sound repeated in the date, and I like the idea of a favourite day for no apparent reason. I spent it reading, appropriately. I finished The Selfish Gene, which was interesting and I am glad I read it, though one doesn’t read The Selfish Gene for the reasons I most love to read, so the task was arduous at times. I also read Margaret Atwood’s The Tent, which I loved. And began Just As I Thought, a book of non-fiction by Grace Paley which has superglue on its cover. We played a marvelous game of Scrabble last night, and features included “vulva” and “fetid”. It was tremendously fun, and now I must devote my time to essay writing. Which, clearly, I am not doing.
The Streets (who I love) have helped British pop reclaim its accent, according to this piece at CBC.ca.
April 9, 2006
Hanami Time
Though this might not be news to anyone else, April 9 2005 was a year ago. 
Our ability to move so brazenly through space and time is extraordinary.
April 7, 2006
Because you asked
I have decided not to seek the Liberal leadership. Frankly, I could have run a very competitive campaign. I had a chance of winning, but for me, the end game is not about winning but about strengthening the party. I can best serve that purpose by remaining simply a knitting/bookish blogging graduate student with a passion for Margaret Drabble, a role that allows me to be more open in expressing my views. It is not because of my French, or because I do not belong to the Liberal Party. Mon francais etait le plus bonne que tu pense et mon Francais est un prioritee pour moi. And I’m not going anywhere. I’m not going away.
Thank you.
April 6, 2006
Selfish Jeans
I’ve got things to say about “The Selfish Gene”. First, no book I’ve read has ever provoked such a reaction from strangers who spy the cover. Yesterday someone said, “Don’t you love it?” I wouldn’t go that far. Dawkins assumes a foundation of knowledge I’m far from having attained. I didn’t know what a chromosome was, what DNA was (in spite of my extensive CSI background- I know- crazy!), how genes factored into chromosomes etc. etc. Now with this sort-of grasped, thanks to my fine biologist husband, I am enjoying the book. I’m not used to having to follow a text so carefully to understand, and sometimes that’s a bit frustrating. And I’m still waiting on character development.
It’s strange to realise just how much I don’t know, a realisation encourged by reading Annie Dillard, who knows everything. But at the same time, really, how wonderful it is that we can never run out of things to learn. And it all comes together. So much of what Stuart and I have been discussing about genetics, and what it means to give credit to microscopic things, was quite relevant to my class today and I enjoyed that perspective upon it. In fact I quite loved school today in general. Though I was so close to hit by a car on my way home. Apparently I am invisible to people driving through stop signs. I yelped like a wounded bird as the car drove toward me, which caused a group of high school boys to imitate my cry. This was altogether less humilating, of course, than when I fell off my bike in 2001, and a group of high school boys yelled “Whoa! Wipe out”.
I’m now reading “Six Words You Never Knew Had to do with Pigs”, which is a bit too “gift book” for my liking. And I got a book of Grace Paley’s nonfiction out of the library yesterday, so when I’m through with Dawkins I might go there. Bad news. Men still don’t like books by women. The winner of the Blooker.
I just baked a cake! Must go and add the topping.
April 6, 2006
Listening Fun
I love the BBC. Over the last day I’ve been able to pop it up with Sara Cox on Radio 1, and to glory in words with an address by Virginia Woolf over at BBC 4.
