December 13, 2005
Knowledge Gaps
I was stunned yesterday by a woman in the bookstore who was perhaps ten years older than me and who, as I overheard, was not ashamed to admit that she didn’t know during which years the Second World War had been fought.
However I do not know if my Christmas tree is a spruce or a pine (though I am pretty sure it’s not a maple) and I don’t know if my own ignorance is any less troubling.
December 13, 2005
York is the new New York
Oh Toronto, Toronto. That sweet snow-coated city that so called me home is the centre of the universe. The literary universe at least. Vanity Fair says so.
December 11, 2005
Gleanings
More McSweeneys pop song correspondences, A LETTER TO ELTON JOHN FROM THE OFFICE OF THE NASA ADMINISTRATOR. A sample: ‘After demanding data from you for days, you were only able to offer this insight: “Mars ain’t the kind of place to raise your kids. In fact, it’s cold as hell. And there’s no one there to raise them if you did.” First off, if you did what? That doesn’t even make sense. Secondly, we did not send you up there to evaluate whether Mars is fit for human habitation or child rearing. Thirdly, your mission was not even going to Mars.'” On a lifetime spent with books. How Woolfian: how to read a book. And no federal election coverage, because it’s so damn boring!
Essay WordCount: 2300
December 11, 2005
Oh Tenenbaum, you're a wild and crazy guy
The end of a long fiasco. I wasted last evening needles in hand, watching “Bounce” starring the legendary Paltrow and Affleck. We went shopping this morning and found nothing we needed. Downtown Toronto is devoid of nanaimo bar ingredients. Someone has stolen all the bolts from the Christmas tree stands at WalMart and of course we were actually in WalMart. All the trees were either bundled or the Charlie Brown Special at the store near our house. We finally located a stand at the local mom and pop, and took our chances on a bundled tree. (We swore we would love it no matter how it turned out). Still no nanaimos though. And of course I haven’t even started my essay (though I have written the title and my name and that’s a start technically) but perhaps now I can concentrate on it. Christmas is officially here at Pickle Me This! See below for our freshly knit stockings and our rather lovely tree (which doesn’t yet have anything atop it but there will be time).
border=”0″ alt=”” />
Now reading “Pearls in Vinegar” by Heather Mallick, which I am enjoying but only because I am obsessed with Heather Mallick. Those without Mallick obsessions would be far from interested. I also read “Negotiating with the Dead: A Writer on Writing” by Margaret Atwood (which I could pretend pertained to my essay) which was good. And finally reading “A Fine Old Conflict” by Jessica Mitford, which is odd because I haven’t read a Mitford bio since the Mitford obsession of 2003 and I feel as though I have gone back in time.
Now preparing for our Christmas party. If I haven’t invited you, considered yourself invited anyway. There is going to be a lot of food! Paul and Bronwyn are coming home this week, Bronwyn with her Alex and Paul sans his lovely girl so we’ll have to console him (with a lot of food!).
December 7, 2005
I am a librartarian
I think the library is the closest I’ll ever get to undertanding what it must be like to be conservative in our time, to look about and see all the values you hold dear thrown by the wayside, moral decline in the name of progress. It’s absolutely heartbreaking.
Exams are nearly upon us at the University of Toronto, and consequently the libraries are teeming with scholarly hordes violating those sacred places. The carrels are cracking with candy wrappers and buzzing with cell-phones, the stacks are full of books people continue to write in, the computers are occupied with people on instant messenger, the student lounge echoes throughout the entire building, wireless access fails for five minutes and all hell breaks loose. In my job, when I inform students that they should not be eating in the library or speaking on their phones, never does anyone apologise and realise the error of their ways (unsurprisingly, as they are eating with “No Eating”/”No Cell Phones” signs staring them in the face), or even just apologise. Instead they tell me to fuck off, either with words or their facial expressions.
I believe passionately that libraries are sacred places, and in sacred places we don’t eat and drink, and our cell-phones don’t ring. We don’t talk above whispers, we don’t scratch our initials into furniture. I believe that people who keep overdue books are immoral and undermining the foundations of our society. When the librarian tells you to shush, you shush my friend. You are in a house of godliness.
But alas, no one else seems to think so. The old road is rapidly fading.
December 5, 2005
Hobby Time
I finished my first Christmas stocking tonight, and though far from perfect it resembles a Christmas stocking. Ya ta!
December 4, 2005
On the radio
I enjoyed Kate Taylor’s article on the CBC in The Globe this weekend. I must disclose that I’ve only been listening to the CBC since the strike ended this Fall, after reading so much about this invaluable national network that makes Canada Canada I thought it was time that I got in on the action. And I love it. I like Metro Morning, As It Happens, anything about books, The Current, Quirks and Quarks and Definitely Not the Opera is a splendid way to spend away my Saturday afternoon. We also like “The National Playlist”. A part of me regrets I’d been missing CBC Radio my whole life, whiling it away to crappy middle of the road station soundtracks. But it’s never too late. Further, as a result of continued exposure to CBC radio (after all he is unemployed), my English husband knows everything about Canadian politics and current events there is to know. So that is my background.
Now debate is currently centred around the new CBC Radio One afternoon show, Freestyle. I am home in the afternoon two or three days a week (I’m about as busy as my unemployed husband- we’re a household of go-getters you can see) and have listened to the show a number of times and my concensus is this. The format is potentially good. Problems lie in two places. 1) A stupid over-reliance on the internet and the weird wonderful world of the web. It’s very late 1990s and boring now. Perhaps a more thematic format would be too demanding for a daily show, but something must be done. 2) The hosts are unequivocally dorky, awkward and have no chemistry. Perhaps something will develop between them, but now listening to “Kelly and Cameron” makes me cringe.
The problem in no way lies with the music, or with CBC’s movement toward playing pop music. I am an unabashed pop lover, and it’s this movement that has made the CBC so accessible to new listeners like me. Playing popular music doesn’t relegate the CBC to the (low) status of commercial radio, but rather the music in amongst the other fare offered makes for a varied and interesting listening experience. This is the possibility of radio, which commerical stations fail to live up to. I discovered this for the first time when I lived in Britain, and listened to BBC Radio 1, and realised that a top forty station didn’t necessarily have to be Eagle Eye Cherry on repeat and commercials for “Sleep Country Canada”. Before the BBC, radio had been for me an irritating aural experience. Now BBC Radio 1 has its own problems, but it was a pleasure to come home to Canada and see that so much of what I had enjoyed about British radio was present here. By this I mean actual programming. Radio is an amazingly engaging medium, far more potent than television which is purely hypnotic. I don’t think that playing popular music undermines that. Yes, you can hear popular music on commerical radio but not in the context of actual programming, and the context is what matters.
Of course the debate is complicated. This site loves pop more abashedly than I do, and their problem lies with a lack of Canadian content as well. But in her article, Kate Taylor was decidedly wise. She said, “Personally, I think there should always be room for new Canadian music of any kind on CBC Radio One and Two. What I have never been able to figure out is what is distinctively Canadian about Bach and Beethoven. For years, Radio Two has played the music of dead Europeans. Why can’t Radio One now play the music of living Americans and Britons?” Exactly.
And the UK Christmas Number 1 race is off and running. North Americaners, be jealous you can’t be a part of the madness and learn about it here. It’s this tendency for the stupidest obsessions to sweep the UK that I miss here mega-regionalised land. I have fond memories of being swept along with the rest of the nation. The first year I lived in England, Girls Aloud beat out One True Voice (oh the hysteria). The next year, much to my chagrin, Mad World beat The Darkness. I was gutted. This year I am hoping the Pogues get it with their re-release of “Fairy Tale of New York”. But of course I can always get behind Robbie.
December 4, 2005
Pickle Me This Federal Election Coverage
Oh my god Stephen Harper! Stop wearing jackets over shirts that aren’t button-down!
November 30, 2005
A conclusion is imperative
In our house, my stories are a family affair. Stuart invented the main character in my novel, and his imagination is partly behind many others. We’ve been grappling with a short story for ages now, as every ending I cooked up was determinedly dull. Last night, I had just about reached le end de ma tether. As we washed the dishes after dinner, we played “What If” games in fervent effort to develop my plot. Some progress was made. And then today, when Stuart came home, I read him the newest ending and it met with applause. Applause! From my favourite critic. And so boys and girls, my story is done!
November 30, 2005
My Summer Reading Project
I have decided to devote my summer vacation, and indeed I am in long term forecast mode for it is not yet December but, to re-reading novels. Far too many of my books have not been experienced to their full potential, and I want to read them again. So far my reading list includes: White Teeth by Zadie Smith, Howard’s End by EM Forster, Franny and Zooey by JD Salinger, Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf, The Robber Bride by Margaret Atwood, Headhunter by Timothy Findlay, The Radiant Way by Margaret Drabble, Possession by AS Byatt, Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowry, The Fire Dwellers by Margaret Laurence, Lives of Girls and Women by Alice Munro, Unless by Carol Shields, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith and The Hours by Michael Cunningham. All of these are books I have really enjoyed, but I read some in high school and would like to revisit them, or I read them in university classes and would like to try them without training wheels, or I loved them so much I devoured them without pondering them as much as I should have. As well as rereading novels, I want to read letters and diaries of writers, which I’ve never done enough of.
