12th Canadian Challenge - 11th Review - Stereoblind

Emma Healey's Stereoblind is a slim collection of prose poems.  The word in the title, stereoblind, refers to the condition of not being able to visually perceive depth, i.e. everything is flattened out.  While this would be most common among people who have lost sight in one eye, it can also impact people with two functioning eyes.  I'll have to be honest here and admit that the poem that most closely dealt with stereoblindness, "Impossible Colour," didn't grab me as much as some of the others.  Perhaps a case where the concept in the abstract was a bit more intriguing than the implementation.

I did like several other poems along two basic themes -- bureaucracy (and paperwork in particular) and riffing on Blade Runner.  While Stereoblind came out fairly early in 2018 (and I am just getting around to reviewing it now), I imagine that the two Blade Runner poems ("ESPER" and "Voight-Kampff") were written quite a while back, i.e. before Blade Runner 2047 kind of brought Blade Runner back into general circulation in 2017.  Who knows, it might have been the 30th anniversary edition DVD that got her into Blade Runner in the first place.  (Just writing 30th anniversary makes me feel so very old.  Granted I probably didn't see this in the theatre in its original run, though I'm not saying I didn't.  I saw Tron a couple of times and that came out in 1982 as well.  I definitely saw Blade Runner on early VHS a few times and then at a University of Michigan film society screening in 1988 or so (back when there was still the voice-over).  So I am part of the original audience in that sense.  Sorry for the digression...)

Since I have raised the Blade Runner connection, I will start with these two poems.  Going into these poems, I definitely had the warm fuzzy feeling that you get when something connects with a part of your childhood (or very young adulthood).

"Voight-Kampff" takes a slightly cynical take on the technology: "At first I liked the test because I couldn't tell what made the questions like each other. ...[but] I was pretty disappointed when I got there on my own: it was just empathy and violence, like everything else is."

Then the poem riffs on the line "I'll tell you about my mother."  Instead of unleashing unspeakable violence on the tester, the poet recalls her mother visiting her in Montreal, where she lived in a terrible apartment that had no interior doors and where the ceiling "was buckling in slow, beautiful waves."  Her mother brought her a bike, which the poet was then afraid to ride.  The poet then focuses on the tester.  "I wanted to ask him whether he thought that story was about guilt or clarity or debt. ... But he didn't want to hear it.  He was busy with his work."

I have to admit, this poem made me laugh as it wasn't too reverential about the source material.

I would have to say that "ESPER" is a little less successful, as it seems too faithful to the movie: "In this scene it's night, like always.  Our hero stares down at a handful of old photographs, picks at the keyboard, maybe dreams about a unicorn, etc. ... The sink behind her out of focus, piled with dishes, kitchen floor in black and white..."  That said, the poet does try to link to the earlier poem and make it a bit more personal: "Small trail of symbols, significance of the bicycle, all this glowing and pause. ... She looks good, caught up, flickering inside the question, almost there but not there yet."

The other poems I enjoyed were related to government bureaucracies in one way or another.

"Bad Dream" takes a somewhat apocalyptic view of government literally combusting: "The National Student Loans Service Centre not calling you, engulfed in flames. Bright, fast, on purpose. ... In the morning in one sense the country will wake and be lighter by one building.  Not you.  ... You will spend all of your life breathing letterhead in.  Old T4s, bills, receipts.  All that proves.  Your own balance outstanding."

For me the outstanding poem was really a series of linked prose poems, called N12, which the poet helpfully explains in the notes is a form that tenants gets when he/she/they are being renovicated.  This was and remains a major issue in Toronto given the sharp rise in property values (and rents) and the very low vacancy rate (under 2.5% in 2017, and basically the lowest in Canada).  Thus, tenants feel very much at the mercy of their landlords in Toronto.

I can only quote a few of the lines from some of the poems in the series, but I find there is a nice mix of the absurd, the humorous (at least from the outside) and the sheer anxiety that must be going through the mind of the poet (assuming that this is either inspired by real-life experiences or the dread of same...).

"The real estate agent plants his sign in our lawn like a flag, takes a key.  ... One night before bed, I lift my pillow and find one [business card] ... The real estate agent's gleaming white teeth are arranged in a neat, endless row, like piano keys in a nightmare."

"Our landlord drives a disappearing Lamborghini.  Each time we see it, the rust has claimed more ground."

"One day, his brother follows in a very large truck.  Together, in the bleak mid-morning light, they lean a ladder up against the shed and begin the complex ritual of removing years' worth of garbage from its roof."

"One day, there are no more first-time buyers.  The next, too, the door stays locked.  ... We all rush to the front window.  The real estate agent is grimly unstaking his face from the lawn. ... The next two months proceed in a complex silence.  It's dangerous to want, to fix, to ask."

"The first-time buyers return.  This time they're men alone in suits that smell like plaster dust and money."

"For weeks I bike and sweat between the city's smallest places, breathing in centuries of dust, trying to imagine a future underground."

"I go to a party in an abandoned condo sales centre.  Someone has wrapped all the showroom furniture in white vinyl.  It looks like the end of the world."

"On the water, a man sits in the province's last remaining swan boat, playing a mournful song on the trumpet while two civilians paddle him around the perimeter."

Throw in some shout outs to raccoons early on (and even a reference to air rights), and one could hardly ask for a more in-the-moment poem about Toronto and the impact this latest property bubble is having on the city. I can strongly recommend Stereoblind, and particularly the series N12, for anyone interested in contemporary Toronto life.

What to Do on the Last Day of the Year

I'm still in a lousy mood.  However, I did write a letter to the Councillor about the intersection rather than just stew over it.  I believe I provided concrete solutions that would improve the intersection if actually implemented.

I'm finding it ridiculously difficult to find non-alcoholic cider for New Year's Eve.  We eventually tracked this down in Vancouver, but I haven't seen it in any stores in Toronto.  I did a bit of an internet search, and this doesn't really seem to be sold here.  There is non-alcoholic wine, called Vin Zero, but it isn't sold in any the stores in my neighbourhood, so I wasn't just imagining it was hard to find.  I may make a stop at a Loblaws on the way home, but my hopes aren't particularly high.

I've been getting many, many requests from charities* that are looking for charitable donations that will be matched.  I did give a bit to the AGO a while back, and I made sure that my United Way payroll contributions were renewed.  After some thought, I decided that I've give to the Theatre Centre, though not Factory Theatre or Theatre Passe Muraille.  It's hard for me to imagine giving to the University of Toronto or even to Hart House, given the other major donors that they have backing them.  I probably should just donate to a local food bank, given that local poverty is definitely up.  (In the end, I went with Eastview Neighbourhood Community Centre, which indeed runs a food bank, but has other services as well.)  I also made a one-time donation to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) in honor of my father.

I'm still feeling pretty grinchy/grouchy, but I think in my small way I tried to make the world a slightly better place (rather than just take it out on other people and make things worse).

So Happy New Year, and let's see what 2019 brings...


* With about two hours to spare, I decided to give to the Heart and Stroke Foundation (again just under the wire for matching donations), at least in part because my father died of heart failure.  I wasn't sure how they had my address in the first place, but this is one of the charities that the kids support in school, and I had supported a skip-a-thon or some such thing.  But this is definitely it for charitable giving for 2018.

Black Mood Descending

I was in a generally upbeat mood towards the end of the afternoon.  Yesterday I made a lot of progress on my year-end round up posts.  I'd like to squeeze in one more formal book review and perhaps some general notes on what I have been reading lately before the end of the year, but it isn't the end of the world if I don't.

I even snuck in a half-trip to the gym, in the sense I went but mostly to use the stationary bike and only did a half set of weights, since I had just been there for a full work out on Sat.  And I think my cold has finally let up, so that was a pleasant surprise.

I have pretty much given up on covering the roof of my Little Free Library with tiles.  While it would probably look pretty nice, essentially every guide says that outdoor tiles won't stick to wood and in general it just isn't worth it because they'll have to be replaced within a season.  I suppose I was starting to get turned off by the expense (this outdoor box is really starting to add up).  So I will just get some roofing shingles and put them on the top with a bit of a slanted false roof on top of the actual box.  This shouldn't be too hard to manage, though I don't know if I can just buy some spare shingles at the Home Depot.  I'll check that out on my next trip.  I will say that getting back across the parking lot was fraught, and then I slipped on my way back over the bridge, since they just don't keep it maintained very well in the winter.  (The pedestrian underpass to replace this bridge can't come soon enough for me...)

Anyway, I decided to head right back out to try to see Cuarón's Roma, which was playing at Tiff Lightbox downtown.  I just missed the bus by 30 seconds or so.  That is, if I had left 30 seconds earlier, I would have been able to beat the bus across the intersection and make it to the bus stop in time.  So I was thoroughly pissed.  I ended up crossing the street anyway, to see if I could snap a couple of pictures of the sunset.  I let one car go by, then crossed.  Then next car not only didn't stop, but seemed to try to swerve around me so it wouldn't have to stop and crossed over the center line.  The problem was, I had already moved that far across, so it was literally headed straight for me and it seemed to be speeding up.  It missed me by only a couple of inches, and in fact the next driver stopped and asked if I had been hit, since it seemed impossible I hadn't been.  I was just so furious and so shaken up.  I turned around and went home.  I've had enough crap happen this month that the last thing I need is to be out and get hit by a car.  The universe seemed to be giving me the sign that it was not safe to be out and about.  So fuck Roma.  I have absolutely no intention of seeing it now, probably not even on Netflix.  And fuck all you shitty Toronto drivers.

When I get in this mood, it isn't the black dog of depression (that Michael Williams, Judi Dench's husband used to get), but rather just a deep hatred for the vast majority of humanity.  About the only good thing about climate change is that I will probably be still alive to see gas prices go up to $10/litre and watch all the selfish drivers suffer.  Ideally, I'll even see oil patch executives charged as war criminals, but that may just be a bit far fetched.  It's been a couple of hours since the incident, and I'm still royally pissed off.  I am going to write the Councillor and explain how dangerous the intersection really is and demand some improvements.  I might as well focus my ire on something reasonably productive.

Best reads of 2018

I'd say that 2018 was not a particularly enjoyable year in terms of what I read, definitely worse than 2017 and even worse than 2016.  I'm not even sure I can list 10 books total for the year that I truly enjoyed (rather than enjoyed in fits and starts) and instead of a top 5, I am going with a top 3!  I found that I didn't care for most of what I was reading for several months straight, in some cases including books I decided to reread, which means that my tastes have changed significantly or I am reading books out of obligation, not for enjoyment, which seems peculiar.

Several books felt like a significant waste of time (The Death of My Brother Abel, Adjacentland, Faulkner's A Fable), though in most cases (aside from Burning City) I did soldier on and finish (so that I wouldn't wonder later on if they improved*).  I think for 2019, I will have to seriously rethink this strategy and simply abandon more books earlier.

I had very mixed feelings about Updike's Rabbit novels.  I realize they are a pretty significant achievement, taken as a collective whole (and which a "serious reader" should dip into), but there were so many things I disliked about the main character, to say nothing of his even-more-lousy son, that I can't say I really enjoyed reading them at all, though Rabbit is Rich seems the best of the bunch.  I certainly will never revisit them.

At any rate, the top 3 books from 2018 were:
Arnold Bennett The Old Wives' Tale
Paul Auster Moon Palace
Russell Smith How Insensitive

The best book reread was
Don DeLillo White Noise 

Honorable mention:
Julian Barnes Pulse
Chloe Benjamin The Immortalists
Joan Didion Play It As It Lays (too much ennui to be truly great)
Elizabeth Gaskell North and South
Mieko Kawakami Ms. Ice Sandwich
Adam Langer Crossing California (started strong but wore out its welcome)
Mary McCarthy Birds of America (the sucky ending kept this out of the top list)
Rabindranath Maharaj The Amazing Absorbing Boy
Alice Munro Friend of My Youth
Anthony Trollope The Way We Live Now

Most disappointing is certainly von Rezzori's The Death of My Brother Abel, as I had such hopes for it, though I suppose I more actively disliked Faulkner's A Fable, but I didn't have such high expectations in the first place.

* Hardy's Far From the Madding Crowd is a special case, where technically I had read it before (in high school) and so much of the plot was spoiled by the introduction that I was quite confident that I wasn't missing out by bailing halfway through.

Concerts of 2018

Interestingly, 2018 is marked more by the concerts I didn't go to rather than the ones I did.  Looking over the calendar, I think the only pop/rock concert I saw was David Byrne in August.  I ended up passing on They Might Be Giants (because I would have had to stand the whole time).  Indeed Lowest of the Low is playing Lee's Palace (I think the opening act is starting right about now).  While this was vaguely temping (and I probably would have gone had my friend been in town to make the gig), I just don't like standing at a concert and almost never consider it worth doing.  I probably could have gone to see 54-40 again at the Horseshoe, but thought it would be pretty much a repeat of the last time I saw them.

I couldn't find any tickets in a reasonable price range for Simple Minds, and Collective Soul was playing way out in the boonies (and it would have been all but impossible to see them and get back at night*).  I went back and forth a bit on Nick Cave but decided that since he was being such an obnoxious jerk about artists who are boycotting Israel that I would boycott him.

I think I only saw Tafelmusik once (at one of their free summer shows) and Amici once.  I didn't see Scaramella at all.  I think I had planned to see them once, but it either fell through because I forgot the date or I had gotten sick.  I pretty much stuck to the TSO for my classic music fix, though in Dec. I did see an organ recital of Messiaen's La Nativité du Seigneur at St. James on Bloor.

For classical music with a modern twist, I did see the Kronos Quartet in May, and I saw TorQ several times in 2018, including once up at York University.  I did take my son to the York University concert, as well as to a performance of Dvorak's 9th Symphony by the TSO. 

All that said, I still saw vastly more music than movies (either in at the cinema or at home).  I basically only saw movies if I was taking the kids (Incredibles 2, Black Panther, Avengers Infinity War).  I was pretty sure I was going to take my daughter to see Ralph Breaks the Internet, but that fell through for a variety of reasons including one movie theatre couldn't be bothered to keep their listings straight in terms of whether the movie was 2-D or 3-D!  I'm leaning towards seeing Alfonso Cuarón's Roma tomorrow in the theatre, but that might well be the only serious movie** I've seen on the big screen for all of 2018!  Movies just aren't really a big part of my life anymore.

* Of course, I find sometimes even local transit is so terrible that it makes it impossible to see in-town concerts, and I gave up on a Skye Wallace show when the TTC let me down badly.

** Not entirely sure if I should count Hotel Artemis, starring Jodie Foster, though I did see this in 2018, and I saw Brown Girl Begins just a week or two prior to that.

Best theatre of 2018

As always, there was much I enjoyed* in Toronto and occasionally elsewhere.  This is a somewhat generous list in that I am listing plays when I may have only enjoyed certain elements, i.e. the script or the acting or the general feeling of inspiration and not necessarily all of them.  I do know that a few of these I cooled on after further reflection, but I'll remain in the generous frame of mind for the time being.

Jan.
The Wedding Party  @Crows Nest
Lear -- The Groundlings @ Harbourfront
A Delicate Balance by Albee -- Soulpepper
Mustard by Kat Sandler -- Tarragon
Krapp's Last Tape -- Video Cabaret @ Theatre Passe Muraille

Feb.
The Crucible by Arthur Miller -- Hart House
Bang Bang by Kat Sandler -- Factory Theatre
Dark Heart by Genevieve Adams -- Assembly Theatre
The Humans by Karam -- Canadian Stage
Richard III -- Shakespeare Bash'd
Jerusalem @ Crows Nest
No Foreigners -- Fu-Gen @ Theatre Centre

March
Come From Away -- Mirvish
Three Tall Women -- Broadway
The Overcoat by Panych -- Canadian Stage

April
Punk Rock by Simon Stephens -- Howland Company @ Crowsnest
Vanbrugh’s The Provoked Wife -- George Brown
Fear and Misery of the Third Reich by Brecht -- George Brown
Prairie Nurse -- Factory Theatre

June
Stephen Fry's Mythos: Gods -- Shaw Festival
Gruesome Playground Injuries by Rajiv Joseph

July
Entrances & Exits -- Toronto Fringe
Police Cops in Space -- Toronto Fringe
A Kev 'n' Cal Mystery -- Toronto Fringe

August
The Private Life of the Master Race (cabaret version of Brecht's Fear and Misery of the Third Reich) -- Theatre Centre

September
Portia's Julius Caesar -- Shakespeare in the Ruff @ Withrow Park
The Tempest -- Stratford
Long Day's Journey into Night -- Stratford
Napoli Milionaria! -- Stratford
A Number by Caryl Churchill -- Solar Stage @ Wychwood Theatre

October
The Wolves -- Howland Company @ Crowsnest

November
Dancing at Lughnasa by Brian Friel -- Toronto Irish Players
Durang, Enough Said -- East Side Players
Escaped Alone by Caryl Churchill -- Soulpepper
Kill the Poor by George F. Walker -- Assembly Theatre
Caucasian Chalk Circle by Brecht -- George Brown
The Theory of Accelerated Hotness -- Assembly Theatre
Space Opera Zero -- Eldritch Theatre @ Red Sandcastle

I actually did not see any shows in December, which is a bit rare for me.  I found out about A Christmas Carol at Campbell House too late and all the tickets were gone.  As I said earlier, I'll see if they bring it back in 2019, and I'll go then.  I did actually see a play in May, but really disliked all aspects of the show (unlike most local critics), so I'll stay schtum.

For sure, this was a very different year in theatre for me, as I participated in Fringe, which sucked up a huge amount of my time.  Although the reviews for Final Exam weren't particularly kind, most people that actually went had a good time and we came very close to selling out three dates.  I don't think you can ask for much more than that.  However, I don't think I'll enter another show into Fringe again, as it really was too much work.  I actually saw close to 10 Fringe shows, going for the full immersion experience, but I'll just list the 3 that were the funniest.

The oddest highlight for sure was Space Opera Zero, which was a gonzo SF extravaganza (put on by only 3 actors) at Red Sandcastle.  But what makes it stand out is that it is built on the bones of Middleton's The Changeling.  What a hoot!  I will definitely see if Eldritch Theatre attempts something similar next year.

Another surprise was George Brown's production of Brecht's Caucasian Chalk Circle.  It had essentially been turned into a musical.  In some cases they were singing the original dialogue, and in a few other cases it seemed that they had added songs to comment on the action.  I had debated taking my son, though they had originally said the production ran close to 3 hours.  In the end, they cut one intermission and tightened it up to something closer to 2 hours 15 minutes.  Had I known, I would have taken him, and I think he would have enjoyed it.  C'est la vie...

Between Shaw and Stratford, I enjoyed the spectacle of The Tempest (taking my son) and the sets and, to a somewhat lesser extent, the plot of Eduardo De Filippo's Napoli Milionaria! (though my goodness did they mis-market this as a heart-warming comedy!).  Panych's The Overcoat at Canadian Stage also was very impressive on the spectacle side of things and the singing was also strong.

The best musical I saw was Come from Away by far.  I'd say the best play overall I saw was Karam's The Humans at Canadian Stage, which did live up to my expectations, while other things I had looked forward to fell a bit (or a lot) short.

It's hard to say what 2019 will bring.  I am slated to see a couple of things done by George Brown, and I'll probably check out Shakespeare Bash'd doing Othello in Feb.  It's looking very unlikely that I will get out to Rochester to see Yankee Tavern, but I haven't completely given up hope.  I've pretty much given up on Tarragon (after yet another boring, uninspiring season) and I am so not interested in the so-very-woke offerings at Factory and Theatre Passe Muraille (to say nothing of the furor over at Buddies in Bad Times, which is so incredibly depressing).  I've also cut way, way back at Soulpepper to the point where I can't even put a mini season of 4 plays together, so I'll just try to drop by a couple of times to go the rush ticket route for an evening of Pinter shorts and possibly Frayn's Copenhagen (though I have to admit this one doesn't really grab me).  I am expecting storefront theatre to largely fill in the gaps, and in one case jailfront theatre (one company is putting on Kiss of the Spider Woman at the Don Jail, and I definitely need to see when tickets go on sale for that).  I'm reasonably optimistic that, in the end, I'll see as much interesting theatre in 2019 as I did in 2018.

* Out of curiosity, I looked at Glenn Sumi (of Now) and his top 10 list for 2018.  As it happens, I saw 6 of his 10, but only put 4 in my list above, but I'm not going to indicate the two where we disagree.  I will say, however, that the minute I heard Every Brilliant Thing was going to rely very heavily on audience participation, I crossed it off my list of things to see and haven't regretted that decision for a moment.  Many critics loved it, but Carly Maga of the Star was much more on my wavelength and didn't like it particularly much.  I am certain I would have hated it.
 

Academic Dreams

I try not to try to share dreams, as they generally aren't very interesting to people outside of one's own brain, but this dream had some odd features.  It started out where I was sitting around a seminar table with other grad students.  The teacher was pretty terrible (and I suspect this was the transposition of a bad temporary manager I had a couple of years ago).  At some point, as the class was breaking up, I realized that I didn't need to go to class any more, since I already had been awarded my PhD.  Then there is a transition that is a bit unclear, and then I was being driven down the street with a young, female grad student.

I was probably trying to be helpful (and subtly put the moves on her) when I started offering up some advice on getting key informants in the schools.  At this point, I realized that my research was based on just three interviewees, and I was worried that if anyone found this out, my PhD would be taken away.  So I was trying on one hand to sound like an expert but also prevent her from probing too closely and finding out the secret.

She seemed to have things well underway (perhaps she was studying the school where her daughter went).  So I opened up a bit more, but for some reason I couldn't remember the title of my dissertation.  At that point, we must have parked, since we were walking, and we actually went by the school I had researched.  I debated going in, but she wanted to go through an open air market nearby.  I guess I was getting more desperate to impress her at this point, and I suddenly had the dissertation in my hands (as one does in dreams), I kept flipping through it but couldn't find the title.  Too frustrating!  There was a little bit of the dream left over about losing her in the crowd, but I was definitely starting to wake up by this point.  I suspect the disconnect was that my dissertation was on transportation politics and not urban education, so it would have been quite a stretch to completely make up an entire dissertation on another topic, even in dreamland.

Of course, it would have been far worse had it been the reverse -- if I dreamed I had my PhD, then woke up to find it was just a dream (and I had a long slog still ahead).  I don't recall ever doing that, but it must have happened to some budding academics...

Boxing Day Blues

Ok, so these blues are lasting a bit longer than just Boxing Day* itself.

There have been several frustrations at work, not least of which is that I am still at work and pretty much the entire consultant corps is off, taking a true holiday...

I'm also struggling to fight off a cold.  I basically went straight to bed after work on Thurs., and I decided to skip the gym today, but I'll probably be back there on Sat.  I'm pretty sure that this is due to my relaxing at all, even the slightest bit, on Christmas and Boxing Day.  I always get sick when I take a vacation, which is one reason I have so much vacation time saved up (4+ weeks for 2018 and then I'll have another 3 weeks by the end of 2019).  At any rate, it isn't really just the exercise, but I have to get serious about cutting out the sweets, as my pants are getting tight.  It looks like I've had all the fun I'm going to have these holidays.

Speaking of no fun, I had the second round with the dentist today.  I'm not sure if the hygienist was upset about having to work or what, but this was definitely more painful than the first cleaning session.  I think I mentioned I have a couple of small cavities to be filled, which is unfortunate, but it could have been a lot worse given the long layoff between visits to the dentist.  I won't let it go that long again.

I'm just about to write my year end round up of fiction, and I have to say that the second half of 2018 was mostly damp squibs -- books that I thought I would like but really didn't enjoy that much.  I actually decided to hold off just a bit on Musil's The Man Without Qualities, since I'm pretty sure it will also fall into that category (a book I should like (or at least admire) but don't actually find that entertaining).  Even McCarthy's Birds of America, which I generally did like -- and finally finished on Boxing Day -- has a particularly unsatisfying ending.

Maybe the single most annoying/depressing thing (aside from my pants getting too tight) is that I have been looking at the bus/train schedule to Rochester, NY and 1) it costs much more than I expected and 2) the times are pretty terrible.  Megabus would have been the best deal (about $45 round trip) but the times I need are sold out, so I would end up leaving Toronto at midnight and showing up at 4 am, probably crashing at the bus station until the play started, and then leaving at 3 am the following morning.  That's just crazy.  Then I considered renting a car, but even that adds up (particularly with traditional car rentals where you pay for the gas), and of course I would be exhausted and couldn't get get any reading done.  I'm very close to just giving up, but I'll sleep on it and take another pass through the schedule tomorrow.  This was all in order to try to catch Dietz's Yankee Tavern, since it doesn't appear it will be playing in Toronto any time soon.

But it is the weekend, and I can probably find something fun to do.  Or I can choose to be productive instead and put the finishing touches on the Little Free Library.  That would probably cheer me up at least a bit.

* I will say that I prefer the Canadian approach to Boxing Day where core services, particularly transit, still run and the larger shopping centres and malls are open whereas things were shut tight in England.  In Cambridge, the bus drivers all got to spend time with their families, completely stranding people without a car.  Granted, I am sure that the tube and buses run in London on Boxing Day, so perhaps it is just the difference between living in a small city vs. a sprawling metropolis.  That said, there were many other things that drove me up the wall about living in the UK (and this was years before Brexit was even on the horizon), and I'm glad to be well out of there.

Library Wishes

I have been trying with moderate success to check more books out of the library and not actually buy them.  Fairly recently, I finally went over to the Reference Library and listened to some of the CDs they had in the reference area.  While I liked a few of them, generally there wasn't anything I was desperate to buy.  In one case, I actually listened to a record.  As an aside, the library has recently upgraded their turntables, so that they actually work.  They also have started buying vinyl for the first time in decades.  Personally, I am not sure this is the very best use of their funds, since new vinyl is absurdly over-priced (and in most cases is simply an analog pressing of music that was digitally recorded!).  There are probably a few rarities I have downstairs that I could donate, but I won't do that if it is just going to end up in a book sale...

Now one interesting case was Hugh Fraser's Looking Up, which was the record I listened to.  I found it pretty busy and wasn't that grabbed by any of the tracks except for a 12 minute opus "Sanctus Agnus Dei."  I was hoping this had made its way onto some compilation or even Youtube, but no such luck.  It had been played on some podcast, though this seems to have been scrubbed from the airwaves.  So I probably will try to be strong and not buy the LP, but it is frustrating not to have more options.  As I was doing some research, I found out that UT's Music Library has a pretty decent collection, including of jazz by Canadian artists (and one more Neil Swainson recording I hadn't even heard about).  However, alumni borrowers cannot take CDs out of the library!  When it reopens, I'll have to ask how many music listening stations they have, but this may not be a viable option for me, particularly as the hours aren't great for people who work full time, though they are open on Saturday.  I don't think I know any current UT students who could check the CDs out for me, so it might be a long wait to listen to any of these CDs or records.

I am definitely hoping that one of the libraries picks up Rezzori's Abel and Cain (now scheduled for release in April 2019).  I cannot imagine rereading the entirety of The Death of My Brother Abel.  No matter how butchered the original translation was, there isn't anything that could salvage this novel for me, and Kain/Cain sounds like more of the same.  I'll read it once but only for completeness's sake.

In early February, NYRB is coming out with Amit Chaudhuri's Friend of My Youth.  While I quite like the cover, that isn't a good enough reason to buy the book, particularly as it is quite short (under 200 pages) and I could easily read it in a week or less.

After poking around, I saw that Robarts already has an earlier edition of this novel.  In this case, I don't even think there is a special NYRB introduction (as there is for Comyns's The Juniper Tree), so there is no reason not to just check the book out (as soon as I renew my alumni card).

Perhaps the biggest question mark is if either Robarts or the Toronto Library will pick up this forthcoming book on Picasso's late work (Picasso The Late Work: From the Collection of Jacqueline Picasso), which should be published in late May.

 
My money's on Robarts, since they generally have the stronger art collection, though it might also end up in the Reference Library's collection.  Robarts would definitely work better for me.  While I find aspects of this period of Picasso's work to be interesting, I probably wouldn't return to it often enough to actually buy the book.  Now curiously enough, Picasso's step-daughter will be opening a museum in Aix-en-Provence featuring many of these works, though it isn't scheduled to open until 2021 (with a preview scheduled for a museum in Potsdam of all places).  I had a very nice trip to Aix years ago (mostly to check out Cezanne's old stomping grounds), and while I wouldn't mind going back, it is fairly low on my list of priorities (whenever I do get back to Europe).  For the immediate future, I'll have to settle for checking out this catalog whenever it hits one of my local libraries.

Countdown to Christmas

Only a few more minutes now!  Fortunately, we don't have the tradition where kids get one gift at stroke of midnight.  Instead, they have to sleep in and get gifts on Christmas Day.

The stockings are ready, and I have just three gifts left to wrap, so definitely manageable.  It will be a smaller Christmas this year (we were at the neighbors for a Christmas Eve bash, and those kids had lots of presents!), but I think that's ok.  It's the thought that counts, as they say (though kids never believe it).  Our kids have pretty much aged out of Christmas anyway (and I did tell my son that the bike he got was going to be the main present for the year).  My daughter still is pretty resentful that we lied about Santa.  I guess she is going to be one of those hardcore parents who always tell their kids the truth.  Sigh...

I have to admit in general, I am not feeling that festive.  In addition to my father passing away early in the month, we are under some massive deadlines at work.  I worked almost all day Friday and up until 1 pm today, despite these being my days "off."  In fact, I worked most of the way through the night last night, so I was very weary around lunchtime on Christmas Eve.  I finally tore myself away and went over to the mall.  I didn't really want to buy anything, but the gym is not going to be open on Christmas or Boxing Day, so this was the last opportunity for a while.  I didn't really want to go, but I'm glad I did force myself to stick to the routine.  After dropping by at the neighbors, I took a nap, then got up to read The Night Before Christmas with the kids.  It's one tradition that we do adhere to.  At one point years ago, I read Dickens' Christmas Carol to them, but that takes a bit more planning ahead and spacing it out, since it takes several hours to read it in its entirety.  Maybe I'll return to that next year, though somehow I doubt it will actually happen.

Anyway, Happy Holidays and best wishes for 2019!

Minor Holiday Triumphs

Certainly the elephant under the tree is that I have completed all the holiday shopping already (really by midweek last week) and ran over to a couple of dollar stores to get the stocking stuffers over the weekend.  Now I may get one more gift card, but that's a fairly simple matter (and can be done on-line).  I haven't wrapped the gifts, but I have a couple more days for that.

Now I am considering acquiring a new microwave, since the one we have is acting very strangely, even sparking when it shouldn't (when there is no metal inside).  This wouldn't precisely be a Christmas present, but I might as well take advantage of the various sales going on now.  I don't think these things can be recycled, so I probably need to see when the next small appliance pick up is scheduled.

I am about halfway done cooking* for tonight (and usually my wife covers the more traditional holiday cooking).  We even have a party to go to on Christmas Eve, so things are pretty well done on the food front.  I haven't really felt like doing any cooking baking, but I may get in the mood Monday or Tuesday.  I did pick up some blueberries and may bake blueberry bread or something.  (Muffins seem a bit too fussy, and I don't think I have the muffin liners anyway.)

I have managed to get to the gym on average three days a week.  I haven't biked much naturally, though I may go out today, since it is chilly but no snow in the forecast.  I finally weighed myself.  It looks like I have gained back 3-4 pounds (out of roughly 40 lost), which is far from ideal, but I had expected it to be in the 5-10 pound range, between grief eating and just too many sweets around the office.  I can cope with this and for sure get back into better habits in the new year.

I had hoped to get a bit more reading done, as well as finish the Little Free Library.**  And perhaps return to the quilt, which is maybe 1/3 done.  The unfortunate truth is that there is a lot of work that is due Monday, so I haven't had that much free time, so assuming I can get through this all by tonight, then I should have a couple of solid days to relax.  Then back to the grindstone.

* This may not count as a triumph of any sort.  I attempted to make paella, but I don't think the rice was at all suitable, and it is more of a casserole with rice rather than proper paella.  It may be edible but that's about it.  Drat. 

** On the theme of books, I have finally found places (though in some cases only temporary) for the various books I brought back from North Carolina.  I don't like adjusting my bookshelves that often, but it had to be done.

Live at the Rex Hotel

I don't go all that often to the Rex Hotel to listen to jazz, though I should admit that I usually have a good time when I do.  (Of course, the time before last when I was there a radiator leaked/spewed water and ruined my coat...)  In any event, I find their show times pretty weird.  Basically, they have it set so that there are two sets by a local band (with no cover, though they usually pass a donation box around) starting at 6:30 or so and then there is a 9:30 headliner, which often does two sets.  The problem for me is that I am getting old and don't like to be out so late.  I would much prefer it if the headliner came on a 8, then did a 10 o'clock show.  That's much closer to how the Jazz Showcase and the Green Mill in Chicago do it (though the Green Mill often has an after hours jam as well).  Very rarely does the Rex get a major US headliner anymore (not sure if they used to in the past), but even so 9:30 is really later than like planning to start an evening out.

That said, I saw that Kirk MacDonald and his generations band were having a CD release party in the main slot.  This is a group where his daughter, Virginia, joins him on clarinet.  On the CD, Neil Swainson is on bass and Harold Mabern on piano.  Now unfortunately Mabern wasn't making these gigs, or I would have gone both nights.  (I've seen him backing up Eric Alexander a few times, and he was very good live.)  But Swainson was going to be at the Rex, so I decided to go.  I actually have one of Swainson's very rare outings as a leader -- the excellent 49th Parallel with Joe Henderson and Woody Shaw!

My original plan was to go to the AGO with a friend and then over to the Rex.  However, I stupidly left the CD at home, so I went home after the AGO.  On Thurs. (with CD stashed in my bag) I went to the Toronto Reference Library directly after work, then back to Queen St.  I debated grabbing something to eat at the Queen Mother Cafe, but the dinner entré prices were too steep, so I just went to a cheap Vietnamese place down the street.  I got back to the Rex just as it was emptying out after the first band.  The cover was only $10, but it was definitely amusing later during the night watching all the people turn up and immediately turn around and split once they knew there was a cover charge.

There was an empty table along the wall, so I grabbed that.  (I find the center table gets much too crowded.)  I kept my eyes peeled for Swainson and almost went up to the wrong guy, but fortunately stopped myself.  I started doing some creative writing.  I find that I can usually get quite a few pages of dialogue put together while listening to live jazz.  I managed to get maybe 2/3 through a piece called The Visitation, very loosely inspired by some of the goings on at the funeral home a couple of weeks back.  I'm sure it's not a great piece, but I'm trying to use comedy to heal.

At any rate, I felt kind of bad sitting at a table by myself.  I did offer to share the table with a young Asian woman, but I guess she thought I was hitting on her.  (I truly wasn't.)  Little did I know that she was partnered with the much, much older drummer in the group.  (God, what a cliché.)  Anyway, another woman joined the table a bit later, so I didn't feel like I was completely monopolizing the table.

I tried to catch Swainson's attention right before the set, but that didn't work out.  The music was quite good, and Kirk and his daughter have quite a rapport, as one might expect.  At the break, I did go up to Swainson.  He was pretty floored to see that I had 49th Parallel, but he was very nice about signing it.  I looked to see what other CDs were on sale.  I had already streamed MacDonald's Generations, so I settled on Symmetry.  Unfortunately, the CD artwork is dark black, so it wasn't worth trying to get MacDonald to sign it.  I found out later that many of MacDonald's CDs are on iTunes, though not Symmetry so that worked out.  I don't think his Songbook CD is on iTunes either, so I may look for that at some point.

I decided that I really wasn't up for one more set (which also would be pushing closing time for the subway), so I just went home at that point.  I was just a bit bummed, walking by Campbell House that I couldn't get tickets to A Christmas Carol in this very intimate setting, but that's ok -- I'll see if it returns next year.

Given that I have a few other short plays I am working on, plus a TV pilot (just for my own entertainment -- no one is paying me to write this), I probably should drop by the Rex more often.  I see that Kirk MacDonald is back on Jan. 9 with Jacek Kochan.  I had hoped that Swainson was in town, but I don't think so.  MacDonald and Swainson are playing a concert with pianist Kenny Baron, and I though seriously about going but 1) it is out at Niagara-on-the-Lake and 2) the tickets cost $65, which is just more than I want to pay.  In terms of the more local artists coming to the Rex in Jan., I might check out Richard Whiteman and perhaps Kevin Quain, though Quain is a singer in the style of Tom Waits, which would probably just be too distracting for me to get any writing done.  Richard Whiteman is probably the better bet.  In any case, while I certainly wish there were more jazz clubs (and clubs that could bring in the bigger names), the Rex will do for now.

Trying to Get Back in the Swing of Things

I'm sure I'm still pushing a bit too hard, trying to get back on top of work so soon after my father's funeral, but there just seems to be so much to do these days.  I will get a couple of days off soon, but I'm not really taking that much time off.

In any case, I have kept up with the gym, and am back to 3 times a week.  Unfortunately, my spirit is proving far too weak when it comes to all the holiday treats around the office.  I don't even want to weigh myself until I've lost some of the weight I've gained.  I'm not really sure what I can do to replace all the biking I was doing.  I did bike to the office last Sunday just to see how it went.  Going there wasn't too bad, but I was pretty sore on the return.  I did look at getting more padded grips, and that might help.  In any event, I'm not eager to keep biking as the temperature keeps dropping (and it is so dark on the return).  I suppose I could try jogging, though that doesn't appeal to me either.  I did get a bit of advice from a physiotherapist, but overall she didn't think there was anything specific I should do other than just give my hands more time to heal, so I am still targeting the spring to be back to normal, more or less.

I did manage to force myself to go to the Eaton Centre after work and got the remaining gifts for my daughter.  (The crowds were pretty bad, but I stayed focused and was in and out fairly quickly.)  Then I got something for my son at Gerrard Square, so I am done with my Christmas preparations aside from wrapping and grabbing some stocking stuffers (probably just from the dollar store).  It's not the fastest I've ever been done with holiday shopping, but it's not too bad.

After a very long time of just letting things slide, I finally started going to the dentist again.  I have a couple of problem spots and will need an old filling replaced, but it could have been a lot worse.  I should be able to stay in their good books with regular visits from now on.

The Little Free Library is slowly coming together.  I'm working on the door to close in the front.  If I can manage to get this put together in the next couple of days, I'll have to decide how to install the post (and whether to use some cement or not) and then if I can come up with a sufficiently stable bracing system.  Plus I haven't decided exactly what to do about the roof, if I should really try for roofing shingles or some tile.  That can probably be added on later.

Later this week I do want to do a bit more creative writing, but not right now.  More than anything, I just need more rest, so I guess I will head off to bed.

Xmas surprise

We are a bit late in getting the tree up, though we managed to do so Sunday morning.  It seems that every year there is another box of ornaments to bring up.  We probably really do need to do some rationalization, if not actually tossing some old, broken bulbs, then reducing the number of boxes they are stored in.

It did take a while to rouse my daughter and get her in the proper mood, but that came in time.

In any case, one of the boxes I picked up actually was full of dishes, including quite a few pots that my father had thrown.  (Because they are supposed to be functional, it doesn't feel right just putting them on a mantle for display, for instance.)  I figured out a place for two of them and took another one to work.  It will be a challenge when the others turn up at some point in the New Year...

Anyway, by noon, we had the tree up and the fireplace appropriately decorated.

Hopefully, this will be a somewhat restful holiday season.  I certainly don't need any further dreadful news...

12th Canadian Challenge - 10th Review - Late Breaking

I was intrigued by the fact that the stories in K.D. Miller's Late Breaking are all inspired by Alex Colville paintings.  After I borrowed the book, I realized that I actually had not seen any of these in person, as none of them were in the retrospective that was at the AGO (all the way back in 2014).  Curiously, Miller's interest was sparked by that exhibit.  However, she decided to delve much deeper into Colville's work.  I do wonder how often she was fascinated by a painting and generated the back story afterwards and how often she had an idea in mind and searched until she found an appropriate painting.  (In my own small way, I did this for a short poetic sequence called The Palace at 4 AM, which I may get around to publishing on the blog one of these days.)

In a couple of cases, the paintings are pretty generic and there is no particularly strong tie to the stories ("Late Breaking" and "Octopus Heart"), whereas in the case of "Olly Olly Oxen Free," Miller seems to really strain to arrange the story so the man and woman end up in front of the refrigerator, as in Colville's Refrigerator (incidentally also on the cover of the book).

Alex Colville, Refrigerator, 1977

What becomes quickly apparent is that the stories are linked.  One character's son, who is essentially an off-screen presence in "Witness" has a more substantial role in "Flesh."  By the end, essentially every character turns up or is at least discussed in two or three of the ten stories.  As an aside, Raymond Carver did not link his stories this way, but in Altman's Short Cuts, Altman did link them all in a similar fashion.  For some reason, it worked for me a bit better in Short Cuts than it did here.

I'm not entirely sure why I didn't care for most of these stories.  It could be that, while the majority of them are realistic stories, there is a subcurrent of the eerie or even surreal in a few, such as "Lost Lake" and arguably "Olly Olly Oxen Free."  It could be that I found some of the characters' actions to be unconvincing.  It could be that I felt she was trying too hard to link up all the stories.  It could just be that I found too many of the stories to be open-ended and thus not that satisfying.  Or finally it could be that I read this while I was in a totally lousy mood.  No question other reviewers have liked the collection more (here and here).

For me the most successful stories were those that centred on authors and their work.  The title story, "Late Breaking," tracks four authors on a seemingly endless publicity tour as they vie to win a major literary award (the Olympia Featherstone Award For Fiction).  The closing story ("In the Crow's Keeping") also examines a writer, essentially retired, who decides to tackle one last project.  In keeping with the open-ended nature of many of the stories, the subject of this last book isn't spelled out, but presumably it has something to do with death in the animal kingdom and perhaps how differently humans approach death.  In this case, I think Miller could have been just a touch more direct and revealed what the writer was planning.  It wouldn't have spoiled the effect.

Father at Work and at Play

While he had retired from the university several years back, my father was in the middle of a couple of papers when he passed away.  We were able to get his last notes and manuscripts off of his tablet and send them off to his co-authors, and hopefully these will be completed and published some day.

In truth, he did an awful lot of work at the kitchen table, but he did have a little work area in a back room.

This isn't too different from my set-up, though I do have more bookcases surrounding me.  Also, my desk directly faces an outside window, which can be nice or really distracting, depending on the situation.

Nonetheless, my father really ramped up his hobbies, particularly after retirement.  He had given up raising fish, but he was still growing orchids (one in bloom below).

He was an excellent potter, selling quite a number of pieces in local crafts shows.  He was very much into functional pieces, and his prided himself on the fact that his plates and bowls could go into the microwave and dishwasher.

We currently have a set of 4 small bowls (in constant use), a berry bowl and a teapot (not used much at all).

While we were wrapping things up at the house, I picked out five pieces that will either be shipped to me or brought over the next time the rest of the family visits Toronto.  I tried to chose a variety of styles and glazes.  It will be difficult to wait, but better that than having them get broken on the plane home...

Here are a few shots of the studio where he did most of his throwing, as well as his wood working.

He was serious enough about the pottery that he had a small kiln at home, and had a share in a much larger gas fired kiln at a workshop downtown.  As one can see, there is a huge amount of pottery to be sold and otherwise disposed of.  The family decided to leave this for another day.

While it wasn't a major sideline, my father also made pens.  Most of them were from wood (and my wife may still have one of those), though I personally found the acrylic ones to fit my hand better.  On our last visit, my father had the grandkids help make their own pens, using the lathe and sanding them down.  They still have them, and I told them that they have to take extra care of them now.  I probably had a pen at some point, but picked out a nice acrylic one from his stash.

Finally, my father loved music.  He loved listening to it and he loved playing it.  While we lived in Michigan, he primarily played classic guitar, but when he moved south, his interests shifted to bluegrass and old-time music.  He still played guitar, but more frequently he would play banjo.  He also made musical instruments (a much more specialized hobby).  He made guitars, banjos, mandolins and had recently started specializing in making cigar box guitars (a three stringed instrument!).

It was a very full life, with a good balance between work and recreation outside of work.  I see that I have not talked much at all about his work, including several books he wrote or edited, but that can wait for another time.  I had forgotten quite how involved he was with "good works," including serving for the United Way when he was still in Michigan.  This is a useful reminder to renew my annual donation to the United Way.  He also donated regularly to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), so I'll make sure to make a donation to them this year.

Back to Normalcy

I managed to get out of North Carolina before the mini-blizzard hit.  I had wanted to try to move my flight up a bit, but everything was sold out.  In fact, when I checked in, they said that they were oversold and wondered if I would switch my flight.  I declined politely.

While they went through my bags pretty carefully (and they were pretty heavy), I did manage to get through without paying any over-weight fees.  The trick is to carry a duffel bag through security (so they don't weigh it at that point and it doesn't appear to be particularly heavy) and then to gate check it.

When we got to the gate, they were still looking for volunteers.  They even tried to convince some poor soul to cab it to Charlotte (paid for by United) and then to catch the flight to Chicago.  I probably would have at least considered it if there was a chance of making a connecting flight, but it really wasn't going to work out for me.  I was frustrated that the food options in the airport there were so limited, but once in Chicago I was able to grab a slightly more substantial dinner.

While there was some turbulence at the end of the flight, we actually got into Pearson a bit ahead of schedule and customs went super-smooth.  That was good, since it meant that I could still catch the UP Express rather than the 192 Rocket, which basically goes the wrong direction for me.  I didn't get home until a bit after 1 AM, but, as I said, I was really glad not to get snowed in.  High Point/Greensboro ended up getting about 8 inches, which is pretty crippling for them.

I slept in a bit.  My daughter was feeling a bit under the weather, so we agreed to postpone the movie one more weekend.  I ran off to work to try to get a bit caught up, though I had been able to stay on top of emails.  The main reason I left the house was that there was a free organ concert at St. Paul's on Bloor where the organist was going to play Messiaen's La Nativité du Seigneur, and I headed there after a couple of hours in the office.  So it did feel like picking up right where I left off before the terrible news.

I'm still extremely sad and more than a little depressed (of course I was already depressed about work), so it will be a real challenge not to overeat through the holidays.  I did make it to the gym on Monday evening, and I'll probably go Wed. evening as well, since I am skipping the work holiday party (I just have no patience for chit-chat right now).  I think it's fair to say I am feeling pretty brittle right now, but I'll probably start adjusting/coping and hopefully end up in a slightly better frame of mind by the spring.

Road-tripping w/ Steven Dietz

This should probably be titled Road-tripping for Dietz* (or rather to see his plays).  Steven Dietz is actually one of the more successful American playwrights, but I have not managed to see any of his plays.  I did read a few of his scripts while in Chicago.  The Nina Variations is a little bit like running Chekhov's The Seagull through the blender.  It's not quite as purely absurdist or consistently funny as Durang's effort (Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike) nor as "faithful" as Posner's Stupid F*ing Bird.  It's more of a cubist piece.  I'd probably like seeing it live, though it's a little hard to tell of course.

I decided not to read Yankee Tavern, since the reviews suggested it had some creepy twists at the end which were better not spoiled.  Somehow I missed out (finding out too late) about a short run in Milwaukee, which I could have made via Amtrak train.  Then it ran in Chicago, but after I moved away.  I've kept my eye on DPS, however, and it will be performed in Rochester in February.  I'm quite likely to bus it out there, so I hope it lives up to my somewhat inflated expectations.

If I do like it and perhaps read a couple other of his plays (and like them), then I'll decide how much effort to make in tracking down and watching the others.  A relatively short list** of the other ones I'd like to see includes:

• Bloomsday (indeed inspired by Joyce's Ulysses)
• Lonely Planet (an AIDS-era play)
• This Random World

I actually have this crazy idea of staging Lonely Planet as a site-specific in this odd bookstore up the street.  (The play is set in a crowded map shop.)  Given that this bookstore isn't truly accessible and may not have any bathrooms at all, I couldn't do it under the Fringe umbrella.  However, given that the play involves bringing in a bunch of chairs over and filling up the space, it would quickly become completely claustrophobic, as well as a fire hazard, so I think this will remain an unrealized dream.

Many of these other plays are being performed in quite out of the way places, but Bloomsday will be in Chicago from mid May through mid June.  Interestingly enough his new play about the Beats (Mad Beat Hip & Gone) is also playing in Chicago from late April through June 1.  I had sort of been toying with idea of going to catch both.  Now I just found out that I sort of should be in Vegas in early June (never thought I would say that), I might work out a quick trip to Chicago, immediately followed by a flight to Vegas.

I probably won't completely knock myself out to see the others, but I will keep my eyes open (and keep checking DPS), as well as encourage Toronto theatre companies to put on some of these pieces.  As it turns out, Private Eyes played Toronto in 2010 so may not be returning for a while, but I don't think any of the others on the list have come through.


* Indeed, one of his most successful plays is Becky's New Car, about a very odd road trip.  Ironically, this one doesn't particularly interest me and I would not road trip it to see it, but if it turns up in Toronto proper I'd probably go.  It appears that it has popped up in London and Cambridge but not Toronto as of yet.

** After reading it, I dropped Private Eyes, as this is all post-modern game-playing, i.e. there is no meaningful final reality (everyone is just playing a part within a part) and thus the stakes are nil.  I'd probably go see a local storefront theatre put this on, but I am definitely not going to go out of my way to see it.

Don't Look a Gift Book in the Mouth

I had been thinking the previous week that I did have quite a stack of books piling up at my father's house.  While the gap between shipping books to the US and to Canada is sometimes shrinking, it is growing for other bookseller sites.  The most annoying was this deal where a Canadian bookseller would ship to the US for free but charged a pretty penny to ship elsewhere in Canada!  More often I sent books his way when the (US-based) sellers flat out refused to ship to Canada.  At any rate, I knew there was a lot of stuff* and that I should try to pick up, but I was assuming it would be late spring or more likely summer that I made it back down.

When I saw the actual stack, my heart sank a bit, though I would pretty sure I could get it in my duffel bag, though of course I had considerably less space after buying some new clothes and shoes!  Very oddly, the hotel maid threw away my toiletries (including razor and toothbrush!), apparently thinking that since I had taken my duffel bag with me for the day, I was skipping town a day early.  Very annoying, and it's not like that even opened up that much space in the bag.

In any event, as I looked through the pile, I realized that there was a Mark Twain volume from Library of America that I didn't remember ordering.  This combined A Tramp Abroad and Following the Equation (which I was not familiar with). I searched my memory, but I simply couldn't remember ordering this book.  Later I checked my email (and Amazon account), and I hadn't ordered it at all.  It seems my dad had ordered a James Thurber collection from Library of America and most likely bundled this together.  Now either he had meant this as a present for me, or it just ended up in the wrong pile, but I decided to gracefully accept the book.**

My stepmom pushed us to take other books, simply to help her get them out of the house.  I really had very little room left, but I did take the Thurber LOA volume (given that it was on his nightstand it was one of the last things he had been reading, and so will be a keepsake for me, even though I have other Thurber collections).  I decided there was a small chance my daughter would want a learning to play guitar book, so I took that.  As I was almost ready to leave, I saw Howard Becker's Art Worlds, and I thought that would also be an appropriate link to my dad through our sociology connection and love of art.  I actually just missed out on meeting and perhaps being taught by Prof. Becker, as he had retired from Northwestern only a few years before I got there.  He was still a bit of a legend in the department and several professors talked about his tenure there and his impact on them. I decided to pass on a massive Sherlock Holmes collection, as that probably really would have split the bag open.

So now I'll just have to get it home tomorrow, but it should be fine.  Famous last words...


* Right now everything takes on a bit of a morbid cast.  One of the books is a posthumous John Berryman collection, and several of the books are signed by dead authors (Timothy Findley and Robert Kroetsch), where I won't be able to track them down at a reading in Toronto.  I also bought a couple of books signed by Salman Rushdie (fortunately still among the living), since I couldn't get tickets to his reading in Toronto and I just frankly didn't have the time (or patience) to stand in line when I heard him reading in Chicago.  I wouldn't mind getting an autographed copy of his latest novel, The Golden House, but I'm not quite sure how much I am willing to pay.  Probably not that much.

** The real question now is when (rather than if) having two of the LOA Twain volumes (I already had The Gilded Age and Later Novels) will induce me to get the two-volume set of Twain's shorter writings.  As I scoured the interwebs, I saw there were some absolute steals for each individual volume, though the set itself was fairly pricey.  While of course there is roughly a $5 difference (per book) to ship to Canada, this time around I'll just swallow it.

Shopping for clothes

I suppose it was latent superstition that led me to not pack any dressy clothing Monday night, i.e if I didn't have anything appropriate to wear to a funeral, there wouldn't be a funeral.  Needless to say, it didn't work out...

So yesterday, my brother and I went over to the mall in Greensboro (the one in High Point having closed last year).  While there are certainly malls in Toronto, with the Eaton Centre doing quite well, this did feel like a throwback to the malls I went to as a teenager, especially as there was still a JC Penney's.  I managed to pick up a couple of shirts (50% off), black pants and shoes (only 20% off).  My dress shoes at work are starting to give out, so it isn't a total waste.  While I am probably still a size down from last year, I am clearly regaining some weight, and I'll have to get back on the wagon when I get back to Toronto.  Between retirement parties and just too much junk food floating around due to the holidays (and now this funeral), I've been doing way too much stress eating.  This will have to stop...

I had started going to the gym again and was back up to twice a week, before this all threw me for a loop.  I should see if I can get back to three times.  And just maybe I'll get the bike out of storage and do some winter biking as well.  Though for that I would need to buy some winter gear, so I might need to head over to Mec when I get back.  It's always something...

Bereft

Towards the end of the workday on Monday I received one of those calls you dread -- my father had been admitted to the hospital after suffering a heart attack.  They thought they could stabilize him and perhaps try some additional procedures in a day or two.  Nonetheless, the prognosis was not good.  In a way it wasn't a total surprise, as heart problems run in his side of the family and he was certainly overweight.

I scrambled and finally found a flight that would bring me down by 2 pm on Tuesday.  I had to decide how long to stay and compromised a bit with a Sat. return.  (It's a little hard to explain a one-way ticket into the States these days...)

I met my brother at the airport, and he gave me the bad news that my father had passed away about an hour or so before.  It probably wouldn't have mattered even if I had gotten a red eye on Monday, since he was on a ventilator and heavily sedated.  About the only mercy was that it wasn't a long, protracted illness.  Overall, it was a relatively painless, easy death.

Nonetheless, I obviously don't feel I have any closure, since I wasn't able to talk to him at the end.  We had had a chat right after Thanksgiving, and we did talk roughly every two weeks, but I hadn't seen him in person since the summer of 2017.

It's bitterly reminiscent of when my mother died (many, many moons ago), though in her case she suffered a massive aneurysm and hung on at the hospital for about a week (though probably not really in any pain either).  While I probably talked to her every week, it still had been a while since I had seen her, even though I could have taken the train from Chicago to Detroit, but just didn't until it was too late.

I can't say I have major, major regrets in the sense that we were on good terms, but one still wants some time at the end to say goodbye before it is too late.  And of course in the case of my mother, she never even knew my wife or children.  I'm a bit sad that I didn't find more opportunities to bring the grandkids to visit my father, but I brought my daughter twice and my son three times.  You just always want more time, particularly so long as one's parents aren't actually suffering.  I'm just really sad and feeling sorry for myself.  Tomorrow we'll have to start thinking about the service, but mostly I'll stay out of the way as my stepmother does what she needs to do.  I'll know soon enough if I need to try to extend my stay by a few more days.

The Library - It Giveth and Taketh

I really do enjoy spending time in libraries, though I still find it odd how much of Toronto's collection is reference and thus materials cannot be removed from the library.  I suppose it is really more that I enjoy browsing in libraries (though more often now through their on-line catalogues) and then taking books home.

As it happens, I've temporarily let my UT library privileges lapse (after quite a splurge in the last few weeks).  I'll renew my card in the spring.  Of course, immediately after this, I found a book I wanted to read (Late Breaking by K.D. Miller), though fortunately this was available from the Toronto Library.  In addition, there was a new book on Vancouver housing policy (Mudflat Dreaming).  In this case, I requested it as inter-library loan, but if they won't loan it (or charge for the loan), I'll just hold off until the spring.  It's certainly not as if I don't have plenty to get through on my reading list.  Even though I've picked up the pace quite a bit (having gotten through DeLillo's White Noise and Boyle's The Road to Wellville and most of the way through McCarthy's Birds of America and finally launching into Updike's Rabbit novels), I have many, many books at home to plow through.  I don't really need to be getting more books out of Robarts, and my Toronto library branch is so much closer.

I was kind of excited to find out that one of the Ry Cooder soundtracks I wanted to listen to was in the Toronto reference library.  In addition, they had two plays by Steven Dietz I could peruse.  Now unfortunately, these were both reference copies, but I had a bit of time at the end of the day, so I headed over.  I was able to listen to the CD, but then Dietz's Lonely Planet was nowhere to be found.  I was fairly annoyed by this, since that meant I might have to wait until I head back to Chicago (perhaps in the very late spring) to give it a read.  And indeed, what's the point of all this material being reference, if it isn't actually there when you want it?

I was debating whether I should try to put a trace on the book, but then looked through the catalogue again.  It turns out that Lonely Planet is also in a collection of gay and lesbian themed plays.  (It should be the entire play, though it is a bit hard to tell from the table of contents.)  While most of the plays were pretty obscure, Paula Vogel's The Baltimore Waltz was also in there.  (I think I passed up a chance to see this, perhaps in Chicago, though if it comes back around, I'll most likely go this time around.)  In any case, I found a copy of the anthology super cheap and just ordered it.  While I would have preferred to get it from the library, at least I found out enough through the library to move forward and obtain a copy.

One relatively minor annoyance is that it is getting harder and harder to donate books to the library.  Of course there are book dumping grounds, but if one has a quality book that should enter the collection (if it isn't in the collection), there is essentially no way for this to happen with the Toronto Public Library.  Ostensibly it should be possible at Robarts, though they are temporarily suspending all donations.  That said, I had a copy of a book by Barbara Comyns* that was fairly rare in North America, and I donated it a year ago.  As far as I can tell, it wasn't accepted into the system.  I'd like to donate a relatively rare Bohumil Hrabal book, though I suspect it will meet the same fate.  Obviously, this was all so much easier 20 or 30 or 40 years ago, when entire collections were gladly scooped up.  My books will just end up in the landfill.**  Ah, the price of living in the 21st century...


* Speaking of Comyns, of all her novels, the one I rated the best was The Juniper Tree, which is a moderate inversion of the Grimm fairy tale of the same name.  NYRB just brought this out a short while ago, so it is conveniently back in print.  Unfortunately, Robarts doesn't seem interested in acquiring this edition (it has Methuen from 1985) nor does Toronto Public Library have a circulating copy.  While I probably won't buy my own copy (as I'm relatively unlikely to read it again), I'll probably keep my eye out if the price drops significantly.  Somewhat unusually, the Vancouver Public Library does have the right edition, but I don't think they would loan it through ILL for at least a year.

** Actually I was making very good progress on building my own Little Free Library until I was called away on a family emergency.  I hope to wrap it up in a week or so, then start giving away a large stack of books I have accumulated.