12th Canadian Challenge - 16th Review - Small Arguments

While waiting on Souvankham Thammavongsa's Cluster to come in, I had a chance to borrow three of her earlier poetry collections - Small Arguments, Found and Light.  All three are on the Pedlar Press imprint.  They all have the same characteristics of being undersized volumes with truly tiny print.  These are not books you want to read if you have any trouble with your eyesight!  Surely for the worse, I found that the physical characteristics of the books carried over and found the poems pretty underwhelming.  That said, I did reread them all a second time and found a few poems I liked, particularly from Small Arguments.

There are a few features that carry over into all books.  She often returns to the imagery of bones, even when discussing butterflies!  Souvankham learned English as a second language, and she frequently focuses in on the odd features of language (that native speakers often overlook).  So for instance, she comments on the way that joule and jewel sound identical, and bear/bare.  In some cases, her investigation broadens to other languages, so in the collection Light, she considers the Arabic word for light (noor) and how it is made up of circles (only in English transliteration of course) or the way you can almost "lick" the Dutch word for light (licht).  She does the same with a handful of Lao words and expressions.  Still, a little of this goes a long way, and most of the poems didn't go much deeper than these somewhat shallow observations.

I wanted to like Found more than I actually did.  The concept is that she found a scrapbook belonging to her father from the time when they were living in a refugee camp in Thailand, and she is examining different aspects of the scrapbook in the poems.  So a few poems look at the stamps he had saved (from different responses to his appeals to refugee resettlement agencies).  There was only one US stamp, a 31 cent airmail stamp.  What's a bit radical is that she represents the underlining of key addresses and the crossing out of months with different diagonal lines.  In fact there are seven "poems" that are nothing but a calendar month and a single diagonal line on the page.  And then 3 blank pages for the 3 months that followed.  In this sense, it functions as an interesting representation of the scrapbook, but doesn't succeed particularly well as poetry.  (I should note that there are more conventional poems in the volume, but they didn't really stand out for me.)  It may not come as a complete surprise, but Found was made into a short film about the scrapbook, and presumably the broader experience of coming as a refugee from Laos to Thailand thence to Canada.  It's possible that I would appreciate the film more than the poems, but without seeing it, it is hard to say.

Small Arguments starts out with a somewhat typical introduction (at least in the immigrant literature vein) in that Souvankham's life was completely changed by learning English. In "Materials" she writes "Growing up, I / did not have books // The only reading material / there was / were old newspapers laid out / on the floor / to dry / our winter boots".  Then "When I learned to read, / the winter boots / lay dripping in the hallway; / ... / because I knew this / this // would be my way in".

There really is not much else related to the immigrant experience in Small Arguments.  There is naturally more in Found and flashes of it in Light.  Instead, the poems focus on small domestic things, like still lifes (individual pieces of fruit) or different types of insects.  Things that are indeed small and seemingly (though not actually insignificant).  Whether this is related to the instincts of an immigrant to not draw attention to him- or herself is not entirely clear.

She brings up an interesting insight in "A Coconut" that in order to get at the good parts ("To discover / what it keeps // from you") one must use violence to force one's way inside.  She also personifies snow and finds that it also has a hard-knock life.  "The Snow / tries so hard / to be like the rain // It will fall / into the same places / ... {but} everything in this world / is against it / even the sun."

In a bit of a twist, when I got to Light, I preferred the poems that were less about the immigrant condition ("Perfect" is a good example of trying hard to be the perfect model minority immigrant, however) and those that were a bit more universal, such as "I Remember."  In "I Remember" Souvankham discusses quite a few things that seem quite comparable to my childhood.  "I remember Hopscotch and roller skates / ...  / I remember burying pennies in the ground, thinking they'd grow into trees just because I was told they didn't. ... / ... / I remember dissecting a white rat. .../ ... / I remember riding the bus for fifty cents." Actually, in more and more high school biology classes, they are doing away with dissecting of actual animals and moving towards computer simulations.  I can just sort of see the other side of the debate (that this is imposing our dominance over animals for no particularly good reason), but in general, I think this is doing a disservice to students.  There's nothing quite like the real thing when studying biology.   At any rate, this is something I also remember, but my children may not experience.  I suppose I'll find out in another year or so.  Souvankham doesn't really get into the morality of experimenting on animals in the poem.

Speaking of morality and how what is "acceptable" changes over time, Souvankham was able to write unironically about her love of Michael Jackson in "Paris, 1:00 AM" but she probably could not do so today (after the release of Leaving Neverland).  She hears someone singing Man in the Mirror and "It makes me think of / a Michael Jackson button I had in Grade Two // I hid it in my coat pocket / and took it out to kiss it whenever / no one was looking // After some time / his face began to disappear // My mother always said / never to love a thing too much".  Prophetic words indeed.  At any rate, for pretty much any Gen Xer growing up in North America (and likely the UK as well), Michael Jackson is part of your teen years, and knowing just how much a creep he really was is not going to change how deeply his music is embedded in your consciousness.  It's definitely a tricky balancing act, trying not to ignore how much he once meant versus not wanting to celebrate him any longer. 

Concert Follies

As I mentioned in the last post, I was thisclose to going to Hamilton to see their orchestra play Prokofiev's 2nd Violin Concerto.  In the end, I decided not to.  Though I wasn't too eager to be waiting on the bus after dark in downtown Hamilton, the single biggest reason was that their box office was unreachable and even in the FAQ they didn't indicate whether it was possible to buy tickets in person (to say nothing of rush tickets).  Even if they had said something on the website like box office will be open one hour before the performance, I would have gone down, but I have made assumptions before about the way things work in smallish towns/cities only to be rudely disappointed.  It actually is not completely impossible that the box office would be completely unstaffed, and there would just be ushers scanning tickets.  I suppose I might have figured out how to buy a ticket on my phone, but that was way beyond what I wanted to deal with.  At any rate, I had already spent enough money (and time) on entertainment for the day, so I went home and took a short catnap.  I will keep my eyes open to see if that piece is playing in Toronto in the next couple of years, as I did want to hear it.

Now over at the Royal Conservatory, there have been several substitutions.  Murray Perahia was supposed to play a concert on May 1.  Then he had to cancel due to health reasons, and they found a substitute, Peter Serkin.  RC apologized and they did offer a discount on a few upcoming events.  (This seems a better approach than what Soulpepper did a couple of years ago where they actually switched out a play on subscribers.  I was quite unhappy and insisted on a full refund instead; this was really the beginning of the end of my affections for this organization.)  I was sort of sorting my way through this, as well as trying to get tickets to see Vivaldi's Four Seasons, when I got another update that Serkin was going to have to withdraw, also for health reasons, but that Perahia would be back on in 2020!  I didn't see any mention of a discount this time around.

There are a couple of unfortunate things all going on here.  First, Serkin was going to do Goldberg Variations, which actually appealed to me a bit more than Perahia's program.  Second, due to all this futzing around and trying to make up my mind, the cheap seats for the Four Seasons were gone by the time I was actually ready to pull the trigger.  Or rather, there was just a single cheap seat left in the back row, but nothing available for my wife and son.  Interestingly, on the same week the TSO was going to be playing Vivaldi's Four Seasons, though the weekend event was up in North York.  So in this case, it won't be all that hard to switch to some mid-week performance, but I just need to remember to call the box office on Monday.

As far as the RC shows, I decided I would go see Angela Hewitt doing Bach's Art of the Fugue.  This should really be quite the event of the season, though there were a reasonable number of tickets left.  It's scheduled for April 2020.  Fingers crossed that her health keeps up!

I'm pretty sure that I saw she was going to be at the Toronto Summer Music Festival doing Goldberg Variations at the tail end of July.  I haven't really entirely decided to whether to go.  I've actually seen this twice, including once in Vancouver on harpsichord.  However, it's also true that Hewitt is one of the leading Bach interpreters still working today.  I wonder if my son would be interested in going, though to be honest, it may be just a bit too austere and demanding for him.  I was going to have him come along to see Beethoven's 7th Symphony last week when the Hart House Orchestra was doing it, but he had a bit too much homework.  I think I would have him come anyway if they had done Beethoven's 5th as originally planned.  At any rate, at some point I am sure I'll take him along to see the 5th and the 7th (but maybe not the 9th, not sure about that one...).  In fact, in a couple of weeks, the TSO is doing Beethoven's 5th, but the only seats are in the choir loft (so you see the orchestra sideways) and the performance would end quite late, so I think I'll have to pass.  I'm sure there will be an appropriate afternoon concert one of these days.

Russian Masters in Toronto

While it isn't impossible to hear Shostakovich or Prokofiev and certainly not Tchaikovsky in Toronto, these composers were programmed more often in Chicago and even Vancouver.  I'll discuss a bit in a separate post, but I booked a ticket for Hand to God at Coal Mine Theatre for a Sunday matinee on May 5.  (Virtually all the other shows were sold out!  But I probably could have found a different matinee performance)  As it turns out, the Toronto Symphony Youth Orchestra is having a big blow out performance at that time, and I would likely have gone.  They are playing Shostakovich Symphony 10, Prokofiev's Suite from The Love of Three Oranges and a Mussorgsky piece.  I obviously can't go to both, and I can't change my Coal Mine ticket at this point.  What does soften the blow a bit is that this November, Sir Andrew Davis is back in town conducting the full TSO in Shostakovich Symphony 10 and Prokofiev's Violin Concerto 1, which should be a good concert.  Currently, single tickets are not on sale, but you can put together a subscription series and add this event.

I've probably heard The Love of Three Oranges in person, but it would take some sleuthing to verify.  I certainly know that I had heard Shostakovich #10 before.  At any rate, this led me to go back and try to update this list of symphonies I have heard in person.

Focusing just on Toronto performances, this leaves this list:
#1 (TSO - Nov 2016)
#5 (TSO - Nov 2016 and March 2019)
#6 (TSO - May 2018)
#8 (TSO - April 2016)
#9 (Kindred Spirits Orchestra - July 2016)
#10 (TSO - Nov 2019*)
#13 (TSO - May 2016)

It's a solid list,** though I'm still a bit bummed that I still haven't seen Shostakovich Symphony 12 or 14, and they aren't that likely to turn up here, though I'll keep looking.  It's actually possible that the Kindred Spirits Orchestra (KSO) played them, but I usually am not willing to rent a car and travel up to Richmond Hill or Markham (their usual haunts).  However, I sometimes make it to their June concert when they rent out the Glenn Gould Studio at the CBC.  I did see them playing Shostakovich #9 in 2016.  Now this June, they are playing a concert featuring Hindemith's Symphonic Metamorphosis and Prokofiev's Symphony 2, which I don't think I've seen live (mostly having seen #5 and 7).  I'll probably go, though I haven't completely made up my mind. June 2020 will be Franck's Symphonic Variations, Tchaikovsky Symphony 5, and Shostakovich's Concerto for Piano and Orchestra No. 2.  That looks like a fairly compelling concert, and I'll try to put it on my calendar to order tickets, though obviously there is no rush.

My biggest question right now is whether to go out to Hamilton tonight to try to catch Prokofiev's Violin Concerto 2.  I'm leaning that way, but this is a fairly full weekend already, and there are a few things (including work things) that I just won't get around to if I don't just buckle down and get to it.  However, I would be able to catch up on some reading and maybe make some progress on The Man Without Qualities, since I would be taking the Hamilton Express Bus if I do go.  I guess I have another hour or so to decide one way or the other.

* Forthcoming

** It does appear I didn't see any Shostakovich symphonies in 2017 (though I may have seen the odd concerto or two).  The TSYO did perform Shostakovich 5 in 2017, but I didn't go to that.

Too Much Music?

I'm slowly coming around to the view that having unlimited music does devalue it to some extent.  It just becomes background noise to the rest of our lives, particularly when there is so little marginal cost or effort to get the music (compared to the old days of having to go to the record store...).  I do try to avoid endlessly clicking around on Youtube or iTunes, skipping from one thing to another.  I also make a conscious effort to listen to albums straight through, particularly on iTunes, but the temptation is strong to go on to the next thing.

There are a few artists who have just so much stuff available that it becomes an embarrassment of riches,* as it were.  Jimi Hendrix didn't produce many studio albums, but there are so many live performances and bootlegs, sometimes legitimately licensed after the fact, that it is hard to keep up.  I think I stopped counting around 20.  (I draw the line at the Grateful Dead -- that way madness lies...)

Now I owned perhaps 1/3 of Felu Kuti's recordings on CD (back when they were putting two LPs onto each CD), but essentially all of his recordings are on iTunes, which is pretty incredible.

One thing that is interesting (to me) is that virtually all of Frank Zappa's recordings, even the posthumous ones, are on iTunes.  About the only thing that I couldn't find was 200 Motels, which seems to have some rights issues still hanging it up.  In contrast, quite a few Captain Beefheart albums are not on iTunes.  Now I never liked Captain Beefheart nearly as much as Zappa, perhaps because he was a bit more of a serious "beatnik," but I'm willing to give his music another whirl, so it is a little disappointing to find out that some of the core albums aren't on iTunes.  On the other hand, Trout Mask Replica just came out as a Record Store Day release, which often means that, after a week or so, the cleaned up music files make their way to iTunes and Spotify.  Here's hoping anyway, not that I don't have plenty to listen to in the meantime...

* At least for me, one of the most exciting things about the new approach to music delivery is that sometimes, though not always, the really obscure stuff (that never was in stock at the record store) is now available on tap.  In addition to the obscure stuff that the Numero label rescues (virtually all of which ends up on iTunes), you can find all 3 Shadowy Men on a Shadowy Planet albums (a bit of a cult band from my first sojourn in Toronto).  My new favorite listen is the box set of Nucleus records (a jazz-funk-rock hybrid in the same vein as Miles Runs the Voodoo Down).  While the box set itself isn't on iTunes, after the albums were remastered for the box, the individual albums went up on iTunes, which was great for me.  In this particular case, I really lucked out because there is one Nucleus CD on a different label not in the box (Out of the Long Dark) that I bought separately as a 2-fer (with Ian Carr's Old Heartland).  Neither of these albums is on iTunes, as of yet.

The Search for the Hidden Banksy

While I was sorry I didn't make it out to the unauthorized Banksy exhibit in Toronto, I thought the ticket prices were just too high.  Thus, I was pretty interested when I read in the paper that there was a Banksy that was going to be installed in the Path system somewhere south of Union Station.  It wasn't the highest item on my agenda, but I was keeping an eye out for it.

I finally stumbled across it last week.  What perhaps threw me off a bit is that south of Union Station most of the Path is elevated, which means it skirts the stage/arena area inside the ACC and then crosses over Lake Shore Blvd.

In any event, the Banksy is in this elevated portion of the Path, fairly close to the Winners, which itself only opened fairly recently, about halfway between 20 Bay St. and the ACC.  It's a pretty nice piece (cop with balloon dog), protected under Plexiglass so no one tries to mess with it.  It's also a pretty solid piece, so I don't think anyone will try to make off with it.

I don't head over that way all that often, but I will make a point of checking it out when I am in the area.

Female Artists at the Market

This is a short review of the exhibit at the St. Lawrence Market Gallery.  I was feeling kind of pressured to get this post out, since the exhibit was going to close in April, but now it appears the exhibit has been extended until June 22.  In addition, it turns out that Friday, admission is half price (and free for post-secondary students with valid ID on Thursdays).  Admission for adults is $8, which definitely feels a bit steep, given that for the longest time admission was free.  In fact, as I was getting ready to enter, two seniors came up, found they had to pay and immediately turned around and left.

Whether you decide the exhibit is worth $8 is going to be fairly subjective.  I thought a few pieces were pretty nice, but many were only slightly above the level of what a talented amateur could do.  Sadly, the Rita Letendre piece was shown so that the sun was really glaring on it, and I couldn't get a decent shot at all.  Here are a few other pieces that stood out.

Marion Long, The Gay Yellow Awnings, ca. 1931

Lorie Schinko, Streetcar Stop-Embarking Disembarking, 1983

Margaret Priest, Cityscape (1982)

Sybil Goldstein, T.V. Banking, 1982

Ann MacIntosh, Dairy Fresh, ca. 1985

The Long Weekend Wraps

Overall, this was a fairly productive weekend.  I did take it easy (mostly) on Friday, taking a bit of a catnap though I still went to the gym towards the end of the day.

Sat. I did the grocery shopping early, then ran to the mall to get more of the plastic eggs (as my wife had thrown out the ones from last year).  I packed up eggs with chocolate for the Easter egg hunt while waiting on the furnace guy.  We actually had wanted to get in on a deal to replace our AC (it had been completely out last summer, and this summer is likely to be just as hot or even hotter).  I was open to discussing a furnace/AC combo, since the furnace is also pretty old -- and getting unreliable.  The salesman was an hour late, which was super annoying, but I managed to get other things done in the meantime.  While there was a decent deal on a rental, I thought overall I would prefer just to buy the new unit outright, especially as there was a good sale that was (supposedly) wrapping up.  We settled up, and the new unit will be installed on Tuesday.  Fortunately, we are in that time of year where you don't absolutely need the furnace on (while it is offline being reinstalled) but it is nowhere close to warm enough to be running air conditioning (not that I run it much anyway).

After all this concluded, I ran to the library and then to work.  I really wanted to push through and finish the Canadian taxes.  I managed to get them done at about 10 pm.  While I do owe a chunk of money, it is actually less than I thought when I did the first rough cut, so I'll probably put a bit down as an installation payment for 2019 and maybe a bit into my RRSP.  Anyway, it is just good to be done.  I managed to catch one of the last trains home (they were going to shut service down early) and crashed.

Sunday, we had the egg hunt on the street.  It was a bit much.  I don't think I'll stuff any eggs next year, given that some parents are putting out 100-200 eggs! 

At any rate the kids (and the kids at heart) had a good time.  The weather wasn't great, but it didn't rain and it wasn't too cold.

I knew the AGO would be open, so I biked over.  I wasn't as sure about the Bau-Xi Gallery, but it was, which was nice.  There was a small show by Alex Cameron that was about to close, and I wanted to catch that.

Alex Cameron, Tornado Alley, ca. 2018

While the Cameron show was ok (I think my favourite was Tornado Alley), I was actually a bit more interested in Kathryn Macnaughton's work.  They had a large canvas, Fluid, on view.  She will have her own show in July, and I'll probably stop by for that, though her work is much too large to think about bringing into the house.

Kathryn Macnaughton, Fluid, ca. 2018

I made a short visit to the AGO, though I didn't go into the Impressionist exhibit, since I knew I'd be coming back again in a week or two.  (I was also a bit too early to try to get into the new Infinity Room.)  I was on a bit of a hunt for this Joseph Beuys' piece.  It turns out it is on the far east side of the gallery, where they used to display a huge Rubens.  It was kind of interesting, though I probably wouldn't make a point of going to the AGO just to see it.

Joseph Beuys, Hare's Grave (Vitrine), 1964-1979

Then I biked over to The Power Plant at Harbourfront.  I wasn't as sure this would be open, but it was.  Thus, of all the exhibits I discuss in this post, I made to everything except Ai Weiwei (still running through early June at Gardiner), the moon at Aga Khan (though I have a free pass lined up) and the upcoming Textile Museum exhibit.  Not bad.

Of the 3 artists, I liked Omar Ba the most.  His work was somewhat dreamlike.  I'm sure it is a lazy comparison to say it reminded me a bit of Chris Ofili's work, but it did (more the oversized figures than the colour scheme).

Omar Ba, Afrique, pillages, arbres, richess, 2014

Omar Ba, Les Autres, 2015

I went back to work for a bit, though I didn't really get a jump on the week, unfortunately.  After I biked home, I went over to the gym.  Pretty busy for a weekend where I should have tried to rest more...

12th Canadian Challenge - 15th Review - Clusters

The story of how I settled on this book of poetry, Clusters by Kenneth Sherman, is somewhat droll.  The Star had given a generally favorable review to Cluster by Souvankham Thammavongsa (well, more of a blurb really), so I thought I should read it for Poetry Month.  (I guess April is always poetry month, perhaps to offset the "cruelest" moniker Eliot gave it all those years ago -- was April always tax month, I wonder?)  I did put Cluster on hold at the Toronto Public Library but thought that Robarts might have a copy available.  As it turns out, they don't have a copy of Cluster at all, though they had a few of Thammavongsa's earlier collections, as well as some chapbooks (in the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library).  However, Sherman's Clusters showed up in a title search, and, as it was poetry by a Canadian author, I decided to check it out (while waiting for my hold material to arrive).

There's no point in beating around the bush -- I didn't much care for Clusters.  I only thought 2 or 3 poems were of interest.  It's not that these are terrible poems overall, but they don't have particularly strong imagery or wordplay, so you are left with just the ideas behind them, and I am not really on Sherman's wavelength.  The 3rd section of the book concerns itself with various exotic locales that Sherman visited and then the 4th has some ponderings on God and the divine (definitely not my cup of tea).  I think it's very unlikely that I will read any of his other collections.

The poems I did like concern themselves with mundane, everyday life -- sending the kids off to summer camp and getting by in the suburbs (presumably of Toronto).

Here Sherman talks about feeling the absence of his children in "Summer Camp": "Our little ones are gone. / Now our most important person / seems to be the mailman / who brings their sometime letters / ... / We read and grasp at morsels, / hunger for more details. / But already part of them is private. / They grow away from us ..."

In "The Suburbs" Sherman hints that the very mundaneness and ordinariness of the suburbs (while generally something sought out by those who move there) may be hiding something.  "It is true.  There are painful regrets / and drama behind each door, / ... / But how considerate the region is / with its regular / goings and comings ..."  There may be even deeper secrets, things paved over in this era that has lost touch with the natural world -- and perhaps even the ancient gods...  "We ask / if there were once gods in the cedars / who have abandoned us.  We wonder, / as night wraps around like a mask, / at the pressing disorder of stars."

If there had been a bit more of this throughout the collection, I might have been more into Sherman's Clusters.

Wet, Slow (Good) Friday

Canada certainly takes Good Friday pretty seriously.  I can't recall the situation in the UK, but it's probably pretty similar (unless one is in London).  At any rate, a few museums were open in Toronto, as well as the Eaton Centre, though essentially no stores near us.

I think I have been working a bit too hard without taking any time off (I have something like 6 weeks of vacation accumulated!), so I ended up just staying in and taking a short nap.  Towards the end of the afternoon, the rain had slowed down, so I went out to the gym.  Or rather I started out, but got about 1/4 of the way there and realized I hadn't put my laundry in the drier.  I didn't even have my phone with me to ask my son to toss it in.  The laundry would have been kind of gross and required rewashing, so I turned around to take care of this.  I still went out to the gym after this, and I plan to go Sunday as well.  The rain had returned on my journey home, though it wasn't coming down too hard.

I've finally finished the Selected Essays by Montaigne, and my new gym book is Grand Hotel by Vicki Baum.  As I mentioned quite a while back, the Musil is just too heavy to try to take to the gym and read on the bikes.  It's hard enough reading it on the train.  Since my copy of the Complete Essays had arrived (and I rearranged my shelves a bit), I put the Selected Essays out in the Little Free Library.  Interestingly, it only lasted a day or two.

One slightly annoying thing was that my wife had tossed out a bunch of the plastic Easter eggs, since we hadn't expected our daughter to do the neighbourhood egg hunt, but she wants to after all.  That meant I needed to get a bunch of eggs at the dollar store, but of course it wasn't open.  This is probably what ultimately drives me into being a pack rat -- the idea that I will use something again -- and it's why I will never be that interested in the cult of the home organizer, since I don't need to love something or be thrilled by it to think that I will need it again.  This meant that I needed to run over to the mall early on Sat. in order to get the eggs to get them stuffed  (and dropped off) before I could get the rest of the Sat. chores accomplished.  As I expected, the stores (and particularly the parking lots!) were very busy, since everyone had to cram everything in on Sat.  However, I managed to get my shopping done and now have a few other things to wrap up.  But I should be able to take it easy on Sunday, at least after the Easter egg hunt in the morning. 

Rainy week

I guess it isn't really a surprise, but this week is mostly grey and rained out.  Monday didn't really rain, but it was overcast and somewhat clammy while riding in.  The streets were still wet from the deluge on Sunday, so I went down Richmond rather than King.  When it is wet, I find King just a bit too treacherous with all the streetcar tracks that one has to cross.  I actually saw someone hit them wrong and go down pretty hard last week.  I'm still a bit gun-shy from my accident and thus am more cautious than I used to be.  I guess that isn't such a bad thing in general.

Tuesday was fine in the morning, but then the forecast said it would be raining most of the late afternoon and evening.  I thought it might be another heavy rain like Sunday so was getting a bit agitated.  In the end, it was more like a minor drizzle, not unlike Vancouver weather.  Nonetheless, I left work a bit early, so I wouldn't have to deal with the height of rush hour traffic and the rain.  If I had known it was going to be so light, I probably wouldn't have bothered.

Today (Wed.) is probably the only nice day all week.  This may well be the last time I ride to work this week,* but I guess we'll see how I feel tomorrow and how much it actually rains.  Nonetheless, I have been getting in quite a bit of exercise and saving money (and hassles) by avoiding the TTC.  So that's all to the good.

One small benefit of the rain is that it looks like we will have flowers blooming soon.  Here are some purple flowers peeking up in the front yard.

* I only just now remembered that I have Friday off, though not Monday.  Taking one day off from biking due to the rain will allow a reasonable amount of rest for my weary legs.  I may well drop by work over the weekend to put the final touches on the Canadian taxes, but most likely that would be done by transit.  I just hope there are no planned subway closures like there were last weekend...

Theatrical Duds

Last week was not a good week in theatre for me.  On Wednesday, I went and saw Frayn's Copenhagen.  As I mentioned before, I didn't think that highly of it, mostly because it is far too static with three souls caught in the underworld going over this mysterious meeting in Copenhagen when Heisenberg may or may not have hinted that he wanted Bohr's help to help develop nuclear energy for Germany (while Denmark was still an occupied territory during WWII).  This caused an irreparable breach between the two scientists.  It was pretty hard to care about any of the characters, since the whole thing was focused on their retrospective careers and they kept replaying and redoing certain scenes, as if they still didn't know what had actually happened to them while alive.  This was a little like Idomeneus from last season (though Copenhagen was written prior to Idomeneus).  For the record I really disliked Idomeneus, and Copenhagen was better than that, but still the stakes were nil.  I saw a fair number of people leaving at the half.  I don't think word of mouth will be very kind (as it feels like a 2.5 hour lecture on atomic physics cribbed from Wikipedia), though it's the sort of play that panders to people and makes them feel smarter than they (probably) are. That's probably ultimately the reason it won so many awards.

Saturday I went to Monsieur d'Eon is a Woman by Mark Brownell. It was unbelievably terrible, just one stereotype after another about the British and the French, and the student actors really took every opportunity to mug and play things broadly.  I probably should have left during the first act but that would have been incredibly rude. But it seemed like an eon until intermission. Unfortunately, in my huff to get out of there, I left a library book, so had to call the house manager and stop back in on my way home from work.  It's a shame, since George Brown started out quite well with Brecht's Caucasian Chalk Circle and an adequate production of Shaw's You Never Can Tell.  (My views on Shaw have gotten harsher over the years. I think he is drastically over-rated, not least of all by himself.)  One positive is that because I left at intermission, I had time to stop in at the St. Lawrence Art Gallery and check out the show on Toronto women artists.  I'll blog about that shortly.

It doesn't look like I have any theatre scheduled for this weekend.  Next week I am checking out Shakespeare Bash'd's As You Like It (a good play aside from the ending) and Bigre, a wordless farce put on by Canadian Stage.  Also Video Cabaret has a new production in a new studio space near me (Queen and Logan), and I'll probably check that out.  It looks like they will be gearing up for a full season in the fall, and I'm eagerly anticipating that.

No Gilliam

I'm just a bit frustrated at myself, but I am more frustrated by movie theatre scheduling and the weather.  Ultimately, I did bike to and from work Thurs (it was quite cold and unpleasant) and could have still turned back around and gotten to see The Man Who Killed Don Quixote last night.  However, I was really dragging, partly because I had been out late on Wed. and the weather was still gross* and, due to the late start time, I wouldn't have been home until midnight.  So I passed.

If I had had perfect foresight, I probably would have tried to flip Copenhagen at Soulpepper and Gilliam's film (since on Wed. it was showing at the much more reasonable time of 7 pm).  The weather wasn't really that great on Wed., which was the primary reason I had held out for biking back from Soulpepper.  But that might not actually have worked, since I think Thurs. may have been the official opening night of Copenhagen and was likely sold out.  (On the whole I found Copenhagen to be too talky and too artificial -- it was kind of like having three people recite the history of atomic physics as set out in Wikipedia for 2.5 hours.  There were some interesting moments, but basically I don't think this succeeds particularly well as a play.  I'm quite astonished at all the raves/awards it has gotten.)  I'm still somewhat hopeful that Gilliam's film will get another few showings next week or will head to TIFF Lightbox, but if not, I guess I will stream it.

* I think the weather impacted me more than I realized.  I was so completely fed up with the cold, drizzly weather that I sort of went into hibernation mode.  I didn't even go to the gym, though I probably should have (and I am a day short heading into the weekend).  Still, this might be the last of the really cold weather.  Here's hoping.

Competing Events

Just quite a bit going on this week.

For quite a while I had been planning on trying to get rush tickets tonight to see Copenhagen over at Soulpepper.  I decided on the basis of the casting that I ought to check this out.  Now next week they are just as likely to have rush tickets, but I would generally prefer to go sooner rather than later.

But it turns out that Terry Gilliam's much, much delayed film The Man Who Killed Don Quixote is opening in Toronto.  But it is only going to have 3 showings - 2 tonight and 1 tomorrow!  There is a chance that it will get a slightly extended run or will move over to the TIFF Lightbox (to say nothing of Netflix or another streaming site).  The reviews have been mixed, but I think I'd still like to see it.  Probably it would make more sense to try to catch it tonight and see Copenhagen tomorrow, but I actually biked today, and the overall pattern works much better if I go to the Distillery to see Copenhagen.  Plus it is fairly likely to rain tomorrow, so I'd be on transit anyway.

In fact, it is a fairly late showing on Thurs (9:30), so if the weather does improve a bit, I could actually bike to and from work and then take the TTC back to Yonge-Dundas Square to catch the film.  I guess that is the way I am leaning, though I do wish Don Quixote had a more typical release.  If I recall The Zero Theorem had some crazy one-day release as well, though I did make it to that.

If I am not completely sick of films and rearranging my schedule, there is small chance I would go to TIFF Lightbox on Friday to check out Jean Vigo's Zéro de conduite.  I don't think I've ever seen it.

Anyway, definitely a lot going on so a lot to choose from.  (Good thing that I actually am done with the taxes, the US ones at any rate!)

Dueling loaves

I had this pretty amusing mental image of a duel with baguettes.  Curiously, there was not that much on the internet, though I eventually found this picture.

In any event, on Monday I made another loaf of banana bread.  I've found that one of the grocery stores nearby sells bananas that go bad fairly quickly, so I've been baking banana bread almost every week.  Consequently, I'm getting pretty good at it.

However, I found that my director had also brought in some home-made bread, so people could do a head-to-head comparison.  I don't want to brag, but ...

In all seriousness, there has been someone leaving or changing jobs virtually every week, so there have also been a huge number of farewell parties.  This is causing real havoc with my diet.  Last year I was much stricter and stopped going to all these events, though it is a challenge when the person being honored is part of your team -- then it just seems really rude.  Nonetheless, I'm exercising enough, so to restart the weight loss I have to be eating better.  Easier said than done, but I think my will power is slowly returning.  I guess I can discuss my progress in a couple of months.

12th Canadian Challenge - 14th Review - Immigrant City

David Bezmozgis has returned, after a fairly substantial gap, with another slim volume of short stories.  Immigrant City is a bit more diffuse than Natasha, in the sense that several different immigrant families are featured in these stories, rather than Natasha's focus on a single family, the Bermans, from the former Soviet Union (primarily from Latvia).  That said, nearly all the families featured in these stories are Latvian and Jewish, though they don't seem to know each other and interact.  However, in the title story, a Jewish father ends up taking his daughter on an extended trip (to buy a car door of all things) into the wilds of northern Etobicoke.  Bezmozgis notes how the neighbourhoods have changed but are still predominantly a sort of landing pad for immigrants (in this case Somalis).  There is a fair bit of this literature linking previous waves of immigration to the new immigration.  In this case, Bezmozgis's narrator is trying to make a link, remembering back to when his family was so fresh-of-the-boat, so unwelcomed and struggling so hard.  This is the more generous outlook, but it can also manifest itself as, look we started from nothing but we made it, and thus so should you.  It's very hard to say how things will turn out twenty or thirty years from now, but I don't think it would be a big surprise if the different racial (and religious) characteristics of the new immigration will make it harder for the new immigrants to fully integrate into Canadian society.  In the end, it will probably be somewhat easier for Syrians to feel part of Canadian society than Somalians or Ethiopians.

At any rate, I don't think that is Bezmozgis's point (that immigrants should integrate faster).  This time around, several of the stories feature people stuck on the lower rungs, rather than the Bermans, who slowly and painfully made their way up.  "The Russian Riviera" is the most developed along these lines.  The main character is a washed up boxer from Siberia who comes to Canada and is granted asylum (so prior to the fall of Communism) but has few skills and very poor English.  He becomes a bouncer at the Riviera and has to deal with low-level gangsters that want to muscle in on the action.  What's somewhat interesting and a bit frustrating is that these stories rarely have clear endings.  They are truly just a few pages out of the book of someone's life and we can't really tell what happens next.  Is the boxer going to break up with his dancer girlfriend (likely) because she feels humiliated that he wouldn't ditch work on the day her mother and grandparents were coming to visit the club (and thus avoid humiliating her)?  While it is certain he won't be calling the cops on the gangsters, it isn't even clear if he will call an ambulance to help sort things out after a fight breaks out.

For most of Bezmozgis's characters, they sort of stumble/bumble through life and things slowly get better.  This is sort of summed up by a psychologist talking about children in "Childhood": "'Most of us turn out all right,' she said with calm finality."  Of course, there are exceptions.  At any rate, this means skipping over quite a few difficulties along the way.  One still has to avoid major pitfalls and generally one has to have a fair bit of luck as well.

Minor SPOILERS ahead...

It turns out that there is one story about the Bermans after all in Immigrant City.  "Roman's Song" is a story written from Roman's perspective, not his son Mark's.  This story most likely takes place between "The Second Strongest Man" and "An Animal to the Memory" in Natasha.  Roman is still struggling a bit economically and Mark is still in school.  At any rate, a couple of Russian pimps want to open up a "massage parlor" on the strength of Roman's massage therapist licence.  While this would definitely lead to better cash-flow, it is also one of those turning points that might well have gotten Roman entangled in the Canadian legal system had he gone down that road.  He turns them down, and the story turns its attention to whether Roman will sell his old car to a struggling relative (one who just doesn't seem likely to cope in Canada).  Roman doesn't focus on the man's struggles nearly as much as he envies the fact that his family is still so young and the children rely so much on the parents.  He misses the days when Mark was close to him, not a somewhat estranged and even surly teenager.

In "Little Rooster" we see one family on the upward trajectory, but the narrator learns that his grandfather has a secret connection to another Latvian family in Toronto.  He goes over and encounters a daughter, somewhat younger than himself, who lost almost everything in a wildfire in Alberta.  This story is particularly open-ended in the sense that it is completely unclear whether the narrator will follow up on the news that he has a relative living in Latvia (a love child of his grandfather's abandoned when the other family left the Soviet Union).  I found the ending of this story and "A New Gravestone for an Old Grave" to be fairly unsatisfying.  I don't necessarily need a bow tied on every story, but I do like to have some idea where things are headed.

At any rate, I had trouble getting into "A New Gravestone for an Old Grave" in the first place, in the sense that I would never give in to accommodate such a fairly silly request from a parent -- to completely change his vacation plans to Europe to fly to Riga to oversee a new gravestone for his father's father (who had already been dead for 35 years).  I have zero sentimentality about grave markers and cemeteries.  I doubt very strongly I could be emotionally blackmailed into doing such a thing in the first place.  Now perhaps it would have been different had I been from an immigrant family, always told about the many sacrifices my parents had made to bring me to a better, richer country.  But I doubt it.

These are all fine stories, but most of them didn't resonate with me that much, particularly "Little Rooster" and "A New Gravestone for an Old Grave."  I would have liked stronger or at least clearer endings to the stories.  I'd say the ones I liked the most were "Roman's Song" where we get to see inside the Berman family from Roman's perspective and "Childhood" where the narrator is struggling to figure out how to cope with a son who seems to have some issues and to find a way for him to have a happy and successful childhood and early adulthood. 

Early April Updates

Well, I guess I shouldn't be so surprised...

It did in fact snow a bit over the weekend.  Grrr.  However, what was particularly frustrating is that this was supposed to be all over by Sunday.  In fact, it was snowing Sunday morning.  While it was not pleasant, I did end up biking to work (and spent a fair chunk of time on taxes, though I am not finished with them).  But the weather never improved, and in fact it snowed and was blustery and super unpleasant all the way until 7 pm!  So the weather forecast for the weekend was truly off.  So frustrating.  I ultimately left my bike in the bike locker room at work, which meant that the work trip was unbalanced.  I then had to carry the pannier back on the subway -- and remember to take it back to work on Tuesday along with a change of clothing.  (Monday evening I went off to Sing-for-Your-Supper.)

Tuesday biking back and Wednesday wasn't too bad.  I should be able to bike on Thurs. as well.  It is definitely getting warmer on the ride back, and my hands are coping pretty well.  I suppose before too long I'll start seeing a few more people out.  For now, it's still pretty much hard core cyclists on the roads.

SFYS was quite a bit of fun.  In the end, I only had one piece (featuring two teenage mall workers) accepted, and it was put on at the very end of the night.  But it went over pretty well.  What was interesting was that both actors had French accents -- one quite strong.  So Sybil became Sibille.  Kind of wish I had recorded them.  Oh well.  While I think it is pretty unlikely I will do another evening of shorts (given how much $ I lost the last time around), I do have almost enough pieces.  This one, plus one about teens living in a post-carbon world (where they have to pedal just to keep their phones charged and working), the one about the unloved tree in the front yard and then the time travel piece.  Oh, and then the one about the break-up of a K-Pop band.  That is definitely close to enough.  At any rate, my next piece or two will be much more serious, though I don't know if they will go over quite as well.  I guess we'll see.  Now I just need to buckle down and write them.

I tried a couple different browsers, but still couldn't get Hoopla to play.  So I gave up and installed all the updates to Firefox.  Somewhat surprisingly, I was then able to get Hoopla to play, though the downside is that my ePub reader is shot.  I should probably see if there is a fairly straight-forward way to convert ePub files into something that Kindle can read, since that reader is decent.  The internet claims that Calibre can do it, so I guess I will investigate, though at this point, I really need to wait until my taxes are done.

The furnace is still giving us quite a few problems, though it bothers my wife more than me (given that I went several winters without any heat at all).  It's basically that the thermostat doesn't quite communicate to the furnace, and you have to fuss around with it and are never 100% sure it will work all the way through the night.  Ideally, we could just have the thermostat upgraded, but the furnace is pretty old and the A/C completely conked out last year, so I'm pretty sure I will end up needing to replace both as part of a package deal.  It's looking like it's going to be an expensive spring, since I also wanted to have people come out to look at the roof.  In this case, it is just preventive maintenance.  There is no leaking from the ceiling, knock wood.