Friday, May 16, 2014
The Art of Google
Or perhaps this post really should be titled Art about Google? While my Google-Fu is pretty good, I don't practice at a high enough level to consider it art.
Anyway, while Google there is plenty of art on Google (Google is intimately involved in digitizing as many books and as much artwork as it can and posting what it can legally and most probably stashing away what can't be published (yet) due to unduly long copyright regimes), there is not so much art about Google.
I have a throw-away line in one of my plays about a character being amazed her mom knows about Google. (And I have to check my timelines to see if that is remotely plausible or just should be struck out. The latter most likely.)
Beyond that I can think of one fairly recent documentary and one novel that really revolves around Google. I'm not saying other don't exist, but they haven't really come to my attention. Feel free to point out what I've missed in the comments.
I'll start with the documentary, which I have to admit I only know about through reviews. There was a chance to see a free screening in Vancouver, but I just couldn't make it. I suspect it will be the kind of thing that pops up occasionally for random screenings (or could be found through Google-Fu).
Anyway, it is called Google and the World Brain - a documentary by Ben Lewis. It takes a very dim view of the notion that Google is just going to vacuum everything up, riding roughshod over intellectual property rights, but most egregiously monetizing it later. In general, I have little patience with the later part of the argument, in that the advertising that Google sneaks in here and there seems a very small price to pay for the sheer awesomeness of having search engines that actually work. I remember when the equivalent was very weak in the early days of the web, and you basically had to know the address you were looking for ahead of time. Those were dark days. (What can I say, I'm a dinosaur.)
I realize not everyone is so sanguine, but really no one is forcing you to use Google. Everyone draws the line somewhere, and for me, I don't mind using Google for searches, even if they make money off me (though it couldn't be much given how I ignore all on-line advertizing), but I really didn't like the idea that Google was going to go through my Gmail account, so I don't use it at all (probably haven't checked it in 2 or 3 years), just as I have completely avoided Facebook and Twitter.
I also know that in the real world, not in the ideal world of some digital activists, most corporate copyright holders have been absolutely terrible stewards of the art and literature to which they hold the rights. Artists aren't going to be paid anything either way, and having Google make it more accessible (or at least better publicized if it can't be published in full) seems a slightly more positive outcome. I really thought that the opt-out clause was a reasonable way to get around the truly depressing issue of orphan works where no copyright owner can be traced. This isn't a small issue in some fields of art (particularly when looking into minor poets with only occasional publications in literary journals). But the one-size-fits-all copyright extensions pushed by Disney (and rejections of reasonable compromise on opt-out) has made it quite untenable to do anything about it.
Anyway, Lewis basically pisses on the claims occasionally made, implicitly at least, by Google that as long as one's intentions are good (see freeing up orphan works of art), then nothing is off limits. I admit this is a tendency/problem among smart people who only look at the problem in terms of promoting access (with small ancillary benefits coming to them) and don't put themselves in the shoes of copyright holders. There is an element of group-think going on, as well as just a feeling that the world should be this way (and not bound up by unreasonable rules that are clearly at variance with the spirit of the Founding Fathers). I feel this way all the time -- that the world I want to see is slipping further and further out of reach. I think it is completely unobtainable in the U.S. at this point, and probably out of reach in Canada, though it would be easier to put Canada back on track, simply because the way the rules of the (political) game are structured. While this is a total tangent, if I ever do write more about Travelling Light (the play about the particle physicists) there is a tangible sense among a lot of scientists that because what they do is in the name of Science (or Truth) they shouldn't be held back by petty concerns like what is the cost/benefit ratio of an experiment. Or in a totally different vein, engineers always bemoaning how politics has taken over the decision-making process. (It is hard to believe but most public authorities were put in place specifically because reformers of the day felt it was the best way to allow engineers to rise above short-term political calculations.)
I've kind of exhausted this concept, but I will admit I am completely in love with Google's idea of scanning all the books in the world to be kept in print indefinitely. I'd like it even more if they set up their own country and eliminated copyright past 25 years and just let people check out any book they wanted. (A slightly more principled version of Pirate Bay, I guess.) Maybe they'll do something of this sort after they decide to pull out of the E.U. after one too many absurd rulings like the one last week where a Spanish man's right to be ignored on the internet means Google has to remove links to the public record. I don't care what Eric Posner says, this is a stupid ruling that undermines the very nature of the internet and free exchange of ideas. I've had my doubts about the E.U.'s creation out of whole cloth a bunch of weird (and largely unenforceable and probably meaningless) "rights," and this is where I just turn my back on the whole E.U. experiment. I think they've really gotten things wrong and have no idea of the unintended consequences of these rules they are promulgating. (Well, I have worked myself up and have not even gotten to the novel. It's time for a break. Part two will probably follow tomorrow.)
Wednesday, May 14, 2014
7th Canadian Challenge - 14th review - The Fat Woman Next Door
As anyone with the slightest familiarity with Michel Tremblay knows, this book is essentially a love letter to his extended family. It is actually the first of six novels in the Chroniques du Plateau Mont-
One of the greater mysteries is how did the Fat Woman (essentially Michel's mother) end up in Montreal in the first place. There are a few hints in this book, and more in the play For the Pleasure of Seeing Her Again, that she is from the Prairies and at least part First Nations (Cree, if I am not mistaken). It's not even entirely clear to me that French is her first language (although it is true that there were more pockets of Francophone culture outside of Quebec earlier in the 20th Century, with most of them having disappeared by the early 2000s).
A much later series explores her back story. These novels are:
What I will say is that this is probably a family that one loves from the inside, apparently quite passionately in Michel's case. From my outside vantage point, they seem like people I would steer clear of. They are loud, argumentative, nosy neighbours, very stereotypically working-class in fact. The menfolk are a bit more appealing, though Gabriel is portrayed as a bit of a coward and Edouard is a bit of an overweight, homosexual dandy. I've forgotten exactly what Edouard does, but for some reason, I'm imagining him as working in a department store, selling shoes to women (a forerunner of Al Bundy?). I'll have to come back around and fix this if it is grossly incorrect. There is one other fact that I cannot clearly get correct -- the relationship of the fiddler Josaphat to the Tremblay family. While I believe he is the brother of Victoire, he has some connection to the Fat Woman as well. He has a daughter, Laura, who is quite a bit younger than the Fat Woman or Albertine. Laura is also pregnant, as are many women on the street.
This is the family tree of the core characters, as best as I can reconstruct it. As far as I can tell, the Fat Woman is never given a name, at least in this book. I also might have the birth order of Gabriel and Albertine reversed. Albertine does occasionally act like an old sister would, but is often ignored, which tends to support the idea that she is the middle child. Edouard is definitely the youngest of the three.
There are many other characters swarming inside this book. There are two prostitutes, plying their trade just down the street. While Albertine refuses to engage with them, particularly in a curious set piece where Gabriel invites them to dinner, the Fat Woman and Victoire bend conventions a bit and are reasonably sociable.
There is another woman who runs a candy shop and has a mangy cat, Duplessis (apparently named after a Quebec premiere). The cat hardly gives her the time of day and is actually infatuated with the toddler Marcel (actually appreciating the fact he is often pee-stained). I would say the sections from the viewpoint of the cat are the least interesting to me.
While she lives in a different part of town, there is an ex-whore who used to be a big player in Ottawa, sleeping with half the Cabinet. She occasionally relives her glory days in front of her niece, who is a good soul but fairly straight-laced. This fancy woman actually lost a leg to diabetes, but cannot conquer her love of chocolate.
There are several other bit parts, including a wild streetcar driver, and a young man filling in as a park attendant, who has a disturbing interaction with Thérèse, who goes up and kisses him on the mouth. He becomes infatuated with this little girl (of about 13) and there are strong hints that he has been converted to a pedophile on the spot. I wasn't too crazy about that section of the book, and I do wonder if he resurfaces in the later novels.
As far as the magic realism goes, the novel opens with a different woman and her three daughters, all endlessly spying on neighbours and knitting. By their second appearance, it has become evident that they are some version of the Fates. Only a very few people can see them, including Josaphat, Marcel, the cat and occasionally Victoire. Josaphat also has been tasked with fiddling up the moon, and he apparently expects to pass this duty on to Marcel, who has this connection of being able to see the unreal. Personally, I am not really sure what this adds to what is already an overstuffed narrative of working-class Montreal. It will be interesting to see if the later novels are more fully realistic. While Tremblay may have been aware of the magic realism coming from South America, it is more likely he is working in the realm of Greek and First Nations myths.
While the unborn baby will clearly some day be the inquisitive and sensitive artist Michel Tremblay, this is not really a case where the baby is soaking in these influences and is certainly not aware of the events on this day (so this is not quite comparable to Carlos Fuentes' Christopher Unborn). However, the unborn baby does have an outsized impact on the family. The Fat Woman discusses a few times how greedy it was that she wanted one more baby (and even a bit unsafe at her age in those days), and her husband went along, in part because he is a weak-willed man in love with her and at least in part because he didn't want to be called up for the WWII effort. So he does internalize a bit of the contempt that outsiders heaped upon him. He also promises to move to a bigger apartment but knows he will never do so, as he loves being part of a big family.
The Fat Woman can barely move, and essentially sits in a chair in her bedroom all day. Albertine, never the most patient woman in the best of times, is forced to serve her food and even bathe her. Albertine's frustrations at being in a cramped space and having to deal with her mother's odd requests often erupt. She is often fairly cruel to Marcel, who is a demanding but basically good and loving child. It is hinted that she is actually glad her husband, Paul, is off in the war, and she has taken over his place at one end of the family dinner table.
Tremblay also goes into the travails of the other family members, such as the separate frustrations and longings of Richard and Thérèse (not for each other fortunately), and of their grandmother and Uncle Edouard. This is quite an accomplishment, given all the characters in the novel. One of the more amusing sections is when Victoire gets it into her head to go to the park, mostly as a way of punishing Edouard (who has to accompany her despite having a raging hangover). She hasn't left the house in close to 3 years, so this is quite the outing (definitely shades of Grandmother Willoweed in Barbara Comyns' Who was Changed and Who was Dead, though I suspect this is too obscure to have inspired Tremblay).
Given that all the action takes place over a day (with occasional flashbacks) there are clear links to Joyce's Ulysses and secondarily to Dubliners. This does seem to be Tremblay's attempt to do for Montreal what Joyce did for Dublin. I'd say there are also clear ties to Proust, not only in the name-checking of Albertine, but that Edouard is a bit of a call-back to the somewhat grotesque figure of Palamede, Baron de Charlus. (I will be curious to see how he is treated in later books, particularly if there is ever a scene where Michel comes out of the closet to Edouard. It's hinted that the Fat Woman ultimately knew her youngest son was gay but this was never spoken of, at least in part because she died when he was relatively young.) There is vastly more plot in Tremblay's work to be sure, and it is much more entertaining to read, even if I wouldn't want to live next door to this family in real life. I think that's all I have time for now.
- La grosse femme d'à côté est enceinte (1978) (The Fat Woman Next Door is Pregnant)
- Thérèse et Pierrette à l'école des Saints-Anges (1980) (Therese and Pierrette and the Little Hanging Angel)
- La Duchesse et le roturier (1982) (The Duchess and the Commoner)
- Des nouvelles d'Édouard (1984) (News from Édouard)
- Le Premier Quartier de la lune (1989) (The First Quarter of the Moon)
- Un objet de beauté (1997) (A Thing of Beauty)
One of the greater mysteries is how did the Fat Woman (essentially Michel's mother) end up in Montreal in the first place. There are a few hints in this book, and more in the play For the Pleasure of Seeing Her Again, that she is from the Prairies and at least part First Nations (Cree, if I am not mistaken). It's not even entirely clear to me that French is her first language (although it is true that there were more pockets of Francophone culture outside of Quebec earlier in the 20th Century, with most of them having disappeared by the early 2000s).
A much later series explores her back story. These novels are:
- La Traversée du continent (2007) (The Crossing Continent)
- La Traversée de la ville (2008) (The Crossing of the City)
- La Traversée des sentiments (2009) (The Crossing Feelings)
What I will say is that this is probably a family that one loves from the inside, apparently quite passionately in Michel's case. From my outside vantage point, they seem like people I would steer clear of. They are loud, argumentative, nosy neighbours, very stereotypically working-class in fact. The menfolk are a bit more appealing, though Gabriel is portrayed as a bit of a coward and Edouard is a bit of an overweight, homosexual dandy. I've forgotten exactly what Edouard does, but for some reason, I'm imagining him as working in a department store, selling shoes to women (a forerunner of Al Bundy?). I'll have to come back around and fix this if it is grossly incorrect. There is one other fact that I cannot clearly get correct -- the relationship of the fiddler Josaphat to the Tremblay family. While I believe he is the brother of Victoire, he has some connection to the Fat Woman as well. He has a daughter, Laura, who is quite a bit younger than the Fat Woman or Albertine. Laura is also pregnant, as are many women on the street.
This is the family tree of the core characters, as best as I can reconstruct it. As far as I can tell, the Fat Woman is never given a name, at least in this book. I also might have the birth order of Gabriel and Albertine reversed. Albertine does occasionally act like an old sister would, but is often ignored, which tends to support the idea that she is the middle child. Edouard is definitely the youngest of the three.
There are many other characters swarming inside this book. There are two prostitutes, plying their trade just down the street. While Albertine refuses to engage with them, particularly in a curious set piece where Gabriel invites them to dinner, the Fat Woman and Victoire bend conventions a bit and are reasonably sociable.
There is another woman who runs a candy shop and has a mangy cat, Duplessis (apparently named after a Quebec premiere). The cat hardly gives her the time of day and is actually infatuated with the toddler Marcel (actually appreciating the fact he is often pee-stained). I would say the sections from the viewpoint of the cat are the least interesting to me.
While she lives in a different part of town, there is an ex-whore who used to be a big player in Ottawa, sleeping with half the Cabinet. She occasionally relives her glory days in front of her niece, who is a good soul but fairly straight-laced. This fancy woman actually lost a leg to diabetes, but cannot conquer her love of chocolate.
There are several other bit parts, including a wild streetcar driver, and a young man filling in as a park attendant, who has a disturbing interaction with Thérèse, who goes up and kisses him on the mouth. He becomes infatuated with this little girl (of about 13) and there are strong hints that he has been converted to a pedophile on the spot. I wasn't too crazy about that section of the book, and I do wonder if he resurfaces in the later novels.
As far as the magic realism goes, the novel opens with a different woman and her three daughters, all endlessly spying on neighbours and knitting. By their second appearance, it has become evident that they are some version of the Fates. Only a very few people can see them, including Josaphat, Marcel, the cat and occasionally Victoire. Josaphat also has been tasked with fiddling up the moon, and he apparently expects to pass this duty on to Marcel, who has this connection of being able to see the unreal. Personally, I am not really sure what this adds to what is already an overstuffed narrative of working-class Montreal. It will be interesting to see if the later novels are more fully realistic. While Tremblay may have been aware of the magic realism coming from South America, it is more likely he is working in the realm of Greek and First Nations myths.
While the unborn baby will clearly some day be the inquisitive and sensitive artist Michel Tremblay, this is not really a case where the baby is soaking in these influences and is certainly not aware of the events on this day (so this is not quite comparable to Carlos Fuentes' Christopher Unborn). However, the unborn baby does have an outsized impact on the family. The Fat Woman discusses a few times how greedy it was that she wanted one more baby (and even a bit unsafe at her age in those days), and her husband went along, in part because he is a weak-willed man in love with her and at least in part because he didn't want to be called up for the WWII effort. So he does internalize a bit of the contempt that outsiders heaped upon him. He also promises to move to a bigger apartment but knows he will never do so, as he loves being part of a big family.
The Fat Woman can barely move, and essentially sits in a chair in her bedroom all day. Albertine, never the most patient woman in the best of times, is forced to serve her food and even bathe her. Albertine's frustrations at being in a cramped space and having to deal with her mother's odd requests often erupt. She is often fairly cruel to Marcel, who is a demanding but basically good and loving child. It is hinted that she is actually glad her husband, Paul, is off in the war, and she has taken over his place at one end of the family dinner table.
Tremblay also goes into the travails of the other family members, such as the separate frustrations and longings of Richard and Thérèse (not for each other fortunately), and of their grandmother and Uncle Edouard. This is quite an accomplishment, given all the characters in the novel. One of the more amusing sections is when Victoire gets it into her head to go to the park, mostly as a way of punishing Edouard (who has to accompany her despite having a raging hangover). She hasn't left the house in close to 3 years, so this is quite the outing (definitely shades of Grandmother Willoweed in Barbara Comyns' Who was Changed and Who was Dead, though I suspect this is too obscure to have inspired Tremblay).
Given that all the action takes place over a day (with occasional flashbacks) there are clear links to Joyce's Ulysses and secondarily to Dubliners. This does seem to be Tremblay's attempt to do for Montreal what Joyce did for Dublin. I'd say there are also clear ties to Proust, not only in the name-checking of Albertine, but that Edouard is a bit of a call-back to the somewhat grotesque figure of Palamede, Baron de Charlus. (I will be curious to see how he is treated in later books, particularly if there is ever a scene where Michel comes out of the closet to Edouard. It's hinted that the Fat Woman ultimately knew her youngest son was gay but this was never spoken of, at least in part because she died when he was relatively young.) There is vastly more plot in Tremblay's work to be sure, and it is much more entertaining to read, even if I wouldn't want to live next door to this family in real life. I think that's all I have time for now.
Sunday, May 11, 2014
7th Canadian Challenge - 13th review - Salvage
This is actually more like a review and a half. Michael Crummey published a limited edition monograph called Emergency Roadside Assistance. All or essentially all of the poems ended up in Salvage, in some cases slightly reworked and tightened up. While one could certainly lead a mini-workshop in showing how these poems changed, I don't think that would be particularly interesting, especially given how few people will be able to get a hold of a copy of ERA. What is perhaps somewhat interesting is that the poems that I liked the most from Salvage were often originally in ERA. It may well be that Crummey is moving in a direction that I don't find that appealing. I was quite surprised to learn that I only enjoyed a single poem out of his most recent collection, Under the Keel, and thus I won't be reviewing it here.
The single best thing about ERA is how it is printed to look like the instructions that are left in the glove box for when the car breaks down. It is even packed in a plastic sleeve. Very cute.
The title poem is quite good, though it is more than a little ironic, given that the motorist is not able to just wait in the car, waiting for assistance to arrive. I'm not sure if there is supposed to be a bit of pride (or a jibe) in that Canadians ultimately have to be more self-reliant than Americans (the self-professed kings of self-reliance) or just annoyance about having to face "That bitter walk in the cold / ahead of me..."
However, this isn't because there is no one to call, but rather there is "No telling how far / I'll have to go to find / a phone tonight and I sit there / frosting the windshield as / the last of the light goes under, / thinking about that."
Given the poem was probably written in the mid 90s, it hard to tell if the poet just doesn't have a cell phone, or if the coverage doesn't reach to "the back roads / to Ottawa." The infrastructure and networks in the U.S. are just more robust and ubiquitous, and the poet probably wouldn't mind being in the U.S., facing similar circumstances. The poem ends with the poet still in the car, slightly dreading the long walk in the cold. I can certainly remember a long, long walk in the cold when the car my mom was driving died on us. I'm not quite sure why it was so hard for her to get help, but it was. That probably wouldn't happen today. It is interesting (to me) how some poems and an awful lot of novels/movies just don't make any sense anymore given the vast changes in technology. You basically have to insert an elaborate set-up for why the hero's cell phone has died or why they don't have On-Star or some similar service.
"Returning" also features winter, though it doesn't seem quite so dreadful, viewed from inside a house (with a working furnace):
First storm of a late winter, heavy
snow, a wind driven by the weight
of human anticipation,
our resignation to the season's
turning.
Turning to Salvage, winter reappears in "Simmer," which also has a bit of a meditation on passing time and change. The poem begins by casting back in time to the poet's grandmother and love of dusk, and her favourite saying "A watched pot never boils." It abruptly shifts to the present: "After the funeral we followed the hearse / in through the country to Twillingate, / crossing the causeways that replaced / ferries in the 70s, islands / strung on an asphalt necklace."
"Darkness Turns" apparently returns a year later, so is also December, this time with more snow: "Relentless winter: the driveway muscled clean / each morning is buried again at night..." The ending is a bit mysterious: "No one remembers why darkness turns / the green poinsettia red. It just does." While there is definitely some lingering sorrow over the grandmother's absence, the holidays are around the corner, and the sense that life does go on.
I liked "Dostoevsky" which features a train ride through part of the Gobi desert. He actually has written a number of poems about train rides in China in his previous collections, and they are often quite good. In fact, this may be my favourite poem of the collection that wasn't also in Emergency Roadside Assistance, so I will wrap up with a short discussion of it. The poet has brought a copy of The Brothers Karamazov to help pass the time on the train. A fellow passenger (an old man) "leans in to lift the novel / from his hands, inspecting the cover / ... Returns the book with a shrug, / disappointed somehow..."
He considers the old man to be "inscrutable as a Russian winter." I'm not sure why this is any more or less "readable" than any other winter, but probably it is a bit of a riff on Churchill claiming the Soviet Union was "a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma." No question that this poem is focused on the limits of communication (and plays up mystery in the landscape as well as amongst the passengers), whereas David O'Meara's "Night Train" approaches the same subject but with more confidence that connections across cultures can be made.
Here is the final stanza of "Dostoevsky":
The train sways on the rails like a voice
holding and holding a single note,
the desert leans in the window
muttering its stark indecipherable language.
The single best thing about ERA is how it is printed to look like the instructions that are left in the glove box for when the car breaks down. It is even packed in a plastic sleeve. Very cute.
The title poem is quite good, though it is more than a little ironic, given that the motorist is not able to just wait in the car, waiting for assistance to arrive. I'm not sure if there is supposed to be a bit of pride (or a jibe) in that Canadians ultimately have to be more self-reliant than Americans (the self-professed kings of self-reliance) or just annoyance about having to face "That bitter walk in the cold / ahead of me..."
However, this isn't because there is no one to call, but rather there is "No telling how far / I'll have to go to find / a phone tonight and I sit there / frosting the windshield as / the last of the light goes under, / thinking about that."
Given the poem was probably written in the mid 90s, it hard to tell if the poet just doesn't have a cell phone, or if the coverage doesn't reach to "the back roads / to Ottawa." The infrastructure and networks in the U.S. are just more robust and ubiquitous, and the poet probably wouldn't mind being in the U.S., facing similar circumstances. The poem ends with the poet still in the car, slightly dreading the long walk in the cold. I can certainly remember a long, long walk in the cold when the car my mom was driving died on us. I'm not quite sure why it was so hard for her to get help, but it was. That probably wouldn't happen today. It is interesting (to me) how some poems and an awful lot of novels/movies just don't make any sense anymore given the vast changes in technology. You basically have to insert an elaborate set-up for why the hero's cell phone has died or why they don't have On-Star or some similar service.
"Returning" also features winter, though it doesn't seem quite so dreadful, viewed from inside a house (with a working furnace):
First storm of a late winter, heavy
snow, a wind driven by the weight
of human anticipation,
our resignation to the season's
turning.
Turning to Salvage, winter reappears in "Simmer," which also has a bit of a meditation on passing time and change. The poem begins by casting back in time to the poet's grandmother and love of dusk, and her favourite saying "A watched pot never boils." It abruptly shifts to the present: "After the funeral we followed the hearse / in through the country to Twillingate, / crossing the causeways that replaced / ferries in the 70s, islands / strung on an asphalt necklace."
"Darkness Turns" apparently returns a year later, so is also December, this time with more snow: "Relentless winter: the driveway muscled clean / each morning is buried again at night..." The ending is a bit mysterious: "No one remembers why darkness turns / the green poinsettia red. It just does." While there is definitely some lingering sorrow over the grandmother's absence, the holidays are around the corner, and the sense that life does go on.
I liked "Dostoevsky" which features a train ride through part of the Gobi desert. He actually has written a number of poems about train rides in China in his previous collections, and they are often quite good. In fact, this may be my favourite poem of the collection that wasn't also in Emergency Roadside Assistance, so I will wrap up with a short discussion of it. The poet has brought a copy of The Brothers Karamazov to help pass the time on the train. A fellow passenger (an old man) "leans in to lift the novel / from his hands, inspecting the cover / ... Returns the book with a shrug, / disappointed somehow..."
He considers the old man to be "inscrutable as a Russian winter." I'm not sure why this is any more or less "readable" than any other winter, but probably it is a bit of a riff on Churchill claiming the Soviet Union was "a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma." No question that this poem is focused on the limits of communication (and plays up mystery in the landscape as well as amongst the passengers), whereas David O'Meara's "Night Train" approaches the same subject but with more confidence that connections across cultures can be made.
Here is the final stanza of "Dostoevsky":
The train sways on the rails like a voice
holding and holding a single note,
the desert leans in the window
muttering its stark indecipherable language.
Packing the books away
Well, the day has arrived to start packing up the books. This is always a bit traumatic. Even though rationally I know I can't read (much) more than I already do, I hate the idea that the vast majority of my books will be crated up and inaccessible for a few months. (I did pull together one book of the most critical books on the TBR pile to see if I can get through any of those, and more critically, leave them behind in Vancouver.) Some books just scream out, you should read me, you were intrigued by me once, what happened?
At the same time, it is interesting as I go through some of the boxes and find books that had been misplaced and some presumed lost.* One of the more interesting discoveries was an entire box of books that I have been trying to sell either on-line or at local used book stores. While I think it is marginally easier to sell used books in Toronto (though still much harder than it would have been even 10 years ago), I think in the end, I'll have to donate them to the library. I have no intention of carting around books with no meaningful resale value. I will admit to being a bit flummoxed by David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas. I'm not that likely to read it again, but I thought it was an interesting book, and it's not impossible that I will tackle it again now that I have seen the movie. What makes it even more ridiculous, is that I may have two copies, but I won't know for certain until I unpack later in the summer.
While I wouldn't say that I have really made that many hard decisions (and am hanging onto far too many books), I am getting rid of the Molly Keane book discussed here, as well as Bissondath's Innocence of Age, which started well, but ended up being a disappointment to me (it turns out this was my very first Canadian challenge review). Despite really loving the cover, I'm going to have to part with it.
For some of the marginal books, I am checking the holdings of the Toronto Public Library. I find it so odd that many novels are reference holdings there. It really seems to defeat the purpose. That is one main reason I ended up reading so much Keane and Comyns here, since I couldn't check them out in Toronto. Of course, the reality is that a book that is just on a virtual library holding shelf is a book that I probably won't get to in this lifetime. But that's the case for a lot of the books that don't make it out of the boxes.
I had really thought that I could live with four main bookshelves (two for fiction and two for urban studies/sociology/transportation), but it just isn't enough. It's too hard to leave so many classics stashed away where I really can't find them. So like a man finally admitting he needs to buy a bigger pair of pants, I will get another bookcase (or two) once we are settled in Toronto. At least, this should be the last major move, and there is a tiny chance this will be the last move of all.
I've been blocked on packing (not so much mentally but because the landlord had left a lot of junk on our garage space). Now that that has been cleared away, I threw down a tarp and started packing in earnest. We got through 20 boxes on Sat. I am kind of tied up today with work and a concert today, but I think the vast majority of books will be packed by next weekend. It will be another week to pack up the CDs and DVDs (setting aside at least a few more to sell off), but then I'll be largely done with the office.
Well, except that the files are a bit of a different story. Vast quantities have been scanned, but I am really unwilling to recycle this paper until I have verified that the scanned version is acceptable, so that will take a bit longer. Still, I have disposed of roughly 50% of the files I brought to Vancouver, which I consider a major accomplishment. The hardest will be going through all the detritus that accumulates at the bottom of desk drawers and probably should just be pitched out. I'll try to be stronger about parting with it in this move.
Minor update -- work indeed prevented me from getting a lot of boxing done on Sunday, though we did pack up about half of the children's books. While I exercised a lot of executive decision-making, hanging onto books that I felt needed to be kept, it was interesting to see which books my daughter did and didn't want. She definitely is skewing towards easier books, though she can read proto-chapter books, whereas my son has definitely launched himself well into YA territory, only really interested in books with a quest of some sort.
* There is one CD box set that has not turned up since I moved to Vancouver, and I really hope it turns up as I start going through a few of these random boxes that haven't been fully unpacked from the last move...
Edit (5/16/2015 -- incredibly, this box set by David Oistrakh is one where two different internet sellers simply failed to come through, and I had forgotten that until going through old emails, so it wasn't missing at all. I finally bought the set (successfully) last November, though I haven't listened to the whole thing yet. I never thought this day would come, but I basically am shaking free of the need to horde music (and DVDs) that I never listen to (or watch). I haven't cut the purchases to zero (yet), but I am going 3 or 4 weeks without shopping at Amazon, which is a major improvement from before.
As it turns out we are making one more move, but only 3 blocks away, so it doesn't feel quite so overwhelming as these cross-country moves, but I still find myself packing things up that I know I won't look at or use anytime soon, and I tell myself I ought to do the sorting now, but I know I won't. I'm kind of astounded that I packed up 20 boxes in one day in Vancouver, but maybe I had the kids helping out. That's not a bad idea for today...
At the same time, it is interesting as I go through some of the boxes and find books that had been misplaced and some presumed lost.* One of the more interesting discoveries was an entire box of books that I have been trying to sell either on-line or at local used book stores. While I think it is marginally easier to sell used books in Toronto (though still much harder than it would have been even 10 years ago), I think in the end, I'll have to donate them to the library. I have no intention of carting around books with no meaningful resale value. I will admit to being a bit flummoxed by David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas. I'm not that likely to read it again, but I thought it was an interesting book, and it's not impossible that I will tackle it again now that I have seen the movie. What makes it even more ridiculous, is that I may have two copies, but I won't know for certain until I unpack later in the summer.
While I wouldn't say that I have really made that many hard decisions (and am hanging onto far too many books), I am getting rid of the Molly Keane book discussed here, as well as Bissondath's Innocence of Age, which started well, but ended up being a disappointment to me (it turns out this was my very first Canadian challenge review). Despite really loving the cover, I'm going to have to part with it.
For some of the marginal books, I am checking the holdings of the Toronto Public Library. I find it so odd that many novels are reference holdings there. It really seems to defeat the purpose. That is one main reason I ended up reading so much Keane and Comyns here, since I couldn't check them out in Toronto. Of course, the reality is that a book that is just on a virtual library holding shelf is a book that I probably won't get to in this lifetime. But that's the case for a lot of the books that don't make it out of the boxes.
I had really thought that I could live with four main bookshelves (two for fiction and two for urban studies/sociology/transportation), but it just isn't enough. It's too hard to leave so many classics stashed away where I really can't find them. So like a man finally admitting he needs to buy a bigger pair of pants, I will get another bookcase (or two) once we are settled in Toronto. At least, this should be the last major move, and there is a tiny chance this will be the last move of all.
I've been blocked on packing (not so much mentally but because the landlord had left a lot of junk on our garage space). Now that that has been cleared away, I threw down a tarp and started packing in earnest. We got through 20 boxes on Sat. I am kind of tied up today with work and a concert today, but I think the vast majority of books will be packed by next weekend. It will be another week to pack up the CDs and DVDs (setting aside at least a few more to sell off), but then I'll be largely done with the office.
Well, except that the files are a bit of a different story. Vast quantities have been scanned, but I am really unwilling to recycle this paper until I have verified that the scanned version is acceptable, so that will take a bit longer. Still, I have disposed of roughly 50% of the files I brought to Vancouver, which I consider a major accomplishment. The hardest will be going through all the detritus that accumulates at the bottom of desk drawers and probably should just be pitched out. I'll try to be stronger about parting with it in this move.
Minor update -- work indeed prevented me from getting a lot of boxing done on Sunday, though we did pack up about half of the children's books. While I exercised a lot of executive decision-making, hanging onto books that I felt needed to be kept, it was interesting to see which books my daughter did and didn't want. She definitely is skewing towards easier books, though she can read proto-chapter books, whereas my son has definitely launched himself well into YA territory, only really interested in books with a quest of some sort.
* There is one CD box set that has not turned up since I moved to Vancouver, and I really hope it turns up as I start going through a few of these random boxes that haven't been fully unpacked from the last move...
Edit (5/16/2015 -- incredibly, this box set by David Oistrakh is one where two different internet sellers simply failed to come through, and I had forgotten that until going through old emails, so it wasn't missing at all. I finally bought the set (successfully) last November, though I haven't listened to the whole thing yet. I never thought this day would come, but I basically am shaking free of the need to horde music (and DVDs) that I never listen to (or watch). I haven't cut the purchases to zero (yet), but I am going 3 or 4 weeks without shopping at Amazon, which is a major improvement from before.
As it turns out we are making one more move, but only 3 blocks away, so it doesn't feel quite so overwhelming as these cross-country moves, but I still find myself packing things up that I know I won't look at or use anytime soon, and I tell myself I ought to do the sorting now, but I know I won't. I'm kind of astounded that I packed up 20 boxes in one day in Vancouver, but maybe I had the kids helping out. That's not a bad idea for today...
Friday, May 9, 2014
Interesting overheard conversation/transaction #2
I was in a bus shelter last night, trying to stay out of a mini-deluge, after hearing a staged reading of Jordan Hall's Travelling Light. (I may have more to say on this later. I found it interesting, though it mostly dealt with physics on a Popular Science level and the main characters' motivations were a bit unbelievable. It also seems impossible to stage. I didn't think the jumping around in time really helped matters, and it sort of seems like a blatant rip-off of Dr. Manhattan in The Watchmen to have a character skip around in time simultaneously. I did like the riff on the joke "A particle physicist walks into a reactor," however. I thought the treatment of time in Penny Penniston's Now Then Again was actually more in line with scientific theory.)
In any event, there was a young woman in the shelter talking excitedly on the phone about some place she had scored. She said something like "It's got a stove, so all we have to do is find someplace to shower." And I thought, 'Ah, the romance of loft living or even near-squatting. I sure don't miss those days.' After some further discussions with the friend, including chiding her for not going in for a job interview that the woman had set up, it became clear that she and some friends had actually purchased a camper of some type. She started talking about interior design possibilities and asked the friend to bring her some cloth swatches. The discussion switched to whether they needed to retrofit it with seat belts in the back and thus whether it was street legal in Washington and Oregon. She was quite excited about this adventure, almost like the Edward Abbey's Monkey Wrench Gang but without the environmental angle (she didn't make this connection), and was particularly psyched that they already had "growlers" to drink out of. So they were pretty much set for the road...
A sketchy character joined us in the shelter. I tuned him out and kept waiting for the bus. It was a fairly long wait. A black man came in out of the rain, and within a minute the two of them commenced a drug deal of some sort (I think it was just marijuana but had no interest in getting too involved). There are quite a number of things I don't like about Vancouver, and the willingness to let the Downtown East Side sink into a total cesspit in order to maintain the mayor's liberal cred is in the top 5. As it happens, I can't wait for the day they go ahead and legalize weed, just so the ridiculousness around it can cease (and not because I have any intention of partaking). It's de facto legal in Vancouver, but there is still all this legal limbo around it. Even if the U.S. drags its feet for another 20 years, Canada can and should legalize it in 2015 (assuming the Liberals finally kick Harper out of office). However, even if it were legal, have a little respect for others and don't deal under our noses. (I will admit I was glad that the deal took a little while -- the Black guy actually had to roll up a joint -- and they ended up not getting on my bus after it finally arrived.)
Anyway, I just find it so f'ing depressing when people live up to or down to their stereotypes. I still recall taking a Metra train out to the North Shore suburbs. There were two young Mexicans on the train (indeed the only Latinos that I saw). They began chatting and one admitted he had been exiled to the suburbs to keep him out of trouble. While it took them a bit longer, dancing around the subject, they too were doing a drug deal within a matter of minutes, without any concern of being overheard and certainly not being arrested. How refreshing it would have been if one of these people had said: "Why do you think I deal drugs? Just because I'm Black/Mexican?" But no, the signifier was quite accurate in both cases. Sigh.
In any event, there was a young woman in the shelter talking excitedly on the phone about some place she had scored. She said something like "It's got a stove, so all we have to do is find someplace to shower." And I thought, 'Ah, the romance of loft living or even near-squatting. I sure don't miss those days.' After some further discussions with the friend, including chiding her for not going in for a job interview that the woman had set up, it became clear that she and some friends had actually purchased a camper of some type. She started talking about interior design possibilities and asked the friend to bring her some cloth swatches. The discussion switched to whether they needed to retrofit it with seat belts in the back and thus whether it was street legal in Washington and Oregon. She was quite excited about this adventure, almost like the Edward Abbey's Monkey Wrench Gang but without the environmental angle (she didn't make this connection), and was particularly psyched that they already had "growlers" to drink out of. So they were pretty much set for the road...
A sketchy character joined us in the shelter. I tuned him out and kept waiting for the bus. It was a fairly long wait. A black man came in out of the rain, and within a minute the two of them commenced a drug deal of some sort (I think it was just marijuana but had no interest in getting too involved). There are quite a number of things I don't like about Vancouver, and the willingness to let the Downtown East Side sink into a total cesspit in order to maintain the mayor's liberal cred is in the top 5. As it happens, I can't wait for the day they go ahead and legalize weed, just so the ridiculousness around it can cease (and not because I have any intention of partaking). It's de facto legal in Vancouver, but there is still all this legal limbo around it. Even if the U.S. drags its feet for another 20 years, Canada can and should legalize it in 2015 (assuming the Liberals finally kick Harper out of office). However, even if it were legal, have a little respect for others and don't deal under our noses. (I will admit I was glad that the deal took a little while -- the Black guy actually had to roll up a joint -- and they ended up not getting on my bus after it finally arrived.)
Anyway, I just find it so f'ing depressing when people live up to or down to their stereotypes. I still recall taking a Metra train out to the North Shore suburbs. There were two young Mexicans on the train (indeed the only Latinos that I saw). They began chatting and one admitted he had been exiled to the suburbs to keep him out of trouble. While it took them a bit longer, dancing around the subject, they too were doing a drug deal within a matter of minutes, without any concern of being overheard and certainly not being arrested. How refreshing it would have been if one of these people had said: "Why do you think I deal drugs? Just because I'm Black/Mexican?" But no, the signifier was quite accurate in both cases. Sigh.
Wednesday, May 7, 2014
Corporate Haiku
Well, this title is a bit of a tease. I have been working for about a week solid on a proposal, and someone suggested we needed some very short pieces in call-out boxes for the non-technical people (who are going to ignore everything else in the proposal). So I churned these three out, and noticed that they did look like corporate poetry, though none of them are remotely haiku. (Maybe next time.) Enjoy!
Firm A/Firm B:
cutting-edge experience
in advanced model development
combined with local understanding.
This project is centered
around the client's needs
for a forecasting tool
to inform critical decisions
on infrastructure,
pricing and tolling,
transit congestion,
highway congestion,
supporting Green modes,
reducing greenhouse gases,
and improving freight movement
throughout the region.
The proposed enhancements
to the model support
better forecasts and
a deeper understanding
of these issues.
Enhancements to the model
extend the work and school
journey concept to full-tour
modelling with consideration
of impact of stops in the combined
mode choice/time-of-day model.
With the addition of destination choice
for all tour/trip purposes, as well as
a stop location model
for inbound and outbound legs,
the model is well-positioned to
move to an activity-based model
in the next phase of enhancements.
Friday, May 2, 2014
Am I Blue?
This has to be quite a short post. I've just gotten back from a trip to Baltimore and Washington D.C. The Baltimore portion of the trip went really well, though I was disappointed to find there are apparently no Chase banks in that part of the world. I did find one ATM that didn't have out-of-network fees. It was particularly good that I managed to have much of the day to myself on Sunday, walking around taking photos and then going to both the Walters Art Museum (for the first time) and the Baltimore Museum of Art (for the second time). Monday it started to rain and it just got worse and worse on Tuesday. I wasn't going, but some folks I was with had wanted to go to Camden Yards to see the Orioles Tuesday evening, but the game was called off.
But that was nothing compared to the rain in D.C. on Wed. It just would not stop. I got soaked, then would get into another museum to dry off, then go out again and get soaked again. Apparently, Wed. did set some single day records for rain. On top of everything else, the East Wing of the National Gallery of Art (where all the modern art is displayed) was closed for renovation. That was a big blow. And half of the Hirshhorn was closed, so that was another blow. I'm not entirely sure I would have made the trip had I known about these closings as well as the torrential rains. I probably would have been better off just flying home on Wed. Of course, given my luck my flight would have been cancelled.
Of the few modern art works on display at the NGA was this Rothko.
It kind of summed up my feelings at the time, various shades of blue.
However, I did have time to check out the Sackler/Freer Galleries. While I sadly was a few days too early to catch the Whistler and the Thames exhibit, I did see a very nice exhibit on a Japanese artist Kobayashi Kiyochika, who was known for woodblock prints of twilight and night scenes. This was quite a nice exhibit. Appropriately enough, a few featured rainy evenings. More information here.
I wasn't quite done (nor was the rain), and I went to the Smithsonian American Art Museum, which is open later. It was worth the visit, though I was disturbed by an unusually large and noisy group of school children with too few chaperones. The rain was finally slowing as I got to the hotel, and Thurs. was actually quite a nice day, but I had to head to the airport. I'll try to write a bit more about this eventful last week over the weekend.
But that was nothing compared to the rain in D.C. on Wed. It just would not stop. I got soaked, then would get into another museum to dry off, then go out again and get soaked again. Apparently, Wed. did set some single day records for rain. On top of everything else, the East Wing of the National Gallery of Art (where all the modern art is displayed) was closed for renovation. That was a big blow. And half of the Hirshhorn was closed, so that was another blow. I'm not entirely sure I would have made the trip had I known about these closings as well as the torrential rains. I probably would have been better off just flying home on Wed. Of course, given my luck my flight would have been cancelled.
Of the few modern art works on display at the NGA was this Rothko.
 |
| Rothko -- No. 14 |
However, I did have time to check out the Sackler/Freer Galleries. While I sadly was a few days too early to catch the Whistler and the Thames exhibit, I did see a very nice exhibit on a Japanese artist Kobayashi Kiyochika, who was known for woodblock prints of twilight and night scenes. This was quite a nice exhibit. Appropriately enough, a few featured rainy evenings. More information here.
 |
| Kiyochika -- Rainy Night at Yanagiwara |
 |
| Kiyochika -- Kudanzaka at Night in Early Summer |
I wasn't quite done (nor was the rain), and I went to the Smithsonian American Art Museum, which is open later. It was worth the visit, though I was disturbed by an unusually large and noisy group of school children with too few chaperones. The rain was finally slowing as I got to the hotel, and Thurs. was actually quite a nice day, but I had to head to the airport. I'll try to write a bit more about this eventful last week over the weekend.
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