Saddest Father's Day aka Deck Follies #3

That was what my daughter told me: that it was the saddest Father's Day when I told her I would be working most of the day (as well as going off and getting the groceries).  We agreed that hungry fathers were sadder, but yes, it was pretty sad that I would have to work.  Both the kids helped a bit on the deck, but it was a fairly hot day, and I didn't want them to overdo it.  I might have a touch of heatstroke myself.

I didn't mind the working per se, but the fact that it just doesn't look much better after an entire day's work.  See below.

I am finding the paint on the boards to the right is just entirely intractable.  It can't be scraped off and it has to be sanded off.  Even to the left where the paint often peeled off, there are still lots of spots left to be sanded.  It's looking like even with the wash (which I can probably put on tonight or Tuesday, which is a bit more likely), it will be another day of medium sanding and then a day of fine sanding, which would be next weekend.  After that, I will just leave whatever paint is left and go ahead and start staining.  I can't be bothered anymore at this point. 

Depending on the weather and how much I can do in the evenings, I might have the first coat down by Canada Day.

Anyway, I am going to shower and head off to Luminato to hear Tafelmusik.  Hopefully that will partially make up for a fairly tough day.  Ciao.

9th Canadian Challenge - 18th Review - The Moons of Jupiter

It's actually a bit shocking how long I have been sitting on this review (roughly 5 months).  It is unfortunate, as this is my overall favourite Munro collection to date, though I have to admit it gets off to a fairly slow start.  Overall, The Moons of Jupiter is a welcome return to form from Alice Munro.  I really wasn't all that crazy about Who Do You Think You Are?, particularly when Munro was clearly using these stories to work out issues with her own marriage and essentially attack her former husband.

There is one moment that was very uncomfortable in the first story (or rather a pair of stories -- "Chaddeleys and Flemings") where her husband criticizes one her relatives and she throws a plate at his head.  The plate misses him but he still ends up with pie on his face.  Munro has a short note about how what sort of seems funny on TV or in the movies can be shocking in real life (though of course this is still just mediated experience in a supposedly entertaining story).  The narrator of these stories doesn't really acknowledge that she was deeply in the wrong and that violence is never acceptable in a marriage.  So I was worried that this would be another collection where Munro was still going to be attacking her ex-husband in various ways.  Fortunately, this was the last story along those lines.

I found the next story "Dulce" to be kind of meandering and the next one was sort of a snapshot of a youngster learning about the adult world as she worked in a turkey processing plant over the summer.

"Accident" is the first story where Munro really throws the reader a curve ball.  The story starts off describing a somewhat desultory affair between two teachers in small town Ontario (still Hanratty).  Then there is a terrible automobile accident, which sends the main couple into a somewhat unexpected direction.  Perhaps one could call it the carpe diem effect, though of course not everyone agrees on what (or whom) must be seized (or life would be much easier).  This was the first story in the collection that really caught my attention.

I also appreciated "Labor Day Dinner" which featured a near-accident that got the main character thinking about the preciousness of life.  This story essentially showed the inner thoughts of two people in a second marriage and was a bit more rounded than some of Munro's earlier stories (particularly those in Who Do You Think You Are?).  It started out with getting into the head of Roberta, who was starting to feel dissatisfied with her marriage to Gary, primarily around how he subtly (or unsubtly) criticized the way she was raising her children.  She seemed to feel that they needed the summer off to deal with the new family dynamics, and Gary basically felt they should be doing "something" or working.  (This is what I remember, but it has been a long time since my first reading of the story.)  Where this is a bit different from earlier Munro stories is that Munro then shifts perspective to Gary and shows how some of his frustration stems from being the unappreciated bread-earner who is actually somewhat unsure of his status, particularly with the children, who seem to be comparing him to their father in a sort of competition (where he doesn't really know the rules).  This is somewhat akin to Eliot's Middlemarch, though Munro isn't quite so blunt about what her characters are thinking and the reader must infer quite a bit.  We even see a bit into the minds of the children, and one is more or less a peace-maker while the other one never wants to fall in love, since she doesn't like the changes that have come over her mother.  This sounds like it could be the set-up for some heavy play by Eugene O'Neil when in fact it is basically just a pretty typical day for a blended family, and Munro seems to hint that one shouldn't dwell too much on the negatives since family dynamics are changing all the time and in some cases getting better.  It is very possible that next summer, the children (particularly Eva, the younger) will be more accepting of Gary.  Roberta wants to get back to work (as a book illustrator) and Gary is supportive of this in a general way, so it might well happen.  Of course, it might not and they end up in a very crabbed marriage, but that wasn't the sense I got from the ending of the story.  Again, I may be over-interpreting what is going on, but I generally think that Munro is good at exploring these transitory states and how a person's life and even their feelings about their own life isn't stable.  (One very good exploration of this idea is Michel Tremblay's Albertine in 5 times where Albertine alternates between being deeply discouraged about her life and being more upbeat or at least more philosophical.)  I'll come back to this idea when I write about the title story.

Munro was basically in her late 40s during the writing of these stories, but she may well have started facing up to the ordeals of dealing with elderly parents (again a major theme of "The Moons of Jupiter").  "Mrs. Cross and Mrs. Kidd" features two older women in a managed care facility of some type.  They look out for each other, and the story mostly appears to be about perseverance and finding ways to manage in a fairly impersonal institution.  Munro actually has written a fair bit about old women ending up along in these kinds of nursing homes (especially Flo in Who Do You Think You Are?), and it possibly was one of her biggest fears that it would happen to her.

"Visitors" is a slightly different take on aging, about a couple that has retired (relatively recently?) -- Mildred and Wilfred -- and how Wilfred's brother has turned up on a visit with his wife and her sister (who is almost a twin).  Their house is quite small and they struggle to fit everyone in.  Fortunately, the 3 visitors are stick-thin, but the couple are overweight and can hardly seem to fit into their own bed now that they are obliged to sleep in one room, rather than wherever they choose in their home.  Wilfred has stayed relatively close to where they grew up, though he has never visited.  (He had a hard-luck story of their mother dying giving birth to him and then his aunt dying when he was roughly 12 and his uncle driving him out of the house to fend for himself.  His brother was somewhat older and somehow managed to get to business college but wasn't in a position to help Wilfred out.) Mildred convinces everyone to head out to see the old homestead about 45 miles away.  It turns out that the old farm has vanished, and they spend nearly as much time investigating and talking about a nearby swamp.  Mildred is astonished how the two sisters are like peas in a pod, while Wilfred and his brother Alfred don't seem to have anything at all in common, not even their general outlook on life, with Wilfred being the more easy-going and open of the two, despite having less education and certainly fewer opportunities.  After the visitors leave, Mildred is astonished to find Wilfred crying and saying that he will never see Alfred again.  Mildred says that it isn't that difficult for them to visit his brother in Saskatchewan, though she thinks it "she would be as likely to visit Siberia."  The story feels set in a time when physical distances across Canada were shrinking but the psychological feeling of separation still remained.  I can attest that long-distance phone call bills in the late 70s and early 80s were nothing to sneeze at, so people just didn't stay quite as connected.  In a sense, this story occurs at a midway point on the mobility/connectedness spectrum when compared to an episode from Gabrielle Roy's Street of Riches where the narrator and her mother go off on an extended trip back to Quebec to see relatives at a time when the general population just didn't make long-distance pleasure trips.

The collection ends with "The Moons of Jupiter," which is another story that hints at multiple viewpoints (in this case the narrator, Janet, and her father).  The father has suffered a medical episode with his heart and he is given only 3 or so months to live unless he has surgery.  After a night of reflection (and listening to an older, more cautious doctor), it appears that he has decided against the surgery, and Janet takes this in stride.  He never made a fuss, and this seems natural to her that he would take the path of least resistance, i.e. going home and trying to take it easy during his last days.  Then there is a bit of a discursion where Janet remembers how she was upset when her father confided that her formative years were just a blur to him (when they were so crystal clear in her memory) and then she finds the same thing has happened to her with her two children.  At any rate, she calls her father and finds out that he is about to drive back to Toronto for the surgery after all.  He says in an offhand way that he "might as well" have the surgery.  It turns out that he didn't want to go gently into the night after all.  (I suspect this is another area where Janet will come over to his point of view when she is his age.  There are very few people who are truly stoic when it comes to their own demise, or at least if they are not in a state of constant pain, which is another thing altogether.  There is no indication that her father is suffering in any meaningful way, other than having a somewhat wonky heart.)

The story wraps up with a bit of a discussion of Janet's visit to the ROM and the planetarium (where she sees a show about the planets and the moons of Jupiter) while she has some time to kill between tests that the hospital is doing to ensure that her father is stable enough for surgery.  She spends most of her time at the ROM in the Chinese temple that used to be on the Bloor side of the museum (where the gift shop inside the hideous Crystal is now).  Both the planetarium show and the sense of eternity one gets in a really old space (even a reconstructed one) calm her down and let her take the longer view.  While the surgery most likely will be successful, there is no question her father may not wake up and he will be snuffed out like a candle, i.e. all at once, and this actually seems to be what is bothering her.  It seems that she would have preferred the assurance of more time spent with him (even though it might only have been for a few more months) as opposed to this gambit, this gamble, for a longer time spent on the earth.  Still, she realizes it was his choice to make.  Again, I liked the way that multiple viewpoints come through in the story, and Janet recognizes that her decisions or preferences are not inherently better than her father's.  Also, I liked how this story memorialized the ROM in its glory days before the horrible desecration by Libeskind.

After a fairly thorough revisiting of this collection, it appears that my positive view of it stems primarily from "Labor Day Dinner" and "The Moons of Jupiter," though some of the other stories are interesting.  I found it impressive how a number of viewpoints could be represented in short form.  I do hope that this was not a fluke and this is the way Munro's writing was trending.  It might be a while (six months or so) before I get around to her next collection, The Progress of Love, though I have said I would make an attempt to read more Canadian fiction during the 10th Canadian Challenge, so perhaps I will end up picking up the pace a bit to ensure I get through that and Friend of My Youth before the next (but hopefully not last!) Challenge ends.

Deck Follies #2

Progress has been slow, but I made just enough today to avoid the slough of despond.  Will I actually manage to get all the paint sanded and scraped off by Sunday 5:30 pm (at about which time I need to pack up and head over to the Hearn)?  I doubt it, though it is not impossible.  I'm going to switch to a different grit tomorrow.  I think I will avoid putting down any more stripper, as tempting as that is, and perhaps cover the whole area with the cleaning solution and let that soak in for a while.  I really ought to see about starting to put the cleaning solution on the bottom part of the deck, but this looks like it is going to be a multi-day process, certainly including the sanding of the bottom part of the deck, and then the staining.  But I might be done with the top part by Canada Day, and then I could at least get the deck furniture back in place.  Maybe that is the more sensible approach.

Anyway, to give you an understanding of what I did today (Saturday), this is where I had to leave off last weekend.

And this is where I am today.

There are still a lot of very stubborn patches of paint left, and it is possible I do give up and just stain on top of some of them, though hopefully few (and only in places that are not quite so out in the open).

I do know that I will surely be sore tomorrow, and I can assure you that I am not enjoying this at all.

Mo' Much Ado Mo' Problems

I'm going to throw up a relatively short review, since I don't think anyone has reviewed the joint production of Unit 102 Theatre Company and Leroy Street Theatre of Much Ado About Nothing.  It is playing this weekend and then next week, and that's it.  Several nights have sold out, but it was a thin, but appreciative, crowd last night.  I would definitely encourage more people to make it out.  Details here.

While the Majlis Art Garden wasn't quite as spectacular as I had in my mind, it was an interesting hybrid space.  You are clearly outside, yet covered in case it does start raining.  Not to scare anyone off, but there are small animals in the garden, and one actually scampered across the seating area in the second half.  Virtually all the performance is in a stage area, though Benedict does hide in the bushes (next to the audience) at one point in the play.  Since the outside world was literally locked away, the performance was far more intimate than the usual Shakespeare in the Park (this review does suggest that Love's Labour's Lost is struggling a bit in its setting).  As is typical in many of the comedies, they have musicians and even a bit of dancing integrated into the show.

I thought they did a very good job of the play.  I could see Margaret struggling with the decision to reveal what she knew when Hero is falsely accused.  Unlike in Othello, where it would cost Emilia personally very little to reveal that the handkerchief was not a particularly valid token of dishonor, Margaret would be quite stained to reveal that she had been messin' about in Hero's chambers.  Nonetheless, she is quite the moral coward not to have done so, and it is a little strange that she comes back on and is just bantering with Hero and Beatrice during the period Hero is pretending to be dead.  Maybe she is an expert on going with the flow.  (It is interesting that there still is a fair bit of bantering, particularly between Beatrice and Benedict in the 2nd half of the play, but that is probably Shakespeare's way of hinting that this is a comedy and things will be set right.  That said, for much of this later battle of wits, Beatrice is using her feminine wiles to ensure that Benedict will challenge Claudio to a duel.)

This may be the strongest Benedict and Beatrice I have seen, and it is worth catching the show to see them in action.  Both Claudio and Hero are played by younger, less experienced souls, sort of as a way of excusing their tempestuousness (a la Romeo and Juliet).  What was really quite interesting to me, and something you don't usually get with outdoor theatre, is that they ended with Hero in a particularly pensive mood, perhaps a bit envious of Beatrice finding a more noble mate than Claudio has turned out to be.  Does she really even want to be married to him, even though it was all just a mistake, and he is surely repentant?  She doesn't really say a lot in the last scene, other than to repeat her claim that she is innocent of all charges that had been laid against her -- and she is in a jolly mood when she hands over Beatrice's note saying that she (Beatrice) was enamoured of Benedict.  I think this is a perfectly logical, if slightly downbeat ending, trying to push Much Ado About Nothing into the category of a problem play.  It's certainly not how it is usually played.  If they succeed, there will be very few pure comedies left in Shakespeare's oeuvre...

Of course, nothing can take away from the pure silliness of Dogberry, here played by Chloe Sullivan.  She is quite good, and the role seems a million miles away from the prostitute she played in Red Light Winter last winter.  So again, quite a few reasons to see this show.  It is a bit of a shame that it ran for two weeks only, and interested parties have just a bit over a week left to catch it.

I think it is fair to say that in Shakespeare's day, it would have been fairly difficult to construe Much Ado About Nothing as any sort of a problem play, since not just one but two marriages were soon to be completed and two houses tied together.  Emotional fulfillment only came into the picture secondarily.  Also, as Benedict himself says "The world must be peopled."

Nonetheless, I've already written about how difficult it can be to reconcile today's understanding of marriage and the status of women and several of these plays.  No question the hardest is The Taming of the Shrew, which in some ways has such a meaty role for an overlooked, unlovable character such as Katherine, but the last scene where she revels in her submission is almost entirely impossible to reconcile with such a reading of the play.  Generally, the closest one can come is to play it as though the lines are in fact not totally sincere, but Katherine is putting on a show partly for her own amusement.  As it happens, just the other day, this issue came up in the New York Times.  The Shrew probably would just end up relegated to the bottom of the heap of problem plays aside from the fact that it does offer up these meaty roles and it is so funny (aside from Katherine's speech about submission).  I noted elsewhere that Driftwood will be doing it in Withrow Park this July, and I wish I knew just how they were going to handle this (and whether they would subvert the final message of the play), since I would like to take my son to the show.  In a way, it is amazing that a play over 400 years old can still inspire such different approaches/ideas and even heated feelings.  I am very glad not to be living in a society where hurt feelings are to be avoided at all costs (or even one in which ambiguity (and irony?) must be stomped out) and that we can have challenging plays in our parks.  And with that, I will step aside for a while.

Long day - and what makes a million

I suppose many of my days are long, even at the new gig which usually lets me go home at a usual hour.  In any case, I had a meeting Thurs. morning at 9 sharp, so I made my way to the bus stop a bit early.  (I had originally been told it would rain Thurs., but the rain actually came earlier on Wed. (just as I was crossing the river on my bike incidentally).)  The transit app said the bus would be there in 3 minutes, which wasn't too bad, but I think they must have cancelled a bus, since it clearly ended up being 12-13 minutes.  I am getting really annoyed at the unpredictability of the Pape bus, even though I know it is still better service than the Jones bus, for example.  I ended up being 2 minutes late to the meeting, but there was a delayed start, so I didn't miss anything of any importance, and for once I didn't totally lose my cool over the transit snafus.  It might have helped that it really was a pleasant morning, weather-wise.  (Today looks about the same, and I think I will bike to work, even though I have another late night out, and will have to risk biking home after dark.  I will take a couple of tokens in case I end up leaving the bike at work.)

The meeting went fairly well, though this is a case where I was glad I wasn't the consultant, as the feedback we provided will change their results considerably.  Just in general, I have been appreciating no longer being a consultant, though it is also because I see the bigger picture as I am reviewing a wide variety of work done by a number of consultants.

I didn't have a lot of time between this meeting and then one over on Spadina.  I left a bit early, since I wanted to go to a bagel place I used to occasionally frequent.  I have to say it was a bit of a disappointment.  They've reconfigured the place to give more priority to food couriers and the cashier's line was a mess.  Also, they messed up my order, and the sandwich included onions.  Not a lot, but certainly more than zero, which was what I had requested.  In a sense, this makes it easier to move on, since I am a lot less likely to want to eat there again (or the Manchu Wok in Metro Hall, which has failed its health inspection a couple of times now -- yikes!).  I even had some issues with dinner at Freshii, where they have changed the flavour of one of their burrito/wraps, and I like it much less now.  I am really hoping that Union Station opens up its food court again, since the options nearby feel extremely limited.  Though I just need to buckle down and start bringing my lunch more often.

I had a little time left before the meeting, so I wandered over to Prefix Institute on 401 Richmond to see their Rodney Graham exhibit.  I have to admit, it was a let down.  There were only three of his oversized photos on display.  Not worth the trip on its own, though the 401 Richmond Building has quite a few other art galleries and art just hung in various places.  There were quite a few large scale photos by the activist-art duo Condé + Beveridge (see their site here).  They have several photos that focus on the ills of global warming and nuclear power.  I think of all the photos, this was my favourite:

Condé + Beveridge, The Plague, 2009

It appears the various installations will be up though June 25, so it is worth running over if you have a chance.

I also ran into a small gallery called The Red Head Gallery, which was featuring art by Ian Mackay.  I particularly liked this piece, though several others were nice.  In person, I picked up some echoes or hints of Philip Guston, in part the pinks (though he usually combined pinks, darker pinks and reds) but also the soft forms.  Looking at it on-line, the color palette seems just a bit closer to Kandinsky, but the painting is far more static and sedate than a Kandinsky abstract.

(This exhibit closes Saturday, so only a very short time left to see the paintings.)

Ian Mackay, Short Squeeze, 2016

Then I ran over to my 3+ hour meeting.  It was a struggle but I spent the time listening and not interjecting, since I really was supposed to be an observer.

I still had some time to kill before the concert, so I went back to work (grabbing the disappointing burrito along the way).  I didn't really manage to get a lot done, but it was (perhaps) better than just hanging out outside Roy Thompson Hall.  One public group has pointed out how few places there are to just sit outside in Toronto, and that felt very real to me today.

I was bored by the first piece on the program -- a modern piece supposedly reflecting the musicscape of the city.  It was better than an Unsuk Chin piece, but that's not saying much.  The Beethoven Piano Concerto #3 was played very well by Yefim Bronfman, but I just don't think as highly of this as #4 or of course #5.  I don't know quite why I am so cranky about it, but I am starting to think that Peter Oundjian is an incurable ham that just milks the applause.

Anyway, somewhat incredibly, the family next to me didn't come back after the intermission, so I could stretch my legs a bit, which was nice.  I thought they did a very nice job on Beethoven's 3rd Symphony.  I suppose it is shallow of me, but I really only go out of my way to hear Beethoven's 3rd, 5th and 7th Symphonies.  I find the 9th too exhausting to attend more than once every 5 years.  I probably am due to see the 7th soon.  (It looks like the TSO will be doing it March 2017.  I'll have to see if I already ordered tickets.)

During the interminable applause, I started asking myself if I had seen a million faces of strangers.  Given that I take a lot of public transport and in New York and Toronto I was near transit hubs, where I easily would see 100-200 faces a day (and just as many in Vancouver/Burnaby), though maybe more like 75 in Chicago, I assume I have gotten to that number.  Now this is not the same as seeing a million unique people, though given that I have switched cities so many times in my life, it is more plausible for me than for others who are more rooted.  The rough calculations look like 80 people per workday (and Saturday since I usually am out and about) equals 24,000 people per year, and 30 years or so of working life makes 720,000.  In fact, I think I am grossly underestimating the number of people I have seen, but it is true I saw fewer people in Cambridge for instance, and in general I see fewer people when I bike to work.  If I haven't actually seen a million strange faces (and again there may be considerable duplication of people on transit, though I do leave at different times), I am probably well on my way.

Then I was wondering if I had read a million words (almost certainly) or a million pages, which is less certain.  Over my life (say starting from 16), I've probably averaged 75 books per year (again a somewhat conservative estimate), which is 2250 books.  It is so hard to say what the average might be, but probably around 250 pages.  That would make 562,500 pages, though I do think it is a conservative estimate.  (That's well over 100 million words!  And not counting internet browsing!)  If I keep up the pace, I would hit 1 million pages by 75 (and something on the order of 1 million minutes spent reading), though I would certainly expect to be reading almost twice as much as I do now when I enter into retirement or a phased retirement.  (I'm sure some people have watched a million minutes worth of movies or certainly of television, though I am probably not in either group.)  So like everything, it all adds up.  Unfortunately, I am a bit late, and it is now time for me to go back to accruing my minutes at work.

Author readings/signings

I've been going through my main book collection lately, trying to recall which authors I have actually seen at a reading or public lecture of some sort and, of this relatively short list, which authors did I have sign a book or two for me.  I do have a small, even tiny, number of books that were bought with a pre-existing autograph, most recently Neil deGrasse Tyson's Death By Black Hole, though in that case, I did buy it from the gift shop at the Hayden Planetarium where he works, so it felt legit.

The literary world has changed substantially since I started going to readings in the tail end of the 80s, and you don't find nearly as many readings at book stores as one used to.  There may be about as many (free) readings at major libraries and on college campuses, but I must admit that I am just not nearly as attuned to them as I once was.  One thing that is relatively new is the rise of literary festivals, particularly in major cities like New York, Chicago, and Toronto where authors are packaged into panels and you can see two or three of them at once.  However, in most cases, these are ticketed and paid events, and I just haven't felt any desire to pay to go see a reading.  I'm sure it is my loss, but it feels like too much a betrayal of my conception of how the author and audience are supposed to relate to each other.

These are the ones I can recall, with a * if I did get an autograph:

Ann Arbor 1987-1991

Toni Morrison (delivering the Tanner Lecture rather than reading from her work, though her lecture does discuss The Bluest Eye and Sula)
There was a symposium the following day with Amiri Baraka among others commenting on the lecture
Tim O'Brien (I cannot recall if he read from The Things They Carried or The Nuclear Age, though probably the former)
Paul Auster (reading from The Music of Chance) * (he signed The New York Trilogy for me)
Jim Gustafson *
Alice Fulton *
Adrienne Rich * (I already told the story of how my signed copy of The Fact of a Doorframe was stolen, and I ultimately bought a different collection with a signature right after her death.)
Douglas Adams (reading from Dirk Gently, if I recall)
John Sinclair *

Ken Mikolowski * (went to at least one reading and/or book launch, as Ken was my poetry instructor at UM)
Jim Carroll *  (Allen Ginsberg was supposed to be at this reading as well but cancelled.  Such a shame.)
Grace Paley (I actually fainted towards the end of this reading, overwhelmed by some anecdote of Mary Shelley nearly bleeding to death after a miscarriage.)

I'm fairly sure I saw Charles Baxter and Ethan Canin reading (not at the same event), and this most likely would have been in Ann Arbor, but I can't be sure any longer.  The downside of a life stuffed with events is that some fade from memory.
 
(During my NELP residence, we were supposed to meet with Jane Kenyon, but she was already too sick.)

Newark/New York 1991-93
Doris Lessing * (I suspect she read from The Fifth Child, but cannot swear to that.  I had her sign a copy of The Good Terrorist, but I ultimately parted with it)
Amiri Baraka
Haki Madhubuti *
Charles Simic *

Toronto 1993-94
Margaret Atwood * (I had her sign two poetry collections, which surprised her a bit)
Susan Swan *
Michael Ondaatje (I'm almost certain he read from The English Patient.  Years later I had an opportunity to hear him read his poetry in Chicago but it didn't work out for fairly absurd reasons.)

I have a vague memory of seeing Timothy Findley reading or at least telling stories about the writing life, though it might have been in New York rather than in Toronto.  I'll have to see if this made it into my journal at some point.

New York 1995
Robertson Davies (reading from The Cunning Man at the 92nd St. Y)
Grace Schulman
Patti Smith (this was a reading/happening in Central Park)
T.C. Boyle (I think this was in New York, which is his stomping ground, but it could have been Chicago a year or so later.  I think he was promoting The Road to Wellville and read part of that, as well as a short story.)

Chicago 1996-2010
Gwendolyn Brooks * (technically reading in Evanston; she signed a copy of Blacks)
Charles Simic
Salman Rushdie (this appears to have been an event in 2009 when he read from The Enchantress of Florence at the Harold Washington Public Library)

Toronto 2014-2017
Ann Choi (reading from Kay's Lucky Coin Variety at the Word on the Street Festival)
Kerry Clare (reading from Mitzi Bytes, though this was more of an interview than reading)

I'm sure I missed a few, but these are the readings I recall.  (I am definitely sorry for any author whom I have forgotten.  The fault is entirely mine.)  I really have slowed down going to readings post-2000 and don't make a point of even seeing what readings are going on nowadays, though I am far more active in theatre circles.  In addition to the disappointment in missing out on Ginsberg, Faye Kicknosway often came through Ann Arbor and gave a reading arranged by my poetry teacher, but not while I was there.  I suspect I probably missed out on seeing Philip Levine read while I was living in Michigan (or worse, I went and the event has completely slipped my mind...).  I would definitely have liked to see Robert Kroetsch read, though I don't know if he came through Toronto that often in the mid 90s.

It's awfully hard to rate/rank these.  I think the rarity of going to a Salman Rushdie reading probably does put that up at the top, but I am awfully glad that I saw Douglas Adams and Robertson Davies read, as well as Adrienne Rich and Doris Lessing.  Honestly, though, I appreciate any of these authors taking the time to go on the publicity tour and take the time to spend it with their readers and potential readers.  I'll try to keep that in mind and at least open up a bit more to the possibility of going to more readings here in Toronto now that I am putting down more roots and integrating back into the literary community to a certain extent.

Allergy update (and SFYS)!

Unfortunately for me, the folks doing the allergy forecast were dead on.  Pollen seems particularly high today, and I was sleeping under a window with a light breeze blowing all kinds of stuff my way.  I am still suffering, though I guess I'll make it through the day.  I'm sure all the sanding I'm doing today will not make it any better, though I do have a mask (and earbuds and safety goggles).  Anyway, I have just over an hour before I start sanding.  I'm still really sore from yesterday.

I actually have slightly mixed feelings that The Pitch was selected for SFYS, but not enough to not go.  I may still raise the issue about doing the entire piece at Toronto Cold Reads, but it will probably just vanish into the mists of time.  In any case, I will make it to The Storefront Theatre tomorrow night, starting at 8.  Hope to see some of you there (955 Bloor St. W., just west of the Ossington stop).

This will certainly throw a kink in the plans, but perhaps it just means that we try to stain all the spindles today* and see how they dry, and then get started on the main deck Tuesday afternoon.  I'll want to check on the updated weather forecast midweek anyway.

Edit (6/14): Back from Sing-for-your-supper.  It was another entertaining evening.  We started with an emotional moment reflecting on Orlando saying that love (and community) will always triumph over hatred.  I was a little disappointed that a couple of people from work didn't make it after all, but I thought that the actors did a good job with my script, making it even funnier in places.  I did think they rushed one or two of the laugh lines about starving artists, but that's ok.  I liked how the main guy captured the right tone of desperation under the bravado.  We chatted during the intermission and I gave him my card.  He suggested that the whole thing could be written out and put up at Red Sandcastle.  It's sort of tempting, but I just don't know what I would pair it with, since I don't think I would want to extend it much beyond the second scene.  I had initially seen it as two younger associates, but the actor assigned the part of Sam 2 was much older and played him as a somewhat cranky almost Bartlesby-type with a German accent.  It worked, though it wasn't what I had in mind.  In some sense, this is what is so special about theatre: it is collaborative in some sense and if an author is open to additional ideas it can end up being much more interesting than one person can come up with.  I think this is particularly true of comedy where one can really keep stretching the boundaries.  It is also a reminder that words on a page can be interpreted so many ways.

* The sanding is not going as well as hoped and I actually will have to scrape up the paint with a putty knife and then sand.  This is really back-breaking, and it will probably add two more days of labor, so we might not be done by Canada Day after all, but I guess I shouldn't lose hope just yet.