Gibson House in North York

On Sat. I took my daughter up to Gibson House, which reflects the period around 1851.  Interestingly, David Gibson was originally a farmer and land surveyor in North York (he actually had a hired hand for most of the farm work and he mostly stayed busy surveying the surrounding territory).  However, he was an associate of William Mackenzie and supported the 1837 Rebellion.  Not only was he forced to flee, but the British forces putting down the rebellion burned down his house!  If my understanding is correct, Mackenzie and his entire family fled to the States and then Mackenzie and his wife and daughters returned after the amnesty.  In Gibson's case, he was the only one who left Canada.  After he was pardoned and returned, he built a second house on the site of the first.  Unlike some of the other museums, only a few items actually belonged to the Gibson family, including a couple of dolls with real human hair.

I've been to North York Centre/Mel Lastman Square a few times, but didn't even realize that the Gibson House was there right to the north.  I'm glad that they didn't wipe it out in an effort to modernize the area.

What was quite different is how few visitors they had.  We were the only ones, so we got a personalized tour.  I don't know if everyone that had planned to visit went during November, when it was free, or if the distance from the downtown core frightens people off, but it is still quite easy to get to.

I had thought the house would be more decked out for Christmas, but apparently "Christmas" wasn't a big thing in the 1850s, particularly for the Scottish immigrants.  Instead, they celebrated Hogmanay, which is a New Year festival.  There were some pine branches hung on the windows and mantles in the parlor and dining room to represent Hogmanay, even though it is a few weeks early for that.

Dining room

While the Gibsons had somewhat simpler style of life than the Mackenzies (probably fewer visitors as well), the house definitely feels more open.*  There were still two children in each bed, however.

Front parlor

David Gibson's office

Boys' bedroom

Girls' bedroom (with original dolls)

Bed in master bedroom

Chest of drawers in master bedroom

On the way out, we stopped in the kitchen again, and they gave us shortbread and mulled cider.  Very nice!  All in all, another very informative trip, and I would definitely come back again at some point.  (However, I would certainly check beforehand to ensure that the TTC isn't suspending service on Line 1, as they will be doing for the upcoming weekend!)

Kitchen corner (with wood for fireplace)

* I don't know if it is a function of Gibson House generally getting fewer visitors (or having fewer original artifacts), but we were able to walk around in the parlor and dining room without any of the typical visitor ropes and could even touch the horsehair sofa, so that was neat.

Making an elephant

Quite a while back, I mentioned how I was cutting up work shirts with the intent of someday using the material for a quilt.  When I cut apart the sleeves, I was a bit surprised to see how much they looked like an elephant (well, maybe an elephant as drawn by the narrator of The Little Prince).  Anyhow, here is one of the pieces of fabric (perhaps appropriately wrinkled).

In this case, the cuffs make reasonably good, if somewhat small, ears.  For the other shirt, they seem even smaller, and I'll probably have to figure out something else.

And here is the cut-out version with one eye stitched in (backwards naturally).

Now I have to sew on the ears and then go around the body of the elephant.  (I'm a bit worried about not leaving enough tail on this elephant.)  While I had tried to think of a way to sew on the tusks beforehand, I think the way that they stick out past the trunk means they'll have to be sewn on last.

The moment of truth comes when you have to invert the entire thing through the hole you leave for stuffing it.  (I think sea stars and even some species of squid can turn themselves inside out at least temporarily, and you get a real appreciation for their ability when you do this.)

I left the hole quite small and then realized that the ears were too big, but eventually I  managed to work them through.  This is how it turned out (and yes the tail area is definitely too short, but otherwise, it came out looking pretty good).

I ironed it a bit, especially the ears, then started stuffing.  I took a break from stuffing and extended the tail and added the tusks.  Then I went back to stuffing.  In the end, I probably used half a bag of the filler.  In some ways this is more like a pillow than a stuffed animal.  Here is the final incarnation of the elephant, though actually I am going to let it settle overnight and then add any last stuffing and seal up the two holes (one in the stomach and one at the end of the trunk).

Sadly, my daughter doesn't really like home-made gifts so I suspect in the long run, I'll either reclaim it or give it to my son, who would appreciate it.  It really was only about a day's worth of work, but I still don't think I want to get into the business of trying to make and sell these.  I have a few too many other things on the go...

VC -- where to start

Just for my own reference, I'll list the top 15 books that I want to tackle off of the Vintage Contemporaries checklist.  In some cases, I am selecting them since I have owned them for a long time (Marshall, Naylor), and in other cases these are the first books in series (Exley, Ford).  Often these are books that I came close to buying or checking out from the library in the past, but held off for some reason.  I could easily add another 10 to this list (plus the Vintage Contemporaries book with a neon heart on the cover that I am trying to track down*), but the point is to provide some focus and not overwhelm myself with a massive list that just depresses me.  That's what my main reading list is for.  Anyway, these were largely chosen on the basis of perceived literary merit, whereas as I get further down the full checklist, I'll probably start selecting based on the coolest cover (back in the 80s).

Great Jones Street by Don DeLillo
Ratner's Star by Don DeLillo
A Narrow Time by Michael Downing
A Fan's Notes by Frederick Exley
The Sportswriter by Richard Ford
A Handbook for Visitors From Outer Space by Kathryn Kramer
The Chosen Place, the Timeless People by Paule Marshall
Far Tortuga by Peter Matthiessen
Suttree by Cormac McCarthy
The Bushwhacked Piano by Thomas McGuane
Ransom by Jay McInerney
Mama Day by Gloria Naylor
Clea & Zeus Divorce by Emily Prager
Mohawk by Richard Russo
Eleven Kinds of Loneliness by Richard Yates

* Edit (9/14) This must be The Wrong Case by James Crumley.  (Glad I wasn't just imagining it.)

I actually stumbled across Crumley's Dancing Bear, which is his second "Milo" detective novel (The Wrong Case is his first), at a library book sale, so I picked it up.  I should see if I can borrow The Wrong Case, even if I can't land the edition with the heart on it.  I suspect if I do read some of these novels, they will put me back on a Chandler/Hammett kick.

Vintage Contemporaries

As I had threatened to do, I have gone ahead and translated the list of Vintage Contemporaries into a proper checklist.  (This is close to complete, but probably a few have been missed, so feel free to add comments below on anything I overlooked.)  I have only read 10 or 11 of the 92 below (I feel I read Mona Simpson's Anywhere But Here, but can't vouch for that absolutely so will leave it out of the tally).  I'm not doing too much better on actually owning them -- 11 total and only 3 on the Vintage Contemporary brand itself, though I did just order Far Tortuga (and this should be the VC edition).  As in other lists, X stands for having read the book and O stands for owning it, even if in a different edition.

I think at one point I did own McGuane's The Bushwacked Piano, but left it behind in a move.  I'm not going to go out of my way to collect the books in this edition, but I will see about reading a few of them each year and perhaps I will eventually get through this list.

X The Mezzanine by Nicholson Baker
X Room Temperature by Nicholson Baker*
    Love Always by Ann Beattie
    First Love and Other Sorrows by Harold Brodkey
    Stories in an Almost Classical Mode by Harold Brodkey
    The Debut by Anita Brookner
    Latecorners by Anita Brookner
XO Cathedral by Raymond Carver
    Fires by Raymond Carver
XO What We Talk About When We Talk About Love by Raymond Carver
XO Where I'm Calling From by Raymond Carver
    Bop by Maxine Chernoff
    I Look Divine by Christopher Coe
X  Dancing Bear by James Crumley (completely implausible and quite unpleasant)
    The Last Good Kiss by James Crumley
    One to Count Cadence by James Crumley
X  The Wrong Case by James Crumley (I liked this less and less as it went on)
    The Colorist by Susan Daitch
    The Last Election by Pete Davies
O  Great Jones Street by Don DeLillo
XO The Names by Don DeLillo
O  Players by Don DeLillo
O  Ratner's Star by Don DeLillo
    Running Dog by Don DeLillo
X   A Narrow Time by Michael Downing
    The Commitments by Roddy Doyle
    Selected Stories by Andre Dubus
    From Rockaway by Jill Eisenstadt
X  Platitudes by Trey Ellis**
X  Days Between Stations by Steve Erickson
    Rubicon Beach by Steve Erickson
O  A Fan's Notes by Frederick Exley
O  Last Notes from Home by Frederick Exley
O  Pages from a Cold Island by Frederick Exley
    A Piece of My Heart by Richard Ford
    Rock Springs by Richard Ford
    The Sportswriter by Richard Ford
    The Ultimate Good Luck by Richard Ford
    Bad Behavior by Mary Gaitskill
    Fat City by Leonard Gardner
X  Ellen Foster by Kaye Gibbons
X  Within Normal Limits by Todd Grimson
    Airships by Barry Hannah
    The Cockroaches of Stay More by Donald Harington †
    Dancing in the Dark by Janet Hobhouse
X  November by Janet Hobhouse
    Saigon, Illinois by Paul Hoover
X  Angels by Denis Johnson
    Fiskadoro by Denis Johnson
    The Stars at Noon by Denis Johnson
XO Asa, as I Knew Him by Susanna Kaysen
X  Lulu Incognito by Raymond Kennedy
X  Steps by Jerzy Kosinski
    A Handbook for Visitors From Outer Space by Kathryn Kramer
    The Garden State by Gary Krist
    House of Heroes and Other Stories by Mary LaChapelle
O  The Chosen Place, the Timeless People by Paule Marshall
    A Recent Martyr by Valerie Martin
X  The Consolation of Nature and Other Stories by Valerie Martin
    The Beginning of Sorrows by David Martin
O  Far Tortuga by Peter Matthiessen
    Suttree by Cormac McCarthy
    California Bloodstock by Terry McDonell
    The Bushwhacked Piano by Thomas McGuane
    Nobody's Angel by Thomas McGuane
    Something to Be Desired by Thomas McGuane
X  To Skin a Cat by Thomas McGuane
XO Bright Lights, Big City by Jay McInerney
    Ransom by Jay McInerney
    Story of My Life by Jay McInerney
O  Mama Day by Gloria Naylor
    The All-Girl Football Team by Lewis Nordan
    Welcome to the Arrow-Catcher Fair by Lewis Nordan
    River Dogs by Robert Olmstead
X  Soft Water by Robert Olmstead
O  Family Resemblances by Lowry Pei
    Norwood by Charles Portis
    Clea & Zeus Divorce by Emily Prager

XO A Visit From the Footbinder by Emily Prager
    Mohawk by Richard Russo
    The Risk Pool by Richard Russo
    Rabbit Boss by Thomas Sanchez
    Anywhere But Here by Mona Simpson
    Carnival for the Gods by Gladys Swan
    The Player by Michael Tolkin
    Myra Breckinridge and Myron by Gore Vidal
    The Car Thief by Theodore Weesner
X  Breaking and Entering by Joy Williams
X  State of Grace by Joy Williams
XO  Taking Care by Joy Williams
    The Easter Parade by Richard Yates
O  Eleven Kinds of Loneliness by Richard Yates
    Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates

* It looks like 1990 is basically the cut-off point when the cover design shifted over to something less standardized.  Baker's 2nd novel (with the paperback edition coming out in 1991) is slightly out-of-sync with the others on this list, but I think I'll leave it on anyway as sort of a transitional cover away from the "De Stijl layout" that Vintage Contemporaries had throughout the 80s.

** This just blew my mind.  Apparently, I not only read this novel, but reviewed it on Amazon in 2009 (giving it only 2 stars).  I was there poking around to see if I could find one or two more books in the VC series from the 80s.  I'm a bit surprised that this completely slipped my mind, as I only have ever reviewed 3 books on Amazon, mostly keeping my reviews to this blog.  I suppose at some point I'll borrow this from the library to see if anything comes back to me, but it seems like I am not missing much (according to my earlier self).

† I ran across this book today, which brings the tally up to 93. This is a particularly odd case as this is the 4th (out of 13!) books Harington wrote about his fictional Ozark community, Stay More. I can't tell if Vintage published any others in the series, but I don't believe so, and certainly none others in the Vintage Contemporaries line. This novel may well be the oddest of the series as part of the book does appear to be written from the cockroaches' point of view.  Gross.

Backing Up

Like most people, I am generally not great about backing up my computer data, though I am actually reasonably good about backing up the creative writing pieces I am working on, as well as the material that I scan (and then shred).  However, the backup in that case usually means it is on two external hard drives and often burned to a data DVD, but I have no effective system for storing and retrieving the data DVDs.  This is something I am working on improving, though probably it will have to be something I pay the kids to help with, since I am a bit overwhelmed with other tasks right now.

I mostly work off of external hard drives, but my Achilles' heel is to leave them running as long as the computer is on, which just puts extra wear and tear on them.  I had actually heard the weird beeping that sometimes presages a hard drive failure and decided it was time to take action.  So I unplugged that drive.  On Monday I went and bought another external hard drive.  I was hoping to score a Black Monday sale, but only the 2T and 4T drives were on sale.  I have a (probably silly) conviction that for long term storage the 1T drives are going to hold up better than the larger ones.  In any event, I bought a 1T drive and brought it home.  I started by backing up photos and the core files I've scanned lately.  Then I backed up the drive I feared was failing.  Naturally, that drive seems fine now.  But it was still worth backing it up.  That put me at pretty close to 550 GB, and I was thinking I probably should have gotten the 2T drive after all. 

Anyway, I have a set of 4 externals that hold older material (mostly old music files and stuff from my dissertation, as well as old work files that I don't really need).  These are completely off-line and usually sit in a desk drawer.  One of the 4 had been failing from time to time, so I thought I would attempt to back that one up before it gave up the ghost for good.  I couldn't simply copy the contents over, as the new drive would be 40 GB or so short.  However, I knew that there was a lot of redundancy with the music files, so I went methodically through the different artists and got rid of the duplicate albums (making sure to keep the ones with the higher bit rates).  It took quite a while, but in the end the entire contents of that drive fit onto the new drive with about 15 GB to spare!  (And it really only crashed a couple of times, so that was reassuring.) 

Finally, I tracked down a few other music files I wanted to back up on yet another hard drive (that doesn't seem to be in immediate danger of failing), though in this case it was mostly about gathering up everything by each artist (more Thelonious Monk for example).  I ended up with only 3GB left over on the 1T drive!  It is currently unplugged, as it has been working overtime these past two days, but later on I'll spend some time delving into music files that I haven't really had access to for at least 6 months to a year or longer.  I really don't know how long it would take to listen to all the music on the drive, but certainly a long time.  I probably don't ever have to buy any music ever again, though I'm sure I will occasionally.  I'm not one of those people who feels music is devalued in this era where virtually everything can be streamed, but it is true I consume and listen to music in a very different way now than when I was younger and mostly heard music on the radio and only occasionally bought cassettes and then CDs from artists that really grabbed me.

Temptation (more books)

I suppose more often then not I am in the same boat with Oscar Wilde, who said* "I can resist anything except temptation."  I should report that I did resist temptation last night, though will likely only be a temporary victory.

I had dropped off a number of books at Robarts and decided to walk along Bloor to Bathurst in order to drop in at BMV.  I'm definitely going to be keeping an eye out to see if they get a bunch of the Alex Janvier catalogues.  In any case, they didn't have any (it may be more likely that they start getting them in late Dec. or Jan. as the exhibit at the McMichael winds down).  However, they had a full table of recent NYRB titles, mostly priced at 9 to 10 dollars.  If they had been just a bit cheaper, I probably would have scooped up a whole bunch.  As it is, I fought temptation off.  I was able to get home and verify that I do have Zweig's Beware of Pity already, as well as Kennedy's Ride a Cockhorse.  Also, I checked, and there was a general consensus that the brand new translation of Gogol's Dead Souls isn't quite as amazing as they (NYRB) made out, so that the earlier ones are still the ones to track down.  (As it happens, I have the Reavey translation, and then I did order a cheap edition of the Guerney translation, revised by Fusso.)  That said, I may well go back and get Tišma's The Use of Man and certainly Hamilton's Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky if it is there (I don't think it was).  But I will try not to go back for a few weeks.

I'll almost certainly get Faulkner's Collected Stories on my next visit, though I have decided to just get his Uncollected Stories from the library.  There are a number of Canadian authors that were of interest, but again, I think I can be strong and just get them out of the library.  But I will probably be weak with Elias Canetti's memoirs.  They had the 2nd and 3rd volumes in an attractive paperback edition from Granta for $7 each.  If the first had been there, I would have pounced no matter what, but I'll go check out the other BMV and Book City to see if the first one (The Tongue Set Free) is available, but otherwise, there are a few floating about that aren't too expensive, even with shipping to Canada.

Another book-related area I feel quite weak is around the Vintage Contemporaries series.  I don't even own all that many of them (mostly DeLillo and I think I still have McInerney's Bright Lights, Big City), in some cases replacing them with later editions, as with Raymond Carver, but they still remind me of all the time I spent in used bookstores in the late 80s and early 90s.  (Back then I also had a bit of a "crush" on Bard Avon, since they made a point of bringing out writers from South America, such as Garcia Marquez, Vargas Llosa and Jorge Amado.)  Vintage (and Avon) paperbacks are still around but only in bookstores that stock the equivalent of the "long tail" of retail.  Here is someone else with a deep appreciation for these books and, in particular, their covers.  I suppose it is just as well that no one has assembled all these books into a single lot and put it up on eBay, as I would probably go ahead and bid on it.  As it is, there are a few stores around that do stock these older editions, and I may make a bit more of an effort to pick some of them up.  But really at the end of the day, I do care more about the book content and not the cover.  I might just go ahead and generate a checklist of the 100 or so books in the Vintage Contemporaries series to see how far I have gotten through them, but definitely not tonight...

* Or rather had a character say (in Lady Windemere's Fan).  I enjoyed that play quite a bit, so I'll keep my eyes open to see if there will be another production in Toronto soon.

Mackenzie House

We got a reasonably early start on Sunday, leaving for downtown right after I finished grocery shopping.  The first stop was the holiday windows at the Bay.

I think my favourite was this relatively contained scene of downtown Toronto.

The other windows were bigger, with a large polar bear, as well as this winter scene with a rabbit and a special tree. (This last window was my daughter's favourite.)

Then we went into the Eaton Centre for lunch.  While I hadn't really come out this way to go shopping, we did pick up some leggings at Old Navy.

Then we walked over to Mackenzie House.  This is the last home of William Lyon Mackenzie, publisher, first mayor of Toronto (in 1834) and leader of the 1837 Rebellion (where he tried to establish Ontario as an independent republic!).  He went to the U.S. in exile, only returning in 1850.  The house was actually purchased on his behalf by grateful citizens.

There is a relatively short demonstration of the printing press in a mock-up of Mackenzie's printing house (which was further away) and then a house tour.  Here is a reproduction of the reward for Mackenzie, printed on the press in the back of the museum.  (One thousand pounds was a huge amount of money, more than it cost to purchase the Mackenzie House when first built.)

Since the house is lit to 1860s standards, many of my photos just didn't turn out that well, but here are a few.

Downstairs dining room (and Mackenzie's desk)

Upstairs bedroom (for 3 of Mackenzie's daughters)

Kitchen

We got to try homemade cookies, though we weren't able to stick around for the next batch, which looked quite tasty.  On the whole, it was a good visit, and I learned a fair bit about an important figure in Toronto history.  We were lucky that a streetcar was just pulling up as we got to Dundas.  Then on the way back, we stopped off at the library to get a few more books, so a productive trip, all in all.