Back in the Swim of Things

Yesterday (Wed.) was one of the first days in quite a while where I simply felt I had bitten off too much to chew.  I was giving a presentation (only wrapped up a day or two ago) in a meeting that just wouldn't end.  The meeting was supposed to wrap at noon, but then there was question after question.  And the chair kind of twiddled her thumbs and just let it roll.  The problem, in my mind at least, was that I was also scheduled to give a lunch-time talk (and I had kind of skimped on getting those slides ready...).  I finally got there 20 minutes late (yes, the other meeting ran 20 minutes long), apologized to the folks who had stuck around, then launched into the talk.  It went ok, but definitely wasn't one of my better lectures.  I'll have to spend some extra time cleaning up the presentation and send that around to try to make amends.  Then I had about a 15 minute break, then another couple of hours of meetings.

When I got home, I had to launch another round of model runs, as I am trying to wrap up a TRB paper.  Given that the deadline to submit is August 1, I don't have a lot of time.  But for once the modelling gods were smiling on me, and several models actually worked out pretty well.  Because the models can be launched through a batch run, I was actually able to run off to the gym, so that was a plus.

Today was a lighter day, spent partly on getting the bibliography together.  I only had informal meetings today, so that was nice.  I was a bit unhappy that I listened to the weather forecast, as I definitely could have ridden my bike in (and avoided some very unpleasant transit crowding).  I suppose it sort of worked out on the way home.  I stopped off at Regent Park Aquatic Centre (soon to be renamed for the late Pam McConnell).  I got in 10 laps, though I was a bit disappointed that the whirlpool was closed for maintenance.  Oh well.  It happened that the next bus was actually one of the rerouted King buses, so that actually took me up to the subway, so I rode a couple of stops, then grabbed some books at the library.  

I took care of a few chores (replacing some lamp bulbs and rehanging a painting), but am trying to take it slightly easy.  I think I will take a bit of a nap, then get back to the paper.  It really has been a fairly long and trying week.  But the TRB paper deadline is the last major, major deadline I have to deal with (for a while anyway), and I feel confident that I'll make it. That's all for now.

Guns on the Danforth

Details are still pretty sketchy, but last night around 10 pm, a lone gunman shot up several restaurants along the Danforth from Logan to just east of Chester.  While no part of a city is completely immune to gun violence (there have been several shootings in the Entertainment District and fairly recently in Chinatown), this hits very close to home.  One woman is dead and the shooter is also dead, though it isn't clear if he took his own life.  Many wounded, including a 9 year-old girl. The motives aren't clear at this point, but it doesn't appear to be a targeted killing, either gang-related or an ex-boyfriend hunting down his ex-girlfriend.  Thus, it was someone who just wanted to terrorize the city.  I suppose we'll know more soon.

While it will never be possible to completely stop the flow of guns from the States, given the fairly porous border, it won't take too many more incidents like this for the federal and provincial government to crack down much harder on gun ownership, particularly in cities.  That's a complete contrast to the States.

My thoughts go out to the wounded and hope they recover quickly, as well as to the families impacted.  I'm obviously glad I wasn't out and about.  While Pape subway is technically open this morning (Chester will be closed), I think it will be a total mess over there.  I'll take the 506 Carlton instead.  Incidentally, this is the last day before they start detouring the 506 to avoid Gerrard and Broadview, which will be totally closed.  I have a meeting tomorrow where I would have preferred to take the 506, but I suspect this will add at least 10-15 minutes to the travel time.  Of course, if the rain is hard enough tonight, it may be out of the system for tomorrow, and I can just bike instead.  That would be preferable.

Rainy Day Update

The weather forecast kept changing over and over.  First it was going to rain all weekend and perhaps Monday as well.  Then they removed rain in the forecast entirely.  Then rain crept in for Sat. evening and Sunday, which is what is says right now.  And in fact, it says it will rain from now until Thurs!  While we desperately needed rain, especially the lawn and gardens, five days straight is a bit much.  I suppose if it is more like Vancouver rain, a bit here and there, then I can deal with it and may bike to work most days.  Anyway, it isn't worth worrying about it too much.

In some ways, I am still recovering a bit from Fringe.  On the whole, it was a good experience, though I certainly wish the reviews had been better. I suppose it is always worth challenging oneself to do better, but it just felt like such a discrepancy between the reactions of the general audience and the reviewers, and it's a shame if people stayed away due to poor reviews.  I was basically ready for Fringe to be over a few days before it was actually over, just because it was so much work.  We didn't have anywhere to store anything, so everything had to be brought back and forth across the bridge for every show.  I also had to leave work at 5 sharp each night, though that turned out to not be such a huge deal.  After our last show, I saw a couple more shows on Sat. (including the incredible Entrances and Exits, the improvised farce), then on Sunday, I saw three shows.  One thing that is kind of neat is that for three of my last five Fringe shows, I knew others in the line-up.  I guess that's what happens when you start spending time with actors.

I slowly caught up on work over the week.  I had actually planned on seeing a couple of Summer Music Festival shows, but the late night show was Thurs, rather than Friday, and I just didn't want to disrupt my schedule that much.  Then Friday's show was sold out.  There is one show I will try to see in two weeks, but I had better get tickets soon!

This Sat. I spent a huge amount of time working on a TRB paper (the deadline is basically a week away), but made terrific progress.  I actually took a nap (while the program was running a batch file), so wasn't able to get out and go swimming in Regent Park.  But later I did grab some groceries, ran off to the library and then went to the gym.  I also obtained the painting which is part of the Impermanence Project, but I'll blog about that separately.  And I did some weeding, after the temperature finally broke.  So it was a fairly productive day, all things considered.  I had been inside a few hours before it finally starting raining.

Today, I should be able to run out to go swimming (just waiting to finish digesting breakfast), do some more shopping and wrap up the grocery shopping.  I should try to hang the painting, though that might wait until Monday.  The model estimation for TRB should wrap up tonight, and I need to carve out a few hours for other work, but I feel pretty much on top of that.  I guess then I can work on a few other projects, like returning to the quilting, figuring out something for under the porch to keep the frigging raccoons from knocking over the garbage bins and then building a Little Free Library for the front yard.  Always something to do, that's for sure.

Edit: While the rain was fairly gentle on the way out to the pool, it was so heavy coming back.  I managed to get my laps in, but it has been far too long since I've swam laps.  I'll have to try to make it back there once a week.  Looks like it will definitely be raining pretty hard tomorrow, but maybe it will lighten up a bit after that.  The plants do look a lot happier right now.

Short Stories into Novels

I wonder if this is more common today (turning or rather extending a short story into a novel), given that short story collections are so much less commercial than novels.  This came to mind because I happen to be reading two novels that fall into this category: Thomas Mann's Felix Krull and Max Apple's The Propheteers.  One might argue that Kafka's Amerika, which I also just read, falls into this category, since he was relatively pleased with the opening chapter, The Stoker (it actually is one of the relatively few things he published during his life).  Though one might argue that he had always considered this part of a larger work, which he eventually abandoned.  Of course, there are other odd hybrids, such as when the New Yorker or the Atlantic Monthly publish excerpts from novels that could be read on their own but could be seen as works in progress.  For instance, I couldn't force myself to finish Franzen's The Corrections, though many people feel the short story (or even novella) "Chez Lambert" published in the Paris Review is more successful, or at least more succinct.  I'll try to get to that one of these days.

Actually, as I was checking up on the Franzen details, I stumbled across this cool list.  I should have remembered Mrs. Dalloway, since I've actually read Mrs. Dalloway's Party, which contains the original short story and some related stories.

Anyway, one interesting question is if the short story serves as a seed for the later novel, and there are subtle (or even significant) changes, such as apparently occurred with NoViolet Bulawayo's Hitting Budapest.  Or indeed, if the text is repeated word for word, as with Mrs. Dalloway in Bond Street and Felix Krull (at least for the first several pages -- I haven't compared the ending of the short story to the novel yet).  I do know that some people wondered if Mann was going to continue Felix Krull's life-story (before he himself died) or if he considered it a completed work.

I've mentioned a few times before how a character from a short story in Vanderhaege's Man Descending got his own novel -- My Present Age, so I won't dwell on that, other than to say I'll have to find some time to read these again.

It took a trip to Goodreads to remind myself that Max Apple's "The Oranging of America" was about Howard Johnson restaurants (they all used to have orange roofs) and thus there was a direct link to The Propheteers, where the trio (Howard Johnson, his secretary and his driver) are trying to grab some land in Florida in time to get a piece of the Disneyworld action.  I don't remember the story well enough to know if it is repeated word-for-word in the novel or if it is a different part of their (very fictional) biography.  I'll try to grab a copy of The Oranging of America out of Robarts this week.  I might even tackle The Jew of Home Depot (his recent collection of short stories).  And just possibly T.C. Boyle's The Road to Wellville, which seems somewhat akin to The Propheteers.  As always, there is just too much to read!

Edit (7/24): I did make a short trip to Robarts (getting fairly wet in the process), and I picked up The Oranging of America.  While there are some very slight differences, the title story is indeed Chapter 1 of The Propheteers.

Missed opportunities (the cat)

As anyone taking a casual glance at the blog knows, I have been very preoccupied with Fringe.  That said, I did manage to get to the big art fair at Nathan Phillips Square (more on that soon).  And in the evenings, I did some internet browsing.

I stumbled across a site with kittens and cats for adoption.  I was so drawn to one that looked almost exactly like my first cat, and apparently had many of the same characteristics.  She was calling to me...  As I said, I was fairly busy, and I was also slowly softening my wife's opposition, since she has never been a big cat person.  Perhaps I should have at least emailed the site.  But when I went back yesterday, she had already been adopted.  So sad.  The others just didn't do as much for me, and one or two clearly had behavioural issues.

What I will have to do, in order to move more quickly the next time, is make a real effort to clear out the space in the office where a litter box would go.  I have to clean up the basement too, but in some ways this is a bit less daunting.  Then perhaps I can get more serious about cat hunting this fall. 

12th Canadian Challenge - Consumption & AGO show on Inuit art

I pushed through a bit more than I expected and finished reading Kevin Patterson's Consumption (to get it back to the library without having to renew).  I guess I wrapped it up on what was technically the day after Canada Day, but nonetheless a very early entry into the 12th Canadian Challenge (with a 2 week lag in writing up the review!).  Details here for those interested in signing up for the 12th Canadian Challenge (still plenty of time).  As I noted elsewhere I am still reading a fairly large number of Canadian novels, but I am feeling slightly less motivated to review all of them and I may drop the challenge next year.

I'm not entirely sure how Consumption got on my reading list, but perhaps it was mentioned in the Toronto Star as a book that talked about the themes of Reconciliation but didn't have any easy answers, which seems accurate enough.  While there is a lot going on in the novel, there are a number of steps taken by well-meaning individuals that have unintended consequences, and yet it is too easy to say that these people should have done nothing.  The novel starts with a young Inuit girl, Victoria, taken from her family and sent to Winnepeg to treat her very advanced case of tuberculosis.  If she hadn't been taken for treatment, she most certainly would not have lived long.  However, once treated, she fell through the cracks for 6 years, losing her connection to her family and her traditional ways as she grows up in Winnepeg.  Then she was returned home, somewhat against her will.  She never fully integrated back into the community, and quite a few people in the small community near Rankin Inlet feel she should have stayed away.  She actually mostly socialized with the Kablunauks (aka white people) and ultimately married Robertson, a white man who eventually became manager of the local store (I believe it was essentially a Hudsons Bay trading post).  She had been warned that most Kablunauks "married" and had children, but then felt no compunction about pulling up stakes and leaving (without their families) if they were transferred.  Nonetheless, she feels affection for him and thinks Robertson is different, and indeed, he is uniquely committed to staying in this remote community.  Her decision to marry Robertson was certainly helped along by her feeling fairly alienated from the rest of her clan.

The novel makes a number of interesting and challenging choices.  First in centering so much of the story on Victoria (and making her an untypical Inuit).  Second, Victoria is not actually particularly admirable as a character, or at least I didn't like her as a person.  She makes a number of bad decisions, and then later blames others, even shunning them, when things go awry.  A bit more self-reflection or the ability to forgive would have been welcome.

The cast of characters starts expanding, and characters that only had a relatively small role in Victoria's life get more important.  By the end, it almost feels like an episode of Northern Exposure, and the doctor (Keith Balthazar) has just about as much weight as Victoria.

Here is a list of the "main" characters:
Emo (Victoria's father)
Winnie (Victoria's mother)
Robertson (Victoria's husband)
Tagak (Victoria's brother)
Justine (Victoria's daughter)
Marie (Victoria's daughter)
Pauloosie (Victoria's son)
Simionie (Victoria's lover)
Doctor Keith Balthazar
Amanda (Balthazar's niece)
Father Bernard (priest)
Two teachers at the school - Penny and Johanna
Simon Alvah (a Kablunauk with boat wintering in Rankin Bay)

I'm actually skipping over a few characters from Victoria's early life, as well as Amanda's parents and her boyfriend.  I'm not sure how I feel about this huge cast.  I think it might have been better to start off with a broader view, taking in the whole village, from the beginning, rather than switching midway through.  As you can imagine, the focus definitely starts to slip as pages are allotted to everyone, and the time spent on Amanda, who lives in New Jersey(!), seems completely extraneous to the plot (and really the two teachers as well, though they did interact with Victoria's children from time to time).  By the time the novel proper wraps up (with Balthazar meeting the retired priest in the South Pacific), the novel feels pretty baggy.  Then the reader is treated to over 50 pages (in even smaller font!) of the doctor's notes.  While there is some interest in getting his take on what actually transpired up north, it really dragged on and overstayed its welcome.  The novel would have been more effective had it been more focused, at least in my view.

What was a bit ironic is that I was reading this novel about the north (where most of the time the characters are dealing with terrible winters) in the midst of a severe heat wave.  And indeed, two weeks later, the heat has returned.  But to help put myself in the proper frame of mind, I went to the AGO.  For the first time ever, the main exhibit features Inuit artists: Kenojuak Ashevak and her nephew Timootee (Tim) Pitsiulak, who died tragically young from pneumonia.  (The AC helped a bit to put me in the right spirit...)

While I generally like Inuit carvings more than Inuit prints, some of these were quite nice.  Here are a few that stood out for me.  (The whale piece is quite large and really needs to be seen in person.)

Kenojuak Ashevak, Untitled, 1994-5

Kenojuak Ashevak, Nunavut-Our Land, 1992

Tim Pitsiulak, Swimming with Giants, 2014

The exhibit runs through mid August, so there is still about a month left to check it out.  I'll try to get back one or two more times before it closes.


Edit: I managed to borrow a copy of the exhibit catalog, and none of these three works is reproduced in it (there is a small shot of Swimming with Giants in the background).  I think that is a real missed opportunity (and I can't really recommend the catalog now that I know it is missing works from the exhibit), but it just means there is even more reason to go see these works in person!

Final Show!!!

Today at 4 pm is the last performance of Final Exam.  Last night, we had several walk-ups (a bit astonishing given our location) and got 20 people in the audience, which I was not expecting.  The energy was great (and a welcome change from Thurs, which was a low energy show to a certain extent).  We had the biggest reaction from the audience, including someone who got a bit carried away in their student role and answered Mr. Miller.  I wasn't expecting that...  It was really the best or second best performance of the run (just a couple of times the actors jumped on others' lines and one slightly missed cue).  We had great feedback after the show as well, but I think we can top that today...

We're hoping to get 3-4 more folks to turn out today (though more are welcome).  This will allow us to have an unbroken streak of 10 or more audience members at every show (in fact, we are averaging 17, which is great).  By the end of our run, just under 120 people will have seen the show.  To encourage folks to show up for the last performance, we have put the tickets on the Daily Discount, so they are only $8 (cash) at the door (or you can order them here).  Hope to see you!

Edit: It looks like we just made it to 10, and there might be a couple of walk-ups.  Yea!  Thanks for the support, and hope everyone had a wonderful Fringe!  I have just a few more shows to catch (I haven't decided on any of the Patron's choice shows Sunday evening, though I'm currently leaning against).

Edit2: Incredible!  We went from 7 last night to 27.  That might not actually count a few people that showed up at the door, and the Front of House manager said we were technically sold out.  All I know is I had to run for more chairs twice.  Now unfortunately, two of the friends of one of the actors thought the show was at 5 not 4, so they showed up as we were packing up.  Most unfortunate, but aside from that it was a great show overall, with a lot of good vibes from the audience.  I think anytime you go from thinking you are going to have a lightly attended show and then you jump up to essentially sold out is quite an adjustment.  (Obviously, a good problem to have.)  We also had the youngest audience members by far (perhaps a few under 10), which is probably the unofficial cut-off for age appropriateness of the show, but they seemed to be ok.  Hopefully no nightmares tonight.  I'm going to ponder if I am going to do anything more with the show, like run it again at Danforth Tech in the fall, but I am leaning against it.  One Fringe-like experience is probably enough.