I've just been watching the video of the female coyote running around the schoolyard at Marlborough Elementary in Burnaby, trying to find a way back under a portable where she had denned up with her four pups (Jennifer Moreau's blog at blogscanada.com/2012/05/30/coyote-pups-trapped-under-portable-at -burnaby-school/). The place had been boarded up earlier that day, on the mistaken belief the pups and mother were out. It took her a long time, until after dark, to work up the nerve to go back under, where someone had peeled back a board to give her access. Then the pups came out (or she brought them out) and started to play, before she hurried them all off to a safer place. But you sort of have to wonder how on earth she ever picked that spot in the first place--with kids stomping around overhead all day, and yelling and running about in the schoolyard. Maybe the strange indifference of the people walking by the coyote all day as she prowled about, waiting for the pups or trying to find a way back to them, has something to do with it.
We see and hear a lot of coyotes in our neighborhood, a block away from the research farm at the U of A South Campus. Not as many as a few years go, when we could sometimes watch six or more come out in the evening from a dense thicket of poplar and other scrubby bush at the corner of 115 St. and 51 Ave, now largely turned into a deep dug-out park that doubles as a dry pond. But, still, most nights in summer, when we have the windows open, we hear them in the middle of the night. We see them on our street, too, once even sitting under the streetlamp outside our bedroom window. We have seen them in the Community Centre park area in broad daylight, and in winter trotting along by the community hall. Sometimes we hear puppies squabbling.
Last October, in Terwillegar off-leash park, we heard and then saw one disconsolate young coyote sitting across one of the borrow ponds, on the bank, in mid-afternoon, barking and howling and otherwise protesting being alone. It is that time of year that the mothers leave their pups to fend for themselves, and this one was pretty disappointed or disgusted with the whole process. We kept George, our German Wired-haired pointer, away from that area that day, though it is a lovely area to walk in.
Next day, it was quiet and empty, so we went back along that trail. George wears a bell, since he likes to explore, and we like to keep tabs on his exploration. He went along behind a thick growth of shrubs, and his bell started a bouncy rhythm, like he was trotting, so I went around to see what was going on, and there he was, jogging along behind the young coyote, who seemed to enjoy having another canine to play with. Of course, the coyote was also jogging along over the crest of a hump, into some more shrubs. I hollered "George! Come here now!" And for a change he did. The coyote kept on going. It might have been alone. It might also have been bait for a pack over the hump.
Coyote, of course, is one of the creative/re-creative force figures of many First Nations cultural stories. With Raven, Crow, Hare, Iktomi the Spider, and others, Coyote falls into that misnamed category of "trickster." And, in the words of a song by Ian Tyson, "Coyote is a survivor." Our department Chair is not so enamored of Coyote these days, however. Her family dog, or what was left of it, and its collar, was found at the mouth of a coyote den along the edge of Mill Creek Ravine a month or so ago.
Ravens, technically the largest songbird in North America as well as the prototype for another important trick-playing force figure, are also very common in our neighborhood, and on the U. of A. main campus. Noisy, large, gregarious ravens. Not so obviously threatening as coyotes, and more entertaining. Mostly to themselves.
Leanna from my writing class a few years ago spent five years in the north, and gathered a number of raven stories, first hand. Her favorite, for a while, was of the day she tricked a raven. She told us how she had been walking home one evening from Arctic College, and a large clump of snow shook loose from an overhead branch, down her neck. She looked up and saw a raven on the limb over the sidewalk. The raven casually flew off down the street to the next tree, and landed gently on another snow-laden limb over the sidewalk. "Couldn't be deliberate" Leanna told herself, but kept a lookout, and sure enough, just as she got under the limb, the raven shook it, and down came a clump of snow, just missing her. And off to the next tree went the raven. Leanna got to just before the tree, then took a detour, into the ditch beside the sidewalk. It meant going up to her thigh tops in snow, but she avoided the avalanche. She bragged about how she had fooled the raven.
I kind of spoiled the moment: "Let me get this straight. You're up to your thighs in a snow-filled ditch. And you fooled the raven?" Leanna got this look. And then she groaned and then she laughed. That was a game the bird could not lose.
Wednesday, 30 May 2012
Wednesday, 23 May 2012
Getting distracted, Del Mastro style
On Facebook, I get a link to a message from Mike Rilstone, Friend of a Friend, under the title
WAKE UP CANADA!
-----------------------
At what point in time does a party duct tape a buffoon's mouth?
Isn't a used car salesman taking a medical doctor to task in her own field, (albeit something a bright Grade One kid would probably know), a bit much?
What he's talking about is the comment PC MP Dean Del Mastro made on radio to Liberal MP Carolyn Bennett that biology was not science. Bennett is a medical doctor. Apparently she burst out laughing. On blog spots, and comment sites all over the internet, Del Mastro has been pilloried as a bozo, a clown, and, as above, a buffoon. Maybe so. But don't expect him to get the duct tape treatment any time soon, because in making these kinds of comments, he is doing pretty much the job assigned to him. He is not supposed to be an expert; he is supposed to be a distraction.
Need proof? Ask yourself, what was the occasion for this comment? Why were these two MPs being interviewed in the first place? About what? What was the outcome for the issue they were debating?
Discussion of the "Sex: A Tell-All Exhibit" at the museum of Science and Technology and of criticism of the government's negative response to it, has pretty much disappeared, as amused and irate commentators shift focus to the nonsense spewing from the mouth of Del Mastro. He has become the issue. He has succeeded. And because he has succeeded, he will be rewarded with more opportunities to be a stand-up distraction in the future.
Del Mastro is not a newby to parliament. He is in his third term, so the Prime Minister knew what he was getting when he promoted Del Mastro to positions of increasing responsibility and visibility.
That's right: his third term. Somebody in Peterborough likes what he is doing for his constituency--a lot of somebodies.
That reminds me of the third verse of Tom Paxton's satirical song, "What did You Learn In School Today?":
What did you learn in school today,
Dear little boy of mine?
What did you learn in school today,
Dear little boy of mine?
I learned our government must be strong.
It's always right and never wrong.
Our leaders are the finest men.
And we elect them again and again.
That's what I learned in school today.
That's what I learned in school.
Within the parliamentary connotations of the word, Dean Del Mastro is doing a "fine job." Even if a lot of commentators are wondering if he went to school, and if he studied or passed any science courses while he was there.
Another angle he pursued in his analysis of the Exhibit was that if people wanted that kind of information, they should go to an adult video store for it, prompting a few to wonder if he has spent much time in adult video stores, because he seems to need to learn a lot about them, their services and products, too.
See--a distraction.
WAKE UP CANADA!
-----------------------
At what point in time does a party duct tape a buffoon's mouth?
Isn't a used car salesman taking a medical doctor to task in her own field, (albeit something a bright Grade One kid would probably know), a bit much?
What he's talking about is the comment PC MP Dean Del Mastro made on radio to Liberal MP Carolyn Bennett that biology was not science. Bennett is a medical doctor. Apparently she burst out laughing. On blog spots, and comment sites all over the internet, Del Mastro has been pilloried as a bozo, a clown, and, as above, a buffoon. Maybe so. But don't expect him to get the duct tape treatment any time soon, because in making these kinds of comments, he is doing pretty much the job assigned to him. He is not supposed to be an expert; he is supposed to be a distraction.
Need proof? Ask yourself, what was the occasion for this comment? Why were these two MPs being interviewed in the first place? About what? What was the outcome for the issue they were debating?
Discussion of the "Sex: A Tell-All Exhibit" at the museum of Science and Technology and of criticism of the government's negative response to it, has pretty much disappeared, as amused and irate commentators shift focus to the nonsense spewing from the mouth of Del Mastro. He has become the issue. He has succeeded. And because he has succeeded, he will be rewarded with more opportunities to be a stand-up distraction in the future.
Del Mastro is not a newby to parliament. He is in his third term, so the Prime Minister knew what he was getting when he promoted Del Mastro to positions of increasing responsibility and visibility.
That's right: his third term. Somebody in Peterborough likes what he is doing for his constituency--a lot of somebodies.
That reminds me of the third verse of Tom Paxton's satirical song, "What did You Learn In School Today?":
What did you learn in school today,
Dear little boy of mine?
What did you learn in school today,
Dear little boy of mine?
I learned our government must be strong.
It's always right and never wrong.
Our leaders are the finest men.
And we elect them again and again.
That's what I learned in school today.
That's what I learned in school.
Within the parliamentary connotations of the word, Dean Del Mastro is doing a "fine job." Even if a lot of commentators are wondering if he went to school, and if he studied or passed any science courses while he was there.
Another angle he pursued in his analysis of the Exhibit was that if people wanted that kind of information, they should go to an adult video store for it, prompting a few to wonder if he has spent much time in adult video stores, because he seems to need to learn a lot about them, their services and products, too.
See--a distraction.
Thursday, 10 May 2012
Bear Stories
And speaking of monsters: have I told any bear stories lately?
in the late 60s and early 1970s, I worked on the edge of the Chilcotin Plateau for a couple of summers and farther north, along the eastern edge of the Alaska panhandle for three, as a surveyor for the BC Department of Highways. The crews had a core of full-timers ranging from 19 to around 57 years old, augmented in May by university students, and sometimes in July by a few high-schoolers. We July veterans of two months of not shaving and rarely showering—it was a great summer job in many ways—were not allowed actually to harm the high-schoolers. But we were allowed to have some fun with them—the same kind of fun the regulars occasionally tried to have with us.
in the late 60s and early 1970s, I worked on the edge of the Chilcotin Plateau for a couple of summers and farther north, along the eastern edge of the Alaska panhandle for three, as a surveyor for the BC Department of Highways. The crews had a core of full-timers ranging from 19 to around 57 years old, augmented in May by university students, and sometimes in July by a few high-schoolers. We July veterans of two months of not shaving and rarely showering—it was a great summer job in many ways—were not allowed actually to harm the high-schoolers. But we were allowed to have some fun with them—the same kind of fun the regulars occasionally tried to have with us.
The Chilcotin years, we were
working in grizzly bear country, right across territory on which Connie King, a
retired pro hockey player, had been badly chewed up by a grizzly on his ranch.
The first year we drove in to the hopping-off point for our job, we had met
King in a café, admiring the scar where half his face had been. So, we did carry rifles with us on some parts
of the job, as grizzlies were a genuine threat, if not the commonplace we let
the high-schoolers believe.In fact, I don't recall ever actually seeing a bear while on
the job, in all five summers. Once in the north, in the evening, out for a drive along
the project, we passed a small grizzly on the edge of an old landing
strip. That's it. We saw more wolves than bears. By one. Still, bears
were the big worry.
The second summer, I had two
of the not-ready-to-shave set working with me doing cross-sections of line.
They were not exactly quick or productive workers, to put it generously. But they were willing to listen to wild
stories about bear attacks and wonder aloud how to handle a grizzly (it was always a grizzly) if one happened by.
“Well, you
know,” I told them, from my several months of non-experience with bears, and a bit of theory gleaned from unreliable sources, “grizzlies cannot climb trees, so if a bear comes after us,
we have to get about twelve feet up a solid tree within a few seconds.”
“How many
seconds?”
“Oh,
depends. Ten or twelve, I would think. That’s why you always have to have a
tree picked out as we work ahead. So if I yell, `Grizzly,’ you can get up the
tree without thinking too hard.”
Did I
mention we were working on a mountain side? One with trees that tapered very
quickly from a foot across to a few inches?
Rooted in thin mountain soil?
So I
offered to put them through a grizzly bear drill. I would suddenly yell, “Grizzly,” and then
time them to see how long it took them to get out of claw range. And as we worked along a steep slope one
afternoon, that’s what I yelled.
The more
agile of the two leaped to a handy fir, and began to claw his way desperately
up the trunk. When he was about 7 or 8 feet up, clinging with arms and legs to
the rapidly narrowing tree, it came loose from the shallow litter it was rooted
in, and rolled off down the slope, with a seventeen year old firmly clinging
for dear life.
“You’re
dead,” I called after him.
Later that
week, we were dropped off along the line by the rest of the crew who went on
ahead. The basic equipment we needed for
the day was a hand level, a rod, a tape, and a pogey stick to rest the
hand-level on. And our lunches. The teens had their lunches, just fine. But
as the truck pulled out of earshot, there was this casual,” Do you have the
hand-level?” from the sixteen-year-old whose job it was to bring it. “No.” “So now what,” he asked, looking for a cozy
spot to curl up for the next seven or eight hours.
“Now,” I
replied, pointing into the bush, along a row of survey stakes, “you walk about
two miles that way up the cut line, till you get to our camp, you go to your
tent, you get the hand level, and you come back here and start to work.”
“I can’t go
alone.”
“Dave can
go with you, since you both screwed up. I’ll just wait right here.”
“What about
bears?”
“I’m not
worried about bears,” I replied.
“No, us?”
“Well,
bears don’t like noise,” I reminded them. “So take a stick and beat it against
your hard hat as you go along.”
And that’s
what he did. Two miles to camp, and two miles back to our worksite. Without
first taking off the hard hat. I was sorry I hadn't told them to bang their two hard-hats together.
Tuesday, 8 May 2012
Where the Wild Things Went
The sad news today is that Maurice Sendak has died. Back in the mid 1970s--1975 I guess--I took a job as a branch library supervisor at the Regent Park Branch of Regina Public Library. I knew just about zip about children's literature, and hadn't looked at a picture book in who knows how long. So I had to find out from the staff who the kids liked, as I prepared for my first pre-school story and craft hours, and for my first Saturday morning story hours. They showed me a lot--Curious George was a sure winner, if any were in. Among the newer books that came along (ordered by my precessor) was Leo the Late Bloomer. Story of my life.
But one they all loved was Sendak's Where The Wild Things Are. We had many copies. We had to replace worn out copies every couple of years.
The first time I read it, I was tickled at the story of Max, a bad boy punished for being too unruly, sent off to bed where he works out his attitude on a dream island full of monsters who have to learn to live and play by his rules. The monsters were the funniest things I could imagine in a picture book. And the fact that Max was pretty unapologetic didn't hurt, either.
So one afternoon, in came a father with several children. They took off into the children's book section while he sat by the entrance to see what they would pick. And to tell them what they were not allowed to have. A parent's prerogative, I suppose. But I was only maybe 26, covered in hair, beard and attitude, and full of righteous indignation at anything that looked like censorship to me. I was, after all, on the executive of the Saskatchewan Library Association. And one day would chair its (one-person) Intellectual Freedom Committee, and write to local newspapers and speak to regional library boards (well, one of them) on matters of censorship. But my training not to interfere with parents showing an interest in their children's reading held cool until one little boy trotted up with a huge smile and Where the Wild Things Are. Without even looking inside to see what it was about, the dad said a firm "No." Surprised, I asked him why, since the book was a major award winner and truly popular with kids the boy's age.
"Too scary. It'll give him nightmares."
The kid had not looked too frightened when he brought the book up to his dad. And there's a monster on the cover. So I honestly do not think, to this day, that was the issue. But the man had not even looked into the book, so it wasn't the story, either.
I tried. I reaffirmed that the book was hugely popular. That it had won major awards. That it was a story of a little boy learning to control his monsters, to make them his playmates. That had surprisingly little impact on the father in question. Well, none.
I hope the kid got to read the book one day. Maybe he had already heard it at school or at a library story hour. Maybe he took a children's literature course at university, where an older, balding and beardless instructor read it to him and gave him permission to study it for credit.
Then again, maybe the dad had also heard about it, about a boy who gets away with being disobedient and who learns to control the monsters in his mind and life. Maybe it was even on some "books to keep your kids away from" list he had been supplied with. There are such things. Lots of them. Maurice Sendak was on lots of them. Still is. He was on them even before In the Night Kitchen, with its full frontal diaperless male toddler nudity.
Shocking. To some parents out to purify the world. Shocking like Robert Munsch with his illustrated great big fart in Good Families Don't.Which also got onto some "do not let your kids see this book" lists.
Kids, even very little ones, sometimes just have too much maturity for their parents to handle. That's one thing I learned, once I became a dad myself. Physical maturity of the kind that takes your breath away as your watch him climb a shaky chain and log ladder and pull himself up onto a platform a foot or two over his height, to take his turn at the slide--when you were wondering how he got there last time while you were talking to another dad for just a few seconds. Then wish you hadn't found out.
Physical maturity of the kind that takes your breath away as you make his supper in the kitchen under your bedroom, and wonder what is that noise coming from the second floor, thirteen steps straight up over a concrete landing where just two seconds ago he was playing with some toys. And he's not yet two.
And mental maturity (or daring precociousness) of the kind that makes you double take when you see that he is still watching the same song on the Muppet Show tape, a good five minutes after you are sure it had to be over. "Wow, that song's going on a long time," you say. "I pushed it," he explains, prodding the replay button. And he's not yet two.
Good thing there's a long training period before they hit adolescence, and really begin to work on you. Too bad it's not ever long enough.
Tonight, I'm wishing my copy of Where The Wild Things Are were here at home for a sentimental send-off read. Maybe I'll have to listen to The Troggs instead. Wonder if they're on YouTube? Silly question, really.
But one they all loved was Sendak's Where The Wild Things Are. We had many copies. We had to replace worn out copies every couple of years.
The first time I read it, I was tickled at the story of Max, a bad boy punished for being too unruly, sent off to bed where he works out his attitude on a dream island full of monsters who have to learn to live and play by his rules. The monsters were the funniest things I could imagine in a picture book. And the fact that Max was pretty unapologetic didn't hurt, either.
So one afternoon, in came a father with several children. They took off into the children's book section while he sat by the entrance to see what they would pick. And to tell them what they were not allowed to have. A parent's prerogative, I suppose. But I was only maybe 26, covered in hair, beard and attitude, and full of righteous indignation at anything that looked like censorship to me. I was, after all, on the executive of the Saskatchewan Library Association. And one day would chair its (one-person) Intellectual Freedom Committee, and write to local newspapers and speak to regional library boards (well, one of them) on matters of censorship. But my training not to interfere with parents showing an interest in their children's reading held cool until one little boy trotted up with a huge smile and Where the Wild Things Are. Without even looking inside to see what it was about, the dad said a firm "No." Surprised, I asked him why, since the book was a major award winner and truly popular with kids the boy's age.
"Too scary. It'll give him nightmares."
The kid had not looked too frightened when he brought the book up to his dad. And there's a monster on the cover. So I honestly do not think, to this day, that was the issue. But the man had not even looked into the book, so it wasn't the story, either.
I tried. I reaffirmed that the book was hugely popular. That it had won major awards. That it was a story of a little boy learning to control his monsters, to make them his playmates. That had surprisingly little impact on the father in question. Well, none.
I hope the kid got to read the book one day. Maybe he had already heard it at school or at a library story hour. Maybe he took a children's literature course at university, where an older, balding and beardless instructor read it to him and gave him permission to study it for credit.
Then again, maybe the dad had also heard about it, about a boy who gets away with being disobedient and who learns to control the monsters in his mind and life. Maybe it was even on some "books to keep your kids away from" list he had been supplied with. There are such things. Lots of them. Maurice Sendak was on lots of them. Still is. He was on them even before In the Night Kitchen, with its full frontal diaperless male toddler nudity.
Shocking. To some parents out to purify the world. Shocking like Robert Munsch with his illustrated great big fart in Good Families Don't.Which also got onto some "do not let your kids see this book" lists.
Kids, even very little ones, sometimes just have too much maturity for their parents to handle. That's one thing I learned, once I became a dad myself. Physical maturity of the kind that takes your breath away as your watch him climb a shaky chain and log ladder and pull himself up onto a platform a foot or two over his height, to take his turn at the slide--when you were wondering how he got there last time while you were talking to another dad for just a few seconds. Then wish you hadn't found out.
Physical maturity of the kind that takes your breath away as you make his supper in the kitchen under your bedroom, and wonder what is that noise coming from the second floor, thirteen steps straight up over a concrete landing where just two seconds ago he was playing with some toys. And he's not yet two.
And mental maturity (or daring precociousness) of the kind that makes you double take when you see that he is still watching the same song on the Muppet Show tape, a good five minutes after you are sure it had to be over. "Wow, that song's going on a long time," you say. "I pushed it," he explains, prodding the replay button. And he's not yet two.
Good thing there's a long training period before they hit adolescence, and really begin to work on you. Too bad it's not ever long enough.
Tonight, I'm wishing my copy of Where The Wild Things Are were here at home for a sentimental send-off read. Maybe I'll have to listen to The Troggs instead. Wonder if they're on YouTube? Silly question, really.
Friday, 27 April 2012
Short Order Poetry
This week, on Wednesday and Friday, I had the numbing joy of sitting at a table in the concourse of the Stanley Milner Library, and, as part of the Edmonton Poetry Festival, writing short-order poems for the public. I think there were six of us shared the opportunity--six I can name (in whole or in part, but I don't have permission--though one was Alice Major, the city's first Poet Laureate. Gotta drop at least one name. And another was Kelly Shepherd, a former student, now a writing colleague with whom I've shared similar tables on a few other occasions--but usually to write stories or short non-fiction explorations--things I'm much more comfortable with).
The original plan had been to set up in Churchill Square--but it rained and blustered Tuesday, and the week became horribly cold and we even had snow (heavy, wet, slushy stuff) on Friday morning. When Tuesday was a true washout, Alice (who is festival organizer) decided to move us into the library. In what amounted to four writing spurts from 11:30 to 1:00 on the four functional days, we served up poems (or poem-like drafts) on 51 topics:
Friday
(only one repeat = the
Wild Rose Party)
This was one of those "step outside your comfort zone" experiments, as far as I was concerned, and now I'm glad I did it. It left a buzz for a few hours after. Though to be honest, as I explained to a woman who asked how this short-order poem thing worked: "Sometimes it works pretty well, and other times not so much." It's the finding out that makes the experience what it is.
What keeps me in a humbler space about my uneven contributions to the overall event is encountering a truly gifted recent graduate of the street school of hard learning, a man my age (Kevan) who sits out in Churchill Square and walks the few blocks around it, collecting observations and stories, and who had recently lived on the streets for a year and a half. He stepped up to the open mike and read a few of his poems, all written in the last two years about things observed or overheard within those few square blocks, any one poem of which has more genuine empathy with stark realities than anything and maybe everything I've attempted. And he also writes poems for children, and reads them in schools. I gather he started writing as part of a journaling exercise to help him recover from an unspecified addiction (along with a ruptured hernia and colon cancer). Until that moment, he had never written a thing in his life. Now, he is working on a manuscript that will combine stories behind the poems--and some of those stories are evocatively lyrical in themselves--with the poems that emerged.
It makes my sense of "outside my comfort zone" a pretty puny feather bed of a space. I didn't even need to get wet or cold for my art. We were spared those inconveniences. Maybe we should have called ourselves the "hot-house flower poets," rather than short-order poets.
But risk is relative, as well as absolute. It's tricky, that way.
Speaking of tricky, some thought on fences, occasioned by seeing a flock of crows, two ravens, and a blue jay sitting on and above the fence that divides the University of Alberta South Campus farmlands from the Lendrum residential area, along 115th Street (A work in progress, by the way--what you see today might not be what was here yesterday, and might change tomorrow):
Fence: a trick
played on and with
open landscape
A line in the land
both in and out
and the connective
in-between.
Fences mark a delicate
space: both sides and the middle
ground despised but maintained
out of mutual
otherness, that need to be
different;
neither here nor
there
but both at once
defining your own space
and mine
and making that middle
ground possible, bringing
together to keep
apart.
AS A P.S.: we have been asked to do another Short Order Poetry table for an Edmonton Arts Council event for downtown businessmen, the evening of May 12, so I guess the Edmonton Poetry Festival people thought it worked well enough.
The original plan had been to set up in Churchill Square--but it rained and blustered Tuesday, and the week became horribly cold and we even had snow (heavy, wet, slushy stuff) on Friday morning. When Tuesday was a true washout, Alice (who is festival organizer) decided to move us into the library. In what amounted to four writing spurts from 11:30 to 1:00 on the four functional days, we served up poems (or poem-like drafts) on 51 topics:
Short Order Poems
topics, April 23-27, 2012
Monday
amber
space
integration/anti-segregation
harmony
Wild Rose Party
sexual exploitation
Tuesday
space
integration/anti-segregation
harmony
Wild Rose Party
sexual exploitation
Tuesday
none (bad weather)
Wed.
Wed.
teaching English
the name John
liver cancer
tea
love
earache
Wild Rose Party
skateboarding
no words
wave
literacy and flight
Thurs.
the name John
liver cancer
tea
love
earache
Wild Rose Party
skateboarding
no words
wave
literacy and flight
Thurs.
cats
sleet
pistachio ice cream
birthday wishes from kid
to mom
prisons
invidious
joy
Shreveport, Louisiana
food
Kinsmen gym
Kinsmen gym
toilet bowl
“teach me how to write a
poem” (wrote about a baby)
running shoes
survey
new Edmonton arena
graceful
Edmonton road closures
grand-babies
intriguing
the pleasure of giving
away poems
an excuse for being late
uplifting/get well poem
bulldogs
Friday
letting go
magnanimous
addiction
“anything funny – just
don’t go near relationships”
weather
movie theatre
ladybugs
three-year-old
granddaughter who has a temper
mountains
the Beatles
Spermy, the origami sperm
whale
This was one of those "step outside your comfort zone" experiments, as far as I was concerned, and now I'm glad I did it. It left a buzz for a few hours after. Though to be honest, as I explained to a woman who asked how this short-order poem thing worked: "Sometimes it works pretty well, and other times not so much." It's the finding out that makes the experience what it is.
What keeps me in a humbler space about my uneven contributions to the overall event is encountering a truly gifted recent graduate of the street school of hard learning, a man my age (Kevan) who sits out in Churchill Square and walks the few blocks around it, collecting observations and stories, and who had recently lived on the streets for a year and a half. He stepped up to the open mike and read a few of his poems, all written in the last two years about things observed or overheard within those few square blocks, any one poem of which has more genuine empathy with stark realities than anything and maybe everything I've attempted. And he also writes poems for children, and reads them in schools. I gather he started writing as part of a journaling exercise to help him recover from an unspecified addiction (along with a ruptured hernia and colon cancer). Until that moment, he had never written a thing in his life. Now, he is working on a manuscript that will combine stories behind the poems--and some of those stories are evocatively lyrical in themselves--with the poems that emerged.
It makes my sense of "outside my comfort zone" a pretty puny feather bed of a space. I didn't even need to get wet or cold for my art. We were spared those inconveniences. Maybe we should have called ourselves the "hot-house flower poets," rather than short-order poets.
But risk is relative, as well as absolute. It's tricky, that way.
Speaking of tricky, some thought on fences, occasioned by seeing a flock of crows, two ravens, and a blue jay sitting on and above the fence that divides the University of Alberta South Campus farmlands from the Lendrum residential area, along 115th Street (A work in progress, by the way--what you see today might not be what was here yesterday, and might change tomorrow):
Fence: a trick
played on and with
open landscape
A line in the land
both in and out
and the connective
in-between.
Fences mark a delicate
space: both sides and the middle
ground despised but maintained
out of mutual
otherness, that need to be
different;
neither here nor
there
but both at once
defining your own space
and mine
and making that middle
ground possible, bringing
together to keep
apart.
AS A P.S.: we have been asked to do another Short Order Poetry table for an Edmonton Arts Council event for downtown businessmen, the evening of May 12, so I guess the Edmonton Poetry Festival people thought it worked well enough.
Friday, 13 April 2012
Measured Wave Lengths
Some more haiku-formed musings, this time with "wave(s)" as syllable #5:
Rolling, tossing waves
calmed by a softening voice
pattern for the ages
Ringlets, curls in waves
wind-tossed strands across bright eyes
flirtatious protein
Rippling shimmers waves
gold to the edge, bread basket
migrant peasants dream
Star to the crowd, wave
walking the fame eternal
self adoration
Never amber waves
grainy photos black and white
myth and nostalgic
Roll in, roll out, waves
push up the strand pull full back
note of joy? Sadness?
Invisible waves
communicate essentials
twittering nuisance
And, a late addition Saturday, in honour of the snowstorm that settled in for the weekend last night:
Mid-April flurries
delicate disappointment
crystal on crystal
Rolling, tossing waves
calmed by a softening voice
pattern for the ages
Ringlets, curls in waves
wind-tossed strands across bright eyes
flirtatious protein
Rippling shimmers waves
gold to the edge, bread basket
migrant peasants dream
Star to the crowd, wave
walking the fame eternal
self adoration
Never amber waves
grainy photos black and white
myth and nostalgic
Roll in, roll out, waves
push up the strand pull full back
note of joy? Sadness?
Invisible waves
communicate essentials
twittering nuisance
And, a late addition Saturday, in honour of the snowstorm that settled in for the weekend last night:
Mid-April flurries
delicate disappointment
crystal on crystal
Tuesday, 10 April 2012
"Snarkenfreude"
I ran across this delicious word for a malicious behaviour in a column by Aretha Van Herk, in the Winter 2012 New Trails magazine from the U. of A. Alumni Association ("Telling Hard Truths," page 9, for those who worry about the finer details of apparatus).
It's a portmanteau from "snark" and the German word "Schadenfreude." "Snark" everyone has had experience of, probably even spoken or written an example of. You might be familiar with the word via Lewis Carroll, but Urban Dictionary says "snark" already a portmanteau, is a "combination from `snide' and `remark.'" "Schadenfreude" refers to pleasure in the misfortunes or unhappiness of others. Hence this combined term for taking sarcastic or snide pleasure in remarking on the misfortunes or unhappiness of others. Or maybe taking pleasure in causing unhappiness or misfortune for others through snarkiness: Snarkenfreude.
One place snarkenfreude tends to show up is in the "Comments" sections of the blogosphere. In one form, it is cyberbullying, the online hobby of literate narcissists and cybersociopaths.
The Van Herk column brings up the word in a discussion of a bigger issue worth thinking about. Why do we assume that "the hard truths" are always the unpleasant ones? At least, that's the way the saying gets passed around. And some just take snarky pleasure in spitting it out to watch the misery it creates. Is good news, then, a "soft truth"? Is that why when we have a hard truth to convey, and we are not in a snarkenfreude mood, we look for language to soften the blow? And end up, in my all-too-frequent experience, muddying the issues, confusing the situation and making a sour hash of something better made short and, if necessary, unsweet.
Why pretend the bad news isn't really that bad? Why not just let the person receiving it get on with the next stage--anger, grief, frustration, depression?... Of course, there is always the fear that the recipient will shoot the messenger--even if the messenger did not create the bad news in the first place. Messengers tend to be less powerful (which is how they get to be messengers in the first place), so easier to take things out on--less dangerous. Fewer bodyguards and enforcers.
A former student was by my office today. She has been working for Health Canada, but is on a lower rung on the seniority ladder, so is likely one of the upcoming Budget-Balancing Layoffs. She was one of the thousands of recent public service hires, after all, of the minority Federal government, so will be one of the face-saving victims of the majority Federal government. She was telling me she was going to think of it as an "opportunity." Sad, thinking of her going gentle into a different good night.
There is a passage in Timothy Findley's Not Wanted on the Voyage that keeps coming to mind when government or any other institution begins to solve its own self-inflicted financial or other problems by resorting to decisions to cut back everything and everyone they have been spending madly on for years:
The building of the ark was a monstrous undertaking--and once the keel frame had been laid and the ribs of the ark itself set in place, it was obvious how vast its size would be: the largest structure ever built in the whole district. The workmen now were in awe of it, as though they were building a temple, and this produced a thoroughly satisfying atmosphere of "no more questions asked--no more questions needed." Noah was able, now, to stare each workman squarely in the eye and dare him with a look to challenge the grandeur of the project. As if the grandeur of the ark was its own justification. (119)
In the present circumstances, that would sound something like: "Just question how we're balancing the budget--we dare you. Surely you must believe that the budget needs to be balanced and the deficit we created for you must be paid off? Surely you don't want to leave a mess for your children and grandchildren to pay off and repair after you have taken more than your fair share out of the system we built to give you access to more than your fair share as a way of buying your votes the way we now are forcing your shamed silence?"
I recall a hospital administrator, in the mid-1990s, when Ralph Klein was slashing budgets of all sorts of Alberta public institutions in order to eliminate the deficit, to make this the one shining glory spot in the nation, the only province without a debt--well not one to talk of, anyway. All that decayed or never built infrastructure? Not worth mentioning: "Go on, mention it. I dare you." The administrator, who had yearly asked the province to increase the budget of the hospital, for the good of the public and to create better access to health care, immediately turned tail and proclaimed that his could be a better institution for the cut-backs--a leaner, more efficient, more effective machine. In one of those cases, he had to be messing with the hard truth. Maybe in both.
In Alberta today, if you question the grandeur of some of the tar-sands development policies, such as the virtual holiday from royalties the richest companies in the province enjoy, at the expense of the taxpayer, you are in for a dose of this "dare-you" look.
"Surely you cannot question the need to develop this valuable resource for the good of all?" Nope, I can't. And if it were for the good of all, we could all rejoice in its completion. Of course, when it is complete, there will be a big messy hole in the province, and not much carry-over. We'll be the provincial equivalent of a ghost-mining-town, the likes of which dot the interior of British Columbia, northern Ontario, Quebec.
Remember what happened to all those silent, bullied workmen who toiled on the ark? They were left with their families and animals to drown in the great cleansing flood that carried all the undeserving undesirables to their doom, after they had built the lifeboat for the few deserving desirables: Noah; his wife; their sons Shem, Ham and Japheth; and their wives. Apparently the wives didn't have names, only roles to play in the grand scheme, so a place in the lifeboat. Probably feeding the animals. Then looking after the livestock.
A few snarkenfreude-like retorts begin to frame themselves at the core of my otherwise carefully maintained, mild-mannered Canadian politesse. If only I thought they might cause a few seconds of unease among today's Noahs.
But I'm too restrained and intimidated by years of such symbolic violence as "the look" ever to comment on such things.
It's a portmanteau from "snark" and the German word "Schadenfreude." "Snark" everyone has had experience of, probably even spoken or written an example of. You might be familiar with the word via Lewis Carroll, but Urban Dictionary says "snark" already a portmanteau, is a "combination from `snide' and `remark.'" "Schadenfreude" refers to pleasure in the misfortunes or unhappiness of others. Hence this combined term for taking sarcastic or snide pleasure in remarking on the misfortunes or unhappiness of others. Or maybe taking pleasure in causing unhappiness or misfortune for others through snarkiness: Snarkenfreude.
One place snarkenfreude tends to show up is in the "Comments" sections of the blogosphere. In one form, it is cyberbullying, the online hobby of literate narcissists and cybersociopaths.
The Van Herk column brings up the word in a discussion of a bigger issue worth thinking about. Why do we assume that "the hard truths" are always the unpleasant ones? At least, that's the way the saying gets passed around. And some just take snarky pleasure in spitting it out to watch the misery it creates. Is good news, then, a "soft truth"? Is that why when we have a hard truth to convey, and we are not in a snarkenfreude mood, we look for language to soften the blow? And end up, in my all-too-frequent experience, muddying the issues, confusing the situation and making a sour hash of something better made short and, if necessary, unsweet.
Why pretend the bad news isn't really that bad? Why not just let the person receiving it get on with the next stage--anger, grief, frustration, depression?... Of course, there is always the fear that the recipient will shoot the messenger--even if the messenger did not create the bad news in the first place. Messengers tend to be less powerful (which is how they get to be messengers in the first place), so easier to take things out on--less dangerous. Fewer bodyguards and enforcers.
A former student was by my office today. She has been working for Health Canada, but is on a lower rung on the seniority ladder, so is likely one of the upcoming Budget-Balancing Layoffs. She was one of the thousands of recent public service hires, after all, of the minority Federal government, so will be one of the face-saving victims of the majority Federal government. She was telling me she was going to think of it as an "opportunity." Sad, thinking of her going gentle into a different good night.
There is a passage in Timothy Findley's Not Wanted on the Voyage that keeps coming to mind when government or any other institution begins to solve its own self-inflicted financial or other problems by resorting to decisions to cut back everything and everyone they have been spending madly on for years:
The building of the ark was a monstrous undertaking--and once the keel frame had been laid and the ribs of the ark itself set in place, it was obvious how vast its size would be: the largest structure ever built in the whole district. The workmen now were in awe of it, as though they were building a temple, and this produced a thoroughly satisfying atmosphere of "no more questions asked--no more questions needed." Noah was able, now, to stare each workman squarely in the eye and dare him with a look to challenge the grandeur of the project. As if the grandeur of the ark was its own justification. (119)
In the present circumstances, that would sound something like: "Just question how we're balancing the budget--we dare you. Surely you must believe that the budget needs to be balanced and the deficit we created for you must be paid off? Surely you don't want to leave a mess for your children and grandchildren to pay off and repair after you have taken more than your fair share out of the system we built to give you access to more than your fair share as a way of buying your votes the way we now are forcing your shamed silence?"
I recall a hospital administrator, in the mid-1990s, when Ralph Klein was slashing budgets of all sorts of Alberta public institutions in order to eliminate the deficit, to make this the one shining glory spot in the nation, the only province without a debt--well not one to talk of, anyway. All that decayed or never built infrastructure? Not worth mentioning: "Go on, mention it. I dare you." The administrator, who had yearly asked the province to increase the budget of the hospital, for the good of the public and to create better access to health care, immediately turned tail and proclaimed that his could be a better institution for the cut-backs--a leaner, more efficient, more effective machine. In one of those cases, he had to be messing with the hard truth. Maybe in both.
In Alberta today, if you question the grandeur of some of the tar-sands development policies, such as the virtual holiday from royalties the richest companies in the province enjoy, at the expense of the taxpayer, you are in for a dose of this "dare-you" look.
"Surely you cannot question the need to develop this valuable resource for the good of all?" Nope, I can't. And if it were for the good of all, we could all rejoice in its completion. Of course, when it is complete, there will be a big messy hole in the province, and not much carry-over. We'll be the provincial equivalent of a ghost-mining-town, the likes of which dot the interior of British Columbia, northern Ontario, Quebec.
Remember what happened to all those silent, bullied workmen who toiled on the ark? They were left with their families and animals to drown in the great cleansing flood that carried all the undeserving undesirables to their doom, after they had built the lifeboat for the few deserving desirables: Noah; his wife; their sons Shem, Ham and Japheth; and their wives. Apparently the wives didn't have names, only roles to play in the grand scheme, so a place in the lifeboat. Probably feeding the animals. Then looking after the livestock.
A few snarkenfreude-like retorts begin to frame themselves at the core of my otherwise carefully maintained, mild-mannered Canadian politesse. If only I thought they might cause a few seconds of unease among today's Noahs.
But I'm too restrained and intimidated by years of such symbolic violence as "the look" ever to comment on such things.
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