Relief publishing

The Campbell River Museum is one of my favourite museums, I have only visited about 3 museums in BC so it could yet be usurped! Plus it has some competition from The Museum of Country Life in Mayo (some of the exhibit contents are found without leaving my ma’s house) and the pinball machine museum in San Fran.

On the trail of Relief Camps during the 1930’s I harked on this on Campbell River Museum blog:

the “dirty thirties” resulted in vast numbers of homeless and unemployed and the FDP camps included accommodation and meals as well as work. One such camp (FDP Camp 5) was located at Elk Falls Park.

 

Elk Falls is a favoured spot by firstly my males who make annual pilgrimages there and latterly me who jumped on the bandwagon once and had a mighty time.

I’m particularly intrigued by the publishing of newsletters associated with the Forestry/Relief Camps during this time.  Even today there continue to be newsletters published by various history societies such as Forestry and so on. They might be one of the few print venues that enthusiastically solicit anecdotes and stories from their readers. There’s a great appetite in them for Got a story — We want to hear it. A contrast to these official writerly outlets where we seem to spend far too much time being told why we don’t have a story. Or rather why the person reading it has decided it isn’t a story within their limited framework.

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On an interrelated note (a minum over a quaver) why hasn’t the fragment taken off in non fiction the way we have embraced it in blogging. I grow somewhat weary of the essay form at times. Especially when conceiving of generating it. It can become intoxicated by itself, we know where the walls are when we’re reading it and the writing often assures us, as we read, that this is how things should be written. A kind of “There will be a front door and a back door and four walls in this house so help me God.”  I don’t find it ungratifying, I just fancy an element of surprise. Some indication of the “paragraphic” (yep made that up) nature of thinking. And the way the mind likes to dart and associate. Rather than competently sprawl because, because we (holy grail of writing) said it must.

A concentrated afternoon in a large, quiet room with only two old fellas reading ancient newspapers. I read and read and read.  I spent the time with a 64 page pamphlet publication called Vancouver through the eyes of a Hobo by Victor Forster published in 1934. It’s a one man polemic on what he observed and decided. A talk back to the city he wanders about in.  The pamphlet is raw, flamboyant in its lyricism and is suffused with the writer’s racism toward the Chinese (referred to as the singular “China man”),  and his perception that working women were a threat to the working man. What’s curious is how these two groups of people specifically are set against the working man, the working husband. We continue to see immigrants scapegoated for economic difficulties (particularly notable in current US senate election).

Another portrait emerges from this pamphlet of Vancouver as a city of vice and gambling and this man’s belief that the police were entirely in cahoots with it, that it was happening under their nose and so on. Another contemporary theme: the distrust of the police force.

There’s a section in it called The Racing House which offers a portrait of a house where people gathered to wager on races. The caller out would connect by telephone and repeat the narration of the race taking place to those in the room. The portrait makes compelling reading.

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I found a fascinating book called Depression Stories published by New Star (1976?) by Sydney Hucheson (sp?).

I am revved on the 1930’s and may be moving on from the 1970’s !

Tom Raworth

Tom Raworth should be bottled and drunk three times a day.

Yesterday he read in Vancouver.

I told my almost 11 year old it doesn’t get any better.

I hope he believed me.

My favourite moment: the said 11 year old’s laughter.

Young laughter has its own timbre.

Tom has his.

Raworth’s poems are like a roledex on acid. Remind me of the old British Rail train the 125mph. The station in three dots. Bump. Bump. Bump.

It’s enough.

Tom’s figured out what’s enough for the listener

and that nothing’s too much for the reader.

I like this.

I just popped over to drop something off to a friend and discovered we were listening to the identical blues song on the radio. She declared herself mesmerized by it and quoted the lyric and I’d just left it on the radio. We now have to discern which song it is. CBC radio has this marvellous Blues program on Sat night called Saturday Night Blues — who’d leave the house? Wow. You can even call the Blues line…

“High drape pants, stripes are really yellow”

The BBC weather forecast has begun colour coding the clouds. I like this specificity! The forecast for London for the next three days reads: day 1 light rain, day 2, white cloud, day 3 grey cloud.

I have just checked and Vancouver is due to have Grey Cloud next Weds according to the BBC forecast. Be sure to look out for it now….

Duck Lake Gossiper

The Duck Lake Gossiper (1938) was a newsletter (5 cents) published and printed by the unemployed at the Duck Lake Forestry Camp, Powell River BC.

”

KEEP THE CAMPS OPEN

Doctor, Doctor, save the day,

They’re taking my B.C. apples away. ”

(Source Powell River Museum archive & Rusty Nails & Ration Books. Barbara Ann Lambert Trafford Publishing)

Penguins do not sleep ever. They nap.  There’s a piece in the latest NYRB about a book The Great Penguin Rescue that describes a penguin rescue from an oil spill in South Africa. In one paragraph the aquarist, Dyan diNapoli who wrote the book describes arriving and seeing all the penguins ripped from their mates and shoved into random pens in an enormous warehouse, “serving as an improvised penguin rescue centre.” I think there were 16,000 penguins. My first thought on reading this description concerned the napping arrangement. If there are 16,000 of you in pens and none of you sleep — how can you possible negotiate napping? We struggle to reach consensus on two couches.

I shall read and report.

I am completely down with the penguins. Keep it Penguin.

“eggs in literature.”

One of the most popular search terms to reach this blog. I’m honoured, eggs are pretty remarkable.

I just ate one. A high achievement man can attain is the cooking of a good egg, at the right moment. Second only to the cup of tea and that aforementioned perfecto palate cuppa. You know it when you drink it.

Huddling

I had been so looking forward to an outing to watch Shadow Machine at W2, but my stomach had other plans and misbehaved.

Earlier today I was reading more on kleptotherming and the Admiral penguins huddling procedures and wonder how this might be adaptable to a short legged, frozen woman in a supposedly temperate climate. Penguins have a nifty “wings out” approach where they lift their wings out as a deflection against the cold. They puff their feathers to trap air. I think the common armpit may mimic this action and shall experiment.  They also have bald patches that are less impressive. They have excellent blood flow control to their feet.

Thermoregulation

A group of monks known as the Tummo are known to practice biofeedback meditation techniques that allow them to raise their body temperatures substantially.