A splendid couple of hours in the Rare Books archive at UBC, with the help of a librarian whose father was a labour lawyer.
My father was an Industrial Relations Officer, I told him and we both smiled.
*
I’m simply astonished by some of the sentences being handed out in England after last week’s unrest. 4 years for stealing an ice cream cornet (was I reading right?) A woman jailed for 5 months for handling a pair of stolen shorts, looted by her flatmate during the riot, but she was no where near the riot. The report, as I heard it and this is no transcript, said the Judge declared she should have set a better example for her 2 children. If I understand this those children will have no parent for 5 months, exactly what kind of example does this offer them? Ultimately the value of a pair of shorts is higher than that placed on parenting, even if its dubious parenting.
Parents (read Mothers, likely single mothers) are also going to be evicted from their council flats for the misbehaviour of their looting sons or daughters. Exactly where does this leave the rest of their children? Why are they too victimized by sibling association? The fact is that some siblings in a family go off the rails. Some have mental health issues. The solution, therefore, is to screw up the entire family for the actions of one. I live in a building with a history of single volatile teens, who cohabit the space with perfectly reasonable teens.
I’ve also lived in buildings where a mother had a particularly troubled child/teen who ended up on the street with the disease of drug problems. I can verify that she was not necessarily doing anything different from the rest of us. He did, however, have a mental health issue.
Today at a branch library I attempted to find three different B.C. novels and found none of them. Fair enough it’s a branch library I don’t expect the shelves can hold everything, but my eyes caught at least 3 memoirs by American politicians. It really seems quite remote what ends up on the shelves. I imagine popularity and taste and even desire might dictate. Last week I had better luck and left with five copies of Handyman magazine and the Women’s Guide to Woodworking or some such.
Today I did nab a nifty book about Steveston and, literally, a sculpture of a book by Anne Carson that on tactile grounds alone more than compensates.
I heard telephone reports of two happening rainstorms on Cortes Island latter nights that I wish I could have heard. (mainly).
The Rereading the Riot Act book and collation process therein is now well underway. Whilst the graphic elements of physically working with pages in Scribus are demanding for this neophyte, the manner in which material can sit beside each other intrigues me and how material relegated to the stacks of my half-remembered reading comes back into focus or at least announces itself as a candidate for reexamination.
I like this remembering or even re-remembering as a process and the departure it offers. It appeases my chronic consumption of what can seem like redundant material. But no, it all has value and inter- informs. I place high value on the moment.
I also will be glad of the assistance and collaboration from my visual art compadres and especially, my visual artist partner Jeremy.
Bunty biffs Bataille
I’ve begun working and collating material for my book for the Rereading the Riot Act project/series.
It’s going to involve a paste-up/collage form, and the curator I am working with gave me two books to look at for reference.
After I ploughed through them I felt a small burst of excitement because they reminded me so keenly of some reading material, some thinking before I realized no, it was not George Bataille’s Details, it was the Bunty for Girls Annual, which so absorbed me a child.
Last night at gymnastics a young woman told me she’d already attended Cross Fit class three times that day. Three times! That in food terms would be like eating three whole turkeys yourself. Cross Fit, as I understand it, is a form of exercise that verges on the type of training competitive athletes undertake. It sound punishing to attend it for more than the five minute range.
Today another woman told me she attends yoga classes twice a day! What’s with all this duplication?
I have to confess to spending much of my time at gymnastics undertaking sociological questioning of three young males on their generation and its current dilemmas and perceptions therein. (early 20’s) They are quite fun and offer all kinds of advice on my son and ask me puzzling questions on unrelated matters. Yesterday one of them had a back injury and I attempted to talk sense into him on the need for ice and rest and recovery, which appeared to make little impact. Curiously tho’ for my part I find their insights and advice on young males, high school, sports (not injuries), video games etc compelling and I listen closely between the more jovial banter. The thought occurred to me that my inquiries may be the equivalent to asking someone age 70 to comment on the high level of hip replacements.
I had the good fortune to visit a cranberry farm today for a birthday gathering and it was splendid.
The cranberry farm was in Richmond, which was — in this particular spot — rather like being in Holland. The only thing was the towers in what I was told was North Burnaby looked ridiculous from where we were. I thought at first they must be downtown towers, but asked our hosts, who told me it was N Burnaby.
The cranberry plants fascinated me I had no idea they grew on such a small, bush arrangement. The plants look a tad heathery in texture. I have a new respect for the cranberry. She’s a hardy, stout looking berry. In order to harvest them, water and flooding is used. Like I said the berry is hardy — she floats for collection.
I had a lovely conversation with the cranberry farmer about peat and how they used to harvest peat on this farm years ago (to sell to nurseries) and how they stacked it. We compared notes based on how my mother makes Reckles to stack her peat in rural Ireland, (used as fuel) so it can dry. The farmer described a different arrangement that was like an igloo, built up in curving walls so the peat would dry out in the wind. As we sat chatting large jumbo jets and small planes flew overhead descending to land at the nearby airport.
I am smitten by the land out there and it’s so close to the city. The ditches and tall reeds reminded me of the Norfolk Broads a bit.
I can find no one who recalls Scott Sommer’s work and there’s little online about it, maybe because he wrote during a pre-internet time and history is being written up at such a pace each day, by the epic recording that takes place both individually and collectively, that anything pre- a few years faces obsolescence. Yet from what I have found Sommer was far from an obscure writer in his time.
Somebody has asked on a question forum when did Scott Sommer die? Not far from this question is a neighbouring question: Who flies to Tapei?
I am going to hunt the rest of his work, in addition to the title I discovered last week, and pen A Consideration on the work. His prose demands it.
I am living out very Beckettian exchanges with my practically teenage son that I find amusing.
Recently he was away chez Grandmaman and would request I phone him. I would phone.
“Hello” I’d say.
“You’re rambling,” he’d reply.
Occasionally he’d send an email that demanded an instant response. “Write back immediately” he’d type.
I’d write back to no response.
I’d write back again to no response.
But most of all I enjoy the expression that covers his face when I suggest something deliberately ludicrous. Hence I think of more ludicrous things to elicit that wonderful glaze the besets him and the head shake that joins it.
I want to learn to build cupboards, but it’s a very particular cupboard I want to build. One that requires little in the way of tools, other than a handsaw and the obvious ingredients. I want them to be “here and there” skinny, odd cupboards. Little fellas.
I’ve successfully built my own shelves all over the teeny gaff, so am upping my game to add back and sides and (maybe) doors. But everywhere I look for simple instructions I find very convoluted constructions that require multiple things with plugs on them.
I had very little success learning to cut hair from videos, plumbing was a completely different matter. I hold my single plumbing achievement in the highest regard, despite my partner’s insistence it was back to front.