August 22, 2010
The voice
Mícheál Ó Muircheartaigh – Tráchtaire ár Linne
Bhí an tráchtaire Mícheál Ó Muircheartaigh ag ceiliúradh 80 bliain ar an saol ar 20 Lúnasa agus labhair sé leis An Saol ó Dheas ar Raidió na Gaeltachta ar an lá sin ó bharr Chnoc Bhréanainn, áit a raibh sé ag ceilúradh i dteannta 23 duine dá chairde agus dá ghaolta.
I might be confusing him with Mícheál O’Hehir. Beidh me ag eisteacht ar Sept 10, 2010.
And certainly with Roch Carrier.
Ding when are you going to start your broadcasting ??
August 22, 2010
Box ****
Today’s dilemma was the disappearence of the red mail box (post box). I had a letter to post and a hard time finding a mail box.
Then Ding Ding! I will look up and find a map of all the mail boxes in Vancouver so I can carry it with me. But no map. Just this message from Canada Post
Our red Street Letter Boxes are a standard feature of the Canadian urban landscape and are conveniently located in public areas such as street corners, shopping centers and public transit locations.
Canada Post boast there are 900,000 places across Canada to post a letter. Am I alone in thinking given the size of this country that’s not very many?! In fact I think that number in one place would keep the population of Kamloops happy because we all know it’s necessary to have 10 postboxes per person.
But I did learn some spectacular news — you can indeed print a stamp online, so I set about investigating clickety-click and
The Canada Post Ship-in-a-click tool you have chosen is not available at this time.
We are actively working towards a solution to resolve this issue.
We thank you for your patience, and apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.
Please try again later.
August 22, 2010
One of my literary cooking high moments ce soir (ie. do not disturb me reading…) massive steak (not cooked properly I fear v chewy & complete with self sustaining red swimming pool) 2 wildberry waffles (gluten free, yep rock n roll), one cherry tomato between cooker and sink.
Washed down with a gallon of tea for pudding.
Phew glad that’s over.
Back to Juan Butler’s The Garbageman!
August 21, 2010
Jane Rule’s novel becomes a great deal less interesting when everyone in it bundles off to live in Galiano Island. Is it difficult to write about Island life without earnest reverence? Does everyone suddenly get made up once they hop off the ferry?
The book is drawing to a breezy & unfortunate end, that said what’s interesting about the book remains interesting. I continue to have exchanges on the questions that occurred to me and have discovered a few other folk equally curious. The novel (The Young in One Another’s Arms) has prompted me to consider the intersection between fiction and social history and also the intersection of housing, urban landscape (and its development) and literature. One communication I had with a writer about the book described the prose as “informative” not “evocative” and I found this distinction/description dead on.
I’ve long been curious about this sense of Vancouver as a city being constantly “surrounded by”, dwarfed by mountains, the city as a city being looked at in the reflection of what’s around it rather than what’s in it. We do not live up trees, we do not live in the mountains. We live in the streets and bus seats and libraries and corner shops, laundry rooms, and queues for bureaucracy.
And so onward with the thinking. I will visit the archives and query my wonderings further there.
August 21, 2010
I have a kind supplier of recent copies of The Northern Miner newspaper. One included a free colour map of current exploration in Newfoundland which would have to compete with a life sized Roberto Luongo for display in our teeny abode! It’s interesting to read said newspaper because firstly it’s very short, and secondly, you realize how extensive mining is in this country and it’s quite curious to see what’s being pulled out of the ground and where.
August 21, 2010
My garden has had three visitors.
By visitors I mean people whose destination was actually my plot.
They said nice things about it and were impressed.
That was very uplifting.
My seedlings have been diagnosed by one who know about such things as “bolting” towards the light (or lack of). Apparently I have my seasons all confused.
The fragile arugula plant which made it tastes extraordinary, it’s literally like getting your entire mouth lit up. Very spicy and that’s just half a leaf.
Happy Days!
August 19, 2010
I continue to contemplate and consider Jane Rule’s novel The Young in Another One’s Arms. (Post note: Actual title is The Young in One Another’s Arms, but I leave the mix up because I like the sounds) Right now I am struck by questions of whether or not the book could be seen as document of social history. Fiction rarely succeeds as social history it seems, and yet some work succeeds in an almost incidental manner.
The removal of the removed (displaced people) from the house, the tearing down of the house, which I’ve investigated and would correspond sources tell me to an initial period of gentrification in the early 1970’s in the neighbourhood of Kitsilano where the novel is set. The formation of alternative families, the quandary of draft dodgers where they went, how they lived, how they immersed into the city is all here in this novel.
I’ve been struck by the absence in BC fiction I’ve read, of certain, almost overwhelming aspects of where we live (labour, recessions, work, resource based industry, a turbulent labour history and so on) and at this time am busy trying to assess what is in the fiction in order to understand what did not breach the levees or the absence I allude to.
Another thing I contemplate as I read novels from the 1970’s period is the departure or starting point for the women in them. There are two extraordinary remarkings in Jane Rule’s novel that I must detail here on this point, but they’ll be detailed tomorrow in another post. They are simple, almost unremarkable in their mention and yet …. once you get to considering them, oh how they chime or rolling boil. Manana, manana.
August 19, 2010
Another hand ripping night on The Rings! Aside from the vicious assault this apparatus is on the armpits, hands and shoulders, it is a superb way to waste my time and a most unbecoming manner for an almost forty year old woman to hurl herself about each Wednesday.
But oh the progress. Aside from one disastrous entanglement between the two rope things which sent me whipping around like a demented, just shot, duck as I thought Christ I will never get down from here nor see the daylight again. I even managed to do the put your legs over your head thing from swinging and there I was hanging there, utterly amazed, pleading with the man beside me, er now what the hell do I do? Since I assumed I hadn’t done the move yet. You’re already there, says he. I confess I was quite terrified and again after an acceptable period said erm how the hell do I get down…
He’s terribly patient that particular coach. Otherwise my tutelage comes from one of the other young gymnast’s who is ace and shows me all these techniques that I am then unable to fully employ.
I was also learning front somersaults (front tuck?) on the trampoline, bounce, bounce up you go turn in air and wham onto this stack of mats, except the bounces and counting threw me & landing in that mad foam pit didn’t suit me. It is extremely torturous trying to get out of said pit when your legs are short and so I retired. I think I am not a woman for turning somersaults at this moment.
The back flip I am doing in threes on the tumbling tramp. At least one in every three is an epic fail. And one is just dandy. What’s interesting is the epic fail should come on the final one where you’re tired, but no the epic fail comes at any point in the sequence, which very annoying. And the epic fail always follows the really strong one. So much for momentum. And the problem with the epic fail is it absolutely rips the shoulders and arms of you. And that alone should teach one to throw it and land it properly. And it does not. And that is why it is an epic fail.