...and a cup of coffee?

Someone put the link to this on my mother's Facebook and since Demeter pretty well can't access Facebook on her computer at home (which hasn't stopped her from continually acquiring Facebook friends -- which I have to log in and accept for her), we've been checking her page while she's been here in Hades for Christmas. Last Christmas I got all wobbly and tearful over the viral video "Where the Hell is Matt?" Well, this one put we away again too.

Okay, so it's Starbucks. Just watch it okay?

I'm not sure how John Lennon would have felt about the commercial aspect, but surely this is exactly what he meant.

Christmas cards have all been sent...

...as Karen Carpenter used to warble when she had the strength.

Still, I need to sort the presents set aside for the Twelve Days of Christmas (mostly the out-of-town ones) so I'll cheat with some YouTube videos:

First, some Can/con with this delightful poppy number from Serena Ryder. I think this deserves to become a Canadian Christmas classic. For one thing, it's a little more cheery than "River" and "River" is really an Advent song anyway: ...although this one makes me really glad not to be dating...

Next, dascottjr has done another literal video and because Hall and Oates did two versions of the original (which I never noticed), he's done two-in-one. I think the second one is marginally funnier:


Finally, it's Christmas Eve and I used to be able to depend on CBC to play Carols from Kings, but I guess that isn't politically correct anymore. For those of you who keep Christmas (and for those who don't but like the music), here's one of my favourite carols:

God bless. See you a bit later.

O Holy Night, Batman!

We made our annual pilgrimage to the Stuart McLean Vinyl Cafe Christmas concert. After last year's trek through the blizzard without buses, it was rather a relief to take elder daughter, younger daughter, and this year, Demeter on the bus through the frigid Ottawa streets where we had a loge to ourselves. I felt confident that it would be a pretty good show when Stuart McLean opened with a slightly abbreviated version of my all-time favourite Dave-and-Morley Christmas story "Polly Anderson's Christmas Party", but I didn't see what was coming when a young man named Matt Andersen walked onto the stage.

Okay. He looks like a young Meatloaf. Sounds a bit like him too, but just imagine Meatloaf with less melodrama, more soul, a healthy dollop of folks and blues, and a Maritimer sensibility. He started singing, and I thought: He's good. As the song continued, I thought: Actually, he's amazing. And then, I don't know how to describe this, I drifted away on his voice, his performance, the marvelous support of bassist Dennis Pendrith and pianist John Sheard, both remarkable musicians in their own right and regulars on the Vinyl Cafe. The audience burst into applause mid-song and swept to their feet when he finally finished. Now, it's true that Ottawa audiences will give standing ovations to practically anybody; I'm not sure whether they want to be seen as discerning or warm (they are neither), but this time, they had a point. If you have seven minutes to spare please watch this; it will give you some idea of what we experienced. If you have two minutes, listen anyway; that's about how long it took for me to start wondering: Gad. Who is this guy?

When he came on again, they called up his mother from the audience. His parents had just flown in from New Brunswick and it had been his dad's first time on a plane, apparently. Matt sang a duet with his mum and it was...great. Then later, he sang "O Holy Night". I don't even like "O Holy Night" and I was transfixed.

Damn. This guy is good.

The rest of the show wasn't bad either.

Keeping abreast of things

Seven years ago, I found a mysterious lump in my right breast, one that kept appearing and reappearing. The doctor zipped me off to have a mammogram which found nothing, and this apparently qualified me for the dubious pleasure of having more. I've had the experience of three mammograms so far. They're not exactly fun (squishing each boob in a sort of vise twice from different angles, for the uninitiated), but there are worse things.

This year, they've introduced a new wrinkle to the process at the breast screening centre here in Hades. Now, we're submitted to a very long, very thorough manual examination after the squishing. It involves sitting up, lying down, lying on one's side, raising arms, hands behind heads, left-turn signal elbows, etc. etc. etc., while being, not exactly pummeled, but being felt up in a very clinical way. For me it requires careful breathing to keep my reflexes under control, but on a discomfort level, it's somewhere between having one's teeth cleaned and having ultrasound on one's gall bladder.

The nurse was nearly finished. She had to be nearly finished; this had been going on for several interminable minutes. My eyes were shut in self-defense; I was, after all, lying topless with a women kneading my mammaries which is not an erotic situation but a rather awkward and intimate one. I did peek into her concentrating-like-a-concert-pianist face as I noticed her fingers kept returning to my left breast. She'd carefully prod the right breast in the corresponding area, then check the left, her movements slowing down.

Oh crud.

She had me feel for myself. It took a few seconds, but there it was, a hard knobble about the size, as she put it, "of a ball-bearing". I've kept going back to it over the past couple of days. Now that I know where it is, I wonder how I missed it.

Oh well. That's why they have screening clinics, don't they? I keep thinking of that oft-repeated slogan: The only thing worse than finding a lump in your breast is not finding it. Sometimes, that even makes me feel better. Most of the time, not so much.

To put this into perspective: Two of my friends have died of breast cancer. Both had family histories of aggressive cancers. I do not. My mother, aunt, and their cousins all went through a decade or so when they were finding benign lumps on a regular basis. My great-aunt did get breast cancer --- and died of old age years later.

All the same, Merry Bloody Christmas. I should be hearing from my doctor in a few days.

The End of the Innocence

All nations have them: the dates when one can say exactly what they were doing. Some have international significance. Most people over fifty can remember even tiny events of November 22nd, 1963, because John Fitgerald Kennedy was assassinated that day and the minutiae of that November afternoon are preserved like insects in amber. Those over sixteen can probably remember the day Diana died in the tunnel in Paris, and I venture to say that the majority of people living today can remember September 11th, 2001.

Until December 6th, 1989, the Canadian "where-were-you day" seemed to be September 28th, 1972. It's a damned hockey date, of course, but geez, there have been films made about this in Canada. It was rather nice, though that Canadians shared a euphoric memory. Until December 6th, 1989. Most Canadians over the age of twenty-five can tell you where they were that day. If they can't, simply say: "Ecole Polytechnique, Montreal."

I had invited my mother to supper. She was grieving over the recent death of her fifteen-year-old cat, and I sought to distract her. I made the mistake of turning on CBC Newsworld which was then a brand-new channel. I saw the body language and heard the urgent tones of the broadcasters and knew something horrific had happened, but not where. The details narrowed it down, agonizingly slowly: It had happened in Canada...in eastern Canada...in Québec...in Montreal...at the Ecole Polytechnique...

A man had entered an engineering classroom, brandishing a rifle and ordered all the male students out. He yelled something about feminists ruining his life and opened fire. He made his way through the building, shooting people and in the grand tradition of such things, finally shot himself. Fourteen women died. Ten women and four men were injured.

All thoughts of providing comforting companionship to my mother vanished from my mind. I was a sessional instructor in ESL at my local university. In the summer sessions, the great majority of my students were Québecois. Many of them were from Montreal and quite a few attended the Ecole Polytechnique. To make matters worse, the news reported that one of the dead was a staff member and one of my students the previous summer had been a professor at the Ecole. I had to wait more than a day before the names of the dead were released and the names of the injured were never released, so I fired off anxious letters to those students for whom I had addresses. (This was in the days before email and IM, children.) The responses I got were reassuring. They were in shock, but comforted to know that English Canada cared. The professor's husband attended the next summer session of our ESL programme, sought me out at registration and told me that his wife was all right.

But it became evident in the weeks following the tragedy that a deep trauma had occurred. I found myself wandering through my day with Don Henley's "The End of the Innocence" running through my head:
. . . somewhere back there in the dust
That same small town in each of us
I need to remember this
So baby give me just one kiss
And let me take a long last look
Before we say goodbye

Just lay your head back on the ground
And let your hair fall all around me
Offer up your best defense
But this is the end
This is the end of the innocence.

The song was about America in the time of Reagan, but Canada, in the wake of this tragedy, had lost some illusions too. We could no longer say smugly, that we were immune from American-style violence. Furthermore, female students seemed terrified. I was taking my Master's at the time, in a couple of classrooms that faced out to a quadrant darkening in early December dusk, and one of my classmates begged tearfully for the door to be bolted. The incident seemed to bring to the surface the dark fears that most women contend with: the suggestion of violence, of death for the crime of being smart, ambitious, pretty, female.

It's hard to believe this happened twenty years ago. This evening, many women will walk out to the memorials that can be found on campuses and in parks across Canada. They will leave flowers and notes, and light candles, even twenty years later.

I don't like to say the name of the murderer. He got his recognition. Instead, I will draw your attention above to the names of fourteen women who will never reach fifty.

Set sorrow aside

Sad November thoughts pursued me through the night, disturbing my rest and making me resort to hippy-dippy rituals. But when we woke up, it was December and younger daughter has been longing for December, so begins her day with the Advent Calendar and gets herself through the interminable school day dreaming of which Christmas video she will watch when she gets home.

Starting on the long return journey from her school (made longer today by one bus being too early and the other late), I found myself between audio books and dinosaur that I am, tuned my personal player to CBC Radio Two which at that time of the day straddles their morning show and "Tempo" the classical music section. Just as we hit the Transitway, the host put on a piano setting of the "Bergamasca" of Otto Resphigi's Ancient Airs and Dances, (arranged by Resphigi himself) and any lingering November gremlins were swept away by one of my favourite pieces of music ever.

One idea I had for my memorial service would be to conclude the ceremony of tearful and mirthful testimonies about how wonderful I was (oh hush, this is my fantasy) with a reflection time during which the preceding movement of the suite "Companae parisienses and Aria" would be played, and then the Bergamasca would come on, signaling the mourners to get up and, remembering me happily, go off and enjoy a nice buffet.

If that's too morbid for you, imagine me on the bus this morning, as the ice pellets gradually became huge white flakes of snow whirling above the Transitway:
.

Herd immunity? Of course I've heard of immunity...

I have a healthy respect for pandemics.

Exhibit A: My great-aunt Dorothy who succumbed to influenza in 1919, along with millions of others world-wide. She was twenty-eight years old, and had been married only six months. My grandmother remembered the anxious ride home on the trolley in Wolverhampton when she was called home from her work as a secretary, and her sister's attempts to speak to her husband as she drowned in the fluids of her own lungs.
Exhibit B: Yours truly who was an unwitting and unwilling participant in another recent pandemic. I was eleven and this illness was in the top three of the sickest I've ever been: an temperature of 106º during which I lost track of whether it was day or night and the bed appeared to flip end over end.

Here in Canada, the reaction to the spread of H1N1 virus has ventured as about as close to hysteria as Canadians get outside of a hockey arena. Speaking of which, unvaccinated hockey players on the Ottawa Senators team have been banned from attending charity events. In my hometown of Victoria, British Columbia, a woman who didn't even have the flu was forced off a bus by an irate little old lady. In Hades, the H1N1 vaccine became available the same week two healthy kids suddenly died, so the clinics were packed and the vaccine kept running out. Oddly enough, healthy kids the same age as the victims were not in the priority groups to whom the vaccine was being offered, so the Resident Fan Boy and I had to field anxious inquiries from Demeter on why neither we nor our kids were immunized. Leo Sister and Jolly-Not-Green-Giant Brother-in-law both have asthma, so braved the line-ups a couple of weeks ago. Within two days, my nephew came down with the virus and thoughtfully shared it with his family before their immunity kicked in. They all survived.

Finally, the vaccine was offered to those outside the priority groups (younger children; medically compromised; elderly; medical staff), so the Resident Fan Boy and I took younger daughter to our family doctor's clinic, hoping to avoid the cattle-calls that have been extensively covered by the news for the past month. Well, it was still a cattle-call, but a small one, aimed at children, but with possible vaccinations for parents, should doses be left over.

Younger daughter is normally brave about needles, but got herself worked up into a right state over this one. She told me she didn't want to have a bleeding arm for Christmas. So you can imagine how delighted I was when we were directed to sit on a stool outside an office from whence blood-curdling screams were emanating. (No! Noooooooo! Don't do it!!!!) This continued for about five minutes. Clearly someone was being vivisectioned in there. Finally, the door opened and a puffy, teary four-year-old boy emerged, followed by his parents carrying his perfectly placid one-year-old sister. Younger daughter entered, gave one "Owwww!" as the needle was inserted, and as we exited, the next parents pointed her out to their kids, saying: "See? It took no time at all and she's smiling!" Whew.

We were corralled into a narrow hall where we were required to wait fifteen minutes before departing. The reason for this became clear as we worked our way gradually towards the exit. A boy of about ten or eleven leaned against his mother, sobbing. Gee, I thought. How badly did it hurt?
I saw the mum of this older boy touching his forehead, so I glanced around for some staff, then approached her.
"Do you need me to find someone?"
"Well, it's just he's so hot..."
I darted into the passageway, found someone with a stethoscope and told her I thought a young boy might be having a reaction. She whipped past me, saying: "Thanks, this is what we need to know!"
Boy and his mum were hurried into another area. I never found out what happened.

The puffy little four-year-old strolled by with his parents and valiant little sister in tow: "Well, it did hurt quite a bit and I may have cried..."

The Resident Fan Boy hung around for his shot, and I took elder daughter in to a smaller and even more civilized evening clinic last Thursday. My arm is sore and bruised and I've been falling asleep at odd moments over the past three days. Let's just say we did it for the herd immunity...

Goldengrove unleaving

A couple of weeks ago, we were eating our traditional Sunday lunch of macaroni and cheese (from scratch, mind, okay, not the noodles), and the Resident Fan Boy was plotting his final attack on the leaves in the front yard, it being the final week for the city to pick up the bags of garden refuse. He gets excited about things like that which is rather endearing.

"It's like that poem about 'Goldengrove unleaving'," he rhapsodized. I gave him an incredulous look.

"It is Margaret you mourn for?"
"That's right; it's about the leaves falling, and about being reminded of death."
"But Goldengrove is a man, isn't he? And Margaret is weeping over him, but she's really mourning for herself..."
"No, it's about the leaves falling..."

So out came the Norton's Anthology and this time and this time only, the Honour History major trumped the English Literature major. The poem, by Gerald Manley Hopkins, is actually entitled Spring and Fall: to a young child. The Resident Fan Boy remembered studying it in a First Year English course at UVic; I, despite having a degree in the same at the same, never actually studied it, but knew it from an essay called "The Poet and the Peasants" written by the late Jean Kerr which recounted, in hilarious and poignant detail, her ambitious plot to get her five young sons to memorize and even like poetry. I have never forgotten the article, but clearly, I didn't read this particular poem closely enough:



Margaret, are you grieving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leaves, like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! as the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you will weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sorrow's springs are the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What héart héard of, ghóst guéssed:
It is the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.

So, to sum up, it's addressed to a little girl, not a heart-broken young woman, and Goldengrove is a place, not a heartless young man. Couldn't have been more wrong.

So I went out to walk in the "unleaving" neighbourhood just before the late afternoon sunlight got gobbled up by the over-eager twilight of late autumn, where the last of the maple leaves were being scooped into paper bags by the more civic-minded, the rest being left to blow anti-socially over others' yards. It has been an unusually balmy November and there are whispers of a rainy rather than snowy Christmas this year.

I bent my steps in the direction of the Rideau River and thought mourning-for-Margaret November thoughts while watching ducks on a current so slow and in air so still that they might have been swimming in a pond. Then I strolled further and noticed for the first time that there are beavers living along the river bank. Mind you, I've never seen one in my nine years in Hades. I suppose the squirrels could have been getting extra hungry and ambitious; I wouldn't put it past them.

Finally, I nearly got ploughed off the sidewalk by a car which roared up the side-street and inexplicably tried to wedge itself between the sidewalk and another car making a right turn into a driveway. Honks and words were exchanged between the two drivers, as I checked to see if my heart hadn't jumped out of my chest and dazedly mused about the lack of control we have in what happens to us, plus the fact I'd told the RFB I'd be home in half an hour and his potential progression of annoyance to worry to panic if I'd not shown up. This, of course led to morbid thoughts of the events of a year ago. Come to think of it, I was mourning for Margaret then, too.

Any way the blog blows...

I have several blog posts I could write, but seem to keep blocking myself. Obsessively watching pirated episodes of Never Mind the Buzzcocks doesn't help. So while I continue to stall, watch this. I love this. This is going to go viral. I don't care. This is magnificent.

Sorrow, remembrance and blood

Living in The Nation's Capital has an extra resonance in the days leading up to Remembrance Day. Not only are we in close proximity to The National War Museum and key Armed Forces offices and bases, but being resident near Rockcliffe Park, our daughters have attended school with children and relatives of prime ministers and high ranking officers, both foreign and otherwise. Remembrance Day is taken very seriously here. The wearing of the poppy (which, by the way, I think is a rather better-looking poppy than that available in Britain) is not exactly mandatory, but the custom is heavily observed, and Ottawa streets are strewn with lost poppies, dropped from the flimsy pins.

Coming from Victoria, where I grew up between the naval base and the army base (not that pleasant experience for an adolescent girl, soldiers and sailors being what they are), I bring my own strategy for making my poppy stay put. I wrap the end of the pin with scotch tape. However, Ottawans have another excellent method which doesn't work for my thick Irish cape, but does nicely for blouses and lapels. They removed the pin and black felt poppy centre and replace it with a maple leaf or Canadian flag pin, the kind you stick straight though and anchor with a metal clutch on the other side of the fabric.

Lately, there's been a debate in the papers about wearing poppies. A columnist in The Ottawa Citizen worried that poppy-wearing might symbolize support for Canada's involvement in Afghanistan. I was rather startled by this idea as I've never viewed wearing the poppy as supporting the idea of any war. I wear it because I associate it with sorrow, blood, and remembrance.

There has also been a flurry of letters to the editor in the debate over In Flanders Fields, which being written by Dr John McCrae of Guelph, Ontario after watching a close friend die at Ypres and before succumbing to pneumonia himself, is a staple of Canadian Remembrance Day ceremonies. John Finnemore recently discussed his problems with the poem in his blog, and once again, I was a bit perplexed. John McCrae was a doctor in the army for both the Boer and First World Wars. He would have seen the very worst war can offer. I don't think he had any rosy ideas about war being glorious or desirable, although I do think he thought it was necessary. The stanza both the writer of the Letter to the Editor and John Finnemore had trouble with was the third one which begins: Take up our quarrel with the foe . . .

Well, I don't boycott plays like The Merchant of Venice for anti-Semitism, nor books like Huckleberry Finn for its use of the "n-word", nor pretty much anything written or performed over the centuries for its depiction of women. Art is a reflection of its era. Good art transcends this. I happen to think both statements apply to In Flanders Fields, which, like the poppy, expresses sorrow, remembrance, and blood.