Disappointment and dub step

I sensed the setback looming when younger daughter hurried down from her bedroom and into the kitchen, before vanishing upstairs again seconds later.  While she'd been at school yesterday, I had slipped into her room to blank out her calendar because her singing school's June recital has been cancelled due to the time lost when her voice teacher was hospitalized last month.  I remembered that the kitchen calendar hadn't been adjusted and belatedly went to do it, then waited for the fall-out, which came this morning.

It was gentle as far as fall-outs go -- she sat with her morning tea making distressed sighs and declaring "Nothing is wrong!  I don't know what it is!" whenever I made inquiries.  Finally, I bit the bullet and asked if she was upset about the recital's being cancelled, knowing that saying it out loud makes it real. She fled upstairs, and I sat and sadly thought about the special dress she'd been saving to wear at the recital because her godmother had sent it, and wishing her teacher and the assistant had given earlier notice about the cancellation.  I recognize the stresses that they're under, but to a young girl whose every day is a maze of stumbling blocks, a lost chance to shine in one of the few things that come easily to her is a blow.

So we went out to lunch at a new restaurant in Westboro and watched the street performers at WestFest, and when we got home, I showed her this video, based on the first song she performed in public.


I've posted a video from cdza (Collective Cadenza) before; they're a bunch of depressingly talented (and good-looking) musicians based in New York. Both younger daughter and I were confused by "dub step" -- I'd thought it was a dance style, but online definitions assure me it's a music style, so there's something I didn't know before.

And yes, younger daughter seems to be recovering, another sign of how far she's come.

Jeg er kølig

 Another Facebook pal passed this on a couple of weeks ago, which means you've probably already seen this.  I could claim this is exactly what I experience on a day-to-day basis on OC Transpo, but Ottawa has never had a reputation for being cool.  (Cold -- yes.  Humid -- definitely.)  Besides, I don't think I could handle a mosh-pit situation trying to board the thing every day.  Danes have that Viking blood thing going for them, while I'm a Canadian wimp. 
 I wonder if Danish bus windows, as wide as they are, get as filthy and opaque as Canadian bus windows do in the winter?  Especially when they steam up with the body heat.  Just askin'.

Geni out of the bottle

As much as I enjoy family research, I must admit that it is rife with hazards.  I have discussed quite a few of them on this blog before:  You can make fascinating discoveries -- which may not be appreciated as such by other family members.  You may find your work co-opted by others, and used in ways you never intended. There's a possibility you will contacted by people you'd rather not meet.

Then there are the many companies springing up to aid -- and profit from -- the dedication, desperation, and quite frankly, the addiction of family researchers.  I'm not saying they're evil incarnate, y'understand, but every budding family researcher (and a few of past-their-first-bloom ones) needs to understand that these companies are in it for the money, which means they may not explain all the implications of their systems to you.  Or the implications simply may not occur to you.  By which I mean "me".

I have three family trees online, mainly as buffers against computer catastrophe.  Should my PC go "foom", as it has from time to time,  quite a bit of my research is stored at three different sites.  The latest site where I established a repository of my family research is Geni.com, and I did so at the invitation of one of my husband's second cousins, who hasn't done much research himself, but knew I had.  It seemed a good opportunity to share what I had with a particular branch of the Resident Fan Boy's family.  Besides, some of what they were posting wasn't quite accurate; misspelled names, wrong birth-dates and birth-places, that sort of thing.

My original intent was to limit my Geni contributions to that branch of the family only, but if you've been paying attention, I've mentioned dedication, desperation, and addiction -- and that's just me being nice.  Over time, I simply couldn't resist filling in other branches of the family as well, including my own.

Well, predictably, Geni started charging for their family trees about a year ago.  Unless you upgraded, you could no longer add relatives.  This must have gone over like a lead balloon, because recently, so-called "basic" members (the non-paying ones) were once again allowed to add information to the trees, while certain aspects, such as merging trees or making contacts with strangers with shared ancestors, were restricted to so-called "Pro" members.  Since merging my tree had never been an attraction, I didn't pay much attention.  In fact, I only updated the tree when I had something new and startling for the Resident Fan Boy's cousins.

I had taken some privacy precautions, making sure that the relatives I entered were on the setting which permitted their being viewed only by close relatives by genealogy standards, no further out than third cousins.  I had noticed that with certain ancestors, I didn't have that option, signaled by an icon of a globe at the top of their profile.  These all seemed to be great-great-great-great-grandparents and associated family, so I wasn't particularly worried.  Until last week.

When you enter a relative into the Geni format, you become the "manager" of that relative.  If someone else wants to manage, that is, edit information on that particular relative, they usually have to make a merge request.  I've been working on time-lines this month, and as a result have acquired more information, so went to my online trees to update.  To my horror, I discovered that I now had "co-managers" on a pair of my 4xgreat-grandparents; two strangers were claiming to also be descendants of this pair.  Apparently, if a profile is public, then no merge request need be made.  This means that any Geni member who believes this person is their relative can enter their own information in their preferred format, and that is how it will appear in "your" online tree.

Now,  I have no reason to doubt that these two gentlemen are also descendants of my gggg-grandparents, nor do I have a problem with sharing information.  I do have a problem with its being foisted upon me. I sought to rectify the problem by dismantling those branches of the family tree which go back further than 4xgreat-grandparents.  You do this by deleting individual relatives, using the "x" in the upper right hand corner of their square.  You can see the crosses on Harry Potter's parents in the illustration.  One problem: not all squares have crosses.  I was able to delete my great-great-great-great-grandfather, but not my 4xg-grandmother.  I couldn't even delete their daughter, in order to excise that branch of the tree. Looking further along the branches, I could see that some squares had the delete option, others not.  You could take out some siblings and spouses but not others.  If there was a rule for deletion, it escaped me.

Another wrinkle emerged within a few hours.  One of my co-managers contacted me, politely asking why I had deleted our joint 4xgreat-grandfather.  Had I meant to?  I tried to explain my reservations in the most diplomatic way possible, considering how unnerved I was.  I told him I would be pleased to share family research with him, but I had no "urge to merge", and had failed to understand that I didn't have a choice in the matter. I also told him that I saw no reason that he couldn't simply re-enter the ancestor into his tree.  So he did.  And damn it!  I re-appeared as co-manager! I hasten to add, that I don't believe this is his fault -- I don't think he has much in the way of options either.

So, in short, if you're considering joining a Geni family tree network, be warned:  once you've entered a person, you may not be able to remove him/her.  You may resign from Geni, but your tree will not resign with you.  You can dismantle or even delete your trees at Genes Reunited or Ancestry, or make them entirely private; this is not an option at Geni.com, and I suspect it's a similar story at myheritage.com which has a very similar set-up and is, I believe, affiliated with Geni.

I've worked my way out to the furthest reaches of my Geni tree (which, I suppose, isn't even mine anymore), deleting anyone with a cross in the square, leaving scores of others which I am unable to delete, open to being co-opted by other "managers".  I suppose I could erase the information in the in-deletable fields, leaving abandoned pink and blue squares hanging in cyberspace, waiting to be filled by others with the same (or possibly wrong) details.

Once again, Persephone learns.  The hard way.  Always the hard way.

Educating riders (write of passage number twenty-nine)

I have a number of errands before taking the Transitway west to pick up younger daughter at school, which means I'm seated on the #1 bus for a little longer than usual as it crawls up Bank Street.  So time is short and it's shortening, when I hear the bus driver challenging a passenger.  I'm close enough to the front to make out that it's an issue with an expired transfer and that neither the driver nor the lady clutching her grocery bags is going to back down.  He's telling her she needs to pay up or get off the bus.  She's arguing something about the number of minutes that have expired; I gather another bus driver has given her some sort of rule about a grace period. She is talking firmly, but not stridently. 

I'm a few stops away from my destination and in a seat by the window, remembering a day about ten years earlier when a small and elderly Jamaican man left his seat when the bus was parked at a transfer point and went up to ask directions.  The bus driver took this opportunity to inform him his transfer had expired.
"But I don't have the correct change."
"There's a vendor on the platform."
"Will you wait while I buy a ticket?"
"No, I have a schedule."
"Please, I'll be very quick."
"No, I cannot hold the bus for you.'
"Please, I have diabetes...."
"Do you want me to call an ambulance?"
"No, I just..."
The bus driver had a phone in his hand now.  "Are you saying this is an emergency? Because if you are ill, I will call an ambulance!"
After a few more exchanges, the little old man finally lost his temper and swore.  The bus driver responded as if he'd been struck and began yelling about abuse.  He got on his phone and loudly asked for backup.
By this time, more than one passenger inched forward to pay the man's fare, but the driver blocked them and said he'd made the call, there was no going back and this was going to the authorities.
At this point, I got off and waited with a number of others for the next bus.  A lady caught my eye and said quietly, "You know, if it were my mother on that bus and she was not well and alone, I wouldn't want her treated that way."
I answered wearily, "Your mother is a probably just like my mother -- a nice little old white lady.  The only reason this happened is because this was a little old black man."
I went home and wrote a detailed email to OC Transpo for which I was thanked with what was undoubtedly a response form.

In the few seconds that it takes me to recall this, I make my decision and excuse myself to the lady on the aisle.  It's something I wished I had done ten years ago before things escalated and I sense an escalation here. Pushing my way forward, I drop two tickets into the box, and tell the lady, "I've paid your fare, go have a seat."
"That's very kind of you," says the lady, not budging. I have the distinct impression she's not about to give up her point and will resume the discussion once I've alighted.
"That is very generous of you," says the bus driver, as I long for the bus to stop so I can get out.  "But how is she ever going to learn?"

How is she ever going to learn? The lady is somewhere around my age, well-spoken, neatly dressed, her shopping bags at her sides.  Is this bus driver here to teach her a lesson?  About what? Manners? She hasn't been discourteous, just firm.  Honesty?  She clearly thinks there is a grace period for transfers.  I think she's mistaken; there's nothing about a grace period on OC Transpo's web site.  But were she a white woman, I don't think this guy would be going on about what she's got to learn.

I don't say this to the bus driver.  He's on one of my regular routes and I'm likely to encounter him again.

Bludgeoning myself with poetry

I'm reading one of the earlier books by Sue Miller, and while I like her writing very much, it's not painless.  Every now and then, her characters will make an observation, or have something happen to them that is just a little too close for comfort.

In this book, For Love, the protagonist is waiting for her twenty-something son at the airport and is ruminating over the changes in their relationship now he is grown:  She was, on the whole, glad for this. But she missed the other too.  She missed him, the person he had been and wasn't anymore.  The younger Ryan, the little Ryan -- all the little Ryans -- who might as well have died, really.  Sometimes she dreamed of him as he was at three, or six; and woke with a mixture of gratitude and bottomless sorrow, the same feeling she had when she dreamed of one of the few close friends she'd had who'd died.

Oh ouch. And yet, like a glutton for punishment, I find myself rooting around in my anthology of Phyllis McGinley poems for this one, which has similar (but not quite) sentiments:

Ballade of Lost Objects
Where are the ribbons I tie my hair with?
Where is my lipstick? Where are my hose -
The sheer ones hoarded these weeks to wear with
Frocks the closets do not disclose?
Perfumes, petticoats, sports chapeaus,
The blouse Parisian, the earrings Spanish -
Everything suddenly up and goes.
And where in the world did the children vanish?

This is the house I used to share with
Girls in pinafores, shier than does.
I can recall how they climbed my stairs with
Gales of giggles on their tiptoes.
Last seen wearing both braids and bows
(And looking rather Raggedy-Annish),
When they departed nobody knows -
Where in the world did the children vanish?

Two tall strangers, now I must bear with,
Decked in my personal furbelows,
Raiding the larder, rending the air with
Gossip and terrible radios.
Neither my friends nor quite my foes,
Alien, beautiful, stern and clannish,
Here they dwell, while the wonder grows:
Where in the world did the children vanish?

Prince, I warn you, under the rose,
Time is the thief you cannot banish.
These are my daughters, I suppose.
But where in the world did the children vanish? 

Not that my children borrow my stuff much, since I am, after all, a fashion disaster.  Elder daughter has been known to make off with my pumps from time to time.  But the "neither my friends nor quite my foes", and the "alien, beautiful, stern and clannish" -- yes, I can attest.  And I find myself, from time to time, laid low with a pang of grief, for the little girls who will come no more.

Phyllis McGinley won a Pulitzer Prize for Times Three, the very book of selected verse through which I'm rummaging.  Since she specialized in light and often humourous verse on life in the suburbs, some of her stuff is very dated, and some is timeless.

Here's one she probably thought would not date, but she could not have foreseen the coming of video games and computers.  My childhood just predates the advent of both, so I do remember the wordless change of activities in the school yard.  One week, it would be Chinese jump-rope, only to change, with no one having actually said anything, to marbles.  These are the last two verses of The Tom-Tom:

If you ask them, they are perplext.
The calendar gives no warning.
One does not tell the next,
Yet they wake and know in the morning
(As a swallow knows the time
For quitting a rainy land), 
When the rope should whirl to the skipping-rhyme
Or the baseball thud in the hand,
Or the multitudinous din
Of the roller skates begin.

It is something the tom-toms say.
You cannot explain it away,
Though reason or judgment reels.
For yesterday was a swimming day
And today is the same as yesterday,
Yet now they are all on wheels.

(When exactly did this stop?  Probably about the same time when the kids stopped passing on skipping rhymes.)

On the other hand, this poem, about l'esprit de l'escalier, has always applied to me and always will:

Melancholy Reflections After a Lost Argument
I always pay the verbal score
With wit, concise, selective.
I have an apt and ample store
Of ladylike invective.

My mots, retorts, and quips of speech,
Hilarious or solemn,
Placed end to end, no doubt, would reach
To any gossip column.

But what avails the epigram,
The clever and the clear shot,
Invented chiefly when I am
The only one in earshot?

And where's the good of repartee 
To quell a hostile laughter,
That tardily occurs to me
A half an hour after?

God rest you merry, gentlemen,
Who nastily have caught
The art of always striking when
The irony is hot.

So there. But here's the wistful, short, and bittersweet observation she left about the relationship between mother and child (especially mothers and their not-so-supposed daughters).  I have it committed to memory and frequently bludgeon myself with it:

The Adversary
A mother's hardest to forgive.
Life is the fruit she longs to hand you,
Ripe on a plate. And while you live,
Relentlessly she understands you.

Oh, ouch.  The Resident Fan Boy and I had a Susan McGinley poem read at our wedding.  But since it was a June wedding, I'll save it for later in the month.  I may need the post.

Comedy Cheat #1: Jerry Lewis does the Count.

As you may have noticed, I'm NaBloPoMo-ing again, my eleventh NaBloPoMo as I strive to cover each of the twelve months of the year over five years.  (If all goes as planned, I will finish with December this year.)  Now, the idea of NaBloPoMo is, of course, to blog every day for a month.  This inevitably means that some days I find bedtime is approaching and I need to get something up.  I've learned to have a sort of emergency plan of quick-cheat-posts, and this month, I've pulled together a small collection of comedy moments that have burned into my psyche over the years.

Here's one of the earliest.  Back in the dark ages, we didn't have Netflix, DVDs or even (*gasp*) videos.  If we wanted to see an old film, we either had to wait for it to show up on television, or we had to grab the opportunity should it be screened at an art cinema or at a university.  The latter shows were usually double-features.  When I was quite small, my mother took me to an out-of-way movie house in northern Edmonton to see Bambi which was paired with an old Jerry Lewis comedy. (Heaven knows why.)  Bambi was memorable all right, and I remember nothing of the Jerry Lewis flick except this scene, which I never forgot, along with the music. I haven't seen it since. Until now.

I searched for it on YouTube, using terms such as "Jerry Lewis" "jazz", "business meeting" and "mime", and up it came.  Amazingly, it's pretty well exactly how my childhood self remembered it.  I'm not a huge fan of Jerry Lewis, but this really is comic genius, all set to Count Basie: 

Another close call

A friend of mine had a birthday the other day.  Facebook notified me with the tiny little birthday cake icon in the upper right-hand corner of the screen, and since the fellow in question is a talented poet (no, seriously, he's good -- he's been published), I quickly dashed off a post:  "Happy birthday...."  No.  That needs a little something extra. "Happy birthday, Poetry Man!"

Wait a minute.  Isn't there a song called Poetry Man? The internet being what it is, I quickly found the song and a nice accompanying video.  I could just attach that to my message. However, something checked me.

I listened to the song, which I only know vaguely:

Now, after the first few lines, I was thinking:  Well, thank goodness I checked before sending this!
After checking for the lyrics online, I was even more grateful:

You make me laugh
Cause your eyes they light the night
They look right through me
You bashful boy
You're hiding something sweet
Please give it to me yeah, to me
Talk to me some more
You don't have to go
You're the poetry man
You make things all rhyme
You are a genie
All I ask for is your smile
Each time I rub the lamp
When I am with you
I have a giggling teen-age crush
Then I'm a sultry vamp
So once again
It's time to say so long
And so recall the cull of life
You're going home now
Home's that place somewhere you go each day
To see your wife 

Well, yikes.  1) Not really an accurate description of this fella, who is a charming Southern-gentleman type who is not bashful; 2) I've never harboured any feelings beyond friendship for this guy, who would be mystified (and probably horrified) if I sent this rather suggestive tune his way; 3) he separated from his wife over a year ago, who happens to be an old school friend.

The moral of this story:  If you've got the internet at your fingertips, take those few extra seconds to check before you send anything.  I still wished a very happy birthday to the poetry man, but left it at that.  The guy's got enough problems.  Maybe he's getting some poems out of them.

I did spend a few more minutes finding out about Phoebe Snow because all I really remembered about her were her distinctive looks and voice.  I didn't know she had a daughter born with brain damage who died a few years before Snow herself did, and that she largely gave up hopes of advancing her career because she insisted on caring for her child herself.  And I didn't know that "Poetry Man" was her biggest hit.  I actually prefer this wistful number:


I wish I was a willow
And I could sway to the music in the wind
And I wish I was a lover
I wouldn't need my costumes and pretend
I wish I was a mountain
I'd pass boldly through the clouds and never end
I wish I was a soft refrain
When the lights were out I'd play
And be your friend
I strut and fret my hour upon the stage
The hour is up
I have to run and hide my rage
I'm lost again
I think I'm really scared
I won't be back at all this time
And have my deepest secrets shared

I'd like to be a willow
A lover, a mountain or a soft refrain
But I'd hate to be a grown-up
And have to try to bear my life in pain

Personally, I think anyone who made the choices that Phoebe Snow made and who could also reference the Marx Brothers and Shakespeare in the same song is the highest definition of "grown-up" there is.  She looked and sounded like one too.

A matter of minutes

I had the first inkling that there was trouble when I spotted the guy parking the CTV van in front of the coffee shop.  Shouldering a video camera with a stand, he jaywalked and disappeared around the Indian Embassy.

I was already late, having just given the Accent Snob his pull around the block so he could await our return in relative comfort. As I reached the corner, I saw my bus long before I should because it was parked well behind the bus stop. A few more steps and I knew why.  There was an overturned car on the sidewalk in front of the seniors' residence.  It was balanced precariously on its crumpled and smoking roof. I made a quick decision to cross the street to make a path well away from the ambulance and the accumulating crowd.  I could see police and paramedics leaning in gingerly to speak to someone who was evidently still in the car.

Bewildered, I asked a knot of onlookers at the next light when this had happened.  "About four minutes ago," someone replied.  I felt something shudder and drop from my chest to the pit of my stomach.  About four minutes before, I would have normally been standing almost exactly where that upside-down car was now teetering.  I averted my eyes from the knocked-over mailbox, the chunks of cement planter and what appeared to be puddles of red, and hurried to catch a bus on an alternate route where a loud-ish lady informed me that "people waiting at the stop were hurt".

Shakily, I fumbled text messages to the Resident Fan Boy and elder daughter, then proceeded to Nepean to retrieve younger daughter.

That evening, I strolled out to the drug store and saw workmen blocking the broken panes of glass with fibreboard.  I caught the eye of one of the young men and grimaced.
"This was pretty terrifying"
"Yeah.  Good thing no one was hurt."
"Uh... Three people went to hospital, and two of them had serious injuries."
"Oh?  The insurance guy was just here and he said no one was hurt."

Well, he would, I thought, picking my way through some leftover debris in the crosswalk.  "Serious non-life-threatening injuries", the reports had said.  To most people, this seems to mean "okay".  No one seems to consider that people who drop out of the news reports because they haven't actually died, face weeks, months, or even years of recovery -- or even no recovery at all, especially if a brain injury is involved.

Elder daughter tells me she's never been so glad that we have a dog.

You'll wake up screaming "Na-nah-na-na-nah"

Gotta go to bed.  But it's the last day of May, and I need to write a May post, no matter how brief.  Elder daughter, an intelligent young woman who is about to enter her final year of her undergraduate degree and has been named co-editor-in-chief of her university magazine, has an inexplicable obsession with One Direction.  (Well, I suppose they are her contemporaries.)  Needless to say, I've been torturing her with this parody.  Lots of puerile "they must be gay" humour, but some wonderful throw-way zingers.

We are the seventh sign of the apocalypse...

Nyuk-nyuk-nyuk.

We've had a humidex of 40 today and the current temperature is 27 with a humidex of 38.  Must go to bed...

Another argument for not getting your history from films

Closest Companion: The Unknown Story of the Intimate Relationship Between Franklin Roosevelt and Margaret Suckley by Geoffrey C. Ward

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


When I saw the film Hyde Park on Hudson a few months ago, I had never heard of Margaret Suckley (pronounced "Sookley"), but I do know something of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his era, so I found myself questioning what I was seeing.  Of course, the thing with so-called historical films is that there is a time constraint and a need to create dramatic tension, so you know the facts are going to be meddled with.  Still, the President getting a blow-job in an automobile in a secluded field?  A bit Bill Clinton, isn't it?  The King and Queen of England becoming anxious at the idea of consuming hot dogs?  A bit over-the-top, wouldn't you say?

As the credits rolled, I noted that the movie was based on a play, and the play was based on a book.  I went home and placed a hold on the only copy in the library.  It took three months for my turn to come up.

At first, I thought the wait had been a waste of time.  Geoffrey C. Ward, a well-known biographer who has collaborated on occasion with the documentary film-maker Ken Burns, is not the author of this book, but the editor and annotator of this collection of the letters and diaries of Margaret Suckley, whom he had met while researching his own books on FDR.  My disappointment gradually abated as I read further.  Margaret (known as "Daisy") was articulate, idealistic, and absolutely in love with Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who was her distant (sixth) cousin.  (His wife Eleanor Roosevelt was her fourth cousin, while FDR and Eleanor were themselves fifth cousins once removed.)

Daisy is very much a product of her time and class.  Although her family had lost much of their wealth during the twenties and thirties, she speaks from a viewpoint of privilege and her attitudes towards people of colour, although liberal for the times, would get her into a lot of trouble today.  She does, however, come across as sweetly naive, and you will not find a word of criticism against FDR whom she worshiped. 

It was this very lack of criticism and her willingness to keep in the background that, no doubt, kept her in the very inner ring of FDR's circle long after the intensity of their friendship slackened. It was a friendship that lasted more than thirty years, and she was present at his death.  Did this relationship ever involve a Bill-Clinton-ish encounter in an automobile?  After reading Daisy's letters and diaries (some of FDR's letters and notes are included), I somehow doubt it.  Both FDR and Eleanor had intense and romantic friendships, and I supposed some of them may have involved physical intimacy.  However, Daisy's starry-eyed adoration over many years doesn't seem to fit in with that.  We need to remember that it was a very different time.

For anyone interested in Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his era, this is indispensable, and Ward's annotations are even-handed and unobtrusive.



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