Paying attention

 It's my habit to have CBC Mornings on Radio Two playing while I rise and dress. Earlier this week, I was half-listening as I went through my waking rituals, when I found myself tuning in to a particular song, which was neither familiar nor unfamiliar.  This time, I was noticing the voice and its easy gentleness, so I reached for my phone which has the Mornings playlist bookmarked.

William Prince is based in Winnipeg and belongs to the Peguis First Nation, whose members are of Cree and Salteaux/Objiwe descent.  I plan to pay attention to him.

Working stiffs

I'm worn out. Here's a photo I snapped at dusk about a year ago. It's a statue of workers, which stands outside the Resident Fan Boy's office building.

With a hey and a ho

Part of my regular listening in my pre-children days included a couple of Baltimore Consort CDs: early music, sometimes featuring a singer with possibly the best name in classical music - Custer LaRue. Despite having the name of a rodeo trick-rider, she had the pure soprano of a boy chorister.

Life with children swept me down other musical avenues, until a Facebook notification last month alerted me to the startling news that the Baltimore Consort would be performing in Victoria. It seemed just the thing to chase away the blues of mid-January, so on a cold and rainy evening, the Resident Fan Boy and I strode up Quadra Street to the Alix Goolden Hall. We found a perch in the balcony above what used to be the sanctuary of the Metropolitan United Church before the Victoria Conservatory took it over a couple of decades ago. It gave us a good view of both the audience and the stage, and I spotted my art teacher in the front row.

Baltimore Consort (founded in 1980) consists of six musicians. Four of them switched instruments seamlessly during the concert. On of them - Larry Lipkis - played both string and wind instruments, including a crumhorn, which looks like a small shofar in reverse. The two "specialists" (i.e. sticking to one instrument) were the lutist Ronn McFarlane, and the soprano Danielle Svonavec.

I don't know what has become of the fabled Custer LaRue (well, actually, she appears to be doing just fine), but Danielle Svonavec, who looks all of 25, sang expressively and even, at times, mischievously.

It turns out she's the mother of three teenaged girls, is the Dean of Girls and the music teacher at a middle school, a cantor at her local Basilica, on top of being a busy soloist with various ensembles and choruses. Oh yes -- she also lives on a farm.

The concert had a Shakespearean theme, grouped in blocks around nine of his plays. Highlights for me: a French dance piece called Les Buffons "The Clowns", by Jean d'Estrée, from a 1559 dance melody book. Larry Lipkis picked up a recorder, and stole behind Mindy Rosenfeld, whose flyaway hair and clothes, along with her kicking heels, reminded me a bit of a Jules Feiffer cartoon.

They did a sort of peek-a-boo, while trilling away in complex runs.

In the second half, a section devoted to Hamlet with John Dowland's "Tarleton's Riserrectione". This was a lute solo by Ronn McFarlane, an elegant gentleman in black, who could pass for the Ghost of Hamlet's father with his silver beard, and is, among many other things, a Grammy nominee. It was one of those moments when I hardly dared move, enchanted beyond words.

This was so worth the walk in the wind and the rain (with a hey-ho).

We picked up their latest CD, of course.

No good deed goes unpunished

I don't usually make a point of taking pictures of Victoria when it snows, because, unlike many of my fellow denizens believe, this city isn't magically transformed into a winter wonderland. It just turns into Ottawa.

The snow snuck up on us Sunday evening, when Demeter came over for dinner and to watch Masterpiece Theatre. I didn't even notice the snow outside until the Resident Fan Boy donned his boots, and I went to the window. Demeter refused our offers of boots or YakTrax, so we escorted her up the sidewalk, as the right rear wheel of her walker picked up broad white ribbons, then stalled with the resulting snowball.

I found that if I rhythmically swatted the wheel with Demeter's cane - rather like the old-fashioned bowling of the hoop - we made steady progress. Thank goodness the journey only took two blocks.

The RFB and I returned to the colourful glow of the Christmas lights against the snow, and pondered how both elder daughter and younger daughter, of the Hadean childhoods, reject January and February snow, only wishing for it at Christmas.

A snowfall in Victoria is a good time to visit the shops, nearly deserted by those lacking the inclination to brave the weather without winter gear or tires, for that matter.

At midday, as the flakes resumed, I resolved to seize our trusty ergonomic Ottawa shovel, and tackle the sidewalk running the length of our building, much as I cleared the sidewalk outside the Hades house in the vain hope of shaming my neighbours into making passage easier for strollers, wheelchairs, and canes.

It's about the same length of sidewalk as that I laboured on in Hades, so I cleared it again an hour or so later when the snow stopped. A Strata Council member thanked me profusely. Unlike Ottawa, where it's a municipal pastime to complain about the city's failure to bulldoze sidewalks, it's a municipal requirement in Victoria to clear paths and fronting pavements during the occasional instances when we get a brief blizzard. (It's never a real blizzard, but don't tell Victorians that.)

After two brisk shovelings, the body cries out for carbohydrates and salt, so the Resident Fan Boy fetched me potato chips.

It was the dip that did me in.

At 1:48, I awoke in agony, and chewing antacids and swallowing acetamenophen, lay awake until stupid o'clock, wondering if I were having a heart attack. (I've reached the age where this is a possibility.) I gave up, and, since upright seemed a marginally bearable position, plodded miserably to the cold living room to watch stuff I'd PVR'd and peer out between the blinds at the garden, which was steadily disappearing. As I dozed fitfully after 5 am, the RFB learned his office building, along with schools and several other businesses, had been locked. He ventured out at dawn to join the shamed shovellers. (I can dream, can't I?)

Signs of singletons

No, I didn't take this picture. Are you crazy?

Two earnest young mums huddle over a table in the coffee shop this cold January morning. One, young and brown-haired, is carefully cuddling and nursing her tiny child, leaning forward to listen to her companion, a tall lady with a long blond ponytail, juggling her child, who, given what I remember about child development, is somewhere between eight and eleven months old.

Clearly, both have just the one child.

How can I tell? Something in their posture, in the intent focussing of their attentions on the babies. Also the fact that they're sitting in a coffee shop.

Some time later, I make my way down the hall to use the tiny loo. Blond Ponytail is crouched in one of the two stalls. Her baby is balanced on the adult seat, and BPM is reading from a pile of picture books, while the little girl-child makes noises of the kind a baby makes in the months before words come.

I've heard something of this phenomenon. It's called something like "elimination communication", because young parents simply don't have enough to worry about. With this method, you prove how much at one with your kid you are, by carefully watching your baby for signs that s/he might be ready to pass something, then popping them on the adult toilet until whatever it is emerges. This way, you not only wipe out the need for diapers, but you also get yet another opportunity to bond.

Blond Ponytail Mum bonded with her preverbal daughter, all during the time I used the free cubicle, and for some time after that. Luckily for her, it seems that no more than one woman at a time needed the facilities during that period. Definitely the mother of one. Imagine a mother of two or more believing this was necessary for her baby, much less leaving the other(s) unattended for the amount of time each toileting takes.

Mind you, BPM is probably waaaaay too environmentally conscious to have more than one child.

(For the record, I used cloth diapers, but would probably be condemned for my water wastage.)

Leaving the Christmas lights up

Snow in Victoria tends to slow things down and fill days up.

I'm not a huge fan of Taylor Swift nor of Shawn Mendes. Despite the fact that both are clearly talented - and Mendes is Canadian - their music isn't up my alley.

But, heck, I do like this song.

Also, I have no problem whatsoever leaving the Christmas lights up until Candlemas.

And that's in February.

They cry "Who's this?"

We had the pleasure of seeing the Baltimore Consort in person last night.  I want to write more about the concert tomorrow.  Here's their closing number, where soprano Danielle Svonavec, dressed somewhat puckishly,  runs a little riot amongst her fellow musicians.

Her antics were similar at our concert at the Alix Goolden Centre. 

(I watched from the balcony after the close, as my art teacher, seated in the front, quietly gathered up the music that had scattered at her feet after Robin Goodfellow tossed it, and stacked it on the edge of the stage.)



From Oberon in Fairyland, the King of ghosts and goblins there, mad Robin I at his command, am sent to view the night-sports here: What revel rout is here about in any corner where I go; I'll oversee and merry be, and make good sport with ho, ho, ho!

As swift as lightning I can fly amidst the aery welkin soon, and in a minute's space descry what things are done below the moon.  There's neither hag nor ghost shall wag in any corner where I go, But Robin I, their feats will spy, and make good sport with, ho! ho! ho!

Sometimes you find me like a man, sometimes a hawk, sometimes a hound, when to a horse I turn me can to trip and trot about you round.  But if you stride my back to ride as swift as ayre away I go, O'er hedges and lands, o'er pools and ponds, I run out laughing, ho! ho! ho!

When lads and lasses merry be, with possets and with banquets fine, unknown to all the company, I eat their cakes and drink their wine. And to make sport I fart and snort and all the candles out I blow, the maids I kiss, they cry, "Who's this?"  I answer, laughing, "Ho! Ho! Ho!"

Since haybred Merlin's time have I continued night sports to and fro, that for my pranks men call me by the name of Robin Goodfellow.  Fiends, ghosts, and sprites, that haunt the nights, the hags and goblins do me know, and beldams old my tales have told, sing "Vale, vale!" ho! ho! ho!
- Ben Jonson (circa 1623)

Whose hearts are caged by the wage of their lives

A darkish sort of day, as we move deeper into January.  The temperature is dropping and the wind is rising.  This is literal, not a metaphor (but it could be).

Spotify sent me this today.  I like it.  It's like four different poems, read forwards and then backwards, like a tide.  In this days of extreme weather, the first verse seems particularly apt.

Look back in anxiety

Awoke this morning to a BBC article in my newsfeed. From the "Future" section, it wonders about how medications affect personality.

Apparently, statins can cause irritability, even rage. Antidepressants can reduce signs of neuroticism (at a possible cost to reasoning). A common drug for Parkinson's Disease - L-Dopa - can affect impulse control; asthma drugs can bring on hyperactivity.

Then, there's paracetomal, commonly known as acetaminophen - that's Tylenol, folks. I take acetaminophen, because ibuprofin does nuthin' for me. Apparently this common pain-killer can reduce empathy.

Now, I am over-simplifying things. I really do suggest reading the article.

However - and this is anecdotal, not scientific, I realize - years of being a home support worker, a hospice volunteer, and a daughter and granddaughter have shown me that what is frequently mistaken for "just" aging, is often the reactions to medications. My grandmother once said, near the end of her long life: "The nice me is gone. All that's left is an old bitch."

I also remember the bewilderment of being so easily hurt and enraged for the brief time that I took Clomid for fertility.

And I have to wonder: was my Double Leo Sister always as hyperactive as she can be? She's asthmatic --- and diabetic. Geez...statins....I think she's been on those.

Then there's me. I don't take acetaminophen constantly, but I've taken it enough. Do I feel less? Care less?

I've been on levothyroxine since before the advent of younger daughter. It isn't mentioned in the article, but are there emotional side-effects? I'm looking back, uneasily, on the person I was before being prescribed. Is it only the years which have shaped what I am now?

Shutting out and being inclusive

One text from elder daughter in Ottawa today: "The news cycle isn't getting any betterrrr..."

Damn right.

Yup. One can only take reality in small doses these days, so I offer this video of James Acaster, which sort of has something to do with recent changes in my circle. Or not.