"Mind if I swoop?" "It's your place..."

Demeter flew in for a ten-day visit that encompasses Thanksgiving, so I'm cheating today. I hope I won't have to cheat for the whole ten days, but we'll see. This is my absolute favourite skit from The Kids in the Hall. I find both the characters here rather endearing, but especially the quintessential hockey fan played by Scott Thompson who, ironically, was the first openly gay actor I recall encountering on TV. Mark McKinney, the would-be gay vampire, is actually straight in real life and, I feel compelled to add, co-wrote and starred in one of my favourite television series of all time Slings and Arrows. Also, I grew up knowing guys just like Brad. His caped companion, not so much, but I led a sheltered life and didn't go to hockey games...

Who-bris?

Okay. I've watched "The Wedding of River Song" twice. Trouble is, I need to watch Steven Moffat's episodes at least three times before I have the slightest idea what's going on. This episode was like the Silents, the creepy slimy things in business suits who hang from ceilings like bats and are instantly forgotten the minute you look away. Every time I try to recall what happened in the first fifteen minutes --- I can't. I just can't. There were pterodactyls, weren't there? And Winston Churchill as Caesar. Oh yeah, and a Noel Fielding look-a-like in a Star Wars bar.

My head hurts.

My understanding, from a very quick look around the Doctor Who sites I can stand, is that opinions are sharply divided on this one, between those that were dazzled and those who were bored (which is difficult to imagine) and have decided that Stephen Moffat has ruined Doctor Who.

Oh, here we go again. Even at his most preposterous, Russell T Davies didn't ruin Doctor Who. (I've gone on about this before; if you care, just type "Russell T Davies" in the search box, but only if you must...) Steven Moffat, another highly talented and brilliant television writer, won't ruin Doctor Who. Most of my favourite episodes have been penned by Steven Moffat. So why do I feel oddly deflated?

I like Matt Smith as the Doctor. I like Amy Pond. I'm very fond of Rory. And I love-love-love River Song. (I've gone on about that before too.)

Y'know, I think the problem is that I really don't care for this split season thing, with half-a-dozen episodes airing last spring and another bunch airing this late summer/early autumn. If we're going to go with this story-arc thing, best have all the episodes close together, so lame-brains like me can keep up. Also, frankly, two short seasons just make me feel twice as cheated when they end.

My contribution to the obsessive arguments now dominating the Who-niverse: It seems to me that the Silents have taken upon themselves the task once overseen by the Time Lords. The Resident Fan Boy thinks I'm on to something and that the Silents are the Time Lords. Discuss.

The ten suggestions

The door is always open, says the current billboard in front of the Resident Fan Boy's church. "Except when it isn't," says I, making my way across the crosswalk from where the bus has dropped us off. The Resident Fan Boy dissolves into manly giggles. The front door of the church is always locked except for Sunday morning services. "Sometimes," he intones, "you need to sneak around the side. There's a metaphor in there somewhere..."

We're here early because younger daughter has her final rehearsal before her solo in this suddenly chilly morning's "inter-generational" service. There will be bongos, bells, and inaudible Bible readings by coerced pre-adolescents. Younger daughter has been carefully preparing an ugly duckling of a little song entitled "Beautiful". I've been listening to her prepare over the past few weeks; it's devilishly difficult to sing, with an odd meandering melody. Then there's the lyrics:

Beautiful is a flow'r, the sea; and sometimes beauty is me
Beauty is summer, the grass or the snow; or even seeing animals, a fawn and the doe.
Beauty is the prairie, the forest, a bird; and sometimes beauty can be just a word.
Beauty can be a sunset that rises; Beauty can be many colours, shapes and sizes.
Beautiful...Beautiful...Beautiful.

Wait a minute. A sunset that rises? Fortunately, the Resident Fan Boy explained to me that it was poem by a girl who died at age eleven. Oh. Okay. He also pointed out that only a child raised on the Canadian prairie could come up with "Beauty is summer, the grass or the snow...." Every Prairie kid knows that snow can show up anytime.

Younger daughter will not sing, as it happens, until an arts-based "reflection time", based on "God's Loving Ways" (the ten commandments, but that made God sound way too bossy). Each "Way" has been carefully rephrased: "Honour thy mother and father" has become "Pay attention to your parents and other adults who love you." Not quite the same thing, is it? Anyway, the congregation has fifteen minutes to cut out images from magazines and clue them to the appropriate commandment Loving Way. I decide this is an ideal moment to accompany younger daughter to the washroom and notice several other people have the same idea.

When we return, the Resident Fan Boy is gleefully snipping something out. He's discovered an ad for Genesis Compost which declares: "Your tomatoes will be the envy of your neighbours!" Oh, the irony. He's gluing it under Loving Way #3: "Be careful how you use my name, whether you are speaking in anger or joy." (Loving Way #10 is probably more appropriate but that's clear across the sanctuary.)

Younger daughter's task is to sing the congregation back into the prayers. And she does it.

Beautifully.

Dancing between the rain-drops

When we first came to Hades in 2001, you could still smoke in restaurants. This was a bit of a shock to us because in Victoria, indoor smoking in public places had been banned for some time. Oh, there was a hullabaloo; restaurant owners and particularly pub and bar owners swore it would destroy business. Then everyone noticed that food tasted better and everything seemed cleaner and the fuss abated.

So we came to Ottawa and seemed to fall into a time warp, sitting in the so-called non-smoking sections and emerging into the streets stinking of tobacco anyway. We frequented the diners and delis along Elgin Street in those days, as we were living in a nearby hotel waiting for our house to be vacated. The Elgin Street Diner was one, and through the haze, I would gaze at a mesmerizing photo while waiting for my BLT.

It's still there, eleven years later. Poised like a ballerina about to take the stage, a lithesome lady in a veil hovers beneath a huge umbrella. Monsoon-like rain ricochets off the street around her beautiful bare feet. She makes the summer-suited men lined up across the street look ungainly and identical.

I've asked the diner staff about it; no one seems to know anything about it. I've googled and googled, thinking of every word combination to bring up the image, but am clueless about the identity of the photographer. Any ideas out there? Hello?

I can see the photo more clearly these days. A year or so after our arrival in Hades, smoking indoors in public places was banned. Restaurant and bar owners howled in protest, predicting economic doom. Everyone got used to emerging from eateries smelling of food and not cigarettes. We don't even need the rain to wash us clean.

Update: Some days later, the mystery was solved.

The squeal of the Sciurini

I've spent a chunk of this past month listening to the prancing and pawing of each little roofer. Well, they were actually very large sturdy chaps, the kind who probably do well picking up women at bars. Still, they were fairly loud: "Stomp...Crash...scrrrrape...."

They were redoing our roof, and reopening our hatch, so, instead of climbing a wobbly extendable metal ladder to do maintenance, we can climb a wobbly shorter ladder and haul ourselves up through a dark hole while attempting to push up the hatch-lid. I'm not exactly looking forward to the prospect of this as a yearly ritual, but I got a third of the way up the aforesaid extendable ladder one balmy evening last week before realizing that the hatchless option was not going to work for me. I retreated on shaky legs and in deep shame while the aforesaid sturdy chaps chuckled, not unkindly.

They're gone now, leaving a new roof and dead vines drooping down the front of the house, so I cleared away the obstacles barring the entryway to the dusty, drafty bedroom balcony we never use, shouldered a large pair of secateurs and set out to prune the dangling doomed bits of Virginia Creeper. I found myself eye-to-eye with an indignant squirrel who had been using several winding tendrils of dropped vine to create a large nest on a ledge next to the balcony. She flattened herself on the stucco and hung on the wall defiantly, chattering rodent threats. I didn't have the heart to shove her nest over the precipice, so trimmed away at any lifeless vegetable matter within reach.

I carefully shut all doors leading to the upstairs balcony and trotted downstairs to sweep the front path of debris resulting from my trimming and Ms Squirrel's housekeeping. I saw some trailing wilting ends within arm's reach and started giving them a good yank. I had to leap backward as the squirrel's concoction, a large tangle of vine, chewed up newpaper and what looked like a head-sized gauze bandage, plummeted down the side of the house. I looked up and the squirrel peered back at me from the edge of the roof, seemingly frozen in shock.

As I set back to work, the keening started: Skree (five second interval) Skreee (five second interval) Skreeeeeeee...

I'm a monster.

West of Eden

I look out over the large garden that slopes down the hill below Lansdowne. It reminds me of a long-ago May, my first visit to London when I'd gaze out the back of a friend's house in Muswell Hill, south over the dipping garden and beyond to the red brick houses below. However, here, I see the Olympic Mountains rising in the distance on the far side of the Strait of Juan de Fuca. They've pulled up grey and white cloudy eiderdowns to their rocky chins, but the sky above us is clear and very blue.

Drifting through the clearing is younger daughter, hair cascading down her back to her waist. She's picked an apple from one of the surrounding trees and eats it dreamily, occasionally frowning to herself in the midst of her inner dialogue -- the only place where words come easily to her.

It's Eve, Eve in the morning, returned to Eden.

A flash of light

I've known her since I was a teenager; she's in her nineties now. I remember the measured tones of a thoughtful accountant; now deafness cuts her off from most conversation and her carefully chosen clothes don't always survive the long ride to church. I'm in the passenger seat when we draw up to the apartment to pick her up, so I'm the one to ascend the steep steps and signal her through the glass where she's waiting in the lobby. I greet her, but she's concentrating on negotiating the transferral of her cane to accommodate the changing sides of the bannisters. In the car, the rest of us chatter and she is silent. I know better than to try and include her over the roar of the traffic and her hearing aids. She clambers out of the car as we pull up to the ramp leading into the church and she makes a beeline for today's greeter who embraces her and guides her to a seat.

In this Unitarian congregation where I grew up, it has become the custom over the past few decades for those who choose, to line up after the offertory and light small candles off the larger flaming chalice, planting them in one of two bowls of fine sand where they will burn until just before the closing song. I follow Demeter and light my own candle, thinking of loved ones in Hades. As I turn to move back to my seat, I see a hand reach out. It's my thoughtful deaf accountant glowing and smiling at me. I smile and grip her hand, then find my way back to Demeter. I tell her what happened, and she says, "She had just remembered who you were."

(I'm halfway through a house-sit where the computer is, oooh, roughly twenty years old. It's a dial-up. You may not hear much from me until the end of August when I'm back in the grip of Hades.)

Riotous indignation

Can you remember your most embarrassing adolescent moment? You probably remember more than one, don't you? I can remember....several.

There was the time I... Ugh.

Then that day... *Cringe*

I've written of the gremlin attacks that have been known to assail me in the wee sma' hours. Often they take the shape of ill-judged sayings and deeds from my misspent youth. I pray I'm the only one who actually remembers these gaffes.

Fortunately for me, I blundered my way into adulthood before the advent of email, texting, and other computer-based forms of social media. Today, adolescence seems to stretch well into the twenties and sometimes beyond, with every misstep enshrined for all to see, often proudly posted by the agent him/herself.

Nothing illustrates this quite so well as the recent Stanley Cup riot in Vancouver. Briefly, if you were lucky enough not to notice this item, a hockey team from Boston (most of whose players don't actually come from Boston) won the final game of a seven-game final against the team from Vancouver (most of whose members are not from Vancouver). In fact, the Boston team actually has more Canadians in it than the Vancouver team. This was lost on the crowd inside Rogers Arena, who sportingly booed and threw things on the ice as the cup was presented to the Boston Bruins. Outside, those who hadn't got tickets were watching proceedings on big screens set up for their entertainment by the city, and decided the perfect ending for the evening would be tipping over cars, setting them on fire, and breaking into shops.

A similar embarrassing melée occurred in 1994, the last time the Vancouver Canucks got to the Stanley Cup finals and failed to win. Only that time, cell-phones weren't quite so ubiquitous and there was no such thing as Facebook. So, this time around, while the Vancouver police were declaring that the riot was the work of well-organized thugs and anarchists, and the Vancouver Canucks were declaring that the rioters were not Canucks fans, a bunch of furious and indignant vigilantes were setting up web sites and Facebook pages overnight, posting photos of kids rocking cars, overturning cars, posing in front of burning cars, smashing windows, waving merchandise and mannequin parts, and punching each other out. The response was immediate and visceral. Not only did acquaintances identify the subjects in the photos, they contributed screen-captures of Facebook pages where mostly adolescent males had boasted about what they'd done and for whom the warnings of frantic friends to take this down were either too late or fruitless. Several had their schools, phone numbers and home addresses on their profiles....

What quickly emerged was that the rioters were not professional thugs and anarchists but drunk adolescents and post-adolescents who lived in comfortable middle-class homes and who, judging from their reactions to the hate-mongering that ensued, had led rather sheltered lives. I was particularly struck by the television interview of a twenty-two-year-old carpenter who was called up to his boss's office the very next morning and unceremoniously fired. As far as I can tell, the most he had done was hang around (albeit illegally) after the riot act had been read, then post some rather silly status updates on his Facebook page about the city needing remodeling anyway. Breaking down in front of the television cameras, he wept that it was just a joke between him and his friends.
"My friends would understand that I was joking," he sobbed.

Gee, you mean your what? 500? 600? 700 Facebook friends? They'd all understand you were fooling around? That's when I realized that we were not dealing with "morons" or "idiots" as these targets were being described on the avenging web sites. We're dealing with really young, really naive, and not-quite-grown-up people.

I was as embarrassed as anyone by the behaviour of these Canucks fans (yes, they were Canucks fans -- they were all wearing the tee-shirts and jerseys). Some of them caused serious injuries, and many scared the hell out of innocent people who were trying to do their jobs. A hapless franchise owner of a coffee shop locked herself in a back room while the place was trashed. Those who struggle to run businesses in these times don't need the added burden of re-stocking and rebuilding.

However, is justice really being served here? Those whose riot photos were tagged have been vilified, embarrassed, and terrorized themselves. The family of a young man photographed trying to torch a police car (apparently he didn't even succeed) had to flee their house after receiving an avalanche of threats. This doesn't strike me as being fair, either.

Oh, thank goodness there was no Facebook when I was going through puberty. I didn't go in for drunkenness, vandalism or looting, although I did plenty of other non-criminal forms of stupidity --- which I refuse to discuss, thank you very much. I had friends and relations, though, who did break the law. As far as I know, they all grew up to be responsible adults and while they may remember what they did -- late at night -- there are no permanent public reminders. Times have changed, haven't they?

(The above photo appears in journalist Matt Gibson's account of what he witnessed during the riot. While many Canadians decry this incident as not being typical of us, I think Matt's experiences are, in a way, quintessentially Canadian. Read it and see if you agree.)

Public transit for deities (write of passage number twenty-one)

I could have sworn I was riding the bus with Isis and Ishtar today. Isis was seated sideways near the front. Her raven hair was pulled back with artful and deliberate hair-sprayed wisps sticking out from her bun. She wore a black scarf wrapped about her head very much as it is in the accompanying image of Isis and her eyes appeared to be rimmed with kohl, although that was probably the effect of her carefully applied false eyelashes. Her golden off-the-shoulder blouse revealed braided bra straps that hinted at a leopard-skin design. It was clear that under the golden folds, the bra itself was somewhat armour-like with sharp upthrusting edges. Old-fashioned brassieres used to "lift and separate"; today's seem to thrust and bunch. Isis was small-breasted enough for this to work.

In the centre of the aisle, hanging shyly from the overhead handrail, Ishtar stood, plump and rosy as a peach, her belly jiggling pleasingly as she radiated ampleness. When she moved down the bus and stood next to me, I saw that her morning toilet may not have taken quite as long as that of Isis, who sat with her legs delicately crossed in off-white cargo capris. Ishtar's purple empire line tunic top was covered in tiny white cat hairs and on the right side of her generous tummy was a dried splotch of something: possibly jam, possibly spaghetti sauce.

I've had many Ishtar mornings. I'm not sure I've had a single Isis morning....

Counting blessings (write of passage number twenty)

I don't enjoy riding sideways on the bus. Besides, the side seats are usually in the "priority seating" (recently renamed "courtesy seats" in one of those futile re-branding exercises), so I move back if I can.

Last week, we couldn't. It was the morning of younger daughter's speech therapy appointment which means leaving the house at 8:15 rather than 7:20, which means more people. Someone offered me a side-seat, and it seemed churlish to refuse. The Resident Fan Boy and younger daughter took seats further back.

About halfway into town, a very tall beefy young man thunked into the space between the elderly woman sitting behind the driver, and me. He spread his sizable knees and squared his broad shoulders and I found myself pushed to a forty-five degree angle away from him. I had time to catch an amused glance from the Resident Fan Boy before I noticed that Beefy Young Man was talking. The times being what they are, I thought he might have a cell phone which I wouldn't be able to see, given that I was leaning from my waist like a famous Italian tower. Then I noticed how rhythmic his words were:

"...Number two, she is walking toward me. Number three, her love is like...."

Across the aisle, a teenager in a khimār gazed at BYM, her jaw dropping open. Her eyes found mine and she gave me a mischievous eyebrow flash and grin.

"Number five, she looks at me..."

"What was that about?" asked the Resident Fan Boy, waiting to see younger daughter and me off at our transfer.
"Uh....I think he was rapping," I shrugged.
"Rapping or raving?"
"Well, he kept saying words like "love", so I don't think I was in danger."
"Well, no. Not unless he was saying: 'Number six, kill the white lady....Number seven, kill the white lady..."

I rolled my eyes at my snickering husband, handed younger daughter her bus pass, and got on with our day.