Beth Kaplan's Blog, page 166

home in the heat with giant cucumber

It's so hot out there as to be painful - 33 degrees feeling like 39, unbreathable. On Friday it says it'll feel like 41. How terrible for those who have nowhere to escape to. I've been looking up movie times, just to get into the cool, and I have A.C.! And yet - the upside of the heat is that my tomato crop is phenomenal and my latest cucumber the biggest I've ever seen - 19 inches long and thick. Yes, I measured my cucumber. I'm going to make gazpacho.

So glad to be home, as always, but I loved visiting my American family in upstate New York and my British and Canadian family in Ottawa. I'm especially proud of my accomplishment in Ottawa. Aunt Do is a very stubborn 96-year old, and yet I managed to get us to Ikea, to choose curtains, to get the right equipment and find someone to hang them and get them up before I left. It was a miracle. Today she is happy to have shelter from the sun pouring in her windows, though, she says, she also misses her sheer curtains. Next time we'll have to go back and find a second set, some new sheers to keep her happy. But that's next time.
Below: last walk in Britannia Park.
 Discovered a fabulous vintage store nearby - Antique Hoarders on Howe St. Full of great stuff, including the Librarian Action Figure. Did not buy her, but was tempted.
Do in the Fiat
and with her dear friend Una, after our lunch out on Monday.

Trip home perfect - the thunderstorms predicted did not materialize. My son who'd kept the garden alive was in residence, commandeering sofa, TV and fridge, as always. He'll be back to keep watch over house and garden while I'm away next week, at a rented cottage with Anna and the kids. And that's it for summer travel. That will almost be it for summer 2016. Somewhere out there, athletes are straining. In here, all that matters is that the rosé is chilling.

A very nice woman just sent me this note, below. How welcome it is when people write to writers. Thank you! Fred was one of my favourite students a long time ago, and BPS my first book, a compilation of Globe and CBC essays, designed by my friend Chris and published by Kinko's. I found an old copy recently too and confess I re-read with pleasure. Some of them are not bad. (A few are reprinted on this blog, under Articles.)

I have been purging and sorting for the past couple of days and came across Back Page Stories.  My friends Fred Reynolds and Angie Hains gave it to me for my 50thbirthday.
It is as fresh and entertaining to read it as it was back in 2000 – thank you once again!
And now that I have signed up for your blog, I can get my Beth-fix on a regular basis!

Ludwig forever

Thanks so much to my helpful friends who've been writing to suggest composers of violin concertos - Bruce thought it might be Mendelssohn or Haydn, Chris suggested Sibelius. Nyet. I also tried Brahms and Schubert and others, and then I said, It has GOT to be Beethoven. It was just richly Beethoveny in tone plus it kept building to a crescendo and then not ending, as Beethoven does. So I his violin concerto Googled again - the version I tried was very slow, just wrong, and I didn't listen to enough. I tried another version - and we have a winner. It was in fact the Beethoven Violin Concerto in D Major, and a glorious thing it is too. What I heard on French CBC was quite fast, others play it more slowly. I'm listening to it again now.

So that was Dad and his violin keeping me company. Yesterday I went to the communal garden at the base of Mum's apartment building to check out her patch - she had a beautiful bit she tended with lavender, rudbeckia, phlox and daisies, very Mum. Her patch was lovely still, and a bird was singing in a tree right there. So I felt my mother there too. It was an emotional day.

I had dinner with the Scrabble ladies; my elderly aunt came second in Scrabble, beating women decades younger. She is a force of nature. When I took her home, she complained yet again, as she has for a year, about her blinds that are broken and she doesn't know where to get them replaced - to keep heat out in summer and in in winter. At 3 a.m. I awoke. Ikea, I said to myself. Ikea curtains. Just the thing.

This morning I managed to get her away from the Olympics to Ikea where we actually figured out dimensions and chose curtains and marched through sixteen miles of other stuff to get out of there. At home I made a bunch of phone calls and we found a handyman to come tomorrow to put them up. Let's hope they work, or else I will be to blame, and I will never hear the end of it.

We went out for lunch with my brother and his nine-year old son, and I spent the afternoon showing her a year's worth of photos on my computer. Managed to secretly throw out some of the food rotting in her fridge. And then after dinner, I left her poring over the curtain instructions.
Once again, all I can say is - I hope I have my Auntie Do's genes.

Went for a long walk through the park by the river. Britannia Park in the summer is a microcosm of Canada. As I walked, I heard every language except English. It's a marvellous place.

Finally - a bit of truth - why I'm happily single.

Beethoven pipes me in

This morning, tootling along the 416, the gleaming highway to Ottawa, in my cherry-red Fiat, the sky extraordinary, powder blue with great puffs of cumulus, stunning, the weather stunning, the family visit behind me wonderful. I turned on the radio and it was a violin concerto, at first I thought it had the sweetness and nimbleness of late Mozart but then it turned muscular, so I guessed it was Beethoven - unfortunately they didn't say afterwards what it was or who was playing, but it was so beautiful, and - you know me - I wept. I wept because I had spent two days with my dad's family, Ted yesterday telling me how he'd looked up to his older cousin Gordin, how his father Leo and he too loved Mike, my grandfather, Leo's older brother who put him through law school. We were celebrating a family legacy, and it meant the world.

I wept because I showed Ted the picture Anna had just sent me of Eli, and Ted exclaimed, "He looks just like your dad!" I had seen that myself, but to have someone who's never met Eli see it so clearly meant the world.

And I wept because it was the most beautiful day of the year and because New York is nearly empty now, it used to be full of Kaplans and now almost none are left, and because one day I too will not be around to celebrate days like these, music like this blasting out of my cherry red speakers. My Dad played the violin, so right then, he was with me.

I pulled over when the music ended and sang a few bars into my phone so I can find out later what it was. (Just Googled - Beethoven only wrote one violin concerto and it's not the one. Mystery.)

I arrived in Ottawa, went to my airbnb place and for a blessed walk in Britannia park - I seem to have done nothing but eat, drink and sit for days, am expanding exponentially - and marvelled at the para-sailers - is that what they're called? People skimming over the lake at high speed pulled by sails.
The dots are sails; there were at least ten of them. Check out that perfect sky.

Then headed downtown to meet someone I didn't know. Just before my mother died, a man got in touch with her whose hobby was doing research into Bletchley Park and those who had worked there. Did she know, as someone who worked there during the war, she was eligible for a medallion from the British government? So he ended up coming to meet her and sending her particulars to England, and she received her medallion. I have it now.

He and I had lunch together. I cannot use his name because he works for the Communications Security Establishment - CSE - and must keep his identity secret. But we had a great talk about Mum and what he learned about her work during the war. She told him a few stories she didn't tell me. So again, we were celebrating a family legacy, this time on Mum's side. And also, I was celebrating him, this man who made sure that deserving people got recognition. He told me about a very important civil servant in Ottawa, a Brit who worked at Bletchley during the war, side by side with Alan Turing, and when he received his medallion in a ceremony, said he'd been ashamed all his life of not being in combat like his friends; this was the first time he realized just how important his war work had been.

LOVE that.

Now I am going to have dinner with the Scrabble ladies - Auntie Do's team. She has been playing all afternoon and I was not invited, but am to join them for dinner.  I have bought a bottle of wine to help me through.

The wedding was very moving - Debby at 65, marrying for the first time; Dan, whom she first met as a teenager, not long divorced with his three grown sons in attendance. What a story. Debby owns an apartment in the Marais in Paris and a country house too, none with heat and both with her hoarder's stash of stuff and her many cats being looked after by friends. She is moving to Dan's house in upstate New York. A big job ahead in France. Dan is up for it.
 Debby being walked down the aisle by cousin Ted on the far side and his husband Henry on this side
After the ceremony - Dan and Debby. May they have many years of happiness. There are good omens  - it was supposed to rain that afternoon but was gorgeous during the ceremony, as you can see. When we were inside stuffing ourselves with a huge wedding banquet, it poured. By the time the meal was over, it was lovely out again.

I was very glad, though, to get back to Canada this morning. Upstate New York is a poor white area; there are lots of angry people supporting Trump. And lots of the biggest people I have ever seen. Perhaps these two things go hand in hand. In any case, I'm back where sanity reigns. For now.

stopping by the woods

I'm in beautiful downtown Ogdensburg. Actually no, I'm at the Quality Inn just outside of Ogdensburg, but I just toured the town with my first cousins once removed Ted and Susan and their spouses Henry and Peter. We went to the Frederick Remington Museum which is the only thing to do in Ogdensburg - well laid out and interesting - and we drove around looking at the big old houses and the falling down houses and the seaway, on the other side of which is my fine country. We asked a local where downtown was, and she said, there isn't one.

So that's Ogdensburg. Still, it was entertaining being with these two long-term couples as they bickered through town. Turn THAT way! THAT WAY! They went together to Tibet. It boggles the mind.
Lots of lovely Tiffany stuff in the Remington museum
A painting entitled Canada. Yup, that looks like Toronto to me.
A local restaurant.

It's nearly noon. At 1 p.m., Ted and Susan's younger sister Debbie is marrying Dan, a man she first knew as a teenager. Debbie is 65 and has never married. Dan has three grown sons from his previous marriage, big big young men. I met them last night at the restaurant where the two sides assembled, at least 25 of us. It was terrific - what families do and are, people who have absolutely nothing in common coming together to celebrate love and marriage. I am glad to be part of it. Especially as there is almost no family left on my mother's British side, so the New Yorkers are it for me. And what a voluble bunch they are. When I arrived at breakfast this morning, they were avidly discussing what they pay their handymen.

There are dark clouds. The ceremony is taking place outside, on the parched lawn here. I pray it does not rain, which would put a serious damper on things, as there does not seem to be an awning or any kind of shelter. Or shade, for that matter.

An adventure.

The train from Toronto to Brockville, where I rented a car - a bright red Fiat - and drove to Ogdensburg, was an adventure too. Opposite me in the car was a family of four who did not look up from their phones for the first two hours of our trip. All four of them, faces plastered to the screens, as Ontario went by outside the windows. The boys were fraternal twins, I think, of about 11 - beautiful boys, locked into their games. They will soon be teenagers and lost forever. I wondered if their parents might one day regret not being a bit more present with them, instead of lost in their own worlds. But then I remembered how I hated playing I Spy and Spot the Licence Plate and all those tedious games to keep my kids busy on long trips. So maybe arriving refreshed, after being lost in your own private digital world, is a good idea.

Most of my family here are Democrats, except for Peter and Susan, who are very rich and so Republican. But we don't talk politics much. Here's something wonderful for all you Dems out there:
STOPPING BY THE WOODS ON A SNOWY EVENING – By Donald J TrumpBY ROTTINGPOST ON MARCH 25, 2016 • ( 99 COMMENTS )
I have a pretty good idea whose woods these are, believe me.
And let me tell you something, my people say he’s a complete nobody.
This guy lives in the village.   So what if he sees me stopping here?
I dare him to sue me!   I dare him!And by the way, this snow is pathetic.
These are by far, the least downy flakes ever!
I hear they had to import them from Canada.
I don’t know.  Maybe they did.  Maybe they didn’t.  We’re looking into it.My horse – he’s the most incredible horse, seriously,
I have the greatest, the classiest horses –
My horse doesn’t even know what the hell we’re doing here.
The horses love me though.  They do.
They’re always shaking their bells at me, it’s very loving.
It’s a beautiful thing.Let me tell you something, these woods are an embarrassment.
They’re not dark.  They’re not deep.  They’re nothing.  They’re for losers.
And I cannot wait to sue this guy.
I cannot wait to sue this guy.

Mel Hurtig, great Canadian, R.I.P.

What joy - I'm listening to the CBC 6 o'clock news, we're 15 minutes in, and they have not said the name Trump once. I'm sure it'll come, but still - he's on a slide. Let us pray it deposits him at the bottom of a lake. It's funny - as people who have read this blog for some time know, there are three politicians I despise: Mike Harris, Stephen Harper, and George Bush, particularly the first two. I cannot loathe Trump the way I do Harris and Harper, because he's so completely ridiculously absurd, so utterly beyond belief as a serious candidate, I can't believe he'll get much further. I know, he's disgusting and terrifying - but also so appalling as to be almost funny. Whereas there was nothing funny about the two men who did their best to destroy my city, my province, and my country.
From Twitter:

Trump somehow makes Romney look good. Romney somehow made McCain look good. In 4 years the GOP will nominate a sentient radioactive chainsaw.

Tomorrow, a new adventure - I'm off to a family wedding in Ogdensburg, and then to Ottawa to visit Auntie Do. My son will keep the home fires burning. I'm enjoying my new rooms, though there's some adjusting to be done.

It's 6.20, and they're talking about Mel Hurtig, one of my heroes, who died last night. A wonderful Canadian, noble and inspiring. He was a friend of my father's, when Dad was at the U of A in Edmonton. I wish I'd met him.

It's high summer - hot hot hot. My cucumbers are stunning. Now that's something I never thought I'd say.

6.23, giant rats in Africa that can sense TB. 6.26, the Olympics. A whole news cycle without Trump - the world just might be saved, my friends.

moving day

This will be a long day - I was awake at 3.30 a.m. and got up at 6. I've been mulling my workspace and realized in the middle of the night that I need to change things around. About ten years ago, for various reasons that made sense then, I moved my bedroom from the front of the house to the small cosy space at the back. So the big front room holds all my clothes still, because there's no closet at the back, and also has a long desk and many boxes of research materials. I have tried to work there for years. But it faces north and after the early morning, there's not a lot of light. So I started to work in my bedroom, which faces south and has tons of light, but is small. And then I worked in the kitchen at the back of the house, facing the garden, which is lovely and light but where I can't spread out because it's a much-used public space.

It's been this way for years, me wandering from space to space, keeping my current work materials in boxes in one room or another. For the last few days, at last, it's been bothering me, so the day before yesterday, I swung my bed sideways to have more space in the bedroom to write. But that's not going to work.

I am now waiting for Bill, the quasi-homeless guy who does odd jobs, to come over, to help me transfer furniture and mountains of paper from one end of the second floor to the other. I will go back to sleeping at the front and working at the back.

Is this just another excuse not to actually write? I don't think so, I think this is me finally coming to terms with my needs as a writer. It will be a hell of a lot of work to shift things around, not something to undertake on a whim. But I am pretty sure it's the right thing to do.

An hour later: it's done! Bill, with his long straggly grey hair and toothless smile, is invaluable - and though he looks about 102, he is in fact younger than I am. We hauled file cabinets, a massive desk top, mattress and frame, chest of drawers and four hundreds boxes from one end of the house to the other. Now there's chaos. But I have my office.

Does inspiration lurk just around the corner, in my bright new workspace? Stay tuned. But first, at some point very soon, a nap.

Soixante-six

Tattoos! Done by himself except for a name drawn by his mama.
Wayson and his buddy.

A hurricane blew in and suddenly everything was upside down. Two small people were rampaging through the house, one on all fours, one on his extremely swift feet. I turned away for a second and when I turned around, Ben was about to hurtle off a cliff. Eli distributed all the toys all over the floor. Ben threw all the food from his highchair. The kids splashed madly in the wading pool and soaked everyone. Wayson sat serenely taking in the chaos. Sam was late getting back from a cottage.

But at last, by some miracle, we sat down to dinner, Eli discovering the joys of mashed potatoes, Ben gnawing on a corn cob, the rest of us managing a full plate. Sam cleaned it all up and they all went off to their lives.

It's 8, it's quiet, I am now well and truly 66. Not sure how that happened - not that long ago, I was 23. My skin, back and eyes were better, but nothing else was. I'll take 66, with gratitude.

I'm going to have some of my birthday chocolate now. Onward.

birthday girl

It's cup runneth over time. Nice that the whole country celebrates my birthday with a holiday, isn't it? So quiet out there. Below is what greeted me this morning. The garden made me cry.
Rose of Sharon exploding, ridiculous hydrangeas, rudbeckia, echinacea, golden glow, mint, clematis and more. Plus fresh-picked cherry tomatoes, cukes, lettuce and beans for dinner. The bounty of the generous earth. I have just ordered as my birthday present a book called "The Hidden Life of Trees."

My family are arriving at some point soon - the wading pool is filled and ready, there are steaks in the fridge for a special barbecue, and fresh corn from the Stratford farmer's market. My other huge treats already today:
1. Facebook, how I love Facebook, almost everyone I know in the world is writing to wish me a good day. I love you all! So grateful to be in your thoughts.
2. Boot camp at the Y at 9 this morning, led by Carole, my inspiration, grandmother of 3 grown women and lean and muscly like a greyhound. I hurt now, but what a good pain.
3. Practicing the piano - able (clumsily) to play the first of the Goldberg Variations, which was also played by Glenn Gould. You would not mistake my version for his, but still, my fingers are playing what he played. It's hard, because the minute I learn something, I forget it. Motto, for those of you who are under 60: learn it now!
4. Skyping just now with Lynn in Provence, meeting her grandchildren over the internet, saying hello to her daughter Myriam, whom I knew as a toddler, now the beautiful mother of two Muslim sons.
And, more generally ...
5. Justin Trudeau and Canada.
6. My health.
7. My work, both writing and teaching.
8. My home.
And most of all ...
9. Family and friends.

Cup overfloweth.

Losses this year: my father's cousin George, one of the last of Jacob Gordin's grandsons, a dear friend, in Washington D. C. Much missed.

Otherwise - onward, grateful for every minute. My father died at 65; he did not have a 66th birthday. From now on, every minute is a bonus.

Stratford hooray

Just back from a marvellous overnight visit to Stratford. My beloved friends Lani and Maurice are selling their Stratford house and moving 40 k. away to another small town. I've stayed many times with them, drinking beer and talking in their garden, seeing plays, and best of all, snuggling with Bourbon, the most beautiful dog in the world. No more - at least, in Stratford.

So I took the Festival bus - a fantastic addition to our lives, a luxury bus that costs $25 round trip direct from downtown Toronto to the Festival - for a last visit to Lani's. She had been given comps by her - our - friend Martha Henry to see her production of Arthur Miller's "All My Sons" in the afternoon, and in the evening I went to the musical "A Chorus Line, " which I've seen twice already through the years but love so much. This morning, Lani and I went to the Stratford Farmer's Market, full of fresh deliciousness, and then I went to the matinee of "Rebellion," the first part of the "Breath of Kings" compilation from Shakespeare's Henry plays. At 5, the play ended, the bus was at the door, we sailed through the corn and soybean fields, and despite the chaos of Caribana downtown, I was home by 7.30. Amazing.

Stratford is a miracle - this plump little farming community with a world-class theatre. Here's the big Festival stage and the trumpeters that signal that the show is starting soon:

And today, when I walked out at the intermission from the Tom Patterson Theatre, this is what I saw just across the street:
The shows were terrific - talk about showing off the breadth of the place's talent, a three-act Greek tragedy by a modern American playwright, a big Broadway hoofer musical and a complicated blend of Shakespeare's history plays ending with a big sword fight. Flaws in all, not perfect - a theatre friend on the bus back complained about the Festival's thrust stage and the Patterson Theatre's stage in the round, which means the actors are constantly twirling about so all sides can see. But cavils aside, the place is something to be truly proud of. I stood by the river at intermission, listening to two American visitors try to figure out who Henry Bolingbroke's sons were.

Home, to find that my weekend newspapers had been stolen off my front porch. Ah well.

Before I left, I harvested a bit from the garden. My gift for Lani, who eats almost no vegetables - one of my garden's first cucumbers.

Obama = heartthrob city

Friend Margaret called from Vancouver with early birthday greetings - the big day is Monday, no no, please, absolutely no telegrams or gifts - well, if you insist, a nice bottle of rosé never goes amiss - and told me she is watching the Democratic convention because of reading my blog. One by one, I'll turn you all into television-watching political junkies! Hooray!

Speaking of which - last night at the Dem. convention, again, what a phenomenal line-up. I missed a few at the start, but was enthralled by Tim Kaine, Joe Biden, Michael Bloomberg and then - introduced by a marvellous elderly woman who lost a son in Afghanistan and was inspired by Obama to move onward and upward with her life - the most beautiful man on the planet, POTUS. Kaine charming, Biden impassioned, Bloomberg hilariously dry - one of the best lines of the night, about Trump - "I'm a New Yorker and New Yorkers know a con when we see one!" Let's vote for someone sane and competent, he said, and immediately on the internet an image appeared of Hillary with SANE underneath. Imagine, being sane is now a key qualification for President of the United States. Sane and Kaine, that's the Dem's ticket.

Obama was simply superb - physically so beautiful, graceful, his face warm and alive as he pleaded the opposite of the Republican story, that America is a kind, generous, open place full of decent hard-working welcoming people. The truth I'm sure is somewhere between his rosy vision and the grotesque hell of job loss, poverty and paralyzing fear portrayed in Cleveland. But after 3 nights, I can assert that American oratory is in great shape and second to none.

Cousin Peter B. Kaplan, who's famous as a photographer of the Statue of Liberty, was paid for the use of one of his iconic images in a video about Hillary. In the end, though it's a stirring feminist film narrated by Meryl Streep, they didn't use it, but Peter sent it out to family so we could see the film and his Lady of Liberty (just before the 10 minute mark), and through the email link I found out that our mutual cousin Robert is actually there, at the convention in Philadelphia. So tonight, as Hillary speaks, I'll be scanning the crowd for Cousin Robert.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/07/27/watch-the-hillary-clinton-video-her-campaign-killed.html

A heavenly day - hot but not overwhelmingly so, the garden fresh after a nighttime rain. And more than ever, I count my blessings. The other day I went to visit a dear friend, a vigorous writer and editor who was stricken a few years ago with ALS and is now in a power wheelchair, her mind as strong as ever, her body wasting away. There's news that the Ice Bucket Challenge has produced significant results for those with ALS. Quick, guys. There's no time to waste.