Beth Kaplan's Blog, page 216
March 14, 2015
protesting C51, teasing Chekhov and the "tyranny of we"
I'm proud to announce a historic occasion: Eli, in his new waterproof "fireman pants" from MEC, went to his first protest rally today. At two he is perhaps too young to have formed his own opinion of our vile government's vile Bill C51, granting the paranoid enormous powers to chase down the "enemies of democracy" and destroy democracy in the process. But just because he can't vote doesn't mean he shouldn't have been at the cold wet event today, at Nathan Phillip's Square.
Not much fun, but at least there were Timbits.
The family that protests together ...
When it got too dull for him he and I went for a walk around the square and watched the skaters on the big rink. And then - SCORE - the Zamboni came out. How happy I was to be there when this Canadian child encountered his first Zamboni. What a fabulously interesting machine that is. We loved it.
I had to leave my family protesting and hoof it up Yonge St. to meet my friend Terry at the Panasonic Theatre. For her 70th birthday, she'd asked her friends, rather than buying gifts, to take her somewhere, so I took her to "Vanya and Sonya and Masha and Spike" by Chris Durang. In 1976 in Vancouver, I was in a show called "The Idiots Karamazov" co-written by Durang; I played Anais Nin, pushing the body of her father and a pile of her diaries in a shopping cart through the Russian Revolution. (Typecast or what?) It was crazy, and so was the Tony-award winning play today, a take off of Chekhov and Greek tragedy and much else. Very goofy and scattered, a bit of a strain but fun - saved by the delightful Fiona Reid as a gloomy Russian-type American; she takes the audience into her arms and never lets go. Worth seeing just for her imitation of Maggie Smith - spot on and hilarious.
Last night, dinner with an old friend who was widowed some years ago, and her new partner - a treat to sit by her fire and see her ensconced in coupledom once more. I don't get the need to be conjoined, but I am happy for my friends who want it so much and find it. Sometimes I resent what I call "the tyranny of we." But I am happy when those to whom it matters are able to use their favourite pronoun again.
Four more days and I'm outta here. Yikes.
Not much fun, but at least there were Timbits.
The family that protests together ...When it got too dull for him he and I went for a walk around the square and watched the skaters on the big rink. And then - SCORE - the Zamboni came out. How happy I was to be there when this Canadian child encountered his first Zamboni. What a fabulously interesting machine that is. We loved it.
I had to leave my family protesting and hoof it up Yonge St. to meet my friend Terry at the Panasonic Theatre. For her 70th birthday, she'd asked her friends, rather than buying gifts, to take her somewhere, so I took her to "Vanya and Sonya and Masha and Spike" by Chris Durang. In 1976 in Vancouver, I was in a show called "The Idiots Karamazov" co-written by Durang; I played Anais Nin, pushing the body of her father and a pile of her diaries in a shopping cart through the Russian Revolution. (Typecast or what?) It was crazy, and so was the Tony-award winning play today, a take off of Chekhov and Greek tragedy and much else. Very goofy and scattered, a bit of a strain but fun - saved by the delightful Fiona Reid as a gloomy Russian-type American; she takes the audience into her arms and never lets go. Worth seeing just for her imitation of Maggie Smith - spot on and hilarious.
Last night, dinner with an old friend who was widowed some years ago, and her new partner - a treat to sit by her fire and see her ensconced in coupledom once more. I don't get the need to be conjoined, but I am happy for my friends who want it so much and find it. Sometimes I resent what I call "the tyranny of we." But I am happy when those to whom it matters are able to use their favourite pronoun again.
Four more days and I'm outta here. Yikes.
March 11, 2015
Jean Vanier and L'Arche
Jean Vanier, founder of the L'Arche communities around the world - where people with visible disabilities, and people whose disabilities are less visible, live and work together - has won a prestigious prize.
[image error] Jean Vanier, Canadian advocate for mentally disabled people, wins $1.7M Templeton Prize
My new memoir, set in 1979, centres around a key event that year: my time working at a L'Arche community in Provence. It was life-changing in every way and I will always be grateful - to the mentally and physically challenged men I lived and worked with and to my fellow assistants, to the friends who gave me, a half-Jewish atheist, a job in this most Catholic of workplaces, and to Jean Vanier, whose vision of love, generosity, kindness and forgiveness made these scores of communities possible. Here's the essay I wrote about the experience that I read on the CBC in 1998.
Not long ago, I was invited to a weekend long birthday party in the south of France that I’ll be sorry to miss. My invitation reads, "Soon the community of the Moulin de l'Auro will celebrate its twentieth birthday!" Just holding the letter, with its French postmark, takes me back to the summer my life changed for good. When I worked at the Moulin de l'Auro, in 1979, the community was brand new. After my stay there, I was brand new, as well.
In June of 1979, I was twenty-eight - single, lost, and temporarily without work. Since I’d never taken a post-college tour through Europe, I decided to do so now: I would take a quick trip to Europe and find myself. After Greece and Italy, however, I remained unfound. Then I stopped in the south of France to visit my old roommate, Lynn. Years before, when we were working together in Toronto, Lynn had gone to hear the Canadian visionary Jean Vanier speak about his life's mission, the founding of communities where people who are mentally and physically disabled, and people who are not, would live and work together. After listening to this eloquent and passionately spiritual man, Lynn had immediately volunteered to spend a year working at l'Arche - ‘the Ark’, the first of Vanier's communities in a village north of Paris.
By the time of my visit with her, L'Arche communities had sprung up around the world, and Lynn was the mother of 3 1/2 French children. Her husband Denis, who’d done his military service as a conscientious objector at L’Arche, had recently founded a new community, Le Moulin de l'Auro, an ancient mill and rambling stone house in the spectacular Provencal village of Gordes. I dropped in to spend a few days with Lynn and Denis and their children, and left the village nearly six months later, transformed.
When I heard that the men and assistants of the Moulin were unable to go away on vacation for want of a driver, I suddenly realized - here was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Rescheduling my affairs long-distance, I offered my services and moved into the community. My new circumstances were a shock, at first. I’d never known anyone with a great and obvious deformity, and the men I now lived with had deformities that were great and obvious indeed: Patrick, whose boxer's face was covered with cuts and swellings, the result of falls during his frequent epileptic seizures; Jean-Luc, with a small powerful body and a child's mind, subject to uncontrollable rages; Yannick, a huge man who rarely spoke; jerky Hughes, scowling Francois, handsome, psychotic Michel.
Within days, however, I began to understand the first truth of L'Arche: some disabilities are immediately visible, and some only become apparent in time. We assistants, I found, were just as handicapped - Vanier would say, "as wounded" - as Patrick and the others. We didn't have epilepsy or Down's Syndrome, but we were closed and unloving, or selfish, or greedy, or lazy, or frightened, or small.
I then learned the second lesson of L'Arche: the soul cannot help but grow in community. We ate together, worked, played and rested together. This odd group became my family, with all that a family entails: one moment a desperate desire never to see these people ever again; the next, a need to help or be helped, to hear or be heard, to be with the others, in community.
After July at the Moulin, working every day with the men assembling door handles, learning to cook for twenty, learning that washing up for twenty can be a quick and pleasant chore with a cheerful group, I drove a number of us in the minibus to our August vacation, just like every other French family. The parents of one of the assistants had lent us an empty farmhouse in the middle of a sheep field. And there we lived for a month: four assistants and nine disabled men, in a sea of sheep.
I have many indelible memories, but one stands out. During our last week there we pitched a tent in a nearby field, to give the men a chance to sleep outside. I went to camp with volatile little Jean-Luc and Yannick the silent giant. During the night a violent storm broke; lightning cracked the sky, and rain battered our shelter. Yannick snored serenely, but Jean-Luc was terrified. To calm him - to calm myself too - I held him in my arms until he fell asleep. The next day, beaming in the pale morning sun, he announced to the others in his halting speech that we were now married.
He followed me constantly, cooing, calling "ma copine" - my special friend. I tried to explain, the others tried, but he was firm: we had hugged at night, and he knew from movies, that's what married people did. Though I turned away from him again and again, he kept reappearing by my side, hopeful, bewildered. We would move to the city, he told me, and he would drive a truck. I swore that I would never again be careless with loving gestures, or with love itself.
Back in Provence we resumed the daily routine of the Moulin: door handles, cleaning, cooking, sitting together at a long table to eat and argue, talk and sing. We invited the village to a party at the Moulin, and produced a play in which Yannick starred as a very tall, talking princess; Jean-Luc provided his own kind of music on a stringless guitar. As the season grew colder, my heart grew bigger. When I left, in November, I was overwhelmed with love for these men, who had taught me so much and were so beautiful.
A few years later, I heard that Jean-Luc had become dangerous to himself and others and had been sent back to the hospital for a change in medication. Denis then had an inspiration. When Jean-Luc returned to the community, everyone called him by another name: Tom. His rages stopped. Jean-Luc may have been angry, but Tom wasn't. He was Tom for awhile, and then he became Jean-Luc again, sunny as a child. When I came back to visit after many years, he knew me right away. "Ma copine!" he called, with a huge smile.
Happy Birthday, Moulin de l'Auro. To all of you, I wish a joyous weekend celebrating the power and the glory, for better and for worse, of community. Now that I am so firmly found, I can’t easily leave my family and work to travel, so I won’t be there, with you.
But on that weekend, as for the past nineteen years, you will all be here, with me.
CBC, "This Morning,” First Person Singular, May 22, 1998
[image error] Jean Vanier, Canadian advocate for mentally disabled people, wins $1.7M Templeton Prize
My new memoir, set in 1979, centres around a key event that year: my time working at a L'Arche community in Provence. It was life-changing in every way and I will always be grateful - to the mentally and physically challenged men I lived and worked with and to my fellow assistants, to the friends who gave me, a half-Jewish atheist, a job in this most Catholic of workplaces, and to Jean Vanier, whose vision of love, generosity, kindness and forgiveness made these scores of communities possible. Here's the essay I wrote about the experience that I read on the CBC in 1998.
Not long ago, I was invited to a weekend long birthday party in the south of France that I’ll be sorry to miss. My invitation reads, "Soon the community of the Moulin de l'Auro will celebrate its twentieth birthday!" Just holding the letter, with its French postmark, takes me back to the summer my life changed for good. When I worked at the Moulin de l'Auro, in 1979, the community was brand new. After my stay there, I was brand new, as well.
In June of 1979, I was twenty-eight - single, lost, and temporarily without work. Since I’d never taken a post-college tour through Europe, I decided to do so now: I would take a quick trip to Europe and find myself. After Greece and Italy, however, I remained unfound. Then I stopped in the south of France to visit my old roommate, Lynn. Years before, when we were working together in Toronto, Lynn had gone to hear the Canadian visionary Jean Vanier speak about his life's mission, the founding of communities where people who are mentally and physically disabled, and people who are not, would live and work together. After listening to this eloquent and passionately spiritual man, Lynn had immediately volunteered to spend a year working at l'Arche - ‘the Ark’, the first of Vanier's communities in a village north of Paris.
By the time of my visit with her, L'Arche communities had sprung up around the world, and Lynn was the mother of 3 1/2 French children. Her husband Denis, who’d done his military service as a conscientious objector at L’Arche, had recently founded a new community, Le Moulin de l'Auro, an ancient mill and rambling stone house in the spectacular Provencal village of Gordes. I dropped in to spend a few days with Lynn and Denis and their children, and left the village nearly six months later, transformed.
When I heard that the men and assistants of the Moulin were unable to go away on vacation for want of a driver, I suddenly realized - here was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Rescheduling my affairs long-distance, I offered my services and moved into the community. My new circumstances were a shock, at first. I’d never known anyone with a great and obvious deformity, and the men I now lived with had deformities that were great and obvious indeed: Patrick, whose boxer's face was covered with cuts and swellings, the result of falls during his frequent epileptic seizures; Jean-Luc, with a small powerful body and a child's mind, subject to uncontrollable rages; Yannick, a huge man who rarely spoke; jerky Hughes, scowling Francois, handsome, psychotic Michel.
Within days, however, I began to understand the first truth of L'Arche: some disabilities are immediately visible, and some only become apparent in time. We assistants, I found, were just as handicapped - Vanier would say, "as wounded" - as Patrick and the others. We didn't have epilepsy or Down's Syndrome, but we were closed and unloving, or selfish, or greedy, or lazy, or frightened, or small.
I then learned the second lesson of L'Arche: the soul cannot help but grow in community. We ate together, worked, played and rested together. This odd group became my family, with all that a family entails: one moment a desperate desire never to see these people ever again; the next, a need to help or be helped, to hear or be heard, to be with the others, in community.
After July at the Moulin, working every day with the men assembling door handles, learning to cook for twenty, learning that washing up for twenty can be a quick and pleasant chore with a cheerful group, I drove a number of us in the minibus to our August vacation, just like every other French family. The parents of one of the assistants had lent us an empty farmhouse in the middle of a sheep field. And there we lived for a month: four assistants and nine disabled men, in a sea of sheep.
I have many indelible memories, but one stands out. During our last week there we pitched a tent in a nearby field, to give the men a chance to sleep outside. I went to camp with volatile little Jean-Luc and Yannick the silent giant. During the night a violent storm broke; lightning cracked the sky, and rain battered our shelter. Yannick snored serenely, but Jean-Luc was terrified. To calm him - to calm myself too - I held him in my arms until he fell asleep. The next day, beaming in the pale morning sun, he announced to the others in his halting speech that we were now married.
He followed me constantly, cooing, calling "ma copine" - my special friend. I tried to explain, the others tried, but he was firm: we had hugged at night, and he knew from movies, that's what married people did. Though I turned away from him again and again, he kept reappearing by my side, hopeful, bewildered. We would move to the city, he told me, and he would drive a truck. I swore that I would never again be careless with loving gestures, or with love itself.
Back in Provence we resumed the daily routine of the Moulin: door handles, cleaning, cooking, sitting together at a long table to eat and argue, talk and sing. We invited the village to a party at the Moulin, and produced a play in which Yannick starred as a very tall, talking princess; Jean-Luc provided his own kind of music on a stringless guitar. As the season grew colder, my heart grew bigger. When I left, in November, I was overwhelmed with love for these men, who had taught me so much and were so beautiful.
A few years later, I heard that Jean-Luc had become dangerous to himself and others and had been sent back to the hospital for a change in medication. Denis then had an inspiration. When Jean-Luc returned to the community, everyone called him by another name: Tom. His rages stopped. Jean-Luc may have been angry, but Tom wasn't. He was Tom for awhile, and then he became Jean-Luc again, sunny as a child. When I came back to visit after many years, he knew me right away. "Ma copine!" he called, with a huge smile.
Happy Birthday, Moulin de l'Auro. To all of you, I wish a joyous weekend celebrating the power and the glory, for better and for worse, of community. Now that I am so firmly found, I can’t easily leave my family and work to travel, so I won’t be there, with you.
But on that weekend, as for the past nineteen years, you will all be here, with me.
CBC, "This Morning,” First Person Singular, May 22, 1998
Daniels Spectrum wins award, Beth cuts back on wine LOL
Our very own Daniels Spectrum, the fantastic new arts centre just down the street on Dundas East, has received an international award - well-deserved. The place is always humming with artistic activity of all sizes, shapes, ages and colours. A treat.
http://urbantoronto.ca/news/2015/03/regent-parks-daniels-spectrum-receives-civic-trust-award
The sun! Melting the piles of snow in my yard, nibbling at the edges. I am wearing a new pair of Gap jeans bought for the trip, worrying about the muffin top spilling over the waistband - all the chocolate and red wine that got me through February. Speaking of which - I just read another article on drinking, and have decided - yes I have! I know you don't believe me! - to try to cut back on wine. The recommended limit for women is 10 drinks a week, which is what I've had by Thursday with the weekend still to come. It's my only sin, bon dieu, but still, it seems strange to work so hard at keeping fit and serene and eating healthy foods and then slugging back too much wine. So I'm going to try, first, to limit myself to two glasses a day. That's fourteen glasses a week. And then try to cut it back a bit more from there.
Maybe. Maybe not. It's SO delicious and warms the bones with a delicate inner fire. And when I'm out somewhere, it's part of the scene, and often it's free, which means dive in headfirst. This will be an adventure in restraint, not my strong point. Stay tuned. (I can hear my close friends laughing. Lynn Blin, this means you.)
Just finished reading - skimming - a new memoir from the library, "The Splendid Things We Planned: a family portrait" by Blake Bailey, getting very good reviews. It's quite something - the story of two sons born to fairly normal middle-class parents, one, the writer Blake, also fairly normal, and the other, his older brother Scott, a masterpiece of screw-ups. If you ever start to feel that your sibling is something of a drag, read this book and marvel that one human being can wreak such havoc. It's devastatingly honest, with the two brothers sometimes passed out on the floor - oh their poor parents. Half way through, I couldn't take it any more and skimmed the rest, then read the end in detail. I do that quite a lot. A good read, though, if you want to keep your own family in perspective.
Work is winding down - the U of T advanced class ended yesterday, the Ry one next Monday, the home one tomorrow; the big editing job for Lina is done, her memoir with a copy-editor on its way to publication. Now to extricate myself from everything else, pack minimally and say goodbye to Booboo for FIVE WEEKS. Heartbreak. But once I'm in Paris, I think I'll recover.
Cutting down to two glasses of wine a day will be even harder there, though. Maybe I should reconsider.
http://urbantoronto.ca/news/2015/03/regent-parks-daniels-spectrum-receives-civic-trust-award
The sun! Melting the piles of snow in my yard, nibbling at the edges. I am wearing a new pair of Gap jeans bought for the trip, worrying about the muffin top spilling over the waistband - all the chocolate and red wine that got me through February. Speaking of which - I just read another article on drinking, and have decided - yes I have! I know you don't believe me! - to try to cut back on wine. The recommended limit for women is 10 drinks a week, which is what I've had by Thursday with the weekend still to come. It's my only sin, bon dieu, but still, it seems strange to work so hard at keeping fit and serene and eating healthy foods and then slugging back too much wine. So I'm going to try, first, to limit myself to two glasses a day. That's fourteen glasses a week. And then try to cut it back a bit more from there.
Maybe. Maybe not. It's SO delicious and warms the bones with a delicate inner fire. And when I'm out somewhere, it's part of the scene, and often it's free, which means dive in headfirst. This will be an adventure in restraint, not my strong point. Stay tuned. (I can hear my close friends laughing. Lynn Blin, this means you.)
Just finished reading - skimming - a new memoir from the library, "The Splendid Things We Planned: a family portrait" by Blake Bailey, getting very good reviews. It's quite something - the story of two sons born to fairly normal middle-class parents, one, the writer Blake, also fairly normal, and the other, his older brother Scott, a masterpiece of screw-ups. If you ever start to feel that your sibling is something of a drag, read this book and marvel that one human being can wreak such havoc. It's devastatingly honest, with the two brothers sometimes passed out on the floor - oh their poor parents. Half way through, I couldn't take it any more and skimmed the rest, then read the end in detail. I do that quite a lot. A good read, though, if you want to keep your own family in perspective.
Work is winding down - the U of T advanced class ended yesterday, the Ry one next Monday, the home one tomorrow; the big editing job for Lina is done, her memoir with a copy-editor on its way to publication. Now to extricate myself from everything else, pack minimally and say goodbye to Booboo for FIVE WEEKS. Heartbreak. But once I'm in Paris, I think I'll recover.
Cutting down to two glasses of wine a day will be even harder there, though. Maybe I should reconsider.
March 9, 2015
a couple of rains
Almost warm out - Toronto at its most hideous, with piles of filthy snow. On the walk I took with Anna and Eli, she said, "If I were a dictator, I would ban dogs." And she likes dogs. But you know what she's talking about. Enough said.
Mr. Eli's hair is long, and he was thrilled with his pre-haircut 'do. Also his toenails, painted all different colours, each of which he pointed out to me.
As we walked, he admired all the water running into the "dwains," and wondered if it might rain to produce more water. I said I didn't think so, it was such a nice day. He pondered for a minute. "Maybe just a couple of rains," he said. "Then we'd need our brellas."
I took notes. The Chronicles of Eli have begun.
When I got home, Anna had already sent a suggestion via FB that we make ourselves vests like these on our next craft day. I heartily concur. Now that's what I call a fashion statement.
Mr. Eli's hair is long, and he was thrilled with his pre-haircut 'do. Also his toenails, painted all different colours, each of which he pointed out to me.
As we walked, he admired all the water running into the "dwains," and wondered if it might rain to produce more water. I said I didn't think so, it was such a nice day. He pondered for a minute. "Maybe just a couple of rains," he said. "Then we'd need our brellas."I took notes. The Chronicles of Eli have begun.
When I got home, Anna had already sent a suggestion via FB that we make ourselves vests like these on our next craft day. I heartily concur. Now that's what I call a fashion statement.
March 8, 2015
not so much
Just got this from Anna - her son and his dad, out for a walk today - across the tundra in Iceland.
Actually, not far from her home. Okay okay - so spring's not quite nigh. We'll get there.
Actually, not far from her home. Okay okay - so spring's not quite nigh. We'll get there.
spring is nigh
Above zero! Mon dieu, what is this tropical planet? Neighbour Monique and I walked in the hot sun this afternoon to Allen Gardens's conservatory, full of fragrant spring flowers and even tropical ones. Heaven. There is hope.
Ottawa was wonderful - well, being with my old aunt Do was wonderful, I didn't see much of Ottawa. It was moving to sit with her and watch a DVD of Do, my mother and their oldest sister Margaret chatting and singing during a family reunion in 1996. I took Do and her 3 best friends, her Scrabble team, to dinner at our favourite restaurant, the Village Cafe:
Auntie Do is next to me, the Scrabble champion born April 19 1920.
Next day we had a major excursion, shopping for an electric kettle and various oddments, and then to see the new "Marigold Hotel" film. I might not have gone, having seen and enjoyed the first, but Do really wanted to see it - and it's a treat, thoroughly enjoyable if light, the perfect film to see on a cold afternoon with your 95-year old auntie. Maggie Smith, Judi Dench, Penelope Wilton, the adorable Bill Nighy, and, yes, Richard Gere, who's aging beautifully - never better, any of them. Not to mention glorious Jaipur.
Tried to help Do sort out her massive piles of paper - but met much resistance, reminiscent of my mother, another great saver of paper. One day, a long time hence, there will be a huge job to do. But let's not think about that now. We did a lot of reminiscing, and I told her, once more, how important aunts are. Aunts are very, very important. Many thanks to mine.
And then back on Porter, to see this welcome sight from the ferry:
The ice breaking up! Summer is nigh.
One last thing: I was at an event at U of T and happened to see this - I hadn't realized the winners of the Excellence in Teaching award are forever immortalized on a PLAQUE. I am on a plaque. Does it get better than that?
Ten days until I depart. It's Sunday and there's no Downton - I'm bewildered.
PS Just heard from Ottawa - Do won at Scrabble today. Love those genes.
Ottawa was wonderful - well, being with my old aunt Do was wonderful, I didn't see much of Ottawa. It was moving to sit with her and watch a DVD of Do, my mother and their oldest sister Margaret chatting and singing during a family reunion in 1996. I took Do and her 3 best friends, her Scrabble team, to dinner at our favourite restaurant, the Village Cafe:
Auntie Do is next to me, the Scrabble champion born April 19 1920.Next day we had a major excursion, shopping for an electric kettle and various oddments, and then to see the new "Marigold Hotel" film. I might not have gone, having seen and enjoyed the first, but Do really wanted to see it - and it's a treat, thoroughly enjoyable if light, the perfect film to see on a cold afternoon with your 95-year old auntie. Maggie Smith, Judi Dench, Penelope Wilton, the adorable Bill Nighy, and, yes, Richard Gere, who's aging beautifully - never better, any of them. Not to mention glorious Jaipur.
Tried to help Do sort out her massive piles of paper - but met much resistance, reminiscent of my mother, another great saver of paper. One day, a long time hence, there will be a huge job to do. But let's not think about that now. We did a lot of reminiscing, and I told her, once more, how important aunts are. Aunts are very, very important. Many thanks to mine.
And then back on Porter, to see this welcome sight from the ferry:
The ice breaking up! Summer is nigh.One last thing: I was at an event at U of T and happened to see this - I hadn't realized the winners of the Excellence in Teaching award are forever immortalized on a PLAQUE. I am on a plaque. Does it get better than that?
Ten days until I depart. It's Sunday and there's no Downton - I'm bewildered.PS Just heard from Ottawa - Do won at Scrabble today. Love those genes.
March 6, 2015
winning essay
Thanks to Kerry Clare and her "Pickle Me This" blog, which I just read to the left, I found out too late for my students that Chatelaine magazine had a competition encouraging readers to send essays. The winning one is a good personal essay, just the kind of thing we do in class. Next time, dear students, let's keep our eye on magazines and make sure you send in your best work.
Here's the winning entry:
Heidi Reimer’s winning essay about female friendship has been published in Chatelaine.
And now, off to the tropical delights of Ottawa.
Here's the winning entry:
Heidi Reimer’s winning essay about female friendship has been published in Chatelaine.
And now, off to the tropical delights of Ottawa.
March 5, 2015
Happy World Book Day!
It's World Book Day. So put down that phone, close that laptop, pick up that beautiful object made of paper and riffle through it. Feel the smooth slide of those pages, those former trees now at the service of literature. Absorb those words. Slip the book into your pocket or purse - no need to plug it in. It's just there, always waiting for you, shining in the dark. Magic. An invention we cannot live without.
Thank you Johannes Gutenberg - 1398-1468!
In other news ... not much. It's cold. I watched the last episode of "Call the Midwife" for the second time last night - Chummy's dreadful mother dies - and wept all over again. So good. And then, of course, Jon Stewart, aware that these are my precious last months with this beloved man.
Tomorrow I go for the weekend to Ottawa - balmy Ottawa - to visit dear Auntie Do, who will soon be 95 and is sounding pretty shaky. Tomorrow night I am taking her and her 3 best friends in the building to dinner. They play Scrabble every Sunday afternoon and are hot to trot. I on the other hand will slow down. Someone left a book by the Vietnamese monk Thich Nhat Hanh in my Little Free Library, and what I read suggests that when you focus on your breathing for meditation, you say the words "In" as you breathe in, and - you guessed it - "Out" as you breathe out.
I've been doing that. And it's amazing that suddenly, when you focus on your breath and think the words, speed decreases and things that seemed important don't any more. Try it now. Think "In" as you breathe in and "Out" as you breathe out. And suddenly there you are, a living being on the planet, aware that you, like countless other creatures, are alive.
I will be doing a lot of In and Out in Ottawa.
Thank you Johannes Gutenberg - 1398-1468!
In other news ... not much. It's cold. I watched the last episode of "Call the Midwife" for the second time last night - Chummy's dreadful mother dies - and wept all over again. So good. And then, of course, Jon Stewart, aware that these are my precious last months with this beloved man.
Tomorrow I go for the weekend to Ottawa - balmy Ottawa - to visit dear Auntie Do, who will soon be 95 and is sounding pretty shaky. Tomorrow night I am taking her and her 3 best friends in the building to dinner. They play Scrabble every Sunday afternoon and are hot to trot. I on the other hand will slow down. Someone left a book by the Vietnamese monk Thich Nhat Hanh in my Little Free Library, and what I read suggests that when you focus on your breathing for meditation, you say the words "In" as you breathe in, and - you guessed it - "Out" as you breathe out.
I've been doing that. And it's amazing that suddenly, when you focus on your breath and think the words, speed decreases and things that seemed important don't any more. Try it now. Think "In" as you breathe in and "Out" as you breathe out. And suddenly there you are, a living being on the planet, aware that you, like countless other creatures, are alive.
I will be doing a lot of In and Out in Ottawa.
March 3, 2015
killed by a moose
My brother is in Florida, saying goodbye to our mother's condo. It is 84 degrees, not a cloud in the sky, he says. Here, a lovely fresh snowstorm that turned into freezing rain, thus large quantities of snow turning into large quantities of slush. Oh hooray. We love winter.
Not.
I am appalled at Benjamin Netanyahu. As I've written before, there was a time when its Jewish citizens were the vibrant and insistent social conscience of America - in fact, of every country where they lived. No more - the opposite. Many are now Republicans. Nothing worse. Very sad.
Here's your important political message for today:
Not.
I am appalled at Benjamin Netanyahu. As I've written before, there was a time when its Jewish citizens were the vibrant and insistent social conscience of America - in fact, of every country where they lived. No more - the opposite. Many are now Republicans. Nothing worse. Very sad.
Here's your important political message for today:
March 2, 2015
So True triumphs and Mrs. Hughes finds love
So it's official - that was the coldest February on record. Hooray for us, heroic Canadians, shuffling through the snow coated in fleece - we survived. As always, I think about the pioneers, who had to find food and wood for warmth, who had no medical services, supermarkets, central heat. Their legacy is why we're so tough today.
Yesterday - our So True readings, a wonderful event, the best yet. Have heard from both audience members and participants:
Thank you for your part in the superbly honest presentations this afternoon....truly touching stories.
I tossed my essence out into the universe at "So True," and felt that room full of people put out a hand to help me land on my feet.
I appreciate you organizing this forum for creativity. My brother Matthew, a journalist now in NYC, responded to my invite to this event by saying he was proud of me and that he has come to believe that happiness lies in being creative, and I agree. Thanks for sharing your enthusiasm and the happiness which written expression evokes, whether it serves as a cathartic exercise, a memory or a tribute. It unites us.
Thank you, amazing and powerful mentor. I hope YOU are proud of what you are doing through this inspired forum and through your work.
Yes, thank you, I am. Very very much.
And then - the Downton finale. We were going to drink champagne as we watched but were too tired. Thank God Julian Fellowes will stop torturing Bates and Anna from now on - won't he? Must we survive without Tom's sweet face? Wait a minute, isn't Tom just a bit too perfect? Mrs. Hughes and Carson - woo hoo, get it ON! The crabby Jew has a heart. A challenging man with a nice car for Lady Mary, a weedy one for Edith, and is Hugh Bonneville going to keel over? And, as my screen writer friend Suzette said - and by the way, Suzette won a Canadian Screen Award last week, BRAVA! - "The Dowager and Mrs. Crawley - the best couple on television right now."
How can we wait a whole year to meet them all again? Oh well, something to look forward to next January.
Saturday night, I was at Koerner Hall to hear the African musicians Vusi Mahlasela and Hugh Masekela celebrate the 20th anniversary of the end of apartheid. They made jokes about the cold, about spending the day at the beach - ha - and then they rocked the roof off. There were many Africans of all colours in the audience; Vusi started off with a talk in Zulu, and a man in my row of the audience shouted greetings back to him. How grateful I was that night, I am every day, to live in a city as culturally diverse and as full of artists - and appreciative audiences - as Toronto.
Yesterday - our So True readings, a wonderful event, the best yet. Have heard from both audience members and participants:
Thank you for your part in the superbly honest presentations this afternoon....truly touching stories.
I tossed my essence out into the universe at "So True," and felt that room full of people put out a hand to help me land on my feet.
I appreciate you organizing this forum for creativity. My brother Matthew, a journalist now in NYC, responded to my invite to this event by saying he was proud of me and that he has come to believe that happiness lies in being creative, and I agree. Thanks for sharing your enthusiasm and the happiness which written expression evokes, whether it serves as a cathartic exercise, a memory or a tribute. It unites us.
Thank you, amazing and powerful mentor. I hope YOU are proud of what you are doing through this inspired forum and through your work.
Yes, thank you, I am. Very very much.
And then - the Downton finale. We were going to drink champagne as we watched but were too tired. Thank God Julian Fellowes will stop torturing Bates and Anna from now on - won't he? Must we survive without Tom's sweet face? Wait a minute, isn't Tom just a bit too perfect? Mrs. Hughes and Carson - woo hoo, get it ON! The crabby Jew has a heart. A challenging man with a nice car for Lady Mary, a weedy one for Edith, and is Hugh Bonneville going to keel over? And, as my screen writer friend Suzette said - and by the way, Suzette won a Canadian Screen Award last week, BRAVA! - "The Dowager and Mrs. Crawley - the best couple on television right now."
How can we wait a whole year to meet them all again? Oh well, something to look forward to next January.
Saturday night, I was at Koerner Hall to hear the African musicians Vusi Mahlasela and Hugh Masekela celebrate the 20th anniversary of the end of apartheid. They made jokes about the cold, about spending the day at the beach - ha - and then they rocked the roof off. There were many Africans of all colours in the audience; Vusi started off with a talk in Zulu, and a man in my row of the audience shouted greetings back to him. How grateful I was that night, I am every day, to live in a city as culturally diverse and as full of artists - and appreciative audiences - as Toronto.
