Beth Kaplan's Blog, page 62

Shtisel: terrific drama portraying religious absurdity

On Parliament Street, as often happens, I ran into a neighbour, Stephen. I love your blog, he told me. I'm always amazed at the diversity of people who follow my life. It's not a big crowd - from 40 to 70 people a day, 350 to 450 a month, though when I travel the numbers go up a lot. 

I just checked the overview and saw a startling thing: March goes along with the usual numbers until March 24, when it jumps up to 349 readers. On March 25, back to 43. 

March 24, I'm writing about finding British relatives. Does that mean hundreds of new British relatives are checking in? Mystery.

Anna called this morning; she and the boys were doing a tour of favourite playgrounds on the east side, would I like to meet them? I certainly would. Hopped on my bike and off to the playground at Allen Gardens, a good one. The boys and I played our favourite game - Glamma as the big bad wolf monster chasing them with teeth bared - while Mama went to Loblaws and managed to deke into Joe Fresh and buy a spring sweater. And then they took off for another playground and I staggered home. 

The Rogers technicians came. A nice man with a rolling Russian accent checked out my systems inside and out, thinks he fixed what might have been the problem but will ask the maintenance guys to check also. My TV box, however, is now attached by cable rather than by wifi, so I hope that's fixed. We are so dependent on these devices, more so than ever before — frantic without them.

I wrote about it to Brad who helps me with tech problems. He wrote back You know your Russian “cable guy” has routed your signals back thru a basement in Moscow. There will now be subliminal  pro Russian messages in the next Stanley Tucci episode. That’s how they do it.  

LOL!

Last night, I watched 3 episodes of Netflix's "Shtisel," a dramatic series about orthodox Jews in Israel, but really about love and confusion and betrayal among human beings anywhere, though these ones live by a stringent set of rules and wear strange clothes and hats and hair. The actors are magnificent, so is the writing and filming - all excellent. Recommended. 

However, it's hard not to chafe at the absurdity of the stifling religious regulations portrayed, the arranged marriages, the women in their wigs and scarves loaded down with hundreds of children. I'm not tolerant of conspicuous religiosity. I was at Riverdale Farm once when two busloads of schoolchildren arrived - one a group of Muslim children and one a group of Orthodox Jewish boys. The Muslim teachers were in niqab but the children looked like children, whereas the Jewish boys all had the payot, those ridiculous dangling side curls, and kippehs. I thought to myself, It's child abuse to inculcate children into a cult so young and brand them as religious weirdos. How can they ever make friends with the outside world? They can't, that's the point, as "Shtisel" shows. 

Will turn on my fire and watch more tonight. And perhaps my TV is actually working now, routed through Moscow though it may be. Pleasure is. 

keep on keeping on

Oh sad. The husband of one of my closest friends died of a heart attack this morning. She brought cups of tea up to bed; they drank and talked, and he rolled over and died. He'd been having chest pains but tests were inconclusive and he refused a few days before when she wanted him to go to Emerg. I know how he felt. Another casualty, in a way, of Covid; in normal times, he might have gone. But then again, he might not. He had a peaceful, painless death in his own bed next to the love of his life. But he was only 71. 

Monique's closest sister also had a heart attack and died suddenly last week, at 78. Monique can't stop crying. I think it's not only the loss of a beloved sibling, and the fact that she can't go to France to be with family, but a renewed reminder of our own human fragility. Any time, it might come.

So we live as well as we can, right now.

On the other hand, to descend to the pits of pettiness, some of us have to spend many hours - days - battling with our cable provider. Curse you, Rogers! After upgrading my modem I've had nothing but trouble - internet going on and off, and the TV too; I'm watching something and the screen goes blank, then comes back half an hour later, then freezes or goes black again. Many tortuous phone calls, and it's still the same. A technician is apparently coming tomorrow to check wiring, which should have been done ages ago. My son made me laugh, though. When I texted him about my fury, he replied, "In situations like this I like to take 10 deep breaths. I've got a few articles on breathing techniques I've clipped, next time you're here I'll give them to ya."

He is mocking his mother who clips articles on health issues incessantly and presses them on her children. Who throw them away.

Groundhog Day continues - is this Tuesday? Saturday? I guess Easter is meaningful for some, not for me, though I think Anna and fam will come and I'll hide eggs in the garden. So that will be Sunday.

Our incompetent premier is floundering and so is our province. Restaurants had just opened and now have to shut again. Sam was working and now is not, or maybe he is, maybe they'll figure something out. Anna is still cooking for many elders. In here, nothing is new. It may be isolated, quiet, and sometimes dull, but it beats the alternative. 

A friend sent this from her cell - six years ago or so, Eli had a fever and Glamma was on call. My baby. 

checking in

I am sorting through the packed boxes of family photographs, partly inspired by my new fourth cousin Lesley, and partly because it had to be done anyway. And the more I look at the family back to the twenties in New York and England, the more I marvel that I exist at all. Here, my mother's small family of restrained Victorians, rooted in the British soil for centuries and poor as church mice, sipping tea, sitting decorously in deck chairs on the occasional beach. There, my father's huge family - my grandmother had ten siblings, though she only spoke to some of them, and my grandfather six - of boisterous immigrant Jews, noshing, arguing, climbing inexorably upwards with cleverness and very hard work. 

And yet Sylvia and Gordin fell in love and stayed together for four decades, not without great struggle. A tribute to them both. Now that I know more of the family story, I see more in the photographs - a bunch from the summer of 1958, for example, our family reunited after two years of separation and anguish, I see how tentative is the happiness on our faces. I see much that makes me sad - my British grandparents' wedding picture, so young and serious, my stunning grandmother marrying the wrong man simply to get away from her harridan of a mother; and much - my toddler father's pugnacious face, my American grandmother's scowl - that makes me laugh. 

A few of the hundreds or even thousands, including some I've never seen.

Yesterday, I spoke to my psychologist, once my psychoanalyst. How fortunate I am to have this woman in my life. I lay on her couch for a few years, and once I graduated, so to speak, have continued to consult her regularly. Last year I called her during an excruciatingly difficult crisis with a tenant and later in the year with nothing particular going on, just to check in. And yesterday also. There's always something valuable that comes up, a nugget. She's only nine years older than I but I think of her as the mother I never had - someone who understands and cares and sees me clearly. A gift of the greatest value.

She told me she's retiring next February. I will call her more often this year, to stuff myself with her calm wisdom before she vanishes. Thanks to the gods for pushing her into my path. 

It's going to be seventeen degrees today; Jannette is coming later and we'll do more pruning. As I'm doing now, at my desk - pruning the photographs that tell the stories. 

Watched a doc about the extraordinary, marvellous David Attenborough last night. A lucky man who began young to do what he loved and was very good at and has continued to do his entire life, while making a positive difference to life on our planet. A mitzvah. In the midst of this #$% pandemic, which is getting worse all around us, so many mitzvahs.

Alice Neel, Alan Turing, and the beaver

First, have a wonderful Passover, those of you who celebrate!

Next, I just received a kind note from a writer about "Loose Woman": It’s one of the best memoirs I’ve read; you had me hooked from the beginning and kept me in suspense all the way through as I asked myself, “How is she going to turn herself around?” It’s a wonderful story of transformation and redemption. It lifted my spirits and made me feel that anything IS possible.

Thank you! "How is she going to turn herself around?" sounds like the Ever Given in the Suez Canal. And I did feel like a giant immobile barge sometimes.

We had a heavenly week; now it's grey but still mild, does not feel like March. The birds are happy - a great deal of chatter. A big item in the papers the other day was that one entrance to the Royal York subway stop in western Toronto had to be shut because there was a beaver inside. Apparently the stop is between two waterways and somehow the beaver wandered off track. There are coyotes in Cabbagetown, photographed on front lawns and in the Necropolis; people are warned to keep small pets inside, especially as it's mating season. 

How I love that in the middle of this vast city, we need to be aware of the sexual habits of coyotes and the itinerary of the beaver. Take that, civilization.

Was nearly in tears Thursday morning wrestling with the internet and Rogers. I learned someone had created a fake Instagram account in my name and was asking people for money; when I tried frantically to change my password, my computer disconnected and I had to call Rogers, with two classes to teach on Zoom that day. So on a glorious sunny morning when I'd intended to get outside, I was dealing with some weirdo on Instagram and the lumbering behemoth Rogers. It got done, tho'.

In the hot sun of the afternoon, between classes, I rode to the heart of downtown, Queen and Bay, to deliver this year's income tax information to my friend John. Riding in the sun was just like old times, a hint of normalcy. But not yet. 

And more normalcy - on Friday I did Gina's Zoom line dancing class for the first time in over a month. I am still not strong but much better. And then I watched a film about an exhibit at the Met in New York, a retrospective of Alice Neel, dear friend of my parents in the late forties, described in the exhibition as "one of the great American artists of the twentieth century." I went to meet her in 1981, a few years before she died; must write about that encounter. She was a tough woman, brave, fascinating. Wish I could see the exhibition. As the curators took us through it virtually, I looked for Alice's portrait of my father that my brother and I sold years ago, but I don't think Dad is there. Andy Warhol is, though. 

And then a piano lesson, painful but a start. Life returns to the old bones. I lost a month or two there, but will now reignite my energetic self. Soon. 

The Brits have put Alan Turing on their 50 pound note: the man who saved the world with his genius and then was essentially tortured because he was gay. The most vile injustice. I wish there were life after death, so Alice, who struggled for years to make enough to survive and was denigrated as a mere "portrait painter," could see her paintings treasured; so Turing could see the country that treated him so poorly honour him now.

celebrating the Brits

Tomorrow will be 19 degrees. It's just bizarre. We're all walking around bewildered but happy but bewildered. Don't pack away those boots, folks; winter will return. Says the true Canuck. 

Fragile today and did little, my arm sore but otherwise doing well, no major side effects, though I've taken several Tylenol to make sure that's so. Just a bit achey and no energy, but then I've been like that for weeks. A little concerned - I felt clever taking a Tylenol before getting the shot, but now I read this is not a good idea, might blunt the effect of the vaccine, they don't know. Hey ho. Let's hope not. 

More correspondence with my fourth cousin Lesley in France - what a treasure! Her great-great grandfather William and my great-great grandmother Martha were siblings in the early 1800's in Northamptonshire. She has sent me all kinds of dates and information about my great-grandmother Mary Leadbeater née Campion. And then she sent this - a newspaper article from 1937 featuring my 13-year old mother Sylvia, in the photo on the left, winning the high jump competition for under 14's at Towcester Grammar School. She cleared 4 feet. I pity her rivals: she was six feet tall by the age of 12.   All legs as you can see.

I spent more than two decades researching the Ashkenazi side of the family, 51% of my genes: the Jewish Shakespeare, the fabulously rich, interesting world of Jewish Russia, the Lower East Side, the Yiddish theatre. My mother asked plaintively if I'd ever write about the Brits. Well, Mum, that time may be coming, backed by Lesley's wealth of knowledge. A world of blacksmiths, boot-makers, corset makers, and a great-grandfather on the Leadbeater side, a "rags, bones, and bottles" man who collected junk and second-hand clothes in a horse-drawn cart. A kindred spirit for me, the queen of second-hand. 

Extraordinary that last week I'd just started watching the BBC series "Escape to the Country" regularly, once I finally found it - it's on at 1 p.m. daily on CBC. So delicious, people wanting to move from towns to gorgeous country villages and 17th century houses. A new addiction, a new connection to my British/northern Germanic 49%. 

I'll plunge in to the Brit stories when I get my energy back, Mum, I promise. Any day now. 

One and done!

How blessed is this: a warm spring day, riding my new white bike HiHoSilver to a drugstore 15 minutes away on Bloor Street, walking in, instantly getting the first dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine, riding home. Couldn't be easier. Second dose in a few months. 

As I've written here many times, my father was a scientist, a biologist and researcher. One of his greatest moments of pride was the discovery of the Salk polio vaccine in 1956. That took years of testing and research, while countless people, including my father, were infected with the virus. The fact that several vaccines were produced in the same year as a vile virus appeared - nothing short of miraculous. Dad would have been extremely proud. Thank God for medical science. 

The warm weather, while so welcome, is really a cause for concern. It should not be 16 degrees for days on end in mid-March. There has been snow in May in Toronto, and that may still arrive. But I do find it hard to object. Pruned the honeysuckle, the phlox, the clematis. The daff shoots are up and ready to bloom. Never has spring felt more welcome, after a year of being shut in. 

On the other hand, I do not feel like writing. Anything. Except this blog, and to my new relative in France, my fourth cousin Lesley, about our shared Leadbeater ancestors going back to great-great grandparents in Northamptonshire. 

Another reason I appreciate the AstraZeneca vaccine - it was developed in Oxford. My parents met in Oxford in November 1944. The fact that a Jewish soldier boy from New York City and a young British code cracker born in a nearby village actually met, let alone connected and continued to correspond, let alone eventually ended up on the same side of the Atlantic and produced a magnificent girl child - ahem - well, thank you, Oxford. Must be something in the air. 

finding new family

Heavenly spring weather! It'll go back and forth, hot and cold, for the next while, tho' I don't remember a mid-March this warm. Pruning yesterday, more pruning today, getting the garden cleaned up and ready to burst into life. Deeply grateful for all this Vitamin D soaking in - I'm sitting on the little south-facing deck outside my office, and I feel great. Definitely better every day.

The most wonderful thing: an email out of the blue from a British woman doing genealogical research - she was looking for information on her distant relative Percy Harold Leadbeater, my grandfather, and found my website and blog. She read and loved my Beatles book - "I still love Paul best too!" she wrote - has ordered "Loose Woman," and wrote to say we're fourth cousins. A kindred spirit who now lives in France! Before, I had only two relatives on the British side, my two cousins in Washington. Now another bunch of family possibly opens up. A huge advantage of a website and blog and writing about your life, my friends. 

Had a long Skype with my beloved Lynn in Provence today, getting caught up with family, friends, Netflix, reading, health. The greatest gift, after our children — old friends. And new friends, of course. As always, I marvel that someone I met at just 17 is still a most delightful best friend more than 50 years, and a lot of life, and thousands of kilometres in distance, later.

Have not been quoting praise for the book for some time, so will do that today, if you don't mind. Got a nice email from Bronwyn Drainie, Canadian broadcasting royalty, who said, "I read LOOSE WOMAN with great enjoyment - an amazing story told with honesty and wit."

And handsome talented actor Allan Gray with whom I appeared in many shows, wrote, I loved your book - have recommended it to several people. I was mightily impressed with your writing skills. I found it thoroughly enjoyable. 

Thank you, readers! Today I read in the NYT about something called BookTok, young people posting about books they like on TikTok, boosting sales to enormous heights, and once more I felt 100 years old. As I often do; more and more, I find myself listening to something inane on the radio, saying, "Oh fuck off," and turning it off. Turning into a grumpy old person. Nothing wrong with that. We're smart!

Yesterday a CNFC webinar on interviewing skills with the fascinating Denise Ryan. How I love learning something valuable while sitting in my kitchen. 

And that's it. Healing, feeling the body grow stronger, life returning to normal, plus spring. Blessings not singly but in battalions.

vaccine booking

Gina sent a link this morning to Rexall drugstores which are doing AstraZeneca vaccinations of younger people; the province is still doing only 80 and up and 60-65.  I entered my name immediately; it said I would hear sometime in the future and that this was no guarantee of getting the vaccine.

Ten minutes ago I got an email giving me possible time slots starting next Monday. I chose next Tuesday at 11.10. Filled out the health form and that's it. It's booked at a drugstore about 12 blocks from here. 

I can't believe it! Immediately I began to worry. I'm still recuperating from both appendicitis and antibiotics, stomach still in upheaval and low energy; should I wait? And of course it's the weekend, my doctor's office closed till Monday. Dr. Google to the rescue: it told me there should be no problem. Antibiotics are about bacteria, and vaccines are about viruses. My nurse friend Cathy had an adverse reaction to that vaccine, said she felt terrible the day after, so I'll leave Wednesday open. 

But I'm thrilled. Yes, I'd prefer the Pfizer, not because of blood clots, because it's more effective. But this one is fine. I'll be able to walk into the world feeling safer. Not a lot safer, but much more than now.

What a surprise! My son, incidentally, was afraid he'd been infected by a friend, but happily he was not.  

Otherwise, I've just been hoping to get better, to get my energy back. I'm cold all the time, checked Dr. Google - maybe I'm anemic. So it was steak for dinner tonight, and since it was a nice dinner with onions and mushrooms and new potatoes, I drank my first glass of wine in weeks. Maybe a mistake, but - life is returning. It's about time!

Friend Patsy sent this, hints from long ago to help my healing. I'm doing most of it, thanks. 

And I sent this to my ex-husband; it made me think of both him and his father. He wrote back, "I scored 100%." The one that really made me laugh was "Look, horses." That's my mother. Only it'd be, "Look, Beth, look. Are you looking? Look at those horses! Aren't they marvellous! Did you look?" 

Sigh. 

in praise of books and fires and moving right along

Taught a make up class to finish the U of T term today - last week's class cancelled for obvious reasons. Once again, it gives me enormous pleasure to witness writers gain courage and craft, to hear their words flow, their ideas and truths. Once again I'm grateful to have work I love that pays at least some of the bills and is useful. At least, I think it's useful, to help free a torrent of feelings, memories, and thoughts, and turn them into story. 

Sitting in my office this Tuesday afternoon reminded me where I was that time last week, lying frightened and in pain in a hospital bed, hooked up to a drip and waiting for an operation. And yet one day later I walked out of there and went home. It really is an amazing story - one I'll tackle soon when I get a bit of energy back. Happily I finished the course of antibiotics today. They were enormous horse pills - I had to smash them with a hammer and eat the bits with a spoon, and they wreaked havoc with my innards. Perhaps now things will settle down.

My son was supposed to come over tomorrow to have dinner and watch the segments I've taped of Stanley Tucci in Italy. But a friend of his who visited him recently got in touch to say his roommate was showing symptoms. Here's the chain - the roommate, Sam's friend, Sam, and then me. So Sam is waiting for his friend's test results to come back, his own life in limbo. It's still out there, lurking, terrifying. Son of a bitch. 

It's cold. A friend wrote that I must have low blood pressure because I'm always cold - I do have low bp, is that why? Sitting now in front of my fire, such a boon companion. Even better - two books I had on hold came in to the library today, both by friends: Kerry Clare's "Waiting for a star to fall" and Julia Zarankin's "Field notes of an unintentional birder." 

So now, an occasional TV show or blog post aside, I have my next days and evenings booked in a most pleasant way - sitting by the fire with two fine books, while waiting for my poor old body to fix itself. 

onward and upward

Ken just called: No post since Friday, is all well? Yes, thank you, all is well. I won't be at Gina's line dancing this morning, maybe by Wednesday. But I will be teaching today at 12.30, another class tomorrow, and another Thursday, make up classes for the ones missed last week. Sitting in a chair listening to stories: my idea of heaven. 

As is this house. One of the questions they asked in Emerg was, "Do you feel safe at home?" What a good question, if one with no relevance to me. "Absolutely," I replied, though I could have gone on, except when a toilet explodes out of the wall and floods the house, as happened last year. Or when termites chew through the walls and ceiling. Or or or ... But yes, mostly very safe. Lucky once more. 

Two jays at the feeder - big aggressive greedy birds, gradations of blue, lovely to look at.  

When I got home from hospital last Wednesday, I started to chronicle madly — blog, email (came back to 185 new emails), an essay about it all, I was pretty hyper. I thought I'd bounce back into gear. But it's not happening. Friday afternoon it was warm and sunny, my gardening friend Jannette came, and I went out to prune with her — one of my favourite days of the year, the first time in the garden beginning to deal with winter damage and prepare for new growth. But I didn't last long, just couldn't do it. Anna, Thomas, and Eli came to visit Saturday, and though it's joy to watch Thomas and Eli play cards and Monopoly — merciless, both of them — still, by the time they left, I was beat. Trying not to overdo it, but also not to under-do it so my body turns to mush.

I watched 15 minutes of the Grammys last night before turning it off. Ye gods. I like to keep up with what's going on, and Trevor Noah is terrific, but ... what's with the claws, ladies? The ridiculous dresses, the giant absurd things hanging around necks, the stripper pole dancing? Despair. This is music? Billie Eilish, muttering, half-asleep, standing on a car with nails five inches long? 

I am old, I am old, I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers etc. 

Did however listen yesterday with the greatest pleasure to Eleanor interview the amazing Lydia Millet, an American writer raised in Toronto who credits Canada with her relative sanity. It was like being at dinner with two of the most interesting women on earth. Thank you, CBC. 

And so, one year into this endless murderous pandemic that continues to test us all, on into a new week. Yes, thank you. I feel very safe at home.