Beth Kaplan's Blog, page 81

Forsythia

It's 20 degrees - a heavenly day, almost too hot, an explosion of green. I'm listening to Eleanor Wachtel interviewing Hillary Mantel. Just had a book club Zoom meeting about Deirdre Bair's Parisian Lives, which ended up with another discussion about how far memoir can stretch the truth. I have a great deal to say about that, as you can imagine.

Answer: quite far.

Yesterday, during a walk, I ran into a neighbour who said, "Beth, you have the best forsythia in the 'hood!" Another of my many claims to fame.
It should be the Forsythia Festival today, with a parade and a fun fair for the kids, but not this year. This morning's adventure was a quick early trip to the shops on Parliament St., in mask and gloves. Still, after all this time, bizarre. But so great to have avocados, a mango, Quebecois goat cheese, fresh bread.

Some recent viewing: the National Theatre's Twelfth Night, which had the interesting idea of turning the hapless Malvolio into a lesbian called Malvolia, whose cross-garter outfit was beyond preposterous, with yellow twirling things on her nipples. The gay sexual hijinks continued, with men kissing men and women women and a ridiculous scene in a gay bar. Give me a break. I watched because there was lots that was original, but the play's plot is absurd and shockingly cruel. I'm done with Twelfth Night now.

On the other hand, yesterday a documentary about making the series My Brilliant Friend, primarily about the two astounding young stars, one just out of theatre school and the other who had no notion of being an actor at all before being cast. What's especially wonderful is that we see that the two women are almost exactly like Lenu and Lila, the characters they portray. Somehow the casting people saw right through to their souls, their essence. And oh, it's Italy, we see the cast, we see the set and their families and the country.

My daughter's 39th birthday today. Next year I will have a child who's 40. Surely impossible for one so young. And yet true. Happy Birthday to a wonderful human being. Hope to see you soon.

Beth_Kaplan is Wiki'd!

I think the tension around here will lessen by the middle of next week. That's the hope. In the meantime, I will be listening to a lot of Johann Sebastian Bach.

A great pleasure, however, today: I am on Wikipedia! My friend Sophie prepared the post and waited a long time for it to be vetted by the Wiki folks. But there it is. She sent a picture too, but pictures have to be taken by the author of the post, so she has to take one herself when we next see each other. Which will be whenever.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beth_Kaplan 

Went for a walk this morning down the Don Valley trail, which was too crowded - hard to keep distance on narrow paths. One startling thing - there has always been a vague homeless presence down there, but this time there were two encampments, one with about 10 tents and one with 2 or 3. Though some of the tents were big and looked new, others were little more than tarps. We have to do better.

Speaking of doing better, my friend Chris sent me this link to a beautiful little film. May it prove to be true. https://youtu.be/Nw5KQMXDiM4

However, another frustration: I was just checking a book online and came across this infuriating thing: a used hardcover of the Jewish Shakespeare for $6, a used paperback for $63.62, a new paperback listed at $99.30! Oh yes, that makes a lot of sense and really helps book sales. Thanks, Amazon.
Finding the Jewish Shakespeare: The Life and Legacy of Jacob Gordin (Judaic Traditions in Literature, Music, and Art) by Beth Kaplan (2012-04-30) Paperback – Jan. 1 1688by Beth Kaplan (Author)
4.8 out of 5 stars    6 ratings See all 4 formats and editions
Hardcover
CDN$ 33.95 14 Used from CDN$ 6.0011 New from CDN$ 33.95  Paperback
from CDN$ 63.62 1 Used from CDN$ 63.621 New from CDN$ 99.30

TRUE TO LIFE: Chapter Two

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Allow yourself to begin_What makes a writer? Simply, the need to process thought and experience by putting words on a page, and the discipline to sit until the work is down, reworked, and finished. And something more: not just the courage, but the craft and technical skill to make the words meaningful to others, whether they find an audience right away or not.In Amsterdam, in 1942, just before the Nazis drove her family into hiding, a thirteen-year-old girl was given a plaid notebook for her birthday. Anne Frank made sense of the insanity of global conflict and the hardships of her daily life by scribbling in that notebook. She wrote with the passion, clarity, and insight of a born writer; she edited her work, too, with an eye to publication.Anne Frank changed the world. When the diary was discovered and published after her death in Bergen-Belsen, her words forever altered the way the world looked at the Nazi atrocities of the Second World War. Six million Jewish men, women, and children died in the Holocaust, but one of them was a child with a name, a face, and a wise, unforgettable voice. In 1999, Time magazine published its selection of the “Hundred Most Influential People of the Twentieth Century.” Along with great world leaders, scientists, warriors, movie stars, and artists, the list included a girl shut in an attic with a notebook.A writer is someone who needs to write, who finds a way to get the words onto paper, and who works to make those words tell a living story. And sometimes a writer is a person who changes the world with words.Do you feel that this definition leaves you out? What would it take for you to consider yourself a writer? Untamed Margaret Atwoodesque hair? A garret in Paris? A literature prize? If you set the bar too high, you’ll never start. How about seeing your name in print somewhere, above or below a piece of your writing? Would that be enough? We’ll work on that.In the meantime, how about a notebook full of your words? They’re written, aren’t they? So didn’t a writer write them? Don’t cut yourself off and count yourself out. Every writer has to start somewhere.CBC Radio host Eleanor Wachtel interviews writers from around the world for her superb program Writers and Company, a must for anyone interested in literature (broadcast on Sunday afternoons on CBC Radio One; available as a podcast at cbc.ca). She was once asked what, if anything, the hundreds of writers she has talked to have in common. She replied, “They all define themselves as outsiders.”Haven’t you always been something of an outsider? So you fit the bill. And if you don’t define yourself as an outsider, you fit another bill.Enough with the self-doubt. You’re going to write. Let’s get to work.                       
The writer must be universal in sympathy and an outcast by nature; only then can he see clearly.julian barnes
Why shouldn’t you have the right to become who you are?wayson choy

seven long weeks now

Wonderful response to the True to Life chapter! I will post another tmw or later today. And also, soon, a few paragraphs from the new memoir, which is still working its slow sweet way into the world. Stay tuned.

Taught two classes yesterday. Last term's U of T class has continued to meet and asked me to come back periodically to critique, so there were five of them in the afternoon, and then last night, seven of my longterm writers. Zoom works extraordinarily well. Not the same as being in the same room, but still, we're together. Grateful for that.

Otherwise, a very tough time is drawing to a close and I hope will be resolved by this time next week. I have been living in a near-constant state of tension for two weeks. We never know what surprises will be coming down the pike, do we? And we never know who will support us and who will not. Thank heavens for surprises, so we always have stuff to write about.

It has been seven weeks since the lockdown; my last public event was the home class here, Thursday March 12. And then the door slammed shut. I wonder what we will take from this experience. A woman wrote in the Star today that she can't wait to go shopping for new clothes again, shopping is her hobby and her drug, and my heart sank. Surely, I've been thinking, we now realize how stupid and wasteful all that is. Who cares what fashion dictates? Surely that industry will have to slow down. Surely cruise ships are dead in the water, and if nothing else, we've realized we need vast improvements in animal management and the care of the elderly and health care generally.

Maybe not. Humans have short memories. But I can't believe we won't carry the effects, the memory of this crisis for a very long time.

But here's joy: it's spring, and the varieties of green in the garden are astounding. Canadian poet Lorna Crozier titled a book, The garden going on without us, and she certainly does. Long may she thrive.

For anyone who loves the theatre, or just enjoys a really good series, CBC Gem is showing the fabulous Slings and Arrows. I can't wait.
https://gem.cbc.ca/season/slings-arrows/season-1/30d4351b-f5af-4b8e-a313-a84ec02e96bf

And more cheer for today, here are two of my favourite men, a tall one and a famous one. The tall one is closely connected to me.
One of my favourite pictures of this complicated brilliant man.

TRUE TO LIFE: Chapter One.

Dear friends, I've heard that many people are becoming interested in writing during this pandemic, which makes perfect sense to me. I'd like to let those people know about my book True to Life: 50 steps to help you tell your story, which is a concise guidebook to personal writing: getting started, letting the stories out, keeping going.

I'm posting the first chapter here. Let me know if you'd be interested in more. If you're blocked from replying to this blog - some are, and I can't seem to fix that - please get in touch via the email address on the Contact page here. I'm available for coaching, editing, consulting, encouraging, teaching. Hooray for Zoom.
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Believe in your storiesand your right to tell them_Everyone has a story worth telling, a saga worth listening to. Have you ever been bored somewhere when the dull-looking stranger nearby opened up and began to talk? I can still hear the man beside me on the plane who’d just been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis and was afraid for his children; the woman at a party who dressed heterosexual men in women’s clothing for a living. (“They all think they have great legs,” she told me.) Flannery O’Connor famously said that anyone who gets through childhood has enough to write about for the rest of time. We all contain a universe of stories.But which ones to write down and which to share with others? And who would be interested in your stories? Who cares if you write or not? Don’t you have something more useful to do than fiddle around in your own head? Who the hell do you think you are, anyway?I remember a young student, Grace, who worked hard to write well but every week read us pieces swimming in sweetness. She wrote nothing personal or risky, just generalizations about togetherness and, one week, a homily about 9/11. We could not convince her to speak in her own voice and be honest about her own truths.On the last day of class, she rushed in, breathless and apologetic. She hadn’t had time to write that week, she said, and so had just dashed something off. She was sure it was stupid and mundane.And then she read. She told us her older sister was a drug addict whose two small children were about to be taken away and put up for adoption. Grace wanted to adopt them. She had found a job in day care, and the summer before she’d volunteered at an orphanage in Romania, a gruelling experience. She hoped her dedication and expertise would convince the authorities she’d be a responsible caretaker for her nephews.“I’m going in front of the judge tomorrow,” she said. “I’d pass out from fear, except that I love those kids so much.”We were so surprised and moved that for a moment no one knew what to say.Crestfallen, Grace said, “I knew it was terrible. I’m, like, the most boring person on earth.”And we rushed to tell her how riveted we’d been by her treatise on the power of blood ties. I hope she believed us. I hope the judge believed her.When we tell of the things we care about most deeply, when we dare to write with courage and honesty in our own clear voices, we can mesmerize an audience, as Grace did. We all have powerful, important stories. But sometimes we don’t know what they are, and we don’t know how to tell them.What stories do you tell the stranger sitting next to you on the plane? What are the big stories stored in your head and heart? Is it time to write them down?
                                                 Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,the world offers itself to your imagination,calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting—over and over announcing your placein the family of things.mary oliver

note from a fan

In the Blowing Own Horn department, may I share this email that I received yesterday? Last December, during a trip to New York, I reunited with a friend from Vancouver days I hadn't seen in decades. She'd had a fascinating career working all over the world for the United Nations and now lives in Brooklyn. She told me she was interested in Jewish genealogy, so I brought her my book about my great-grandfather.

She wrote, I wanted to let you know I have been passing the time in lockdown reading Finding the Jewish Shakespeare. What impressive work you have done - the research is incredible and your wonderful writing is a delight to read. In addition to the story of your great grandfather and family, it is also a fascinating portrait of turn of the century Lower East Side. It is most interesting reading it while living here.

Thank you so much for giving it to me - it has been a great companion and distraction from the horrific daily toll of death and suffering here in NYC and has certainly provided some historical perspective.

So good to read at a time when I most needed a boost. Thank you, old friend.

Stronger Together: hooray for Canada!

Watched the Stronger Together benefit concert last night and cried a bunch, extremely proud to be Canadian. It was magnificent - technically flawless though put together with clips from people's living rooms - in English, French, Cree. How they did it, I don't know, though I know from my friend Tara that David Suzuki was filmed on a cellphone at his country place with very spotty internet, yet there he was, along with Justin Bieber (hugging a pillow), Shania Twain, Ryan Reynolds, Mike Myers, Buffy Sainte-Marie, and many more, ending with a rather portentous Drake. The clips of front line workers, children - an amazing kid who has designed earpieces for masks so they don't hurt and prints them on his 3-D printer - plus acknowledgement of the mourning in Nova Scotia - the sense of a country pulling together...It was very moving. Especially when viewed after clips of the demonstrations in the States, encouraged by their president, screaming about ending the lockdown.

Otherwise, not much to tell you. Yesterday at 5 for aperitif Monique and Cathy were sitting under umbrellas in the drizzle so I invited them in; we sat distanced in my kitchen and jabbered for over an hour, as we do. It may be ill-advised but it's a godsend.

I spent time today looking out photos, because my actor friend Allan Gray had a birthday and his husband Larry posted a series of elegant pictures of his very handsome self. I wanted to show all sides of the talented Mr. Gray with these shots of us from 1979:

After I posted them, Allan wrote, "I can find out where you live!" But then he shared them, well, at least the top one, so I hope he doesn't mind.

While I was delving into the theatre box, I found this one of yours truly in a musical called The Club, where all the men were played by women. My brief time as a sex symbol - as a man with a moustache painted on with eyeliner, an experience described in my new memoir. It's been suggested that I should post short excerpts from the book here on the blog. Would you be interested?
And here's Ben this morning turning into his grandmother, seriously at work with a notebook. Nothing could make me happier.
It's a beautiful day. The forsythia in front of my house is glorious; here it is with Robin, my friend and upstairs tenant, taking a break from work on the steps.
My stomach is slowly getting better as the stress lessens. Life goes on. The sun shines. We're alive, my friends. Praise be.

Waiting for Guffman - thank you Christopher Guest

Friends have been calling and writing - are you okay? No blog since Thursday! Sorry to those of you keeping tabs, did not mean to cause concern. Before the pandemic I didn't blog every day, but since it started I've been doing so. Need some kind of record, chronicle, the sanity of being in touch with myself, with you.

Just now I was listening to Eleanor Wachtel on this grey rainy day - she played a clip of the cultured voice of Virginia Woolf. Yet again, thank God for the CBC, the voices floating out into my silent kitchen much of the day. Being in touch. Even with Virginia Woolf.

The usual: walkabout with Ruth and alone, Zoom meetings - a wonderful get-together Friday with old friends Jessica and Suzette, drinking glasses of wine together and laughing in our separate homes. Aperitif every day with Monique and Cathy and yesterday Monique's boyfriend Ron in the hot sun of late afternoon. Yesterday's weather was glorious.

And the unusual - my great stress. I'm not equipped for conflict and actually lost two pounds over the last few days. The Landlady Diet - I do not recommend it. However, things are resolving; my stomach heaving is diminished.

Yesterday's treat - I received my first box from FoodShare Toronto. Magnificent - there on my doorstep was a large cardboard box with fresh produce, some of it local: celery, baking potatoes, sprouts, lettuce, cucumber, and more, plus the exotic: oranges and a pineapple ready to eat. For $16. Amazing! It means figuring out what to cook with what arrives. There will be cheese and veg stuffed baked potatoes, for sure.

Enjoying very much reading Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle - her tone gets a bit arch sometimes but it's a fine book full of important facts and information. Makes me more determined to raise my own veg - but this year, perhaps not.

Last night's treat - Waiting for Guffman, Christopher Guest's hilarious tribute to amateur theatre in small towns, with Eugene Levy and Catherine O'Hara among others. But it's Guest himself as the fey Corky who steals the show. What's so good is that though we are laughing at these people, it's affectionate, gentle laughter, not mocking and cruel, as with Sasha Baron Cohen. It's a loving tribute to what community theatre means to those who watch it and those who do it. The last minutes, Corky in his shop that sells show biz memorabilia, ends with him proudly showing us two little doll men in glasses sitting at a table - these are, he says, the "My Dinner With André action figures." Oh thank you for that, I so needed that laugh!

An even better laugh, someday: must watch This is Spinal Tap again.

I need a book. I need to read Victor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning, have been wanting to read it for a long time. I hate to order it because apparently the post office is swamped, but soon I will. Perhaps I miss the library most of all. No, I miss the boys most. I miss the movies and seeing my far-flung friends.

But - nothing to complain about. As I was lying on the floor stretching with my Zoom exercise class today - coming live from Vancouver - through the back door I saw geese flying north in formation. The geese are coming home. It's spring.

"True to Life": how to tell your story

How happy it makes me to have times listed in my day-timer, small as the events are. It helps me feel that real life is still, somehow, happening.

The best, the absolutely best thing happened out of the blue: I got an email from a friend who'd been suicidal two months ago, so a friend and I got involved, had her over here to talk at length, to insist she go to a clinic and get meds, start taking them, we'd check up on her. And we did. Today she wrote: I wanted to let you know that I have started to feel better so wanted to THANK YOU so much for being there for me when I was feeling so dark. It was extremely loving and generous of you. 

Thrilling to know she's coming back to herself. I needed especially to hear someone say something nice about me, because stress was still swirling about due to the difficult issue I've been dealing with, that continued swirling today. 
I spent the morning doing stuff for the nonfiction collective, including sending in an ad for the newsletter about my writing book. People in isolation apparently want to write, and I need to find a way to let them know about my valuable book. Any suggestions gratefully received.
My new garden helper came at noon. I love working in the garden but it's a lot for me and I need expert advice and help, periodically, with pruning and location. So we pruned and talked location. It's a peaceful way to spend time.

At two I met Debra for a walkabout; she made me a beautiful face mask a few days ago and today gave me the one I'd requested for Monique, who before had two masks, one made from paper towel and one from aluminum foil - yes, foil, held on with rubber bands. Now she has a beautiful cotton mask, black with pink high heeled shoes all over - Debra's pyjama material.

At three, a Zoom coaching session with Ann, a former student who is writing the stories of her life. At four, an important phone call with my friend the retired lawyer. At five-thirty, aperitif with Monique and Cathy who sold her house yesterday, so we toasted and talked about our past lives, especially a particularly wild time the two friends had in Newfoundland, where Cathy will be moving soon.

And tonight, some of a doc about the kids of 9/11, the ones who were there in the classroom when Bush got the news. It's funny, the affection I regard him with now, knowing how very very very much worse a president can be.

In between, emails, radio, eating, general maintenance. Sitting. Sitting some more. Tomorrow, five events in my day-timer: two Zoom catchups, a walkabout, line dancing, and of course aperitif. So busy. How the time flies.

Earth Day: David Attenborough tells it like it is

It's Earth Day, but still, dear God, it was a mistake to watch David Attenborough's heartbreaking, sick-making PBS doc about climate change in the middle of a pandemic. One horror after another - the destruction of coral, of the world's forests, of species. The projections into the future, if the planet warms another degree or two, as it is projected to do if we do not change our ways: the potentially lethal release of the methane gas currently trapped beneath arctic lakes; the drowning end of all coastal communities, not to mention drought, wildfires, hurricanes and other extreme weather catastrophes.

He finishes, yes, with Greta Thunberg and the environmental rallies of children around the world, and a list of a few things individuals can do to help: do not waste food and buy locally grown. Insulate your house. Reduce consumption of stuff - buy quality and keep it - and of meat and dairy.

But I heard an interview on CBC today, a pundit talking about how marvellous it is right now that the air is fresh and clean. Will it last when the pandemic is over? he was asked. No, he replied. I'm sorry to say, I think we'll just go right back to our old ways.

I should not have watched something that would make me sad. I'd had a stressful day with ongoing landlady issues, very difficult ones that ended up painfully involving my family too. So my heart was already heavy. A Nonfiction Collective Zoom board meeting at 4 and meeting Monique in the sun at 5.30 helped, but I was still hurting, and then I watched David Attenborough.

And though again it was sunny, it was cold. But the good news: in the new quiet, wild animals are exploring our cities. Beautiful pictures of a mother fox and her kits playing at the Beach.

Last night I started reading Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, about growing your own food. Just in time. I'll do my best to reduce my footprint. Yes, no car, and even before isolation, reduced consumption and not much meat. But I can and will do better.

And then there's this: "Art is the highest form of hope."
- Gerhard Richter.

It's the strangest thing - it's so quiet, we're in our own homes, and yet it also feels like we're at war.