Marianne Jones's Blog, page 6
April 30, 2014
Death of a Stone Carver
MacLeod was one of those people who make an indelible impression, both through his work and his character. I encountered both when I attended the Humber College Summer School of Creative Writing in 2003. Swept away by the magnificence of his novel, No Great Mischief, I looked forward to learning from him during the five-day summer program.
I was not disappointed. His spoken words were as carefully selected and rich with meaning as were his written ones. Testament to that is that I have kept my hand-scribbled notes from his lectures pinned up in my study for the past 11 years. Here are some of them:
“Style is the clothing of thought. If you have something to say, say it beautifully.
No tears in the writer—no tears in the reader.
“I have to have a plan. Freefall writing will help me discover my material, but once I have the material, I need a plan to know what to do with it.
Have something that you really want to say. Is the theme going to be about loss? Loyalty? Generation gap? Choices? Spend a long time thinking about that. When you decide, then bring in the characters, and then add the setting.
When I’m halfway through, I write the conclusion, then I write the last line of the story. That way I know where I’m going.
Art begins with strong emotion. If a man kicks his cat, he is expressing strong emotion, but is it art?
Strong emotion channeled through discipline makes for art.
I’d rather have people who are strongly emotional than people who are merely disciplined or intellectually manipulative.
All literature is regional.
People write either about what worries them or what they think about. That will differ according to geographic location or individual circumstances. For example, in Toronto in fall everybody is running around getting ready for winter. There’s a whole industry based on it. Nobody in Mexico does this. Stories about blizzards, slippery roads, etc. are unique to Canada. Geography affects the language that we use.
Writers are the people sending out messages in bottles.
What’s interesting about writing is that you write away from your audience all the time. Your direction is inward.
Caveat: Balance themes. Certain things can take over.
Writing autobiographically is like trying to paper the wall with your own skin. It won’t last. Sooner or later you’ll run out of skin.”
Many great artists turn out to be disappointing as human beings, when you read their biographies. MacLeod was one of those whose greatness seemed rooted within the man. He had a presence that impressed all. At his funeral, Rev. Duncan MacIsaac made reference to that presence and character, describing him as a “quiet, humble, kind, peaceful, loving, compassionate man who took in all aspects of life at a deep level…He made room in his heart for what really matters: family, community, people, a sense of being.”
His editor at McClelland and Stewart once described MacLeod as “the stone carver” because his writings were slow to emerge, but destined to endure.
Maybe there’s a lesson there for all of us who write.
Death of a Stone Carver
Alistair MacLeod died on Easter Sunday. The quiet man who was described in a Globe and Mail review as “The greatest living Canadian writer and one of the most distinguished writers in the world,” passed away at 77 and was buried near his summer home in Nova Scotia.
MacLeod was one of those people who make an indelible impression, both through his work and his character. I encountered both when I attended the Humber College Summer School of Creative Writing in 2003. Swept away by the magnificence of his novel, No Great Mischief, I looked forward to learning from him during the five-day summer program.
I was not disappointed. His spoken words were as carefully selected and rich with meaning as were his written ones. Testament to that is that I have kept my hand-scribbled notes from his lectures pinned up in my study for the past 11 years. Here are some of them:
“Style is the clothing of thought. If you have something to say, say it beautifully.
No tears in the writer—no tears in the reader.
“I have to have a plan. Freefall writing will help me discover my material, but once I have the material, I need a plan to know what to do with it.
Have something that you really want to say. Is the theme going to be about loss? Loyalty? Generation gap? Choices? Spend a long time thinking about that. When you decide, then bring in the characters, and then add the setting.
When I’m halfway through, I write the conclusion, then I write the last line of the story. That way I know where I’m going.
Art begins with strong emotion. If a man kicks his cat, he is expressing strong emotion, but is it art?
Strong emotion channeled through discipline makes for art.
I’d rather have people who are strongly emotional than people who are merely disciplined or intellectually manipulative.
All literature is regional.
People write either about what worries them or what they think about. That will differ according to geographic location or individual circumstances. For example, in Toronto in fall everybody is running around getting ready for winter. There’s a whole industry based on it. Nobody in Mexico does this. Stories about blizzards, slippery roads, etc. are unique to Canada. Geography affects the language that we use.
Writers are the people sending out messages in bottles.
What’s interesting about writing is that you write away from your audience all the time. Your direction is inward.
Caveat: Balance themes. Certain things can take over.
Writing autobiographically is like trying to paper the wall with your own skin. It won’t last. Sooner or later you’ll run out of skin.”
Many great artists turn out to be disappointing as human beings, when you read their biographies. MacLeod was one of those whose greatness seemed rooted within the man. He had a presence that impressed all. At his funeral, Rev. Duncan MacIsaac made reference to that presence and character, describing him as a “quiet, humble, kind, peaceful, loving, compassionate man who took in all aspects of life at a deep level…He made room in his heart for what really matters: family, community, people, a sense of being.”
His editor at McClelland and Stewart once described MacLeod as “the stone carver” because his writings were slow to emerge, but destined to endure.
Maybe there’s a lesson there for all of us who write.
April 25, 2014
Why Poetry is Counter-Cultural
If Eugene Peterson is correct in stating that busyness is an illness of spirit, then a healthy spirit is one which takes time to be quiet at the center. It is from that quiet place that we can begin to create, as opposed to producing. In that unhurried space we begin to notice the connections and comparisons between things that we call imagery.
Imagery is the heart and soul of poetry. It is seeing things in unexpected ways. It brings us back to being children again, observing the world around with a startling accuracy. To an adult, clouds are clouds. To children they are dragons and dogs and sailboats.
Of course, the differences between adults and children are ones of time and priorities. Most adults have so many responsibilities that they don’t feel they have time to play. They think and talk in shorthand, to save time. This robs existence of its richness. When we engage with poetry, through reading or writing, we take the time to allow the richness back in, to escape the robotic nature of work and chores and become fully human again.
To discover good images is slow work. Fast writing is superficial writing that results in clichés. Our culture is about speed, superficiality, short attention spans and shallow thinking. It’s difficult to go against the flow and slow down. We feel guilty when we’re not “productive.” But productivity is the value of a consumer society, in which our lives are nothing more than an endless cycle of producing and consuming.
Boredom has sometimes been a friend to me by creating an enforced stillness in the middle of my efficiency-obsessed day. Some of my better poems have come from times when I was bored, held captive in a car or waiting room, with nothing to entertain me. To pass the time I was forced to take a closer look at my mundane surroundings until I began to see novel ways of looking at them. My temporary prison became a doorway into an interior world.
G.K. Chesterton wrote, “our perennial spiritual and psychological task is to look at things familiar until they become unfamiliar again.” Beverly Lanzetta, in her book, Radical Wisdom, writes, “Contemplation is always a revolutionary act. It subverts the daily tedium and searches for the kernel of meaning hidden at the center of each thing.” Thomas Merton wrote, “Sit in your cell and it will teach you everything.”
I tried to express these ideas in one of my poems, “Poetry Weekend,” which came out of a weekend attending a poetry event out of town. It’s from my book, Here, on the Ground.
Poetry Weekend
These days my days are wallpapered with information bytes,
my time sliced
in efficient individually-wrapped portions.
I am in my car too much, fretting at stop lights,
wondering how many tasks I will check off today.
Suddenly, sitting here among polite strangers
listening to word-leaps and hammers,
that familiar punch to the solar plexus,
it takes a while to readjust.
Efficiency has choked my days,
causing me to question our presence here:
what will it achieve, who will care
that some wordsmiths know how to turn a phrase,
carve an image out of leaf mold and memory?
How many hungry children will it feed?
Will it slow global disaster by one degree?
Will the battered planet pause for one second
to appreciate the music of a perfect line?
I’m too old to con:
I know it won’t.
Yet, I am here, nodding my head,
impaled on a line,
remembering how it feels to breathe life in slowly.
April 11, 2014
Encouragement from my mother
Originally posted January 14, 2014:
I probably would have always loved the world of words even without my mother’s encouragement, but her influence didn’t hurt. My siblings and I still laugh over the memory of her reading Coleridge’s “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” to us when we were kids. We weren’t a model audience. We were more like the people in the “pit” in Shakespeare’s day. We heckled and joked as she stubbornly ploughed her way through line after line of iambic tetrameter: “Water, water, everywhere/And all the boards did shrink./Water, water everywhere/Yet ne’er a drop to drink.”
Despite our mockery, I still remember the story and occasionally quote my favourite lines from the opening, “’Hold off, unhand me, greybeard loon’/ ‘There was a ship,’ quote he.” Apparently the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.
Mom firmly believed in the concept of “good” and “bad” art, disapproving of the comic books we loved to read. She tolerated, but didn’t really approve of my Nancy Drew phase, preferring that I read “real literature.” I was more democratic and uncritical in my tastes, devouring everything in print that crossed my path, including the backs of cereal boxes and shampoo bottles. Reading was an addiction for me; and I read the classics and comics with equal pleasure.
Mom had a passion for the poetry of Edna St. Vincent Millay. It was a passion that she tried to share with us, without success. I could never warm up to it, and groaned inwardly whenever Mom hauled out her worn “Collected Works” and asked/commanded me to read.
During my teens Mom stumbled upon a little satirical gem of poetry by Don Marquis, called “Archie and Mehitabel.” She was especially taken with the character of Mehitabel, the cat who was “Toujours gaie” and given to exclaiming, “Wotthehell, cheerio, my deario, there’s a dance in the old dame yet.” Mom was so tickled by the flamboyant feline that later in life she painted a sign for her garden that read, “Toujours gaie.” How the neighbours interpreted it is anyone’s guess.
I suspect it was inevitable that my sister and I both majored in English in university. We never really had a chance. Thanks, Mom. What a richness the world of books has brought to our lives.
April 4, 2014
Great-Grandma's Gifts
Another memory is of the sound of her sewing scissors as she worked on the dining table table at home, cutting out pattern pieces for clothes. The steady cutting noise reverberating through wood was one of my favourite sounds. It meant she was happily engaged creating outfits for herself or my sister or me.
She talked about good fabrics and couturier “tricks.” She taught me how to slipstitch delicate fabrics and make buttonholes by hands. I never became a great dressmaker, but she did bequeath me with an enduring love of textiles and textile art.
Sewing was both my mother’s creative outlet, and a means of economizing. She delighted in her ten grandchildren, but didn’t have the funds to spoil them with expensive presents. So with her talent for sewing and her accumulation of fabric scraps from years of dressmaking, she began making countless dolls and stuffed animals, toys and nativity sets to delight herself and her grandkiddies. A favourite of my children was a fuzzy peach-coloured cat they promptly named “Peachy Keen.” Soon, all the grandchildren had to have their own Peachy Keens. Peachy was more cool than Barbie.
Alas, even grandchildren, like their parents before them, grow up into adults. My mother cast about for a way to continue expressing her love with thread and needle. When she saw a picture of a Victorian crazy quilt, she knew she had found her niche. She set about making wedding quilts for each grandchild from her growing collection of silk and velvet scraps donated by friends and family. When my oldest daughter worked in the wardrobe department of the Shaw Festival, she collected the discarded scraps of exquisite materials to mail to her grandmother. Those scraps became part of her new art form.
When my long-awaited first granddaughter was born, I wanted her to grow up knowing about her great-grandmother, and her legacy of creativity, thrift, and love of children. I enlisted my sister’s help as a watercolour artist, and “Great Grandma’s Gifts” was the result. But I think it’s about more than our mother. I hope it speaks to a time when people expressed love, not by buying things, but through the gifts of time, patience, and the work of their hands and hearts.
Breathing Life in Slowly
April is National Poetry Month, or, as I like to call it, “Take a poet to lunch” month. It is the month when libraries, schools, and poetry associations hold contests, readings, and celebrations of various sorts to mark the contribution of poetry to our lives.
If you’re thinking, “Who cares?” you’re in the majority. As a lover and writer of poetry, I sometimes feel discouraged by the fact that so few people value the art form. This has something to do with the way it is taught in school: badly, if at all. But the educational system simply mirrors the priorities of our society. And in a society driven by commerce, poetry is counter- cultural.
The speed of electronic media both fits and creates a hurried culture. Poetry doesn’t. No one reads a “quick poem.” Both the writing and reading of a poem require slowing down, stepping out of the current that rushes you through your day to stand on dry ground, watching and observing.
Poetry is being a child blowing on dandelion fluff for the joy of sending the seeds scattering on your breath. It’s cloud-watching, studying the pictures created in the shifting shapes. It is letting go of the impulse to control life and to become a student of it instead.
Poetry is becoming aware of your voice, your breath, the moment you are in, and everything your senses are recording in that moment. It is being acutely aware that you are alive, with the intensity and brevity of a flaring match.
Poetry moves us, the way music moves us. It is the music of language. It reminds us of our humanness by making us feel. Entertainment distracts us, but poetry causes us to feel.
I came across this lovely poem by Yevtushenko that I first read in 1970 and copied out for my then-boyfriend, (now husband.)
Colours
When your face
appeared over my crumpled life
at first I understood
only the poverty of what I have.
Then its particular light
on woods, on rivers, on the sea,
became my beginning in the coloured world
in which I had not yet had my beginning.
I am so frightened, I am so frightened,
of the unexpected sunrise finishing,
of revelations
and tears and the excitement finishing.
I don’t fight it, my love is this fear,
I nourish it, who can nourish nothing,
love’s slipshod watchman.
Fear hems me in.
I am conscious that these minutes are short
and that the colours in my eyes will vanish
when your face sets.
March 28, 2014
When the World Needs a Hero
“What if one of the pimps pulls a gun on the bus full of children? I thought as I stared at the operational diagram on the wall.”
This is not the opening of a sensational crime novel, but of a nonfiction book about the International Justice Mission, an organization of modern day heroes, dedicated to rescuing and advocating for victims of injustice.
Terrify No More is the gripping true account of how a team of investigators risked their lives to successfully close down the main industry in Svay Pak, a Cambodian village that lived off the sex trade of young children. Working with local authorities, they rescued children (some as young as five) from brothels, placing them in aftercare homes, and helped bring the perpetrators to justice.
Gary Haugen, founder of the International Justice Mission, writes, in Terrify No More, “If people thought it was ‘possible’ to rescue these kids and bring the bad guys to justice, it would have happened a long time ago.” Unfortunately, most of us have bought into the belief that nothing can be done about it.
That’s exactly when the world needs heroes, who don’t accept hopelessness as an answer.
Gary Haugen was one such person. A civil rights attorney for the U.S. Department of Justice, in 1994, he was put on loan to be director of the United Nations genocide investigation in Rwanda. The experience changed his direction and goals in life. Three years later he left his safe, secure government job to found the International Justice Mission, a collection of lawyers and law enforcement officers that takes case referrals from faith-based organizations serving among the poor overseas. Since then IJM has established partner offices in Canada, Germany, the Netherlands and the UK, and has operations in 13 third-world countries. It has provided training to over 13000 officers and officials in the countries where it serves, obtained 770 convictions and rescued over 18,000 people.
Terrify No More also recounts how IJM uses similar investigative techniques to rescue people from bonded slavery in factories and plantations, and establish them in homes and self-sustaining jobs, while prosecuting their former owners. The organization has investigated reports of police brutality and argued successfully in courts for victims of wrongful incarceration. It has provided legal assistance to return lands illegally seized from widows in poor countries.
There are an estimated 30 million slaves living in the world today, many of them children. Such a statistic is overwhelming, but Haugen, referencing Edmund Burke’s famous statement, “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing,” believes that doing nothing is not an option. He writes, “I have yet to see any injustice of humankind that could not also be stopped by humankind.”
For everyone that wishes it were possible to do something to stop exploitation of the innocent, Terrify No More is an inspiring and empowering read. It is possible, and we can be part of it.
March 21, 2014
Thanks for the Memories
I have devoted a lifetime to loving fiction. From my childhood passion for the works of Lucy Maud Montgomery, Jack London, C.S. Lewis, Lewis Carroll, as well as the creators of Nancy Drew, Black Beauty, Lassie Come Home and every animal story I could find at the Waverly Library, to my adult studies in literature, I thought there was little that could surpass the delight found in the world of novels.
But lately I’ve been wondering if true stories are even more compelling. An invented world is an enchanted place, filled with humour, pathos, suspense and heroism. But I’ve been realizing that I don’t have to go to the world of imagination to find those things. Real-life heroism and courage are found in the biographical section of every library. The brilliant essays of James Thurber and David Sedaris provide more laugh-out-loud moments than most comedies. And for suspense, pathos and inspiration, few things can captivate quite like a great memoir.
Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt was the memoir that gripped me from its first exquisitely-written page to its last. It deservedly won a Pulitzer Prize for its description of his family’s life in the harrowing poverty of Ireland during the Depression. Then, Jeanette Walls’ book The Glass Castle fascinated me with the story of her poverty-stricken childhood moving about with her deeply dysfunctional parents. Truth is, indeed, stranger than fiction. Nobody could make this stuff up.
So I was delighted to discover a memoir written by an old friend in Terrace Bay. I got to know Marilyn Chapman in the late 1970’s where we attended the same church in Terrace Bay I had no idea that we both shared an interest in writing. When I noticed her book, The Secrets of the Jackpines mentioned on Facebook, I had to check it out.
It’s surprising what you discover about people. Until I read this book, I had no idea what an amazing childhood Marilyn had lived—or what a great storyteller she is. Growing up in Nipigon during the Unsupervised Sixties, with alcoholic parents, Marilyn and her siblings had all the freedom in the world to get into mischief as they fended for themselves. They took full advantage of their situation, and used unusual creativity to entertain themselves and play tricks on neighbours and each other.
To say that their childhood was rough and dysfunctional would be an understatement. Yet, while Marilyn describes the realities of neglect, hunger and occasional tragedy matter-of-factly, there is nothing of the “poor me” victim mentality in her account. Rather, she and her siblings adapted to the realities of their home life with typical Finnish sisu and resilience, taking care of each other and their parents as well, while finding plenty of opportunity for entertainment.
I laughed out loud as she recounted discovering “Moses’ basket” in the attic of the sauna, and telling her friends at school that she was related to the Jewish patriarch. And the other anecdotes, of her and sister removing vital parts from their older brother’s vehicles for their games and crafts; and of cutting up their brother’s dress pants to make hats for the one and only meeting of their newly invented Busy Bee Club. Or the time they set fire to the hayfield to make a clearing for baseball.
Marilyn’s memory for detail is profound. Until I read The Secrets of the Jackpines I had forgotten all about Freshie, that Kool-Aid type of drink we drank as kids in the sixties. Or Breeze laundry detergent, that came with a free towel in every box.
The book would have benefited from an editor’s eye, but the stories more than make up for the flaws. Marilyn writes with affection, gratitude, and an attitude of acceptance for human imperfections. After finishing the last page, I wanted more.
To Marilyn, I say: thanks for the memories.
March 12, 2014
Curious George is 70
My two-year-old granddaughter is obsessed with monkeys. She has a monkey mask which she requires adult family members to wear while she leads them about on a rope. At other times, wearing a crocodile mask and nothing else, she chases her hapless monkey victim through the house.
Of course, the great thing about being two is that the story line is fluid. I have some great video footage, which I am saving for blackmail material, of my son in law bounding down the hall after her, making monkey noises while she runs away and screams in delight. I have promised not to post it on YouTube. Yet.
Grandmothers get a gentler treatment. On a recent visit I was required to be Sick Monkey, which involved lying on the couch with the mask while she wrapped me in bandages and examined me with her doctor kit. Dressed in a crocodile mask and nothing else, the doctor’s bedside manner seemed a bit unorthodox, but the patient was cooperative, and appears to have made a complete recovery.
This preoccupation with primates began with Curious George, who, as everyone knows, was a good little monkey, but always curious. Since I remember reading about George and his friend, The Man in the Yellow Hat, when I was a child, I became curious myself in just how long this story has been around. According to Wikipedia, Hans Augusto Rey and Margret Rey, fled Paris in 1940, carrying the Curious George manuscript with them. The books have been in print continuously for seven decades. That’s impressive longevity, even for a monkey!
When my granddaughter is a bit older, I will tell her about the squirrel monkey my Dad won in a poker game and brought home to his awestruck family. The four of us kids crowded around the cage to gaze in fascination at his tiny hands and his ugly little face permanently creased in a sorrowful expression, like a sad clown. For reasons that are unclear to me even now, we christened him “Toivo.” Our status among the neighbour kids had just shot up by ten points.
He was a terrible pet. Mean, spiteful and vindictive, he would fly at my younger brother in a rage and bite his face whenever he got the chance. Not that I didn’t often feel the same impulse myself, but my parents took a dim view of that sort of thing in our pets. He did take a kind of liking to my older brother, which meant that he bit him less often.
He wasn’t completely incapable of affection. He often crept toward my mother when she was sitting on the couch and nestled onto her shoulder. She would be touched by this display, until she felt a dampness trickling down her arm. She would take a swipe at him, but he was too fast.
On another occasion a friend of my father’s came to visit with his pet Weimaraner. In case you’ve never seen one, a Weimaraner is a variety of hunting dog that is as big as a house. The dog was wild with curiosity about the strange little creature in a cage, and was sniffing in a not-unfriendly way when a skinny little arm reached through the bars and grabbed him by the nose. According to my father, the dog “leaped ten feet in the air” and came down beside himself.
The rest is a blur of memories. Toivo stepping in my little brothers tomato soup and leaving tiny red footprints on the kitchen table while my brother wailed. Toivo eating the new blooms on the tulip plant that was my older brother’s science fair project, and my older brother weeping. My Dad chasing Toivo up and down the stairs (we knew better than to laugh). Memories of us crying hysterically when my father in an expression of rage-fuelled hyperbole threatened to flush the monkey down the toilet. The neighbour kids calling out, “The Hamilton’s monkey escaped again.” All the usual things.
On a trip to Mexico a few years ago, I saw a man with a squirrel monkey. I hadn’t seen one since Toivo. I felt awash in nostalgic affection, and had to have my picture taken with the tiny creature.
Those were different times. Nowadays we know that trying to make pets of wild animals is unfair to the animals. George and his friend The Man in the Yellow Hat belong between the covers of a book, where children can enjoy their fantasy world to their hearts’ content.
Monkey Business
My two-year-old granddaughter is obsessed with monkeys. She has a monkey mask which she requires adult family members to wear while she leads them about on a rope. At other times, wearing a crocodile mask and nothing else, she chases her hapless monkey victim through the house.
Of course, the great thing about being two is that the story line is fluid. I have some great video footage, which I am saving for blackmail material, of my son in law bounding down the hall after her, making monkey noises while she runs away and screams in delight. I have promised not to post it on YouTube. Yet.
Grandmothers get a gentler treatment. On a recent visit I was required to be Sick Monkey, which involved lying on the couch with the mask while she wrapped me in bandages and examined me with her doctor kit. Dressed in a crocodile mask and nothing else, the doctor’s bedside manner seemed a bit unorthodox, but the patient was cooperative, and appears to have made a complete recovery.
This preoccupation with primates began with Curious George, who, as everyone knows, was a good little monkey, but always curious. Since I remember reading about George and his friend, The Man in the Yellow Hat, when I was a child, I became curious myself in just how long this story has been around. According to Wikipedia, Hans Augusto Rey and Margret Rey, fled Paris in 1940, carrying the Curious George manuscript with them. The books have been in print continuously for six decades. That’s impressive longevity, even for a monkey!
When my granddaughter is a bit older, I will tell her about the squirrel monkey my Dad won in a poker game and brought home to his awestruck family. The four of us kids crowded around the cage to gaze in fascination at his tiny hands and his ugly little face permanently creased in a sorrowful expression, like a sad clown. For reasons that are unclear to me even now, we christened him “Toivo.” Our status among the neighbour kids had just shot up by ten points.
He was a terrible pet. Mean, spiteful and vindictive, he would fly at my younger brother in a rage and bite his face whenever he got the chance. Not that I didn’t often feel the same impulse myself, but my parents took a dim view of that sort of thing in our pets. He did take a kind of liking to my older brother, which meant that he bit him less often.
He wasn’t completely incapable of affection. He often crept toward my mother when she was sitting on the couch and nestled onto her shoulder. She would be touched by this display, until she felt a dampness trickling down her arm.
On another occasion a friend of my father’s came to visit with his pet Weimaraner. In case you’ve never seen one, a Weimaraner is a variety of hunting dog that is as big as a house. The dog was wild with curiosity about the strange little creature in a cage, and was sniffing in a not-unfriendly way when a skinny little arm reached through the bars and grabbed him by the nose. According to my father, the dog “leaped ten feet in the air” and came down beside himself.
The rest is a blur of memories: pictures of my parents chasing Toivo up and down the stairs (we knew better than to laugh), memories of us crying hysterically when my father in an expression of rage-fuelled hyperbole threatened to flush the monkey down the toilet. The usual things.
On a trip to Mexico a few years ago, I saw a man with a squirrel monkey. I hadn’t seen one since Toivo. I felt awash in nostalgic affection, and had to have my picture taken with the tiny creature.
Those were different times. Nowadays we know that trying to make pets of wild animals is unfair to the animals. George and his friend The Man in the Yellow Hat belong between the covers of a book, where children can enjoy their fantasy world to their hearts’ content.
