Marianne Jones's Blog, page 7

Sorry, eh?

            After seeing on The National that this is the worst winter we’ve had in 35 years, I feel compelled to apologize to Joel Enyart. Not that he hold me personally responsible for the weather. But responsibility is a moot point for Canadians, who have a longstanding habit of apologizing for things we didn’t do. We say “sorry” when people bump into us, or spill drinks on us, or step on our toes. Flying home from Toronto today, I watched as the flight attendant dropped a sealed snack package on the aisle and said, “sorry,” to no one in particular.

            So it seems only appropriate, with a winter of such ferocity, to grovel a bit to Joel. A year ago he left a job he loved in the Los Angeles area to pastor our church in Thunder Bay. Yes, he actually chose to leave southern California for the Great White North. It might have been due to a poor sense of direction or geography on his part, but he and his family have traded their sandals for Sorels and been putting on a courageous front.

When I think of Joel these days, I am haunted by the immortal lines of Robert Service’s poem, “The Cremation of Sam McGee:

Now Sam McGee was from Tennessee

            Where the cotton blooms and blows.

            Why he left his home in the south to roam

            Round the pole, God only knows.

            He was always cold, but the land of gold

            Seemed to hold him like a spell

            Though he’d often say in his homely way

            That he’d sooner live in hell.

Unlike Sam McGee, Joel isn’t complaining about the cold.  He leaves that for us locals. After all, we do it so well, having had so many years’ experience. But under that stoically calm exterior, he must have his moments when the Land of Endless Winter gets to him. So, Joel, on behalf of myself and all Canadians everywhere, I would like to say I’m sorry.

I’m sorry for the relentless deep freeze. I apologize for the snow that replenishes the driveways as rapidly as they are cleared. I’m sorry for the blizzards and whiteouts and icy roads. I ask forgiveness for the perilous sidewalks and slushy curbs. I crave pardon for the morning routine of scraping your windshield in the dark. I beg your indulgence for the short hours of daylight and the windchill that rivals the temperature of Mars. I apologize for the salt on your car and the gravel in the entrance of your home. I’m sorry for the 20 minutes of pulling on enough protective clothing for an Arctic explorer every time you step outside.

And most of all, I apologize for the sheer, stubborn, unremitting length of the season that breaks even the most hardened among us, reducing us to whimpers and tears as we raise our chapped, frozen hands to an implacable sky and pray for spring to come in our lifetimes.

Apart from the “W” word, Joel, this really is a great place to live. Thank you for choosing it. And, um, sorry, eh?

We good now?

End of an Era

Last weekend Hull’s Family Bookstore in Thunder Bay closed its doors for the last time. Like thousands of other small bookstores everywhere, it has succumbed to the changes in the marketplace with the rise of e-books and the competitive edge held by Internet giants such as Amazon. The demise of small bookstores where people can browse and chat about favourite authors is a sad, inevitable reality.

The little store on Brodie Street first opened its doors in 1953 as The Christian Supply House. Like the woman who began it, it was a modest, unassuming presence that managed to quietly serve a far-reaching clientele for many decades without noise or fanfare.

Eleanor Moyer came to the Lakehead in 1940. A shy Mennonite farm girl from southern Ontario, she arrived at the train station in Port Arthur to begin her summer job teaching Vacation Bible School for the Canadian Sunday School Mission. Her duties included obtaining permission from the school boards in seven different rural communities in the region, travelling by bicycle, finding her own accommodation, locating and inviting the children, creating lesson plans and activities and planning closing programs for parents each week. For this she was paid the sum of $15 living expenses for two months.

Amazingly, Eleanor returned the following summer—and the summer after. Eventually she was hired by the Sunday School Mission to work year-round in the Port Arthur-Fort William area. In 1946, the Mission purchased property on the shore of Black Bay for an interdenominational Bible camp. Eleanor became the camp’s “interim” director. Back in 1950, the concept of women in leadership was frowned on. Her “interim” job lasted for 22 years, during which time she grew Dorion Bible Camp to become a modern, full-facility camp that served 700 campers each summer.

In 1953, only a few years after taking on the job of camp director, she decided to open a Christian bookstore. Up until then, churches had to order Bibles and teaching supplies from catalogues. With a $200 loan from her father, Eleanor opened “The Christian Supply House.” Over the thirty-two years that she operated the store, it continued to thrive and expand.

One friend described Eleanor as a visionary—a woman before her time. Eleanor became a member of the Thunder Bay Business Association at a time when women were rarely seen in the business world.

In 1985, Eleanor retired and sold her successful business to Hull’s Publishing Company from Winnipeg. It continued to serve the community faithfully through the years,

February 15 was its last day. Customers came to reminisce, to shed tears, to bring baking, to share stories. Musical groups came to perform. One couple, married 16 years, told how they had first met at Hull’s. For those present, the store’s closing was like the loss of a family member.

Joni Mitchell once wrote, “Don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone?” Like the woman who started it, the “little bookstore with the big heart” leaves a lasting legacy.

Russian Gold

I loved watching the opening ceremonies of the Winter Olympics this year. That other stuff—the gold medals and such—are nice, too. But I confess that sports, Olympic or otherwise, hold no particular fascination for me. Maybe it’s because I can’t relate to all those perfect bodies doing feats of extraordinary athleticism. Within this heart beats not a trace of even a wannabe athlete. Let others log in the punishing hours of pain, sweat and tears, stretching themselves beyond their limits of endurance to achieve glory. I prefer to curl up inside with a glass of wine and a great book, happy in the knowledge that I’m comfortable and safe and in no imminent danger of broken bones or concussions.

Nonetheless, this year’s opening ceremonies thrilled me with their sheer poetic beauty—something that Russia is famous for, along with a terrible history of oppressive regimes and alcoholism. The Russian soul has a way of transcending horrible daily realities with an amazing artistic vision.

I was in my teens when I stumbled on Russian literature. I don’t remember how or when, but I soon found myself devouring the works of Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Turgenev, Gogol, and Chekov. Somewhere, either in high school or university I discovered the poetry of Yevtushenko, and was undone.

It was about that time that the film Dr. Zhivago came out, and its popularity was reflected in the fashion world. “The Russian look” included full-length coats, fur hats and dramatic capes. I was so enthralled with all things Russian that I decided to take Russian as my language requirement in first year. One of my classmates told us she was studying the language because Russia was going to take over the West someday soon, and she wanted to be prepared. We all had our motivations.

Pasternak was followed by Solzhenitsyn, and I was soon reading The Gulag Archipelago, The Cancer Ward and The First Circle. The tradition of big subject matter, exquisite, brilliant writing and heart-wrenching stories continued post-Revolution.

Perhaps it was the fearlessness and passion with which these writers tackled their subjects. Whether they wrote about love, God or the state, they didn’t hesitate to dive in. I may have had trouble keeping the names straight, but the ideas and emotions hit home. I was reminded of that a few years ago when we saw a spectacular dance performance in Toronto based on Gogol’s heart-rending story “The Overcoat.” It was as poignant to watch as it had been to read years before.

Speaking of dance, the Winter Games’ opening ceremonies’ celebrated their proud literary tradition with a ballet sequence depicting a scene from War and Peace. However they do in the games, Russia’s literature has always achieved gold.

 

Do Not Go Gentle

Do not go gentle into that good night

Old age should burn and rave at close of day;

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

                                                       Dylan Thomas

I’m not sure if my mother ever read Dylan Thomas’ famous poem, but she is being true to its spirit. At ninety and in failing health, she is wrapping herself in quiet rage, determined not to let the minutest amount of joy seep in, despite the best and most loving efforts of her family. Calling it geriatric depression may relieve us of any false guilt, but it doesn’t make it any easier to deal with.

As I look around, I see that most of my fellow boomers are dealing with one form or another of caregiver’s stress. One friend saw her elderly mother lose a painful battle to cancer. Another’s mother is in an advanced stage of Alzheimer’s disease, and no longer remembers her.

Making comparisons about which form of misery is worse is pointless. They all hurt. Despite Dylan Thomas, most of us want our parents to have peace and contentment in old age, and a gentle end. Ultimately, we hope that for ourselves as well. Yet few seem to be so blessed. As my sister put it, “The exit strategy sucks.”

Perhaps there is some sort of divine strategy in transitional pain. When my sister and I were struggling in the throes of raising adolescents I said to her, “Maybe it’s Nature’s way of preparing us to let them go. If they were as easy and adorable as they were before the teens, we’d never be able to bear them growing up and leaving.” Maybe something similar is going on with elderly parents. If they were independent and living life to the fullest, we might never handle the inevitable end. As it is, there will be relief mixed with the grieving.

Which is why I recently revisited a small gem of a poetry book: Crossing Arcs: alzheimer’s, my mother, and me, by Susan McMaster, (Black Moss Press, 2009). I met Susan in 2012, on the PoeTrain to Cobalt, Ontario. It was a delightful, crazy, exhausting and stimulating weekend during which Canadian poets and musicians travelled together on the now defunct Ontario Northland Train from Toronto’s Union Station to Cobalt where we celebrated the arts, especially the poetic variety, with panache.

Although Alzheimer’s was not part of my experience at the time, I bought Susan’s book because it was so good. It combines quotations from her mother, Betty Page and responsive poems by Susan with photographs by Marty Gervais, to convey the journey taken together, yet separately, by Susan and Betty. The book is a collaborative effort, written with the full cooperation and permission of Betty as she raged against her disease. It expresses all the anger, humour and grief common to the Alzheimer experience.

Betty’s statement are concise, insightful and poignant: “I know what it’s like from inside, but not what it looks like from outside”; “I’m an animated film without a story”. Sometimes they are humorous: “My health is fine. I’m as healthy as a pig in rut. Just let me get a man. Too bad most of them here are old….”

Susan’s poems are elegant, cutting to the bone, as in “Hands,” which describes her mother’s final goodbye to her house before moving into a care facility. It ends with the lines, “I put my arms around her–/her hands, between us,/ still closed around something/no-one can hold.”

If creating, as I wrote in last week’s blog, is an act of defiance against the darkness, then Crossing Arcs throws down the gauntlet by celebrating her mother’s spirit even as she grieves her slipping away.

Why I Write Poetry

Poetry gives us the freedom to soar above the gravity bonds of dailiness. It pulls aside the curtain for a fleeting moment to show us the larger story behind our “real” stories. We realize our days are recorded with close attention and deep interest by our Father. No part of them is dull or insignificant. It is our perspective that is dull and clouded, not our lives.

I write to bring some order, some beauty to the confused tangle of thoughts and feelings inside.  Every event, from the most joyful to the saddest, becomes another jewel strung on the necklace of my days.

Creating is God’s gift to us, God’s way of taking the wreckage and broken pieces in our lives, and recycling them into something more extraordinary than the original. It’s how the ugliness and despair of crucifixion became the hope and glory of Resurrection.

God does not deny the reality of suffering. He just doesn’t believe in giving it the last word.

Writing draws the poison from the Serpent’s bite. Creating is an act of defiance against the darkness. God never stops creating, never stops rebuilding. Nature never stops sending green shoots through the concrete. It cannot stop. It is full of God’s indestructible energy.

The poet is the prophet, the truth-teller in society. Sometimes I believe the artist is closest to the heart of God, the Creator and Poet. As with all prophets, her rewards will not likely be popularity and wealth, but the joy of creation, and proclaiming the message burning inside.

For the poet, the greatest moments of satisfaction are not those of seeing her words in print, or being paid for a manuscript. The best moments are when someone says,

“I cried when I read your poem. I felt as if you were writing my story.” To reach out of our isolation and connect with another human being, to touch someone’s heart with our words, makes everything that went into the creating worthwhile.

God communicates with us through different means, but His greatest communication was through Jesus. I find it significant that one of Jesus’ many titles is “The Word.” What higher honour could God put on the poet’s craft than to refer to His own Son as Logos—the Word, the One Who communicated the true heart of God to the world?

Our ultimate goal as poets is not fame or publishing contracts, but to communicate God’s heart through our words. It is a calling that will require everything of us. God’s gifts are free, but not cheap or easy. But there will be those moments when we are not earthbound, when we soar and pull aside the clouds for an instant to show a peek at the dazzling light behind. That is the prophet’s reward.

 

My Career With the CBC

 

Some of us are born to obscurity and some have obscurity thrust upon them.

After rocketing through my B.A. in a mere 17 years, I began casting about for a job worthy of someone with my unique qualifications. The high demand for English majors coupled with the lucrative job market of 1988 made my options dizzying. But when I saw an ad for freelancers with CBC radio, I knew I had found my calling. I was a faithful CBC listener, a devotee of the legendary Peter Gzowski and Arthur Black.

Plus, I had media experience. I had, after all, been the South Porcupine correspondent for the Timmins Daily Press, for 30 cents a column inch on slow news days. The fact that my twelve-year-old daughter made more money delivering the paper than I did writing for it was a moot point. After all, hadn’t Gzowski got his start at the self-same paper? My future stardom was practically assured.

When I went in for the interview, the producer didn’t appear as impressed with my credentials as I was. She wore the pained expression of a teenager coerced into babysitting her kid sister while all her friends were at a party.

Reluctantly, she approved my first story idea and sent me on my way, tape recorder in hand. I returned proudly the next day with my half-hour interview on tape.

“Fine,” she said, nodding curtly. Let’s get it dubbed and take it to the editing room.”

My enthusiasm began to drain away, when she led me to a large machine that resembled a computer from the 60’s—the kind that take up half a room. Nobody had told me I would have to do my own editing. She clearly didn’t know who she was dealing with. In my family I am kindly known as a techno-idiot, unable to handle anything more complicated than a microwave.

It was my worst nightmare. Reels of tape were everywhere. Mountains of them. All piled on top of one another on my nemesis—the Editing Machine.

Dragon Lady grabbed an empty reel and threaded the dubbed tape onto the machine at warp speed. With a razor blade and editing tape she demonstrated how to edit without so much as nicking her dangerous-looking red lacquered nails.

“Now you do it,” she said.

I froze in panic. My mind was a whirl of tape and buttons. I couldn’t remember which reel my story was on. She made a visible effort to be patient.

“First, you need the takeup reel, right?”

I nodded intelligently, wondering what a takeup reel was. I was not off to a good start.

Eventually I was able to listen on the headset and begin to cut away the wasted footage myself. At one point I inserted a six-inch length of music from the “B” reel, but it didn’t sound quite right on the playback. I glanced over my shoulder. Dragon Lady had left the room.

“Quick!” I hissed at someone in the newsroom. “What’s wrong with this?”

He examined my reel and explained that I had inserted the musical piece backward. Like it’s so easy to tell one side of tape from another.

Dragon Lady and I laboured through the morning. I didn’t dare suggest stopping for lunch. She stood over me, tapping her granny-booted foot impatiently when she wasn’t called away to more pressing crises. Fortunately for me, she was called away to the phone just as I reached for the play button and hit reverse instead. My mind was in slow motion, but the machine wasn’t. I watched in horror as the reels spit two miles of tape onto the floor like a pile of Christmas ribbons.

I glanced around to see if she had noticed. She appeared to be deep in conversation, probably nailing some Salvation Army worker to the wall.

There is only one way to rewind two miles of jumbled tape onto an empty reel. By hand. It took me half an hour, during which time everyone in the newsroom looked the other way tactfully.

By six o’clock that evening (still no lunch) the tape was done. We went up to the sound booth where I read the script she had wearily handed me. Apart from the fact that she said I “had a voice like a funeral director,” that part was relatively painless.

After eight hours of labour that made childbirth seem like a picnic, we had reduced a half-hour interview to a five minute “package.” I was paid seventy-five dollar, with, no doubt, the Dragon Lady’s heartfelt wish that she never see or hear from me again.

She went on to bigger and better things with the CBC. I scrapped my dreams of becoming a media superstar and settled for the quieter life of a writer, where the technological challenges are limited to Windows 8. Which is struggle enough for me.