Summer sun

Hope your summer is going well.  I realize I have not kept one of my list resolutions -- I have not been good about writing in my blog.  It is hard this year -- I don't want to reflect too much on what has gone on in 2015 -- it has been a terrible cruel year.  Usually I spend these warm lazy summer days reading the news and thinking, "oh, that's something to write about" but this year, it is really hard.  I am embroiled in the paperwork that comes at the end of a life -- any kind of life -- a beautiful one, like my husband's or any other kind.  There are forms to fill out and people to advise and life insurance (if you're wise or lucky, like my husband {wise} or me {lucky, because my husband was wise}) to apply for and huge international companies sending you letters offering their "sincere condolences" (why do they bother?  I know they aren't sincere -- they didn't know him -- or me -- so how can they offer condolences?)  Anyway, suffice it to say, this summer doesn't really feel like a true summer, in many ways.  It's just like a time to be gotten through.

I have finished my romance novel -- the first draft anyway.  I'm not sure of the ending, so I have to sit on it for a while and then go back and see what I think.  In a way, it's an ending, because finally the two people I've been trying to get together have gotten together, but in another way, like in life, it is just the beginning.  Maybe if I decide it's actually an ending, I'll write a whole series about the couple.  I do like them.  The man, James Carpenter, is based on my husband, so of course, he's very sweet and attractive -- perhaps too much so.  As I read, I think that I haven't given him any dark qualities at all.  And I think a romantic hero does need some dark qualities.  I'll give it a week and reread it and see what I think.

I'm still trying to figure out a play for the fall.  Usually I have an idea, but this year, my mind is blank.  I thought of George F. Walker's "The Art of War" but the cast is too small.  I need something with at least fifteen characters and then room for more, if necessary.  I want something serious -- we've done a lot of comedies lately and I'm in the mood for something thought-provoking (not that a comedy can't do that, of course) and hard driving.  There's still a month to get there.  I reread "Blood Relations" by Sharon Pollock but that cast is too small, too.  Most modern plays stick to small casts because they don't want to pay the actors.  At least, I think that's why.

I have been keeping up with the news and of course, one of the stories that is grabbing everyone's attention is the killing of the lion, Cecil, by the American dentist.  I cannot see how anyone could derive pleasure in killing an animal, whether the hunt is legal or not.  To me, it's immoral to kill something for pleasure.  We realize that animals are far more mysterious than we ever imagined -- octopuses have the intelligence of a three year old child, and bears experience awe when watching a sunset and crows can make and use tools.  We don't know what Cecil's thoughts and feelings were, but we can imagine he suffered greatly in the forty hours between the time he was shot by the dentist's arrow and his moment of death when he was dispatched by a gun.  I never liked Jimmy Kimmel much before but I really appreciate what he said about the whole sordid mess.  And his suggestion that people try to make good come out of the tragedy has raised $150,000 for the researchers who are studying lions in the preserve from which Cecil was lured.

I watched the first season of "Sherlock" over the last couple of days.  It stars Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman as Holmes and Watson and they are terrific.  I don't mind the modernization of the Conan Doyle stories.  I find Moriarty an irritation in the original -- I don't think you need him, but Andrew Scott is lovely, especially that face he makes when he's describing what he would look like if Holmes shot him.  He has a wonderful voice.  And I like the idea of a "consulting criminal" as a foil for Holmes's "consulting detective".  I intend to watch the second season when I can get it from the library.  That's all from me for now.  I'll try to be better for the second half of the summer.

Diversity 101

There is the sexism test that says in a piece of theatre or in literature, you need to have two women talking to each other about something other than a man.  Now a guy (actor and playwright Dylan Marron) has created versions of popular films that eliminate all the dialogue that is spoken by white people.  Not surprisingly, not much is left.  He says it seems that the default position is that the characters are white, if the material doesn't spell it out otherwise.   In our actual society, it seems to be less and less an issue -- children like mine don't really think of themselves as "people of colour".  At least, I don't think they do.  When we talk about race, they don't seem to find it a dividing line or a place of limitations.  It doesn't occur to them that people will see them differently if they think they're "black" or "brown" or whatever term we might use to describe them.  Am I a Pollyanna to see it like this?

On a similar note, I saw a report on the news last night that focused on these stickers that people are putting on their cars.  They look like the ICBC designation for "L" or "N", but they have a "C" on them and at the bottom it says "Chinese driver" or something like that.  We were all shocked and appalled to see such a thing, but then the reporter went to a shop that was selling the stickers and the Asian girl who was behind the counter said that mostly Chinese people were buying the stickers and they thought it was funny!  Then they surveyed people on the street and the Caucasians were shocked and thought it was racist but the Chinese people agreed that it was funny.  A sociologist at UBC (who was also Asian) said that he thought it was people taking the sting out of a stereotype, just as people have done for ages (like "Hunky Bill" using that term for his restaurants, for example).  The world is changing, I guess.  At least, here in our diverse community.  Maybe not in Mississippi -- who knows?  I haven't been there.  In South Carolina, they took down their Confederate flag.

As flies to wanton boys are we to th'gods; they kill us for their sport

We saw King Lear yesterday at Bard on the Beach.  It was terrific.  It is such a modern feeling play (as much of Shakespeare is -- I was struck again that Shakespeare knows everything) and the whole scene on the heath with Poor Tom and Lear and the Fool feels just like "Waiting for Godot".  Lear has burned all his bridges and has nowhere to go and neither does Edgar and so they just wait there and rage against the gods and fate and their own madness.  It seemed to speak to some of the places we find ourselves these days -- rage against the unfairness of life (of course, it's unfair), despair, fear of madness.  The question of what to do next -- where to go?  Will we always be alone?  Will we find the strength or the reason to go on?

I have never seen King Lear before so it was wonderful to be able to experience it.  The performances were great, especially Jennifer Lines as Regan, Michael Blake as Edmund, Scott Bellis as the Fool and Benedict Campbell (Douglas Campbell's son) as Lear.  The death scene was so powerful.  Campbell created this lovely image of the soul flying up to the heavens with a fluttering of his own hands -- "and my poor fool is hanged".

The set was well done -- it was wooden and felt medieval and modern at the same time.  There were three levels and when Edgar is deciding to disguise himself as "poor Tom" he climbed through all the ladders right up to the top level, which I don't think they used enough.  I loved it when they shut the gates in the storm and left Lear and his faithful attendants out in the weather, although I wish they could have had something like rain because I think if they are wet, it is all the more terrible to be out in the storm.  I think we really feel it then.

My sons liked it, although William got lost a few times with what was happening but when he whispered what he thought was happening, he was right.  There was some shocking (and for the lads, delicious) gore and some nicely staged sword fights and such beautiful poetry.  Here are two that remind me of "Godot":

Thou must be patient, we came crying hither;
Thou know'st the first time that we smell the air
We waul and cry.

When we are born we cry that we are come
To this great stage of fools.

and then this one, that is so thrilling:

Thou art a soul in bliss, but I am bound
Upon a wheel of fire, that mine own tears
Do scald like molten lead.

And of course, it wouldn't be Shakespeare if you didn't see it and hear things and think "is that from Shakespeare?" like "last but not least" and things like that.

The other two Shakespeare offerings this season are a steampunk "Comedy of Errors" and a jazz age "Love's Labours Lost" (I don't know this play at all -- I believe I plowed through it once and got very little out of the reading).  Then there's a modern one called "Shakespeare's Rebel" directed by Christopher Gaze himself.  Well, 'nuff said.

Strange things done 'neath the midnight sun

Apparently, Leonardo DiCaprio was spotted in Nunavut on a camping holiday!  Hey, Leo!  That's what I've always wanted to do.  I don't really have a bucket list, but I would like, one day, to go to the far north and listen to the "big silence" and see the Northern Lights and camp out somewhere where no one is.  Pictures of it remind me of Saskatchewan -- the vast expanses of nothing stretching out as far as the eye can see.

When we went to Grasslands National Park in Saskatchewan (to see pronghorns, and we did see them!) we got some information before we went (of course, because that's how I do things) and one of the things that we received was a map of the park.  It had the trees marked on the map and I showed Anthony and William and told them, "these will be the only trees there".  Both BC boys found it hard to imagine, but that was the truth.  A tree is a landmark in southern Saskatchewan.

So good for Leonardo DiCaprio.  At least, he's doing something interesting with his vast wealth.  I find it so tedious to see these celebrities with no imagination amassing huge sums of money and then they seem to have no idea how to spend it.  I remember that film about poor Michael Jackson and he was in some mall with a huge entourage and he went into some tacky store full of all these huge porcelain figures and he was saying in his tiny little voice, "I'll take that one, and that one and that one."  Like Citizen Kane -- all that stuff and none of it meant anything to him at all.

Have a good laugh!

http://www.cbc.ca/news/trending/american-tries-to-figure-out-what-canadian-road-signs-mean-fails-1.3137763  We had a good laugh at this!  Try to figure them out before you read what they thought and what they actually mean.  At the border, the beaver sign always makes me think that it is saying you aren't allowed to bring beavers into the United States!

What do you think of reality tv?

There are several new tv shows in the offing that are being labelled "poverty porn" -- for example,  people who are in desperate financial straits are given a briefcase with $100,000 in it.  They are introduced to another family also in financial straits and then they are tasked with deciding how to share out the money.  They can keep it or give some of it to the other family.  There is another one in which people who are earning less than $30,000 are asked to compete in order to be chosen to earn a "living wage" ("Britain's Hardest Worker").

Often in the summer, I find a guilty pleasure on television and a few summers ago it was "Nanny: 911".  It showed parents dealing with children and of course, the parents presented in the show were quite ineffectual and the children were defiant or neglected, not in a "child and family services" way, but in a way that I, as an audience member, could feel superior to.  I realized what the show was doing -- portraying these parents who were so clueless that it made me feel like "at least I'm not that bad" when I made mistakes or didn't know what to do in a certain situation.

Of course, most of us know that "reality tv" is more tv than reality.  The tv people want drama and something that will get us to watch, so they make sure they find it, and if they don't, they create it.  If you think about what things would look like if someone was able to just walk into your life and choose moments and thread them together, you get the idea.  I have kept a journal most of my life and I realize that I usually write in it when I'm mad or upset because that's what it's for!  It's a place for me to vent.  But if someone read it, they would get quite a negative picture of what I'm like.  Not the picture that most people see, certainly.  I am very fond of L.M. Montgomery (who wrote Anne of Green Gables {if you haven't read it, you should}) and I read her journals and she's pretty bleak in them and reviewers said that this was the "real" L.M. Montgomery, but I'm not so sure.  Certainly, that was part of the real woman, but the face she showed to the world was part of her, too.  And the spirit that breathed in her books was also part of the real woman.

The purveyors of "poverty porn" say that the purpose of the shows is to give us a glimpse into the struggles of real families and I suppose that it really depends on how it's done.  If you wanted to do a documentary about families struggling with debt and low wages and high expenses, that would be okay, but turning these situations into what reads like a game show seems exploitive.  If you wrote a script about a family who fell into a fortune, that would be okay, but using real people seems manipulative.  What do you think?

Canada is boring!

I read this today, on Canada Day, and the commentator, Jeet Heer (a culture observer on CBC's "q" show) says that our boringness is "deliberate".  I've heard people say this before and have thought it myself from time to time.  You think perhaps that Canada is a country with all the "boring" virtues.  We're safe and secure (for now).  The country has a lot of its natural beauty intact (because our population is so small).  We get along in comparison with lots of other countries.  We enjoy relative prosperity.  Here in Port Moody, when you pass someone in the street, you often say "hello".  Our crime rate is relatively low.  Culturally, we don't seem to have any huge movers and shakers (except in the literary world).  People have to leave here to make it big.

But they say that you pay for your experiences, and I know that's true.  If you want excitement, you have to take the scary part of it along with the thrilling part.  At this stage in my life, I think I will choose to limit my excitement and enjoy the peace and quiet of living in a "boring" place.