Bear Aware!

This morning, Daisy woke up barking up a storm.  I told her to go back to sleep, quite gruffly.  It was before six and this is the summer!  Usually Daisy will listen eventually, but she kept barking!  So I got up and looked out the window and there was a big black bear lumbering around in the backyard.  He was a handsome looking fellow with glossy black fur and a healthy roundness that suggests he's getting a lot to eat.  He didn't like the racket Daisy was making so he moved on.  She doesn't realize it, but she was doing him a favour.  Bears need to know that they're not welcome in our yards and so if you see one, make a lot of noise and act like you're not happy (from a safe distance, like the second floor bedroom window, like Daisy did).  If we make them welcome, by leaving ripe fruit on our trees and shrubs or on the ground, or by leaving pet food out or not cleaning our barbecues, or worst of all, letting them into the garbage, they're going to start to feel at home in our homes and that's a disaster for them.  Like they say, "a fed bear is a dead bear". 

Can a leopard change its spots?

Because of the terrible air pollution, Parisian officials tried to ban cars from the city for a day, but it didn't work.  They issued a lot of fines to people who drove anyway, but one woman said she'd rather pay the fine and get her kids to school because she didn't have an option.  The transit was free for the day, but that didn't help her.  You wonder what we can do to change people's habits.  I think most of us realize that climate change is a terrible problem and that we have to do what we can to mitigate the damage that we've already done and prevent the drop over the tipping point.  But it's such an involved mesh of actions and it's not just our government officials who seem incapable of acting; it's each of us as individuals, as the Paris example demonstrates.  I think of myself -- I am worried about climate change, but yet I drive my car every day for about an hour each way to get to work.  The alternatives? - take transit - which would take me three hours.  Get a job closer to home - but that's not as easy as I might wish.  (And I really like where I am.)  There has to be political and personal will and I wonder if people are willing to do anything before it's too late (me included).

The Star to Every Wandering Bark

Today is our 22nd anniversary.  That is a very long time to be married.  It is inevitable that you will have weathered quite a few storms in the space of 22 years and we have, but we have come through and intend to keep on keeping on.  Normally we would go out to dinner, but we are economizing this year with every fibre of our being and so we will eat here in the homestead.  Maybe Anthony will cook dinner (he's been cooking a bit this summer!)

I never imagined that I would get married or that I would have kids.  When I was young, I pictured quite a different life for myself -- single blessedness in a fancy apartment in New York City (or at least Toronto) and the life of an actor/writer/director -- there wasn't any room for husbands and children.

But your life takes on its own character and things don't happen in the way you imagine and your imagination of what makes a good life changes as you go as well.  Thanks to my mom I think I would have made the best of whatever life I stumbled upon, and thanks to both my parents I made some of my own luck -- it's never a bad idea to get an education and working and saving money and living minimally are always good ways of feeling like you're in control of some of the vicissitudes of life.  I will say that my family, my husband and children, my parents, my sister, are responsible for many of the great joys in my life and I wouldn't change a lot about the way I've lived.  I wouldn't trade our little townhouse with the lads and Daisy for a loft in Manhattan (although I'd like to be able to go to Manhattan more often -- New York is a great city with so much going on and such energy and excitement).

From my experience, this is my take on marriage.  It's not easy, but then nothing worth doing is easy.  You have to have a good sense of humour.  Sometimes you have to keep your mouth shut.  (But I do too much of that -- I should be better at communicating -- I know it, but it's hard to fight your impulses).  You have to appreciate and respect the other person.  You can't expect to change them.  They are what they are.  You can't expect them to make you happy.  You have to be happy yourself.  There has to be give and take -- you can't expect them to do things for you and you not to have to reciprocate.  You need to trust them and be trustworthy.  You both have to be willing to keep trying.  I think if one of you gives up, that's disaster.  So I hope Mike and I have another great 22 years (and more?) ahead of us!  Happy anniversary to us!

You Ruined Me!

We're off to a family reunion today at Peace Arch Park.  This is Mike's family, which is, of course, my family as well.  My niece has been hard at work to organize it and I hope it all goes well.  There are lots of people in the family who are really talented and so I expect there will be some music and maybe a poetry slam (my niece is a poet) and there will be lots of food (Mike has made his delicious shepherd's pie and I am going to make a nice coleslaw) and it will be a lovely day.

When the boys were very small, we went back to Saskatchewan to my family reunion.  My parents had both passed away by then, but my sister and I went to represent the family (we're the only offspring).  Rickie was glad that I had had children, since then the Tony Kosar side was going to be continued.  (Hopefully that's not the only reason she's glad about the boys!)  My grandfather had twenty-five children!  He had ten with my grandmother and then fifteen with his second wife!  So when we walked into the little community centre in Buchanan, Saskatchewan, there was the family tree on one wall and it covered the whole wall!  Just with my grandfather's kids and grandkids and, in some cases (faster breeders than me!) great grandkids.  I don't even know all my cousins, there are so many of them and some of them were actually older than my dad, since he was the youngest of the ten first children and my aunt was grown up when he was born.

I'm not especially good at these social events, but families are interesting entities.  You look at all the people and think that you're connected somehow, even though it doesn't appear that you have anything in common with some of them.  I know Mike is quite different from his brothers and sisters and my sister and I have common interests, but we are very different as people.  And then my own kids really reflect my sister's and my personalities.  Anthony is a lot like Rickie and William much more like me.

At my family reunion, they had a photo booth (it was the old days so there was an actual photographer) and each nuclear family was supposed to have its picture taken, so we got ourselves together and started to go in.  When Anthony (who was about three) realized what it was, he broke away from Mike and ran off!  I guess he didn't want his picture taken.  He was about three meters away and he stopped and turned and yelled, "no! no! no!" and when Mike tried to get him and drag him in for the picture, he yelled, "you ruined me!"  I guess a lot of people think that about their parents!  (But hopefully, Anthony doesn't think it now.)

Not single spies!

Does anyone remember "Banksy"?  Someone did a play about Banksy's work being sold at auction for a huge sum earlier this year.  Banksy is a graffiti artist who creates public art with wry social and political commentary.  He doesn't sell his pieces, but some people who've owned the buildings he's graffiti-ed have sold the wall on which he has created his work.  Apparently he created fake pound notes replacing the queen's picture with Princess Diana's face and changed "Bank of England" to "Banksy of England" and then threw the notes into a crowd of people at a fair.  Now the notes are being sold for two hundred pounds (each)!  If you haven't seen any of his work, look in Google because it looks great and is quite provocative (two good things in visual art, I think).  Should art be "for sale"?  If it isn't, how does an artist make a living?  I think art should be available to everyone (hence, no charge to come and see our shows if you can't pay -- but PLEASE, pay if you can, because we need the dough!) but it is a dilemma when we live in a society that requires that people make a living.

He created this great piece called "Spy Booth" with three trench-coated secret agents surrounding a phone booth (I wonder how many phone booths are left!) -- look it up -- it's really film noire-ish.  The owner of the wall said he was going to try to have it removed and sold, and now it's been graffit-ed itself!  It's a bit ironic and I wonder what Banksy himself thinks of it.  But certainly the graffiti that covers "Spy Booth" is not as interesting or artistic as Banksy's work.

It's August!  One more month of freedom (I hope it's only a month).  I'm sure some of you heard the government is going to pay people who have children under the age of thirteen forty dollars a day if we are not back in school in September.  I confess I didn't sleep last night.  It appears the government is willing to pay anybody but teachers.  I keep thinking I can't get any more disheartened than I am already, but it keeps getting worse.  On a bright note, the weather's great and the berries are ripening and I'm going to pick blackberries today which are healthy candy, they're so sweet!

Big Headline! Ira Glass Tweets "Shakespeare Sucks"!

Apparently, this Ira Glass person, who is "famous" in some circles (he has a radio program on the public radio service in the United States), saw John Lithgow in a performance of "King Lear" and he thought Lithgow was "amazing" (I sure would like to see him play King Lear -- he has the combination of craziness and pomposity that would be just terrific) but that Shakespeare sucked.  And then, apparently the internet exploded with people refuting the "Shakespeare sucked" thing.

Okay, so can I first say, I don't get the tweeting thing.  Usually my first response to anything is that I don't want to comment, but the tweeting thing seems to work in the opposite way.  You come out of a movie or a play and the first thing you do is react on Twitter for all the world to see.  Or maybe you react WHILE THE THING IS STILL ACTUALLY GOING ON.  (It seems excessive to capitalize that, but I just mean I'm saying it louder and slower than the rest of what I'm saying -- Elaine Benes, forgive my punctuation.)  One of the things about tweeting is that you want a lot of people to "follow" you.  Am I right?  But that just reminds me of that Gain commercial where the guy had his shirt washed in Gain and he's at a basketball game, and the people around him are smelling his shirt.  They're smelling it passionately because he smells so darn great.  Now, do you want that?  I don't want to be smelled and I don't want to be followed!  But I guess, if you do, you have to say shocking things, so some people are suggesting that this Glass guy is "trolling" (see how my vocabulary is expanding?).  Now, in my day, "trolling" meant that you were in a boat with your fishing line out and it was dragging behind the boat, hoping to attract a fish's attention.  And I guess that's what this kind of trolling is, too.  You're trying to catch a fish's attention, so he'll follow you!  I guess Ira Glass has been successful, because a lot of metaphorical fish are reacting to his Shakespeare remark.

My second comment is "who cares?"  I don't know anything about Ira Glass, but if he didn't like King Lear, I don't care.  Lots of people don't like King Lear, I suppose.  Lots of people would go to see it and like John Lithgow and not understand the play.  My understanding about Twitter is that you don't get much room to give an analysis of what worked and what didn't in any given production, and maybe Ira Glass couldn't give an analysis anyway (probably not, if he's saying something "sucked" although I think he did add that it wasn't "relatable" whatever that might mean).  I'm really tired of having the words of famous people (and their actions and what they wear and where they eat and what their houses look like, blah,blah,blah) being reported as news.

And in Ira Glass's defense (I defend his right to say stuff and everybody's right whether I disagree with them or not), Shakespeare says, in King Lear, "Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say".

"Coolness" is in the mind

I heard this discussion on the radio yesterday on "Q".  There was a guy who writes for salon.com (never read it, never will) talking about "Normcor" which is apparently a trend among "hipsters" whereby they dress like "people who get their clothes at Walmart".  "The ultimate cool is to be purposefully 'uncool'." 

Oh, there was a great hew and cry about what "cool" is and how, in this case, the coolness is in the mind, because, of course, if you are successful in dressing like someone who shops at Walmart, you should look just like them and apparently, they are "uncool".  (I'd say perhaps they are, since the employees aren't paid a decent wage and the clothes come from sweat shops (but that's not just Walmart), but then again, it's rough to try to make ends meet, so people have to shop where they can -- for me, it's Value Village all the way!)  I don't know what to think about all of this.  Some of you have tried to describe to me what a hipster actually is, but I just get an image of someone with "hip hugger" jeans and a thick belt, and maybe long hair hanging in the person's eyes.  Or a bunch of people in a smoky basement club reciting poetry in expressionless voices.  Then to apply "Walmart" on top of that gives a really great image.

To me, it's cool to have a passion and be committed to it, but obviously it can't be an evil passion (like developing liquified natural gas -- the more I learn about fracking, the more vile it sounds).  To be willing to put yourself out there and take a risk.  To embrace life and not be afraid to try new things.  It doesn't have anything to do with clothing, but then I would never be cool if it did, and let's face it, I'm SUPERCOOL!

We went to Stanley Park yesterday.  I had free passes to the aquarium and so we went in.  I like a lot of things about the aquarium, but animals in captivity bother me a lot.  The little aquariums with all the colourful fish and jellies are beautiful and I appreciate that the aquarium does a lot of good work -- educating people about animals that they probably could never see otherwise and also helping injured and sick marine animals, but I find it upsetting to see the belugas in that small pool and the little penguins just standing there on some rocks looking like prisoners waiting for their yard time (which never actually comes) and the sea turtle swimming back and forth across the glass where in nature he would have the whole ocean.  Last year, we went to Monterey and they don't have whales and they are hugely successful.  I know they're having a debate about it now in Vancouver.  If I had the power, I would say that they should phase out the whales at least.  Of course, as a global community, we have to commit ourselves to making the wilderness safe for animals like whales and chimpanzees and lions and elephants and all these iconic animals.  That's a lot harder than keeping a few poor "examples" in aquariums and zoos.