wordless wednesday (summer postcards)

~ carin ~ 11 Comments

Long before digital anything… when dinosaurs still roamed the earth and water bottles were not yet common (or even invented?), I sat in the courtyard of an ultra swanky hotel in southern Florida. Service was abominable. We waited ages and ages for an initial glass of water, never mind the wine and the meal. Polite questions did no good. The attitude of staff was even worse than the service. But the courtyard was beautiful and it was a perfect southern Florida night, i.e. not too sticky or buggy, so we stayed and waited and waited and waited for our meal. Given all that time on my hands I decided to make a few notes in my travel journal, just personal notes (this was before blogs, before the internet, truly the dark ages it was). Something about the act of pulling out a notebook and writing caught someone’s attention and before we knew it the manager appeared at our table asking if there was anything he could do for us. Well, we’re waiting for our meal, we said… And just like that, presto bongo! our meal followed. The manager returned (several times) to ask how the meal was and was there anything else  he could do. No, no, we’re fine, we said, and he said well, maybe after we’d eaten we’d like a tour of the hotel because he’d personally love to give us a tour of the hotel. Um, okay… we said, a little confused. The wine and dessert and tea were comped and the tour was comprehensive and complete with much ass-kissing, which neither of us could understand… until we realized he thought I was a food writer. Because, apparently, who else would write in a journal?

This was before the days of taking pictures of meals and sharing every food experience, when the power of print via pen and ink had clout.

Like I said, it was a long time ago.

~

(Southern Florida, ’90s)

 

♦

Other (not always) wordless friends:

Cheryl Andrews
Allison Howard
Barbara Lambert
Allyson Latta
Elizabeth Yeoman

this is not a review — ‘our souls at night’, by kent haruf

~ carin ~ 12 Comments

 

I’ve said this before… my favourite books are those where nothing much happens other than whole worlds change.

Oh my lord did I love this book of nothing and everything.

In a nutshell:

Louis Waters and Addie Moore are widowed, long time neighbours, who really only have a passing knowledge of each other’s lives, in the way of neighbours who have shared a street for decades. Aware but not involved.

They’re both good people. And, now, perhaps, also lonely.

The book opens with Addie knocking on Louis’ door and asking if he would be at all interested in sleeping with her. She means it literally. No funny business, just pj’s and slumber. Oh, and talking. That’s really what she’s looking for, that special kind of conversation that only happens when you’re lying in bed next to someone.

He accepts.

He continues to live in his own house in the same way he’s been doing for years, but at night he goes over to Addie’s for a single beer while she has a glass of wine and then they brush their teeth and hit the hay.

(The tooth-brushing is not incidental. Remember this is a story where nothing and everything happens. The details of life are beautifully wrought.)

Once in bed they talk.

At first, of course, it’s all awkwardness, but it evolves into something so essential to their well-being that neither of them can imagine living any other way. They’re not a couple but they’re more than friends. They come to reveal everything to each other in ways they never did in their marriages.

But people being people soon begin to pass judgments, especially those people unhappy in their own lives. Louis and Addie don’t give a fig. If anything the judgements only cause them to judge themselves (which is such a healthy reaction) and when they don’t find anything sinister about themselves they take it up a notch and begin hanging out together in public. Not necessarily an easy decision given how the elderly are made to feel they don’t count, that they hardly have a thought in their heads worth hearing.

Addie and Louis know this is the way old people are seen but they don’t see themselves or others this way. They have such wonderful, admirable balls.

A really charming part of the book is when Addie’s six year old grandson Jamie comes to live with her while Addie’s son Gene and his wife try to fix their marriage. Louis and Addie and the boy become a kind of family unit (along with Ruth, a friend of Addie’s) and Jamie is nourished in a way he’s never experienced. He stops crying, he’s able to sleep at night. Life is good.

“They ate a supper of macaroni and cheese casserole and iceberg lettuce with Thousand Island dressing and canned green beans and bread and butter and iced tea poured from an old heavy glass pitcher and there was Neapolitan ice cream for dessert. The dog lay at Jamie’s feet.” 

All of which royally pisses off Addie’s son when he hears about all that happiness. He decides to pay a visit, assumes (the truly wonderful) Louis has nefarious intentions, chastises his mother for her lifestyle and takes Jamie back home well before his marriage is anywhere near fixed. Then he forces Addie to choose between her relationship with Louis and her relationship with her grandson.

This is one of those deliciously slender books, easily read in a day, spare writing yet saying all that needs to be said, in the way of the best conversations. Satisfying to the core. I would read this one again and again for the layers it reveals and the questions it asks us to consider about family, friendship, intimacy, community, loyalty and aging. For starters.

Haruf is new to me but I’m already looking for more of his earlier work.

♦

Available online at two of my favourite indies — Hunter Street Books and Blue Heron Books.

this is not a review: ‘glass beads’ by dawn dumont

~ carin ~ 4 Comments

 
Classed as ‘stories’ on the cover, I began reading Dawn Dumont’s Glass Beads  in tiny slivers, a page here, an opening paragraph there, trying to find a story that hooked me, a place to begin since for some reason I didn’t choose to begin at the beginning. The truth is I almost stopped reading because these little snippets of things weren’t grabbing me. All I gleaned was that each story was about very young people and various kinds of young people angst.

But something about Dumont’s writing style kept me reading… just one more snippet, and then another. The rawness of the characters (they felt like people I knew, maybe in some cases people I once was), the way she captures voice and her superb handling of dialogue (which soon begins to feel less like reading and more like eavesdropping), all of it coming across so true… and before I know it I’m flipping to the beginning of the book and starting again from there.

In a nutshell:  the stories follow four friends over the course of fifteen years, through the angst of teenhood to the angst of young adulthood.

So what makes it special?

Dumont’s writing. It’s as simple as that.

Also, she taps into a universal feeling right off the bat in the opening story, “Kokum’s House”… with a line about how if you’re told something often enough, no matter how sad….“tears don’t come after a while.”.

The tone of the book is….. let me tell you a story about people.

That the characters are indigenous isn’t incidental.

Not for one moment do we forget these are Native kids growing into Native adulthood and that there are issues, events and problems that are specific to them and to no other culture (starlight tours). But neither do we forget for a single moment that there are issues, events and problems these characters experience that are universal (the floundering of youth, drugs, alcohol and parties), and it’s the way she blends things that gives the book its power.

Dumont has written what might be one of the hardest stories to write, one that features a specific culture (it could as easily be a specific race or religion, a sexual orientation… anything that isn’t WASP and cis-gendered) without shining a light on that ‘difference’ or making the difference  the story.

It’s not about   being indigenous any more than a story with white characters is a story about whiteness.

It’s about Nellie who is level-headed and wise and not especially the popular one, the one who “… had never worked as a waitress but she had delivered beers to her dad in the big chair.” And Everett, who womanizes and drinks too much and to whom she’s emotionally drawn.

It’s about Julie, whose attractiveness is part of the reason she succeeds and part of the reason she fails.

“What other people wanted came naturally to Julie and they weren’t complimenting her so much as expressing their desire to have it.”

It’s about these indigenous kids looking at Cosmo and Chatelaine, reading about diets and fung shui, just like everyone else.

It’s about Taz who strives to climb the ladder of Native politics and lands a job with the federal government, in land claims. He calls himself a hired gun. “I come in and bury the Natives in paperwork.” He says it pays well but a comment puts it into perspective. “Enjoy that blood money.”

It’s about what works and doesn’t work on reserves. The band that neglects to send tuition, resulting in a student being unable to register for college.

It’s about how there’s a perception that being in the city will be different than being on the reserve, “… he won’t drink in the city because being away from the reserve will allow him to make connections…  he would be building things, not tearing them apart. Crow’s Nest was behind him along with all of his sad eyed friends and their growing guts and whining that the chief and council sucked but never doing anything about it.”

And it’s about reality.

“But the people in the city turned out to be exactly like the people on the rez. There was always another party, another reason to turn it up.”

Dumont doesn’t put a glossy sheen on anything. She admits there are problems on reservations, with Native governments, people with all kinds of differing views. There isn’t one Native Culture. But neither does she shy away from softness. The sense of community is strong and comes through.

Toward the end of the book, when the characters are young adults, a more adult focus on what’s happening within communities comes to light. In one scene, men just shooting the shit, eating Chinese food, the tone becomes serious when talk centres around how the Assembly of Chiefs has lost connection to what’s important.

“I see that our people are getting arrested, locked up, committing violence or getting dumped by the side of the road – I see the young kids on the streets wandering – where are their parents? Why aren’t they at home? – like how I was at home at their age, doing my homework, watching TV with my family… that’s where kids should be… because pretty soon they’re not kids anymore, they’re adults and then we’ve lost them.”

Native youth…. youth is what’s important.

“That’s what those fuckers should be focusing on.”

The title, Glass Beads,   doesn’t have a corresponding story, leaving me to wonder what the reference is. My interpretation is the idea of trading… what we trade, what anyone trades, for what they hope will be a good life.

And how we forge ahead when that trade turns out not be an entirely a fair deal.

While the stories are stand alone quality, they’re so much more when standing together. For that reason I prefer to think of the book as a novel.

And I would absolutely recommend starting at the beginning.

♦

Glass Beads is available at Hunter Street Books and Blue Heron Books.

Support indies! (These are two of my faves.)

♦♦

Thanks to one of the comments I picked up a copy of Nobody Cries at Bingo,  and not only loved it, I think it ought to be essential *Canada150*  reading. What a brilliant way she has of presenting modern indigenous life so that it feels simply like life, no labels, yet we feel the difference. Such subtleness, and that humour….

“Auntie and Mom looked at one another and shook their heads. What had happened to kids these days? Back in their day, a kid was lucky to get to go anywhere. Growing up in a family of twelve, you were lucky if your mom remembered your face, never mind took you to bingo. And if you did want to go to bingo, it wasn’t just a quick five-minute drive, it was a two-day journey involving a horse, a wagon and three portages. Now those were days when people appreciated bingo…”

 

 

wordless wednesday (summer postcards)

~ carin ~ 11 Comments

A guy playing guitar next to a basket of chanterelles, which to this day I regret not buying. The next day I go back, no basket. So in my broken french I ask if there will be more and he shrugs almost sadly and says something like ils ne sont pas mes champignons, madame….

The expression on the fish monger’s face when I enter his tiny shop, wave at the air and say (enthusiastically):  mon nez est tres joyeux!

The woman at the b&b whose english is on par with my french (which makes me so happy) and where, after determining that I do not mind that my room has only a shower and no tub (this alone feels like it took the better part of twenty minutes), I receive la cle  and decide this tiny quirky space with a bougainvilla covered porch, tivoli lighted tree and room with a tiny humming fridge and a most magnificent view of the parking lot is so very much better than the place the tourist office recommended, which, instead of bougainvilla on the porch, had three grouchy old men sitting in rockers.

My dinner of smoked salmon from the fish monger, which I eat on the rocks at the beach as the sun sets.

The older woman, swimming in the cold water of the harbour — pure joy — and the way, ten or so minutes later, she’s joined by another woman and they hold hands, jump and bob about in the waves.

A child playing at the shore and the slant of late day sun on his face.

The rosehips I pick and bring home to mix with calendula and borage flowers for tea.

The food, everywhere. (I vow, again, to improve my french if only to be able to at least order a meal without feeling like an eejit in this kingdom of cuisine.)

The long fields of long Kamouraska grass.

A tree outside the museum, covered in knitting.

This patio on the water, and that one… hidden in a garden.

The bakery!

The small lights of a boat across the river pose questions: where has it come from? where is it going in this dark night? The best guess is that it’s coming for dinner.

The curious note I make in my journal — cafe avec caffeine, et sans caffeine. Curious because I don’t drink coffee.

And this, copied from somewhere…. dans la vie, il n’y a pas de hasards, il n’y a que des rendez-vous.

 

(Driving back from PEI, September-almost-October, 2015)

♦

Other (not always) wordless friends:

Cheryl Andrews
Allison Howard
Barbara Lambert
Allyson Latta
Elizabeth Yeoman

wordless wednesday (summer postcards)

~ carin ~ 11 Comments

 

Cabins and cottages I have known. Some I have loved.

 

The one room cabin up highway 11 ten thousand years ago that we arrived at by flying over the top of hills with my dad yelling hang on, here’s another one!  then laughing like crazy as I screamed from the backseat and my mother in the front held on to her cat’s eye sunglasses with one hand and her Sweet Caporal with the other. My dad’s cig was between his lips the whole time. We found the place by luck and chance after thinking it was fine to go on a summer holiday without a reservation anywhere. We ate radishes and rye bread for our supper and listened to the rain fall.

The place on Oxtongue Lake where we went a few years in a row and I met an older girl named Lucy who I thought wanted to be friends with me but really she just wanted an alibi for the hours she spent with a rather slimy fellow who worked on the property. I was reading Archie comics in those days and my idea of a good time was getting up before anyone else and taking the rowboat for a spin. Some things don’t change…

Where we used to stay with friends on Rice Lake but too many people kept dropping by and the dock always needed to be fixed.

The surprise of a place on PEI that I swear is magic.

The other place on PEI with a view of everything.

The one near Leamington where they left baked goods and fresh fruit on the table for our arrival and where rooster song woke us in the most cheerful way. I’d always assumed waking-by-rooster would be jarring. It’s not.

The place near the farm in Ganonoque where flies covered the insides of our windows BUT we *did* get to see the pigs fed each evening. Plus there was a canoe.

A friend’s cottage up north where no one dropped by and the dock was fine.

The haunted one near Bobcaygeon, which, apart from that detail, was brilliant.

Two in Nova Scotia:  one, on the Cabot Trail that I barely remember except it was an A-frame and we only stayed a night because it was better than sleeping in the car and who would have thought there weren’t a hundred places to choose from on that route? And the other, also a late night find I can’t remember where exactly but in a town so small everything was closed at 5 p.m. The owner of the cabin made us a sandwich. Such kindness.

The place I spent a day each year visiting people who had a paddle-boat and ate marshmallow fluff straight from the jar.

The one on the land in B.C. that is tiny, ancient and decrepit and was once home to a family of five, who travelled on foot through god only knows how many kilometres of thick forest, up and down hills to get to *town*. And back. It’s not actually habitable but we camped near it and I liked imagining the family’s life, the Okanagan people before them, the life of the land.

Yours…?

♦

Other (not always) wordless friends:

Cheryl Andrews
Allison Howard
Barbara Lambert
Allyson Latta
Elizabeth Yeoman

how to do campbellford in twenty four hours

~ carin ~ 9 Comments

 

Start in Oshawa. At the RMG. Give the current exhibition of abstract paintings too little of your time and make a note to go back when it’s the only item on your itinerary.

Take Hwy 2 to Bowmanville and stop at the VAC. Be delighted to find Frances Ferdinands’ work. Fall in love with a couple of the pieces.      Continue on Hwy 2 (on this getaway we’re generally flipping the bird to the 401) to Newcastle and make your way to the waterfront where you’ll find a monarch recently arrived from Texas and the air pungent with seaweed.

Take the Lakeshore Road east along the shoreline and through the countryside and past a field of cows that apparently live in the forest.

Take that beautiful winding road all the way to Port Hope where you have lunch at Gusto. Have the fresh bright green dairy-free pea soup and the smoked trout and arugula and shut up about not getting a table on the patio because oh my god already… you have a window seat and air conditioning and the baby at the next table isn’t even crying. Life is good.

Get on the 28 to the 9 and go west a bit to the lavender fields of Laveanne. Shrug when they say you cannot have tea because there are no tables free (tables overlooking the lavender fields!) because they’re expecting a large wine group whatever that is. Buy shortbread cookies instead. Use the loo.

Go back along 9 until it turns into 29 and then magically becomes 30 or Grand or something that takes you into Campbellford where you wonder how you’ll manage to find your B&B because you misplaced the address and then, presto bongo, it appears before you like B&B magic.

Wander about town for just a bit.

Then settle on the patio for a glass of pre-dinner wine in the most ultra Canadian way — under a big old maple.

Have a dinner of curried mussels while listening to a guy in shades sing Dylan. Call it a night when he starts doing Led Zeppelin.

Next day,  cross a suspension bridge into the woods and find a pianist playing birdsong at almost-dawn.

Have breakfast on yet another patio in a town where, oddly, there are not that many patios.

Discover a place that cares for feral cats. And another with a lineup for doughnuts.

A visitor centre that grows tomatoes.

A big twoonie.

And the woman who used to run the Ultramar who has now bought the old bowling lanes and is making them wonderful (truly wonderful…!) including a tropical themed patio (in a town where there are not that many patios).

At the farmers’ market, buy organic lettuce picked this morning and something called rat tails that look like snap peas but taste like radishes and buy a bright red perennial and sample the clover tea.

Have conversations EVERYWHERE. Because you can’t buy a stamp in this town without the friendliest people engaging you in the sweetest banter.

Choose the house you’d live in if you lived here.

And where you’d buy your subs.

And your trophies.

Buy postcards at Stedmans. Buy an optical illusion wind-chime thingy for the garden. Buy a bright orange and yellow tea towel that will make it 1965 every time you dry a soup bowl. Give thanks that places like this still exist, who sell garden hoses and slippers and sheets of gingham patterned vinyl by the metre (what does one do with the vinyl?) and so much else you didn’t know you needed, all in adjoining aisles. This truly is the only way to shop.

Visit the WestBen site and vow to return for the music.

Visit Kerr’s Books and marvel that a town this size has an indie.

Visit Empire Cheese and find not only whiskey mustard cheddar but maybe the best veggie chips around and a view of the land in this part of the world.

Take your time driving home.

Above all, continue the theme of bird-flipping to all major highways.

You’re welcome.

♦

(Note: *do* is just another word for relish.)

More travel notes here…

 

 

 

 

things i learned in a few patio hours with my favourite eccentric

~ carin ~ 6 Comments

♦

A teaspoon of red wine vinegar tossed into a bowl of lentil soup just before serving apparently turns lentil soup into nectar.

Shivasana is THE most important yoga move. Ten minutes is good.

Persimmons for arthritis.

Raccoon poop is best disposed of with a) gloves, b) crumpled newspaper. Forget the trowel or shovel because then  how do you clean off the toxic??

Margaret Carney, nature writer and birder extraordinaire, once upon a time worked as an editor at Harlequin.

Lima beans, aka butter beans, will last — tops — three days in the fridge once the tin is opened so after you use half a tin for making a butter bean flan, use the other half — straightaway! — in a butter bean salad (red onion, celery, dressing of choice).

A lavender farm has opened not a million miles away from my front door.

And if that isn’t enough there’s ANOTHER lavender place even closer.

Ways of peeling garlic. (The knife crush is but one.)

Levine Flexhaug.  (1918 – 1974)  Famous for more or less painting the same cheesy landscape scene over and over in audacious colours and with various ‘differences’. So bad it’s brilliant.

The word minim.

 

 

wordless wednesday (summer postcards)

~ carin ~ 9 Comments

Having a wonderful time on the shores of Lake Ontario where I’m happy to say the powers that be finally decided to invest in a bunch of beautiful garbage bins!

Nothing makes my heart sing like rubbish in a bin.

(and no, those bits on the ground are not rubbish, also not snow) (likely mud)

(Whitby, 2017)

 

(click on pic… this one looks much better enlarged)

 

♦

Other (not always) wordless friends:

Cheryl Andrews
Allison Howard
Barbara Lambert
Allyson Latta
Elizabeth Yeoman

wordless wednesday (summer postcards)

~ carin ~ 13 Comments

Where nothing is fancy, everything is good, the toast is plain and buttered just right, the sausages, exactly the way you like them and the eggs — when you say you’ll have them over m’easy,  a phrase you invent on the spot, they understand — the staff have been there for seven hundred years and could work at the fanciest restaurants in the world and show them how it’s done. Among other things, they call you hon  the correct way and when they ask how things are they actually give a hoot. And that orange slice! And the packet of peanut butter. Mint tea in the silver thing that leaks and well-thumbed newspapers stacked on benches for anyone to read. The young woman, slightly stoned or wanting to be, who comes in and orders a juice, drinks it down quick then says she forgot her money and would it be okay if she went to get it. Staff says sure, hon, you do that. And while she’s gone they take her empty glass away and there’s something in their face that says they know she won’t be back but that’s okay, that’s the way it is sometimes. And then the young woman comes back, with her money, and orders another juice. It’s that kind of place.

(P.J.’s, Whitby, ON)

 

♦

Other (not always) wordless friends:

Cheryl Andrews
Allison Howard
Barbara Lambert
Allyson Latta
Elizabeth Yeoman