Tuesday, September 4, 2007

Bono The Beauty Queen

Much to the dismay of modern and old-fashioned feminists everywhere (ditto fatwa-minded Nigerians), the beauty pageant is alive and well. Sure, it is sometimes called Ms. America and sometimes even disguised in Survivor loincloths. But don’t kid yourself kid, there is still fully-blown superficiality in them thar hills. Yet, inevitably tucked between the bikini walks and talent shows still exists the speech, sometimes referred to as the “community service platform” but really it is the pledge: to bring about world peace; to find a cure for AIDS, for cancer, for…obesity; to end discrimination, and so on. But usually, and more earnestly, is it simply to eliminate world hunger. Or to, as it is known in music circles, feeeeeed theeeee woooorld. Let them know it’s Christmas time.

The trick with the pageant platform, as in life (dinner table chatter: tragic what’s been happening in _________; doesn’t make sense in this day and age; pass the salt please) is that it is that first paving stone, one heap of asphalt, on the road to hell. Because Miss Vermont, or Miss New Brunswick, for that matter, is no closer to feeding the world than my dinner companions and I are, her good intentions are worse than apathy. And just ask six million Jews about apathy. Or roughly one million Rwandans. Or the Sudanese. Or poor people, anywhere. Or…oh, geez. Pass the salt.

Isn’t it funny how apathy seems such a sophisticated, complex word? Actually apathy is commonly defined as “emotional indifference” or “lack of interest or concern” (sociopath, in the briefest of definitions, refers to “individuals with little regard for the feeling or welfare of others...yikes, that’s tight). Therefore, technically, our dinner conversations are a moral loophole, and it seems that my little guilt burst is about inaction, not apathy. Yet and yet, how to quantify interest and concern in the parameters of a spoken sentence? Do-gooder. Now that’s a clean, straight-as-Stephen Harper word. No debate as to its meaning (and it is just your imagination that it is uttered on the edge of a snarl).

Worse than apathy is even merely hinting that you are doing some pro-active to solve the world’s problems. Why? ‘Cause if you say you are busy building communities and trucking grain to sustainable markets than I get to…well, be apathetic. Of course Miss Kentucky is not packing rice and petitioning corporations and aid groups to reconsider their food drops, so actually nothing is getting done. This is why Bono should be Miss America or Miss U.K.. Heck, he should have one big fat tiara on his head and some lovely long stems in his arms. And while we’re handing out tiaras, I fancy Jamie Oliver as Bono’s runner-up. As Doug Saunders reminds us, the “dirt-eating and nothing-eating poor” are sometimes no further than down your block. Oliver rolls up his sleeves, slaps flour with the lunch ladies and wham! bam! thousands of council children in Britain are eating better and the school lunch program gets a boost. Wow.

And it’s not just famous people: Joe Kloete, Paul Forman, Eugenia Muhayimana, Bob Geldof…oops, he is famous. Respectively, these do-gooders have rescued a young girl from a burning car, stood up to the Darfur regime while medically treating victims of various war-horrors, and become the loving mother of a ten-year old son, a boy who may or may not resemble his Hutu rapist father, un enfant de mauvais souvenir. Do-good does not cover such love. Do-god more like. Sir Bob, well, he gets enough publicity.

You see, I have done nothing, big fat zero. Even, or especially, writing about apathy is an exercise in self-flagellation that buys me more time in the do-nothing chair. I feel like Suess’ Bofa on the Sofa, but at least he acted as if he didn’t care. Remember that road to hell. My private embarrassment is that I would rather be able to plead ignorance than apathy. I could protest that Bono has the resources and the connections. Because, naturally, a rock star understands the economics of regionalized starvation and the logistics of humanitarian aid. No, it’s simply this: I am lame and Bono and Jamie, well, they are not. Watch out Miss Ireland; Bono puts his mouth where his bikini is… or something like that.

From New Orleans to Vancouver’s East End, all news is bad news these days as we head into the North American season of cold and wanting. The food drives begin some time around the candy-collecting time of All Hallow’s Eve. The fallacy being, of course, that people are hungrier ‘round Christmas than say……today. This year, I do, I really do, want to feed the world, but I am ignorant. I don’t know where to start. And as soon as the rest of those do-gooders call it quits, I’ll be off the sofa. Right with the rest of you lot.

O Canada

The last time I sang our national anthem was on a July long weekend in Kamloops two years ago. Shy in a crowd of many, my voiced cracked in a half-hearted attempt to appear patriotic and, though now thirty-four, I know I reminded myself to sing the new words, sans “God”, as we has been instructed sometime around grade four. My son sang gleefully beside me, slipping into the French version when the English words escaped him, the French lyrics more forceful, prideful: “…des plus brillants exploits….” The great Canadian immersion project.

When I entered the gymnasium of the local elementary school this past May 17th, I recalled all of the gyms of my school years and the frequent “assemblies” which always began with a scramble to sit near my friends and then a hush as we stood for, in the early years, God Save The Queen, and then, of course, O Canada. My vocal performance then was no different from that of today, struggling with the tricky balance of appearing “cool” in front of my friends but feeling in my gut it would be wrong not to sing (after all, Canadians young and old are embarrassed by any overt American-style jingoism…aren’t they? or perhaps it is what Adrienne Clarkson calls our “pathological modesty”). In truth, butterflies would tickle my stomach and I would feel something incredibly like pride as the anthem built momentum. I don’t doubt that both the cool and the uncool felt that same glow.

So, as I sidled up to an election volunteer in my son’s school gym that Tuesday, I felt the familiar thrill of my childhood anthemism. Of course, I can attribute the lump in my throat to the super-polished wood floors, the stale smell of sweat, or the stage and its makeshift curtains over which hung the red and white maple leaf. And yet, if I dig deep, I know that it’s because each of these are successfully symbolic, they make me believe, in the joy of childhood, in the satisfaction of education , in Canada, in the whole damn reason I was standing there that afternoon, in democracy.

I don’t normally think of myself or my family as very politicized, yet my 9- year old son wants to be Prime Minister and giggles at the Globe’s Heather Mallick and her term of dislike for our southern neighbour’s leader (or “neighbor” if you wish): “Bushlet”. My husband has started to refer to me as the “pop-up head” as I interject every news item on the radio with my invariably partially-informed, yet passionate, views on world affairs (“I can’t believe the CBC would broadcast comments like ‘dipstick’ “; “Newsweek shouldn’t have to apologize for publishing misinformation; for god’s sake, Bush went to war on misinformation!! And so on…) When my mother-in-law suggested I was wasting my vote if I voted for a certain environmentally-concerned provincial party, I argued that the heart of democracy was not strategic voting and that her vote could be considered trash too if she voted by default for the likely winner, rather than for the party that most closely represented her values. My friends and I discuss the fallacy of a true democracy in a two-party race and a decreasing voter turnout. Perhaps I am more politicized than I realized.

Of course, it was just a provincial election and (yes, Ottawa and Quebec) JUST a wacky B.C. election at that, but what I realized that afternoon as I hovered over my ballot (YES! STV) and my stomach did flip-flops was that O Canada and Gordon Campbell were the same butterfly. I realized that, with the possible exception of Stephen Harper, I can trust that Canadian politicians, regardless of the waxing and waning of scandals and budgets, will forever uphold democracy, will forever cherish my right to vote and it is up to me to stand on guard, protégera nos foyers et nos droits, by submitting my ballot. If democracy is a sham it is only because a country’s citizens (or a U.S.-sponsored coup d'état) make it one. Sure, I am sometimes as embarrassed by our politicians as I am singing aloud but, fortunately, I can hide behind the cardboard divider. Something as simple as a school auditorium or as seemingly complex as a provincial election nudges the word “free” from my heart to my lips. Free. As in True North. As in Strong and. Sentimentality perhaps, simple-mindedness even, but just try to sing O Canada and not feel funny inside. Peculiar and ha ha at once.

I used to be envious of the determination and passion of voters in countries where democracy is in its infancy, where, sometimes, to vote could mean to die. Canadians no longer value this freedom, I would tell myself. I saw no trace of that lazy monster voter apathy last month on the city roads awash with campaign posters. When I stopped for milk at 7:30 p.m., the clerk asked me to hurry, so she could make it to a polling station before it closed at 8. At my polling station, an elderly man struggled with his cane up the path; he looked determined. He looked proud. I’ll bet he had butterflies.

X Canada
X Democracy

(as published in Monday Magazine, July 2005)

Saturday, June 23, 2007

The Dead Lamp Collection

I call it my dead lamp collection. A corner of my basement, a darkened hallway, behind the bookshelf, all repositories of my wanton consumerism. This is where the cheap lamps lie, $12.99 from Costco, 10 bucks from the Stupidstore. New, plastic-wrapped, boxed, and functional…at least for awhile.

Now I mean this as a bit of a confession. A confession because my neighbourhood and my conscience are filled with ardent recyclers and greener than the grass types. And “a bit of” because I am not really certain how guilty I should feel. The social measure, the checks and balances, confuses me. It was for sale after all. And on sale. Aren’t I supposed to buy it? I need a lamp or two to light my living room. Here’s a lamp, next to the 100-pack of white gym socks, of course, where else would it be. $12.99. I need it, it needs me. Cha-ching.

The downside, as you may have guessed, is that they are cheap for a reason, they don’t live long. Duh, you may say. Yet, how often are you shocked when something recently purchased doesn’t perform, or gasps its dying breath 4000 days before you expected it to? Cheap or expensive, “I can’t believe it…what a piece of sh#%” is a common refrain. If it was an expensive piece of shit, you try to get your money back. If it was cheap, you grow a graveyard. But my growing graveyard of bargain illumination haunts me. What do I do with it all?

Landfill. Yup, that’s all I can do. My husband has replaced the metal fixture thingy at the top of an Ikea lamp more times than I can count. It’s dead. Put down the paddles. Mark the chart. And my blue box doesn’t take dead Ikea lamps. Or dead Costco lamps. No dead lamps period. Love thy basement.

My lightless, uncoffined skeletons make me want to redeem myself in other ways. I yearn to find cool clothes at my local twice-around shop. Trouble is: they charge more than the “out-sourced” clothing available at the mall. Plus they never have my size, and tiger-striped skirts were never my style. And not to make a long story long, but how much time is reasonable to spend searching for that fab previously-loved garment? 2? 3 hours? I do have a life you know.

One redemptive item, no kidding, is the gargantuan plastic play structure in my backyard. It is chunky purple and yellow plastic, with a slide and a steering wheel. My toddler loves it. It’s redeeming because a neighbour was giving it away…just left it!! At the bottom of the street. A “for free” sign nestled against it. And I scooped it, my 16-month old and I dragging it six houses uphill like cats that ate the canary, a big canary, a 200-pound canary. O.k., o.k., my husband came by in the car and hauled it home, but still. And there it towers, my testament to re-use, to what my grandma called a “hand-me-down”. Apparently, a long long time ago, there was something called “poverty”, or in some families “conservation”, in others “practicality”. During this magical time, consumer products were built to last and people responded accordingly: they passed items they no longer needed onto those who did require or want them, to family, to friends, to friends of friends. No basement graveyards. This is what my big hunk of plastic feels like, that magical time. Ha, you say. Not so, say I. Family making is community building and community building means sharesies.

There are of course many types of consumer mother or father to consider, but these two seem clear: that parent who must purchase the newest, trendiest, most-coveted toy, article of clothing, diaper, whatever-of-all. And, the one who freely gives and exchanges items of all sorts, however well-loved or unworn the item may have been. As a first-time mother 11 years ago, I know I was a member of the former. 11 years on and a new arrival, my views, my needs, my expectations, call them what you will are…well, open. To stuff. Your stuff. Pre-loved stuff. Old stuff. Good old stuff. Is there something in between a mom using a toy library and one using ToysRUs?

A trite eco-message this may seem but the trick is that we all want the best for our children, and for ourselves. The real trick is that the best may be a hand-me-down, not a shiny new penny. Or a shiny new $12.99 something. Even in my green green neighbourhood, the mothers are of moderate to high-income and have moderate to high consumer needs and expectations, according to the social measure of course. And as soon as the social measure is a social-conscience measure, shopping and not shopping may get easier.

My dead lamp collection is my dawning consumer-conscience. Their sad, skinny silhouettes in the half-lit cellar are constant reminders of my lack of common sense and short-sightedness. So, I propose my own one-tonne challenge, one Rick Mercer never spewed: Buy less crap. And covet the ass thy neighbour no longer wants. Or something like that.

Club Rest Stop

As a child I feared the rest stop. It was dark, or, in the day, desolate. Dirty toilets and a lone picnic table. The rest stop seemed a last resort, so to speak, a place for people who had nowhere else to stop. We, well, we always had a place to stop: the end of our journey, be it Vancouver, or Terrace, or Prince George, damn, sometimes Billy’s Puddle. There was no resting and no stopping. Mom and I, we were on a road trip, minus the trip, just a whole lot of road and then the end.

It was the 70’s and my mom was the only single mom I knew. Somehow our road trips connect to this. We were on the fringe and on the road. I was the only 7-year old I knew that belted out Jackson Browne by heart (and the squeaky voice at the end of “Stay” was my all- time favorite belting out moment). I know more songs by The Little River Band than any 30-something should know, or confess to. I’m not really certain now why we were ever on any road trips but there were two unspoken rules. Munchies and barreling through. Pee breaks only. Side of the road. Rest stops were for… well, not us.

So, 25 years later, I now find myself on the road with my little travelers, devastated that my 10-year old gets too car sick for munchies and by the fact that Baby Einstein squeaks from the portable dvd player in the back seat while I bemoan the absence of my mom’s devil-may-care tunes and timetable. The other fact is: my 15-month old needs a rest stop. Walking since he was 7 ½ months, our lil’ Tru is a man of action. Let no car seat stand in his way. Damn the torpedoes. These bowlegs are made for walking. Or something like that. In other words, if you don’t let me out of this car, I will flip my adorable lid. The Bramble rest stop was born. Literally.

Our first road trip en famille was to the Mile High Resort -- bearing no relation to the Mile High Club and, as it was a family reunion of sorts, such a connection would be most inappropriate and just plain weird-- near Logan Lake, in B.C.’s beautiful Interior. Somewhere around the Coquihalla summit, we see our wee one’s head start to spin around and, fearing projectile anything, we lurch into the nearest rest stop.

With trepidation, I unload the kids and survey the grounds. To my surprise, fellow travelers mill around chatting, bustle to the loos, gather around the food vending truck. It is almost festive. Nothing like the perceived rest stops of my childhood. Not dirty. Not desolate. No sagebrush lolling about rusted machines in the sand. No men in trench coats with bare knees. This was no Kalifornia. We make our own runs to the toilet, scrape change together for ice cream and poke at the leftover snow ‘round the picnic tables. Best of all: lil’ Tru stretches and stretches and stretches his legs. We can face the road again.

After the 3-day craziness of our Irish-Scots clan celebration—much alcohol, a little fishing, and endless stories round the fire, all at each other’s expense of course -- we buckle up and head home, but this time we know where we were going first. No mad-hope-through-Hope-you-don’t-get-a-ticket dash to the ferry for us. Nope. We are headed for a rest stop. When we arrive, our chosen stop boasts picnic tables sheltered by rustling birches, a hot/cold vendor, a wood craftsman selling his wares, and most importantly, running room & a clean bathroom. The kids meet a dog and some Japanese tourists while snacking on fresh blueberries and hitting golf balls. It seems, well, kind of like a vacation. Here we rested. As we pull away to make whatever ferry will have us and let us return to our island paradise, I realize this rest stop probably hasn’t changed much in the 25 years I had avoided it, but I have, and I suddenly understand that the rest stop is a magical place of rest and refuge when you need it and just a blue sign on the highway when you don’t. I know it sees its share of desolate moments as it does festive ones and the sign outside the bathroom entrance reminds me of this and of the many empty miles in our country far and wide: Keep this bathroom clean: you may be the next person to use it.

Oh, won’t you staaaaaaay just a little bit longer please please please stay just a little more. Hey hey hey.


(As published in Monday Magazine, August 2006)

Brand FOX

A month or so ago, my ten-year old and I were perusing the shelves of a local bookstore in search of a Winston Churchill biography. My son idolizes and idealizes the great War Prime Minister for reasons both understood and unfathomable to me. When I was ten, my Ken doll was hot and feathered hair was my one goal. However, support him I do, in all his frivolous schemes. So there we were, thumbing through lives of the rich or famous when a lovely photo-biography of Terry Fox caught our attention.

Of course, we’d both scraped pledges in the annual school runs; even at his tender age, my son has participated in no less than 5 Marathons of Hope. My own September primary school memories are grazed with a diaphanous image of “our” tousled-hair Terry and his endearing gait. Now, in our hands, was a touching, and in the way only photographs can be, painfully honest record of Terry’s life and achievements (I say and write “Terry” here as most Canadians do, as if he is a member of our own families, and, mistakenly, as if I knew him, knew his struggle, knew his heart).

I lie. The biography was not really honest or truly painful; it was no more honest than my knowledge of Terry is first-hand. It presented images of people and items from Terry’s short life and worthy dream: family barbeques, running shorts, the sock. In a small voice squeezed through the pinhole my airpipe had become, I declared to my son that it was a beautiful book about a beautiful and courageous young man. And it was and it is. Yet it is dishonest in that, however poignant, the clean images are as far removed from the stench of terminal illness as the glorious swath of school children streaming down the street each mid-September morning “marathon” are.

Within a few minutes of reading some perturbing reports of death and anarchy after Katrina and her ferocious waves tore through the bowl of a city known as New Orleans, I found myself humming a particular Hip tune. You know the one. I wondered to myself if it was getting some renewed airplay in light of events down south. I read several days later, to my indignation, that, in order to show sensitivity to those who have suffered great loss in New Orleans, “New Orleans is Sinking” by the Tragically Hip had been pulled from some radio playlists. First of all, I’m fairly certain it’s a clever metaphor of a song. Second, since when do the media decline to play or print stories that may be insensitive? Did no one see the photographs of floating bodies or catch the sensational headlines: “Katrina survivors screaming for help”, “All I found was a shoe”? Third, it’s true. New Orleans is sinking. Was and is. Besides, when your heart is broken, you don’t sing love songs, you sing down and nasty saaaaaaaaaaaad songs. With broken homes, hearts, souls and bodies, maybe that’s just what some New Orleanians want to sing and maybe, just maybe, they don’t wanna swim either. Gord and the guys just got too darned close to the truth, the honesty of the stench.

So here it is: we’ve wrapped up Terry in a beautiful branded box. This true hero: Brand Fox. A man who believed his struggle to raise awareness and hump his broken body across Canada paled in significance to the realities of the cancer ward.

A man whose name may be behind Adidas' The Terry Fox Limited Edition Replica Shoe, but who, in the words of Ken McQueen, was "even uncomfortable with the trademark three stripes on his running shoes".

Middle-class North America could use some down and nasty to desensitize their delicate souls just as it would behoove them to remember that fresh-faced youngsters are not the face of a devasting disease. They are symbols of Hope.

Though I never knew our Terry, he is remembered for igniting Hope but also for not wanting people to wander too far from the broken hearts and bodies. I think that’s what concerned him about corporate involvement and potential exploitation. The point is to raise awareness, to make the lucky hear and help those much less so, not to create a pretty distraction. I’m guessing Terry would have liked a little more Hip and a little less brand. I never knew our Terry, but I sure wish I had.


TRY, TRY AGAIN

The other night, my husband and I had a whopper of a fight. Our worst by far, and even in our few years together, that is saying quite a bit. I had lain awake in the wee hours of the morning piecing together the straw that would break not only the camel’s back, but his mother’s as well. You see, our beautiful brown-eyed six-month old has been sharing my breasts (not too much sharing really) and our marital bed for the last, well, six months. In the beginning, he was quite a bit smaller and frankly, a bit of a novelty. Little coochie coo pudgy pookanoo sucking and snuggling. Yes, well, he’s all that and more now; twelve pounds more to be exact. And, in addition to sucking and snuggling, he’s snoring and grunting and squirming and kicking. Kill Bill-Jackie Chan-type kicking. Did I mention the breastfeeding? So, there I was, in those wee hours, cursing my lot, and my back, as I flipped back from one side to the other to accommodate my little angel. Finally, I sat up and bellowed “I just can’t f&#@*en take this anymore!!!!!”

And that’s when my husband and I decided to Ferberize.

No, it’s not a Jane Fonda routine and what I don’t know about “the Ferber method” could fill a book (Richard Ferber’s Solve Your Child’s Sleep Problems probably) but my basic grasp of the concept is that parents should let their child “cry it out” during nighttime wakings, periodically checking and comforting the child, but NOT picking him or her up! The first night we tried it, our little pudgy poo cried for approximately 25 minutes and then went off to la la land. Phew. The next night was the night hubbie and I said some pretty mean stuff to each other, as babe screamed, every hour, on the hour.

I love my husband more than anything. I mean, don’t make me choose between him and my two sons if there is a bus bearing down on them, but I love him A LOT. Why did we spew venom at each other? First, that Ferber stuff is hard, harder than watching Troy, and hard stuff requires one make an effort. Not swearing at your spouse requires work. I once told a friend of mine that when I got grumpy with my ten- or forty-year-old it was emotional laziness on my part; it was simply me not mustering the energy to think of a better approach or to take a deep breath. I just react; I react because it’s easy. She responded that that was much too harsh an assessment, that we are doing our best, that we’re all trying.

Try is one of those great duplicitous words of the English lexicon. It can be both, or either, “to make an effort to do something that may be difficult” or “to experiment with an action that might be a solution to your problem”. We often use it after we have failed to do that difficult thing or find the fix, as in: I tried not to pick him up while he was bawling his eyes out and I tried burying my head in the pillow to muffle his screams. The progressive form often elicits a snide quip: I am trying!...Yes, you certainly are (trying my patience, that is) Trying not only sounds like tiring, it looks like it. Invariably, at the end of every failure, not only are we sick and tired, we always say we tried. At least the British give it a go.

Certain self-help gurus and “life coaches” say there is no try, only do. But try shouldn’t be relegated to the losers’ corner. The lie of try is the problem. Bulletin: we are not really trying. Most of the time we are making as little effort as possible. I am not so lame that most everything I try I fail at. I am either making a conscious effort to stop trying or I didn’t really try in the first place. Take my man Ferber. I wasn’t so married to his theory to begin with. Did I try? Not so much. Did I fail? No, I just stopped trying. If I’m truly honest with myself, I swore at my husband because I was tired, but not because I tried to do something different, like laugh, or eat a bowl of ice cream. Ditto with my parenting shortcomings. I need to exert myself. Do you remember hearing that it requires more muscles to frown than smile? Well, apparently, that is not strictly true. Some now say it takes 12 muscles to smile, 11 to frown. Splitting hairs perhaps, but energy is not only summoned by your muscles. Just try to smile next time you are really pissed off (and not an insincere one…although a fake smile costs you only two puny muscles). The mental energy required to switch tracks will exhaust you.

I often complain that my fellow joggers never smile or wave back at me. My husband suggested that perhaps they’re real runners and their energy is otherwise directed to the physical task at hand, whereas I’m just a weekend Pollyanna with a goofy gait and grin. Not so. I run hard; I push my limits every run. I really exert myself. I try hard. Raising my hand, smiling, and grunting good morning almost kills me, but it seems an important gesture. It should almost kill me to be kinder to my loved ones when everything goes pear-shaped too.

Crying babies are hard to take. Raising a family can be very trying. Nobody’s perfect, but I sure try.