There is such satisfaction in watching Jane Austen spin her tales. Of holding my breath as she winds a sentences through a maze of meaning until, just at the end, she lays it to rest gracefully and you realize what complexity she has delivered and with what panache.
Clara Hughes
I got to be an Olympic athlete the other night at Roy Thomson Hall. The funny, forthright, unpretentious Clara Hughes took me there. She did all the work; I coasted in beside her as she relived her surprising and uplifting life story.
She brought me beside her on her Olympic speed skating runs, arm swooping rhythmically, leaning into the turns, agonizing over race strategy, confronting her nemesis the German champion, grinning at her own foibles. I empathized with her stuggle with deep depression, her disastrous Olympic games in Turin, the teenage years of drug use and semi delinquency. So exciting to be with her in the stadium as she carried the Canadian flag into the Vancouver Olympics, worrying about flag carrying protocol. And feeling with her the sorrow of losing a teammate cyclist to a fatal accident and rededicating her strength and will to carrying on in her honour. In that hour I lived every moment of her remarkable life seeing only this tall, gesturing, lanky redhead with the mobile expressive face and wide smile in front of me. I respect her inspirational message—“I did it, you can too.”— but her magic was just being totally herself.
Leslie Shimotakahara’s book launch
There was no obvious reason to think that Leslie Shimotakahara was anything but the poised, elegant and innately refined young woman presenting her first publication to the friends and family who flocked to the book launch. It was a cool February evening at the Japan Foundation in the old Colonnade Building on Bloor Street. Her mother, an old friend, greeted me warmly at the door and introduced her daughter.
Leslie smiled, chatted and slipped away to smile again and make introductions. She dipped and slid through the crowd of mostly second generation Japanese Canadians. She is so slight that she looked like a cursive exclamation mark from the side and her black crepe dress drifted softly on her form.
But there was something unsettling about the veiled amusement and intensity behind the dark eyes. Too clever to be obvious, too well bred to put a word amiss, still a sly smile escaped amid the pleasantries and she appeared to miss nothing.
I hope my intuition is correct. I want her to be acerbic and witty, to be as wickedly clever and intelligent as she is gracefully self-possessed. I left with her book, a memoir, in hand, hoping to find a jolt beneath the pleasantness.
This just in
I found out today that Florence Nightingale was brilliant at statistical graphics. Specifically she designed what is called the polar area graph which she used to show that far more fatalities in the Crimean War were caused by lack of sanitation than warfare—on one page, in colour. She did it so she could persuade the British government in 1856 that changes needed to be made. A profound revolution in public nursing and health policies resulted.
She’d been doodling with statistics all her life. As a nine-year old she charted the produce from her garden—the pages in her notebooks still exist. And I thought she was a nurse.
Then I read a letter written in 1865 by Jourdan Anderson, an emancipated slave responding to his former owner’s request to return from Ohio to work for him again now the war was over. A masterpiece of outrage and fury couched in formal pseudo-respectful language, he skewers his master’s arrogant and clueless invitation.
“We have concluded to test your sincerity by asking you to send us our wages for the time we served you. This will make us forget and forgive old scores, and rely on your justice and friendship in the future.” That’s $11,680 for 26 years of Jourdan’s labour and 20 years for his wife Mandy, plus interest. ”You will also please state if there has been any schools opened for the colored children in your neighborhood.” And “Mandy says she would be afraid to go back without some proof that you were disposed to treat us justly and kindly.”
And one last thing, “Say howdy to George Carter, and thank him for taking the pistol from you when you were shooting at me.”
Jourdan Anderson dictated this letter because he couldn’t read or write. Brilliant.
You may have guessed that I have discovered Brainpicker on Twitter. It’s addictive, candy for the curious and an effective aide to procrastination. I love it.
Parents Inc.
Parents worry about kids. That’s their job. But in Silicon Valley California, there are 200 schools that give a data driven report to parents on what to worry about and how much. Project Cornerstone is a non-profit organization that works with some communities and schools with programs to encourage “thriving” behaviours in children and youth, then measures their success in “assets” achieved.
Kids with 31 to 40 assets are optimal and those with under ten are vulnerable. There are external assets like positive family communication, parent involvement in schooling, positive peer influence and time at home with family. And internal assets like honesty, responsibility, self-esteem and bonding to adults at school.
At a recent PTA meeting in Los Altos, a dozen parents gathered to talk about new lunch tables, the recent walkathon and hear a report on their students from Project Cornerstone.
The Project’s glossy brochures, data analysis sheets, coloured pie charts and tables were chewed over under the direction of a cheerful lady. “Seventy-eight of our students said they were motivated to achieve but only 54 percent said they were engaged in their learning. We need to work on that gap.” “Only 32 percent say they have enough time with their family. But 73 percent say they regularly read for pleasure.” And on and on for 40 assets.
In a process not explained, the responses of children to a survey are turned into percentages of assests achieved. And good news! In this school, almost 50 percent have 21 to 30 assets, the acceptable range, and a third are in the optimal range. Thriving indeed.
As a parent you might feel comforted to think there’s a good chance that your child is in the adequate or optimal section of the pie chart asset display. Or you might discover in the list of 40 assets things you never thought to worry about—perhaps Bonding to School or Resistance Skills.
You might wonder that the intangible attributes of personality, culture, emotion and environment can be so neatly quantified into a package of numbers. (Numbers can be so reassuring or so scary.) Or even question that a school delivered survey—prior parent permission obtained—was inquiring about personal family matters.
And why does a discussion about children feel so much like the annual report of a corporation? Internal assets? External assets? Developmental Asset Profiles?
Meanwhile, you will probably still lie awake at night and hope your child can deal with a bully (Interpersonal Competence) or whether he is trying hard enough in school (Achievement Motivation).
A moment in time
It’s seven a.m. and I hear my daughter down the hall singing the good morning song I once sang to wake up our children for school. I’m not so much a guest in her home as a shadow revisiting the life I once led, feeling the fatigue, the unrecognized joy, the moments only really cherished once gone. It’s a privilege to be here, but when it’s time to go home, I will be ready.
St. Anne’s Spa in Grafton
Grafton, Ontario. June 27 and 28, 2011
My daughter said, “I want to take you to the spa, the one in Grafton called St.Anne’s . We’ll stay overnight. Think of it as a thank you for your help while we were selling our house.”
Wonderful. I had always wanted to go. St. Anne’s is renowned for its rustic stone buildings, fine food and country setting. To add details to what I knew would be a lingering impression, I plucked memory fragments during our stay:
Crescents of deep tangled flower beds in full bloom set in acres of lawn.
A towering ancient maple tree, with boughs that stretched as wide as its height over the lawn chairs.
Dinner in the dining room looking out toward Lake Ontario, misty in the distance.
A big fly jumping out of my lemon tart and the waitress yelping with surprise.
My first steam room experience. Holding onto the edge of my bench searching through the choking steam to see the door. Dodging drops of boiling water dripping from the arched ceiling.
Puzzling over the evolved design of the stone buildings that make up St.Anne’s. It stretches out higgeley piggeley from the original tiny stone cottage in opposite directions. The charm is in wondering who and why and how it all came about.
The melancholy of being alone with thoughts in the lovely setting, taking time to think of things often set aside in daily life. Missing my Mom—she would have loved this place. She would have pointed out the yellow finch perching on the flowering weiglia and the cool early morning breeze rustling the maple’s leaves. She might have said, “Listen. the tree is talking.” No maybe not. She wouldn’t have been that cheesy. But she might have.
Trying not to think of how it will be when my daughter and her family move away. How routines and thoughts will gradually settle, how it will all be alright, but getting there will be hard.
Sitting on the patio sipping fuzzy peach tea and breathing the rich scent of mock orange blossoms.
Stretching in the wellness class—feeling shoulders and hips complain and then relax into acceptance.
Eating way too much for breakfast. Eggs benedict piping hot, lots of coffee, fresh linen tablecloths.
Constantly getting wet. In the shower, the steam room, wrapped in hot wet towels, swimming pool, resistance pool, hot tub. This is no place to worry about your hair.
A Carribbean foot treatment that is less memorable than Maria, the treatment technican, (I wonder if they like being called that?). She has a bad back, hates the soups the inn serves, especially the carrot ginger soup, just got a new iphone and hasn’t a clue, the inn is having laundry problems, there are 300 staff—from gardeners to chefs—and 30 treatment rooms, and that she lives with her boyfriend in Ajax. Hmmm. my daughter’s paying for me to hear all this? Of course. It’s good gossip.
Gliding in an ancient lawn swing reading The immortal life of Henrietta Lacks, and, knowing how nice it will be to remember all this.
I hear voices in the clouds
I was sitting in a food court reading Roger Rosenblatt’s new book and waiting for my technology counsellor/advocate (my son) to arrive when two things became clear. I had found a new “voice” in Rosenblatt and the internet has become my indispensible enabler.
The road to Rosenblatt was circuitous. My lecturer at university had brought author Ian Brown in to guest lecture. He was hilarious and I followed his enquiring peripatetic articles in the Globe. I read his poignant, revealing book, The Boy in the Moon, and shortly after noted an enthusiastic reference (on Twitter) to a review of the book by Roger Rosenblatt . I found a New Yorker article by Rosenblatt, Making Toast, (read online) and I was hooked.
So I ordered up his newest (Amazon.com) because the title is irresistible, “‘Unless It Moves the Human Heart: The Craft and Art of Writing.”
I have been gathering “voices” for a while now. A “voice” has a distinctive immediacy-the book falls away and I am alone listening to the author. Usually non-fiction, but not always. Peggy Noonan has it—What I Saw at the Revolution: A Political Life in the Reagan Revolution (1990). So does Nora Ephram—I Feel Bad about my Neck (2006).
Dan Barry of the New York Times is a past master. He takes you to the lives of people caught up by forces beyond their control. I can remember a newspaper article he wrote ten years ago in which he described the walk to school by an eight-year-old girl through her dangerous Detroit inner-city neighbourhood. Chilling.
Susan Orleans is another wizard of “voice”. Besides her most famous work, The Orchid Thief, she writes regularly in the New Yorker. Not long ago I was fascinated by a story about the small but tight community in South Boston who train and race pigeons. I had not the slightest interest in pigeons, but she carried me through to the end, all with her magnetic “voice”.
A recent addition is a young writer, Leslie Shimotakahara. I check her blog regularly because she has the knack; just self revealing enough, just a broad enough scope and a rich resource of other writers to check out.
Of course Brown has “voice”. There is a piece he wrote about flying in the sunrise over East Africa that was magical. Suddenly I was in that plane drinking in the technicolour sky.
“Voices” have become my private friends. I gather them and savour their writing when I can. They seldom disappoint. I used to stumble upon them rarely. Now there’s a community out there somewhere in the cloud and it’s getting easier to pluck new friends. I never feel lonely. Thanks, internet. Thanks, Stephen.
Chasing happiness
Last Sunday the New York Times did its annual roundup of excerpts from university commencement addresses by prominent people. They included the Chief executive of General Motors, the Chief operating officer of Facebook, a political consultant, a historian, Bill Clinton, a technology entrepreneur and several writers—15 in all.
But among the inspirational cliches and advice, (Along the road, be gracious, gentle and polite.” Kenneth T. Jackson, historian), there was one speech maker whose advice was both startling and at direct odds with Bill Clinton who said, ”You should strive to find happiness every day and not believe that it comes at the end of the journey.”
Toni Morrison, novelist, took on happiness as a goal to be avoided. “Please don’t settle for happiness. It’s not good enough.”
She wanted Jefferson to have written “life, liberty and the pursuit of meaningfullness, or integrity or truth” Life without meaning, free of commitment to social justice is a trivial one, she said. “It’s looking good instead of doing good.”
Or as my mother used to say; You can’t buy happiness. You have to earn it.
