Book reviews from winter reading

I am reading a lot at the moment, having rediscovered the joys of the library in an attempt to encourage Kitty to read. However, she seems to be getting books from school, so mine are going by the wayside.

Having said that, she doesn’t think much of the books from school. One would think being in a position to allows you to force a teenager to read, i.e. a teacher, you would give them something GOOD to read.

The library on the other hand, is full of great books and even better librarians who treat every teenager in there as if they are made of solid gold. Consequently, the young adult section is full of them reading and watching movies and working on the computer.

However this is Boooorrrrinnnggg…. Apparently.

How do you get a child to read? There’s the question for today…

Anyways, this girl, who didn’t want to do anything else but read when she was young, presents this lot for your review. Here’s the scoring system.

A+ = glad I read this book. You should read it. The world is a better place for the presence of this book.
A = interesting in terms of subject matter or style. Glad I read it for that reason, but not really adding to my understanding of my reason for existence.
Ho hum = self-explanatory
UNCSYWYLRTB = under no circumstances should you waste your life reading this book.

I’m going to put the score in before I review the book and then see if I remember it right by reviewing the book. If I’m wrong I’ll rescore it.

Animal Dreams
Barbara Kingsolver
A

Codi Noline returns to her Arizona home town to keep an eye on her father, who has early stage Alzheimer’s. She works as a biology teacher even though she is a doctor like him. Her altogether more together sister Hallie is in Nicaragua working with peasant farmers to increase their yield organically, despite the Contras attempts to stop her. As Codi falls in love with Navajo local, Loyd Peregrina and begins to enjoy teaching, can her rubbish self-esteem or other circumstances in her life and past hijack her new-found happiness?

As with all Kingsolver novels, the themes are environmental issues and filial responsibility. She writes novels about having to start being a grown up in your early thirties, about how crap it feels to have to fulfil family and societal duties, and each one of her novels put forward the premise that, at the end of the day, building a strong family and caring for the environment are the only worthy concerns.

Reading a Kingsolver novel when you are feeling crap about being a selfish thirty-something in the dark corners of your soul is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, you don’t feel so goddamn alone and that takes the edge off the selfishness. Which is not such a good thing when you’re supposed to be trying to eliminate it. On the other hand, you get to the end of the novel and think, mweh… the alternative sounded pretty cool.

So why do I keep reading them? Well, firstly, they’re pretty goddamned popular. Lots of copies in the library, and I like to keep up with the Oprah book club types. Secondly, I like writers who write from their place in the world as much as I like those who concentrate on the art of writing or imagining. And unlike many female literary types (as opposed to chick lit), Kingsolver is a good writer who always throws in a couple of interesting side issues and teaches you a lot. This novel focuses on the Pueblo people of Arizona and New Mexico, their art and the amazing pueblo cities they built and still live in. Sounds like Arizona would be a good holiday trip someday.

Be Cool
Elmore Leonard
UNCSYWYLRTB

I do not get the point of Elmore Leonard. Also, I can’t read his novels now without thinking of John Travolta. And since Chili Palmer has a lot of sex in this novel, I found it quite off-putting.

In this novel, Chili Palmer (hero of movie Get Shorty) is thinking about doing the third instalment in his three movie deal, and like the previous two (Get Leo and Get Lost), writes the script by living it. Enter a former shylock colleague who gets topped while having lunch with Chili, some Russian mobsters, a potential Americana star from Odessa Texas, a totally corrupt music executive called Raji and his sidekick, the gay Samoan bodyguard, Eliot Wilhelm.

Much mayhem ensues, Chili dabbles in the music industry, despite nearly being thrown out a window by the Samoan he wins out in the end and the new movie goes into pre-production.

Boring drivel.

The Dead of Winter
Lisa Appignanesi
Can’t remember a thing about this book, but it is on my bookshelf so I must have read it.

The Globe and Mail said this was a cleverly conceived plot about the strange and terrifying power of love. Now that I read the back cover I remember: this is a crime novel set in Montreal and rural Quebec. Rural Quebec is this year’s planned road trip, so I think that’s probably why I bought it.

Madeleine Blais and Pierre Rousseau are childhood sweethearts from rural Quebec. Madeleine becomes a famous movie star and dumps lawyer Rousseau heartlessly. A couple of Christmases later, she turns up hanging in her grandmother’s barn. The police decide it’s suicide and close the case, but Pierre knows it’s murder because she had called him just beforehand. That must be how you know, then.

Pierre’s investigations in Montreal get the killer on his tail and the usual mayhem ensues before the plot is satisfactorily resolved.

Ho hum, although there are two satisfying twists to the tale that I only saw coming about half a mile off.

The Island Walkers
John Bemrose
A+ (but I’m not sure why).

This is a debut novel that got nominated for the Giller, Canada’s big literary prize, a year or two ago. Set in south-western Ontario, it charts the decline of an industrial town called Attawan through the eyes of a young man Joe Walker, whose father Alf gets involved with labour agitators who are trying to organise the town’s textile plant workers.

The labour agitator is an Irish guy called Doyle, which is a nod to the fact that many Canadian union activists and organisers of the fifties and sixties were in fact Irish immigrants. Pity they never get any credit for what they did at home in Ireland. Better keep that for the Democrats in the States, I suppose!

The town is bisected physically and class wise by a river, and it is on its edge that most of the action takes place, from the teenage couplings and rivalries described in the early part of the novel, to clandestine union activity. The mill is taken over by a Montreal company who bring in the usual productivity changes (ie redundancies), and try to root out any attempts to organise the workers by buying off their natural leader, Alf Walker, with a supervisory position.
Alf married above him (an Englishwoman he met during the war) and finds himself caught between his principles and her desire to move up a class in the town.

The portrait of Alf is very compelling, of Joe less so. I found myself seeing my father in Alf’s struggle, which is strange, as they are not alike really.

Alf’s desire to provide for his family leads him to an act which may or may not betray his comrades and lead to the death of a friend. The author switches viewpoint from Joe to Alf for this part of the novel, and Alf’s struggle with his guilt is the best third of the novel.

The first two thirds, which focus mostly on Joe’s perception of the town and his family and developing the movement of the story, are a little laboured. I never got into Joe’s skin, or developed much empathy for him. The whole plot could have done with a bit of a cull.

However, Alf and his co-workers and union buddies are very well drawn. They were all from the same ‘character group’ though, if you know what I mean. Bemrose needs to work on his range. If he can pull a group of diverse well-drawn characters together for his next novel, and go easier on the water imagery, then he’ll have a cracker on his hands.

I’m downgrading this to an A for Alf. Good starter novel though!!

The Secret River
Kate Grenville
A

Speaking of dads, mine gave me this over Christmas. Dads are generally very predictable, aren’t they? The Queen Dad usually gives me novels about a) Australia or Southern Africa, which are b) rural in setting, c) mostly historical or set in the recent past, rarely contemporary, and d) thematically, generally involve some discussion of how the principal European colonial powers messed up the rest of the planet for everyone who happened to be there first.

Sure enough, The Secret River is mostly set in colonial Australia, circa the turn of the nineteenth century, and involves transportation and other colonial outrages. This one has lots of boats, though, which gave it an additional kick of interest.

William Thornhill is a happily married waterman on the River Thames, who gets into a spot of bother due to the big freeze of 1806, steals some lumber, gets caught doing it and is sent to Australia.

Thornhill uses his waterlore to throw off the yoke of servitude, buying a sloop to bring supplies upriver to the early settlers. Eventually he makes enough money to buy his own land, which he settles with his family (who chose to be transported with him).

Trouble is, his land is sacred to the local Aboriginals.

Thornhill’s intuitive response is to try to manage the conflict and build a dialogue with the locals. Unfortunately, not all the settlers agree, and their views push him into an unfortunate choice when the conflict reaches a head.

The initial part, set in London, is an excellent description of the watermen of the Thames, not a subject of which I knew anything. And the descriptions of the Australian outback are so vivid that I felt I was there without ever having visited Australia.

Brilliant characterisation and unfolding of the eventual conflict between Aboriginals and settlers. With lots of sloops. Excellent read. Particularly if you like boats.

The Pick Up
Nadine Gordimer
A+

Because of the Queen Dad (see previous review), I have a deep interest in South African and Australian writing. Nadine Gordimer is my second favourite SA writer, after JM Coetzee who is the MASTER of contemporary, post-conflict literature (better even than our own Ronan Bennett) and who consequently should be read in detail by everyone on the planet.
Coetzee has a dark emptiness inside his stories that is so terrifying and bleak, I can’t figure how he controls it enough to write sentences, never mind complex, demanding novels. Sort of like Murakami, or Pamuk, but with a Western European sensibility.

Anyway, enough about Coetzee.

I got The Pickup in the library and have sent it back, so consequently I won’t be able to remember any of the characters names. I never can. But the book is about a rich South African white woman who falls in love with an illegal Muslim immigrant from an unnamed African country (Saharan though), and who accompanies him back to his village as his wife when he gets deported.

I thought about this book for a long time after I finished it. Unfortunately, I can’t tell you why I did without spoiling the ending.

Spoilers Spoilers Spoilers Spoilers Spoilers Spoilers Spoilers

When they get back to the unnamed country, the SA woman has to live in the family home with him, in a village on the edge of the desert. She falls in love with the desert and the lifestyle, and begins to think how they could develop wealth in the town with her trust fund. Hubbie meanwhile puts the kaibosh on that, as he spends all his time trying to get a visa to somewhere else.

Finally, he gets a green card and celebrates a chance to make it in the States. Only thing, she’ll have to live with her ditsy mother in California while he drudges in Chicago, as he’s not going to expose her to the seaminess of being an immigrant to the States. She hates her mother, so on the day before they leave, she announces that she’s staying with his family. He is astounded and furious, but leaves without her.

The end.

The dichotomy between her need to escape the capitalist wealthy countries of which she’s a privileged member, and his fierce desire to get into any of them is one I had never thought of before. Gordimer highlights this beautifully in the context of an unlikely love story.

The Wildfire Season
Andrew Pyper
A

“Ross River is a town clinging to the outside world at the end of the Yukon’s loneliest road. It is also the hiding place of Miles McEwan, the town’s hard-drinking, fist-fighting fire chief. But the slow burn of Miles’ self-imposed exile is about to explode.”

That’s the blurb on the back. This book is great for three reasons:

1 – it deals with bush fires, and the people who start them. A large part of the novel deals with the crew that fight this fire and the investigation into how it started.

2 – one of the principal characters is a total mother-fucker of a she Grizzlie. I dreamt about her for nights afterwards.

3 – one of the other characters is a watcher – sits in a big tower for months on end, spotting fires. Currently that is my ambition in life.

A rip-roaring read, excuse the pun. People who know tell me it’s exactly what the Yukon is like. Next year’s road trip maybe. Pyper has two other novels, Lost Girls, and The Trade Mission, which got excellent reviews too.

Special Topics in Calamity Physics
Marissa Pessl
UNCSYWYLRTB!!

“Beneath the foam of this exuberant debut is a dark, strong drink” – Jonathan Franzen. Yeah, well you’d know all about foam, Jonathan!

Some nice person bought me this for Christmas, and I can’t remember who because I opened my presents when I was a bit drunk on Christmas Eve and forgot to write the name of the gifter on the novel, which is how I normally remember. So apologies if the gifter reads this. The book itself is a beautifully presented hard-backed edition so I will treasure it for that reason, but ...

... what a (huge) pile of annoying shite.

Dazzling debut my arse! This girl has been writing this novel since forever. Every book she ever read is in here somewhere, the whole enterprise feels like a series of book reports, book-ended by her diary entries about the teacher she had a crush on.

Plot in brief: Precocious grade 12er with handsome witty academic dad moves to new private school and meets astoundingly charismatic teacher who has select group of cool students round for supper every Sunday. Precocious girl tries to get in with the ‘in’ crowd. Weird, murder-related stuff happens, with completely OTT ending involving the Minute Men. Sound vaguely familiar in parts to anyone who has ever read the Secret History?

Ms Pessl says in the afterword (when did they become de riguer) that she thanks ‘my amazing husband Nic, my Clyde, who graciously watches his wife disappear alone into a dark room with her computer for ten or twelve hours at a time and asks no questions’.

I don’t think Nic is the one needs to be asking the questions love, if you don’t mind me saying. What is Nic doing while you’re in the dark room, eh?

And by the way, if you arrange your chapters as Core Curriculum (Required Reading), with such chapter titles as A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, or Madame Bovary, would it be too much to ask that there be a CONNECTION between the chapter title and the content?

I present my case on this novel with a random excerpt:

“When I’d raised my hand in AP English to answer Ms Simpson’s question regarding Primary Themes in Invisible Man (Elison 1952) (which turned up on Summer reading lists with the regularity of corruption in Cameroon), incredibly, I wasn’t Quite fast enough; another kid, Radley Clifton, pudgy, with an eroded chin (BTW - That novel that E. Annie Proulx wrote about a guy, pudgy, with an eroded chin, i.e. The Shipping News, was very popular and often re-read by people, by the way, so you should probably think twice about ripping off lines from it again, Missy!), already had his fat hand in the air. While his answer wasn’t brilliant or inspired, it also wasn’t crude or Calibanesque, and it dawned on me, as Ms. Simpson handed out a nineteen page syllabus only covering Fall Term, perhaps St. Gallwey wouldn’t be such Child’s Play, such Easy Victory.

Sigh. Five hundred and four pages of this shite. With drawings.

You’ll be glad to hear that Radley beat her to valedictorian. Naturally, there were extenuating circumstances, of the kind you’d find in that US magazine that keeps track of UFO sightings and Elvis and such like.

UTTER SHITE.

Three Days to Spring - here's the first Fly of the year

This morning is typical Paddy's weekend weather.

Wet. Grey. Dull.

Enough said about the weather. Spring is coming in three days. The entire population of Canada is as stir crazy and sick of winter as I am, so the spring equinox is A BIG DEAL here.

Just to put the tin hat on the crappy sports day that was yesterday, Montreal beat Toronto to get into the playoffs and Toronto are out.

This is a big deal apparently. Himself is very upset. As is the boy wonder nephew Branden.

I'm talking about ice hockey by the way.

I watched a bit of the game (game, not match, doncha know) and as far as I could see Toronto were the best at beating the other team up, but apparently that doesn't count. Also, while Toronto were beating up the Canadiens, the umpires just stand around and watch. I asked Himself why they didn't stop the fighting and he said they wait until the players fall over before they intervene.

For guys on skates they can fight on their feet for a remarkably long time.

And apparently it's okay to ram another player at speed into the goal uprights.

I have no time for any game that involves body armour.

The Queen Parents called at some unearthly hour of the morning (for them, not me) to comfort me in my hour of woe and the Queen Dad informed me that Ireland had knocked Pakistan out of the Cricket World Cup and were into the last eight. So not to worry about the rugby outcome.

And then I saw Luke had put the same comment on my blog this morning.

This is what I love about Irish people.... they find comfort where they can get it.

Here's a thought... if by some miracle Ireland gets into the World Cup cricket semi-final will you all get time off work to go to the pub and watch the match?

I mean it would only be fair to support the cricket lads the same way as the football lads, wouldn't it?

And then Roddy Doyle could write a book about Fitzer and Paddy Mac and whoever paddling to the Carribean in a souped up Ford Transit van and how they got in with the reggae heads and had a few smokes and realised that not all foreigners were terrible.

Anyways, enough about the weather and the game, I got the first Fly of the year the other day.

I mean The Stinging Fly. It's a creative writing compendium from Ireland. Accent Monkey bought a subscription for me for Christmas. Nice pressie. You get told about it. You forget about it. Then one day you come home from work and there it is in the mail box.

The name comes from a Plato quote (about Socrates): God has especially appointed me to this city, so as though it were a large thoroughbred horse which because of its great size is inclined to be lazy and needs the stimulation of some stinging fly...

Edited by Declan Meade, it contains essays, creative writing, poetry, reviews, photos and new lyrics. This issue has an excerpt from Eugene McCabe's new novel in progress, which is about nuns and which is a perfect short story in itself.

Good stuff generally. Particularly the poetry. However, I am at a loss to understand the three short stories in the review. I never did get the point of short stories if they weren't written by Alice Munro. I didn't really like any of these ones. Someone should tell me sometime what the current thinking on the short story is, as I am too lazy to research it myself.

And the two essays were not essays as I understand the form, although maybe the form has moved on and I have not realised.

However, as always in Ireland, the poetry more than makes up for any weakness in the prose writing end of things.

I'm trying to pick a favourite, but I can't, so here's one of the ones I liked, and I'm a big fan of Caroline Dowling's writing anyways, with apologies for printing it here if it's not a good vibe, etc.

The Cardigan

Her face flushed

When he gave it to her

unexpectedly on

Christmas night.

He'd picked darker colours,

brown and black

trimmed with a

cream crochet thread.

He said it suited her.

She said it felt tight.

Hemmed in her shoulders

strait-jacketed her arms

chest bursting when

fastened. Weeks of

wearing helped her grow

into it. Moulded to her

shape she felt every

knitted row - cable after

cable of blanket stitch,

garter stitch, back stitch,

stocking stitch, coiling into

patterns of Mondays and

Tuesdays, wash days and

Mass days. On Saturday

nights out she'd leave it

open, her underneath top

cheering on her red lipstick.

Sometimes after chips on

the way home he'd tell her

to button it. She could

do it with her eyes closed

It costs fifty euro to be a patron of The Stinging Fly. They don't have enough patrons. There's your birthday and Christmas presents sorted for a year or two.

Off you all go then.

Happy Paddy's Day my arse

This afternoon, after a poxy cold wet icy morning, I eventually venture out into the aftermath of last night's ICE STORM to go shopping. I have to endure OIRISH music in the supermarket and stupid drunk people with shamrocks painted on their cheeks saying 'top of the morning' to each other. I have to endure the racist taunts of the wanker wearing the union jack jacket in the Liquor Store. I have to endure Blockbusters on a Saturday afternoon which has NO MOVIES I WANT TO SEE.

And then I finally get home and check the news and find out that we've lost the Six Nations Championship by a whisker, a mere three points.

Again.

WHAT DO WE HAVE TO EFFING DO TO WIN THE EFFING SIX NATIONS CHAMPIONSHIP?

WHAT?

We're the second best team on the planet and we still can't effing win the poxy six nations championship. In a single season, we cannot beat England, Scotland, Wales, France and Italy.

WHY?

Those perfidious French BASTARDS stole our six nations championship away from us again!!!

By scraping a victory against us a few weeks ago, they edged to the top of the table today. And beat us by three points!

BUT THAT'S NOT WHY!

France had to beat Scotland by twenty four points or more to win the Championship.

So Scotland let them win by twenty seven points.

Just to be on the safe side.

THAT'S REALLY WHY!!

Our so-called Celtic cousins, forever more to be known in my house as wee skanky traitors , helped them.

IT WAS ST. PATRICK'S DAY, you miserable sheep farming bastards...! Could you not kick the effing ball straight for once in your wee lives?

Accent Monkey's over there for the weekend, I hope she's giving people a piece of her mind!

Things I love-hate about Canada - part the third

Quality of life.

That's why we're all here. Apparently. Those of us that are left in Nova Scotia are here for the quality of life.

The Nova Scotia government PAYS for, using MY tax dollars, advertisments saying 'Come to Life'. Meaning, come to Nova Scotia for the quality of life.

We're so broke we can only afford three words. The other six are too expensive.

They show this ad, USING MY TAX DOLLARS, to ME, on my tv channel.

After I stopped shouting 'stop showing the fucking advert to me, I'm already here', I thought about it and now I have one question.

Define it.

They never do.

If they did, those of us that are left would leave on the next train.

If we could afford the prices.

Having said that, I am here, I am still here, and now that it's March and the winter is over, I do like the quality of life here.

There's no traffic.

There's hardly any yuppies and they all live in Bedford so I only have to see them when there's a Tory meeting I have to go to for work.

The pubs are nice.

The restaurants are great.

The scenery is awesome in a quiet way - I've burbled on about it enough not to have to describe it again.

The people are lovely, even if they are too polite and self-contained for my liking.

The food (in the summer) is fresh and organic and reasonable.

The book shops are pretty cool.

The conversation is pretty intellectual.

BUT.....

and this is a big but....

most people who live here can't afford any of those things.

So,

COME TO LIFE.

If you are a reasonably well off and healthy just pre-retiree.

Nova Scotia is the Florida of the North.

Get used to it boys and girls.

Either market yourself as such, or stop putting that stupid ad out.

Things I love-hate about Canada - part the second

Politeness.

As most of you will know, Canadians have the reputation for being the politest people on earth.

Canadians talk about this a lot, they are quite proud of this tag. Nova Scotians add to it their tag of 'friendliest people in the world'.

Coming from the land of a hundred thousand welcomes I know what a ball of smoke the concept of friendliness can be, so I'm not even going there today.

The question about Canadian, or Nova Scotian in particular, politeness is not whether this is true or not, but why it exists in the first place.

So I went rooting around Wikipedia for some answers. And lo and behold, there's a theory about politeness. Why am I not surprised? There's a theory about everything, isn't there?

Politeness Theory

Politeness consists of attempting to save face for another. Simply put, model persons want to maintain others’ face, but nevertheless are often forced to commit face threatening acts. Thus, politeness strategies are developed in order to formulate message in order to save the hearer’s face when face threatening acts are inevitable or desired. This means that the speaker avoids embarrassing or making the listener feel uncomfortable.

So, politeness is a construct designed to get other people to acquiesce to your needs without feeling that they have lost face.

And here was me thinking that politeness was 'a good thing to do'.

Apparently, the majority of Canadians believe the same, telling pollsters recently that they were polite because that was how they were reared. That would explain a lot. In Nova Scotia politeness is often given as a necessity rather than a gift. I am of the opinion that if you don't feel like being polite then you should be grumpy. Therefore, I HATE IT when people are polite to me because they have to be and then glower at me because of it. Here in Nova Scotia, mostly in work, I often come across politeness which barely conceals disdain, contempt, aggression, rage, passive acceptance of being trampled underfoot, or just plain dislike.

I'm still not done with feeling crap when it happens.

I often think it is me. My politeness techniques are different to theirs and the difference grates on them, or so I rationalise it to myself. I get archly teasing about my 'Irish temper' and my 'Irish directness' (in the Nova Scotian 'I am polite but you are pissing me off so much I am grinding my teeth, so I am going to put you down so I can feel better about the whole thing' manner which they have nailed perfectly in this province).

But if politeness is a construct designed to get other people to acquiesce to your demands, then that's a whole different kettle of fish, isn't it?

Back to Wiki:

There are four main types of politeness strategies: bald on record, negative politeness, positive politeness, and off-the-record or indirect strategy.

First, bald on record strategies do not attempt to minimize the threat to the hearer’s face. This strategy is most often utilized by speakers who closely know their audience. With the bald on record strategies there is a direct possibility that the audience will be shocked or embarrassed by the strategy. For example, a bald on record strategy might be to tell your sister to “do the dishes. It’s your turn.”

This would be my normal way of operating in the world. I assume everyone I meet is a friend I don't know yet, so I assume that if I don't closely know them that I soon will, so I go for them baldheaded.

This tends to terrify the shit out of your average Nova Scotian. Those people who are not terrified become my friends. Easy peasy.

The second strategy is positive politeness and this strategy attempts to minimize the threat to the hearers face. This strategy is most commonly used in situations where the audience knows each other fairly well. Quite often hedging and attempts to avoid conflict are used. For example, a positive politeness strategy might be the request “I know that you’ve been really busy lately, but could you do the dishes?”

Normally, if someone has been really busy lately, I will do the dishes for them. So I don't tend to use this one too much. Consequently, I am really bad at it, and even if I do use it, I come across as being sarcastic and so it generally backfires.

The third strategy is negative politeness which presumes that the speaker will be imposing on the listener. The potential for awkwardness or embarrassment is greater than in bald on record strategies and positive politeness strategies. Negative face is the desire to remain autonomous. Thus, a request without consideration of the listener’s negative face might be uncomfortable: “I need $5” is awkward if five dollars is outside the recipient to the question’s financial capabilities. But if the speaker, knowing that the listener wants to maintain their autonomy, adds an out for the listener like “I know you’ve been kinda strapped for cash, but could I borrow $5?”, the listener is more likely to give them that money because the request showed a respect for their ability to maintain autonomy.

I tend not to borrow money from friends unless I absolutely have to, it being the root of some evil. Having said that, when I am asking for something that will involve a Canadian losing face, I tend to forget (for that read 'don't bother') to add the required add on.

This is where I hit the wall in Canada. In Ireland if you do this, the person will either say no, or show through a facial expression that they really don't want to do it. At which point you back off and say 'don't worry about it'. At which point the Irish person would either not worry about it, or spend twenty minutes telling you it was NO PROBLEM while you said, NO NO, DON'T WORRY ABOUT IT, and face is saved by having a row over who was prepared to be put out the most.

In Canada they don't do this. They just stare at you with an expression of panic. The more insecure ones flap their hands around a lot. I am always at a loss for words at this stage and this kind of encounter drives me crazy.

It doesn't help that I still don't really know what is an acceptable favour to ask a Nova Scotian. Not very much of a favour or a HUMUNGOUS one I think. In between ones leave them flailing.

The final politeness strategy outlined by Brown and Levinson is the indirect strategy. This strategy uses indirect language and removes the speaker from the potential to being imposing. For example, a speaker using the indirect strategy might merely say “wow, it’s getting cold in here” insinuating that it would be nice if the listener would get up and turn up the thermostat without directly asking the listener to do so.

This of course is what girlfriends do to their boyfriends. To no effect. I did it this morning actually. Woke Himself up and said 'I'd love some coffee'. To which he said 'mrufufrahaslummmnn' and went back to sleep.

Bastard. Had to get up and make my own coffee.

Anyways, politeness, the ultimate fitting in to a new place test.

I'm probably scoring a C minus at the moment.

Things I love-hate about Canada - part the first

Northern Light

I just finished Jane Urqhuart's The Underpainter last night. A great novel, beautifully understated in Urqhuart's manner. Apparently she came up with it during a stint at Memorial University in Newfoundland.

It's the story of Austin Fraser, an American minimalist painter who is telling his life story from his vantage point at the end of his career. His life and work spans the early part of the twentieth century.

From his teenage years he spent his summers painting landscapes on the Canadian shores of Lake Superior and Lake Ontario.

The story is about what an utter bollox he was to everyone he ever met, including his muse, lover and long time friend Sara, whom he painted for fifteen summers and then abandoned when a painter friend remarked on how cold his paintings were, how loveless.

Reminded me a lot of an ex of mine actually.

But that's not what I'm writing about tonight.

The novel talks about light a lot, in particular the Canadian winter light. In one particular scene, he has a little panic about his life, after inadvertently causing disaster to visit some friends, he travels to see Sara who must ski across the lake for a day to meet up with him. He sits in his hotel waiting for her to appear on the horizon.

The shopkeeper told me the temperature was thirty below zero. But the sun, the white blaze was everywhere and so the chill seemed irrelevant.

Or

I sat in a room blade bright with sun. Prisms angled towards me from the bevelled edges of mirrors, and anything made of metal - the lamp base, a castor on the foot of my bed, my zippo lighter - glared.

This is my world in the winter. And it's breathtakingly, achingly, deceivingly beautiful. I wake up every morning facing the most glorious colours of dawn streaming in the eastern window of our room.

Then I go into the eastern facing bathroom and look in the mirror and see EVERY LINE AND WRINKLE AND GREY HAIR AND FRECKLE AND BLOCKED PORE.

There's a lot to be said for the soft fuzz of an Irish dawn drizzle.

Billion dollar bust in winter's last gasp

I'm being hopeful about the last gasp of winter.

The billion dollar bust is today's shock announcement that Halifax is withdrawing from the Commonwealth Games bidding process, due to the proposed bid at $1.6 billion being about a billion dollars over budget.

As a colleague said today, the Tories, they'd fuck up the Lord's Prayer.

So you've got a cabal of Tories that run this province. And some of them are in the government. And the rest of them are in key positions of influence and authority around the province. And the ones that are in the government hired some of the other ones to run the bid process and gave them $14.3 million of my tax dollars to come up with a winning bid.

That we could afford.

So the lads went off and toured the Commonwealth in first class luxury and came back with a great bid.

For about a billion more than we can afford.

And then there must have been some kind of row and the political Tories shafted the merely influential Tories, and now there's some kind of Tory bloodbath going on.

I'm a simple person, who doesn't really get the nuances of politics in this province too well, as I am constantly being told by the clever people I work with.

But here's my question:

Did the political Tories not think of calling the influential Tories to tell them that the funding cap was going to be about a billion dollars, and to bring in a bid round about that amount?

Obviously not.

If not, why not?

In the spirit of the cbc.ca Test the Nation quiz happening next week, is the answer:

a) they're complete effing morons who shouldn't be in charge of a £12 billion budget anymore;
b) they shafted the influential Tories because they didn't want the Games to happen;
c) they thought they could get some more money out of the federal Tories, and gambled for the big win and lost, or
d) some other obscure Nova Scotian reason that I'm too simple (and by that I mean European) to understand?

Anyways, I'm waiting for Redser Byrne to send me his grateful thanks from Glesgey, who are sure to win the bid now.

Even I was embarrassed today and I'm a come from away.

From Myles, via Accent Monkey

Lunar eclipse from our bedroom window, Saturday night

Sandy Cove near Halifax, Saturday

How well do we know each other

Here's a bit of email fun from Matt in the States. You can tell Matt and Queenie are REAL busy today... the answers in the example are mine. The numbering is not mine!

Welcome to the new edition of getting to know your friends. Okay here's what you're supposed to do, and try not to be lame and spoil the fun! Just copy (do not forward) this entire e-mail and paste into a new e-mail that you can send. Change all the answers so that they apply to you Then send this to a whole bunch of people you know, INCLUDING the person that sent it to you.

1. What is your occupation? policy analyst

2. What color are your socks right now? Grey wool

3. What are you listening to right now? The sound of the construction workers in my office

4. What was the last thing that you ate? Belfast burger and fries

5. Can you drive a stick shift? yes

6. If you were a crayon, what color would you be? Cerulean blue

7. Last person you spoke to on the cell phone? Leonard Preyra

8. Do you like the person who sent this to you? Yes, I do, Matt, he's my agony aunt of choice

9. How old are you today? 36 years, seven months and three weeks old

10. Favorite drink? Barolo, coffee, grapefuit juice

11. What is your favorite sport to watch? rugby

12. Have you ever dyed your hair? Have I ever not!

13. Pets? not currently

15. What was the last movie you watched? Lawrence of Arabia last sunday on the history channel

16. Favorite day of the year? Christmas Eve

17. What do you do to vent anger? shout at the nearest person, write on my blog

18. What was your favorite toy as a child? my rocking horse

20. Hugs or kisses? hugs. definitely

21. Cherries or Blueberries? blueberries

22. Do you want your friends/family to email you back? yes

23. Who is most likely to respond? my mother

24. Who is least likely to respond? My brother

25. Living arrangements? Apartment on Chocolate Lake, Halifax

26. When was the last time you cried? Yesterday when I said goodbye to my friend Kevin who is going to live in Vietnam
28. Who is the friend you have had the longest that you are sending this to? Matt - 1990

29. What did you do last night? cooked supper, scavenged with Himself in the posh part of town (garbage night - he's an Aquarian), and got a walnut antique washstand with mirror and a mahogany wine rack, parked in Dingle Cove and looked at the stars for a while due to teenager taking over apartment, went home, braided her hair, read in bed

30. Favorite smells? mown grass, grass, cooking garlic and ginger

31. What inspires you? the opportunity to become competent at something really difficult

32. What are you afraid of? being old and alone

33. Plain, cheese or spicy hamburgers? belfast burgers

34. Favorite dog breed? Jack Russell

35. How many years at your current job? 1.5

36. Favorite day of the week? Saturday

37. How many states have you lived in? Countries - Ireland, Spain, Canada

38. Favorite holiday? Labour Day weekend

39. Ever driven a Motorcycle or heavy machinery? No

40. Do you have a house phone that is NOT cordless? no

Faffing around with some good ole Kentucky boys

That's what I did in work today.

Gosh, Queenie's job is so laid back and interesting, I hear you all say.

I wisht.

Electricity generation Fuel Adjustment Mechanisms. That involve Fuel Adjustment Factors. Which is where the faffing part comes in.

With some consultants from Kentucky. One of whom sounded just like Jim Rockford from the Rockford Files.

And a load of lawyers in black suits. And some environmentalists. Who were the people not wearing the suits.

For five hours.

Environmentalists don't get to bill for the hours they spend at these sessions.

And neither does Queenie.

Sigh.

Anyways, off to Cape Breton tomorrow for a little spin around the offshore industry.

I always wanted to drive from the top of Cape Breton back to Halifax via Stellarton at one in the morning in February.

The last time I did this trip with this driver we nearly died and I got the worst flu of my life.

So those of you who believe in that kind of stuff, pray for me.

And those of you who know with whom I am travelling, stop laughing.

See you all Saturday!

Maybe...

Katharine's an Auld Dog

Katharine can’t be bothered to remember how old she is, but she remembers the Berlin Wall coming down and the Tiananmen Square massacre so that’s all right then.

She likes old stuff and drinking pots and pots of tea. Like Queenie she has come to Canada from Dublin, unlike Queenie she has settled in Niagara.

Nothing beats a good night’s sleep. I’m evangelical about sleep. When I was a small child I often daydreamed about a perfect world where everything could be done from bed (including driving). Thanks to my laptop, mobile phone, and the internet I’m well on my way to achieving that dream.

If I’m not expecting a visitor I won’t answer the door. The chances of encountering something nasty or boring are too high. People are too quick to open doors and answer phones to people they don’t know, and with a little bit of reflection probably wouldn’t want to know. Easy intimacy is two people lying about themselves to each other. Privacy is the greatest gift, don’t piss it away for a high myspace rating.

Music is dangerous. A very dear friend once said ‘You’d be this perfect girlfriend, except you hate music’. I don’t hate music, I just don’t trust it. Music manipulates your emotions. It brings you to undesired highs and lows, it pushes out all self and breeds itself into your unconscious. That’s its power, and it is wonderful and dangerous, and utterly, utterly untrustworthy. You have to be really careful with the music you listen to because it fucks with your soul.

A man who cooks is a fine thing. Just as long as he’s not prissy or prideful about it. Cooking is not an opportunity to indulge in high-tech, shiny-cock, gadget buying and it’s not something extraordinary that demands lavish praise. It’s a natural expression of love, millions of women all over the earth do it every day.

I remember remembering being in the womb. I was 4 and my parents left me with my grandmother for the winter. They put me to bed and left. I had a nightlight shaped like Donald Duck, but I was still very lonely and scared. So I curled my knees up to my chest under the blanket and put my thumb to my mouth and the moment I did it I was stunned by a sudden flood of feeling. It was something I had no words for, and still don’t really. It was complete peace. Not just the absence of pain or worry, not just security; it was something completely alien from anything I knew and yet it was utterly familiar. I remember thinking very clearly ‘I have felt this before’. But I could not remember having ever curled up like that. It was very strange, and it was the first moment I ever became aware of memory as a part of my being. That there were parts of me I did not know I knew. I think discovering these unknowns is one of our reasons for living.

Every woman should spend at least one day a week braless. It’s good for your circulation. And don’t buy M&S. They’re rubbish. Conversely, every woman should buy a set of outrageously expensive underwear for herself once a year. Not valentine’s day red, lacy crap but something really stunning. If you’re going to be poked by underwire it might as well be by something that makes you look great.

I have never believed in looking for love. Sex yes, love no. Apart from anything, sex is more reliably found. And yet, without the emotional connection, it is more often than not crap. So it’s better not to overthink the whole matter and just get on with what you’d be doing anyway.

I believe in God. But I don’t think it’s polite to go on about it. I pray, though.

We need to live with animals. Animals remind us that there are other lives intersecting our that are not human, and do not have human needs or priorities.

I’m completely stunned by the fact that I’m living the life I’ve always wanted because it’s not like I had a grand strategy. If anything I followed the path of most illogic. My life has been a concatenation of random events, predictable disasters, and strange coincidences. Most of my ‘important’ decisions were based on dreams that I had. And yet here I am, doing a job I love in a great location. Life is very, very strange.

Auld Dog is an intermittent column on this blog, where people offer their pearls of wisdom for the rest of us to ponder. If you would like to be an Auld Dog, send 600 - 700 words of wisdom, along with a bio and photo (or I'll write/ pick them) to auld.dog@gmail.com and I'll post it here.

Compromise is good. And cheap when you go to Frenchies

Seeing as Kitty-Brooke (compromise is good) got an A plus in her poetry assignment last week (yes, an A plus) we decided, on the way back from the island on Sunday, that we all deserved a little trip to Guy Frenchies in Digby to celebrate.

I can't remember if I've mentioned Frenchies on this blog before. I'm sure I have, but I've never devoted an article to it. But now that the New Yorker beat me to it, with a recent two pager on the joys of the chain, I suppose I should fill in for the rest of you.

Guy Frenchies is, quite simply, the best clothes store in the world. There's a whole chain of them in Nova Scotia, but Digby has one of the better ones.

The best thing to do is what is known as a Frenchies' run - get a carful of women and hit Yarmouth, Weymouth, Digby - the three best stores - in one day.

So what is it?

It's like TJ Maxx, only cheaper.

$4.50 for jeans or a skirt.
$3.25 for a top
$5.25 for a dress or a suit
$9 for a coat
Assorted household items for less than a dollar.
Shoes, books, handbags (good handbag section actually), belts, vintage stuff, you get my drift.

The stock is mostly middle America brands, weekend clothes - LL Bean, Gap, French Connection, Calvin Klein, Liz Clairborne, Hilfiger, that kind of thing. They are shipped in on the Yarmouth ferry in big consignments that get transferred around the chain. That is why the three stores nearest Yarmouth are the best. The Halifax Frenchies' are crap.

The stock is unpacked and poured onto large tables every hour for you to sort through. You get an enormous orange laundry basket when you go into the shop and everyone pushes their laundry basket around with their foot while they browse. When you're done you bring your laundry basket into a changing room and try everything on. Then you push it up to the counter and they pack everything in a big black bin liner and off you go!

The tables are sorted into Men and Women - Pants, Sweaters, Blouses/ Shirts, TeeShirts.

Men at one end. Women at the other.

The dresses, suits and coats are hung on racks around the wall.

The bags and belts and other stuff are in the middle.

Unlike TJ Maxx, Frenchies in Digby is full of nice people who spot things in your size and hand them to you and suggest you buy them.

I nearly convinced Kitty-Brooke's cousin to buy a blood-orange coloured, fur-trimmed leather jacket with matching bag.

It was fantastic....! A little too small for me.

Nearly never caught the bird, though, she contented herself with a couple of sweaters.

We all got sweaters.

I got a gorgeous black wool cardi, a slinky black jumper and a big, cuddly, blue, striped wool jumper as all my jumpers and sweaters are starting to get very stressed what with being worn all the time due to the cold.

Himself got three sweaters including a really nice, soft, taupe fleecy one he picked all by Himself (that was not black and didn't have a hoodie attached to it even)!

Kitty-Brooke, being the girl with the A plus (did I mention that it was a plus), got an entire wardrobe of identical black top thingies including cardies and long wool coat cardies, and wrap-around cardies, and hoodies, and tops, and some assorted, identical denim skirts and jeans, and other black stuff that we get the occasional peek at when she deigns to model something for us.

And in exciting news from the 'you really should wear your snow boots in the snow' front, apparently snow boots can be worn to school when accompanied by slinky denim skirts and Queenie's last pair of M&S super-shine, black opaque tights.

Himself not unreasonably (he thought) pointed out that the wearing of a shortish skirt merely meant that a different part of the leg would be cold.

He has turned into my DAD.

As I pointed out, compromise is good.

Plus we bought a new set of dinner plates, OJ glasses, and a cool black ceramic Japanese sushi dish to use as a cheese board.

And six ceramic votive holders for the bathroom for the convenience of certain ladies who need to have long, relaxing, scented baths after days getting A pluses which are bookended by absolute 'hours' waiting for the bus in the snow.

$62 the lot.

hahahahahahahahahahahaha.... sound of Queenie laughing all the way to the kitchen cupboards to stack her new designer plates with the antique ones she got in Mahone Bay flea market last summer for two bucks.

I have gotten more designer dishware in that store than I could have dreamed of in a lifetime. It helps that most of the designer dishware is European so no one else in the shop knows what it is.
No, I'm not telling anyone else!!

No. Not even for free BBQ all summer.

NOOO!!!!

Once, I nipped into Frenchies when Himself was getting a Tims and got a hand-painted, actual Chinese, Chinese ceramic vase for two bucks. It's worth nearly a hundred.

NOOOOO!!

Anyways, we piled all the loot in Albert's ample ass, alongside the half of venison, the three rabbits, the pile of mackerel, the three lobsters, and the enormous ham we were hauling back from the island.

Sometimes I think we should just call ourselves the Clampetts and be done with it.

Himself of course likes nothing better than acting the Huck in the big city, and consequently spent all weekend pretending he was going to put rabbit snares in the Public Gardens (to freak out the city girls he roomies with), and he swears he's going to put my rocking chair on the roof of the car this summer.

Snowing snowing snowing snowing snowing

When is it going to effin' stop snowing?

Christ a'mighty I am sick of this.

All over the world people are enjoying Mardi Gras in the sun and it's still snowing here.

Well, only a few more days left in February and then it will be the last month for major snow.

By that I mean March. With the potential for snow each and every one of its thirty one days.

I can't believe I am clinging to such pathetic straws.

It doesn't usually snow in april.

But that doesn't mean there still isn't snow on the ground.

Sigh.

Snowy Friday in Nova Scotia

Hiking at Indian Lake, Timberlea

Teenagers...

Teenagers are great. Everyone should run out and buy one right now.

How else do you get your own sitcom, starring yourself, a younger verson of yourself, a person who morphs from being your boyfriend to being eerily like your father and back again (really freaky), with a script made up of every boring cliched truism your mother ever threw at you?

How else do they (truisms) mysteriously reappear in your life if not in the guise of your own pearls of wisdom to a teenager?

It's true then. Just when you think you are finally free of your mother's voice in your head, you wake up and it's coming out of your mouth!

Teenagers are different in every generation, but they are all the same.

Teenagers...

Go through every towel in the house, including the bath mat (what does she DO with the bath mat?) during obligatory daily teenage bathroom marathons, and then store them in balled piles on the floor in their room for you to find.

Create an obstacle course using the rest of their clothes, bags, school books and other deitrus, in order to make rescuing the towels that much more exciting.

Love to cook drippy foods including grilled cheese, cottage cheese, grated cheese, milk, eggs, or melted chocolate several times a day.

Hate to clean up cheese in any of its forms.

Don't appear to eat anything; nonetheless, when they're around the fridge is completely emptied of food every four days.

Need you to go job-hunting in the shopping mall with them on Saturday, even if you'd rather chew your own arm off than go to a shopping mall on a Saturday.

Only job hunt in all the stores that sell all the stuff that they like and not in the stores that are actually looking for staff.

Turn the puppy eyes on full blast when you brush pass the sale rack in the job hunting stores.

Get really annoyed when you don't remember their friends' names, even though you have never met any of these people, because they all live on planet MSN.

Spend ALL DAY and ALL NIGHT on MSN with their legions of mysterious friends. (At least it's cheaper than the phone).

Decide that your blog name for them is stupid and insist on picking their own (Brooke).

Think there's nothing wrong with playing the same song eleventy million times in one day, particularly when it's Eminem and they know dad HATES Eminem.

Laugh when dad's pain is being broadcast through small, strangled little cries of despair at the Eminemness of the world.

Fiddle/ brush/ cut/ dye their hair obsessively and don't mind leaving all the deitrus on the bathroom floor, sink, shelves for you to admire.

And dispose of if you feel the urge.

Wear clogs to school in the snow when there's a perfectly nice pair of suede fur-lined boots on offer.

Wear tee-shirts to school in the snow when there's a wardrobe full of perfectly nice sweaters to choose from.

Laugh till they puke when you say they should borrow one of your hats to wear to school.

Laugh till they puke when you say that about any of your clothes.

Watch the same episode of Seinfeld, The Simpsons, Friends over and over again without appearing to notice the similarity.

Spend most of the day lying on the sofa wrapped in their sooky blanket watching television.

HOW, HOW, HOW is it possible for them to do that and trash the house at the same time? I can't remember how I did that part!

Ah teenagers.... it's all coming back to me now.... those years of 'torture': i.e. being waited on hand and foot by harassed parents who were mutedly furious at my laziness and messiness, but so relieved I was a) alive, b) at home, c) not a crack hoe on the streets of Dublin, that they put up with the mess and the noise.

At least I am not dealing with my attitude to authority from that time.

And now, finally, I get why I always got to sleep in on the weekends...

The best thing about teenagers is that on Saturday and Sunday mornings, they sleep. And Sleep. And Sleep. And Sleep.

We creep around to make sure the sleeping happens for as long as possible.

No MSN, no Eminem, access to the bathroom, a clean kitchen, tv off.....

Himself is blissfully making strawberry pancakes, I'm finishing off this and then we're planning a forest hike for later. Sleeping is good. Long hikes in the forest are conducive to sleep. Therefore, a hiking we will go today!!!

Barack Obama's campaign speech

Let me begin by saying thanks to all you who've traveled, from far and wide, to brave the cold today.

We all made this journey for a reason. It's humbling, but in my heart I know you didn't come here just for me, you came here because you believe in what this country can be. In the face of war, you believe there can be peace. In the face of despair, you believe there can be hope. In the face of a politics that's shut you out, that's told you to settle, that's divided us for too long, you believe we can be one people, reaching for what's possible, building that more perfect union.

That's the journey we're on today. But let me tell you how I came to be here. As most of you know, I am not a native of this great state. I moved to Illinois over two decades ago. I was a young man then, just a year out of college; I knew no one in Chicago, was without money or family connections. But a group of churches had offered me a job as a community organizer for $13,000 a year. And

I accepted the job, sight unseen, motivated then by a single, simple, powerful idea - that I might play a small part in building a better America.

My work took me to some of Chicago's poorest neighborhoods. I joined with pastors and lay-people to deal with communities that had been ravaged by plant closings. I saw that the problems people faced weren't simply local in nature - that the decision to close a steel mill was made by distant executives; that the lack of textbooks and computers in schools could be traced to the skewed priorities of politicians a thousand miles away; and that when a child turns to violence, there's a hole in his heart no government could ever fill.

It was in these neighborhoods that I received the best education I ever had, and where I learned the true meaning of my Christian faith. After three years of this work, I went to law school, because I wanted to understand how the law should work for those in need. I became a civil rights lawyer, and taught constitutional law, and after a time, I came to understand that our cherished rights of liberty and equality depend on the active participation of an awakened electorate. It was with these ideas in mind that I arrived in this capital city as a state Senator.

It was here, in Springfield, where I saw all that is America converge - farmers and teachers, businessmen and laborers, all of them with a story to tell, all of them seeking a seat at the table, all of them clamoring to be heard. I made lasting friendships here - friends that I see in the audience today.

It was here we learned to disagree without being disagreeable - that it's possible to compromise so long as you know those principles that can never be compromised; and that so long as we're willing to listen to each other, we can assume the best in people instead of the worst.

That's why we were able to reform a death penalty system that was broken. That's why we were able to give health insurance to children in need. That's why we made the tax system more fair and just for working families, and that's why we passed ethics reforms that the cynics said could never, ever be passed.

It was here, in Springfield, where North, South, East and West come together that I was reminded of the essential decency of the American people - where I came to believe that through this decency, we can build a more hopeful America.

And that is why, in the shadow of the Old State Capitol, where Lincoln once called on a divided house to stand together, where common hopes and common dreams still, I stand before you today to announce my candidacy for President of the United States. I recognize there is a certain presumptuousness - a certain audacity - to this announcement. I know I haven't spent a lot of time learning the ways of Washington. But I've been there long enough to know that the ways of Washington must change.

The genius of our founders is that they designed a system of government that can be changed.

And we should take heart, because we've changed this country before. In the face of tyranny, a band of patriots brought an Empire to its knees. In the face of secession, we unified a nation and set the captives free. In the face of Depression, we put people back to work and lifted millions out of poverty. We welcomed immigrants to our shores, we opened railroads to the west, we landed a man on the moon, and we heard a King's call to let justice roll down like water, and
righteousness like a mighty stream.

Each and every time, a new generation has risen up and done what's needed to be done. Today we are called once more - and it is time for our generation to answer that call.

For that is our unyielding faith - that in the face of impossible odds, people who love their country can change it.

That's what Abraham Lincoln understood. He had his doubts. He had his defeats. He had his setbacks. But through his will and his words, he moved a nation and helped free a people. It is because of the millions who rallied to his cause that we are no longer divided, North and South, slave and free. It is because men and women of every race, from every walk of life, continued to march for freedom long after Lincoln was laid to rest, that today we have the chance to face the challenges of this millennium together, as one people - as Americans.

All of us know what those challenges are today - a war with no end, a dependence on oil that threatens our future, schools where too many children aren't learning, and families struggling paycheck to paycheck despite working as hard as they can. We know the challenges. We've heard them. We've talked about them for years.

What's stopped us from meeting these challenges is not the absence of sound policies and sensible plans. What's stopped us is the failure of leadership, the smallness of our politics - the ease with which we're distracted by the petty and trivial, our chronic avoidance of tough decisions, our preference for scoring cheap political points instead of rolling up our sleeves and building a working consensus to tackle big problems.

For the last six years we've been told that our mounting debts don't matter, we've been told that the anxiety Americans feel about rising health care costs and stagnant wages are an illusion, we've been told that climate change is a hoax, and that tough talk and an ill-conceived war can replace diplomacy, and strategy, and foresight. And when all else fails, when Katrina happens, or the death toll in Iraq mounts, we've been told that our crises are somebody else's fault. We're distracted from our real failures, and told to blame the other party, or gay people, or immigrants.

And as people have looked away in disillusionment and frustration, we know what's filled the void. The cynics, and the lobbyists, and the special interests who've turned our government into a game only they can afford to play. They write the checks and you get stuck with the bills, they get the access while you get to write a letter, they think they own this government, but we're here today to take it back. The time for that politics is over. It's time to turn the page.

We've made some progress already. I was proud to help lead the fight in Congress that led to the most sweeping ethics reform since Watergate.

But Washington has a long way to go. And it won't be easy. That's why we'll have to set priorities. We'll have to make hard choices. And although government will play a crucial role in bringing about the changes we need, more money and programs alone will not get us where we need to go. Each of us, in our own lives, will have to accept responsibility - for instilling an ethic of achievement in our children, for adapting to a more competitive economy, for strengthening our communities, and sharing some measure of sacrifice. So let us begin. Let us begin this hard work together. Let us transform this nation.

Let us be the generation that reshapes our economy to compete in the digital age. Let's set high standards for our schools and give them the resources they need to succeed. Let's recruit a new army of teachers, and give them better pay and more support in exchange for more accountability. Let's make college more affordable, and let's invest in scientific research, and let's lay down broadband lines through the heart of inner cities and rural towns all across America.

And as our economy changes, let's be the generation that ensures our nation's workers are sharing in our prosperity. Let's protect the hard-earned benefits their companies have promised. Let's make it possible for hardworking Americans to save for retirement. And let's allow our unions and their organizers to lift up this country's middle class again.

Let's be the generation that ends poverty in America. Every single person willing to work should be able to get job training that leads to a job, and earn a living wage that can pay the bills, and afford child care so their kids have a safe place to go when they work. Let's do this.

Let's be the generation that finally tackles our health care crisis. We can control costs by focusing on prevention, by providing better treatment to the chronically ill, and using technology to cut the bureaucracy. Let's be the generation that says right here, right now, that we will have universal health care in America by the end of the next president's first term.

Let's be the generation that finally frees America from the tyranny of oil. We can harness homegrown, alternative fuels like ethanol and spur the production of more fuel-efficient cars. We can set up a system for capping greenhouse gases. We can turn this crisis of global warming into a moment of opportunity for innovation, and job creation, and an incentive for businesses that will serve as a model for the world.

Let's be the generation that makes future generations proud of what we did here.

Most of all, let's be the generation that never forgets what happened on that September day and confront the terrorists with everything we've got. Politics doesn't have to divide us on this anymore - we can work together to keep our country safe. I've worked with Republican Senator Dick Lugar to pass a law that will secure and destroy some of the world's deadliest, unguarded weapons. We can work together to track terrorists down with a stronger military, we can tighten the net around their finances, and we can improve our intelligence capabilities. But let us also understand that ultimate victory against our enemies will come only by rebuilding our alliances and exporting those ideals that bring hope and opportunity to millions around the globe.

But all of this cannot come to pass until we bring an end to this war in Iraq. Most of you know I opposed this war from the start. I thought it was a tragic mistake. Today we grieve for the families who have lost loved ones, the hearts that have been broken, and the young lives that could have been. America, it's time to start bringing our troops home. It's time to admit that no amount of American lives can resolve the political disagreement that lies at the heart of someone else's civil war. That's why I have a plan that will bring our combat troops home by March of 2008. Letting the Iraqis know that we will not be there forever is our last, best hope to pressure the Sunni and Shia to come to the table and find peace.

Finally, there is one other thing that is not too late to get right about this war - and that is the homecoming of the men and women - our veterans - who have sacrificed the most. Let us honor their valor by providing the care they need and rebuilding the military they love. Let us be the generation that begins this work.

I know there are those who don't believe we can do all these things. I understand the skepticism. After all, every four years, candidates from both parties make similar promises, and
I expect this year will be no different. All of us running for president will travel around the country offering ten-point plans and making grand speeches; all of us will trumpet those qualities we believe make us uniquely qualified to lead the country. But too many times, after the election is over, and the confetti is swept away, all those promises fade from memory, and the lobbyists and the special interests move in, and people turn away, disappointed as before, left to struggle on their own.

That is why this campaign can't only be about me. It must be about us - it must be about what we can do together. This campaign must be the occasion, the vehicle, of your hopes, and your dreams. It will take your time, your energy, and your advice - to push us forward when we're doing right, and to let us know when we're not. This campaign has to be about reclaiming the meaning of citizenship, restoring our sense of common purpose, and realizing that few obstacles can withstand the power of millions of voices calling for change.

By ourselves, this change will not happen. Divided, we are bound to fail.

But the life of a tall, gangly, self-made Springfield lawyer tells us that a different future is possible.

He tells us that there is power in words.

He tells us that there is power in conviction.

That beneath all the differences of race and region, faith and station, we are one people.

He tells us that there is power in hope.

As Lincoln organized the forces arrayed against slavery, he was heard to say: "Of strange, discordant, and even hostile elements, we gathered from the four winds, and formed and fought to battle through."

That is our purpose here today.

That's why I'm in this race.

Not just to hold an office, but to gather with you to transform a nation.

I want to win that next battle - for justice and opportunity.

I want to win that next battle - for better schools, and better jobs, and health care for all.

I want us to take up the unfinished business of perfecting our union, and building a better America.

And if you will join me in this improbable quest, if you feel destiny calling, and see as I see, a future of endless possibility stretching before us; if you sense, as I sense, that the time is now to shake off our slumber, and slough off our fear, and make good on the debt we owe past and future generations, then I'm ready to take up the cause, and march with you, and work with you.

Together, starting today, let us finish the work that needs to be done, and usher in a new birth of freedom on this Earth.

Interviews and blue bins - the cycle of life

Early Saturday morning, pot of Just Us! jungle blend coffee scenting the apartment, sunshine streaming in the window, no snow ploughs this morning hence silence on the street, blog.

Perfection.

Himself is up and out already, gone to a job interview. Those of you who follow this blog will know that Himself has been assiduously trawling websites and personal contacts in search of a job these past few weeks. He actually got one this week, but the wages were so low it would have cost us money to send him there every day, so he graciously declined.

I'd imagine it is very difficult being a red-blooded, hunter-gatherer type male whose girlfriend is currently paying the bills. But I don't think it should be so difficult that you'd work beneath your ability and worth to get out from under it.

It was a bit stressful for Himself I think, turning down a job that was THERE FOR THE TAKING. So I twisted his arm a little, because I wanted to take the stress out of the decision for him. And the relief when it was done was visible.

Anyways, in the way of things here in Nova Scotia (and everywhere else I'd imagine), I arrived home from one of the shittest days in work ever, in a state of pure despair at life, to find him happily wading through a sheaf of interview offers.

Six in one day.

Yes six.

Has anyone ever in the history of the world been offered six job interviews in the space of three hours? Apart from David Beckham when he announced he didn't like living in Manchester anymore?

I have concluded that the second Friday in February must be 'get off my arse and call some applicants about an interview for that job I've been paid to advertise for the last month' day here in Nova Scotia.

Himself is all tail up now, as one would be when one goes from 'worried whether there's something WRONG with you' to 'in huge demand because there's a labour crisis in the province' in the space of twenty four hours.

Also, the ONE is one of them, the ONE being a good job that Himself would like, that pays well and offers the kind of supervisory responsibility of which he is more than capable.

So whatever kind of juju you use for these things, lash some of it on us for the next week please.

Because whatever about getting a job, getting the ONE is the icing on the cake.

And we like iced cakes in this house.

I made two chocolate cakes, with added chocolate and melted dark Lindt chocolate spooned on top with a sprinkling of ground almonds, the other night and they are both gone.

I don't know what surprised me more. The fact that I made two cakes. Or the fact that they were so nice they lasted thirty six hours.

I shouldn't be surprised they were nice I suppose. The Queen Mother makes a mean chocolate cake and taught me well.

I suppose I was surprised they were popular.

Although some of the people living in this house LOVE chocolate.

Also I brought one of them in to work yesterday, as I knew it was going to be one of the shittest days in work ever, so I thought my colleagues should have something nice to get them through the day.

I. Am. Getting. So. Effing. Domesticated. It. Is. Effing. Scary.

The reason work was so shittest day ever was because we had to clear out the library and the filing room in order for the renovators to move in and re-arrange the space.

Think twenty years of random dumping of file boxes. Think dust hippos. Think paper cuts. Think hours and hours of standing at the recycle bin ripping off plastic binder spirals. Think endless hours of removing steel filing clips. Think of doing all this in a tiny room with your colleagues.

Normally I wouldn't really mind this kind of thing, it being an excuse to not do any real work. But Lady Moonbeam is in town this week, so think all of the above with a grinding pain in my lower back and abdomen and a complete absence of any sense of humour.

The Chief of Staff understood the signals emanating from Queenie well enough to order pizza for lunch.

I like the way he is starting to adapt to my way of doing things!!

Our leader and a couple of our MLAs had turned up just before lunch and stayed to chat. Not for the pizza. God No. Intellectual conversation was the hook there. Definitely.

So we all had pepperoni slices and Sprite and chocolate cake and talked about This is Spinal Tap for thirty minutes.

I must say I do like working for a political leader who is happy to sit with his dusty, grungy team who are a bit stinky after a hard morning at the recycle bin, and shout 'this one goes all the way up to eleven' and correct their interpretation of the lyrics of Stonehenge when his mouth is not full of pizza and chocolate cake.

I can't imagine Rodney MacDonald doing that.

Then I had to go back to the recycle bin for another four hours. Which was devastating.

Himself has just called to say he got the job he interviewed for twenty minutes ago, which we had agreed is the NEXT BEST to the ONE, the interview for which is Tuesday. So we're set now either way.

HOORRRAAYYYY!!

Of course, this means he'll be earning more than me again now...

I kinda liked being the top cat!

Sunday morning, February sky

Sunday morning, 8.30am. I have lost the ability to sleep in. I can't remember quite when I lost it - sometime over the last two years, so while the house sleeps on, I am up with my coffee and my online copy of The Observer.

It snowed again last night, so the snowplough is out, scraping up and down the road every twenty minutes. Probably what woke me up. Or maybe our neighbour, who gets up at six am on the weekends and clomps down the stairs in hob-nailed boots to go who knows where.

The sky is utterly, utterly blue and all the trees and the gardens are covered in snow, so the scene from the window is postcard perfect eastern north america this morning. On days like this, I always feel I should wind a long striped scarf around my neck, grab a book bag and go to some highly erudit post-graduate tutorial in a mock-Victorian college.

Given by Norman Mailer. Or Robin Williams perhaps!

I'm tired of the winter. The cold, the sliding and slipping on the path. Scrambling over frozen lumps of unmelted snow to get on the bus. The biting wind that makes every foray outdoors unendurable. And there's still another six weeks at least to go before it warms up. It stays bright until after six pm though, so it's becoming more bearable.

Himself is up in Halifax full time now and looking for a job. It makes me froth at the mouth watching him go through the process. He submits resumes and rarely hears a word. Canadians don't respond to applications period. Unless you get an interview. Sometimes they don't respond after that. I find it incomprehensibly rude. Lazy. Imperious.

And then they wonder why people pack up and head west.

And the wages are so unbelieveably crappy here. I am trying to feel my way to an understanding of how the economy works in Nova Scotia, but it baffles me. Wages on job websites are down on last year. But there's a shortage of workers in almost every sector. And people who are looking for work find it difficult to get a job. But employers are in to us whingeing about labour shortages morning noon and night.

That's not logically possible.

I must be missing something.

Anyways, what I do know is that Nova Scotians are feeling a sort of hard to shake unease at the situation - a rumble of thunder at the picnic (to paraphrase some author I can't remember who).

Speaking of authors, we went to the library yesterday. Himself, Queenie and Kitty, Himself's daughter who is living with us now. We got seven books between us. Which was a victory for the reader in the house!!

Kitty is starting junior high in Halifax tomorrow. We were at a dinner party last night and one of the other guests had gone to Queen Elizabeth High. 'What was it like?' I asked. 'I can't remember' was the answer. 'That bad?' I asked. 'That much pot!' was the answer.

Sigh.....

Being a grown up sucks sometimes. Particularly on a cold bright February day, when all there is to look forward to is another six weeks of winter, replete with responsibility for beings other than one's own.

There I said it. I was wondering whether I would or not.

But it could be worse. The sky could not be utterly utterly blue. I could be still roomies with psycho-Bruce. It could be raining and I could be in a tiny apartment in Dublin with nothing to look forward to but a day of worrying about work. Tomorrow all I will worry about is whether Kitty will be offered the hand of friendship on her first day in junior high in Halifax. And hope to christ there isn't a glowing joint in the hand. And what I will say if she isn't. And whether it will offer any comfort or it will be just the same crap* I heard when I was her age.

Being a grown up is very difficult when you think you're still twenty on the inside.

*crap as in everything is crap when you're sixteen, not crap as in actually crap!

Oisin's an Auld Dog

Oisín,36, lives in Cork, Ireland, where he’s a tutor in philosophy and politics at UCC. He’s just finished his Master’s there, and—since philosophy appears to have succeeded in gripping him firmly by the head—he’s returning to Canada soon (where he and his angelic wife Katherine used to live, and are looking forward to living again) to begin a Ph.D. More fool him, perhaps!

In the last moments of my mother’s life, hoping to ease her distress, I urged her not to be afraid. I told her she was “pioneering” for us—where she was going, we’d all be going too.

But what was I talking about? What happens at “death”?

First, it seems clear that our familiar notion of “life after death” is incoherent, since it involves an outright contradiction; it wouldn’t really be death, you might say, if life continues.

Aside from this, what (if anything) could it mean for us to survive death?

Well, we can safely assume that our body doesn’t live on (since it’s bodily death that defines death). So perhaps some immaterial part of ourselves survives (if there is such a part), or is “reborn” into another body. This may involve our traditional notion of a “soul”.

If the soul survives without a body, then it must be either in the material world (as a disembodied “ghost”, if such an idea even makes sense), or else in an immaterial world. If survival is in an immaterial world, then such a world will presumably be either good or bad (these cover our traditional notions of heaven and hell), or else neutral (this, perhaps, covers our notion of purgatory). If the soul survives as a ghost or else is reborn into another body, these eventualities could also be good, bad, or neutral for us. The only other possibility is that there is no immaterial part that survives bodily death.

How ought we to feel about these options?

Well, if there really is a soul that survives bodily death, then (in any of the above options) we’d be justified in fearing worse and desiring better outcomes for our soul. (Personally, I find the idea of hell, stated in terms of eternal punishment for misdeeds performed in this life, to be one of the most morally repugnant ideas ever dreamed up.)

But what if no immaterial part survives (either because there’s no such thing, or because it too dies upon physical death)? How should we feel about death if it’s the irrevocable end of our existence? Would this be a good or a bad thing, from our point of view?

One way of answering this question is to agree with Epicurus, who asserted that

Death …, the most awful of evils, is nothing to us, seeing that, when we are, death is not come, and, when death is come, we are not.

Even so, it’s possible that the process of dying (for example, if it’s painful or slow) could be extremely unpleasant from our point of view. Still, if death really is the end of our existence, then maybe Epicurus is right. After all, the supposed harm of death (if such harm is supposed to consist solely in the fact that we no longer exist) does not apply to us while we’re living. And to whom could such harm apply once we’re dead?

It’s clear that death, if it’s the end of our existence, involves the end of our enjoyment of life. But surely we don’t think that we’ll miss enjoying life, given that we’ll no longer exist! We may regret not being able to continue enjoying life forever. We may wish to live a long and healthy life in order to enjoy more of life. But these thoughts don’t seem to capture the dismay we may feel at the idea that we will no longer exist at all.

As Thomas Nagel puts it,

The thought that the world will go on without you, that you will become nothing, is very hard to take in… [But] It’s not clear why.

Consider the following two facts. First, most of us readily accept that there was a time before we existed, namely, a time before we were born. Second, anyone who’s been under general anesthetic—say, for an operation—knows that it’s not like anything to be anesthetised. We’re normally untroubled by the fact that we didn’t exist before we were born. And the complete absence of conscious experience under anesthesia demonstrates that it can’t be a bad thing, experientially, to have no experiences at all.

But the case of anesthesia prompts another consideration: We aren’t dead when we’re anesthetised. We’re still biologically alive, we just lack consciousness. What this suggests (at least to me) is that it isn’t life so much as conscious life that interests us.

In any case, it’s not obvious what there is to fear. Death would be truly fearful only if it held in store for us something like hell (and I’ve already aired my views on this concept). Otherwise, what we think of as “fear of death” is likely a combination of regret at not being able to continue living and a desire for yet more of whatever we enjoy in life. Added to this may be genuine fear that the process of dying might be painful.

Is this, then, the whole story? It seems not. Perhaps illogically, death still strikes many of us as about the worst thing that could happen; which is to say, it remains fearful.

So maybe we’re looking at things wrong-headedly.

In the minutes following my mother’s death, I stood outside her nursing home; warm sunshine flooded the evening landscape. My mother was dead. I recalled a story about a fellow who’d crashed his bicycle at an intersection in the city; he’d smashed headlong through the passenger window of a car, but had escaped serious injury because he’d been wearing his helmet. For the whole next week, he was euphoric at being alive. In those minutes following my mother’s death, I experienced something akin to this feeling. I was simply in awe at being alive, consciously alive, in the world at all. The fact that there is conscious experience in the world at all is one of the most deeply mysterious aspects of the universe in which we live; it appears to be thus far outside the realm of what science can even hope to explain (this is the infamous “explanatory gap”).

Perhaps instead of dwelling on the fact that we may cease to exist, we should consider the quite astonishing fact that we are here in the first place, as consciously experiencing beings.

I cannot think of anything more astonishing than that.

Auld Dog is an intermittent column on this blog, where people offer their pearls of wisdom for the rest of us to ponder. If you would like to be an Auld Dog, send 600 - 700 words of wisdom, along with a bio and photo (or I'll write/ pick them) to auld.dog@gmail.com and I'll post it here.

Mags' an Auld Dog

Mags, 40, is an Irish woman who lives in New Jersey and leads the state's conservation agency. She is an environmentalist, political activist, triathlete and book collector (bio and pic by Q).

If you live your life for someone else's approval, you're not living your life and you're not going to get approval.

I envy selfish people and people who are certain. I worry too much to have certainty and empathize too much to be truly selfish. Although I am working on being selfish - it's my current self-improvement project!

Getting ahead is about timing - being in the right place at the right time having laid the right foundation in preparation for that timing.

Money is the root of all evil. In any and all situations that elicit a painful wail of "Why?" from a puzzled populace, the answer generally lies at the end of the money trail.

My genes dictate that I am prompt, organized and ever so slightly anal. I've lost the fight with my genes and have surrendered to my promptness, organization and anal nature! I am turning into my mother and I no longer mind.

It is impossible to be good, to be truly good and think good thoughts and do good all the time…you need to cut yourself some slack every now and again.

Animals are much cleverer in certain ways than humans. Birds can navigate 3,000-mile migration paths year in and year out, timing their arrivals with emergent food sources and their departures with the tiniest temperature trend changes. They don't have compasses or thermometers or maps. Snakes will take the shortest route, a straight line, between their hibernacula and their traditional breeding areas and they don't have GPS to help them.

I don't think humans are inherently bad, but I do think that a few bad humans give the rest of us a reputation we don't deserve and mess things up royally for those of us who seek to tread lightly on this planet. I think a lot of people believe in god because they can't believe in humanity. I think if we could all seek and find our reward in this life, rather than expecting it in the next, the world would be a much better place in a much better state.

When I am being strong and assertive, I think people think that I'm being bitchy. If I was a man being strong and assertive would they consider me macho? Sometimes I have to flirt to get what I want in work…in fact I just flirted my way into a $15,000 sponsorship deal for my big fundraiser. It annoys me that men don't have to flirt!

I think books are the best things about being alive. I think I prefer books to anything in the entire world and if I was to be stranded on a desert island and they offered me a choice between company or books, I would take books every time.

Finally, I get happier as I get older and I remain surprised at that fact and annoyed that nobody told me that was going to happen. Or maybe they did once and I just didn't believe it then!

Auld Dog is an intermittent column on this blog that provides the pearls of wisdom of an individual for the rest of us to ponder. If you would like to be an Auld Dog, send 600 - 700 words to auld.dog@gmail.com along with a bio and picture (or I'll do them) and I'll post it here.