I really enjoyed this latest book by Miriam Toews. I did myself the favour of buying it (in paperback) because it's a very pretty book, and I'm not sorry I have it. Miriam (I guess I call her by her first name because Marj did) is entertaining as always. Once again she has an off-the-wall heroine, this time a young Mennonite woman whose family moved from Manitoba to Mexico when she was about 12. As a result, she speaks Low German, English and Spanish, and gets herself a job as a translator on a movie that is being shot near her rural home.
The complicating factor is her father, an abusive, violent, hardline conservative who tries to control her life and with whom she shares a bitter secret. Her younger sister Aggie is the other very complex and very funny character. As with The Flying Troutmans, this is a hardscrabble, rough and raw group of characters that figures out a way to make things work.
What will keep you reading is Toews's metaphors, wry humor and unexpected take on almost everything. In one scene Aggie has found a stash of Irma's baby clothes and is holding the tiny garments up to her one by one while Irma is milking cows. One expects sentiment, but instead Aggie says, "Wow, this is ugly," of one little item, and Irma responds, "You wore it too."
The other most intriguing thing is learning to know Irma. Like the heroine of A Complicated Kindness, Irma is wise beyond her years, but unlike Nomi, Irma has been really poorly educated and because of her terrible upbringing, lacks all confidence. Watching her grab her life and run with it is just plain fascinating.
I think Miriam Toews has done it again. Irma Voth may not win the Giller but it is beautifully crafted and I'll be happy to lend it to whoever would like to read it.
June 12, 2012
June 6, 2012
Tuesday Night and my Words are all Gone
A defeated silence hangs over
our dinner, our walk, our going to bed.
I see that my words
have consumed me, storm-tossed,
And in a half-eaten way,
they have sustained me too,
Given me hope and goals.
Giving up the struggle
has left me hanging like a limp sail.
Was there only the one wind
driving me along?
While I stand still the days fly by
May into June, yet even they
are hardly more than words
that also end.
May 16, 2012
Changing my Mind by Margaret Trudeau
Margaret Trudeau, former wife of Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau, spent much of her life, including much of her time at 24 Sussex Drive, in profound misery. She suffers from bipolar disorder.
Although I have read some things about bipolar disorder, this book was an eye-opener for me in that for the first time, after reading it, I feel as though I might faintly understand how "painful, terrifying, lonely and confusing" life is for a person who has to struggle with the disease. This is not about signs and symptoms and medication and coping and how to talk to people in the throes of a manic phase. It's about a real person for whom life is so infinitely much more difficult because of their illness.
Trudeau's life has mostly been on the public stage and this in some ways made things infinitely worse for her because of stigma of mental illness (even greater in the 70s and 80s when she was most in the public eye), the constant scrutiny of the press and what often amounted to mockery of her ideas and behaviour. But her relative wealth and celebrity and supportive families also eased the way for her, providing her with the best possible care (shockingly basic and inadequate most of the time) and always ensuring her a safe landing pad when she did come out of hospital. But all this eminence didn't help much to relieve her endless emotional pain, and it shook me to realize how much harder it is for those without all the resources she had.
Now nearing her mid-60s, Trudeau feels that the illness is finally under control and she can be truly happy for the first time in her adult life. Her healing came about when she accepted that she had the illness and that she needed help in managing it. Medications have improved and she's taking what she needs and being monitored. She's realized that marijuana triggers manic episodes - she was a heavy user. She went through lots of cognitive therapy, a process that she says literally "changed her mind," teaching her to think in new ways. She writes, "I felt clean, shorn, coached in new ways of looking at life, not avoiding pain but confronting it, not overreacting but listening, not closing myself away but examining why I found certain things so hard and hurtful."
The book made me feel like getting active and joining all the many voices who are already out there fighting for a better deal, more understanding and better resources for those with mental health problems.
Although I have read some things about bipolar disorder, this book was an eye-opener for me in that for the first time, after reading it, I feel as though I might faintly understand how "painful, terrifying, lonely and confusing" life is for a person who has to struggle with the disease. This is not about signs and symptoms and medication and coping and how to talk to people in the throes of a manic phase. It's about a real person for whom life is so infinitely much more difficult because of their illness.
Trudeau's life has mostly been on the public stage and this in some ways made things infinitely worse for her because of stigma of mental illness (even greater in the 70s and 80s when she was most in the public eye), the constant scrutiny of the press and what often amounted to mockery of her ideas and behaviour. But her relative wealth and celebrity and supportive families also eased the way for her, providing her with the best possible care (shockingly basic and inadequate most of the time) and always ensuring her a safe landing pad when she did come out of hospital. But all this eminence didn't help much to relieve her endless emotional pain, and it shook me to realize how much harder it is for those without all the resources she had.
Now nearing her mid-60s, Trudeau feels that the illness is finally under control and she can be truly happy for the first time in her adult life. Her healing came about when she accepted that she had the illness and that she needed help in managing it. Medications have improved and she's taking what she needs and being monitored. She's realized that marijuana triggers manic episodes - she was a heavy user. She went through lots of cognitive therapy, a process that she says literally "changed her mind," teaching her to think in new ways. She writes, "I felt clean, shorn, coached in new ways of looking at life, not avoiding pain but confronting it, not overreacting but listening, not closing myself away but examining why I found certain things so hard and hurtful."
The book made me feel like getting active and joining all the many voices who are already out there fighting for a better deal, more understanding and better resources for those with mental health problems.
April 7, 2012
The Sounds of Silence
The April 2012 Canadian Geographic has this beautiful article about the Grasslands National Park, which the writer calls one of the world's last great quiet places. The article follows Gordon Hempton, a sound artist/acoustic ecologist, who was hired by Parks Canada and Tourism Saskatchewan to conduct a sound survey - the first of its kind in a Canadian national park.
Hempton is an American, and he looks for quiet places all over the world. His goal is to record 15 minutes of natural grassland silence without any manmade sounds - It seems such a modest goal! I read it twice to be sure I had read right. But it's a goal he has not been able to achieve in U.S. grasslands, with its network of highways and railways and the ever present jets overhead.
The article describes the grassland in glorious detail: it has 60 different kinds of grasses and many birds and animals whose early morning conversations Hempton records with his very high-end microphones at 3:30 a.m.
Grasslands is also an official dark-sky preserve, the biggest in Canada until Jasper National Park also gained dark sky status last year. The idea of quiet areas receiving a similar designation is just beginning to filter into the parks system. I love this concept. Sometimes when we go snowshoeing in Joe Rich it is quiet like that, but on the weekends there are often snowmobiles roaring all around - not that they don't also have a right to be there, but it makes for a completely different experience.
Hempton is an American, and he looks for quiet places all over the world. His goal is to record 15 minutes of natural grassland silence without any manmade sounds - It seems such a modest goal! I read it twice to be sure I had read right. But it's a goal he has not been able to achieve in U.S. grasslands, with its network of highways and railways and the ever present jets overhead.
The article describes the grassland in glorious detail: it has 60 different kinds of grasses and many birds and animals whose early morning conversations Hempton records with his very high-end microphones at 3:30 a.m.
Grasslands is also an official dark-sky preserve, the biggest in Canada until Jasper National Park also gained dark sky status last year. The idea of quiet areas receiving a similar designation is just beginning to filter into the parks system. I love this concept. Sometimes when we go snowshoeing in Joe Rich it is quiet like that, but on the weekends there are often snowmobiles roaring all around - not that they don't also have a right to be there, but it makes for a completely different experience.
March 1, 2012
The Guinea Pig Diaries by A. J. Jacobs
My New Year's resolution to read less is slowly crumbling in these dark
damp days of late winter. I have succumbed regularly in these past few
weeks to my favourite drug - easy reading, funny books. The Guinea Pig Diaries qualifies admirably in that category.
The subtitle of this fairly ridiculous book is "My Life as an Experiment." A. J. Jacobs is the author who also wrote The Know-It-All (in which he took a year to read the Encyclopedia Britannica right through) and The Year of Living Biblically. He's the master of experiential or immersion journalism and in this third book he describes nine different immersion experiments ranging from a day to a month long. He tries such things as impersonating a beautiful woman, being completely honest in everything, outsourcing all his daily tasks overseas, "uni-tasking" (as opposed to multi-tasking) and spending a month doing everything his wife tells him to.
It truly is ridiculous but it's funny too, and in the course of his experiments he comes to some profound insights about life and people. In between he reflects on how his experiments have changed him, and they have, especially his year of living according to the Bible, which he says has left a permanent habit of thankfulness with him, and although not a believer per se, he prays a prayer of thankfulness every day, sometimes many, and is teaching his children to do the same.
One of the most fascinating things he uncovers in his "Rationality Project" (Chapter 5) is a monstrous list of about 56 cognitive biases that affect the way we think about things. For instance, the "Self-serving Bias" lets us attribute our successes to internal factors but our failures to situational factors beyond our control. So you got an A because you worked hard but if you got an F it was because the teacher didn't like you. Because of the Romeo bias, men generally overestimate women's sexual interest in them. The Lake Wobegon Effect (Lake Wobegon, "where all the children are above average") makes us think we're smarter and more virtuous than we actually are.
I was reading pretty fast, so I'm not sure which of these he's making up (e.g. the IKEA effect, where the harder it is to put something together, the more value you attribute to it), but they all make sense to me anyway. I see Jacobs has a new book coming out in April called Drop Dead Healthy: One Man's Humble Quest for Bodily Perfection. I'll look forward to reading it.
The subtitle of this fairly ridiculous book is "My Life as an Experiment." A. J. Jacobs is the author who also wrote The Know-It-All (in which he took a year to read the Encyclopedia Britannica right through) and The Year of Living Biblically. He's the master of experiential or immersion journalism and in this third book he describes nine different immersion experiments ranging from a day to a month long. He tries such things as impersonating a beautiful woman, being completely honest in everything, outsourcing all his daily tasks overseas, "uni-tasking" (as opposed to multi-tasking) and spending a month doing everything his wife tells him to.
It truly is ridiculous but it's funny too, and in the course of his experiments he comes to some profound insights about life and people. In between he reflects on how his experiments have changed him, and they have, especially his year of living according to the Bible, which he says has left a permanent habit of thankfulness with him, and although not a believer per se, he prays a prayer of thankfulness every day, sometimes many, and is teaching his children to do the same.
One of the most fascinating things he uncovers in his "Rationality Project" (Chapter 5) is a monstrous list of about 56 cognitive biases that affect the way we think about things. For instance, the "Self-serving Bias" lets us attribute our successes to internal factors but our failures to situational factors beyond our control. So you got an A because you worked hard but if you got an F it was because the teacher didn't like you. Because of the Romeo bias, men generally overestimate women's sexual interest in them. The Lake Wobegon Effect (Lake Wobegon, "where all the children are above average") makes us think we're smarter and more virtuous than we actually are.
I was reading pretty fast, so I'm not sure which of these he's making up (e.g. the IKEA effect, where the harder it is to put something together, the more value you attribute to it), but they all make sense to me anyway. I see Jacobs has a new book coming out in April called Drop Dead Healthy: One Man's Humble Quest for Bodily Perfection. I'll look forward to reading it.
February 27, 2012
Metamorphosis by David Suzuki
This is Suzuki's 1987 biography, written when he was about 50 years old. I read it years ago, but now re-read it, skipping only the very detailed parts about the years he spent studying fruit flies.
I found it an intriguing book for a number of reasons. Every resident of B.C., at least, should read it for its highly personal account of the consequences of the Japanese internment during World War II. Suzuki was a young lad when he and his family were abruptly uprooted and forcibly moved to the Kootenays, losing everything they owned. I had not realized (but Suzuki explains it very clearly) that after the war, the Japanese were not really welcome to go back to Vancouver. They were pressured in every which way (and most of them bowed to this pressure as they had little choice) to move east instead. Suzuki's family landed up in Ontario where some of their relatives had gone. It is a story of terrible shame for Canadians, not least because as the Prime Minister admitted in the midst of the evacuation, not one single incident of a Japanese Canadian being a threat to Canada's security had ever been documented.
Suzuki also writes knowledgeably about academic life and in particular the life of a passionate scientist, and the costs to his family of his dedication to his work. It's a bit discombobulating at times as he documents, with disconcerting honesty and humility, his own arrogance as a young husband and academic.
The other part I found quite interesting is his inside look at the workings of the CBC, how it's funded and how the politics of being employed there worked (and didn't work) for him.
Suzuki was the keynote speaker at a teacher's conference I was at in Vancouver in 1988, shortly after the book was written. It was great - he gave the speech his all; there was no sense that this was just another duty for him.
All in all, this is a good read. I see David Suzuki as an important part of my Canadian cultural heritage. He's a thoughtful man who is willing to change his mind and he has changed a lot in the past 25 years. In 2006, he published another autobiography about the years after 1987, called David Suzuki: The Autobiography. It was his 43rd - and, he said, his last - book. I'll be interested to read it.
I found it an intriguing book for a number of reasons. Every resident of B.C., at least, should read it for its highly personal account of the consequences of the Japanese internment during World War II. Suzuki was a young lad when he and his family were abruptly uprooted and forcibly moved to the Kootenays, losing everything they owned. I had not realized (but Suzuki explains it very clearly) that after the war, the Japanese were not really welcome to go back to Vancouver. They were pressured in every which way (and most of them bowed to this pressure as they had little choice) to move east instead. Suzuki's family landed up in Ontario where some of their relatives had gone. It is a story of terrible shame for Canadians, not least because as the Prime Minister admitted in the midst of the evacuation, not one single incident of a Japanese Canadian being a threat to Canada's security had ever been documented.
Suzuki also writes knowledgeably about academic life and in particular the life of a passionate scientist, and the costs to his family of his dedication to his work. It's a bit discombobulating at times as he documents, with disconcerting honesty and humility, his own arrogance as a young husband and academic.
The other part I found quite interesting is his inside look at the workings of the CBC, how it's funded and how the politics of being employed there worked (and didn't work) for him.
Suzuki was the keynote speaker at a teacher's conference I was at in Vancouver in 1988, shortly after the book was written. It was great - he gave the speech his all; there was no sense that this was just another duty for him.
All in all, this is a good read. I see David Suzuki as an important part of my Canadian cultural heritage. He's a thoughtful man who is willing to change his mind and he has changed a lot in the past 25 years. In 2006, he published another autobiography about the years after 1987, called David Suzuki: The Autobiography. It was his 43rd - and, he said, his last - book. I'll be interested to read it.
February 24, 2012
Jan Lisiecki, Pianist
The third of our community concert series for this season was an amazing evening. I felt awed at the virtuosity of this 16-year-old Canadian pianist - truly felt as though I was in the presence of genius. At 60 myself, 16 just seems astoundingly young to have so much understanding and so many notes in one slight teenage body. His playing seemed other-worldly to me, unearthly, like water flowing endlessly down some hillside in heaven.
Back in the day, we used to say of some of our local pianists, "He (or she) has a nice touch." I don't know if that's still a descriptor for pianists, but Lisiecki's "touch" seemed to me sublime. He taught us carefully and formally (without a mic) before each piece what the significance of the piece had been to the composer and what we should listen for. But then when he sat down and began to play (after a long "centering" silence) everything seemed to become almost impossibly light. Not that he couldn't be forceful - he could rock the loud parts - but even there I could barely sense a whisper of effort. It was as though the keys and the instrument and his fingers and brain were all one.
I've been awed before by the skill of very good pianists, but usually have a sense of practise, practise and lots of effort and professionalism and experience, and although I have no doubt that Jan Lisiecki practises as much as anyone, all I could think of when he was playing was that it was some kind of miracle.
He chose beautiful pieces, starting each half of the program with a short and simple Bach Prelude and Fugue and then "lettin' her rip" with Beethoven, Liszt and Mendelssohn and finishing off the concert with 12 Etudes by Chopin. My favourite of the concert was Variations Sieriuses, Op. 54 in D Minor by Mendelssohn. This was divided into three parts called (approximately) Lament, Light (or Lightness) and Sigh. All beautiful.
We felt absolutely blessed to have been able to hear and see this young man play. He has played all around the world and for the Queen, and I think only the quick work of community concert chair Yvonne Topf, when she first saw him on CBC two years ago, brought him out to Kelowna on a snowy February night to play for 800 grey-haired patrons. I fear for his schedule - besides many concerts, he is studying for a Bachelor of Music in Toronto - but he seems very calm and maybe this is just what he loves to do. Lucky us.
Back in the day, we used to say of some of our local pianists, "He (or she) has a nice touch." I don't know if that's still a descriptor for pianists, but Lisiecki's "touch" seemed to me sublime. He taught us carefully and formally (without a mic) before each piece what the significance of the piece had been to the composer and what we should listen for. But then when he sat down and began to play (after a long "centering" silence) everything seemed to become almost impossibly light. Not that he couldn't be forceful - he could rock the loud parts - but even there I could barely sense a whisper of effort. It was as though the keys and the instrument and his fingers and brain were all one.
I've been awed before by the skill of very good pianists, but usually have a sense of practise, practise and lots of effort and professionalism and experience, and although I have no doubt that Jan Lisiecki practises as much as anyone, all I could think of when he was playing was that it was some kind of miracle.
He chose beautiful pieces, starting each half of the program with a short and simple Bach Prelude and Fugue and then "lettin' her rip" with Beethoven, Liszt and Mendelssohn and finishing off the concert with 12 Etudes by Chopin. My favourite of the concert was Variations Sieriuses, Op. 54 in D Minor by Mendelssohn. This was divided into three parts called (approximately) Lament, Light (or Lightness) and Sigh. All beautiful.
We felt absolutely blessed to have been able to hear and see this young man play. He has played all around the world and for the Queen, and I think only the quick work of community concert chair Yvonne Topf, when she first saw him on CBC two years ago, brought him out to Kelowna on a snowy February night to play for 800 grey-haired patrons. I fear for his schedule - besides many concerts, he is studying for a Bachelor of Music in Toronto - but he seems very calm and maybe this is just what he loves to do. Lucky us.
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