to: heatherz@leland.stanford.edu
from: shannon zwicker, mcconnell fellow
subject: connections
date: fri 5 mar 93
i am entirely disillusioned today about the university and its role in society (as opposed to most days when i am merely disillusioned with my job).
i have determined the function of a penis. in addition to acting as most men's primary cerebral organ, it is essentially a handle to make "manager shopping" easier. it works like this: an organization enters the management supermarket, filled with aspiring young managers, many of them (and most of the women) well qualified. the shelves are stocked with these managers, and the organizations take the easy way out. they grab the ones with the convenient handle, ignoring the ingredient labels entirely. after all, it's easier that way - no one will question their choice. the penised model is, after all, the most popular model in use.
i have determined this after observing men in positions of power in the university. ...
do i sound a little bitter? this has been a weird few months. i have given up my search for a mentor entirely - i am now in search of a half decent manager. can't find one anywhere and am not tempted to stick around and continue to look.
(shannon left the university for the private sector shortly after this.)
Showing posts with label women. Show all posts
Showing posts with label women. Show all posts
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
And now, a word from hothead paisan
so two days after the 20th anniversary of the montreal massacre, we get a story in the globe and mail fretting that women outnumber men at university. the implications for family life are particularly scary: "faced with a dwindling number of potential mates who are their education equals, ... more women may take a pass on the traditional family, or be more willing to leave it when things don't work," worries elizabeth church. what's worse, "more men may find themselves tending to hearth and home."
this is followed by an editorial in the same newspaper -- an editorial, by the way, based on its own story -- called "the male minority" that comes down hard on the side of indira samarasekera's inflammatory october comments about the "demographic time bomb." specifically, her fear is that "we'll wake up in 20 years and we will not have the benefit of enough male talent at the heads of companies and elsewhere." what's that you say? - you thought at the current rate it would take 260 years to move from 4.5% to 50%? silly girl! you never were any good with numbers. in addition to coming down hard on samarasekera's side, the editorial comes down hard on the undergraduates who produced clever posters satirizing the comments: the samarasekera response team was "soon collared by campus security, but were not disciplined." insert disapproval here.
and that editorial gem sits right next to a new piece of idiocy from margaret wente blathering on about the absence of systemic misogyny in canadian culture. stop me if you've heard this line of argument before, but mark lepine was a random homicidal lunatic and not a garden variety misogynist. dec 6, pace wente, "has been an annual excuse for fevered breast-beating over the moral failings of society and the persistent inequality of women – as if the glass ceiling or the lack of universal daycare existed on the same moral continuum as homicidal misogyny."
what world are these people living in?
admittedly not mine, which this week involves supersecret meetings evaluating faculty members' performance over the year. i cannot talk about these meetings - what happens in room 5.20 stays in room 5.20 - but i will assure you that the academy intervenes before our classroom presence translates into actual material success.
all of this begs the question of exactly how few women students we should be aiming for (pun intended). what would be the ideal ratio for preserving heteronormative family structures and the current wage inequity between men and women? i ask so i can start advising my smart, hardworking women undergraduates to drop out.
this is followed by an editorial in the same newspaper -- an editorial, by the way, based on its own story -- called "the male minority" that comes down hard on the side of indira samarasekera's inflammatory october comments about the "demographic time bomb." specifically, her fear is that "we'll wake up in 20 years and we will not have the benefit of enough male talent at the heads of companies and elsewhere." what's that you say? - you thought at the current rate it would take 260 years to move from 4.5% to 50%? silly girl! you never were any good with numbers. in addition to coming down hard on samarasekera's side, the editorial comes down hard on the undergraduates who produced clever posters satirizing the comments: the samarasekera response team was "soon collared by campus security, but were not disciplined." insert disapproval here.
and that editorial gem sits right next to a new piece of idiocy from margaret wente blathering on about the absence of systemic misogyny in canadian culture. stop me if you've heard this line of argument before, but mark lepine was a random homicidal lunatic and not a garden variety misogynist. dec 6, pace wente, "has been an annual excuse for fevered breast-beating over the moral failings of society and the persistent inequality of women – as if the glass ceiling or the lack of universal daycare existed on the same moral continuum as homicidal misogyny."
what world are these people living in?
admittedly not mine, which this week involves supersecret meetings evaluating faculty members' performance over the year. i cannot talk about these meetings - what happens in room 5.20 stays in room 5.20 - but i will assure you that the academy intervenes before our classroom presence translates into actual material success.
all of this begs the question of exactly how few women students we should be aiming for (pun intended). what would be the ideal ratio for preserving heteronormative family structures and the current wage inequity between men and women? i ask so i can start advising my smart, hardworking women undergraduates to drop out.
Monday, March 16, 2009
Sunday, October 19, 2008
Extraordinary evening
back about a year ago, i got a note from a colleague alerting me to the fact that a well-known lesbian writer from the UK was moving to alberta and wouldn't i like to befriend her. i wrote immediately to valerie mason-john to say hey let's get together when you're next in town and don't worry, it's a dry cold.
she hasn't moved here yet, but she emailed in september to say she was coming to visit her partner who lives in ponoka. we bandied about various ways of getting together (how about lit fest on thursday night? no, can't do that -- but i'm going on friday? no, that won't work for me, etc) until she said, "look, we're having a dinner party on saturday night. if you and another person wanted to come, we'd love to have you." i demurred politely -- we were supposed to be working on my sister's new house all day, so we'd be tired, plus i know how precious visiting time is, you don't necessarily want to share it with strangers, and is it really environmentally, which is to say socially, acceptable to drive all the way to ponoka for dinner? -- and picked up the thread of other possibilities: tuesday afternoon? breakfast on wednesday?
she stopped emailing and immediately phoned all three of my numbers, from london, to insist we come for dinner.
well.
i'll confess, i agonized a little. for one thing, what to wear? i've seen valerie's photo online and in the tellingly-entitled femmes of power, so i knew she'd be nearly six feet of gorgeous, from boot-tips to hair. all i knew about her partner was that she's cleaning up in alberta's oil patch -- "cleaning up," i took it, in the metaphorical sense, not like some kind of ecodyke. so, once i was dressed, there was the question of wine. why, oh why, am i such an oenological dunce? in my mind's eye, i had us spending the evening in witty repartee around a formal dining room table trimmed with this season's accoutrements. i thought: it will be a new-built country estate. i wondered: will there be servants? from what i hear, oilpatch people burn bricks of money to warm their cold, cold hearts.
of course, i was completely off base. it wasn't oil people, it was country people. there were ten or eleven dykes, all smart and creative and edgy and intriguing and warm. we came from various places -- BC, massachusetts, UK, edmonton, ontario, the michigan womyn's music festival -- to this sweet '40s bungalow in ponoka. the house, it turns out, was built by an architect who saw a magazine picture of a california bungalow and set out to recreate it. cheryl has been restoring it by hand since she bought it a few years back. among her friends were ranchers from nanton and some sheep farmers en route to nova scotia. another couple there had just returned from running a wilderness outfit in the chilcotin. everybody was a writer and a reader; everybody was friendly and funny and sexily self-possessed. the food was tasty, by which i mean: it tasted like food. the smoky beans were cooked with fresh young coconut chunks and .... mmmm, are those artichokes? ours was the only wine, since everybody else opted for valerie's fresh-squeezed carrot-and-ginger juice. there were no clamshell greens. instead, tiny cherry tomatoes fooled around with seedy figs on a bed of hand-torn leaves.
there was a forthrightness to the evening that even this morning fills me with wonder. imagine inviting total strangers to an intimate dinner party. it's not that we might have been axe murderers -- that's unlikely -- but we might have been awkward, or pretentious, or dull. next to my sense of wonder is a sense of ... well, happiness. i love those women. i'm totally committed to the exposure brand of queer, but there's nothing like a lesbian of a certain age to really make me swoon.
the dyke dinner party in ponoka made my world a little bit bigger. i'm not quite ready to stop dyeing my hair, but i am seriously considering michigan this year.
she hasn't moved here yet, but she emailed in september to say she was coming to visit her partner who lives in ponoka. we bandied about various ways of getting together (how about lit fest on thursday night? no, can't do that -- but i'm going on friday? no, that won't work for me, etc) until she said, "look, we're having a dinner party on saturday night. if you and another person wanted to come, we'd love to have you." i demurred politely -- we were supposed to be working on my sister's new house all day, so we'd be tired, plus i know how precious visiting time is, you don't necessarily want to share it with strangers, and is it really environmentally, which is to say socially, acceptable to drive all the way to ponoka for dinner? -- and picked up the thread of other possibilities: tuesday afternoon? breakfast on wednesday?
she stopped emailing and immediately phoned all three of my numbers, from london, to insist we come for dinner.
well.
i'll confess, i agonized a little. for one thing, what to wear? i've seen valerie's photo online and in the tellingly-entitled femmes of power, so i knew she'd be nearly six feet of gorgeous, from boot-tips to hair. all i knew about her partner was that she's cleaning up in alberta's oil patch -- "cleaning up," i took it, in the metaphorical sense, not like some kind of ecodyke. so, once i was dressed, there was the question of wine. why, oh why, am i such an oenological dunce? in my mind's eye, i had us spending the evening in witty repartee around a formal dining room table trimmed with this season's accoutrements. i thought: it will be a new-built country estate. i wondered: will there be servants? from what i hear, oilpatch people burn bricks of money to warm their cold, cold hearts.
of course, i was completely off base. it wasn't oil people, it was country people. there were ten or eleven dykes, all smart and creative and edgy and intriguing and warm. we came from various places -- BC, massachusetts, UK, edmonton, ontario, the michigan womyn's music festival -- to this sweet '40s bungalow in ponoka. the house, it turns out, was built by an architect who saw a magazine picture of a california bungalow and set out to recreate it. cheryl has been restoring it by hand since she bought it a few years back. among her friends were ranchers from nanton and some sheep farmers en route to nova scotia. another couple there had just returned from running a wilderness outfit in the chilcotin. everybody was a writer and a reader; everybody was friendly and funny and sexily self-possessed. the food was tasty, by which i mean: it tasted like food. the smoky beans were cooked with fresh young coconut chunks and .... mmmm, are those artichokes? ours was the only wine, since everybody else opted for valerie's fresh-squeezed carrot-and-ginger juice. there were no clamshell greens. instead, tiny cherry tomatoes fooled around with seedy figs on a bed of hand-torn leaves.
there was a forthrightness to the evening that even this morning fills me with wonder. imagine inviting total strangers to an intimate dinner party. it's not that we might have been axe murderers -- that's unlikely -- but we might have been awkward, or pretentious, or dull. next to my sense of wonder is a sense of ... well, happiness. i love those women. i'm totally committed to the exposure brand of queer, but there's nothing like a lesbian of a certain age to really make me swoon.
the dyke dinner party in ponoka made my world a little bit bigger. i'm not quite ready to stop dyeing my hair, but i am seriously considering michigan this year.
Monday, September 29, 2008
Heather Mallick, my hero
The CBC, like the globe and mail of a few years ago, has rolled over on heather mallick. i guess she wasn't as "deferential" as palin demanded (and, yeah, that's her adjective: she wants journalists -- journalists! -- to be "deferential" in their handling of her).
here's the column, since removed from the CBC site:
VIEWPOINT
Heather Mallick
A Mighty Wind blows through Republican convention
Last Updated: Friday, September 5, 2008 8:48 PM ET
By Heather Mallick, special to CBC News
I assume John McCain chose Sarah Palin as his vice-presidential
partner in a fit of pique because the Republican money men refused to
let him have the stuffed male shirt he really wanted. She added
nothing to the ticket that the Republicans didn't already have sewn
up, the white trash vote, the demographic that sullies America's name
inside and outside its borders yet has such a curious appeal for the
right.
So why do it?
It's possible that Republican men, sexual inadequates that they are,
really believe that women will vote for a woman just because she's a
woman. They're unfamiliar with our true natures. Do they think vaginas
call out to each other in the jungle night? I mean, I know men have
their secret meetings at which they pledge to do manly things, like
being irresponsible with their semen and postponing household repairs
with glue and used matches. Guys will be guys, obviously.
But do they not know that women have been trained to resent other
women and that they only learn to suppress this by constantly berating
themselves and reading columns like this one? I'm a feminist who
understands that women can nurse terrible and delicate woman hatred.
Palin was not a sure choice, not even for the stolidly Republican
ladies branch of Citizens for a Tackier America. No, she isn't even
female really. She's a type, and she comes in male form too.
John Doyle, the cleverest critic in Canada, comes right out and calls
Palin an Alaska hillbilly. Damn his eyes, I wish I'd had the wit to
come up with it first. It's safer than "white trash" but I'll pluck
safety out of the nettle danger. Or something.
Doyle's job includes watching a lot of reality television and he's
well-versed in the backstory. White trash — not trailer trash, that's
something different — is rural, loud, proudly unlettered (like Bush
himself), suspicious of the urban, frankly disbelieving of the
foreign, and a fan of the American cliché of authenticity. The
semiotics are pure Palin: a sturdy body, clothes that are clinging yet
boxy and a voice that could peel the plastic seal off your new
microwave.
'Turn your guns on Levi, ma'am'
Palin has a toned-down version of the porn actress look favoured by
this decade's woman, the overtreated hair, puffy lips and permanently
alarmed expression. Bristol has what is known in Britain as the look
of the teen mum, the "pramface." Husband Todd looks like a roughneck;
Track, heading off to Iraq, appears terrified. They claim to be family
obsessed while being studiously terrible at parenting. What normal
father would want Levi "I'm a fuckin' redneck" Johnson prodding his
daughter?
I know that I have an attachment to children that verges on the
irrational, but why don't the Palins? I'm not the one preaching
homespun values but I'd destroy that ratboy before I'd let him get
within scenting range of my daughter again, and so would you. Palin's
e-mails about the brother-in-law she tried to get fired as a state
trooper are fizzing with rage and revenge. Turn your guns on Levi,
ma'am.
Palin has it all, along with being vicious and profoundly dishonest.
Just hours after her first convention speech, the Associated Press did
a good fast listing of her untruths and I won't dwell on them.
I did promise to watch the entire convention so you wouldn't have to,
but I discovered a neat trick. I switched between the convention and
the 2003 folk music mockumentary A Mighty Wind on Bravo.
They were indistinguishable. Click on a nervous wreck with deeply
strange hair doing a monologue on society today and where it all went
wrong. Are you watching Christian belter Aaron Tippin singing Where
the Stars and Stripes and Eagle Fly in the Xcel Centre in St. Paul or
the actors from Spinal Tap remixing the 1966 version of Potato's in
the Paddy Wagon?
Who delivered this line: "To do then now would be retro. To do then
then was very now-tro, if you will." Was it Rev. James Dobson of Focus
on the Family talking about Bristol Palin's shotgun wedding or was it
a flashback to the Kingston Trio?
The conventioneers are nothing like the rich men who run the party,
and that's the mystery of the hick vote. They'd be much better served
by the Democrats. I know Thomas Frank answered this in What's the
Matter with Kansas?; I know that red states vote Republican on social
issues to give themselves the only self-esteem available to their
broken, economically abused existence.
Lie works for Palin
But surely they know Barack Obama is not planning to finish off the
ordinary hillbilly when he adjusts tax rates. He's going to raise
taxes on the top 2% of Americans and that doesn't include anyone at
the convention beyond the Bushes and McCains and random party
management. So why cheer Palin when she claims otherwise?
Is it racism? I'm told that it is, although I find racism so appalling
that I have difficulty identifying it. It is more likely the dearly
held Republican notion that any American can become violently rich, as
rich as those hedge funders in Greenwich, Conn., who buy $40-million
mansions unseen and have their topiary shaped in the form of musical
notes.
When Palin and Rudy Giuliani sneered at Obama's years of "community
organizing" — they said it like "rectal fissure" — the audience
ewww-ed with them. Republicans dream of a personal future that
involves only household staff, not equals who need to be persuaded to
vote.
So I'm trying to imagine the pain of realizing, as they all must at
some point, that it is not going to happen for them. It's the green
light at the end of the dock. It's the ship that never comes in, gals,
as Palin would put it. But she won't because the lie works for her. It
helps her scramble, without compassion, above all those other tense
no-hoper ladies in the audience.
American politics isn't short of smart women. Susan Eisenhower, Ike's
granddaughter, who just endorsed Obama, made an extraordinary speech
at the Democratic convention (and a terrific casual appearance on The
Colbert Report as Palin was speaking). The Republican party has
already consumed nearly all of its moderate "seed corn," she said
aptly. Time to start again.
Eisenhower, a scholar and journalist, has a point. Or am I only saying
that because she's part of the thoughtful demographic that I'm trying
to reach here? Think, Heather, think like a Republican! The Skeptics,
shall I call them, are my base, and I'll pander to them as ardently as
the Republican patriarchs tease their white female marginals.
here's the column, since removed from the CBC site:
VIEWPOINT
Heather Mallick
A Mighty Wind blows through Republican convention
Last Updated: Friday, September 5, 2008 8:48 PM ET
By Heather Mallick, special to CBC News
I assume John McCain chose Sarah Palin as his vice-presidential
partner in a fit of pique because the Republican money men refused to
let him have the stuffed male shirt he really wanted. She added
nothing to the ticket that the Republicans didn't already have sewn
up, the white trash vote, the demographic that sullies America's name
inside and outside its borders yet has such a curious appeal for the
right.
So why do it?
It's possible that Republican men, sexual inadequates that they are,
really believe that women will vote for a woman just because she's a
woman. They're unfamiliar with our true natures. Do they think vaginas
call out to each other in the jungle night? I mean, I know men have
their secret meetings at which they pledge to do manly things, like
being irresponsible with their semen and postponing household repairs
with glue and used matches. Guys will be guys, obviously.
But do they not know that women have been trained to resent other
women and that they only learn to suppress this by constantly berating
themselves and reading columns like this one? I'm a feminist who
understands that women can nurse terrible and delicate woman hatred.
Palin was not a sure choice, not even for the stolidly Republican
ladies branch of Citizens for a Tackier America. No, she isn't even
female really. She's a type, and she comes in male form too.
John Doyle, the cleverest critic in Canada, comes right out and calls
Palin an Alaska hillbilly. Damn his eyes, I wish I'd had the wit to
come up with it first. It's safer than "white trash" but I'll pluck
safety out of the nettle danger. Or something.
Doyle's job includes watching a lot of reality television and he's
well-versed in the backstory. White trash — not trailer trash, that's
something different — is rural, loud, proudly unlettered (like Bush
himself), suspicious of the urban, frankly disbelieving of the
foreign, and a fan of the American cliché of authenticity. The
semiotics are pure Palin: a sturdy body, clothes that are clinging yet
boxy and a voice that could peel the plastic seal off your new
microwave.
'Turn your guns on Levi, ma'am'
Palin has a toned-down version of the porn actress look favoured by
this decade's woman, the overtreated hair, puffy lips and permanently
alarmed expression. Bristol has what is known in Britain as the look
of the teen mum, the "pramface." Husband Todd looks like a roughneck;
Track, heading off to Iraq, appears terrified. They claim to be family
obsessed while being studiously terrible at parenting. What normal
father would want Levi "I'm a fuckin' redneck" Johnson prodding his
daughter?
I know that I have an attachment to children that verges on the
irrational, but why don't the Palins? I'm not the one preaching
homespun values but I'd destroy that ratboy before I'd let him get
within scenting range of my daughter again, and so would you. Palin's
e-mails about the brother-in-law she tried to get fired as a state
trooper are fizzing with rage and revenge. Turn your guns on Levi,
ma'am.
Palin has it all, along with being vicious and profoundly dishonest.
Just hours after her first convention speech, the Associated Press did
a good fast listing of her untruths and I won't dwell on them.
I did promise to watch the entire convention so you wouldn't have to,
but I discovered a neat trick. I switched between the convention and
the 2003 folk music mockumentary A Mighty Wind on Bravo.
They were indistinguishable. Click on a nervous wreck with deeply
strange hair doing a monologue on society today and where it all went
wrong. Are you watching Christian belter Aaron Tippin singing Where
the Stars and Stripes and Eagle Fly in the Xcel Centre in St. Paul or
the actors from Spinal Tap remixing the 1966 version of Potato's in
the Paddy Wagon?
Who delivered this line: "To do then now would be retro. To do then
then was very now-tro, if you will." Was it Rev. James Dobson of Focus
on the Family talking about Bristol Palin's shotgun wedding or was it
a flashback to the Kingston Trio?
The conventioneers are nothing like the rich men who run the party,
and that's the mystery of the hick vote. They'd be much better served
by the Democrats. I know Thomas Frank answered this in What's the
Matter with Kansas?; I know that red states vote Republican on social
issues to give themselves the only self-esteem available to their
broken, economically abused existence.
Lie works for Palin
But surely they know Barack Obama is not planning to finish off the
ordinary hillbilly when he adjusts tax rates. He's going to raise
taxes on the top 2% of Americans and that doesn't include anyone at
the convention beyond the Bushes and McCains and random party
management. So why cheer Palin when she claims otherwise?
Is it racism? I'm told that it is, although I find racism so appalling
that I have difficulty identifying it. It is more likely the dearly
held Republican notion that any American can become violently rich, as
rich as those hedge funders in Greenwich, Conn., who buy $40-million
mansions unseen and have their topiary shaped in the form of musical
notes.
When Palin and Rudy Giuliani sneered at Obama's years of "community
organizing" — they said it like "rectal fissure" — the audience
ewww-ed with them. Republicans dream of a personal future that
involves only household staff, not equals who need to be persuaded to
vote.
So I'm trying to imagine the pain of realizing, as they all must at
some point, that it is not going to happen for them. It's the green
light at the end of the dock. It's the ship that never comes in, gals,
as Palin would put it. But she won't because the lie works for her. It
helps her scramble, without compassion, above all those other tense
no-hoper ladies in the audience.
American politics isn't short of smart women. Susan Eisenhower, Ike's
granddaughter, who just endorsed Obama, made an extraordinary speech
at the Democratic convention (and a terrific casual appearance on The
Colbert Report as Palin was speaking). The Republican party has
already consumed nearly all of its moderate "seed corn," she said
aptly. Time to start again.
Eisenhower, a scholar and journalist, has a point. Or am I only saying
that because she's part of the thoughtful demographic that I'm trying
to reach here? Think, Heather, think like a Republican! The Skeptics,
shall I call them, are my base, and I'll pander to them as ardently as
the Republican patriarchs tease their white female marginals.
Friday, September 5, 2008
Bad feminist
the following ad floated to the top of the debris pile otherwise known as my inbox the other day, advertising the newly reconstituted faculty women's club (originally called the faculty wives' club, if memory serves):
i know i'm not supposed to feel envious -- but, wow: what kind of a charmed life would you lead if you had time to take in dog walking groups?
The Wine & Cheese Social will be an opportunity for both newcomers and returning members to check out the club and our many activities: from Art Gallery Tours to Golf, Book Groups to Bridge, or Gourmet Dining to Dog Walking - just to name a few. We have activities that meet during the day, in the evening, and even occasionally on the weekends.
Wednesday, July 9, 2008
My niece the feminist
my second-oldest niece, who's ten, has been reading a book about a girl in afghanistan who has to dress like a boy in order to be out and about in her neighbourhood. my mom asked laura, "what do you think about that?" laura said, "i think it's silly. after all, the first person on earth was a girl. everybody knows that." my mom frowns at the rush-hour traffic and tries to figure this one out. "you mean lucy?" "yeah, lucy." laura grows reflective for a second. "maybe that's why men want to run everything. but it's silly. everybody knows that the only thing men are better at than women is hot-dog-eating contests."
Sunday, May 25, 2008
Aunty Joyce
i've neglected my blog for the last week not only because the charms of twenty-first-century edmonton struggle to match those of nineteenth-century buenos aires, but also, and primarily, because i've been overwhelmed by quotidian demands with unexpectedly big emotional impacts, most of which revolve around aunty jo.
in case you haven't met mo's mother's sister, jo is 84, deaf, and frail. she is, in almost equal measure, sweet, conniving, slow, opinionated, aggravating, grateful, selfish, sly, proud, scared, affectionate and feeble. she's a total dear and very fond of mo and me. "you're more the sporty type," she says to mo, "and heather's more the lady type." she smiles a little, pleased to have cracked the butch/femme code.
jo has been in the hospital for a month now, but they're sending her home on wednesday. which hospital, you ask? could it be the university hospital, conveniently located to work and home? the royal alex, within walking distance? the misericordia? the general? no: they've taken her to grey nuns, which is a day trip away from here. and now you're wondering, is "home" the right place for jo to be? shouldn't she be somewhere with a little more care? indeed. if i have learned one thing over the last month, it's that nothing is as important as a pension indexed to inflation. it's more important than good health -- it is good health. it buys community. it will ensure that you can find a spot in a dementia wing, where monthly rent starts at $3500.
when jo was hospitalized a few years back, geriatric medical personnel set out to test her cognition -- not a bad idea, given that she suffered brain damage in a car accident twenty years ago. she passed their tests, but only barely, mostly because she thought the tests themselves were stupid. she has a point. same tests this time around, only (in case her deafness had spread to her eyes, causing blindness?) they wrote the questions down for her to read. TAKE A PIECE OF PAPER AND FOLD IT IN HALF. THEN PICK IT UP IN YOUR LEFT HAND AND THROW IT ON THE FLOOR. jo reads the instructions and looks at me. "why do i have to do that?" "they just want to be sure you still understand instructions." skepticism. "it's so that if you're at home and have to use the stove or something, they know you'll be safe." the OT is standing patiently by, beaming encouragement. jo snorts. "you don't need to fold a piece of paper to use the stove!" "well, true....," i say, "but just show them you can do it. it will make them happy." jo rolls her eyes. the OT's smile is starting to strain. i can see the word "difficult," as in "difficult patient," taking shape in the thought bubble over her head. jo reads the instructions again, her lips moving around the words. she looks at me; i look stern. she looks at the OT, who looks meaningfully at the instructions. outnumbered, jo decides to do the task. but with her left arm in a splint, she can't really throw the paper on the floor properly. the OT hesitates, then yells, "ARE YOU FINISHED, MRS VALE?" "yes," says jo politely, automatically, "no, just a minute." she reads the instructions again, heaves a sigh of exasperation and throws the folded paper onto the floor with her splinted left arm. then she giggles.
ten or fifteen years ago, jo might have seemed mentally slow, but her demographic has caught up with her (caught down with her?), so now she reads like an 84-year-old whiz kid. "that's a nice blouse," she'll say to me. "you wore it last time you visited, too." busted. or, "i like those pants. i wonder what they'd look like ironed." when my mom visited during our buenos aires trip, jo complained that she wanted to get out of the hospital. casually, a bit later in the conversation, she inquired, "do you drive?" this is not someone suffering cognitive impairment.
what she does suffer from? a chronic acute case of vanity. in fact, we all suffer from her vanity. her first concern, always, is her hair. "oh!," she says, "you're here!" then her hands go immediately, reflexively, to her hair. "i look awful," she apologizes, "i need to get my hair done." then, usually, there is a short tirade against whoever's done it last, a detailed account of how they did or didn't use curlers, or made it too straight, or over-permed it, or pinned it up wrong. she's a piece of work, is aunty jo. she takes offence when servers apply the seniors' discount at restaurants. "how does he know how old i am?!" she wouldn't be caught dead using a walker -- "that's for old people." she doesn't socialize with anyone in her building: "they're all old." we cajole in all the typical ways. mo: "i'd love to have a walker! you could sit down a have a little rest whenever you felt like it!" jo looks levelly at us. we change topics, but not tactics. "boy, i'd love meals on wheels," i enthuse. "just think: dinners delivered hot to your door at mealtime!" no comment.
jo has outlived two husbands, her twin sister, her older brother and her best friend. her two great pleasures in life are "who wants to be a millionaire" and eating dinner at boston pizza. she'll order lasagna or chicken fingers, and the staff refill her coffee cup all night long. this winter, she started finding the half-block walk to BP a bit too long. it breaks my heart to see her enfeebled. she's so frail that when she falls (and it's now "when" she falls, not "if"), it takes her hours to get up again. that's if she's conscious, if her arm's not broken, if she's dressed and indoors, warm. she lies to everybody about her frailty, of course. "HOW MANY TIMES HAVE YOU FALLEN THIS YEAR, MRS VALE?," asks the doctor. ("wasilenko: that's my doctor's name. what a name!") "oh, two or three," says jo, breezily. yvonne, the building manager, tells a different story. "i know i'm not supposed to help her up, i know i'm supposed to call the ambulance, but ...." she spreads her hands, helpless before her good heart. it's only through talking to one another that we piece together horrifying images of joyce lying behind a car in a snowy parking lot at 2 AM. "i tripped," she'll tell us, when we ask, "i think there was something on the sidewalk."
*****
that's jo as a character in my narrative. everything in this post so far could have been written at any point over the last five years. what's different about this time is that i see clearly, perhaps for the first time, jo more as a person than as a character, jo as a failing human being who needs my help.
i'm not sure exactly what's brought about this new perspective, but it has something to do with mo being away; jo being alarmingly accommodating and open to suggestion; and the acrid smell of urine and all that it represents about our base, human existence. jo's been somewhat incontinent but it's got worse lately. when i went over to tidy her apartment last week, i find it unbearable. when did it get so bad? wondering this, i look more closely at her as i've seen her over the last year or so. the picture comes into focus and i realize: her clothes are dirty, she doesn't bathe herself properly, and she's anorexically thin. i snoop through the kitchen. she has a collection of napkins and some sugar packets from boston pizza. in the fridge, two jars of jam and a half litre of now-sour milk. is this what the future looks like, a cold, white, humming emptiness?
i feel quite disoriented to be in this entirely new and different relation to jo. in cleaning her place, i am finding things i'd rather not know, but also, and worse, finding things that by rights we should have known, being her only companions in the world. our willful blindness is shocking. i'm shocked, morally shocked, by how cavalier we have been. as my good friend renee put it the other night, mo and i have not taken seriously, have not internalized, jo's need for care. but now, i get it, and to mo and bobbee's chagrin, i'm sure, i am in full-on, over-compensating, bossy-big-sister mode. (poor jo.)
in a profound way, this is the first time i've been called on to be unselfish. many times in my life i have been generous; in fact, i like to cultivate generosity as a way of being. however, generosity is always self-serving. when i'm generous, i get to set the terms. this is different, and hateful. it's what i turned my back on when i walked away from church. it's why i don't have children. and yet: here is a woman who has outlived everyone in her life, who has an accidental connection to me, and who needs things i can provide. and so: there can be no question. i don't like it -- i prefer my old relationship with her, the one where i wear a pretty dress to make her happy, and she compliments me, and then we leave, telling ourselves she's okay on her own.
what blithe lives we lead. what luck.
in case you haven't met mo's mother's sister, jo is 84, deaf, and frail. she is, in almost equal measure, sweet, conniving, slow, opinionated, aggravating, grateful, selfish, sly, proud, scared, affectionate and feeble. she's a total dear and very fond of mo and me. "you're more the sporty type," she says to mo, "and heather's more the lady type." she smiles a little, pleased to have cracked the butch/femme code.
jo has been in the hospital for a month now, but they're sending her home on wednesday. which hospital, you ask? could it be the university hospital, conveniently located to work and home? the royal alex, within walking distance? the misericordia? the general? no: they've taken her to grey nuns, which is a day trip away from here. and now you're wondering, is "home" the right place for jo to be? shouldn't she be somewhere with a little more care? indeed. if i have learned one thing over the last month, it's that nothing is as important as a pension indexed to inflation. it's more important than good health -- it is good health. it buys community. it will ensure that you can find a spot in a dementia wing, where monthly rent starts at $3500.
when jo was hospitalized a few years back, geriatric medical personnel set out to test her cognition -- not a bad idea, given that she suffered brain damage in a car accident twenty years ago. she passed their tests, but only barely, mostly because she thought the tests themselves were stupid. she has a point. same tests this time around, only (in case her deafness had spread to her eyes, causing blindness?) they wrote the questions down for her to read. TAKE A PIECE OF PAPER AND FOLD IT IN HALF. THEN PICK IT UP IN YOUR LEFT HAND AND THROW IT ON THE FLOOR. jo reads the instructions and looks at me. "why do i have to do that?" "they just want to be sure you still understand instructions." skepticism. "it's so that if you're at home and have to use the stove or something, they know you'll be safe." the OT is standing patiently by, beaming encouragement. jo snorts. "you don't need to fold a piece of paper to use the stove!" "well, true....," i say, "but just show them you can do it. it will make them happy." jo rolls her eyes. the OT's smile is starting to strain. i can see the word "difficult," as in "difficult patient," taking shape in the thought bubble over her head. jo reads the instructions again, her lips moving around the words. she looks at me; i look stern. she looks at the OT, who looks meaningfully at the instructions. outnumbered, jo decides to do the task. but with her left arm in a splint, she can't really throw the paper on the floor properly. the OT hesitates, then yells, "ARE YOU FINISHED, MRS VALE?" "yes," says jo politely, automatically, "no, just a minute." she reads the instructions again, heaves a sigh of exasperation and throws the folded paper onto the floor with her splinted left arm. then she giggles.
ten or fifteen years ago, jo might have seemed mentally slow, but her demographic has caught up with her (caught down with her?), so now she reads like an 84-year-old whiz kid. "that's a nice blouse," she'll say to me. "you wore it last time you visited, too." busted. or, "i like those pants. i wonder what they'd look like ironed." when my mom visited during our buenos aires trip, jo complained that she wanted to get out of the hospital. casually, a bit later in the conversation, she inquired, "do you drive?" this is not someone suffering cognitive impairment.
what she does suffer from? a chronic acute case of vanity. in fact, we all suffer from her vanity. her first concern, always, is her hair. "oh!," she says, "you're here!" then her hands go immediately, reflexively, to her hair. "i look awful," she apologizes, "i need to get my hair done." then, usually, there is a short tirade against whoever's done it last, a detailed account of how they did or didn't use curlers, or made it too straight, or over-permed it, or pinned it up wrong. she's a piece of work, is aunty jo. she takes offence when servers apply the seniors' discount at restaurants. "how does he know how old i am?!" she wouldn't be caught dead using a walker -- "that's for old people." she doesn't socialize with anyone in her building: "they're all old." we cajole in all the typical ways. mo: "i'd love to have a walker! you could sit down a have a little rest whenever you felt like it!" jo looks levelly at us. we change topics, but not tactics. "boy, i'd love meals on wheels," i enthuse. "just think: dinners delivered hot to your door at mealtime!" no comment.
jo has outlived two husbands, her twin sister, her older brother and her best friend. her two great pleasures in life are "who wants to be a millionaire" and eating dinner at boston pizza. she'll order lasagna or chicken fingers, and the staff refill her coffee cup all night long. this winter, she started finding the half-block walk to BP a bit too long. it breaks my heart to see her enfeebled. she's so frail that when she falls (and it's now "when" she falls, not "if"), it takes her hours to get up again. that's if she's conscious, if her arm's not broken, if she's dressed and indoors, warm. she lies to everybody about her frailty, of course. "HOW MANY TIMES HAVE YOU FALLEN THIS YEAR, MRS VALE?," asks the doctor. ("wasilenko: that's my doctor's name. what a name!") "oh, two or three," says jo, breezily. yvonne, the building manager, tells a different story. "i know i'm not supposed to help her up, i know i'm supposed to call the ambulance, but ...." she spreads her hands, helpless before her good heart. it's only through talking to one another that we piece together horrifying images of joyce lying behind a car in a snowy parking lot at 2 AM. "i tripped," she'll tell us, when we ask, "i think there was something on the sidewalk."
*****
that's jo as a character in my narrative. everything in this post so far could have been written at any point over the last five years. what's different about this time is that i see clearly, perhaps for the first time, jo more as a person than as a character, jo as a failing human being who needs my help.
i'm not sure exactly what's brought about this new perspective, but it has something to do with mo being away; jo being alarmingly accommodating and open to suggestion; and the acrid smell of urine and all that it represents about our base, human existence. jo's been somewhat incontinent but it's got worse lately. when i went over to tidy her apartment last week, i find it unbearable. when did it get so bad? wondering this, i look more closely at her as i've seen her over the last year or so. the picture comes into focus and i realize: her clothes are dirty, she doesn't bathe herself properly, and she's anorexically thin. i snoop through the kitchen. she has a collection of napkins and some sugar packets from boston pizza. in the fridge, two jars of jam and a half litre of now-sour milk. is this what the future looks like, a cold, white, humming emptiness?
i feel quite disoriented to be in this entirely new and different relation to jo. in cleaning her place, i am finding things i'd rather not know, but also, and worse, finding things that by rights we should have known, being her only companions in the world. our willful blindness is shocking. i'm shocked, morally shocked, by how cavalier we have been. as my good friend renee put it the other night, mo and i have not taken seriously, have not internalized, jo's need for care. but now, i get it, and to mo and bobbee's chagrin, i'm sure, i am in full-on, over-compensating, bossy-big-sister mode. (poor jo.)
in a profound way, this is the first time i've been called on to be unselfish. many times in my life i have been generous; in fact, i like to cultivate generosity as a way of being. however, generosity is always self-serving. when i'm generous, i get to set the terms. this is different, and hateful. it's what i turned my back on when i walked away from church. it's why i don't have children. and yet: here is a woman who has outlived everyone in her life, who has an accidental connection to me, and who needs things i can provide. and so: there can be no question. i don't like it -- i prefer my old relationship with her, the one where i wear a pretty dress to make her happy, and she compliments me, and then we leave, telling ourselves she's okay on her own.
what blithe lives we lead. what luck.
Monday, April 28, 2008
Mysteries of the argentine woman
breakfast in buenos aires normally consists of a big mug of sweet hot chocolate along with a couple of churros: deep-fried donuts filled with dulce de leche and sprinkled with sugar. three-course lunches appear to be at least widely available if not universally consumed. dinner, as most people already know, generally orbits around a large hunk of cow and patas fritas, hold the vegetables.
this is all very encouraging.
until you go into the palermo soho shops, which tend to have three sizes: size 1, size 2, and size 3. small, medium and large, you are thinking? no: tiny, tinier, tiniest. in a cruel and bizarre twist on the traffic in women, it's as though after the currency crisis (precipitated in part by former president menem's decision to stop pegging the argentine peso to the US dollar), designers decided to do something to stop the terrifying freefall, so fixed clothing sizes in a 1:1 ratio. sizes 1 and 3 match the 3-5-7-9-11 scale, with a size 2 thrown in for those who prefer the 2-4-6-8 system. here's how tiny the palermo sizes are: we stopped into a parisian design shop today, where the clothes were designed, built and flown in from paris. after a several hours of palermo-based designers, the parisian outfits looked brobdignabian. and before you raise the obvious: these clothes were flown down here well before the new french anti-anorexia laws.
who are these women? i do see women in the restaurants, and they do appear to eat. the straight couple at the table next to us at lunch opted for the three-course meal. he had a salad and stir-fried vegetables while she tucked into black bean soup, hungarian goulash and flambeed bananas. i couldn't see where there was room in her skinny jeans for a full plate of goulash, but down it went. and she was schlepping shopping bags, too. it's a given that the servers at restaurants could all wear a size 1 or 2, but for the most part they are 18 or 19 years old, and i have to believe they can't afford to shop in these palermo boutiques. (c'mon, i'm carrying 20 years and 20 kilos: give me something to hold onto!)
at the same time, i don't see women out exercising madly, either. i attracted way more than my fair share of stares on the avenida de la libertador this afternoon, when i went humping around the trails. following this beautiful circular path around a nature preserve with paddleboats, swans, and sycamores, i was initially worried that i might be running the wrong way around the circuit. maybe there's a secret counterclockwise code that locals know, and maybe it's a huge offense when ignorant giantesss turistas mess it up. then i realized, oh, no, it's just that i'm the only woman in a hundred miles. the rest are probably tiding themselves over from lunch to dinner on potato chips and treats from one of the many panaderias about. marcia tells me i'm overreacting and overgeneralizing and don't know what i'm talking about because so far i've only gone running at the end of a weekday: wait til sunday morning, she says, and it's a whole other scene. maybe.
until then, it's handbags for heather. eh, maybe i'll actually preserve some pesos to put in 'em. i mean, it. in it. singular. i do not need to buy multiple handbags to compensate for the fact that i can't buy cute palermo clothes.
do i?
this is all very encouraging.
until you go into the palermo soho shops, which tend to have three sizes: size 1, size 2, and size 3. small, medium and large, you are thinking? no: tiny, tinier, tiniest. in a cruel and bizarre twist on the traffic in women, it's as though after the currency crisis (precipitated in part by former president menem's decision to stop pegging the argentine peso to the US dollar), designers decided to do something to stop the terrifying freefall, so fixed clothing sizes in a 1:1 ratio. sizes 1 and 3 match the 3-5-7-9-11 scale, with a size 2 thrown in for those who prefer the 2-4-6-8 system. here's how tiny the palermo sizes are: we stopped into a parisian design shop today, where the clothes were designed, built and flown in from paris. after a several hours of palermo-based designers, the parisian outfits looked brobdignabian. and before you raise the obvious: these clothes were flown down here well before the new french anti-anorexia laws.
who are these women? i do see women in the restaurants, and they do appear to eat. the straight couple at the table next to us at lunch opted for the three-course meal. he had a salad and stir-fried vegetables while she tucked into black bean soup, hungarian goulash and flambeed bananas. i couldn't see where there was room in her skinny jeans for a full plate of goulash, but down it went. and she was schlepping shopping bags, too. it's a given that the servers at restaurants could all wear a size 1 or 2, but for the most part they are 18 or 19 years old, and i have to believe they can't afford to shop in these palermo boutiques. (c'mon, i'm carrying 20 years and 20 kilos: give me something to hold onto!)
at the same time, i don't see women out exercising madly, either. i attracted way more than my fair share of stares on the avenida de la libertador this afternoon, when i went humping around the trails. following this beautiful circular path around a nature preserve with paddleboats, swans, and sycamores, i was initially worried that i might be running the wrong way around the circuit. maybe there's a secret counterclockwise code that locals know, and maybe it's a huge offense when ignorant giantesss turistas mess it up. then i realized, oh, no, it's just that i'm the only woman in a hundred miles. the rest are probably tiding themselves over from lunch to dinner on potato chips and treats from one of the many panaderias about. marcia tells me i'm overreacting and overgeneralizing and don't know what i'm talking about because so far i've only gone running at the end of a weekday: wait til sunday morning, she says, and it's a whole other scene. maybe.
until then, it's handbags for heather. eh, maybe i'll actually preserve some pesos to put in 'em. i mean, it. in it. singular. i do not need to buy multiple handbags to compensate for the fact that i can't buy cute palermo clothes.
do i?
Sunday, March 30, 2008
Seduced by feminism
i was talking last night with my friend susanne about becoming a feminist. the setting was ironic, perhaps: we were at a fashion show with chic girls and pretty boys in their irritatingly early 20s. my modern vintage t-straps had me in agony, which i thought would be sexier than it was. i didn't realize that at this fashion show we'd be standing all night, and i didn't realize that "all night" would be as long as it was. when the invite said doors at 7, i thought that meant show at 8, so i had my friend renee pick me up at 7:30. suffice it to say, we pretty much opened the party. and so, here i was, three hours later, with pain radiating up and down my spine and the mortifying thought that i was going to have to take my shoes right off, as if i was at a wedding reception in a community hall and not at a fashion show at an independent gallery.
anyway, having chosen the best boy-outfit and the best girl-outfit, having outed the boots that were trying too hard and exhausted the treats table, talk turned to whether we'd ever imagined a career in the fashion industry. me, i grew up idolizing long-haul truck drivers. susanne's parents, it turns out, were in the high-end retail business in germany. the upshot was the same: neither of us fancied a career in fashion, both of us became professors. but was style absent? susanne described her first women's studies prof, a redhead the same age as her mother but who wore black leather, played in a rock band, and dated women. even by the standards of 1980s berlin, she was cool.
i was similarly seduced by the lifestyle of the intellectual class. i graduated from high school in 1984 here in edmonton and headed straight to university. i had figured out by that point that i wanted to teach. i didn't care for children and barely survived junior high the first time around, but perhaps i could become a professor. it must be said that in 1984 i had no idea what "being a professor" meant. nonetheless, as soon as i hit on this idea, i knew it was for me. i imagined long periods of reflective study punctuated by socrates-like sessions with devotees; i saw fierce arguments in smoky bars; i pictured myself toiling away on a misunderstood masterpiece all alone in a garrett. we didn't have garretts in edmonton, as far as i knew, so this life would pretty much have to take place elsewhere, probably toronto. once i was a feminist, my imagination became sharper: i imagined coming home after a long day in the library to a tiny apartment redolent with garlic and steamy with pasta, all made by my live-in boyfriend. what can i say? it was the 80s; we ate a lot of pasta, and "common-law" felt radical. i'm getting ahead of myself a little, but it's a measure of my misplaced idealism that i most wanted to become a grad student after reading margaret atwood's the edible woman.
from my vantage point as an eager undergraduate, my professors' lives did appear to conform to my dreamy notions. it's about 1986, a saturday night, and my boyfriend and i are milling around in the now-defunct weinlos books, attending a reception for a visiting poet. i can't remember who it was now -- bp nichol, perhaps. anyway, the talk was all about the canadian long poem. talk? arguments, impassioned ones, among poets, professors, book merchants, and grad students. i didn't have the first clue how to participate in the conversation, but i covertly purchased a copy of the 1979 long poem anthology that night and set to work on it. the book was edited by michael ondaatje, the "early michael ondaatje," we have to say now, the ondaatje of coming through slaughter and there's a trick with a knife i'm learning to do. ondaatje's always been sexy, but he used to be our very own pretty boy.
however, not even michael ondaatje was as sexy as mid-80s canadian feminism. in those heady days, women's studies was just being established at the UofA. in keeping with feminism's commitment to inclusiveness, undergraduates were encouraged to get involved in the hiring decisions. we didn't have the first clue what we were doing. there was a fantastic quebecoise up for the job of chair whose expertise was labour movements among immigrant seamstresses in montreal, but we collectively pooh-poohed that in favour of the candidate who studied Women's Spirituality. c'mon: woman-centred spirituality? for a girl just five years out of braemar baptist church, that was pretty bold. though i didn't use that term exactly. "hers is a more gynocentric approach," i recall saying, knowingly.
anyway, of all the exciting things going on, nothing was more exciting than the book launch for shirley neuman's anthology a mazing space. to give you a sense of how long ago this was, the gerund was not yet ubiquitous in academic titles. there are images of clam shells and spirals superimposed on the pages of the book, which was designed by one of shirley's husbands. can i say that again?: one of shirley's husbands. she was like edmonton's elizabeth taylor. most scandalously of all, there's an essay in the book called "how the cunt lost its tongue." i was agog. "cunt"? in an academic book? you can do that? it was the linguistic equivalent of susanne's teacher's punk haircut.
the launch of a mazing space was held at garneau books (now a high-end CD store). it was the first book launch i'd ever been invited to, and i had no idea what to expect. i thought for sure it would take the whole evening. i thought there would be a formal program. i thought it might be like the symphony, with dignitaries, speeches. i was quite surprised to discover that a book launch amounted to a whole lot of wine-drinking and milling about. kind of like a fashion show, come to think of it, only i was wearing doc martens. these people -- my people -- were so blase about the intellectual life that they could squander it in small talk and boxed wine.
nothing could have seduced me more.
anyway, having chosen the best boy-outfit and the best girl-outfit, having outed the boots that were trying too hard and exhausted the treats table, talk turned to whether we'd ever imagined a career in the fashion industry. me, i grew up idolizing long-haul truck drivers. susanne's parents, it turns out, were in the high-end retail business in germany. the upshot was the same: neither of us fancied a career in fashion, both of us became professors. but was style absent? susanne described her first women's studies prof, a redhead the same age as her mother but who wore black leather, played in a rock band, and dated women. even by the standards of 1980s berlin, she was cool.
i was similarly seduced by the lifestyle of the intellectual class. i graduated from high school in 1984 here in edmonton and headed straight to university. i had figured out by that point that i wanted to teach. i didn't care for children and barely survived junior high the first time around, but perhaps i could become a professor. it must be said that in 1984 i had no idea what "being a professor" meant. nonetheless, as soon as i hit on this idea, i knew it was for me. i imagined long periods of reflective study punctuated by socrates-like sessions with devotees; i saw fierce arguments in smoky bars; i pictured myself toiling away on a misunderstood masterpiece all alone in a garrett. we didn't have garretts in edmonton, as far as i knew, so this life would pretty much have to take place elsewhere, probably toronto. once i was a feminist, my imagination became sharper: i imagined coming home after a long day in the library to a tiny apartment redolent with garlic and steamy with pasta, all made by my live-in boyfriend. what can i say? it was the 80s; we ate a lot of pasta, and "common-law" felt radical. i'm getting ahead of myself a little, but it's a measure of my misplaced idealism that i most wanted to become a grad student after reading margaret atwood's the edible woman.
from my vantage point as an eager undergraduate, my professors' lives did appear to conform to my dreamy notions. it's about 1986, a saturday night, and my boyfriend and i are milling around in the now-defunct weinlos books, attending a reception for a visiting poet. i can't remember who it was now -- bp nichol, perhaps. anyway, the talk was all about the canadian long poem. talk? arguments, impassioned ones, among poets, professors, book merchants, and grad students. i didn't have the first clue how to participate in the conversation, but i covertly purchased a copy of the 1979 long poem anthology that night and set to work on it. the book was edited by michael ondaatje, the "early michael ondaatje," we have to say now, the ondaatje of coming through slaughter and there's a trick with a knife i'm learning to do. ondaatje's always been sexy, but he used to be our very own pretty boy.
however, not even michael ondaatje was as sexy as mid-80s canadian feminism. in those heady days, women's studies was just being established at the UofA. in keeping with feminism's commitment to inclusiveness, undergraduates were encouraged to get involved in the hiring decisions. we didn't have the first clue what we were doing. there was a fantastic quebecoise up for the job of chair whose expertise was labour movements among immigrant seamstresses in montreal, but we collectively pooh-poohed that in favour of the candidate who studied Women's Spirituality. c'mon: woman-centred spirituality? for a girl just five years out of braemar baptist church, that was pretty bold. though i didn't use that term exactly. "hers is a more gynocentric approach," i recall saying, knowingly.
anyway, of all the exciting things going on, nothing was more exciting than the book launch for shirley neuman's anthology a mazing space. to give you a sense of how long ago this was, the gerund was not yet ubiquitous in academic titles. there are images of clam shells and spirals superimposed on the pages of the book, which was designed by one of shirley's husbands. can i say that again?: one of shirley's husbands. she was like edmonton's elizabeth taylor. most scandalously of all, there's an essay in the book called "how the cunt lost its tongue." i was agog. "cunt"? in an academic book? you can do that? it was the linguistic equivalent of susanne's teacher's punk haircut.
the launch of a mazing space was held at garneau books (now a high-end CD store). it was the first book launch i'd ever been invited to, and i had no idea what to expect. i thought for sure it would take the whole evening. i thought there would be a formal program. i thought it might be like the symphony, with dignitaries, speeches. i was quite surprised to discover that a book launch amounted to a whole lot of wine-drinking and milling about. kind of like a fashion show, come to think of it, only i was wearing doc martens. these people -- my people -- were so blase about the intellectual life that they could squander it in small talk and boxed wine.
nothing could have seduced me more.
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