Day: July 25, 2012

The little list

I made a list of things that make me happy about 5 years ago (probably before I blew out my back), and it’s really interesting to see how things changed.

Foreign films.  Still true.

Wreck Beach.  Still true; but I don’t go as much.

Roller skating.  I haven’t done that in ages, and given that my balance is not good, I think that’s done.  I still have ice skates but gosh, I’ve put on enough weight to make them a bad fit.

Writing songs.  Now folks, what do YOU think?  SVQ.  Still my favourite activity by far.  And so cheap! And so close! And so filled with inertnesting surprises!

Baking pies.  I don’t think I’ve made more than one pie since I started living with Jeff.  That, I hasten to add, is not his problem/fault/responsibility.  Mmmm, pie. Too hot to bake right now.

Going to a spa.  Oh, yeah.  In fact, I think I may book something soon.

Cooking a large meal for a houseful of friends.  Still true.

Throwing a party.  Still true.

Walking.  enh, not so much.  I have to get going on this and just make a walk part of my morning routine, rain or shine.

Watching bugs.  I can still do this for hours.  I prefer that they not be silverfish under my bed though.  I just cleaned under my bed, laid down some silverfish poison, and found twenty bucks.  Even my fucking room is expressing an opinion on the subject of how stytastic it is.

Listening to live music.  And you would guess….?

Home-making presents.  Still doing that.

Watching fireworks.  Well, the Vancouver crowds suck unholy mops, but yes.

Walking downtown on a Saturday night.  I love people watching.  Early in the evening, before the drunks get violent.

Getting a massage.  Sadly, I have to pay for these now.  I can winkle a few minutes out of the kids, but sigh.

Driving through terrain.  I love highway driving in BC.

Seeing unusual animals – pets, IRL, zoos, TV shows – I loves me weird critters.  Current favourite is velvet worms.

Travelling alone.  I hate it; I prefer to do it alone.  And sometimes being by myself at 30000 feet is okay; that’s the part of the trip that doesn’t freak me out.

Eating lobster.  Yes.  This.

Having sex.  Haw, haw, haw.  I’m celibate now – have been for a year – and I can cross this safely off my list of things to enjoy.  This aphorism deleted.  And nobody wants to hear details either way so, bully for me.

Going to the ballet.  Haven’t done that in ages.  The last opera was ruined by the perfume (Fuck Entitled White Women and their TRAIL OF TEAR GAS).  But I could definitely handle some dancing soon.

What wasn’t on the list – drinking beer. Surfing the internet or watching ER for 6 hours at a time.  Hugging my kids.  Hearing a friend’s voice on the phone.  Going to church.

Letter to the Globe and Mail published January 5 1991.

John Allemang’s recent comments on the subject notwithstanding, women who choose to breastfeed do so from the conviction that they are doing what is best for the child.  I was pregnant and/or nursing for almost five years, and I certainly got bored with it, but I never felt trapped, because it was something I chose to do, voluntarily, despite the witlessness and smug, value-laden commentaries of people like Mr. Allemang.

I never flashed my breasts in public because I failed to see how I could advance the cause of nursing by so doing.  Take a poll of real live women who nurse their children, and ask them how they feel, rather than telling us how you think they should feel.  We already know that a lot of men like looking at women’s breasts.  Please tell me something new – that we are perhaps now living in a world where a woman can discharge her responsibilities as a caring parent without getting flak for it.

His last comment about bottles bringing happiness into the world was egregious.  Tell that to a Third World mother who has lost child after child to formula mixed with contaminated water, or the mother whose child has become kendy or brain damaged due to lead-contaminated formula.

Letter to Globe and Mail published 24 November 1993

I offer my gratitude, my sense of indebtedness and my daughterly respect to all those men and women who and lived, or fought and died, so that I may enjoy freedom in Canada.  It is right and proper that those who benefit from something should acknowledge it.

However, I think that Michael Coren dishonours the dead of many wars when he says, “There have also been atrocities in war, but only a tabloid historian would argue that this was common.”

I want to give him the benefit of the doubt, but it is hard for me to do.  How is he defining ‘atrocity’? How is he defining ‘common’?

I think of the bombers raining death upon the children of Baghdad not so long ago, the slaughter of East Timor, the firebombing of Dresden, the siege of Leningrad, the Trail of Tears, the levelling of Coventry, the 40 million (estimated) dead of the Chinese revolution, Andersonville, the internment of the Japanese and Italians (among others), the horror of the Eastern Front, the piles of skulls in Cambodia, the napalm and chemicals of Vietnam, the children playing with severed heads in the streets of El Salvador, the starvation of the Ukraine, the open-eyed children lying in the makeshift morgues of the Balkans, the legless children in Angola, and the tons and tons of buried death chemicals all over the Wets, and enduring legacy of war that may yet rise from the ground like an unquiet ghost.

And I sorrow for these dead with at least the same intensity as I respect those who knew what high ideals they were dying for, whoever and whenever in time they may be.

Are these not atrocities? Are they not common, indeed, pervasive? Are not atrocity and war bosom companions, however we may honour those who fight on our behalf?