Boyle Street Blues

Civil liberties and civility

2012-01-11T22:00:00.000-08:00

Big political news in the neighbourhood: our Member of Parliament has decided to sit as a Civil Libertarian instead of as a Conservative. He was elected as a Conservative in a heavily contested riding in 2011 (in Alberta, 66.8% of the votes were for Conservatives but they got 96.4% of the seats. In our riding, Peter Goldring was elected with only 52.8% of the vote).

To see why Goldring is now sitting as an independent Civil Libertarian, read this article from the Globe and Mail.

Note the quote about how it is "hypocritical to hold principles and apply them only when convenient."

It is convenient for Peter Goldring to espouse civil libertarian principles now that he is facing charges for refusing to give a breath sample to the police when he was pulled over during a Checkstop campaign. If you check his voting record in the House of Commons, you could be forgiven for not thinking of him as a civil libertarian. It seems the Honourable Member has voted in favour of some quite non-libertarian bills while he was sitting as a Conservative. For instance, his party's omnibus crime bill, which included elements that even fellow Conservatives find too draconian. Goldring's outspokenness during the marriage debates are another example. Goldring is a civil libertarian when it is convenient.

For instance, according to the articles on his website he is against government support for private sector projects - specifically the new arena the Katz Group is planning in Edmonton. Yet Goldring has several times spoken glowingly of Mayfair Village, a private developer receiving public monies for a housing project, while decrying the non-profit Boyle Renaissance.

That is his right - but it is ironic that he has gone on record as being critical of people who are inconsistent in exactly this way.

Here's the problem: Goldring was not elected as a civil libertarian. He was elected as a Conservative. If he has experienced a conversion - a "Checkstop to Damascus" experience - then the right thing to do is resign and run again in a byelection. Or, if he is truly sitting as an independent civil libertarian, he needs to start voting against the Conservatives when they violate those principles.

The Conservatives ran on a get-tough-on-crime agenda. They claimed all sorts of "unreported crime" was happening, and they want to build prisons to accommdate the prisoners one assumes will be ferreted out by increased government intervention. Goldring supported that stance during the election. Yet when it is Goldring himself being asked to cooperate in a Checkstop - a measure introduced to reduce the cfrime of impaired driving - suddenly Goldring is a civil libertarian.

Some of the things Goldring has voted for in the past - such as mandatory minimum sentences for trafficking minors - I wholeheartedly agree with. But would a civil libertarian agree with them? As a civil libertarian, Goldring might be less palatable to the electorate than he was as a Conservative - and since he did not exactly win by a landslide, the principled thing to do would be to run again. If the Conservatives fielded another candidate, it is unlikely Goldring would beat them.

If Goldring intends to rejoin the Conservatives once his legal woes have been sorted out, that speaks of a different kind of hypocrisy - where his change of principles is a convenience to keep the Conservative party from suffering any ill consequences.

I understand Goldring's position about the Checkstop, but that does not make him a civil libertarian any more than my position on homelessness makes me a communist. Party and philosophy affiliations are not without meaning - and 52.8% of the vote does not entitle Goldring to assume his constituency supports hypocrisy.

Two Deaths and a Maybe

2011-08-25T12:05:00.000-07:00

When my father died in April, he had fulfilled his goals - including his last goal of reaching 85, although he just squeaked that one in there by dying on his birthday. Although the family was sad that he died, we were also relieved that his final illness was blessedly short instead of turning into an extended period of torture and loss.

This week much of Canada mourns the death of Jack Layton, the New Democrat leader who finally managed to bring the New Democrats to the point of official opposition. He died at the age of 61, and while he accomplished many things in his life, he died with unfinished business. He had made a comeback after prostate cancer, but then died of another kind. That sense that he had unfinished business - and for him that business was definitely that he planned to be our next Prime Minister - seems to have compounded the sense of loss felt by his supporters and by people who might not have agreed with his politics but who recognized in him a man who was truly dedicated to public service.

Neither of these deaths is on my back stoop.

On my back stoop is Emil. He stops by once a week or so to see if we have any bottles or cartons for the bottle depot. Sometimes he asks if we have any work he could do. Emil is homeless. I am pretty sure he has struggles with alcohol abuse. A year ago Emil could still work, and he could carry on a conversation, and you had to wonder how a reasonably attractive and fit man ended up on the streets.

But Emil has undergone a change. He has lost weight, he is weak, and he is frightened. According to Emil, he has lung cancer.

This week he showed up at the back stoop to see if we had any food and enough money for LRT fare so he could get to the hospital for his tests. He is urinating blood, he says, and he is afraid his kidneys have been affected. He is allowed food, but he is not allowed to drink until after the tests. He is not very steady on his feet, and as he tells me this his eyes well up and he says, "I'm scared. I'm really scared."

There are con men who will use this kind of tale to extort money from kind strangers. Emil is not entirely a stranger - he is a neighbour, albeit one without a home. I have no reason to disbelieve him. He is sick and homeless and frightened.

I give him some food. At our house the food is basic - some tomato, pieces of cheese, rice cakes, fruit salad with raspberries from our garden. I give him what change I have in my pocket - it's not enough to pay the LRT fare, but he tells me he has 75 cents already so it will be enough.

We are headed out to a meeting about the new community centre, so Emil takes the food and goes away. Later I find a piece of tomato and the plastic fork in the grass, fallen from his unsteady hands.

My father died with the support and love of his family and friends. Jack Layton died with the support of millions of people. Emil, whose life was already precarious, is hanging on to his last shreds of courage and dignity. To suggest that Emil has a fighting chance of beating cancer is almost obscene. If the disease can beat Jack Layton, with the resources and support and pluck he had, what hope can Emil have?

Getting High

2011-05-07T23:22:00.000-07:00

The stratospheric voices of classical coloratura sopranos like Ruth Welting have a chilling, thrilling side. They are like circus high-wire acts; the whole audience barely breathes, waiting to see if she'll hit the notes or if she'll fall short or crack.

The male singers had the Three Tenors to look to - the magnificence of Pavarotti's lush voice with its full-throated high Cs; the intelligence of Domingo's approach to singing; the passion of Carreras.

Even higher are the countertenors. These are the men who sing as high as women, using modern vocal techniques to approximate the art of the famous castrati. The rock stars of their day, the castrati were boys who had been castrated to keep their voices high and pure. The practice was eventually outlawed, but the legends of their astonishing voices continued to inspire, yielding the 1994 film Farinelli and Anne Rice's Cry to Heaven.

Last night was the opening concert of the First Annual Edmonton Early Music Festival. The featured artists were local soprano Jolaine Kerley, cellist Josephine van Lier (who moved to Edmonton from Europe some years ago), harpsichordist Gilbert Martinez from San Francisco, and the amazing American countertenor Brian Asawa.

Asawa is a big name in countertenor circles. He won the major competitions and he has sung at the Met and all over the world. His performance in the concert made it clear why he has been so successful: a marriage of wonderful tone, terrific technique, and a flair for the dramatic. He is shameless - and good.

The concert was not well-attended. Edmonton has a huge number of concerts every weekend - and competition for audience share is tough. I only heard about this concert by accident the night before.

In two shows in my past I have been cast in parts that required stratospheric singing. One was in the comedy Farelinelli at the Fringe Festival. The role was of a choir boy who had been the object of...interference...by a priest, and he had consequently refused to grow up and had remained a boyish treble. The other was The Singing Blade, in which I played the castrato Gaetano Guadagni. I had no idea what I was doing technically. But it gave me an appreciation for countertenors, because it certainly was not easy.

Asawa was slated to do a masterclass the day after the concert. A masterclass is where a master (in this case Asawa) listens to high-level students and gives them some coaching. Masterclasses are sometimes closed to the public - only the students who are singing can attend - but sometimes they are open. This one was open, and I was looking forward to attending and finding out how the countertenor approached the technical aspect of his art.

I mentioned to the organizers how fabulous it was going to be, and they revealed that one of the slated singers for the masterclass had cancelled. They were short a singer, and did I want to sing?

The bass-baritone repertoire is my usual fare. Just last week I sang the role of Pooh-Bah in The Mikado, performing in the very church where Asawa sang last night. No doubt Asawa would have given me lots of excellent feedback on my singing. I asked if any of the other singers was a countertenor, and the answer was no.

I made a deal. I would happily sing for the masterclass, but only if I could sing in the countertenor range. The organizers agreed, and introduced me to Asawa.

Panic set in. What had I done? I had committed to sing repertoire that I do not usually sing in front of one of the world's leading countertenors. Insane! The oldest of the other singers would still be young enough to be my child.

The panic was not enough to disturb my sleep (nothing short of a full-scale disaster stops me from falling asleep), but in the morning I found myself swithering about what to sing. I had thought I would sing But Who May Abide from Handel's Messiah, but I sang it as a bass recently and I wondered if that would make it more difficult. I considered Caccini's Amarilli, mia bella.

There are astonishing countertenors on YouTube. Jaroussky. Marian. Gall. Daniels. Asawa. I knew I did not have the technical ability to sing anything too florid. I finally settled on Handel's Lascia ch'io pianga, a soprano aria from Rinaldo. In the opera it is sung by a woman, but does that really matter when it is being sung in a concert or masterclass situation? To some people it might. I think it is very beautiful, and it is the right range for me, and since I was already breaking all kinds of rules...

I went to the university to get the music from their music library. But the library was closed this weekend. I went to the downtown public library, but all I could find was an online instrumental score. I knew I had a copy somewhere in my files, but where?

Not in my Handel folder.

Then I found it: on page 1103 of the sixth volume of a 1917 anthology. The music had awful Victorian editorial markings - lots of crescendos and decrescendos etc. an the text was not quite right. But it was music.

The first two singers in the masterclass were truly lovely. A lyric/coloratura soprano singing Bach, and a very tasteful mezzo singing Dowland to guitar accompaniment. While I listened to them, I thought "I am going to make such a fool of myself coming after these fine young singers..."

When my turn came, I prefaced it with an explanation of why I was there and why I wanted to sing the countertenor range for the masterclass. There were some people in the audience who know me as a bass-baritone and who have been very supportive of my work, and I was a bit worried about losing face in front of them. I asked one of them - a wonderful speech therapist I have known for many years - if she would push the button on my recorder and record the session for my private listening later.

Marnie Giesbrecht had kindly agreed to play the accompaniment on the harpsichord, wich was tuned to baroque pitch. Baroque pitch is a bit lower than our modern standard - with an A at 415 instead of 440. She asked if it would be a problem, and I didn't think it would.

I was wrong. Listening to the recording when I got home, I am surprised the audience didn't throw tomatoes. My tuning was awful - mostly sharp. and I know it is because I was using my eyes instead of my ears - trying to sing the pitches on the page. This has occasionally been a problem for me when music is transposed up or down. The result in this case was a strident, ugly sound and very out of tune.

Mr. Asawa had agreed to treat me as a beginner, and he was true to his word. He took me through some exercises before we tried the aria again. Then we started over. By this time I was more attuned to the pitch of the harpsichord! Painstakingly, pitch by pitch and phrase by phrase, Asawa teased a countertenor voice out of me. By the end of the half hour, the sound was much improved.

Not once did he show dismay. and no-one criticised me for taking the risk, although I can imagine some of the dinner table conversations that evening, particularly from the other singers.

The last singer was a young bass-baritone. Tall, slim, blond, chiseled features and huge eyes. A resonance, velvety voice. He seemed intelligent, artistic, and blessed with a real gift. Listening to him and the approach he had been encouraged to take (he is doing his Masters) took me back through my years of study and the frustration my teachers experienced - and I experienced - when my voice did not "settle". The more young male singers I hear, the more I wonder if countertenor ought to have been my fach. I remember, though, that I had NO access to my falsetto at all. Already I was too tense, too anxious to please and to do it right. So if I was meant to be a countertenor, no-one would have known.

On the way home I called my friend David in Toronto. David and I had been talking some months ago about Jeffrey Gall and that perhaps I should make a trip and study with him for a bit. I did not see the point at my age. After the class with Asawa my knees felt weak, but my voice felt fabulous. I told David that I was still conflicted about having done the masterclass - and that is true. No-one who was there would have known that I am atually a quite accomplished singer. My issues around singing countertenor clouded everything else.

The triumph here is that at my age I still had the courage to get up in front of people and try something new, something I felt was likely to fail but fail in an interesting way. Mr. Asawa was generous, gracious and intelligent; at the end he commented on how quickly I caught on. I wanted to say "My career is almost over; I have not caught on quickly enough."

Lies from Conservative MP Peter Goldring

2011-04-17T06:25:00.000-07:00

MP Peter Goldring (Edmonton East) wants to be re-elected. He has been a member of the minority government of Stephen Harper – a government which has been criticised for not telling the truth to Parliament and, by extension, the people of Canada.

So perhaps the lies in Peter Goldring’s March 2011 constituency newsletter (#484, “Boyle Renaissance or Boyle Institution?” - pictured here) merely reflect the philosophy of his party.

I know politicians are not supposed to use the word “liar” in addressing each other in the House of Commons. It is considered un-Parliamentary. I am not a politician, and Peter Goldring’s lies in his newsletter are not protected by Parliamentary privilege because they were not made in the House of Commons. The actual facts were provided to me by request by the City of Edmonton.

LIE: Peter Goldring says the Boyle Renaissance project will have most of “a thousand more social subsidized units.”

TRUTH: A 150-suite apartment building and a 90-suite seniors’ residence, neither of them with ongoing subsidies. No shelters.

LIE: Peter Goldring says the Boyle Renaissance project will “move disadvantaged persons already integrated into the greater community throughout Edmonton into a ‘Boyle Institution’.”

TRUTH: Some of those units will be for people who were moved out of the closed York Hotel and Butte Apartments which were already on the site. The other units are to address the needs of the currently underhoused and the aging/disabled population. People already "integrated" into the greater community are not being moved.

LIE: Peter Goldring says the Boyle Renaissance project is largely funded by the federal government as “the single largest contributor to the Boyle ‘Renaissance’ development costs”

TRUTH:Not only is the federal government NOT a large contributor, but so far there is NO direct federal money at all AND requests for federal money have been DENIED.

He further suggests that

non-profit sector operators will be making profit from rental top-ups. FALSE
the City of Edmonton is giving away the land and tax breaks. FALSE

So what is the Boyle Renaissance really? It is a community renewal plan for a couple of blocks in downtown Edmonton. In three phases, the project replaces an aging community hall and under-used sports field, and rehabilitates empty lots and land currently occupied by a scrapyard. You can check it out by clicking here, or read on for a quick summary.

Partners in Phase 1 are the City of Edmonton, the Government of Alberta Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, the Edmonton YMCA, the Capital Region Housing Corporation and the Boyle Street Community League (BSCL). You don’t see "the Harper Government" in this list, right?

Phase 1 includes

1) a new Community Centre to replace the old hall, which was in disrepair and could not be easily or economically fixed. Do you see any mention of this community resource in Goldring’s letter? The flex space (useable as gym or major event space), community activity rooms, multipurpose rooms, and catering kitchen will serve the city at large as well as Boyle Street community. It will be operated by the BSCL under a 25-year lease (licence), and owned by the City of Edmonton. No federal money has been given for the community centre. This is a public facility, but it is unique in being operated by the community rather than through the city’s Community Services facilities department. This business model empowers the community and fosters pride in the facility.

2) Sharing the same building will be a 70-space day care run by the YMCA for anyone in the city of Edmonton who wishes to sign up their child. Is Goldring counting these kids as shelter units? The YMCA will also have a Family Resource Centre in this building, to serve families from anywhere in the city, including but not limited to Boyle Street, McCauley and downtown.

3) The other building in Phase 1 is a modest apartment building called the Welcome Village. Is this a shelter? No. The YMCA, in partnership with Capital Region Housing, is building 19 studio apartments, 61 regular one-bedroom suites, 15 additional one-bedroom suites which are fully accessible for the disabled, and 55 two-bedroom suites. That’s a total of 150 apartments, 70 of which are earmarked for families. This is not “a thousand more social shelter units” as Peter Goldring claims. The apartment building has no ongoing subsidy; it has to pay for itself like any other apartment.

4) 70 underground parking stalls under the community centre building, an enhanced streetscape on 104 Avenue, and parkland around the buildings. And the City of Edmonton, as a partner in the project, still owns the land – it is not being given to anyone.

So are those shelter units Golding is talking about in Phase 2? No. Phase 2 is a 90-suite assisted living facility for seniors, with a third of the suites wheelchair-friendly. The partners are Métis Capital Housing Corporation and Canadian Paraplegic Society, and the project is funded by the government of Alberta (46%), City of Edmonton (25%) and Métis Capital Housing Corporation (29%). Do you see the Harper Government listed as a funder here? No. But the main floor does plan, at this point, to have a full-service pharmacy, dental office and medical clinic, operated by Bigstone Cree Nation. The pharmacy is expected to be run by a pharmacy group or chain, and the medical and dental facilities to be tendered to private professionals. Bigstone Cree Nation Medical Transportation Services provides medical transportation to all of northern Alberta, and this building might become the base for their Edmonton dispatch services.

Phase 3 will be 50-60 units of market housing and the new site of the community garden, which has been in the neighbourhood for many years. Do you see any mention of these in Goldring’s newsletter? No. Do you see the Harper Government listed as a funder here? N0.

There will be NO city of Edmonton tax exemptions to organizations developing Phase II or III, but they may be eligible for other exemptions from other levels of government depending on their tax status (as charitable or non-profit organisation or First Nations). This would be true no matter where they build.

Goldring asks “Could it be the attraction (read profit) for some non-profit organizations of free building costs, free land, no taxes and full market rate rental income prospects after provincial top-up trumps enlightened community integration?”

Enlightened community integration is exactly what Boyle Renaissance is about. Goldring doesn’t mention that the Boyle Street community is also home to The Quarters to the south and another private development in the works to the north – both of which are market housing developments aiming to accommodate, in total, more than 20,000 people. He doesn't mention the exhaustive community consultations.

Open community meetings were held on the Boyle Renaissance by the Boyle Street Community League, the City of Edmonton, and consultants representing the Phase 1 owners. I have been in on a lot of those meetings as an interested member of the community living in full view of the site. The plan has had extensive community consultation which overwhelmingly supports it. The person who does not support it is our elected MP, whose agenda is unclear, although he has spoken glowingly about the subsidised Mayfair Village private development, which has about the same number of below-market units as Boyle Renaissance Phases 1 and 2 combined and received funding from the same public Cornerstones program! Which project do you think should be getting public money – the one where developers make profit and might ditch their altruism after taking the money (like Red Deer’s Monarch Place/Innovative Housing debacle - for the story on that one, click here), or the one which is operated for the community? Goldring seems to think tax dollars should go to the private developers.

Arithmetic might not be Goldring’s strong suit. He is, after all, part of a government that says it prides itself on fiscal responsibility but which has racked up a huge deficit. And area residents might remember Goldring’s arithmetic when his newsletter was about the riding boundary changes – he argued that the 5000 projected Railtown residents were not included in the committee’s calculations, and then he also did not include them in his own calculations of how he thought the boundaries should be changed. Well, here we are again. Goldring is making up the figures, ignoring the projected 20,000+ increase in Boyle Street’s population from market housing, and pretending that non-existent federal funding gives him the right to lie about the project and turn people against it.

(The project did apply for federal funding for a skating rink, but the request was turned down)

Goldring supporters might think that maybe he was genuinely mistaken and not deliberately lying; maybe he was operating on old information. Way back at the beginning of the Boyle Renaissance, the projected number of units (which included BOTH subsidised AND market rate units) was over 900. But that changed two years ago – and when Goldring continued to publish the wrong information in earlier newsletters, his staff was contacted and asked to correct it. I know, because I am one of the people who contacted them.

All these public and community meetings, plus updates in the local newspaper and readily available information from the City – right there on their website - if Peter Goldring’s facts are mistaken, it is NOT because the facts were not available to him.

I don’t want to re-elect a man who lies to his constituents and works against the community interests and consultation process. Why does he want constituents to call HIM? He has done nothing to support this project, his government has put no direct funding into this project – NONE, despite his claims – so it is frankly none of his business. Why does he make it his business? If his constituency newsletters have been any indication, it is because Goldring would rather not have community-based projects when the money could go to private developers like it has with Mayfair Village or Monarch Place.

When a politician supports private business over the community, he has lost sight of his mandate.

High Order Plagiarism

2011-01-03T21:06:00.000-08:00

Lately I have become aware of the many essay-writing services available online. A few suspiciously fluent papers submitted by my students had me trolling the web for possible sources.

The sites promise that they will not sell you, the student, a plagiarized paper. I suppose that is true - it is not a plagiarized paper until the moment the student submits it under his/her name when it was actually written by someone at the essay-writing service. By promising that the paper will pass plagiarism software scans, the service is not assuring the buyer of a high ethical stance; they are telling the buyer they won't get caught.

One site suggested you could tell the scams from the professionals by looking at the quality of the writing on the site pages themselves. I had already found several errors on their own site - including a completely incorrect use of a preposition - and so they provided me with a chuckle.

Here is the opening sentence of a term paper sample posted on the Custom Essay Meister.com site at this address on this date [http://www.customessaymeister.com/?page=samples&handle=termpaper&sampleid=1#sampleanchor] :

Over the years the evolution of the structure and functions of the family have
made this institution a hotly debated topic in the public arena.

Umm. So the main noun of the subject is evolution, which is a singular abstract common noun, and the verb form used in the sentence is plural. [Never mind that an institution is not, in and of itself, a hotly debated topic.] A basic grammar mistake in the opening line of a paper that is supposed to be a major term paper? Someone is going to charge per page for this? A student is going to buy this paper and submit it? Woe to the student if they submit it to me.

One of the student testimonials for that service purports to come from a student in my city. Her testimonial said

My writer was great, your company and writers have assisted me in a few of my projects required so i may work full time, study and look after my family. Thank you!

Students should pay for help with their writing if they need the help. The kind of help they need is not the easy buy-a-paper kind. Buying a paper is hugely dishonest. Beyond the plagiarism, which can get a student expelled from a university, is the deceit of receiving a grade that does not reflect the achievement of the student. When these students graduate, their lack of writing skill will expose them as frauds. The grades given by their university will make the university look ridiculous.

The help most students in university need is ten years late. They were not taught how to write well by their educators, whether in schools or in the family. Too many students graduate from high school with bad writing skills. The writing skills are not an indication that they are stupid or dull - many a competent writer is dull as dishwater. These students are sociable and eager to learn, but they are ignorant of their own language. So they squeeze into universities, who accept them because the universities need the money and the body count, and instructors are then faced with scads of students who cannot write effectively. The deficit is not always owing to poor writing skills; many of the same students cannot express themselves coherently in speech.

Tuition is steep. Students face a tough challenge: finding the money to pay tuition often means working so many hours that they cannot meet their obligations to their course work. Buying essays, term papers, and various other assignments seems like the quick way to meet the course deadlines and obligations.

It doesn't. The students who buy an essay have not met the obligations of the course. The students have not had their knowledge base enriched through the research. They have not had their cognitive skills exercised in the synthesis phase. They have not learned anything except how to cheat themselves and others.

As painful as it may be, students who did not learn skills for clear and effective writing before they entered university must seek remedial writing help while also juggling their jobs and course work. It may not seem fair to them, but the alternative is to allow universities to confer degrees on people who are barely literate.

My next rant is likely to be about the instructors who are reluctant to fail students who cannot make the grade.

Long time away

2009-12-12T20:34:00.000-08:00

My kitchen window was smashed at the end of July by a crazed druggie. When I ventured out to see what was going on, he attacked me with a knife.

The police were terrific. Squad cars, dogs, the helicopter. They got their man. The insurance company swung into action that very night - someone came and put a board in place over the window. First they put some blocks of wood in place, so the board is actually not right against the window. It is outside the frame, so there are gaps on both sides. During the summer I occasionally got some splashes through the cracks - from the outdoor faucet, which is right above the window. I stuffed that side with plastic film. When autumn got chilly, I taped plastic film over the window. This wasn't easy, because there were still remnants of the screen and warped frame there, and the cord of the venetian blinds was outside when they put the board up - so I finally had to cut it off or I would not be able to seal the window.

It is now December, and as I write this the temperature has plummeted to -30. I have been down in my kitchen plugging the window again, because the tape does not hold in low temperatures. Yes, it has been more than 4 months and there is still no window. The insurance company and the glass company are not exactly rushing to answer our calls.

As for me, I cannot go down there without thinking back to the attack. Yes, I see the face of the crazy man, and the blood from his wounds (he cut himself on the window). Apart from the kitchen being too cold (I have a space heater going, and the combination of towels/blankets/pillows/suitcases blocking the hole seems to work passably well - but even sealed glass is challenged at these low temperatures), I would really like to be able to go into my kitchen without being back in that moment.

The incident has not made me fearful. It was a random attack, and I figure my chances of a similar attack are no greater now than they were before. Yes, I am concerned that that floor of the house is not secure - and I have not slept down there since the attack. But that is more because I worry the noise of the board being pried off might not set off the glass break detector of our alarm system. And a thief would be disappointed: my laundry, a dirty kitchen with an uninstalled dishwasher and stovetop, and a bedroom which has become nothing more than a closet. And the frangipani plants, their leaves mottled by the fungicide I use to keep woolly mildew at bay.

I wonder how the insurance agent or the glass people would feel if they were facing the same situation: a senseless random act of violence leading to more than 4 months of high fuel bills, insecurity, too much cold and too little light, and recurring daily mental images of a bloody man coming at them with a knife and yelling "Do you want me to knife you?".

They might not be able to replace the window now until spring - maybe that is why they aren't returning calls. I am trying to imagine how they would do it in these frigid temperatures without freezing the pipes, the plants, and us. Maybe they have a way. Maybe they put up a heated lean-to tent while they install the new window.

Spending all this time and energy on a broken window - it's intensely boring. That guy with the knife owes me big time, and I am not the least bit sorry the police dogs found him.

Oxygen part 14

2009-08-06T21:56:00.000-07:00

The family/care team meeting went well. Yes, there was tension over some of the things that have gone wrong. And the patient was very clear about feeling threatened by the staff. We are almost all agreed that she needs to get out of the acute care bed. The only person who disagrees is the patient herself.

She feels she should stay until she can get out of bed by herself.

I have sympathy with that, even if I disagree.

As things stand now, she will go to a transition unit in a different facility. She will be able to have physio and see what level of independence she can manage before any decision is made about her options.

The whole situation tires us out. Last week we alternated hospital days - going together on the weekend. Right now the situation at the hospital is complicated by the patient's roommate. She is a well-spoken wasted woman who is experiencing strong fantasies and fears. The other day she thought a stingray was on her hand. We can't visit without having her ask us, very politely, if someone couldn't spare a few moments to help her. We have to keep telling her that we are not staff, and she must ring her bell. She inists that she doesn't have a bell. Or she says she is too afraid.

We keep the curtain drawn between the beds, but she chimes in on our conversations. And two days running she has soiled herself and been imagining the excrement is something else. Today it was dogfood, because she had been listening to me tell the patient about the feeding arrangement we have made for our cat and dog.

The situation made me think about proactive nursing and about Art Frank's call for generosity in health care. Too much to go into here (I am exhausted), but worth a few minutes later.

Oxygen part 13

2009-07-22T10:28:00.001-07:00

Today's topic is not so much about oxygen as geriatric assessment.

The doctor who did the bad job on the assessment outlined in Oxygen part 12 was back on Friday. She arrived as the patient was getting ready for physio. She stayed long enough that the physio appointment had to be scrapped - and there is no physio on the weekends. Which means three more days of lying in bed despite the doctors constantly telling her she has to get up and get moving.

The doctor, a specialist in geriatrics, did her best to tell the patient that the next step had to be an extended care facility - she would not be able to go to rehab because she couldn't walk.

Except the patient can. She has been doing physio in the bed and has graduated to doing the parallel bars in the gym. She can walk if she has adequate support. For some reason this is discounted by the doctor doing the assessment. (Keep in mind that this is a geriatric specialist who did an assessment without checking first for visual or auditory impairments, so we already have a precedent for discounting the patient.)

Another element that is not mentioned by the doctor is that there has been a recent change in heart meds, because the physio noticed that the patient's heart was responding erratically to exertion and it was impeding her progress. So the meds were adjusted this past week - which means she hasn't had a chance to prove a faster rate of progress under the adjusted medications.

This is significant, because the patient was living in an assisted living facility before she fell - and she needed to use a walker even then. It is possible the fall was caused by one of the "blackouts" related to her heart's response to stress - and in theory that has now been addressed through the minor adjustment to the meds. She was managing quite well with minimal daily care - most of it provided because of her blindness and to give her some stability for the more complex tasks like showering.

She still needs help getting out of the bed - and this is not a surprise, since she has been in the hospital for 11 weeks and for much of the first month she was not able to get out of bed because of the combination of the treatments for her achalacia and the expected strains and bruises from her fall. Then, when she was deemed well enough, staffing shortages complicated her schedule: she is too heavy for a small person to help out of bed, and so some days she didn't sit up at all because no-one was available.

Staffing shortages also played a role in the catheter situation: the patient does not want to lie in a soiled bed, but the nurses are too short-staffed (especially on weekends) to take the time to help her to the bathroom. There is a story about the commode - initially the patient had a commode, but it came apart twice when she used it. The staff said the commode itself was the problem - it was broken - but instead of exchanging it for another one, they took the expediency of a catheter - with the patient's consent. Why did the patient consent? Because she had become accustomed to waiting up to 3 hours for staff to answer a bell.

Back to the geriatric specialist.

This doctor, who did such a bad job the first time she came, showed up on a Friday morning without any warning, and told a 93 year-old woman who has slowly been making progress that she had to make plans for going into extended care. No prior contact with the family. Not taking into consideration that this is a patient with a history of anxiety issues (controlled at home through occasional use of Ativan/Lorazepam). She pre-empts the physio that the patient knows is crucial to proving she can return to her home. And she keeps stressing that the patient has to have a plan.

The patient has a plan. Her plan is to continue the physio, get back on her feet, and go home.

There was a family member present when the doctor was there on Friday - a visiting granddaughter from Vancouver. The doctor wouldn't know this, but the granddaughter has only been in contact with this side of her birth family for the past 8 years, and has spent maybe a total of two weeks in her grandmother's company over that time. She is not an authority on her grandmother's routines or abilities.

This is significant, because the doctor called my other half this morning to press the need to plan for extended care. The doctor said she understood that the patient had barely been managing at the assisted living facility.

Barely managing? Hm. She went down for dinner every day - with someone to help her change to the portable oxygen tank (a task that tasks less than 2 minutes) because she can't see very well. She was a regular at the knitting club, church, and the singing group. True, because of her visual impairment, someone administered her pills and made her breakfast. Much of her day was spent in her apartment, knitting, listening to the television or recorded books, talking on the phone. Compared to many of the residents in the facility - the ones in wheelchairs, the ones who have no vision at all, the ones who have Alzheimers - this woman is quite highly functional.

Until she went into the hospital, she was mobile and alert and taking an active role in the community. It is a tribute to her strength and determination that she has survived the hospital.

The other thing the doctor said was that she had not prevented the patient from keeping her physio appointment. This may be her impression, but it is not true - and we have witnesses.

When my other half expressed her concern that the geriatric specialist seemed to be acting on wrong information, the response was that the conversation was not getting them anywhere, and the doctor ended the call. This was similar behaviour to the behaviour the patient reported: when the patient tried to tell the doctor about the obstacles to getting better when doctor orders aren't followed, when physio is withheld etc. According to the patient, the doctor dismissed those concerns as if they were immaterial and returned to theidea of a plan for extended care.

In other words, the doctor has made her decision and does not want to hear that the decision has been made on the basis of incomplete - and wrong - information.

Is my view coloured by a false view of the patient? Or is it an assessment based on 18 years of knowing this woman?

Given the lack of follow-through on the physio/rehab by the staff at the hospital, and the way in which the geriatric specialist conducted herself in the three contacts she has had with the patient and the patient's family, I don't think the patient has been treated ethically. She is showing progress in rehab - unless the medical team can guarantee that an extended care facility will continue to work toward recovery, they ought to be planning rehab.

When all the dust settles, an extended care facility might still be the place where her needs can be met most effectively - but that is a decision that should be arrived at through ethical means, not through the patient having been hamstrung by the system and pushed there by a doctor whose agenda does not reflect the best interest of the person who is lying in the bed.

NEWS FLASH

So the main doctor in charge of the case has called for a meeting tomorrow at 1 pm. He said only the plan to go to extended care will be discussed and there is to be no criticism of the medical staff or the meeting will be stopped.

Oxygen part 12

2009-06-25T17:49:00.000-07:00

Today's visit was before noon. Marie was initially asleep, but the nurses came in to move her up higher in the bed (the bed which was set to about 30 degrees - I have given up on pointing out the sign on the wall. At this stage I must assume that either the doctor has changed his mind or most of the staff are incompetent.).

When she woke up, she was in fine fettle. Someone - she wasn't sure if it was a psychologist or psychiatrist - had come to do an assessment. Apparently Marie had only managed to correctly answer 11 out of 16 questions.

Marie told me that she had wanted to know which ones she missed. One of them was a test where the shrink asked Marie to repeat after her:

"Tinkle, tinkle, little star..."

And Marie said "Twinkle, twinkle, little star..."

The shrink pointed out that she had said "tinkle"not "twinkle".

Marie's hearing aid was in the box on the bedside table.

"Did you tell her you have some hearing impairment?" I asked.

"Yes, but they don't listen."

"What else did you get wrong?"

Marie held up one hand and pointed at it with the other.

"What's this?" she asked.

"Your hand," I said.

She shook her head. "No. I am pointing at my wrist."

"Could you see that?"

"No. She was standing right there, right in the centre."

Again, the macular degeneration. With her peripheral vision, Marie had made out that the doctor was pointing to her other extremity, but she couldn't see it clearly. So she failed the question, which is supposed to be testing her mental acuity. I think it was more a test of the acuity of the doctor, and she failed.

"Did you tell her you are blind and can't see anything clearly in the middle of the field of vision?"

"Yes, but they don't listen."

I then heard about how it was the second night in a row she had needed extra painkiller because of the pain in her gut. The staff had gone through the dance of saying they would have to call the doctor and get an order because there is no standing order. Now, Marie is under the impression that there IS an order because when she was at the height of her distress some weeks ago, there WAS. It is hard to know if this has been changed and not communicated to Marie, or if it was changed and Marie was told but she has forgotten, or if it was not changed but the standing order is so far back in the file - like the order for the bed angle - that no-one thinks it exists.

They got the order and, for the second night in a row, brought hydromorphine. Marie, for the second night in a row, refused to take it.

Now, when Marie came in to the hospital, she told them she had previously experienced negative side effects to morphine. They gave her dilaudid (hydromorphine) as an analgesic and she had a couple of rough days which included hallucination. The doctors later decided that this was likely more owing to her electrolytes being unbalanced than any reaction to the dilaudid. This has been explained to her many times by the staff and by us, but she does not believe it. She has even had dilaudid since then - with no negative side effects. But Marie doesn't want to risk it - and given her helplessness in the hospital, I have some sympathy with her position.

To her mind, she has told the doctors she can't have morphine, and the hallucinations proved it. So she does NOT expect nurses to try to give her morphine, and she complains when they do. The nurses are caught in the middle - a patient who needs pain relief but refuses what the doctor orders.

"So what happened last night?" I asked.

"They went out of the room to call the doctor again, and then they came back in and gave me an injection. For all I know it was the hydromorphine and they just waited outside the room."

"And did it work?"

"I was out like a light and have had trouble waking up all morning."

"That's what you want it to do - knock you out so you can sleep. No hallucinations or side effects?"

"No."

"Then it's all good."

But it isn't all good, of course. We should not be having this conversation at all. She is of the opinion that no-one is listening, and that the staff are doing things that put her health at risk. Since we have already witnessed many incidents where this is true, it is hard to combat the impression.

The nurses change so often that Marie seldom knows who to expect - and whether or not the person she gets will know about her impairments or issues. My experience is that the nurses are generally quite competent at their tasks, but ill-informed about the needs of the patient. That is one of the problems with such a fast rotation - nurses don't get to know how to meet the need in a competent and efficient manner, and the patient has to keep going over the same territory - or fear the same risks. It is exhausting for the patient and frustrating for the nurse, who perhaps unjustly appears incompetent or stupid.

Last night we had a "floater". She knew very little about Marie or her condition, but she was a nurse who paid attention and who listened so everything went well. So is it some kind of compassion fatigue when the other staff - the ones who have been dealing with Marie for almost two months - either can't get it right or don't communicate the changes in the care plan?

Oxygen part 11

2009-06-24T00:10:00.000-07:00

The nurse today was young, and she reminded me of one particular student at Aristotle University: a Greek sculpture come to life. This one had her name badge on backwards, so I didn't know what to call her.

When I arrived, the bed was at a 20 degree angle. It was left there by the previous shift. I cluck about this and point out that the bed is supposed to be higher, looking pointedly at the sign on the wall. The nurse asks Marie if she wants the bed raised, and soon it is at 35 degrees. Marie is coughing a bit, and she has abdominal pain. She is due for her next painkiller at 9:30 and it is only 7:15.

The nurse takes her vital signs, and they are excellent - 106/63. There is some discussion about whether or not this pain is related to constipation. Marie says it IS bowel pain, but she has had a couple of movements today so it is NOT constipation. She rates the pain at 8 out of 10. The nurse goes away to see what can be done about an analgesic.

While the nurse is out of the room, Marie says she wonders if something has irritated her bowels. "Like what?" I ask. "Oh," she says, waving toward the feeding tube "all this stuff they keep pushing through." She is bored, she is uncomfortable, and she is wondering where she'll go next.

I want to say to Marie, "You HAVE to tell them when the head of the bed is too low," but there are several other things I want Marie to hear, and I am choosing my battles. After weeks of the staff not paying attention to the instructions in the book or the sign on the wall or the repeated instructions from family, I can hardly expect Marie to feel like they will listen to her.

It seems like such a simple thing to me: the patient cannot control reflux because of the procedure done on her esophagus. She is supposed to stay at an angle of 35-40% minimum for 4 hours after feeding. She is on continuous tube feeding, so she is supposed to be at that angle all the time. It has been almost two months, and the message doesn't seem to stick with the staff. I have spoken with the nurses, with the nurse practitioners, with the doctors.

They are all caring, in their way. I don't want to suggest they aren't. But many of them seem to lack the laser focus that Marie herself brought to nursing - the attention to detail that made her a gold medallist. The reasons why they are lacking in focus - well, I could speculate. Some have been undergraduate nurses who are learning how to pay attention. Others have been around longer, but they are overworked and Marie is supposed to be a fairly straightforward case now - heading to rehab.

The nurse returns. She has been authorized to administer Tylenol 3 through the feeding tube. So she puts some water through the line, then the Tylenol mixed with water, and then she flushes with more water. She accomplishes this with no fuss, no mess.

Oxygen part 10

2009-06-22T18:03:00.001-07:00

Today I brought the patient the stimulating circular from the pension plan, the free 2010 Agenda courtesy of Our Canada (she tried to give it to me, but I said she would need to write her future botox dates in it...), and the Land's End catalogue.

When I came in, the bed was at 25 degrees. It had been lowered to that angle and the person who lowered it had gone away, promising to be right back to finish whatever needed doing. "How long ago was that?" I asked. "Oh, ages. They go away and they take their breaks and whatnot and sometimes it's hours." In the meantime, the patient was trying to eat jello.

I reminded her that the bed was supposed to be kept at a higher angle to prevent reflux because of her inability to close the esophagus. We still have the sign on the wall, and by now I feel as if the patient is alert and healthy enough that she should be able to find the controls on the bed and raise it herself. I do it.

She showed me the special socks that had arrived along with the Alberta Health Services feedback brochure. The socks are very nice - supersoft fuzzy taupe with rubbery treads. The misplaced comma on the inside of the brochure made me cranky.

There is a 3-step process if a patient has a concern.

"What concern?" Marie asks. "Do I have a concern?"

I can't tell if she's joking or not. "Do you have concerns about the way things have been done here?"

"Don't get me started," she says.

Step 1 is to discuss the concerns with the team. Okay - so we did that with the issues of the oxygen and the suctioned fluid and the bed angle. And although none of these things was resolved quickly, over the course of several weeks we seem to have gotten to the point where only the bed angle is still not understood.

Step 2 is to contact Patient Relations if Step 1 has failed to resolve the concern. Now, think about this: Patient Relations. The text of the brochure makes it clear that everything is about the patient's concern. The message I get when I look at this brochure is that the patient has a problem, not that there is a problem the hospital needs to address. So if we had gone to Patient Relations with our problems - the understaffing of the unit, the dangerous mistakes regarding oxygen and the bed angles, the peculiar performance of food services - what exactly could they have done? These are not individual problems; they are problems with the system. As such, they are not "patient concerns"; they should be seen as concerns of the hospital administration.

Step 3 is to contact the Deputy Patient Concerns Officer if the other steps have not resolved the concern. If that doesn't work, you can go to the Alberta Ombudsman Office with your question or concern about the fairness of the Deputy.

Now, let's look at this process again.

A patient - presumably someone who is sick enough to require hospital care - not only has to deal with their care team over the thing that is wrong (we'll call it a "concern" if it makes everyone feel better, but I don't consider repeated failure to provide necessary care a mere "concern"), but they then are expected to take the initiative to go through two more levels to follow-up on their concern. Sounds like a lot of work to get the staff to agree that oxygen needs to be turned on and connected.

On the plus side, today I almost bumped into one of the staff who has given me the cold shoulder since the first oxygen incident. We were both surprised enough to smile. Maybe she understands that my "concern" was about a situation, not about the performance of one person.

Oxygen part 9

2009-06-20T21:49:00.000-07:00

Gaining strength and health means having more energy for both positive and negative pursuits. On the positive side, we have now had a couple of days where Marie was able to sit up for a period and use her magnifier to look at cards and catalogues.

On the negative side: complaints.

Today it was constipation. The original complaint is a valid physical one: when you are bedridden and have little control over your diet and movements, constipation is a serious issue.

When you are in a hospital and it's the weekend, so they are shortstaffed and you have the trainee, getting the constipation issue dealt with is also serious.

Last week Marie was complaining about being given laxatives and then not being able to sleep at night because...they worked. Of course, her wandering roommate was keeping her awake anyway. They stopped giving them to her. The result was hardly surprising.

There might have been some comical moments today as the trainee tried, with assistance, to get Marie in the sling so she could be transferred from the bed to the commode. Not comical to those doing it, though. Marie says they had no idea how to do it - she was having to direct them. Even when they did manage to get her there, they had somehow managed to get the incontinence pads hooked into the sling so she wouldn't actually be using the commode - she would be sitting on it but soiling the pad which was still attached to her.

We were there for about two hours. The complaints were about how much the constipation hurt, how much she had to fight to get medication for the pain (and this made me wonder if the staff might have a reason to withhold the analgesic, since some of them probably complicate the constipation), how she was trying to get them to cut to the chase and administer an enema but they wouldn't...

Of course, it's the weekend. An enema would mean having to stay with the patient, do the clean-up etc. With the trainee probably having four other patients to look after, it is probably a route which is seen as less efficient than the alternatives. So Marie suffers the pain all day, the indignity of the sling, the frequent attempts which leave her sweating and exhausted. From her own account, she was dismissive of the nurse-practitioner at the end of the shift. Orders to deal with the constipation were left, but according to Marie the orders were for the morning staff and not for the evening shift. I can imagine a couple of reasons why this might be. First, perhaps the effort already applied would yield results overnight. Second, staffing on a weekend night shift is probably even more skeletal than during the day, so it makes sense to wait until the staff complement is larger (getting Marie into the sling takes more than one person).

If she has the strength to complain tomorrow, that would be uncomfortable but good. If she is so exhausted from attempts to solve the constipation that she cannot muster the energy to complain...well, that will be serious.

The roses I brought Thursday look fabulous. Today our treat for her was to use the wonderful lotion Tina sent - each of us took a foot and we massaged the lotion into Marie's dry feet. She didn't complain about that!

Oxygen part 8

2009-06-17T10:02:00.001-07:00

Good news! This morning the scummy container had been removed!

Even better, Marie was alert and quite possibly in the best shape she's been in since going to the hospital 7 weeks ago.

After I turned on the lights, I complimented her on her perkiness, and she said "It's because I just had a fight."

It seems someone had come to give her her morning medications. These are mixed with water and then injected by a large syringe through the feeding tube, followed by water to clear the tube out. This morning, whoever was giving the meds dropped the syringe on the floor. Marie has macular degeneration - she has very little vision in the centre but when something unexpected falls, that's when it will be caught by the peripheral vision.

"You can't use that," she said.

"Why not?"

"It's been on the floor."

The floor is generally not overly dirty - but I noticed yesterday that a brownish sticky fluid had spilled on the floor and the base of the pole. Probably nothing more than a bit of spillage from filling the feed bad with Pulmocare. I noticed it for the first time last night, and the cleaning staff were coming in as I was leaving this morning - so it hasn't really been there that long.

Marie is a former nurse. She was drilled in sterile techniques. Although things have changed in the nursing world in the past 50 years with regard to some procedures, you cannot convince Marie that you can use a dropped syringe.

She said the syringe was put back on the table. The person left the room, came back and fiddled with something by the sink. Marie couldn't see what, because that is in direct line of sight. [Despite our pleading with Marie to go to the CNIB and learn how to use her peripheral vision more effectively, she has never been willing to go.]

The person (I cannot be sure if it was a nurse, and LPN or what) came back to the table and prepared to give her the injection. But Marie noticed that the same syringe was picked up off the table.

"You can't use that," she said.

"Why not?"

"That's the same syringe, the one you dropped."

"You see more than we think." A new syringe was fetched.

This is, of course, Marie's report of the incident - maybe the person on the other end of the syringe would tell a different story.

I cannot be sure there wasn't a replacement at some point, a replacement that Marie could not see (although she is quite certain). I am interested in the degree to which the staff do not understand the nature of her blindness even after 7 weeks - and the possibility that they were willing to take advantage of that blindness.

Why would someone use that syringe? Lots of reasons. They might not feel they have time to go and get a new one. They might reason that the floor is pretty clean. They might be aware that the whole health care system is undergoing another round of budget cuts and revisions, so they are conscious of the waste. Are any of these reasons sufficient for potentially putting a patient at risk of infection?

It is not as simple as "Of course not! They should get another syringe and start over." The pressures on staff are constant - pressures from the administration, pressures expressed by the authorities and elected officials in the media. Like the stuff that was in the Medi-Vac pump container, these things breed a culture that might put patients at risk. There were lots of concerns over sterile technique when Marie was at her assisted living complex; Personal Care Attendants have minimal training, and there were lots of issues when they were admonished by Marie for improper procedures.

In that situation, when a resident speaks up about these things, it is the resident who gets labelled as "difficult". We went through a very difficult period at the residence - a period of shunning, of accusations of racism, of all kinds of things - after Marie spoke up about improper procedures. We eventually got things sorted out, but it took a long time. And every time there was a change in personnel, there would be new problems.

It is to her credit that Marie has not been cowed by that experience into remaining silent when she sees mistakes in the hospital.

On another positive note, the medical staff have largely been wonderful with her (with the exception of the one resident who had his arms crossed and was rolling his eyes, clearly wishing he were anywhere except at this patient's bedside). The nurses and aides have had a very difficult job trying to provide quality care for a woman who has been in pain and lacking in mobility, and they have generally been excellent given the constraints under which they are working. Taking care of Marie means having to take the time to ensure things are done and done correctly; time is one of the things that nurses are denied in the effort to maximize the efficiency of the system. The returns diminish quite quickly when nurses can no longer spend time to care for their patients.

Oxygen part 7

2009-06-17T07:05:00.000-07:00

Yesterday afternoon we got a call from cousin Connie - she was at the hospital and Marie was having trouble staying awake. I was about to leave the office for the hospital, so both Candas and I arrived within a few minutes. I got there first.

The room was dark - once again no-one had thought to turn on the light. Or maybe the staff thought it best Marie rest. She had been down for more x-rays. She'd been retaining fluid, and when they inserted the catheter she had an extra litre of urine in her bladder. She had been too tired to tackle her lunch, but the Kangaroo machine was hooked up and she was getting 40 ml/hr of the Pulmocare.

Marie would struggle to say something, and then fall sleep. Her body was twitchy, but she seemed unable to fight the drowsiness. I turned on the light. Connie had already checked the oxygen connections, and the level had been boosted. Staff were checking her vitals every 2 hours - and they were looking pretty good compared to two weeks ago.

Candas arrived, and Marie gradually became more alert.

It seems her roommate, the wanderer, had had a very busy night. Wandering around, talking to visitors (which might have been the guard). Marie couldn't stay asleep. Then the bladder scan, the x-rays, and the catheterization.

The Medi-Vac pump still has the scummy liquid in it from when Marie's esophagus was being suctioned about 3 weeks ago. We've asked the staff about this before - and they told us that someone is supposed to come and add a solidifying agent to the waste before it is disposed of. We expressed our concern that this stuff seemed to be breeding some kind of mold, and we were told it was completely sealed and it would be fine until someone could get to it.

Today I took a closer look. The level of the liquid inside was about 250 ml. A bit milky, with something grayish floating on the top. You can see a pinkish scummy line where the liquid used to reach - and I wondered how it could be evaporating if it was sealed. All but one of the holes on the top were capped with red plastic. The remaining hole was not capped, but it had the suction tube attached - about 6 feet of clear plastic tubing that fell down, looped back up, and then hung dangling over the floor. The tube is not capped. So, in fact, this container is NOT sealed.

We asked the nurse again about getting this removed, and again we were told about the solidifying agent and that it wasn't the nurses' job but someone would get to it. I did not want to make a fuss about the fact that it was NOT sealed - not in front of the patient.

Marie was chuckling about waste. Apparently she'd had a linen change at he end of one shift, followed by a linen change at the beginning of the next shift - two changes in about half an hour. She tried to tell them it had already been done...

Oxygen part 6

2009-06-16T07:39:00.000-07:00

The past few days have been quiet for us at the hospital. We each try to be there once a day - either together or separately. Food services are still a problem. The people who drop off the food must not be aware that the patient is both blind and unable to move much in the bed - they continue to leave her trays on the table at the foot of the bed. Sometimes a nurse or LPN notices and moves things within reach, and sometimes they do not - and food services takes the stuff away again, untouched. Cans of Pulmocare and bottles of Ensure continue to arrive - along with jello and pudding and soup (the soup accompanied by an envelope of protein powder which we mix in - the envelope is small and has fine print, so even if Marie knew it was there she might not know what she's supposed to do with it.) We convince Marie to sip some of the Ensure (we bring the cold ones from the patient fridge, because the ones that are dropped off are room temperature and unpalatable). The Pulmocare must be what is going into the tube - but I'm not sure why there is a growing stockpile.

Yesterday I found her in the dark at 1 pm. Of the two lights she can control from her call button, the lower fluorescent tube has burnt out (we reported it last week) and she can't reach the switch for the overhead lights - and no-one else had thought to do it.

Seven weeks. Even if we are only there an hour a day, calculate an extra 30 minutes each way to drive there or take transit. Three days a week I can just pop over from work. For Candas it adds up to a minimum of 14 hours a week; for me about 12. Some days we stay a lot more - but an hour is pretty much the minimum. And as the previous posts illustrate, we do have to go. That's more than 182 hours so far.

Marie's generation remembers what it was like before universal health care. In some ways, our generation has not yet processed what end-of-life care ought to be - both personally and societally. The boomers are getting older and, no matter how healthy they manage to keep themselves, we are going to have to figure out what part should be played by our hospitals when that huge demographic approaches the end of life. There is no room in hospitals now, and there are not enough palliative or longterm care facilities. At the same time, it would be foolish to build facilities to accommodate the boomers unless there is a sensible plan for what to do with those facilities when demand stabilizes (assuming the post-boomer society will have lower numbers of aging for a couple of decades until population growth brings us back up to regular demand).

Robert Clinton was telling me a week ago about how his family brought their dad home for the final 7 weeks of his life. He needed round-the-clock care, but the hospital was not a good place to die. So they hired private nurses for those times when family could not be available. It was expensive, and it drained his savings.

What IS our social contract about dying and universal health care? Hospitals - full of strangers and noise and tension - are not places where anyone wants to die, but relatively few of us in this younger generation have had the experience of enduring a relative's final illness and death at home. Of course, I am not talking about sudden strokes and heart attacks, but those prolonged deaths where multiple systems are gradually declining into chaos. We haven't given much thought to palliative care facilities, but we will have to. The field of medicine is more interested in keeping people alive than in providing a good death, so universal health services are usually geared toward systems that keep us going. We are busy addressing disease, trauma, genetic disorders - but we are still unclear about the degree to which our tax-funded system should be managing death.

Marie's condition is not fatal. The botox injection - which we are told will have to be repeated - has worked to some degree. The job now is to restore mobility in someone who is fearful and who has challenges in terms of her sight, her weight, and her arthritis.

Many of the patients in the hospital have a strong yearning for home. I don't hear that from Marie - perhaps because most of her life was spent in a succession of rented houses. According to a researcher I met last week, we now have more people living alone in Canada than ever before. Who will take care of them? What is home? Where do people want to die?

Our house is not Marie's home - she's only been here maybe 20 times. If we were to undertake the palliative role, it would have to be a commitment to her last days - because the stairs to the outside mean we can not accommodate her mobility issues. She's too heavy for us to move her. Once she's in, she's in. The primary benefit to her would be that she'd be with people who know her name, and there wouldn't be the illness of hundreds of others to contend with. Her current roomie is a wanderer with impaired brain function, so there is a security guard in the hallway just outside the door. The constant in and out is hardly restful.

My colleague Stewart has spoken of his family's decision to take care of his grandmother at home - they felt it was the right thing to do. Stewart's a nurse, so he had the skills. Is it wrong of me to say I don't want that job? Shouldn't we all be willing to help our family members die in comfort and dignity?

Right now, there is no doubt that comfort and dignity might be better provided at home than in the hospital. It's not a guarantee - but we're also seeing that it is not a guarantee in the institutions. I don't mind the thought that we, as a society, have agreed to find ways to ease end-of-life care; I find it more congruent with my beliefs than spending pots of money on treatment for disease and injury that are easily preventable (such as extreme sports, diseases related to smoking, obesity and unprotected sex).

So when are we going to have a serious discussion about how we, as a society, proceed? We can't have that discussion when our politicians are busy doing the quarter-by-quarter bean counting because they're hoping by being tough on the economy they can be reelected. During the recession, they should have been buying property to turn into palliative care facilities which can be operated much more cheaply on a per bed basis than regular hospitals. Instead, we're seeing debate over new medical facilities aimed at winning votes in communities because people think we need more full-service hospitals. If our full-service hospitals weren't clogged with longterm care patients, maybe the system would be flowing more smoothly.

We're not only talking about geriatric care here. Intensive Care Units are seeing more and more longterm cases as we make advances in procedures and prolonging life - prolonging it with machine intervention. We're not having that dialogue either. At what point will we recognize that prolongation of life is not always the ethical response for the individual or for society at large?

Oxygen part 5

2009-06-09T21:38:00.001-07:00

Yesterday was a good day. Marie was feeling better, and despite the low oxygen setting her levels were in the normal range. She had physio and Big Mike, as she calls him, managed to get her standing - twice! Someone had taken away 12 cans of Pulmocare and 5 bottles of Ensure as well as some of the other paraphernalia that was cluttering up the place. And she'd been told the IV would soon come out - she'd be getting all her nutrition and liquid needs from the stomach tube and orally. This is terrific!

Her first warm food in 5 weeks was soup - but she tells me there was some confusion and instead of letting her eat it the usual way, they put it through her feeding tube! They had also given her prune juice - and she thought they might have given her a laxative as well.

Today I had to work all day, so Candas and I went this evening. The head of the bed was down too low AGAIN. We put it up. Later, when the ice cream came, Candas tried to put the head even higher, but the controls on that side of the bed wouldn't work at that point (again!), so Candas went around to the other side and those controls worked.

The water bottle was off the oxygen - probably a good thing, since she doesn't have moist air at home. Supper had been brought and taken away again before she even knew it was there - she couldn't see it and no-one said anything to her - or if they did, she couldn't hear. A nurse kindly brought her some ice cream while we were there. The nurse suggested we might want to bring food for the patient, because the food services are "hit and miss". The patient in the next bed is new - she transferred from another unit. Her food had to come from that other unit - and took several hours, according to the nurse.

The only stats on Marie's chart were from 16h00. Her blood pressure was the best it had been in quite some days. Her blood oxygen was 94. Looking good!

When we asked her about her day, and the physio, she said it had been difficult because she got so dizzy (any wonder, after being bedridden for almost 6 weeks!). And apparently, according to Marie, her blood oxygen went down to 80 when she exerted herself. But, according to the nurse, this is not entered on the chart - the physio gives his report directly to the doctor.

Marie was still suffering the effects of the laxative, but she was waiting for the shift change and the bedtime clean-up. She was upset about how dirty her hair is - I don't think it's been washed since she went into the hospitral - almost 6 weeks. She's been having trouble hearing, and today she put the hearing aid in. It kept squealing. I checked the manual and it said the reason for this would be excessive cerumen (ear wax). Candas says she has already spoken to the staff about whether or not the increasing deafness in the one ear, quite noticeable in the past couple of weeks, could be because she's not getting her ears cleaned. Apparently that is someone else's department. Of course, perhaps the patient could clean them out herself if they gave her the tools to do it - but since she can't get up... We'll have to bring something along and do it.

We are seeing more and more the reasons why Liepert's plan won't work. By having fewer nurses and assigning care tasks to a raft of less-specialized/less-trained aides, there is no-one who sees the patient on an ongoing basis. They come in, do their one assigned task, and go out - often not even talking. The patient gets no stimulation, and no-one gets a clear picture of what is happening to the patient over the course of the day. When a nurse has a small enough patient load to actually help with the care, the nurse can spot emergent problems. The nurse can notice if food has not been eaten - and she might know what the effect will be. The nurse can spot if the patient isn't really tracking, and check the oxygen levels. The idea of hiring cheaper untrained staff so the nurses seldom have to come to the room unless they are administering medication - well, it removes the element of attention and caring from the role of the nurse - and it is that attentive role which has made the nurse so valuable in the medical system. It is the nurse who can see if there has been a change in the patient's condition - but only if the nurse is actually able to be at the bedside often enough and long enough to know what that condition is.

The nurses who keep lowering the head of the bed clearly do not know what procedures have been done to this patient, or they would understand why the bed MUST NOT be lowered. But none of them really have time - and Marie is so grateful to the few who have spent a few minutes talking to her...

Oxygen part 4

2009-06-07T22:07:00.000-07:00

This morning the oxygen was at 3; this evening it was set at 2. Marie seemed to be doing well on it, though - her mind was very sharp. Her levels had been checked several times between 3 pm and 7 pm (but barely at all from mid-morning to mid-afternoon). There was one nurse for 5 patients, not much point asking questions. The nurse repeatedly called Marie by another name - "Frances". Marie never uses that name, but she has given up trying to correct the staff.

One of the indignities of this stay has been the bathroom arrangements. The shortage of staff meant the nurses didn't want to help the patient to and from the washroom - it took two nurses to get her out of bed, which meant while they are helping Marie there are 9 patients who can't be tended to. The commode in her room broke, so they catheterized her. They have taken the catheter out, but Marie still can't make it out of bed by herself. The nurses can't answer the bell (I was told yesterday it was a 4 hour wait...) for non-priority things like ensuring the patient gets to a commode or the washroom. So a bedridden patient has no choice but to soil the bed. This is then marked on the chart as "incontinent".

Our health board and the minister of health, Ron Liepert, have been saying we have a glut of nurses and they're cutting positions. I am thinking of inviting Mr. Liepert to come and take a weekend shift at the hospital, not as a mock patient but as a nurse. Does he really think essential services are not affected? Oxygen, food, and bodily waste elimination seem essential from my perspective.

Oxygen part 3

2009-06-06T21:31:00.000-07:00

Today I visited the hospital twice.

At noon, the patient was wondering why nothing had been delivered for breakfast or lunch. She is being tube fed, but for the past several days she has also been getting jello and apple juice.

Two plastic containers of apple juice and one of jello were on her tray, along with 4 more tins of Pulmocare. Her tray was at the foot of the bed, beyond her current reach. She can't even sit up without assistance, partly due to pulling muscles when she fell (the reason she came of the hospital) and partly from 5 weeks of being confined to the bed. She has macular degeneration and can't actually see what's on the tray at that distance. The paper slips showed that one apple juice was for breakfast and another, with the jello, was for lunch. She hadn't known they were there.

"People come and go," she said. "They don't say anything to you, and I can't see what they're doing."

There are eight tins of Pulmocare piled on her bedside drawers, as well as six bottles of Ensure. There are at least 8 more tins beside the sink, and 5 more Ensure. I added the four new tins to the pile. What are they for? The number of tins has been growing - does someone think she's actually ingesting them? At this point, everything but the jello and apple juice is controlled by a machine that pushes it in slow and regular amounts through the feeding tube, so it would have to be the responsibility of someone in the hospital to put the food into the bag suspended from the pole.

I went back at 6:30 pm. I took the chart from the wall and looked at the entries for the 5th of June. There, at 16:45, was an entry showing her oxygen machine set at 3 and her blood oxygen saturation at 97%.

What was missing was that her oxygen had been set below 2 and her saturation was only 75%. The output was raised to 3 and it took several minutes to get the saturation into the 90s.

So I asked to speak to the charge nurse. When she arrived, I asked why the chart was missing this information. The charge nurse told me that she had been told the reason the oxygen reading was only 75% had been because the patient's fingers were cold. A reading from the toe was 97%. So I told her that I knew this version of the story was incorrect, because I had a phone call when it happened. Two readings were taken on different machines, THEN the oxygen machine was turned up to 3 and eventually a 97% was reached. I asked if the previous incidents had been recorded or if they too had been left off the chart. She said she didn't know - but that she had made handwritten notes about the incident on Wednesday (when the oxygen hadn't been hooked up).

I told her the doctor had called us Thursday and he claimed to know nothing of these incidents, so he had been thinking the patient didn't need to be on oxygen - which is certainly what it might look like if you don't have these incidents recorded on the charts. She said there isn't room on the charts for explanations. I pointed out that the initial reading should have been on the chart - because those were the levels she would have been at for several hours.

I asked who I have to go to to report this and make sure it doesn't happen again. She did not tell me.

Oxygen part 2

2009-06-05T22:56:00.000-07:00

So today my other half goes to the hospital to find Marie has been down for another set of tests to see if she can swallow food. She's back in her room and a bit groggy - and her bed is at 20 degrees despite the sign over her bed that says it is to be at least 40. Okay, so she had just got back and maybe someone was planning on coming to fix that.

Her oxygen was set at under 2. She's not totally tracking - and the question in these instances is whether her confusion is related to the sedation, the low oxygen, or both. Her fingers are bluish and cold. The chart shows no readings taken after 8:30 in the morning, and it is now after 4 p.m. So my other half gets a nurse and the blood oxygen monitor. 75%. They try another monitor. 75%. They up the oxygen to 3, which is the level which was set by the lung function clinic last year when Marie was put on the oxygen at home. Over the next few minutes her oxygen level goes up to 94%.

The low levels are what we are used to seeing when Marie is at home and someone has forgotten to turn the portable tank on. She gets dozy and disoriented - we have witnessed this several times. She says there have been times when she has passed out.

The doctor told us on the phone yesterday that she tested in the high 90% range without extra oxygen - just on room air - over a period of several minutes. I find this hard to believe, since we are seeing a consistent and different behaviour both at home and in the hospital. Perhaps he is trying to make us believe the hours without oxygen on Wednesday - when she tested at 60% - were probably not serious. He negotiated with us on the phone - I found this weird. He said he wanted to see an oxygen level between 92 and 96. He seemed to think we were concerned about this number - so he was asking if we wanted it to be maybe 94 to 98? We'd be quite happy with 92...if she was actually getting it. But why is he trying to make us feel as if we have some say in this?

The nurses say they are monitoring the levels more frequently, but we don't see the stats entered on the chart because they haven't written them in yet - they carry them around on pieces of paper in their pockets (which must be very useful if any of the medical team is at the bedside and wants to see how Marie has been doing). Apart from those early morning ones, lately the readings don't seem to ever make it on the chart as far as we can see. And I'm fairly sure you won't find the previous errors written on the file. Today my other half was asked if she wanted the incident written in the file. Since we have not been asked this before, I am assuming the other incidents were not recorded.

The staff no longer smile at us. We are troublesome. We have had to correct the bed setting six times in 11 days. Yesterday the doctor told us Marie had to start taking some responsibility. She had said the bed mechanism wasn't working properly and she couldn't reach it. The doctor told us this was not true - the bed works fine.

Except we've been there - we know the controls on her right hand side are not, in fact, working - we couldn't make them work when we were there earlier in the week. And the controls on the left side work, except she would have to use the arm which is hooked up to all the lines, and she has already pulled that one loose a couple of times. Besides, she's blind. So they expect a sedated blind woman to notice that her bed is not at the right height, to find the set of controls that works, and to correct it without disturbing her IV...

I'm afraid the staff is now trying to divert attention from their own errors. I do not understand it: how hard can it be to make sure the oxygen is on at 3, the tubes are connected properly, and the head of the bed is at 40 degrees? Those have been the instructions for more than a month - why is it so hard now?

Who needs oxygen?

2009-06-04T08:02:00.001-07:00

Yesterday morning I looked out the kitchen window into the empty lot. There's a 4x4 canopy out there right now, serving as shelter. There were three people out there, moving about, trying to get night out of their legs. Their clothes were dirty and the dust of the previous days stuck to their oily unwashed hair. They talked to each other, planning their day, talking about who they might meet, who they would avoid, where they might get food or money. All they had was the clothes on their bodies, the canopy (which I think our regular homeless guy, Len, might have put there) and each other. And, as the song would have it, the sun in the morning and the moon at night... and they can breathe. It might not be much of a life from the point of view of outsiders, but it is a life.

Yesterday afternoon I went to the hospital to visit my mother-in-law, Marie. She's 93 and has had a turn of bad luck in the past 6 weeks. She took a tumble in her apartment and came to the hospital, where things went odd. No broken bones from the tumble, but she did wind up with an extreme achalasia, aspirate pneumonia, and a bout of hallucinations (either from painkillers or a mineral imbalance). Yesterday was the procedure for the peg feeding tube.

My mother-in-law has been on home oxygen for about a year following a bout of congestive heart failure and the discovery that her lung function was compromised, perhaps owing in part to the shrinkage of her skeletal structure. She was on oxygen when she went into the hospital, and she has been on oxygen for the 5 weeks of her stay.

When my other half arrived to visit her yesterday, the hospital bed was at too low an angle for the third day in a row. Because last week my mother-in-law had a procedure to inject botox into the sphincter at the base of the esophagus in an effort to solve the achalasia, she has no control over reflux. The head of her bed is supposed to be at 40 degrees or more to prevent her from aspirating stomach acids. I came after work, and I sat with her mother while she went to talk to the nursing staff about the bed issue. Again.

Marie was not in the best shape after this procedure, and no-one expected her to be. She was dozy and not really tracking. The oxygen tubes were in her nose, disappearing out of sight over the head of her bed, and the oxygen supply was burbling in the plastic container attached to the wall. The plastic container had a spare long, coiled plastic tube around it, and I noticed the green-tinted ends of it. Then I noticed another loose green-tinted end and realized with horror that the oxygen was on but my mother-in-law wasn't actually hooked up to it. The end of her tube was dangling behind the bed, not connected to the supply.

A week ago Tuesday I came to the hospital to wish my mother-in-law luck for the botox procedure. I found her lying on a gurney in the hallway, almost flat and feeling like the mess in her throat was coming up to choke her. She had a portable oxygen supply on, but she had no bell, and she had been trying to get someone to stop because she was afraid she was going to choke to death. No-one would stop. I got her attended to, and then they announced that the procedure was postponed because of an emergency.

I went away while they transferred her back to her room. When I returned, she was lying in her bed with her oxygen tubes in. The other lines were not reconnected yet (the feeding tube, the intravenous). She was anxious and disappointed. I spent some time with her, trying to calm her down and reassuring her that the procedure would go ahead in the next couple of days and she just needed to hang in there. She was still anxious, and she wasn't really tracking. It took a while before I noticed the oxygen hadn't actually been turned on.

I told the nearest member of the nursing staff (they seem to rotate every day, so you never know which one is responsible for which room on any given day). 10 minutes later two nurses came in. I asked them to turn the oxygen on. "Maybe she doesn't need oxygen," one of them said. I explained that she had been on home oxygen for a year, that she had been on oxygen for the 4 weeks of her hospital stay to that point, and that nothing had changed that would affect her need for oxygen. One of the nurses went to get the blood oxygen meter while the other stayed to argue with me. I held out my arms in as open a gesture as I could make and I said "I am not prepared to have an argument over this. Oxygen is essential for life and you will turn it on." [link to cerebral hypoxia]

They took the reading but refused to show me or tell me the result. They turned the oxygen on and left. They have been giving me the stony-faced treatment for the past week.

So yesterday the charge nurse came in, hooked up the oxygen, then brought in the machine. The saturation level was 60%. (When her levels were as low as 78% during her congestive heart failure episode we were told it was an emergncy.) It quickly climbed into the 80s as my mother-in-law breathed the oxygen in. Her mind sharpened over the next 15 minutes.

In that ward, there are 4 nurses for 19 patients. The provincial government has announced another set of cutbacks, and the management levels have been told they will have to re-apply and compete for their jobs. In the current climate, I can understand that staff are stressed and that the stress might lead them to make mistakes. I am trying to respect the difficult position they are in. I am not a nurse. But I am also thinking that 6 life-threatening mistakes in 8 days is not acceptable. It is inappropriate to brand me as a difficult family member for having caught those mistakes and having spoken up.

The nurse practitioner on staff yesterday danced around the issue, refusing to speculate about what a period of that level of oxygen deprivation might do to the brain. Do medical professionals not realize that people now have fairly easy access to that kind of information? Not only through general information sites, but through online respected medical journals (I have access because of my job)

We family members are also in a difficult position; we have a loved one lying in a bed in the hospital and being put at risk not by her illness (which is a situation that is resolving) but by the staff. We feel like we should be camping in my mother-in-law's room to prevent the staff from making mistakes.

The vagrants in the empty lot survived their day on the streets and last night they slept under the canopy. They got up relatively early this morning, helped themselves to water from our tap, and they have ventured out into the world again. Breathing.

Cynicism and Cinderella

2009-06-01T21:48:00.000-07:00

Britain's Got Talent is finally over for 2009, and the judges were not able to give Susan Boyle the glass slipper. She's had a fine time at the ball, and there will be a dance or two yet for her - certainly more than she ever dreamed of doing in her life to date - but we're already seeing that "happily ever after" is not likely in the cards. (In the interests of full disclosure, the name of my blog comes from a long-dead Boyle whose name was attached to a street, and then a neighbourhood. Boyle Street itself no longer exists as such - it has been replaced by a number.)

The Cinderella fairy tale is an interesting and persistent story, full of nastiness and a resolution that doesn't ring true (as Stephen Sondheim points out in his satirical Into the Woods). Cinderella is NOT a princess, and no amount of dressing her up and making a fuss over her will make her a princess. Even if she doesn't deserve the miseries of life with her step-mother and step-sisters, she is no more at home as a princess than she is as a housemaid.

The fairy tale helps children through the roughest times of their young lives - those times when they are convinced they are unloved, and that their parents can't really be their parents. It is a story which offers hope: hold on and some day your prince will come and you will be recognized for who you really are.

Like Ritalin, the story is a drug which acts differently on children and adults. The story that saves children from their misery will guarantee misery to any adult who clings to it. Britain's Got Talent struck gold with this story when it featured tenor Paul Potts, so they are repeating it with singer Susan Boyle. The price for a starring role is high - and the damage done to millions of others is unfathomable. We are being encouraged in a delusion.

Read what the critics say about his live appearances. Last year's sensation has had a rough ride - with lots of praise for the story, but lots of criticism as well. His mishmash album, carefully engineered, pleases his fans but not purists. In the past year there have been revelations: Paul Potts had already had a fair deal of coaching, including a masterclass in Italy with Pavarotti, and despite his considerable experience in amateur operas several of the reviews from his much-touted tour suggest he is not really equipped to be a credible opera star- although he sings the one Puccini aria well. His fame is based on having been touched by the fairy godmother of Simon Cowell and company, and from the reviews it looks like his fame outstrips his talent. Those of us with some knowledge of singing foresaw this when we watched his overhyped overproduced rendition of Nessun Dorma in the competition.

[A brief aside about singers of opera. To be truly successful, an opera singer has not traditionally required stunning good looks - particularly the tenors. They must have an extraordinary instrument, true, but there are many other qualities they must have - and those qualities act as multipliers in the world of opera. If any of them is a zero, then the chances of a career is a zero. These include an ear for mimicking languages (and preferably the ability to speak and understand several), an ability to take direction, robust health, musicianship, reliability, punctuality, musical taste, a grounding in music history, and an awareness of musical politics. A show like BGT can catapult you to fame and riches, but it will not validate your career as a serious opera singer. Maybe that doesn't matter; if you've cashed in to the tune of 5 million pounds, as Potts is reputed to have done, maybe the serious career as an opera singer has been replaced by the more lucrative career as a singing celebrity.]

Enter Susan Boyle.

Let's get a few things straight.

First, Boyle's been singing in her community for a long time. This is not a secret talent - merely one that hasn't had a light shone on it by BGT.

Second, Boyle's hearty manner is classic British music hall; her figure, face, and demeanour are of a type which the younger generation might not recall, but the rest of us do: Kate Carney, Tessie O'Shea, Hetty King, Marie Lloyd. Or the famous American Sophie Tucker. When Boyle came out to sing, I expected her to be good. She had a cocky, earthy presence. She is used to entertaining with her voice.

Third, all the hype about how nobody expected anything from her because she looked frumpy etc only shows how narrow their consumption has become. Boyle is not unique - she is one of a whole legion of performers whose type is not in fashion right now. She's attractive in a different way from our overprocessed entertainment industry norms - but people who suggest she is an ugly duckling need to have their glasses checked.

Fourth, her choice of I Dreamed A Dream was inspired. It's a dead easy song to sing and highly charged. Add some reverb and some lighting effects, and any half decent belter will seem impressive. Does that mean a major talent is standing there? You can't tell from that song. But the fact that the judges were so easily won over, despite the weak low notes and lack of finesse on the top, suggests either they don't know enough about musical theatre or they were playing it up because the Cinderella story is gold in their coffers.

Boyle did not manage to be as impressive with other numbers - and that should tell people something.

I like what I have seen of Susan Boyle, and I am happy that she will have some time in the sun. It sounds like she's going to live some of her dream, and that's great. Does it mean she's a great talent? Not necessarily.

And this is where things get nasty.

I know many local amateur or barely-known singers who could perform the living daylights out of that song - and then go on to prove themselves in repertoire far more difficult than La Boyle assayed.

And there are many people who THINK they have a talent that only needs to be recognized; they are waiting for a fairy godmother to see them for who they really are. Except it's not who they are. They don't have that much talent. Instead of understanding this, and finding other ways to satisfy their desire for community and value, they hang on to a dream that is bound to be frustrated. And it is the promotion of that delusion that is so ugly in these talent shows.

There aren't enough fairy godmothers to go around, and even if there were, what would it serve? Lots of people with second-rate talent being fussed over and elevated while people with greater talent are ignored because they aren't good material for a story.

The Vocal Arts Festival is happening here in Edmonton over the next month. Lots of young aspiring classical singers - some of them with breathtakingly beautiful voices and huge accomplishment. They have already devoted their lives to an art form, and they are investing in it. No-one is whisking them off to record with the Czech National Symphony. No-one is cooing over their YouTube videos. The depth of talent in Canada's singers is astonishing, but that doesn't fit the Cinderella story. To sell the Cinderella story, the star must be obscure and unpolished - even if it means their eventual disillusionment.

For the general public, there is no excitement to a story about someone who is dedicated to their studies, who gradually improves their skills, and who eventually enters the professional ranks through the usual means. These people have more chance of longterm success than Potts or Boyle, but who gets our attention and energy? The Cinderellas.

Why? Because we still want to believe the story can happen to us. We still cling to some of our childish wish that someone will discover our hidden talents, our "true" value. So we uphold the story and pronounce the mediocre or passable as amazing and unique - because if it can happen for them, it can happen for us.

The people who feed this delusion - the television producers who make money off this story over and over again - are they cynical or do they really believe these people are major talents? If the former, think about the ethical implications. If the latter, why are so many people swallowing it? The people watching these programs and waxing rhapsodic about the finalists must never attend their local theatres and concert halls or they would understand that they are being duped. By using glitzy production values to fool people into thinking they are experiencing major talent, the producers are creating a false scale - and millions are buying it without knowing that the standards of talent are being degraded and replaced by hoopla.

Isn't it time we all grew up?

Retire this Indian proverb, please.

2009-05-17T20:08:00.000-07:00

WARNING - NOT FOR THE SQUEAMISH

Gilbert Bouchard's body was fished out of the North Saskatchewan river this weekend.

The writer, popular culture commentator and broadcaster had gone missing late one night in April when he went out for a walk. It was reported that Gilbert had been battling depression and had gone off his medications.

A search was organized, and posters were put up, and a FaceBook group was formed. Despite rumours of Gilbert having been spotted a couple of days after he left on his walk, there was nothing concrete until this weekend.

In the interests of full disclosure, I have been only nodding acquaintances with Gilbert for years. He was supposed to be the editor of my first book, way back in the early years of The Books Collective. After agreeing to do it, he faded from the project and he was replaced. In the ensuing years, I stumbled across Gilbert infrequently. He was focussing on visual art and popular culture commentary while I focussed on theatre and classical music.

A year and a half ago, after Gilbert wrote a particularly mean and personal review of one of my plays, someone offered an old Indian proverb: Sit on the bank of a river and wait: your enemy's corpse will soon float by.

Here, in 21st century Edmonton, that proverb had no reality. It was abstract, about karma in general, and it was said without malice - I was being told to let go of my anger, and I did. I wrote a short story titled Driving Day in which people on a happy drug travel down the river to an unknown destination, trying to pull people in with them. So the reality of Gilbert floating in the North Saskatchewan is sad and disturbing. If anything proves to me that Gilbert and I were not enemies, it is this unexpected feeling of loss: I wish Gilbert were still here, still burbling on the radio, still striding about downtown in his long black coat.

Gilbert had his own demons, and many of us were unaware of them. He revealed his excellent qualities to some people: curiosity, generosity, hard work, fun. Our community has lost a man who had passions, who sparked dialogue, and who continued to seek his own path in the world with his own kind of integrity.

I live near the river. I never want to see anyone float by under any circumstances.

Peace, Gilbert.

Moving the Hand

2009-05-14T10:30:00.001-07:00

You'll see them inside the art galleries, sitting on a bench with their sketchpads, copying the works of the masters. These are artists learning something about their craft, learning something visceral about what it feels like to draw those lines. They are acquiring the knowledge of line and form and proportion through the act of copying.

Writers don't do enough of this. We think reading is enough. I have read the occasional how-to book that recommends actually writing out, copying, passages from excellent writers. Have I done it? Only a paragraph here and there. The more I think of it, though, the more I think it might be a good idea. You could feel the rhythm of the sentences, understand that flow in a visceral way.

The parallel to the visual art includes the fact that those people sketching are not working in the same medium - it doesn't mean they aren't learning anything. Just because I use a word processing program on a computer and not a fountain pen, quill, or an Underwood manual typewriter, doesn't mean there is nothing to be learned by typing out those passages.

It would have to be a private effort, though. Unlike the artist's sketches, the end product of the writer's exercise will look just like the original. I guess the attribution should always be at the top, in case one dies and the literary executors think these passages are those of the deceased. Or never save the files - because the value of the experience is in what you learn from the retyping, not from the rereading.

Perspective vs. Truthtelling

2009-05-09T13:42:00.000-07:00

In the past month, I have had two situations in which I felt a former colleague was not telling the truth, and in so doing that colleague was harming my reputation - if I have one.

In one case, it was a matter of what was NOT being said. There was information posted on FaceBook which did not tell the whole story, and when people responded to the information in ways that showed they misunderstood the chain of events...the original author did nothing to correct the misunderstandings - instead choosing to write tasteful thank you notes.

In the meantime, I was getting e-mails from several other people who were puzzled by the situation (as I was). So, rather than add fuel to the controversy, I arranged to meet the former colleague for a drink. We met, and we had a really good and interesting discussion. I expressed my concerns, my colleague expressed some concerns, I pointed out what damage was being done - and I found that in fact the ramifications had not been considered. Fine; a genuine error in judgment that arose from a logical sequence of events. You could consider it a matter of perspective.

The other case is more disturbing. A writer I once worked with, and with whom I had an excellent relationship, has written some things in her blog about the publishing company I used to be a part of, the company which published one of her books.

Unfortunately, what she wrote contained material which I do not believe to be true.

When I read the material in the blog, I submitted some factual corrections - provable, concrete material. I thought perhaps the author's memory of what happened all those years ago is perhaps...unreliable. The author initially did not approve the corrections for posting, instead sending me an incendiary e-mail. My positive comment, on a separate part of the blog post, was approved. So someone could be forgiven for thinking I agree with them. When I drew this to her attention, she agreed to withdraw the positive comment as well. She also agreed to amend a couple of the points - all the while insisting that she was right, even regarding discussions to which she was not privy and I was, and threatening me with legal action unless I amended this blog.

I was once on a grant jury and thus privy to a scathing and bitter letter this colleague had written to accompany her application. I understood the source of the frustration for this colleague, and I defended her when the other members of the jury took exception to what they saw as a lack of professionalism. I fought for her, because I believed in her as an artist. Now I am more worried about whether or not there is something wrong there. Perhaps she is facing a medical issue. Or perhaps there is something else behind the anger. She flatly insisted in her e-mails that the people who disagree with her are wrong, even when I am offering reasonable proof that they could well be right.

One of the questions I have struggled with, off and on, is this: What is the relationship between the art, truth, and the artist? It was one of the themes touched on in the essay in my first book. Now, as I am faced with these situations, I must ask it again. I do know that an artist who refuses to face the consequences of his or her own actions faces a very tough road.

On the Right Side of the Tracks!

2009-04-29T16:07:00.000-07:00

Our newest house is west of the new Light Rail Transit station. Like the house in which we live, it is only a half block from the tracks - but, unlike our domicile, the station is right there.

I noticed the difference because of the sound. House #1 is bathed in the dinging bells of the level crossing where the LRT shoots out of the tunnel from downtown. House #3 hears the lower, mellifluous bells which announce the arrival of the train at a station - and the recorded voice of the station announcement. Far enough away that you can't hear it from inside the house.

There were lots of dignitaries at the opening of the new LRT station last weekend - people I recognized from every level of government. The pedestrian/bicycle underpass hosted blue-icinged cupcakes, popcorn (how many poisons can they offer me in one event?) and a roster of young musicians - young and good, I must say. Although playing amplified music in a concrete tunnel assured a decibel level that I wouldn't stay around for.

The little dead end street is showing a fair amount of activity as people renovate, making a desirable location even more so.

Our house was empty for much of the winter - with the exception of a few very short-term guests. This weekend it will be invaded by a family of 5. It has been two years since the house saw this kind of liveliness. I look forward to feeling a more active vibe there. We have been furnishing the place, and it is starting to look like someone's home again.

Soon we will have to stock the pond with koi or goldfish to keep the tradition that Virginia Van Santen started. Many of the paving stones around the pond have heaved owing to the fierce fast freezing cycles of the Edmonton winters, and we will eventually have to do something about that if we keep the house. For now it makes the backyard look like a wild, abandoned magical place - including the old blue bicycle rusting against the fence.

Blue Plate Diner

2009-02-21T08:13:00.000-08:00

The following is the text of a recent e-mail exchange regarding an experience at the Blue Plate Diner in Edmonton.

First message - sent to the restaurant through their webpage.

I met with friends at your restaurant last Thursday. We had an hour, and the restaurant was moderately busy. I always enjoy the ambiance of the Blue Plate.

We ordered. As usual, I identified that I have celiac sprue and can't have dishes with gluten. I was specific that this meant wheat, oats, barley and rye. I also have a corn allergy - which is why I happily place myself at the servers' discretion when choosing a meal. The special that evening turned out not to be safe; I was advised to order the stuffed pepper.

It arrived on a bed of couscous. Wheat. And by then there was no time to re-order, so I left.

This is the THIRD time I have been given dishes with wheat in them after telling the servers and kitchen that I can't eat it. I had not been to the diner in almost a year because of the previous hassles.

I will not be back. Much as I like the diner, it is not a safe place for anyone with dietary concerns. I will ask the Celiac Association to place a warning in their newsletter.

Second message - sent by Rima Devitt to me three days later

Dear Timothy,

We expect our servers to be reasonably knowledgeable and respectful towards special dietary issues such as gluten intolerance. Having said that, we also know our serving staff can't all be experts in the fields of allergies, intolerances and nutrition in general and hope that customers who do have special dietary needs come to our restaurant armed with some knowledge of their own. Seeing as you have several allergies/intolerances and have had negative experiences it would seem in our restaurant in the past - would it not seem reasonable for you to perhaps call ahead with any questions about the menu you may have, go on our website, pop us an email, etc.? Rather than coming in during the busy dinner rush and basically putting your health in the hands of our server, who by definition is a 'server', not a 'doctor' or a 'nutritionist'? I believe it states right on the menu that the Stuffed Pepper is served on a bed of couscous - if you would have asked for that to be served on rice instead this whole scenario could have been cleanly avoided had you actually read the description of the menu item.

I respectfully suggest you consider dining at home more often, rather than subject hospitality staff to your bad manners and lack of preparedness.

Sincerely,

Rima Devitt
Blue Plate Diner

Third (and fourth) messages - my response

Thank you, Ms. Devitt.

I was very clear with the server, and the server understood - it was not the server's mistake. The restaurant was less than half full. When I ordered, I was also clear that I like everything, and anything that could be prepared would be fine - including any necessary substitutions. That is hardly a lack of manners. The server was quite upset, because the mistake had been made in the kitchen and she didn't notice when she brought the dish to the table - the lighting was dark enough that I had to confirm with my companions that this was indeed couscous and not broken rice. Calling ahead would not have made a difference if the kitchen staff do not recognize couscous as containing gluten.

I left not because I was upset about the food, but because there was then no time for another dish to be prepared if I was to be on time to teach my class. My companions stayed and had dinner. They were asked for my e-mail so the restaurant could contact me. After a couple of days had gone by with no follow-up from the restaurant, I sent a message through the website.

I do take responsibility when I go to a restaurant. In restaurants where there is any indication from the staff that they do not know what celiac is, I hand them a laminated card with an explanation and a list of ingredients. I do not ask servers to be nutritionists or doctors, but with celiac becoming more and more common I am surprised to find this is still an issue at the Blue Plate. The Creperie has a separate menu; Mata Hari indicates their celiac items on the menu; Bistro Praha has always been most welcoming; Chianti offers gluten-free options on their pastas; Upper Crust has never had a problem, and never made me feel as if I am a problem. My dietary concerns are not unusual, nor are they difficult to accommodate.

You interpret my actions as bad manners and lack of preparedness. While I admire your defence of the staff and the restaurant, blaming the customer for a mistake made in the kitchen is not appropriate. Yes, this situation could have been avoided. It could have been avoided by the kitchen staff knowing what the server meant. It could also have been ameliorated by management sending a timely apology and saying they were asking the celiac association for the latest guidelines so the staff would be better prepared in future. The attitude reflected in your e-mail does not bring credit to your restaurant.

Yours,

(PS. The Blue Plate Diner is one of the restaurants I recommended in an article on Edmonton in the Fall 2008 issue of the national magazine Out in Canada. I would like to think that was not a mistake.

T.)

Okay. So now the commentary:

I like the Diner. I like the idea of the Diner. I like the people at the Diner. I recommend the Diner to other people, as long as the people I recommend it to have no dietary restrictions.

On a previous visit to the Diner, I was served a salad that had croutons. The croutons had NOT been listed on the menu - but I HAD told the staff that I could not have wheat products. The server was apologetic and said he would bring a salad without croutons. A couple of minutes later I had a salad and it seemed like everything would be fine - until I got to the lower layers of the salad and found more croutons. Soggy with dressing.

I'm not overly fussy about things like cross-contamination, or I would never eat out at all. But if I eat wheat, I suffer symptoms that are like those of an intestinal flu. Because I have a fast metabolism, the symptoms can start within about an hour. Instead of throwing together a fresh salad, it seems the kitchen staff had tried to pick the croutons out of a pre-made salad. So there were crumbs in there - and that's all it takes to make me sick.

Fortunately I only feel crummy for a few hours (the other blessing of a fast metabolism).

But what if the customer had an allergy that led to anaphylaxis? Let's say a peanut allergy - and the kitchen just picked the peanuts out, but left a few by accident...

When a restaurant is informed of an issue, they have the option of saying "I am sorry, but I don't think we can safely accommodate you." Then people can leave OR assume their own risk. Don't tell the customer you will accommodate them and then make them sick.

In the e-mail exchange above, Ms. Devitt blames me. I had been clear about the sensitivities, ordered the special and was then told it was not safe - and the stuffed pepper was recommended as an alternative that would be safe. She has a point: I did not read the description of the recommended dish, and I assumed that the kitchen would make any necessary substitution - particularly since I had made it clear that I like all food and would eat anything that was safe.

I was not abusive toward the staff in any way. I did mention that it was the third time this had happened, and that I did not have time for another dish to be cooked (we had been there 30 minutes already). I didn't raise my voice, but I did leave abruptly because I hoped to find something to eat before teaching my class. Is that rude? Considering the circumstances, I don't think so.

As for chiding me and saying I ought to come to the restaurant "armed with some knowledge" - how strange to accuse ME of being the unknowledgeable one when it was the cook who didn't know couscous was wheat. Well, now I do have some knowledge: the Blue Plate Diner not only can't be trusted to accommodate celiacs, but the management blames the customer. That is knowledge that needs to be shared with other people who have food sensitivities so they can do as Ms. Devitt suggests and dine at home instead of at the Blue Plate Diner.

Locking the Doors

2009-02-14T08:59:00.000-08:00

Occasionally a stoner will come to our house. He (almost always a he) is remembering a time when a drug dealer lived here. "Remembering" might be too active a verb. It's more like an instinct. There are other times when a drunk or wasted former resident will show up, insisting that they still live in our basement.

We have an alarm system, and it works. We did once have a situation where one of these guys got into the basement back when the basement door was sticking and not quite latching.

The alarm went, the police were called, they came and they took the man away. He was confused and on the belligerent side, but he didn't mean any harm.

The police officers were apologetic - they thought he must have been in there for some time, searching the place. It had been thoroughly tossed.

I reassured them that it always looked like that.

I have too much stuff. Or too little organization for the stuff I have. The valuable stuff is the least likely to be stolen, because the market for it is not the local pawn shop. I don't have much in the way of electronics - no television, a couple of obsolete laptops I keep for sentimental reasons. Not much that is portable and valuable. A crackhead is not likely to wrestle the heavy antique furniture out the narrow door and up the outside stairs.

The alarm is more about saving the hassle than saving the stuff. After a theft, you either have to report the incident and go through all the nuisance of explaining it to the police, the insurance company etc OR accept your losses and find a replacement for what was taken, knowing that you will spend the next couple of years occasionally looking in pawn shops to see if anything looks familiar.

So the alarm goes on. We even have it turned on most of the time when we're home. The alarm isn't about fear as much as it's about having limited energy to deal with thieves and addicts. At times I look at the mess that is my basement and think "Let them have it!"... but then I realize I do have an attachment to some of the things I have inherited or scavenged over the years. Not ready to downsize yet.

Moon River

2009-01-30T08:19:00.000-08:00

Walking home on an uncharacteristically warm January evening - warm for January, that is. Which meant I took the indoor pedway system as far as the Sutton Place Hotel, where the bar's grand piano was sulking in a corner. I have become sensitive to the plight of the captive grand pianos. I have been told there is an ornate old European grand doing time in the west end Derk's Formal Wear store. It sits, mute, watching men try on their rental tuxes. Does the piano know these men are likely headed to events where younger, trendier pianos will tinkle in the background?

So I come out of the hotel into the cloud of smokers on the sidewalk and I turn toward home. Behind me a man bellows "Del!" A heart beat goes by and then "DEL! Where are you?" From somewhere down the block a distant "Here!"

"DEL!"

"What?"

"Where are you?"

I cross the street. The big windows of the Italian restaurant show that there is only one table occupied. The outdoor speakers, set up for the enjoyment of the ghosts of patio patrons past, are trickling out Moon River quietly enough to forestall complaints from the seniors in the assisted living residence across the street.

"Over here. Here."

"Del!"

Del is in front of the residence. She's tall and thin and I swear I didn't see her because of the light post. She has high cheekbones, and when she calls back to her drunken suitor she places her high-heeled boots wide, angles forward from the waist, and bellows.

"What?"

"C'm 'ere!"

"No."

"DELLLL!"

His voice bounces off the office buildings, off the big windows of the Italian restaurant, and Moon River is the soundtrack to this doomed romantic evening. Above the street the lighted windows of the insomniac retirees suggest there are witnesses remembering their own Breakfasts at Tiffany's, their own Streetcars Named Desire, and wanting the noise to stop.

Religion, doubt, and dishonesty.

2009-01-26T21:04:00.000-08:00

The John Patrick Shanley play Doubt is now a movie. A movie that feels a lot like a play that has been filmed, rather than its own piece of art. While I found the movie intriguing, the significance of it for me has nothing to do with whether or not that fictional priest was guilty of sexual abuse of the boys under his care.

What I was most interested in was a philosophy expressed by Sister Aloysius twice in the movie. I checked some of the online websites to see if I could find the actual quote, but I could not. It was something along the lines of "Sometimes when you are fighting evil, you have to step away from God." I know that's not quite right, but the sentiment is close enough.

In a recent Edmonton Journal article, on the Religion page under the Offerings section, a local Christian Reformed pastor wrote about how a recent polygamy case in Bountiful BC shows that the definition of marriage, made nebulous by the decision to allow marriage of same-sex couples, must be re-affirmed as a voluntary union of one man and one woman to the exclusion of all others.

The problem is this: the pastor used arguments against same-sex marriage as if they were the same as arguments against polygamy. He referenced passages of the Bible and he also referenced a scholar from McGill University. Unfortunately, when I checked out the references I found that they did not support his position vis-a-vis polygamy (although they partially supported some of his other points - only partially). I don't want to be too blunt here, but the gentleman was not being truthful, including in the way he used the reference to the McGill scholar (who had admitted to polygamy as a variant of marriage in her submission to a Commons committee - I looked it up).

It made me wonder if he felt he, like sister Aloysius, was justified in playing loose with the facts because he was serving a higher good.

Unfortunately, many people know that

polygamy is still permitted for Muslims in India (a country with a diverse population of more than 1 billion),
it was practiced in China until 1953 (at which point China had a population of more than half a billion) it is still practiced in parts of the Middle East and Africa,
it was clearly practiced without prejudice in the stories of the Old Testament - including the non-voluntary practice of levirate marriage (where you had to marry your brother's widow).

And of course there is the history of the Mormon church - currently 13 million people who know that polygamy was a part of the practice of the early Mormon church.

All of which means the reader of the article had to decide whether the author was ignorant or if he was deliberately presenting a distortion. Neither option is pleasant to contemplate.

What would it have hurt to say "I know we practiced polygamy in ancient times. I know the Christian church even had same-sex unions in pre-modern Europe. But the Christian church has always been a dynamic, changing force suffused by the Holy Spirit in order to keep God's plan for the world relevant and alive. Our branch of the church currently believes in holy matrimony as a sacrament which is intended to unite one man and one woman to the exclusion of all others."?

Of course, the problem is that the whole goal of the letter was to convince people that marriage has NOT changed and SHOULD NOT be changed. To admit that it has already changed, not only from polygamy to the current standard but also from religious sacrament to civil arrangement, would be to open up the argument to people who say "Yes, it has changed in the past and it must continue to change to reflect our reality."

I am drafting a letter to him. Not to the paper - I am not interested in publicly humiliating anyone. But the good pastor will have to figure out what he wants to do with the knowledge that he has been caught doing something which is against the teachings of his faith. Perhaps he will know the Sister Aloysius quote.

Folding Time

2009-01-06T16:47:00.000-08:00

Half a year gone. Situations and events pleat the fabric of time. Or maybe a better metaphor is that of the hurdler, needing enough momentum to get over the hurdles, so even the spaces in between become a blur.

July was Youthwrite and the most awesome birthday, complete with fire alarms and a pinata and 60 kids out on the lawn in the middle of the night.

August was the death of my beloved little dog, Dextrose, and the hyper-life of the Edmonton International Fringe Theatre Festival: the satisfaction of the lovely, low-key Etymology of Iroquois contrasted with the circus atmosphere of Pagliacci in a tent. And everything made more challenging when I broke my right hand in a cycling accident.

September was the month when Candas was away in Whistler and the challenge was to teach my college and university courses, get my research project done, look after the rental property, close the house deal, care for the dying cat and the living mother-in-law, and meet the obligations of my church job.

October was a blur which included the More Peas, Please cabaret. November was a blur with Vinok Worldance's Christmas Around the World on top of it. December also a blur, with the Coming of the Kings laid on top.

So many times I wanted to post, but there was no time to process what had been happening.

Still isn't.

Father's Day sentiments

2008-06-15T20:53:00.000-07:00

I do listen to the sermons on Sunday. That doesn't mean I always agree with them, and certainly today's sermon was a puzzler. The text was the story of Abraham taking his son Isaac up the mountain with the intention of killing him. The sermon meandered through several things related to fatherhood: jokes, masculinity under fire from feminism, the father-son relationship, ancient Jewish teachings on killing etc.

It's the story that interests me. Why was that story told? In the passage, it suggests the story is the source of a common saying: "On the mountain, God will provide."

Here's the story in a nutshell: God tells Abraham to take Isaac up the mountain and sacrifice him. Abraham doesn't tell Isaac what's going on. They trek up the mountain to make a sacrifice, and Isaac want to know wher the animal is. Abraham tells him not to worry - God will provide. so they get to the top, and Abraham builds an altar. Then the tricky part: he ties Isaac up, puts him on the altar and raises the knife to kill him. An angel appears and stops him. And they find a ram caught by his horns in a thicket, and it's the ram who has the dubious honour of being killed instead of Isaac.

The story is yet another example of the completely dysfunctional lineage that is the central line of Christianity. Isaac doesn't exactly have a great time with his own sons later either.

So...that saying, "On the mountain, God will provide", what does it mean exactly? That you can be as abusive as you like, say God told you to do it, and at the last minute God will stop you from going the whole way and killing your kid? That when you go out on a limb in faith, and risk your nearest and dearest, God will bail you out?

How about an Alberta update? Henry Albertan gets a message from God, who in Alberta is something like a morphing of the Premier with an oil baron and an economist. The message is: Henry, you're in trouble. You're poor - or if you aren't poor now, you will be. You need to appease us by sacrificing your elderly, your children, and the sick. So Henry agrees to support God's decree. He doesn't question the damage done by resource extraction. He allows seniors to suffer huge rent increases, allows cutbacks to the education of his children, allows the government to make a mess of the health care system. But Henry has faith that in the end, God will provide.

But just like the original story, it's a false crisis. It's God who tells Abraham/Henry there's a crisis. Totally manufactured. But you're not supposed to question God. And Isaac is shushed for questioning his father (I'd have some questions if my father tried to hogtie me and sling me on an altar). And the only ram stuck in the thicket is the oil, and Henry Albertan is going to do the same thing with the oil that Abraham did with the ram: burn it. And nothing will have been solved, except Isaac and everyone else will have been abused because of Abraham/Henry's stupidity. And the cycle will continue into the next generation.

That's the sermon I would have preached.

Salvage

2008-05-24T18:16:00.001-07:00

The view from our home office includes the bottle depot, a rundown old apartment building, the abandoned Golden Harvest Movie Theatre aka Wings Bar, and at the end of the cul de sac is the salvage op.

This is when you look past the skinny empty lot which is already home to a couple of guys this season (one of whom is Len - and judging from the shape of Len's nose, I'd say he's not the winner of most of his bar fights).

Today Richard stopped by to drop off the beautiful boxes which had housed the Dom Perignon and Veuve Clicquot he and Tracy had used to celebrate special occasions. We're probably the only house on the street that starts with the empties!

Richard looked up the street, eyebrows raised in disbelief.

"It's the salvage yard," I said. "Overflowing. Been like that for a few months."

"That's not right," he said. "You should be able to call the city and have that cleaned up."

I love Richard. He's smart, cute as a button, and has lovely manners. He can also be, by his own admission, naive.

I didn't tell him about Wayne stealing our aluminum ladder - about how you can't leave anything metal in your yard or it's likely to be taken to the scrapyard for a few pennies. It's convenient to have the scrapyard there - a trip to the yard can be combined with a trip to the bottle depot. Now that Wings is closed, and the Camelot Sports Bar, there are fewer local bars to spend the money, but these guys tend to buy Finesse pump hairspray at the minimart and drink it.

Not Len, so far. but he looks like he's headed in that direction. He's still enough in the world that he wants to see under the hood of our Jaguar. And he's taken it upon himself to kick out would-be squatters. Yay Len!

This whole neighbourhood is a salvage yard. And in the summer, this is what happens. The people overflow. They lie about in every empty lot, sometimes just soaking in the sun, other times too blotto to know where they are. There are fights.

One of my neighbours two blocks north told me she was hearing a party of hard drinkers in the lot next door to her house. She went out and told them she had a young boy in the house, and she didn't really like her boy having to see this. You know what happened?

This is why I love this neighbourhood.

The men politely apologized, right away, and packed up.

Just because it looks bad, and tumbles out into the streets, doesn't mean the castaway stuff - be it metal or people - has no value or understands no values.

Like Weeds

2008-05-10T21:05:00.000-07:00

The spring weather has brought the dandelions, the chamomile, and a host of other weeds. Yes, it has also brought the violets and squills and tulips. Can anyone tell me why my daffodils come later than the tulips when almost everywhere else the daffodils come first?

I've been out in the garden, weeding, checking on the perennials. The miniature roses are back,having successfully overwintered for a second year. These are the cheap little roses you get at the grocery store as potted gifts. They've proven hardy here, and given the struggle I have with the David Austins, I'm happy to have them.

This morning there was a beer bottle in the front garden, and a flattened scuffed area. The little wire dog figure my other half put out to define the corner of the garden was lying flat. Someone had stumbled into the garden and dropped their bottle in the process. I didn't pick up the bottle - we have a regular procession of shopping carts headed to the recycling depot across the street. I knew it would be gone in a matter of minutes. So I straightened up the wire dog. None of the plants seems to have been seriously hurt.

Along with the weeds, we get an increase in outdoor neighbours. I hesitate to call them homeless; they have homes, but they don't involve houses or apartments.

We were looking at a house a couple of blocks away - a really nice reno - and in the empty lot beside it there were four people leaning up against the wall of the adjacent apartment building. They were slumped there in their dark clothes, enjoying the spring sunshine. They called out to anyone who went by - not because they wanted anything in particular, but because they were feeling good. Spring has arrived and there's enough money for beer and someone had dragged a small mattress to the lot, so they didn't have to sit on the hard ground. One of the men had slumped down far enough that his head was the only part of him propped up by the wall. The position was the sort of thing you'd have to be drunk to tolerate.

And all four of them were drunk. Their faces were bloated by drink and too much sun (and perhaps the swelling from the most recent fight).

It's going to be a hard sell, this house, with that as the view.

On the way home from the Vietnamese restaurant I saw another man passed out against the north wall of the tiny carwash that serves the city vehicles. He was slumped down the same way as the man in the lot - so only his head was held up by the concrete, and at an angle that had me thinking how much I would need my chiropractor if I ever took up drinking in a serious way.

While I am watching this, and hearing the occasional groaning of our pipes as the homeless come for the water, a friend of mine is sending me e-mails urging me to protest against a proposed gravel pit in the west end of the city. The e-mails are full of exclamation marks!!!!! and dire warnings of what evils will befall the entire city if the gravel pit is permitted.

And of course the campaign invokes THE CHILDREN. We must think of the children.

Yes, I believe children have the right to be loved and secure. But I resent having children used as a sentimental button for every issue that comes up. In this case, the threat to the children is unclear. It seems there will be an increase of truck traffic on the main road in the area, and this poses a threat to the children. I'm not sure why. If children play on this already-busy access road, then the parents haven't been doing a very good job.

The residents are up in arms about the danger to the environment - conveniently forgetting that their own housing developments were plunked down relatively recently in the same sensitive area. They warn about the pollution of the river - although they can't say WHAT would cause the pollution in the process.

I sent a message back to my friend. I pointed out that the NIMBY attitude (Not In My Back Yard) displayed by the local residents is the same thing that has meant the highest concentration of halfway houses, harm reduction facilities, facilities for the homeless etc are put in MY neighbourhood because the good citizens everywhere else block the zoning. And no thought was spared for the children in MY neighbourhood. The burbs are busy saying "We don't want this sort of thing in OUR enclave." So it's not about the children - it's hardly ever about children - but about property values.

But the children in my neighbourhood are a lot like the adults in my neighbourhood: poor. So they have no clout. And they are surrounded by excellent object lessons every time they walk down the street: drink too much, and it'll be YOU lying in the vacant lot with your head bashed and bloated.

It would be nice if the residents who are worried about the gravel pit would stop and think more globally. Maybe the gravel pit is the way they can contribute to the good of all. And if it means teaching their children to play safely and have a healthy fear of moving vehicles, then that's a bonus. They should be teaching their kids those lessons anyway.

The Room Out Back

2008-04-19T17:07:00.000-07:00

Yesterday the insurance company finally got the old Honda Civic towed from our parking space off the alley. I hadn't realized how much it was weighing on me, seeing the car every time I looked out the back windows.

The car was rear-ended August 29th. For much of the winter it has been a dwelling for Wayne, one of the marginalised people who drift about downtown Edmonton. I think I evicted Wayne 4 times this winter - and there were so many reasons why Wayne had to be evicted. The weather is too cold here in Edmonton to survive in a car that isn't running. Wayne smoked crack and had a drug habit that involved injectables - so there were candles, matches and lighters in an extremely flammable environment. The car couldn't be secured because the frame had buckled and a window mechanism had broken - so locking yourself inside was not an option. And the guy up the street is ready to beat up anyone he thinks is hanging around, stealing stuff.

Four weeks ago I took all Wayne's stuff out of the car, shoved it in orange trash bags, and told him he had to leave. Anything he didn't take with him would be thrown out. What use does a homeless man have for a broken X-Box? It didn't even have a car adapter! Some of the stuff is scavenged, some of it might be stolen goods. Wayne took some of the stuff, but a week later the garbagemen took the rest - five bags of it.

Two weeks ago, Wayne was back in the car. I tried to secure it better, and I posted a No Trespassing sign. Made no difference. So I took all the stuff out again - new stuff. There were several blankets, three sofa cushions, clean and dirty workclothes, women's clothing, tools, drug paraphernalia, and three battery-operated vibrators. Wayne had been entertaining a girlfriend.

As I was clearing out the car, a couple came by. "Oh, you're clearing out my Uncle Wayne's stuff, eh?" The woman who said it didn't seem the least bit surprised.

"I've told him he can't live here," I said. "I've told him several times."

"Wayne's kinda stubborn that way. Shit happens. He snoozes, he loses," she said, and the man with her grunted. "Does he got any good clothes in there? Any women's clothes?"

I pointed to the growing pile laid out on a tarp in the lot next door. "Wayne wear those?" I asked.

She laughed. "No, he had a girlfriend but she took all his money and dumped him. He's not too smart that way."

Wayne's niece and her boyfriend rummaged through the debris of Wayne's life. I left them there. I knew she would tell him to come and get his stuff, if he was going to.

Wayne showed up again at some point in the night. He left a blanket, a lighter, and a pillow on the back seat. I threw them on the pile.

A city crew came and cleared out the stuff. Someone thinks it's a city lot, and they do all the maintenance.

Then, one night later, I saw motion in the car. I put on my coat and boots and went out there to confront Wayne again.

The back door was unlocked. I opened it and addressed the form huddled under a white comforter.

"Out. Out of the car NOW! You cannot stay here," I bellowed, using my stentorian operatic voice.

There was a mumble, and the figure pulled the comforter closer. I grabbed the edge of it and pulled it off, throwing it over the car into the empty lot.

It wasn't Wayne. And the figure lying there wasn't alone. There was a man lying on the seat itself, and lying one the floor behind the front seats was a woman.

I ordered them out. The man struggled and made it out, but the woman was stretching an arm out to me and asking for help.

"You don't need my help," I said. "You got in there without my help, you can get out without my help." She had a round, puffy face, and she was reaching out with one arm and saying she needed help. Her male friend was walking down the alley and he turned around and hollered:

"She's only got one arm, eh."

Which was true.

She couldn't get up without help, not from where she was wedged behind the seats of the car.

"You knew that," I called out, "and you left her here? Get back here! You help her out. She's your friend; you help her."

And he did. And she was swearing at me. I've gotten used to this - that the men of the streets usually cooperate but the women get violent and abusive.

Anyway. The car is now gone. I feel sorry for it. It had been so well cared for by the previous owners, and we were prepared to care for it too. At the end it had been smashed, ripped up, smeared with egg and wax, the mirror ripped off, and it stank of alcohol and survival.

Current Currants

2008-02-02T21:15:00.000-08:00

Finished off the last of the cherries today - looking out at the frozen grey blocks of downtown Edmonton. They weren't as flavourful as the ones we picked off Bev's tree summer before last - these had made the long trek from another country, and I suspect they ripened along the way.

Bev lives in New Westminster, BC. Her cherries grow on a mature tree which shades much of her backyard. On a sunny day, those fruits shine and twinkle. I don't know why this took me by surprise - in the back of my mind I think I attributed the shine on grocery store cherries to some kind of micro-coating or waxing or...but, no, that amazing gleam was put there by the creator.

Of course even Bev doesn't get cherries in late January. These were from Chile. When I was in the store today, I found that a lot of the fruits were from Chile at this time of year. So I just did a quick online search to see what fruits might be native to Chile.

I found a report that showed there were 15 varieties of currant considered native to Chile - "native" in this case meaning they can be traced back as far as the 19th century. Of those 15 varieties, guess how many are cultivated, according to the report?

None.

Either that means Chileans aren't terribly interested in currants, or it means that Chilean fruit growers are focussing on the non-native species to sell to the international market. And why not? How many species native to Canada form the backbone of our produce exports? Many of our plants were brought here. (Oh, yes, we have Saskatoons - nasty gritty berries with more reputation than flavour, in my estimation.)

I can't allow myself to get obsessive about native plants and biodiversity. I'm too excited by the thought of the frangipani growing on my windowsill, the holly in my garden, my tender roses (no doubt completely ruined by the extended cold snap we've been having).

So why do I worry about the agricultural exports of Chile? Why can't I just eat the cherries and be thankful they don't have to go by a slow boat, or that my only option in the winter is preserves?

Deep Freeze

2008-01-31T21:04:00.000-08:00

The city has been in the grip of a cold snap for several days. It began with a blizzard - not one of those picturesque snowstorms with the fat snowflakes whirling about like wedding planners in June, but that mean and stinging hard snow that abrades like powdered glass. The drifts grew, the temperatures plummeted, and now here we are.

The nighttime temperatures have been down in the minus 30s. The meteorologists have been feeding our need for weather drama by telling us how much colder the windchill makes it feel.

Wayne hasn't been sleeping in the car. I'm glad. My recurring vision of stumbling over a corpse has never included the possibility of a human popsicle in one of our parked cars, and I'd like to keep it that way.

There was a man selling Our Voice street newspaper downtown today, just around the corner from Starbucks. He was sitting on the sidewalk, leaning up against a building, with his vendor tag clearly displayed and the papers fanned out in front of him - and a cup for the anticipated twonie. He was wearing a navy balaclava, pulled so that only a small oval of his forehead could be seen. It was pale. There was frost on the top of his balaclava. He had one leg tucked in, and the other stretched out - seemingly clad only in navy sweats, dark socks and black runners. He was wearing a thick navy winter coat, and I had to watch for several seconds before I was reassured that he was still breathing.

When I got home from dropping Candas off at the college, there was a young man ringing our doorbell. He had a shovel, so it was safe to assume he was looking to shovel our walk even though it was more than minus 20. I had done a quick job the night of the storm - shovelling three times in the bitter cold. He was dressed in a similar fashion to the Our Voice vendor, except the newspaper guy had mitts. This young man had bare hands and a grey toque.

We did a quick negotiation in the freezing January sunlight. He was looking to clear the sidewalk, and would do it right down to bare concrete if I had an ice pick and $20. He'd lost his gloves at an earlier shovelling job. I loaned him lined leather mittens, a good ice scraper, and he set to work. While he was scraping, I was inside doing a quick editing job. He worked hard and fast and so it was only about a half hour later that he was done - right down to the concrete, as promised. He gave me back the mittens and the scraper, thanking me for their use, and I gave him $25. I was tempted to offer him hot chocolate, but he was already shouldering his shovel and pushing off to see if he could make more money. I considered giving him the mittens - but I've found the only thing that seems to keep my hands warm is to wear leather gloves with thinsulate inside these fleece-lined leather mittens. Although I bought the mittens at Winners and the gloves at WalMart and they didn't come to more than $25, I don't have time to look for replacements.

I hope he comes back after the next snowstorm. Next time, hot chocolate for sure.

Mackerel Moon

2008-01-21T17:26:00.000-08:00

So I'm coming home for dinner between work and a meeting (I would say "sandwiched" but our houseguest has brought home a chicken and cauliflower and salad so dinner is much more satisfying than a sandwich) and I'm walking east past the police HQ when I notice the full moon up ahead. It is lighting a circle of cloud which by day would be giving a wonderful mackerel sky. The clouds are moving quickly, their scaly qualities emphasized in the way they go translucent as they pass the bright moon.

"Hey, bro. Sell me your jacket and I'll pay you later."

He's drunk and his date is cranky. He just fished her discarded cigarette out of the snowbank.

"Come on," she says, pulling him across the street in the direction of the Mount Royal Hotel, where there's a bar. Maybe the tavern of the York has already cut them off.

"But it's a nice jacket," he says.

The jacket is an oversized herringbone wool coat by Dittrich Tailors in Edmonton, vintage 1960s or earlier. I bought it at Value Village last spring for $15. It was made for this climate - heavy and thick and perfect for the minus 40 temperatures we get in the winter.

I'm not selling him the coat. I traded coats with a hooker once - that's another story - and I know a raw deal. I'd rather have my herringbone coat keeping me warm as I watch the mackerel moon.

The Unwelcome "Tenant"

2008-01-15T17:56:00.000-08:00

We have two cars out of commission and parked in our back parking lot. One is the 1970 Jaguar XJ6 Series One, and the only thing really wrong with it is the flat tire and the undeniable drinking problem. That car guzzles gas like nobody's business.

The other car is the 1987 Honda Civic in a light metallic blue-grey. The Honda had been cared for lovingly before it came to us in the fall of 2006, and we cared for it almost as well. But in August 2007 it got schmucked by a Dodge Caravan, the frame buckled, and it has been awaiting the decisions of the insurance folks.

The Honda has issues. One window won't go all the way up, and the frame has buckled so the trunk doesn't shut quite right, and the passenger side doors are stuck shut.

Back when we had a Neon, the local vagrants would smash the windows so they could spend the night in the car. The police advised us to use a club on the steering wheel, make sure nothing of value was left in the car, and leave it unlocked.

The Neon was stolen and we bought these two cars with the insurance money. So we keep clubs on their steering wheels and we left the doors unlocked until we found we were attracting tenants. Now the Jag is locked, but we can do nothing about the Civic. And Wayne has moved in.

We've kicked him out once already, and we're going to have to do it again. We can't get rid of the car until the insurance folks say we can; it can't be driven and it can't be secured. And we've made it clear to Wayne that he does not have permission to stay in our car.

The first time I evicted Wayne I made a pile of his belongings: a couple of blankets, some spare clothes, tools, frozen eggs, needles (used and new), a plastic pail with cigarette butts in it. A candle. Lots of garbage. In the trunk there were good work boots and some electrical wire for his job. We had given Wayne several days' fair warning that the insurance adjustor was coming and he needed to be gone.

He's back.

We gave Wayne one meal at Christmas. He came in, ate in the kitchen. Told my other half about how he'd gone into a spiral when his girlfriend was murdered. The murderer hasn't been caught. I think his girlfriend was one of the many locals working in the sex trade.

It's hard not to look at Wayne and see him through my mother's eyes. When I was growing up, my mother would tell me that Indians were all lazy and drunk. She didn't say anything about residential schools, about the drug trade, about sextrade workers being treated as disposable. She probably didn't know - didn't want to know. We lived in Montreal, and the Indians were kept on the reserve.

Here he is. Not too different from dozens of guys we see in this area: a casual labourer with nowhere to live, a substance problem, and out on the streets dancing with the ghost of his murdered girlfriend. And, yes, he's being evicted from our car. Because the car is not a safe place for him. Because it's not safe for us to have Wayne in the car. Because he stole the neighbour's extension cord. Because the car is now covered in broken, frozen egg and when spring comes there's gonna be an awful mess. And I admit to not being smart enough, or kind enough, to help Wayne with the big issues.

I admit it: I am the sanctimonious result of the kid who grew up memorizing Bible verses for the Women's Christian Temperance Union prizes. I do not understand substance abuse and I have zero patience for it, especially when there's a lot of help out there. And I live with the discomfort of feeling I should be able to do something more for Wayne, and being angry that Wayne is so willing to make his problem into my problem.

Making It Up On the Fly

2007-12-13T20:10:00.000-08:00

McDougall United has these downtown Wednesday noon concerts during the Christmas season. They host a regular Wednesday concert series, but the Christmas one is different. It's in the sanctuary, which is all decorated for Christmas. Starbucks donates coffee. The Journal donates advertising and carol sheets. The church provides greeters, leadership in the carols, and a number or two performed by the church musicians.

There's always a literary moment in the Christmas series, too. And yesterday that literary moment was ... me.

They had asked someone else - a bigger media name. But they didn't get a positive response, so they asked me to step up to the plate. The musical group was the Pergolesi Brass - and I have to say they were in top form. They zipped through a Bach fugue that made my ears quiver with pleasure. And my ears are usually deaf to the reputed charms of Bach.

John Henry Weinlick, the minister at McDougall, got behind the podium and started an introduction. I'm getting weirded out by these events. There was one a couple of weeks ago - a wonderful Women's Breakfast with 65 amazing women in attendance - and I thought I would die of embarrassment when my accomplishments were reeled off. "I don't recognize that guy!" I wanted to say. So when John Henry started to wax over-fulsome, I pushed him away from the mic.

I hadn't actually had time to write the story down. These days everything seems to take twice as long as planned. So I stood there, in front of a healthy crowd who had just enjoyed the brass, and I had 7 minutes to fill.

I'm paper-trained. I admit it. As a musician and as a storyteller, I am used to seeing the material on the page and lifting it off. I have tried to be less anal about the music - and I find I actually learn it very quickly without hanging onto the security blanket of the page. But flying without a net as a storyteller? Not me!

The good folks at T.A.L.E.S. (The Alberta League to Encourage Storytelling) do this kind of thing all the time. But it's nervewracking. All those people staring at you, and they've been given a buildup...

I started with the brass. The only other known musician in my family was a horn player named Kleebach, and in the mid-1700s he moved from Dresden to London. Yes, it took 250 years for my family to produce another musician. The gene is highly recessive. And it wasn't until a few years ago, when I was researching the period for a show, that I figured out why Kleebach went to London. Handel.

Handel spent a lot of time being his own impresario, lining up singers and instrumentalists for his opera company and orchestral efforts in London. He often went to Germany and convinced musicians to join him in London. And because Handel tended to put his players on barges in the Thames - and brass players are a susceptible and non-swimming lot - he always needed new ones.

So Kleebach went where the work was, and probably played enough Messiahs to be heartily sick of them.

Classical musicians do a lot of work at Christmas. Tinned music doesn't carry the same spirit as a live musician. But it means musicians have an odd Christmas - they work and work and work, and often they find themselves far from home. Like Kleebach in London.

My first Christmas away from home was when I was in Banff in 1985. Oh, it wasn't the first time I had been separated from my family at Christmas. At my level of singing, I was always booked locally at Christmas. So if my family wanted to spend time with relatives, they would have to go and I would be the one staying home. But I didn't mind, because I was out there, enjoying being a part of all those Christmas services.

In 1985 I was at the Banff Centre, and one of my musician colleagues couldn't afford to go home to Toronto for Christmas. I had enough money for one round trip ticket. So I decided to stay in Banff, and I gave him the money to go home. When he came back in January, he was able to pay me back.

So there I was, alone in Banff at Christmas. There were only 4 of us at the Centre, eating our meals at the makeshift cafeteria.

My mother makes a hard, sugar-crystally fudge at Christmas. Somehow the tradition developed that she would make it for the ones who were away - and those of us at home wouldn't necessarily get any. Mother not only sent me fudge: she sent Christmas in a box! There was a small fake tree, complete with decorations. And baking and presents and the fudge!

So on Christmas Eve I sang at St. Paul's church. Then I went back to Lloyd Hall, dressed more warmly, and I hiked up Tunnel Mountain in the dark. I was used to Tunnel Mountain - I had been running up and down it for more than a year. On Christmas Eve there was no-one else there. The bears had gone into hibernation, the elk were quiet, and the tourists were all busy doing Christmassy activities in the town.

I got to the top of the mountain, and I looked out over the town, which nestled in the Rockies and sparkled with the Christmas lights. The stars were bright, and the northern lights were humming in that annoying way they have. But it was music of a kind - the music of the spheres, like a natural high drone. And then I was singing. Christmas carols, mostly. And a little Handel, for Kleebach I suppose. And when I was hoarse, I put my hand in my pocket and brought out a piece of my mother's fudge. And I put it in my mouth to soften it as I picked my way down the mountain in the chill dark, feeling that this was the best Christmas ever: I had music, I had my mother's fudge, and the world had God.

So that's the story I told, on the fly, in my 7 minutes. And it's almost all true...

Happy Grammarians

2007-12-11T23:10:00.000-08:00

I entered the marks for my college students today - those brave souls who have been coming out to class for 3 hours every Wednesday morning. And they came. If the final exam results are any indication, they even learned a thing or two about the English language.

This was a rare term in which all my classes - the creative writing class, the grammar class, and the more casual teaching and coaching I do - were a blast. The students were creative and alive, and they were a tonic through a period which is generally typified by the gloom and exhaustion I feel as the sun goes south and the work pace picks up. Without those vibrant students, I would have had a rough go of the past month. The constant round of chiro, and now acupuncture, to deal with the aftermath of the August car accident. And my beautiful dog is showing her age - she has terminal liver/kidney disease. It's winter, and she's lost much of her coat. The vet didn't sound optimistic about her prognosis; all I can do is keep her on a special diet and wait while the disease takes its toll. She seems perfectly happy. I am not. But I refuse to dwell on the dreary. Life on this side of the tracks has enough to be blue about, and I refuse to wallow. Why should I?

Vinok Worldance hosted their traditional Christmas Around the World program in mid-November. This was my seventh year as host, and it's one of the happiest gigs you can imagine. Partly because my other half celebrates a birthday November 16th, and Vinok means I can provide her with a party that includes live band, dancing, 200 guests and...Christmas carols! Back when I was first hired, the powers-that-be wanted the script weeks in advance. Now we're comfy enough that I can show up at a dress rehearsal. The exception is the new musical numbers. This year I massacred Norwegian and Puerto Rican Christmas carols.

There is a law of theatre, and I don't know if it has a name yet, but if it doesn't I'll claim it! The law states that if you are going to go outside your comfort zone and tackle new material - a language, subject matter, a different skill such as juggling - an expert will be in the front row for at least your first three shows. I know - I had the Norwegian fellow right up front!

The year I brought someone up from the audience to teach them a basic German Schuhplattler step, the man turned out to be visiting Canada...from Germany! The year I sang a faux-drunken version of the Bartok Roumanian Christmas Carols...yep, Roumanians in the front. There has to be a way to make this law work for you. If I were to mimic a media tycoon, would the front row suddenly be reserved for Black, Murdoch et al?

The Vinok show is a tough sell. "Folk dance?" Yes! But it's more than that. The dancers are excellent, and that should be enough. But the costumes are stunning - they come from the places where the dances originate. And the 4-person band switches styles and instruments at a whirlwind pace. I counted, and one of those folks played 9 different instruments in the course of the show. Instruments as far apart as the accordion, string bass, hammered dulcimer, violin...

November is the busiest month for me. Early Christmas performances, the crunch of end-of-term at the various institutions where I teach. The month flies by, and I am left exhausted. Christmas then passes in a haze.

So I have neglected the blog. And that must change! But it can't change tonight. I have to write a short story for a performance tomorrow. And I have to look up an acronym for a procedure done in pediatric intensive care - not sure what the acro stands for, and I need to know. And my dog needs walking.

Magpies

2007-10-06T23:00:00.000-07:00

When I first came to Edmonton, I was struck by the beauty of the magpies. We don't have them in Ottawa. Ottawa birds are on the whole a drab lot, which is fitting for a government town. So why would Edmonton, another government town, have the magpies?

As I was walking up the road to the Convention Centre from the river valley last week, preferring to walk since the whiplash injury, I noticed a magpie walking on the road in front of me. It was walking quickly, staying about ten feet ahead of me. Once in a while it would look back as if checking. And I looked back and saw four other magpies on the road, seemingly evenly spaced down the road and all walking in my direction. I had become the second in a procession, and we were all moving along at the same rate. I stopped and laughed. The magpies stopped. Then, as if caught out doing something they ought not be doing, they scattered to either side of the road and looked intent on finding something to eat.

The frost has come. This means no-one is camping in the lot next door. Fewer visitors to our tap. September/October always brings change. I am now working at the university, co-ordinating a project for one faculty and teaching a course in another faculty. For MacEwan College I am teaching grammar, and loving it!

Many years ago, when I was still thinking I would dedicate my life to avant garde opera (really!), I did a mask workshop at the Banff Centre. We went through a whole process of visualization and feeling, and we shaped the mask blindfolded. My mask ended up looking like my friend David - it had a truly wonderful aquiline nose, nothing like my hockey-accident stub. When we were done with the papier mache and the paint, it was time to play the masks. We didn't play our own - someone else put the mask on and waited for the character to emerge. Peter Spira played my mask. He said it was a 57-year-old English prof. I laughed at this, because I could think of few things less probable.

Well, I'm not 57. And I'm only a sessional. But it's eerie how my life seems to be headed in that direction some 20 years later. Am I in a procession of magpies, unaware that I am actually considered one of them?

YouthWrite

2007-07-26T12:21:00.000-07:00

Last week I was teaching at the second week of YouthWrite, a fabulous writing camp held at Kamp Kiwanis outside Bragg Creek.

Not only was it wonderful to work with so many fine young writers, but spending time with the other instriuctors and the supervisors was also an unmitigated pleasure.

One of the most inspiring is Carolyn Pogue. She is firm in her belief that children can and will save the world, and she presents the many projects which have been youth-led and which are leading to positive change in our world. She makes me want to turn back the clock and become a kid again, but this time a kid who had the fortune to be in Carolyn's class. Encouraged to make a difference in whatever way I can, and shown that each individual can be an effective voice/force for change.

My fiction class was 15 of the most interesting and accomplished young people you're ever likely to meet. A week wasn't long enough. And everywhere you turned there were creative minds being challenged, and meeting the challenges, and it was awesome.

But then there were the ladies from Ipsos-Reid. One of whom was brand-new on the job. And they spent a day at the camp as part of an assessment being done of the programs supported by the Alberta Foundation for the Arts.

What is wrong with this picture: a highly successful program whose graduates are now out there making waves in the adult literary world, a program operated on a shoestring and only made possible by the dedication of the people who believe in it, is being assessed by two young women who revealed no background in the arts and who are not old enough to have a grounding in the history of these programs in Alberta.

This is part of a sweeping examination of the AFA programs. Again. The last time they went through this exercise, they had totally missed the challenges facing publishers (and subsequently we have seen several Alberta publishers fold or sold to out-of-province interests) and had made no provisions for service to our growing aboriginal population.

And why? Because instead of looking at what the people of Alberta need, they're busy navel-gazing about their programs. Some years ago the government cut the travel budgets of the consultants, so they can't go out there and find out who they're serving. The whole system has become about the board and the consultants talking to each other and evaluating the grants instead of being a proactive force behind the fostering of the arts in Alberta.

Instead of sending the ignorant to evaluate YouthWrite, they should have been sending Ipsos-Reid reps out to every school in the province to find out what the level of arts-related instruction is like. Instead of evaluating their grant program yet again, they should be sending ambassadors out to the small communities and to the reserves and reaching out so all Albertans understand that the Foundation is there to represent them and their interests. And then they might understand the value of a program like YouthWrite.

If you don't know the need, what is it you're evaluating?

They're Back...

2007-07-12T21:15:00.000-07:00

So last week I was washing out my coffee filter at the kitchen sink and I looked out the window and there they were. At the base of the tree in the middle of the hedge of the lot next door. Spindly legs up in the air and her privates open to view except for the bits you couldn't see because of the man on top of her and at first I thought it was a hooker, because sometimes we get those. But it wasn't. It's a couple, somewhat the worse for the wear, and they're living in the hedge.

They're not hedgehogs, nossirreebob. They share. There are probably six or seven people living in that hedge this week. And at night they laugh and talk and fight and the sound of their voices comes through our windows in a code of cheap liquor and Finesse and grunting.

Some people might find this distressing, having the lot next door become a gypsy encampment. I don't find it nearly as distressing as having the amaryllis bulbs stolen from our front deck this week. They were nicely arranged in a shallow planter - three sets of bulbs placed so the leaves would overlap. And the planter was on the table beside the clay tray full of cacti. Whoever took them didn't like cacti. I checked the back yard and they didn't take the plumeria either.

We live in a neighbourhood where people seem to think plants are common property, even the ones in the garden plots or the planters. We have one neighbour who outright asks to take stuff - I gave her several amaryllis last year. And this year half our peony blooms were stolen. Our solution is to try and plant enough stuff that a certain percentage of loss won't really affect things much. We have lots of white yarrow. No-one steals the yarrow.

When I lived at the Rockwood, it was the same. Someone dug up my carefully nursed opuntia, grown from seed and thriving in a small way in the parking lot. Someone dug up my daylily. They just come and dig them up and take them away. All the oxalis from my plot at Our Urban Eden. You never know what will appeal to the plant thieves.

It's not the gypsies next door who are doing the stealing. They don't have gardens or windowsills for these plants. Besides, we'd see the plants out there under the hedge.

Job Hunting

2007-07-06T19:02:00.000-07:00

Been out there - looking for work and marvelling at the progress that has been made in HR recruiting since I worked in HR some decades ago.

First, there are the keywords. The job posting lists many things, and you have to make sure as many as possible are spelled out in your resume.

For instance, a job posting for a government position required some knowledge of fundraising. The HR consultant for the government did not understand that being the general manager of a registered federal charity for 7 years meant a background in fundraising. Because the word "fundraising" did not appear there, the HR consultant didn't see this as one of my qualifications. The fact that the position being advertised did not include any fundraising wasn't considered a valid point. Strike one.

Then there was the question of experience and knowledge of the film/television industry. The HR consultant read in my cover letter that I had some knowledge of the issues facing that industry, but he couldn't see that reflected in my resume. This is because he didn't know what it meant that I was on the local ACTRA council for 4 years, that I had worked on promotions for several television productions, and that I had even been in a few as an actor. It seems this particular HR consultant couldn't see that this meant I knew many of the people in the industry. Strike two.

And then there was project management - although the HR consultant said he was able to infer that I might have some project management experience related to the non-profit sector, it wasn't clear. So a university certificate in non-profit management, seven years producing concerts, more than a decade as a publisher, and many years as a theatre producer and director, and teaching Project Lead at MacEwan for 3 years - from these he was only able to "infer" that I had project management experience. Strike three.

Were these strikes against me? No. They were strikes against an HR system which allows a consultant to disengage from their critical faculties and just scan for key words. That's what he told me he did - scanned for the key words.

Now, the bio of the successful applicant for that job showed up in my e-mail. Nothing about fundraising, far less experience in publishing than me, some experience teaching in post-secondary institutions (not unlike mine), and not a word about any connection to the film industry. Probably the successful applicant had all the keywords in their cover letter so the HR consultant didn't have to think too much - certainly didn't have to compare this lesser-qualified applicant to me. I hadn't even gotten an interview.

So the next time I dealt with that department, I not only included the keywords but I highlighted them in red, just to help the HR consultant along. It worked! I got an interview.

And the interview was long and fairly thorough, although the three members of the interview panel showed some impatience because time was tight. They asked questions that required complex answers, but they hadn't allowed time for complex answers.

After my interview, one of the questions kept nagging at me. I felt the time crush had meant the focus of my answer was not exactly what I would have liked it to be. So I sent a brief e-mail to the HR consultant and gave a 3-point message of clarification. In response, I got an e-mail saying the interview panel was unable to consider any information outside the interview.

Unable? Well, no. It's one of those new HR policies. So the job won't necessarily go to the thoughtful person who does follow-up, but to the person who scores the most hits on the tick boxes in the interview. And I already knew I'd blown it over PowerPoint. I don't use PowerPoint. Too often it is badly used - like transparencies except you don't write on them. PowerPoint seemed very important to the panel. The fact that I work in a variety of computer programs, including having done design work, word processing, spread sheets, databases, html coding, and have been the bookkeeper for organizations using Simply Accounting, Quicken and QuickBooks - well, those don't fit in the tickbox. So even if PowerPoint is not particularly hard to use, and I could and would use it if required, I will have a bad mark in that tickbox while someone with inferior computer skills who says "Oh, I'm proficient in PowerPoint!" will be seen as more competent and qualified.

Again, the HR consultant doesn't want to have to think about the candidates as individuals, each uniquely qualified. It's about filling in the tickboxes from the application and the interview. Does this approach yield better results? Yes and no. It streamlines the process for HR, making it easier for them. They don't have to use analytical skills, don't have to have prior knowledge of the field, and don't have to make judgment calls - the tickboxes are quantifiable. But it works against finding the best candidate.

The position which was open was an executive position. PowerPoint should be the least of their worries. And a candidate who follows up with prompt and concise clarification of a point he thinks may have been misinterpreted - well, that's what they should be paying attention to, because that's the kind of person they need in the job.

Every time out I learn a little more. If I were unprincipled, I would land a fabulous job for which I am only marginally qualified by crafting my responses to exactly what they want to hear. In the meantime, the jobs for which I would have been a terrific fit have gone to people who learned that game faster than I did - and all the more power to them.

Hoops

2007-05-09T09:07:00.000-07:00

I understand the temptation to spill all in a blog. There are several things I would love to vent about, but discretion is a virtue I must cultivate.

NEWSNEWSNEWS

On May 23rd I will receive my MFA in creative writing from UBC. It's been a process with a few glitches and it has left me much further in debt than I have ever been in my life, but there it is. So I would like to thank the profs who guided me through the shoals of the workshop-based MFA, in no particular order:

Susan Musgrave, who never failed to take my work seriously even when I wasn't sure poetry was "my thing".
Gail Anderson-Dargatz, who challenged me to get out of my head.
Terry Glavin, whose regard for Orwell will never be forgotten.
Glen Huser, who put together a workshop which challenged, excited and encouraged.
Sara Graefe, my thesis supervisor who showed great insight, flexibility and grace.

I have been very fortunate to have these people in my life over the past two years. The time flew, my writing improved, and I've got piles of projects on which to work.

ARMCHAIR CRITIC - Oliver!

So on Sunday Candas and I went to see Oliver! at The Citadel. Huge show - cast of over 50 (lots of kids), and a set that overwhelmed everything. I'm not going to give a report card on individual performances. If I had the ear of the directors (which I don't) I would ask a few questions:

Why take a musical in which the emotional journeys are all so fragile, and the scenes so distilled, and then overwhelm it with a massive mobile set that takes the combined energies of the entire cast to move? My heart goes out to Krista Monson for valiant attempts at choreography on a nightmare stage.

Why make Fagin look so old when his song makes it clear 70 is distant?

What was said to Nancy, Fagin and Sykes about their solo numbers that led to ineffective staging and musical choices? These are accomplished performers, but they are not well-served here. Please give Fagin some stage and musical support in his number; please remind Sykes that a tense closed throat doesn't "read" as menace when it chokes off much of the sound; please encourage an actual journey in Nancy's reprise instead of a blasted belt from beginning to end (impressive, but it didn't serve the drama). Please support your title character in finding the notes.

I know these performers. If they are well directed, they can deliver top-notch theatre. And maybe there wasn't time for personal direction, given the logistics of the set. But I am tired of seeing fine performers like John Ullyatt in roles that don't suit them. Or Larry Yachimec (whose Actor's Nightmare remains on my list of favourite performances of all time) playing down his strengths for bland choices.

ARMCHAIR CRITIC - Verdi's Macbeth

Edmonton Opera tackled their first Macbeth recently with a charming disregard for text. The bearded witches were not bearded, Fleance jumps on the back of attackers (apparently this has to do with a miscued curtain which was then allowed to stay in the show), Malcolm doesn't run away when the guards are accused of killing Duncan, and Lady Macbeth begs for night to come when the stage is already black. Macbeth calls for his armour, says they'll meet their foes in battle (and he already knows the witches' predictions are unreliable) and then we're treated to a bare-chested fighting Macbeth. Ludicrous. And we were treated to a lot of cauldrons and braziers and cutesy flash tricks. Oh, and the lady-in-waiting did double duty as the head witch - which made a laughingstock of her later scene with Seaton where she sings about how distressing Lady M's behaviour is. The peril of surtitles is that the whole audience, not just the Italians, can read the text and see the discrepancy with what's happening on stage.

And the banquet scene - Macbeth at the downstage end of the table so everything has to be delivered upstage? And Lady M's sprightly "Everything is fine!" music quite ignored in the direction? And the scene starting out with as much celebratory cheer as the Oilers' dressingroom after the final game of the 2006 Stanley Cup... And what's with making the male leads fall down so much, and so early in their scenes that they then have to deliver wads of the scene propped up on their elbows?

Don't ask me why so many people wandering through the forest at night are doing so without aid of a lantern or candle. I'd love to hear what Brian Webb has to say about the process. Webb was credited for the chorus movement in one of the most statically-staged choruses in memory - the artfully posed witches were less threatening or interesting than your standard Zellers matrons, and in some places the chorus was left standing around the stage looking for all the world like they were waiting for someone - anyone - to give them something to do.

But like Oliver!, it was a production focussed on the set. In this case it was the flying scrims and their projections. How annoying. Especially with such fine singers in the leads.

Director Michael Kavanagh has given Edmonton some amazing operatic moments - Rake's Progress had stunning visuals (although some questionable other elements). So what happened here? Too many clever people at the production end and not enough attention to the basics?

End of Term

2007-04-18T00:47:00.000-07:00

School is done! And in short order I will have my MFA in Creative Writing from UBC, which will then mean I can... ummm...

Now I have to polish the manuscripts and get them out there, along with the 3-Day Novel manuscript. But first on the agenda is finding paying work. This is critical, since I have a mortgage and my tuition is clogging up the credit card.

School is almost done! All I have to do is grade the exams for Project Lead, mark the remaining papers for Distilled Prose, and then I can... ummm... look for gainful employment?

Mozart coming up in a month with the Bow Valley Chorus in Calgary and Canmore. With any luck, this will make up for having to miss the St. John Passion. And I'm also hoping Pro Coro Canada can find a way to record the Allan Bevan piece over the next year.

The Finesse bottles are cropping up in our backyard - more reliable than the crocuses. And the gaggle of the homeless that hang out in the empty lot are back. The spring winds are blowing a daily load of garbage in. Tonight we bought all the bags of topsoil left at Save-On so we can dig out part of the backyard and see if we can't get something decent growing there. Right now it's a mat of early weeds, with the chamomile already budding.

Looks like the giant sequoia didn't make it. I took a chance on it, burying the young tree's pot in the spot where I dug up the dead magnolia last fall. I don't seem to have much luck with trees. Not an arborist. I knew the sequoia might not make it, but I was tired of babying it. If I try again, I think I'll plant the tree in the river valley in a spot where it might have a fighting chance.

Tonight there was a panel on homelessness at City Hall. Several speakers, varying degrees of passion and clarity. Candas Dorsey got up and made some points about concrete ways in which the problem could be addressed while empowering the homeless. Many people have made housing their profession, and they have a vested interest in keeping the status quo. It is a foreign concept to allow poor people to have control over their own housing options!

Spring Cleaning

2007-04-13T23:05:00.000-07:00

We got the first crocuses blooming this week, and it made me feel guilty enough to clean up the yard. The caragana hedge is a magnet for plastic grocery bags. The bags have been used by gleaners to take empty bottles and cans to the bottle depot across the way, and then they're thrown away. It's windy in this part of town, and those bags snag on the thorns of the caragana and the next thing you know they're a greying eyesore.

I deliberately left the mess in the part of the hedge that juts out onto the lot next door. Not very neighbourly of me, I admit. But the man who owns that empty lot hasn't lifted a finger to keep it clean in five years. The city crews who pass by every day on their way into the city central yards - they come out and do a cleanup a few times each summer. And I keep the hedge trimmed at the front because if I don't, the sheltered ell made by the hedge is kitted out to be someone's home.

Don't get me wrong here. I have no objection to people camping out. But this block isn't a safe place for sleeping out of doors at night.

Anyway, today I go out there and one of my neighbours from an apartment down the street is out there on the sidewalk with a shopping cart full of garbage. He's got a pick, and he's picking up all the trash from the empty lot next door.

Lots of the neighbours think we own that lot, but we don't. In the interests of neighbourliness, I thought I'd better let the man know it wasn't MY mess he was cleaning up.

Of course, he was just doing it so he wouldn't have to walk by a mess every day.

"You got a nice place there," he says, nodding at my old house. "Shame to have this mess beside it when you keep it looking so nice."

It does look nice today. The sun is out and glinting on the three glass cloches in the yard, and we have those brave little crocuses, and the rhodos made it through the winter, and the rose canes are showing signs of greening, and I pruned the caragana back hard in the middle of the winter.

I thanked the man. His name is Raymond. And he just wants the street to look nice. But even Raymond has limits.

"Over there," he says, waving at the south side of the street, "they can look after their own garbage. Would you lookit that? Coffee cups, wrappers... I don't mind picking up a few things on this side of the street, especially for the old lady there. But I'm not going across the street."

Bach to the Blues

2007-04-06T00:04:00.000-07:00

Do you suppose the universe won't let you play Pilate and Jesus in the same week? Is that breaking a religious code? I was supposed to sing Pilate in Bach's St. John Passion last weekend, and I'm playing Jesus on Good Friday. Both concerts were at the prestigious Winspear Centre, but for different musical organizations.

Lo and behold, if I don't come down with a humdinger of a cold. Bad enough that I had to cancel on singing Pilate. Now, Pilate is not a very large part in the Bach. It's not as tiny as Peter or Ancilla, but it's not a stretch. I've done it before, and I like it. But even a small role needs a voice. And my cold went straight for the vocal flaps.

For the first time in 30 years as a soloist with orchestras, I had to cancel. Not even enough voice to fake it. The production was saved by the timely intervention of baritone Michael Kurschat - who has my gratitude. And my fee. But he earned it!

It's been a week. By keeping my voice low and husky and sexy - and with an excellent mic and sound man - I was still able to host the Edmonton Vocal Minority cabaret: Sizzle! What a blast! The Chickadivas sang the first set - and if you haven't heard this lively a cappella group, run out and buy a ticket to their next show. The second and third sets were various ensembles and solos from the members of Vocal Minority and EKOS, two ensembles conducted by the amazing Paula Roberts. The evening proved that there is a depth of talent in these ensembles. Who knew that our amazing human rights champion, Julie Lloyd, is also an accomplished guitarist and singer? Or that the charming preppy Terry Harris is a born crooner? Not me. There should be a law against people being attractive, smart AND talented. Harrumph.

I alwaysmanage to pronounce someone's name incorrectly. This time, I ran all over the place checking to be sure. And I still managed to screw up - on EKOS! I pronounced it "eeee-kohs". Paula slid me a piece of paper to correct it - it's supposed to be like "echoes". Now, she said it would be fine just to say it correctly the next time I got up there, but I believe in transparency.

I fessed up to the audience, and told them all EKOS rhymes with geckos. They laughed. "Those of you who are laughing," I said, "have never been to the desert at night to hear the geckos sing. They're beautiful." A couple of the EKOS members said I'd solved the problem of a suitable mascot for them.

The other day I was stopped by a woman who lives in the apartment building across the street. She saw my picture in the paper for having won the novel contest, and she wanted to show me her poetry chapbook. It was really well produced. I was on my way to the airport and didn't have time to really chat with her, but she may be a good contact for an upcoming lit series at McDougall United.

And tomorrow it's Jesus. The piece is Allan Bevan's Nou Goth Sonne Under Wode, and this will be for a CBC national radio broadcast. It's a modern masterpiece, incredibly layered and effective, full of middle English poetry and King James bible verses. At the premiere two years ago, it made the Mozart Requiem seem anemic.

This time, at the request of the composer, I have been moved offstage so I can be the disembodied voice of Jesus. It's nothing personal - the published score has performance notes which suggest this is an option.

Walking back from the dress rehearsal tonight, through that strange mix of parking lots and ethnic restaurants and rooming houses that mark the space between the ritzy hall and my house, I noticed a flattened mouse on the sidewalk outside a hotel supply store. It was curled up and as flat as a sheet of bristol board. Maybe it had been inside the building and got hammered with a frying pan.

The winner is...

2007-03-25T22:40:00.000-07:00

Now that the final episode has gone to air (March 25), it's official: my novella "Juggernaut" was selected as the winner of the first reality-tv version of the 3-Day Novel Contest, broadcast on BookTelevision and CLT nationally and on ACCESS Network in Alberta.

This comes on the heels of the same work having made the shortlist for the print version, the International 3-Day Novel contest.

There are many people to thank: producer Tate Young, Chapter's manager Rachel Sentes, the amazing team at BookTelevision/CHUM, Kyla Sentes (who catered the 3-Day Novel weekend and managed to make me delicious meals without any of my prohibited incredients: no corn, rye, oats, wheat, barley or alcohol).

The other eleven finalists wrote some amazing things during the weekend, and they should be proud of their accomplishments. Mar'ce Merrell, Wayne Arthurson, Ron Yamauchi, Felicia Pacentrilli, the indomitable Catherine Ford, Laura Kjolby, Tyler Morency, Mark John Hiemstra, Ali Riley, Darren Zenko and Jill Battson.

For the next little while, excerpts from all our novels will continue to be on the website at www.booktelevision.com

THE 3-DAY NOVEL CONTEST NEARS THE END

2007-03-21T14:21:00.001-07:00

Since last September I have been waiting for this week. Tomorrow we will shoot the finale to the BookTelevision reality-TV series on the 3-Day Novel Contest, and the winner will be revealed.

Winter has been lightened here by having an instalment of the show to look forward to every week. I don't know what it's like for the general public to watch it. The website has a poll where the public can express their opinion about who should be "voted off the island". I logged in today and found that Jill Battson is their first choice to boot off, and I am second. But it's not a popularity contest. What matters is the writing, and I am confident that my entry Juggernaut (already shortlisted for the International 3-Day Novel Contest) is in the running for the top prize.

Keeping my extremities crossed.

What will happen? Brian Aldiss and Reader's Digest

2007-03-21T13:26:00.000-07:00

The noted British science fiction writer Brian Aldiss was relaxing by the pool in Florida last weekend, and he asked me what was going to happen. When a science fiction writer asks "What is going to happen?" it is with the full knowledge that anything is possible, and no-one has a certain answer.

Mr. Aldiss wasn't talking about the change in hotel management, or the green water, or global warming. He was talking about his recent experience with the Reader's Digest Sweepstakes in the UK. He decided last year to "play" along with the contest - those officious faux documents with their inflated language and gimmicky stickers and envelopes and dire warnings.

He has been playing for months, and he said the time for the announcement of the winner was upon us...and what will happen?

I laughed. We've been filling out similar forms here in Canada. It gives Candas' 91-year-old mother something to look forward to, as each "official" notification lets her know that she is still a contender for most of the prizes. She doesn't read Reader's Digest. She has macular degeneration, and she is not able to read much of anything. We got the sample book, and the free gift (a redundancy!) of a doohickey to help open pop cans. None of us buy pop cans - you should have seen us inspecting this little tool, like archaeologists at the site of a forgotten civilization!

[At least, we think that's what the tool is for. It isn't sharp enough to slit your wrists if you've been banking on a win in the sweepstakes and find yourself disappointed.]

It had been a rough conference for Mr. Aldiss. He'd had a minor accident, banged his head and was examined at a local hospital - he was still wearing the plastic bracelet. He's been the Permanent Guest of Honour at this conference for ages, and it is going through changes. While there were many valued colleagues at the conference, there were also several missing. I have met so many amazing people at this conference (in no particular order): Daniel Keyes, Kathleen Goonan, Neil Gaiman, Peter Straub, Octavia Butler, Suzy McKee Charnas, Stephen R. Donaldson, John Clute, John Kessel, Anne Harris and a raft of other writers. There have also been moments of enlightenment and fascination in the presentations by scholars, and in the poolside chats. Sharon King from California always has something amazing from the early fantastic literature and theatre (medieval and renaissance France), and she has opened up a window on an entirely new world for me: reptile pets. Some academics give papers that are little more than book reports, but this year I caught some thought-provoking sessions that went beyond what you find in the books to what it all MEANS.

This year the conference was all about gender and sexuality in the fantastic - so the bonuses included Geoff Ryman and Nalo Hopkinson at the conference. My reading was at 8:30 in the morning on the Friday, but I was slated with Nalo and P. Andrew Miller - both engaging readers.

The International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts has been held at the same hotel in Dania Beach for some 20 years. Next year they move to Orlando.

With New Orleans as the focal point for our memories of Hurricane Katrina, we forget that other areas were hit too. Florida was hit - and when I was at the hotel last year the changes in the atmopsphere were palpable. The trees and shrubs were stripped or gone, and you could hear the noise from the highway and the airport because the "green screen" was gone.

This year the changes were the result of a change in management, from Marriott back to Hilton. A large outbuilding, suitable for receptions and parties, was gone. The poolside bar was under plastic tarps - being reconfigured as a shower/changing facility. New carpets were being installed in the public areas while I was there, and the room had been redecorated. It looked very nice, but smelled like a chemical soup.

The water that came out of the tap had a greenish tinge to it. So did the water in the bathtub. At first I thought the pool had been repainted, but it was only the green water making it seem that way. I don't know if this was connected to the mysterious flu bug that was working its way through the conference attendees - a very fast-striking virulent strain.

I don't smoke. I don't drink anything stronger than coffee. I don't take drugs - not even aspirin. Sometimes I remember to buy vitamins, but mostly not. By keeping the expenses down, I justify this annual trip to an academic conference someplace warm. I don't go there as an academic; I go there as a professional writer and editor. If I were to go as an academic, I would have to pay for the conference. They have graciously waived the registration fee for a number of professional writers who work in the speculative fiction field. I still have to pay for airfare, the (greatly reduced) conference room rate, and most of my meals.

Orlando next year? Maybe...

Story Slam at the Blue Chair

2007-02-22T13:43:00.000-08:00

Last night I took a visitor out for a typical Edmonton evening - a story slam at the Blue Chair Cafe. These happen once a month - 10 writers sign up and they read their 5-minutes-or-fewer story to the crowd. There are 5 volunteer judges in the audience, and the stories get rated. A hat is passed and at the end of the night - voila! The winner gets a cash prize.

Last night's winner was Mark Ramsden, and he happens to be one of my students at MacEwan. I can take no credit for his talents. He isn't in one of my writing classes.

The chocolate mousse turned out to be gluten free and corn free, and it was the perfect topper to an earlier spicy chicken curry soup. The stories were in general palatable, but I was wondering why so many men write about being drunk or on drugs. Do they think the audience finds it as interesting as they do? Not me! I get plenty of exposure to alcoholics around here, so I prefer to hear about something else. Oh, maybe it was the thing to talk about back when drinking/drug culture was seen as the emerging literary force - all that Burroughs and Bukowski et al - which isn't much different from the opium culture of Coleridge's time. In the hands of a good writer, it can be interesting. It's not the content that attracts; it's the skill of the writer. Too many men don't seem to think abut that before they put pen to paper and outline their youthful indiscretions.

At the end of the evening, as everyone was paying their bills and heading out into the half-hearted snowy night, a young man stopped at our table. He had been watching the televised 3-Day Novel series the night before - the episode where one of the judges rapped me for what he saw as racism with regard to something I said to the band in preparation for the reading challenge. The young man wanted to tell me he thought the judge was wrong and that I was robbed. I really appreciated that.

One Less Voice

2007-02-17T17:17:00.000-08:00

These days I’m paid to go to the big United church at the centre of town: McDougall United. It has a long history of being a centre of political and social influence, but that was in the past. It has come through the waning of the last couple of decades and is starting to grow strong again – and part of that is a refocusing on their purpose. McDougall does a lot with the downtown community – supporting the work of the Bissell Centre and the Edmonton City Centre Church Corporation.

McDougall also has a long history of excellent music, and it used to be a premiere concert venue for the city before the Winspear Centre was built. The acoustics are terrific, and the place is both open and warm. It’s the music ministry that pays me to be there.

I’m the bass section leader. That means I provide an anchor for the volunteer basses in the choir. I help keep it all together and provide leadership. This means I make sure the guys have the right music, that anyone who is having trouble gets a little extra attention. I keep attendance, assign robes to newcomers, and sing the occasional solo piece. At McDougall, the music ranges from Bach to Beatles.

This month is Gospel Music Month – a tribute to the musical heritage of the church as well as coordinating with Black History Month. Our attendance goes up a notch during Gospel Music Month. Maybe it’s the bluegrass band. Maybe it’s the informality of it all. Maybe it’s a nostalgia for a time when we weren’t living in doubt.

I’m the young guy in the bass section. That doesn’t mean a lot. Maybe it’s because the bass voice matures later than the others, but our section is well-lived. We have our challenges: some don’t read music, some are hard of hearing, some are dealing with the pains of growing old. But they come to rehearse every week, and then they show up on Sunday and they give what they have.

Our choir president resigned recently. 70 years old, he’s been singing there for 30 years. He was still singing the occasional solo – and while the voice does not have the robust fierceness of youth, it is still a resonant and sensitive instrument. He has chosen to stop now, before he loses his abilities. He doesn’t want to be an old man singing out of tune and out of time.

He has stepped down now, in Gospel Music Month, when the choir is more informal and when his absence won’t be felt as keenly. I might be the paid section leader, but he’s the man who has been the backbone of the section for decades. I miss him already.

So Dave, if you read this, know that your years of singing brought joy and pleasure to hundreds of people. Thank you.

Raw Fish and Minister Faust

2007-01-26T21:54:00.000-08:00

Last night was the preview of BookTelevision's 3-Day Novel reality television series. I'd like to say everyone was there - but you know it's not true. O hyperbole, thou'rt fallen on hard times! There were quite a few of the contestants - Darren, Ali, Mar'ce, Wayne, Tyler, and me. And all the fab folks from BookTV were there, as well as the fab folks from Chapters. Some of them didn't have much choice, since the event was held IN Chapters, but it was good to see them. Chef Kyla was there, and (electro)Lucy for pet therapy.

And Minister Faust, one of the judges. Minister Faust made a point of saying that his way of helping a conflict situation (his judging) return to normal is to give people room; that some of the contestants may have thought he didn't like them because he kept his distance.

Ah, yes. One can see how they might think that. Or it might have been the things he said about them.

Chapters gave us presents! So did BookTV - including a set of collector cards with gum. These things are very cool. And the spread had several celiac-friendly goodies: smoked salmon, sushi, fruit, cheese. In abundance! I can't be angry with anyone when there's raw fish in the offing. Besides, Minister Faust likes the work of Daniel Keyes - and Keyes' Minds of Billy Milligan changed my life. And I like the Minister's blog. So maybe we can forge an understanding. Over sushi.

I missed Catherine Ford, who was sunning herself in warmer climes while we basked in the northern limelights.

The powers that be won't reveal the winner of the television competition until they film the finale in March.

As I was putting my coat on in the room where the 12 contestants slept last September, I noticed a binder labelled Loss Prevention Manual. Oh, the temptation! The opportunity for irony! I had a bag full of presents already - who would notice an extra bulge?

Did I? Of course not! It would be wrong.

Hopeless mission

2007-01-21T21:19:00.000-08:00

So last night we were both at our computers engrossed in schoolwork (after midnight on a weekend no less) when the dog started yipping. She was sitting on a chair and facing the front door. We told her to be quiet and went back to our tasks. A minute later, there was a man at the doorway to the office.

He hadn't rung the bell or knocked, and this was one of the rare occasions when we didn't have the alarm set. He had walked in. He was looking for help, he said. He wanted blankets because the shelters were full and he was going to sleep outdoors in sheltered corner beside the entrance to the Ashton apartments. He was with his girlfriend.

"She has a wooden leg..." he said. I went to the door - which he had left wide open - and across the street I could see a shopping cart. Big blue plastic kind. And on the bottom level, where you'd put heavy flat things like bags of rice or kitty litter, there was a body all curled up. He'd been wheeling her around like that.

"It's warm in here," he said.

It's not the first time we've had uninvited guests. I came out of the bathroom downstairs once to find a woman looking at stuff in my livingroom. When I asked what she thought she was doing, she said "Just checking it out." That was in the summer and during the day, not the middle of the night in January. And there are a lot of people in our part of town who come from communities where no-one locks the door and you just walk in. It's not an invasion; it's just that boundaries are different in the towns these folks come from.

Our current visitor was a bit worse for drink. This made him behave like our arthritic one-eyed cat. He would open the door and sniff the air, turn back inside and say "It's nice and warm in here." And the door would still be wide open.

He'd left muddy shoeprints on the tiles in the music room. While my partner went to find spare blankets, I called the Hope Mission to see if they had any beds. I tried to get our visitor to stay put - and he probably thought my concern was for our stuff. Our house is full of interesting stuff - art and books and glass and ceramics. But I knew he wasn't likely to take any of the stuff. What would he do with it? No, I wanted him to stay put so I wouldn't have to spend more time cleaning the floor again. I'd just washed them all a few days ago.

The Hope Mission said they had plenty of mats and our visitors would be welcome. The Mission is only a few blocks away.

"You got something to eat?"

We had spent all day making sausages. We'd made two kinds: a pre-cooked kind with rice and assorted meats (goose, deer, turkey) and a raw kind. So my other half nuked some of the pre-cooked ones while I chatted to our visitor. He wasn't too happy with the phone call to the Hope Mission. I asked him how they found themselves in this situation.

"Don't ask about that," he said.

"You have a problem," I said, "and you want to make it MY problem, so I figure I have a right to ask." Hey, when you want something from a writer, there's a toll booth: cough up the story.

"So where are you from?" I asked.

"My mother."

A comedian.

"You got anything to eat?"

"We're getting you something. Sausages - we made them today. They're good - rice, meat. You'll like them."

"You got any socks?" he asked.

"On my feet." Two comedians. I went to see if my partner needed any help in the kitchen.

He wandered into the kitchen, tracking dirty snow through the livingroom and hallway. He didn't want the sausages. "They don't look right," meaning they don't look like the ones from the store. "You got anything else?" We didn't, really. We had used all the salad, had no fresh vegetables, and all our odds and ends of meat had gone into the sausages. We had dined on the leftover sausage meat.

"Pork...sausage...doesn't sound right."

"Maybe you should bring your friend in for a few minutes."

"She's got a wooden leg."

It wasn't a non-sequitur. The an building our deck started it last May and still hasn't come back with the railings, so the steps aren't safe for anyone who isn't confident of their balance.

We offered a ride to the Mission. He took the blankets instead. I understood this in a way - the shelters in town are segregated, so he wouldn't be sleeping with his girlfriend. So he took the beige comforter and an old red wool blanket that belonged to my partner's grandmother. He left before we could pack the sausages up.

He got his girlfriend out of the shopping cart and half carried her to the corner where they thought they might spend the night. He spread the blanket and comforter over them. My partner took them the sausages. All our visitor said was "You got any warmer blankets?"

My partner called the Hope Mission to see if their van could pick the couple up, but they only send the van if EMS asks for it. So my partner called the police and asked that they check on these folks. I washed the floors.

They did. After 5 a.m. A police car came and rousted the couple from their spot, making them pick up their blankets and move along. Just as the night was reaching its coldest.

Do I feel guilty? No. We provided good food, warm blankets. We found a bed for the night and offered transportation. Our uninvited guest wanted more. He felt completely comfortable walking into our home, asking for things, and then complaining that he wanted better. I wasn't looking for gratitude; it has always irked me that food and shelter aren't free. But he was rude, tracked dirt all over, lied about the shelters being full.

I still want to know the story, though.

Making the Grade

2007-01-17T14:54:00.000-08:00

Labour Day weekend 2006 I left the cosy confines of Boyle Street and let myself be shut into a bookstore in the south end of town for the first ever television version of the 3-Day Novel Contest. Before I went, I spent a few hours wandering around my neighbourhood and making notes about the place.

So I wrote a novella set in my neighbourhood. It's fiction - none of the characters are real people, but they are based on real situations. There's the homeless Cree woman who showers under the outdoor tap outside my kitchen window. And the do-gooder United Church intern minister from suburban Ontario. And the gang of kids looking for homeless people to beat up. And the hookers and dealers and dog walkers and cat ladies. The bars, the park, the cemetery int he river valley.

Got word on Monday that the book didn't win the big International 3-Day Novel Contest based inVancouver - but it DID make the shortlist. We still don't know who won the television version of the contest, and I suppose we won't know until March when they shoot the final episode of what has become an 8-part series.

I spent a couple of hours in November serving lunch at the Bissell Centre as a volunteer. So many hungry people. People rotated through, some of them lining up over and over so they could amass enough sandwiches to take back to family or to keep them through another meal. We shovelled out those sandwiches as quickly as we could, and I kept trying to stifle that voice that said "What's really happening here?" because at the end of the day, all that's happening is this: people with enough food are sharing. Yes, I could care more about the root causes of poverty and hunger - and maybe I should, because as a celiac if I ever find myself relying on the Bissell Centre for lunches I'm going to have a rough time! But there's no point trying to fix someone's life when the immediate need is to make sure they don't starve.

The best news was hearing that the number of after hours requests for water at the Bissell Centre has dropped dramatically since we turned the tap on outside our house. As starving artists we can't really afford it, but where did the public water fountains go? When they redid Churchill Square? When they redid Giovanni Caboto Park? When they renovated Edmonton Centre Mall? Why are we begrudging people access to water and food?

Welcome

2006-11-20T23:07:00.000-08:00

Boyle Street isn't really a street at all anymore. The streets all had their names taken away decades ago, and they were given numbers instead. So Boyle Street is an area - a gritty, tough area. This is where the halfway houses go and no-one complains because they spruce up the neighbourhood. A roominghouse fire is urban renewal. And the gangs are busy picking off people they think are surplus to requirements, people they think are homeless or hopeless. I have no big plans for this blog - it's just where I get to sing the Boyle Street blues.