This Blog Is Going Smash

America is an homogenous place. Sine moving to New York last January I’ve been surprised to learn how similar the east coast is to the west coast commercially. A K-Mart in Washington State looks, feels and smells the same as K-Marts in New York. Prices are adjusted, but there is a familiarity in every branch within the franchise. This power of recognition is true for large department stores, chain-food restaurants, groceries, movie theaters – almost every brand with a nationally (or regionally) growing presence. The neighborhood is going global.

This is to say that I was surprised recently when I was unable to find a NutRageous candy bar on the east coast, a global product – and highly esteemed among chocolate and peanut butter lovers – I thought was available everywhere. It went like this: one day I wanted a NutRageous although I hadn’t had one in years. I went to the street corner to buy one from the newsstand but they only carried Reese’s peanut butter cups. I went to the Duane Reade’s, to CVS, to every grocery store I could. I went to Manhattan and Brooklyn. I searched in Washington D.C. and Virginia and I could find them nowhere. Yes, they were available on Google, but how could I know these weren’t stale versions of the 1994 original?

When I came home to Washington state, I couldn’t find them at the first two supermarkets I checked. I began to grieve the death of my third favorite candy bar. And then I discovered them in our neighborhood – our locally owned – grocer. It was like finding the last remaining gas station when the world has run out of oil.

We need our independent, local businesses. We need autonomy or we will all go crazy – or worse – we will run out of chocolate. I heard from a Canadian friend only a day ago that she was unable to find Robin Hood Nanaimo Bar Mix where she had always found it before. When I was in Vancouver in March I was also unable to find it. Have you searched for this indelible goodness lately? Has Stephen Harper got hold of Robin Hood, too? Stand on your guard, Canada. Stand on your guard.

-Will

I really enjoy learning networks. This past week, my sister and I had quite a good time poring through the K: program for the next two months, excited to see that the ever-adorable Sally Hawkins is on her way to channel 4 for Christmas Holidays. Here-here for Persuasion!!

When I’m not sitting around watching television, however, I’m typically either culling the internet for facts on dead Canadian authoresses for The Canadian Writing Research Collaboratory, teaching students about aboriginal literatures, or delving into a good Bill Bryson read.

Growing up, history meant something incalculable, unwieldy, something to memorize by rote. It never felt alive. You’ve heard that message before, I know. So, instead I want to leave you today with some encouragement to learn something historical this week. For me, that’s meant taking things less as a list of facts, and instead entering into stories individually, contextually. Kinda like what I feel I get the opportunity do here at This Great Society every time someone’s willing to share their story with me via nonfiction@thisgreatsociety.com.

Here are a few different things I’ve discovered lately through my various bite-size history avenues.

There were a ton of women writing in Canada in the nineteenth century…
And while a great deal of them grew up in privileged situations, with lawyer and doctor husbands, or merchant fathers, or old-money mothers from Virginia, a notable number were also poverty-stricken at some point during their lives (often because of those same wealthy men running off or dying, and leaving said women with a string of babies to feed). I get to look at these ladies’ birth certificates, and immigration records, and family trees, and entries in Toronto’s 1878 City Directory—all to piece together a narrative that makes sense of what they accomplished. What’s really neat to see, is how many ways these poets and suffragists and politicians and novelists were all connected to one another—to see how often they read one another’s works and helped one another out along the way. Of course, reading of a good scandal and a lively story every once in a while is quite fun, too. Here are a few examples: Kate Simpson Hayes, who notoriously had an affair with a notable politician, and Joan S. Grigsby, who passed on to her husband and offspring an entirely fabricated family history, including fake Jewish uncles and fairly-romanticised Scottish origins.

4,133 people died because of London’s war-era blackouts. You gotta read Bill Bryson’s At Home, friends. But if you don’t, here’s something so curious: the Luftwaffe didn’t even have to drop a bomb, and because hustle-bustle city had to go about in the smoggy, pitch dark, pedestrians were dangerously stepping out into traffic, where cars precariously going both directions had to straddle the centre white line, as to not run into the “kerb” and hit those other pedestrians, otherwise safely making their way to and from work. It meant a lot of carnage, without occupation.

And finally, Canadians should know about The Trail of Tears. As well as all other bits of history, but if you’ve got an hour to spare, and Netflix just isn’t doing it for you, watch this really concise and informative Trail of Tears Documenty by PBS.

When we started to review and edit the poetry for our current issue, “Death,” I was surprised by how many submissions we received and by how smart and sensitive all the submissions were. Almost all of the pieces approached the theme through fine details, like a small door to a big room – instead of embracing the whole beast. At the time of the World Trade Center attacks on 9/11 I was living in Washington State, far removed from the nightmare on the eastern seaboard. This year however, my first September in New York and the tenth anniversary of the attack, 9/11 has come to life in a new way.

Last week the CEO of New York Public Radio called an all-staff meeting. Through the course of an hour she invited different people to tell their story of that Tuesday ten years ago. Every person was in a different place at a different time and hearing all of these stories in succession turned a static event into something very first-hand. This arrangement of collective storytelling did not turn into a group of grief, though. Hearing a story that belonged to everyone gave me a fresh outlook; nearly anything that one person had to say had a different variation from someone else. Everyone offered their stories through the details of hope and challenge – more life than death.

Writing about death, I think, is really writing about life. It is not a conflict we are able to escape – but it is a conflict to which we can choose our reaction and action, to live a story worth handing down.

-Will

Speaking of Death, last Saturday Trilby invited me along to Vancouver’s “Sins of the City” walking tour, hosted by the Vancouver Police Museum. At first, I wasn’t quite feeling compelled to hear all about my home’s more sordid past, afraid that I would leave with my stomach turning from salacious details of murder stories and the like.

The tour, however, primarily focuses on offering participants a general overview of the history of the city’s crime and corresponding development of police force. The Police Museum itself is worth a $7 visit on its own ($5 for students/seniors), if you can’t afford the $15 ($12) walking tour (includes access to museum). Even if you’re not into seeing drug paraphernalia and homemade weapons collected off the streets of Vancouver and its suburbs, you might be interested in walking around inside Vancouver’s first Coroner’s Court and City’s Analyst Laboratory (i.e. morgue), which was in use right up until the 1990s. The basement still houses Vancouver forensics labs.

Check out Sins of the City. Today’s the last day for regular bookings, but if you and your TGS friends put together a group, you’ll probably be in luck to take part this informative and intriguing event.

In Michele Norris’ 2010 memoir, The Grace of Silence, the NPR host explores race relations in modern America by tracing her own family’s stories.

Norris grew up in middle-class Minnesota, but it wasn’t until after her father passed away that she realized the impact race had made in the making of her family. Her mother’s mother was a traveling Aunt Jemima, a controversial role that painted African-American women in light of the “mammy” role (which is currently much discussed due to the release of Kathryn Stockett’s novel “The Help” and its subsequent film).

More central to the memoir’s arc is the story of Norris’ father, who grew up in Alabama in the time of strict segregation. After her father died, she was told he was once shot by a white police officer. Shocked by the news that violent race relations had so closely affected her family, Norris goes on both an emotional and journalistic journey to rebuild her father’s story.

At the end of the book, Norris has one challenge for readers: ask. Ask your family about their pasts. Sit with your grandparents, your parents, great-aunts and uncles and ask them to recreate the world that was before you. Then, listen, and learn from the stories that don’t include you, but formed you.

I’ve been doing just this for the past couple months. I’ve always been fascinated by my grandma’s story ever since I interviewed her for a high school paper I wrote on the Dust Bowl (her family made the “exodus” from Oklahoma to California when she was 9). We’ve begun emailing back and forth: I send a few questions; she writes whatever she wants to answer. What I’ve learned so far has been fascinating: my great-great-grandma, for instance, was the first female postmistress in Oklahoma. My family line may or may not involve moonshine, revelry, and more. It’s downright exciting.

So, I’ll echo Norris’ charge: Ask. Listen. You’ll learn about who you are and where you come from, and prevent some of the most important stories – of our culture, of our families –  from being lost.

Lauren

Ramadan has come upon us – that holy month in the Muslim calendar when one must fast during the day and feast during the night. In my neighbourhood, many of the people around me have chosen to fast. Some of the local restaurants have closed, the old men don’t drink tea like they normally do, and people seem to live at a slightly slower pace.

However, when the sun begins to dip in the sky, my neighbourhood comes to life. My first clue that things are about to change is the line of men wrapping around the corner at the the local bread shop, trying to purchase their sesame-sprinkled flat breads before the loaf cools or the sun drops. The restaurants begin setting out dish after dish of their iftar meals and the family who runs the sweet shop sells the last of the baklava while watching the countdown on the evening television.

And then, the call to prayer overwhelms the cooled evening air. All goes silent for a moment. I no longer hear the boys kicking the soccer ball underneath my window or the old men rolling the dice for the backgammon board – only tinkling melody of knife against a plate, a spoon against a bowl.

My husband and I have discussed what these evenings might be like – especially the iftar meal. I love the imagined collision of family and food – one that always produces unknown results. Will your senile grandmother clap yet again at the sight of dates on the table? Will your husband be home in time with the bread? It’s a brimming mystery that is especially sharpened when you are going sixteen hours without food.

The festivities seem to reach deep into the evening. And then, at 3am, the streets thunder with drummers awakening everyone to the morning meal. I have found myself standing at my living room window looking out on the other women looking out on the street. Never have I had such company in the middle of the night.

Jill

I have a recurring fantasy. I want to buy a small shovel and start to dig at the base of my apartment building. I would dig up my neighbour Ahmed’s newly built marble sidewalks, scooping down past the foundation of our ten year old building. I would go deeper and deeper until I could find signs of life from the days of the early Republic, of the Ottomon sultans, of the Christian emperors, and of the pagan explorers. I want to hold the fragments of this city’s humanity in my hands to see how they felt about the world, to understand their questions, and to envision the future they had for themselves and their children. However, how much do I really want to know about those who came before me? How much do I want the lives of past Istanbulites entangled in my own?

Two weekends ago, my husband and I returned from the Istanbul Archaeological Museum puzzling over our past and how those who came before us saw the human form. In the early sculptures, the human form is often combined with that of animal forms. Fauns and sphinxes intermingle with busts of Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar. The vision of humanity blurred with that of the natural world.

But that vision seems changed with the Greeks and Romans. All of a sudden, the human form takes full stage. Heads, arms, feet, line the walls. This carries over into the Christianization of the Hellenistic world. The early Christians, enthralled by the doctrine of the Incarnation, create entire theologies around the affirmation of the human person. In fact, in the early councils of the Christian Church, St. Gregory begins calling art “a second creation.”

And then, May, 29, 1453. Mehmet the Conqueror enters Istanbul. The human form is replaced by patterns and symbols. Photos on coins are replaced by words. Icons and mosaics replaced by tiles. This to show the ineffability of God and to stymie the temptation to worship any other living being. We cannot see the human form here, but it nevertheless exists in colour, pattern, word.

I don’t know with whom I identify when I look on the heirlooms of Istanbul’s past, but I have come to realize that the human form is continually in flux–moved and shaped by the elements around it.

- Jill

I love you, summer weather. Please stay and be the balm that heals us from the mean-spirited spring. When Vancouver’s sky shines its bluest, I am transported to a place where nothing matters. Not even my Monday morning alarm clock can wipe the smile off my face. Dining al fresco, pints on the patio, long weekend mini-breaks and summer festivals. What’s not to be gleeful about? With that in mind I share my list for the week:

- Canucks, Canucks, Canucks! Although I think we can get ‘er done in 4, there is a chance game 5 is on the day of my sister’s wedding. How do you convince the bride to have a projector or a computer streaming CBC live at the very least? Tips please! I would prefer to not be the maid of honour checking out her Canucks app under the head table.

- Dave LeBlanc has it right when referring to the current “decay fetish” scene of architecture appreciation. As pleasing to the eye as these photos may be, it’s the story behind this relic of a house that rings out. Makes me think of our turn-of-the-century brick farm house, and how as kids we used to come up with elaborate stories about the original owners (my dad egged us on with town myths about piles of gold buried in the earthen basement).

- My favourite meal at the moment is what I affectionately call our quinoa-kitchen sink: quinoa topped with sauteed asparagus, mushrooms, peppers, garlic and grape tomatoes and a sprinkling of fresh basil, chopped Moroccan dry-cured olives and black pepper goat cheese. The secret ingredient is a teaspoon of sambal tossed with the veg. Try it! I would pair it with a good Gewürtztraminer.

- Finally, Bumbershoot 2011 has been announced and it looks like they are trying to go back to their roots as the trifecta of music, visual art and comedy. Although I can’t really blame the outcries against removing major mainstage line-ups (I can’t complain about seeing Stone Temple Pilots, Beck, Death Cab, Neko Case, Blitzen and Sondre Lerche back in 2008), it is warm and fuzzy to know that Broken Social Scene is leading the line-up this year alongside hot-to-trot Fitz and the Tantrums and the likes of Mavis Staples. It’s called bumbershoot for a reason, folks! On that note, I plan to shake it.

- Laura

As a tribute to the 100th year of Canada’s National Parks Board (the oldest national parks board in the world) NPB sent thirteen teams (three musicians and one director in each) out to thirteen national parks to create music and a stunning film. You can preview the project above and watch all thirteen short films on NationalParksProject.ca. They’re each about 5-10 minutes long.

It’s a great inspiration to get outside. For me, May long weekend marks the beginning of summer. The weather might still be a bit iffy at times, but I think it’s time to throw caution to the wind and go forth into the great outdoors.

- Joel

Conan The Conqueror from Giulliano Palladino on Vimeo.

Deconstruct. Go.

- Laura