Bunnies Everywhere!

I'm here on campus at the University of Victoria and there are bunnies everywhere, peppering the lawns. I have half a mind to scoop one up and bring it home with me but I doubt that would go over too well.

I've temporarily returned to university life to do a one week course on designing and installing museum exhibits. It's proving as interesting as I had hoped and there are people here from all over Canada and even two from Madrid and Singapore.

After working on an assignment, I met up this evening with my friends Ron and Raji. They took me to a little restaurant out of town and on the ocean (can't remember the name of the place). My salmon was very tasty, although I probably shouldn't have had quite that much wine, since I'm feeling a bit unfocussed at the moment. That's not good, since I'm supposed to be preparing for a telephone interview I need to do tomorrow morning with CBC Radio.

Before flying to Victoria last night, I got to spend the day with Lucca in Vancouver. As always, we had a good meal, a long (but not long enough) chat, found me some new red shoes, and generally just hung out. She's joining me here on Wednesday night and staying on campus for a few days. Yeah!

Mysteries of Music and Wine

Have you ever wondered why you can hear the same piece of music several times yet it sounds so different every time? This is particularly true with live music, although it happens with recordings too. Last night at flamenco dance class, our guitarist was playing the same pieces he usually plays. For some reason though, they sounded so much more beautiful than ever before. The music almost moved me to tears it was so lovely. Same guitar, same player, same music, same room, same ears...so different.

I guess it speaks to the truth that the emotions/current state of mind of both performer and listener play a huge role in this wondrous mix. And when you think about it, what an amazing thing that is. Obviously we give and receive music on so many different levels and when all the stars line up on all those levels it can be a truely memorable experience.

In this way it's much like wine. You can have the same vineyard making wine from the same type of grapes using the same methods every year, but yet the vintage can make for totally different drinking experiences. Such mysteries!

By the way, I have decided it's time I learned a bit about wine. I have gotten by in life with letting someone else choose the wine, since I hardly know the difference between a chardonnay and a shiraz. However I would like to have the confidence of knowing I can make a decent pick when I walk into a liquor store or restaurant, so I have been reading about wines lately. I'm learning all kinds of things, like how different wines can pick up such exotic aromas and flavors as dark chocolate, black cherry, and pencil lead! I now know what wines go with caribou or sushi, and the names of some of the consistently good wineries. All this learning is proving to be a fun task, since it requires lots of taste testing!

Easter Time; Seedling Time

Technology is Amazing!

It might be because he plays bagpipes, or maybe because he's a hunter. Genetics might have something to do with it too. Whatever the cause, Joe learned several weeks ago that he needed hearing aids in both ears.

My image of a hearing aid was that it would be a big beige clunker of a thing that's almost larger than the ear itself. I was blown away when I saw what Joe came home with yesterday. These things are teenie tiny. The part that goes in the ear is a clear material with a miniscule attachment behind the ear. I wouldn't have noticed he was wearing them at all had I not seen the box sitting on his night table.

They come with a remote control and can be set for specific situations. For instance, there's one setting for listening to music. There's another setting if you're outdoors and want to hear every little sound of nature. They have a limiter for sudden loud noises (like the sound of a gun going off). Amazing!

Joe needs to go back every couple of weeks to have them 'turned up' bit by bit. I guess his brain needs to get used to the change in sound. I am amazed at how far these things have come from my grandma's days.

Roxy Music - the Best and the Worst

Here is one of my favorite songs of all time, and one of the most deliciously disturbing performances of it that I've ever seen. And in a club setting too!

This band, however, should be set before a firing squad!

Spring Break in the Yukon

It's March Break, and I'm loving it. It means I have a whole Saturday free, with no piano lessons to teach. It's not that I don't enjoy teaching; I do. But by this time of year, I'm ready for a break from working six days a week. I think Jamie and I will spend part of the afternoon taking a winter's worth of recyclables to the Recycling Centre (there's no curbside collection here).

For my older kids, this is also audition time. Iris did her dance audition for Ryerson University yesterday. She said it went well, she wasn't nervous, and now it's just a waiting game. She says if she doesn't get accepted, she's quite happy to stay at York, so we'll see what happens. Obviously I just want what's best for her. Alan has guitar auditions to do for both Selkirk and Grant MacEwan Colleges. He's opted to do them via DVD with his music teacher invigilating for him. Me thinks April/May will be a time of impatient waiting in our household.

Benny and the Jets

Last night I went to see 27 Dresses with a few women from work. It's a total chick film and I quite enjoyed it. My favourite scene was when Jane (Katherine Heigl) and Kevin (James Marsden) were in a bar and they started singing Elton John's Bennie and the Jets. They were getting the words all wrong, and I started to laugh, remembering that I too could never quite hear the words to that song, and with no lyrics on the record sleeve to help me out, I guessed at chunks of it as I bopped around in my bedroom, invisible mike in hand. In my version, the song has the words "She's got electric boobs, her ma has too, you know I read it in a magazine." Here, for the record, are the correct lyrics:

Hey kids, shake it loose together
The spotlight's hitting something
That's been known to change the weather
We'll kill the fatted calf tonight
So stick around
You're gonna hear electric music
Solid walls of sound

Say, Candy and Ronnie, have you seen them yet
But they're so spaced out,
Bennie and the Jets
Oh but they're weird and they're wonderful
Oh Bennie she's really keen
She's got electric boots a mohair suit
You know I read it in a magazine
Bennie and the Jets

Hey kids, plug into the faithless
Maybe they're blinded
But Bennie makes them ageless
We shall survive, let us take ourselves along
Where we fight our parents out in the streets
To find who's right and who's wrong

My Winnipeg

I must admit knowing next to nothing about Winnipeg. It's not a city I've had any burning desire to spend time in, and I can probably count on one hand the things I know of its history. However last night, in watching Guy Maddin's "My Winnipeg", I was enraptured by what I learned about the place. The film itself is fascinating...presented in a dreamlike state that fits perfectly with the major themes. But that's not was has captured my interest so much. What keeps running through my head are some of the bits of history that I learned about through watching this documentary.

For instance, several decades ago, there was a fire at the racetrack in the city. The horses panicked, and bolted from the barns and into one of the near-by rivers (I can't recall if it was the Winnipeg or the Assiniboine). It was winter, and the river was full of ice. The horses couldn't make it across and froze into the ice, with just their heads sticking up above the frozen river. Those heads stayed like that for the rest of the winter. I can't seem to get that horrifying image out of my head...every time I close my eyes it's there. What would it have been like to walk by the river all winter, seeing those dead horses encased in ice?!

Another bit of history that I gleamed from the documentary took place during the second world war. Apparently some members of the Rotary Club decided to make Winnipeg look as though the Nazis had taken over the city. They secretly got a large number of their members to dress up in German uniforms, changed the street names to German names, and went about arresting various teachers and other members of the community, who had no idea that this was just a put on.

The purpose was to show people why winning the war was so important, and to convince them to purchase war bonds. You'd think that the story of this enactment would have been passed down through younger generations, but Maddin said he only stumbled upon this gem by accident. He suggested people in Winnipeg must have been sleepwalking at the time (his film deals a great deal with the idea that Winnipeg is full of sleepwalkers).

Bottom line, this was a great film. Now Jamie and I are off to see Breakfast With Scot. More later.

A Nitwit

I'm chiding myself for something I wrote yesterday. I talked of feeling badly about the damage 'my people' have caused 'their people', meaning Inuit, over the years. Afterwards, I realized that I had done a fine job of absolving myself from any personal blame. However I did live in Iqaluit for three years, and looking back, I realize that I managed to inflict my own values on people I came in contact with, just as white people who came before me had done. Here is a case in point:

For part of my time there, I was the senior news editor for CBC. I had a newsroom of three, including one Inuk reporter. Each newscast was bilingual: first presented in Inuktitut and then in English (or maybe it was the other way around, I can't remember). At times there were stories that were very uncomfortable for my Inuit staff to deal with. They tried to tell me that in their culture, this wouldn't be a story, or this wouldn't be something that people would want to hear on a newscast. I argued back that while it might be uncomfortable for them, it had to be done, since it wouldn't be right to leave out stories done in English from the Inuktitut newscast. After all, when it came right down to it, news was news no matter what the language, right? And after all, I was the expert in these things, having gone to journalism school, right? My compromise was to allow them to re-arrange the order of the stories, so that the more uncomfortable stuff was buried in the newscast.

Now I shake my head at my ignorance and narrowmindedness. Of course there would have been no problem with having different stories on the Inuktitut version of the news. It makes perfect sense that, depending on what was taking place on any given day, there could have been completely different content in each version. I wonder why I couldn't see that at the time. I wonder if anything has changed in that regard since my time there. It raises the question: in what ways am I still imposing my values on people from cultures different from my own?

Why White People Are Funny

This morning at the conference I'm attending, Zebedee Nungak (writer and former politician from Nunavut) presented a film called Qallunatt/Why White People are Funny. Qallunatt is the Inuktitut word for white person. Here's how the National Film Board describes this movie:

Qallunaat/Why White People are Funny is an irreverent look at Western Civilization through Inuit eyes. Inspired by the satirical essays of Zebedee Nungak, the film turns the tables on generations of anthropologists, teachers, adventurers and administrators who went North to pursue their Arctic Dreams. Now it’s their turn to be poked, prodded, examined and explained. A new generation of Inuit is ready to take on the Qalllunaat at their own game. Grounded in their own traditions but educated in the South, they have a unique perspective on the culture that has come to dominate the planet. And they are not afraid to speak their minds. Qallunaat/Why White People are Funny is an uproarious trip through the cultural looking glass.

Yes, the film is veiled in a great deal of humour. And there was added enjoyment for me because I recognized some of the people in the film from my years in Frobisher Bay (now Iqaluit). But it packs a powerful message and there were times when I felt sick to my stomach being reminded of the damage that 'my people' have caused 'their people'. I think this brilliant work is a must see for senior high school students and for anyone who lives in the North. In fact, it's a must see, period.

Lessons from Ann

I'm in the middle of a two-day northern communications conference, and today's key note speaker was the well-known reporter Ann Medina. I watched and listened to her closely during her years with CBC; she is probably the female journalist I respect the most (she and Barbara Frum are in large part responsible for my interest in becoming a journalist 30 years ago).

The first thing that struck me when I saw her this morning is how very much she looks and sounds like my Aunt Marjorie. Secondly I was reminded of just how powerful a storyteller she is. She spoke of many things, but what follows is a rough re-telling of the story that stuck most in my head. It's all about not being afraid to ask 'the dumb question'.

Ann has a thing for birds. Where she travels (and her job has taken her all over the world) she buys small birds, keeps them in her hotel room, and gives them away when she's ready to head home to Canada.

On this particular occasion she was in the African country of Mali, and asked if there was a chance she might purchase a bird. Her TV crew thought she was nuts, and there were many rolled eyes. But one of the locals took her on a long ride to the outskirts of the city, where a man had a large cage full of birds.

She chose two of them, but when it came time to put them in a cage to take back to Ann's hotel, the only cage that was available had wire mesh that wasn't fine enough - the birds could just fly through it.

The man with the birds got to thinking. Soon he and a friend were digging around in the dirt. First they found a few rusty nails. Then one of them came up with a small bit of chicken wire. They dug and dug until they had a small pile of 'junk' which they proceeded to incorporate into the bird cage. An hour later, they had fashioned a cage that would work for Ann's newly purchased birds.

Ann said she had learned more in that one hour about Mali in terms of a country that survives and makes do with nothing than she would have learned from reading a whole library of books. And all because she wasn't afraid to ask the 'dumb' question.

Film Festival Time Again

Tomorrow is the start of this year's Available Light Film Festival. I have a festival pass, so I'll be trying to see as many as my schedule will allow. Among those on my list are Brand Upon the Brain!, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Breakfast with Scot, Control, The Tracy Fragments, and Cats of Mirikitani. It'll be interesting to see how I fit these movies in between dance classes, work and home duties, but I'll give it my best shot.

Away from Her

I saw "Away From Her" today. While in a few spots I thought the script was trying a little too hard, and I felt the character of the person who ran the retirement facility was one-dimensional, overall I thought it was a powerful and quite wonderful film that was as much about love and loss as about Alzeimer's. Both Julie Christie (Fiona) and Gordon Pinsent (Grant) gave stunning performances. I think the movie particularly spoke to me because of what I just went through with my dad.

I've often asked myself how one grows old with grace and with some semblance of dignity. Both Fiona and Grant show us how it's done.