Rotary International Ambassadorial Cutbacks

I was very sorry to hear that tomorrow, due to the financial crisis and its impact on RI endowments and accounts, Rotary International will be terminating their funding for their Ambassadorial Scholarships.

It was under this program that I earned my year in India & Pakistan in 1999-2000. In that time Turner and I studied Hindi/Urdu in Mussoorie; read a lot of Indian literature in English; met & came to love Carla, Sunit, Angad and the Chowdhrys; lived in Shimla with Nazko; had many dear friends and family to visit; and learned a whole hell of a lot about a whole hell of a lot. Neither of us would be the people we are today if it hadn't been for that scholarship.

Those who visited us were also directly affected by this scholarship, listed in the chronological order of your visits:
Bruce Bristowe (March 2000)
Valerie Bristowe & Michael Garvey (April 2000)
Ainsley Bristowe Sullivan, Sunday Kayaras Sbrozzi (April 2000)
Claire Lording (May 2000)
Mark Magee (May 2000)
Sean Monkman & Keitha Robert (June 2000)
Alex Luckhurst Van Tol & Colin Van Tol (July 2000)
Jenna Roussy (August - September 2000)

Although many of you know that my experience with Rotary Clubs in India and Indian Rotarians was particularly (and spectacularly) disappointing, it's worth remembering that the Canadian district (7080) that chose me as their scholar was hugely supportive to me, and their clubs gave me wonderful support both before and after my stay abroad. And the Pakistani Rotarians I worked with were awesome. For the record, if you ever thought you might want to give money to an NGO or Rotary club that would use it wisely, I definitely recommend the Rotary Club of Lahore Garrison.

I am very, very sorry to hear that this scholarship is becoming defunct. Tonight I raise a glass to RI, and to the Ambassadorial Scholarship. You should, too. Thank you, Rotary.

Categories: Ash | India
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Do They Taste Diiffer'nt?

Definite colour difference in milk from the different boobs.

Why, we dunno! ...Theories?

Categories: Ash | Mom-ness
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Waiting For The Labour...

So here we are: Due date - check. Hospital bags packed - check. House clean - check. Laundry done - check. All the basics, we're covered.

So we moved on to the stuff we've been procrastinating for months. Those little wire corner shelves to be put up in the bathroom? How about hanging the Brooklyn Superhero Supply map we got last October? Uncle Jay might be convinced to use his mad superplumber skillz to replace the bathroom sink tap and fix the downstairs toilet. And hey, I could fertilize all the house plants, I haven't done that in an age... 

...Yep, all of these and more. Check, check, checketty-check. 

Now that we're on pretty much full-time contraction watch, nothing is happening. So we're filling our time with nice hanging-out-type activities and make-work projects, and lovely, slightly-huffy-out-of-breath (mostly me) socializing with the peoples. Should we see some photographs of what, exactly, have we been doing to fill up our time? Sure, why not!

Well, the Blessing Way was last Friday; organized by the fabulous Jen Lippold, it was a ladies' night of celebrating ME. Personally, I thought it was a great event.
   
They put my feet in a bath and as each person spoke they added a flower...


   
Post-ceremony potluck and tummy comparisons...                        

We've had lots of great meals:
 
Thanks to all the fruit we're constantly keeping on hand these days (yehoo!), elaborate breakfasts full of fruit and nut goodness...


Herein Turner instructs Jana on the finer points of charcoal BBQ grilling, before we put on the koftas Jana had made, by scratch...

    
While Sloane went about getting gloriously dirty in the backyard...

ExCiteMENT abounds Chez Bristowe Turner these days, no? More to be posted as more occurs!

Categories: Ash | Pregnancy
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Star Wars Chatty-Chat

Sometimes Sloaner and I head to Douglasdale for sleepovers at Brucio's. To get out of Turner's hair, give him some nighttime space to work and think. Getting out of the house makes a huge difference, I know from the other side. Also, we're all keenly aware that our semi-organized life is about to be turned absolutely upside down, and Turner & I are both racing to get a number of things out the door before munchkin numero 2 arrives on the scene. Hence the getting out of Ramsay, and heading to Douglasdale for the evening...

This was my GoogleChat with T tonight before bed:

FTR, my email, sent at 10:22pm, among other things contained this:

Rented Star Wars tonight. Sloane talked and asked questions the whole way through. Basically she never stopped talking. I decided early on that I'd answer everything, so I also yammered away through the whole thing. Even Brucio, usually very much an advocate of the "shut up and listen so you can find out for yourself!" school of moviegoing plot comprehension, eventually got into explaining things to her, too. At the end I said, "Well Sloane, now you've finally seen Star Wars. ...All you need is to see it again, so you can HEAR it next time!" Dad laughed at that. I expect that we'll be seeing it again soon; you can handle the tag team running question-commentary next time if you like, as there are very probably 6 squillion potential questions as yet unanswered...

She was impressed with the swing-across-the-bridge part with Luke and Leia, and the two suns on Tatooine, and the stormtroopers ("stormwalkers"/"sandwalkers", she didn't quite grasp all the different names this first go-round). She likes understanding all about the robots and creatures, though the bar scene was full of too many to figure out in the brief screen time each was allotted. The only thing she was actually afraid of (and hid from) was Greedo. I think because I told her in advance that Han Solo was going to shoot him. She didn't want people to be shot with the guns. She also didn't want to see Obi Wan Kenobi die, but was totally ok with it when it happened. I said he hadn't really died, his body just disappeared. She was ok with that.

After the movie ended, we had a TEN minute conversation about how the kids at playschool mispronounce both Darth Vader (Darse Sader) and Boba Fett (Boba Vett). I am seriously not kidding about the time elapsed on that talk. Round and round it went. She has resolved that she is going to set them straight tomorrow morning, first thing.

Overall she was very pleased to have seen the movie. She's looking forward to the next one - after MUCH questioning on the matter, I relented and promised that Empire Strikes Back contains more Boba Fett, because she was very specific that she needed to hear his voice (this version had the 'new' footage and Boba Fett appears but doesn't speak in Mos Isley when Han Solo is talking to a CGI Jabba the Hutt in front of the Millenium Falcon). Re: Boba Fett specifically, she's very interested in the idea of bad guys being "good to bad people and bad to good people" and that this is what makes them "bad guys". But she was confused about how Boba Fett could be so important to the narrative of the epic overall (one of the kids at school talks about him all the time, so she's familiar with the character) if he didn't really talk that much in the movies themselves, and howcome he doesn't talk much, and why, and so on. We explained that he played a pivotal role but didn't get much face time and sometimes that's just how it is, and that she'd just have to see for herself...

She'll need to see it again and again, I predict. It's fast-enough paced and has enough weird kid-sized characters to convince her that it's a kid movie. I couldn't quite get her on side with that claim vis Ferris Bueller's Day Off the other night, unfortunately.




(* That's a Big Lebowski reference, yo.)

Categories: Ash | Family | Married Life | Pregnancy | Sloane | Turner
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Pregnant Purple Party-Goer

Our Aussie neighbour Garry is having a "P" party tonight, wherein we are expected to arrive costumed in something appropriate to the theme.

What am I?  Hint: 35 weeks + a half-bottle of 1% gentian violet...

At home, before going to pick Margaret up at the airport. See those pants? Purchased today at Value Village. I basically brought the entirety of the store's purple inventory to the dressing room and tried it all on. These velour pants didn't make the cut for the party outfit, but were so comfortable that I bought them for around the house in these last weeks of the pregnancy.


Tha's me in the purple, there. Nice ex-bridesmaid skirt, eh? Note also that I'm wearing fresias in my hair. This pose makes me look like a fecund post-Baccanalian dryad or something. I think it's been twelve years since I was last purple!

Margaret, fresh off the plane from a week in Paris, came as a Parisienne. Oui oui!

Categories: Ash
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Don't Tell The Obs/Gyn People

I can still kick it on the trampoline, yo.


Ash @ 32 weeks pregnant, Sloane @ 4 years old.

Don't worry, after the birth I'll keep the bouncing to a minimum for at least a month. Last time, I leaped up there when Sloane was about a week old, and got as far as one!-two!-threeeeeee!-uh, oh nooooo... Still-recovering-uterus jiggle-discombobulation? Nah, I don't need to learn that lesson twice.

Categories: Ash | Pregnancy | Sloane
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Albums That Changed My Life

This is a Facebook meme forwarded to me by my cousin Alanna some weeks ago. It's basically 'name and explain the albums that changed your life'. Here're the ones that most profoundly impacted me:


Sally Go Round The Sun

A charmingly-rendered collection of "Canadian songs sung by Canadian children", I loved this record as a child. We took it out of the library so many times in Thunder Bay that my parents finally broke down and bought it. Val hung onto it and 20 years later transposed it onto a tape, which helped keep me sane in graduate school. An excellent introduction to all the songs you should know as a Canadian child, including "Oranges & Lemons", "There Were Three Jolly Fishermen", "Nobody Likes Me, Everybody Hates Me, Think I'll Go Eat Worms", and many more. Three or four little kids sang while accompanied by simple riffs on the guitar and piano. Awesome. Part of me has never grown out of my love for campfire favourites like these, and I credit the zillions of listenings I put in to Sally Go Round The Sun in my earliest years for giving me that grounding, very useful when you have your own children and the stereo goes on the fritz. Plus, lookit that hippie-dippie album cover. Far out!


The Muppet Show (album) 

The Muppets and Sesame Street have been huge influences in my life and this album became a focus point of my childhood. Our family acquired this record in 1980 while I was away at Camp Caddy Lake. On the ride home, John and Ainsley (age 4) shrieked at length about how amazing this record was, how funny this one part is, oh oh oh you hear this bumblebee but it can't sting you... and on and on, and the record lived up to their enthusiastic hype. That last comment referenced what became my introduction to absurdist humour, a track entitled "Gonzo Eats a Rubber Tire to 'The Flight of the Bumblebee' ". Therein Gonzo announces his intentions, the music starts, you hear various mastication noises throughout the instrumental length of the piece, and finally concludes with a "tah-dah" trumpet blare. Genius. This album kept my siblings and I enraptured for years, and I am lucky enough to be in possession of our original record (miraculously unscratched), which we play for Sloane. Stood against the revolting pap being peddled as "children's music" these days, The Muppet Show album stands out as captivating, intelligent and funny, while declining to condescend to the young audience it served.


Blondie, The Best Of Blondie

I remember being in the St. Vital Mall in Winnipeg with my mom, allowed to choose ONE tape of my very own. This was my choice. We'd seen Blondie on The Muppet Show recently and Blondie was very obviously the coolest person to have ever walked the earth. "Heart of Glass" was later used by my gymnastics class for a group routine and we were all adamant about waiting for "the coconuts" to finish before we started across the floor (much to our coach's frustration, who wanted us to begin when the song started). We held our ground, and the coconuts still remind me of the power of group solidarity, lesson learned at age 7. 


Billy Joel, Glass Houses

"You May Be Right", "Sometimes A Fantasy", "It's Still Rock n' Roll To Me": all brilliant. I've always had trouble discerning lyrics in songs, and end up singing whatever I hear. But on this album Billy Joel made it super easy to understand everything he said, and suddenly I was able to appreciate the words and possible meanings in actual adult music! I remember winding my fingers through the wood filigreeing on our AKAI floor box speakers and being confident I was getting every word right:

What's the matter with the crowd I'm seeing
Don't you know that they're out of touch?
Should I try to be a straight 'A' student?
If you are then you think too much.
Don't you know about the new fashion, honey?
All you need are looks and a whole lotta money.
It's the next phase, new wave, dance craze, anyways
It's still rock & roll to me.

As a child the cover art, featuring Billy Joel himself ready to hurl a rock at a large window-fronted mansion, seemed unspeakably provocative: holy crap, was he ever going to be in TROUBLE!


John Denver, An Evening With John Denver

Incredibly, this album came into our life via Brucio. He just came home with it one day, and I'm not sure why (I should ask). But we would listen to it driving up to the mountains. Those were some of the only solid times of those early days in Calgary - the drives into Banff and beyond, singing along to "Sweet Surrender", "Today", and "Poems, Prayers and Promises". John and Ainsley and I would get up really early and together struggle to put the skis on the car so we could get an early start: Let's go, let's go, let's get out of here, let's GO. I remember actively praying to god that one of those days we wouldn't go back, that we'd just keep driving through British Columbia, all through the mountains. This album kept that hope alive.



Footloose, the soundtrack

I think I might have missed an adolescent calling as a dancer. As a gymnast I was hugely drawn to the choreography of floor routines, but because I was streamed into acro(batics), I spent my official gym time on minitramps and the tumbling sprint line. So I created my own, very complicated, routines to popular songs at home in the livingroom, the most intricate of which was the one I designed for the title track of Footloose. I couldn't really go for my officially-choreographed back flips given the 9' suburban ceiling, so I concentrated on the twinkly, bouncy, dancy bits that took me from 'floor line' (the tumbling parts that go corner to corner) to floor line, acting out every weird nuance and lyric. "Holding Out For A Hero" and "Hurts So Good", even though I had NO idea what these songs were about, were also favourites here. Go Kevin Bacon, go!


Paul Simon, Graceland

There's very little I could add to what's already been said about this album. Lovely genius.



INXS, Kick/Listen Like Thieves
    
In grade 9 "I Need You Tonight" was one of the most interesting songs I'd heard to date. "Shine Like It Does" calls up a nostalgia for that poor sucker I was, before I became myself around age 16, an audio reminder of that lonely pre-anger rootlessness that everyone experiences in their early adolescence. When I finally attended the INXS concert, about a year after Kick came out, I was in the 6th row on the floor at the Saddledome. ...Huge disappointment. Taught me that although you might like a group's music, their on-stage presence in a lacklustre, poor-acousticked venue can really bite. For a long time I thought there was something wrong with me, not enjoying concerts, when everyone around me was clearly having these euphoric experiences. Still, these albums contain beautiful music and it's a real shame so many of the singles from Kick were overplayed to the point of public nausea.


Eurythmics, Savage

Wow. Artists performing in character was new to me, and Annie Lennox's unhinged vamp of "Beethoven (I Love To Listen To)" absolutely captured my imagination. And I couldn't relate to the dark release in the writing, but the character singing "I Need A Man" as a brazen and spiritually ugly feminist spoke volumes about the creativity and expression you could harness with some simple, extreme lighting and a costume.


Pink Floyd, The Wall

The Wall was music that I'd heard while growing up, from MuchMusic and ambient in the air. Sometime in grade 10 I actually sat down and listened to the whole tape and was blown away by the whole concept of the "concept" album. Later that year we did an air band assignment in Musical Theatre class and I played the character of the prisoner in "The Trial". One of the other girls's fabulous performance of the judge still comes to mind sometimes. In university I encountered a number of people - mostly boys - who were enormous fans of Pink Floyd and acted like they'd discovered this music all by themselves. Their presumed ownership always made me smile. 


Dead Milkmen, Beelzebubba/Big Lizard In My Backyard
  

At 16 I worked at the local HMV and got tapes for half price on the staff discount. Suddenly my musical taste was allowed to explode without completely crippling my buying power. These Dead Milkmen albums were my introduction to intelligent, complex, jokey humour-music. They paved the way for my later appreciation of Barenaked Ladies, (early) Arrogant Worms, and Moxy Fruvous.
"Stuart" (Beelzebubba) in particular is singularly hilarious, and a good social barometer. To wit:

Anyway, 10:30, the other night, I go out in my yard
and here's the Wurster kid, lookin up in the tree
I say, "What're you looking for?"
He says "I'm lookin fer my burrow owl"
I say, "Jumpin Jesus on a Pogo Stick!
Everybody knows the burrow owl lives. In a hole. In the ground.
Whythehelldoyouthinktheycallitaburrowowl, anyway?"
...Now Stuart, do you think a kid like that is going to know what the queers are doing to the soil?

And of course, don't forget "Bitchin' Camaro", which became a family-famous air band performed (and recorded) in Hawaii, January 1990. At the end of our "video" you can hear our half-stunned grandmother ask into the general din of the room, "...Bitchin' Camaro?" Too good.


Depeche Mode, Album Single for Personal Jesus

Containing only two songs, "Personal Jesus" and "Dangerous", this album rocked my world and threw me headlong into being a proper teenager. I was already a fan of Depeche Mode, songs from Some Great Reward, Speak & Spell, A Broken Frame, Black Celebration and Music for the Masses had laid well-worn claim to tastes and edges of my adolescence. But with Personal Jesus it will forever be the coldest day on earth, hiding downtown on a school day at the empty Lancaster foodcourt with Matthew, the song leaking out the edges of headphones, gratefully realizing the world was a huge, amazing place toward which I was finally spiralling deliciously forward at speed. ...And no, I wasn't high. 


Sinead O'Connor, The Lion & The Cobra/I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got
  
Matthew also introduced me to the complexity and nuances of "Troy". And my god, "Just Like U Said It Would B" is about the most angsty and amazing song for a teenage girl to hear. These albums cracked my world open as a powerful woman-to-be. Somewhere out there, beyond the blunted edges and silent houses of Bonavista, was a place where Sinead could be this unhappy and angry and exquisitely talented, and get it all the fuck out and move on. I couldn't wait for that room.


Pixies, SurferRosa/Doolittle
  
I first heard Pixies through my cousin Alanna, in a minivan in Hawaii, January 1990. "Here Comes Your Man" came on and she said, "Oh, I love the Pixies, they're SO CUTE." I hear this in my head every time that song plays. My friends and I got very into a mash of the Pixies in high school, standing me in excellent cred stead upon arriving at university where no one had heard of them (yes, unbelievably). These songs have rhythms that brought me into myself, I recognize that quickening of my current and genuine adult soul in the sense-memories laden into these tracks. I know them backwards, and although my versions of the lyrics probably aren't 100% accurate, I'll guarantee that when I sing along to Black Francis I'm certainly mimicking exactly what he seems to be saying.

In first & second year university I used two Pixies spoken-word tracks on my answering machine that garnered a lot of negative attention:

Kim Deal        (in fake Valley Girl voice, cracking on the high notes) ...on girls and fucked 'em at school. Aaaaall I know, is that... There were rumours ...he was into field hockey players... There were rumours?
Black Francis   (suave, relaxed) So I applied, basically
KD                  ...He was gone the next day
BF                   I "went out for the team" (snickers)
KD                  It's like, he was gone, they just like... It was so hush hush. They were so... quiet about it. And then the next thing you know...

And:

Black Francis  (far from the mike) "...You fucking die," I said to her.
Producer        (inaudible off-mike question)
BF                  I said "YOU FUCKING DIE", to her
Prod               (obviously alarmed off-mike question, again)
BF                  Huh? What? (coming closer to the microphone) No, no! I was talking to Kim. ...I said "you fucking die."
Prod               (off-mike comment)
BF                  ...No, I was just... we were just goofing around.
Prod               (off-mike comment)
BF                  No, no! It didn't have anything to do with anything! She said: "Don't touch, anybody touch, this is my stuff", and I said "... (or) you fucking die" like that.
                       ...I was finishing her part for her
                       ...You know what I mean?

I dunno, I still think they're funny. And my grandparents never minded them, either.


Sugarcubes, Life's Too Good

I saw Bjork perform "Birthday" on Saturday Night Live and she looked absolutely mentally ill, fingering the microphone with contorted face. Something about the warble and cracking pitches and craziness of the cadences completely stilled me and I felt like there was a whole world to understand inside that voice. My mother periodically brought home tapes she'd read or heard recommended, and soon after, I found her un-listened-to copy of Life's Too Good in a drawer, its weird lime-green cover edge standing out in a line of bland labels. Thus began a lifelong exploration of Bjork and her art. When I finally saw her live at the Guvernment in Toronto, a quiet pre-tour gig with 400 people in 1997, I walked out of the concert understanding for the first time what it was like to be fulfilled by music.


Smiths, The Queen Is Dead

In grade 11 a friend's younger brother was finally hauled off to juvie and we were invited to come ransack his room for curiosity's sake - the boy was an eclectic klepto and had an amazing assortment of stuff in his basement lair. I found a case-less tape of The Queen Is Dead on the floor, and having the Pretty In Pink soundtrack at home I knew of "Please Let Me Get What I Want". Aside from a pair of giant black lace-up boots, I only took the tape that day and I think it lived in my ghetto blaster forever. "William It Was Really Nothing" remained a mix-tape favourite for years.


Erasure, the albums released 1986 - 1991
        
When I finally escaped my ridiculous and dysfunctional high school relationship, I resolved that if I ever wrote a book about those two years of craziness it would be entitled, "Forced To Learn Erasure Against My Will". The unimaginative poseur I dated in those days was wedded, heart & soul, to the English synth-pop group Erasure. Their sound was one that probably would have appealed to me if I had found it on my own. But as it was, my experience of Erasure was controlled entirely by, and represented the absurdity of, this young man's whims and pointlessly manipulative fancies. For example, one week I was told I couldn't kiss him until I had finally (properly) learned all the lyrics to the songs on Erasure's 1989 album Wild (and was extensively quizzed on compliance, natch). It is a spectacular testament to the boredom and desperation of my life at that time that I put up with that crap. Suffice to say that I spent pretty much 90% of my time in grade 12 suffering through repeated listenings of the Erasure back catalogue, all the B-sides, singles released only to Official Fan Club Members, and so on. Erasure became the soundtrack to all the now-hysterical-hypocrisies I committed in the name of that retarded relationship, and everything I gratefully left behind when I finally got a restraining order and moved on with my life.


Bjork, Debut/Post/Homogenic
   
Bjork's music is, for me, like listening to the points past which my own creativity explodes. Her example of unbending weirdness, focus, and creative collaboration has been so inspiring. Bjork's intonations, apparently owing much to the Icelandic storytelling tradition of un-singing over centuries of colonial suppression under the Danes, hitch-stutter-spout an obvious genius that I am unable to believe is not universally appealling. There is a way that she rolls her mid-word 'r's that transfixes me; I know it's coming, I wait for it in the lyrics ("the soft distortion fills you up, nourish, nourish, your turtle heart") and hold my breath each time. Although I also love Vespertine, these first three albums each knocked me flat anew and I am so grateful that Bjork came into my world when I was young and waiting exactly for her.


Luscious Jackson, Fever In Fever Out

My relationship with this album was always with the first track, "Naked Eye", and I don't really know any of the other songs, even in passing. However, the impact of Naked Eye was so profound that it deserves to be on this list. I've always had the capacity to listen to songs over and over, far past the normal threshold for repetition, without blowing myself out on them. But the case of Naked Eye really takes the cake, because I probably listened to it four to six times a day, every day, my whole first year of grad school. It was the perfect length to last the drive from our house on Surrey Street to the University of Guelph (including negotiating unpaid entry past the guard at the Johnston Hall parking lot). I walked a fine line between sanity and pure unholy hell that year in terms of my mental balance (helped not at all by some truly championship-level insomnia), and the ritual of Naked Eye to school and Naked Eye from school, day after day and often several times a day, helped me maintain a vague semblance of outward normalcy. ...Of course, anyone who rode in the car as a passenger more than once would begin to suspect at my coping mechanism, since I played nothing but Naked Eye. So it was an incomplete armour, to be sure.


Billy Bragg & Wilco, Mermaid Avenue

When Turner and I lived in Shimla, our lives were, for the most part, fairly routine and calm despite the fact that we were in India. Our flat looked out over the verdant Annandale valley and in the evenings we would have "libations on the porch" as the sun set, watching for the 5:20pm train winding through the trees on the other side of the ridge spur. Turner had mp3s of "California Stars" and "Way Over Yonder In The Minor Key" on his computer and we'd sit there in the folding doorway, holding hands in front of the zillion-dollar view, and breathe our love listening to these songs. Wilco became the background music to our partnership and in the year we were broken up, I went to see Wilco by myself at U of C's Mac Hall, to pay homage to the pain of living without Turner in my life. When we got married, "California Stars" was our 'first dance' song. As we swayed on the shuffleboard-painted floor at the Canmore Seniors Centre, we laughed at how long the song actually is when you had to dance to it, watched by 150 friends and family.


Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, movie soundtrack

Indeed, KKHH changed my life for the way better. About a month after screening the film with the other language students in Mussoorie, I sat down and painstakingly transliterated the Hindi lyrics into Roman script, and then sat there listening to the song over and over, learning the words phonetically. Something was telling me that it would come in handy, being able to sing the title song to this blockbuster movie soundtrack. And it totally did, lubricating our transactions through customs lineups, train ticket purchases, Rotary presentations, rickshaw negotiations, etc. Getting to know this soundtrack also forced me through the paces of getting past the typical westerner's bias against the characteristic high-pitched wailing and ridiculousness of Hindi film music, and onward into accepting this genre as a true and nuanced (if popular) art form. Bollywood connaisseurs may be aghast that this is the album on which I trained my ear, but enh, you work with what you've got. ...Plus, Shah Rukh Khan is SO AWESOME.


Paul Simon, Greatest Hits (Shining Like A National Guitar)

I bought this album in April 2002, at the Fort William Zeller's in Thunder Bay, Ontario. I had just broken up with Turner, and was making my way across the country, back to Calgary. I'd just spent five days in the city of my birth, staying with an aunt who didn't remember me and drinking in downtown Port Arthur with babyhood friends. It was a very wet and very windy morning when I was packing this and other newly-purchased music into the cd changer in preparation for that day's long drive into Manitoba. There were some songs on this album I'd never heard, or hadn't heard enough, and I spent the rest of the journey across the country piling their words and rhythms into the memories of that poignant and shellshocked time. Although this album contains "50 Ways To Leave Your Lover" and its opportunity for obvious association with my circumstances, it was instead the clickety-clackety background beat of "Kodachrome", the swelling warmth of "Hearts and Bones", and the winding contemplation of "Still Crazy After All These Years" that really came to represent the best of what this album offered me at that time. And while staying with Tarik & Sangye in Winnipeg, during a slow drive through the rambling lanes of Assiniboine Park, "Renee & Georgette Magritte With Their Dog After The War" fell into my soul like it had been there all along, waiting to be sprung from a box to comfort me. I am so grateful to this album for being a sensitive friend in such a shattered time.


Aengus Finnan, Fool's Gold/North Wind
 
I met Aengus Finnan in late 2002, at a large Canadian Heritage-sponsored event at the Banff Centre. Aengus ran into the hall as he was being called to the stage to perform. Clearly livid over the abysmal parking situation that had caused his late entrance, he stepped up to the microphone panting, sweat on his face. He snapped, "This one's a toe-tapper, so get up and dance if you like." Whereupon he launched into his "O'Shaughnessy's Lament", the tragic story of a miner who loses his beloved wife and their twins in childbirth, and is left bereft and alone. Half the audience was in tears by the fourth verse, and after he finished there was a deafening silence. "Thanks" he said, and stepped off to get a beer. Right-o, sez I. Must meet that one. Other than Corin Raymond, I didn't know any other songwriters or singers. But as a character, Aengus was exactly the kind of person I would have known in my old life back east, just the kind of guy my circle would have drawn in. His struggle to create genuine music, continue touring, find representation and manage his career obviously caused him some anxiety, and I wasn't entirely sure that he'd continue on his current path. We were out at the bar one night and I asked, "What do you really want to do? Like, what do you actually want to have achieved, 10 years from now?" His guard was down, I think. He replied, quietly, "Actually, I want to start a music festival. In Shelter Valley, where I grew up. I know it could be great. I know it could really happen." I invited him to my 'How To Get Funding From The Government' seminar the following day, and he attended. Aengus gave me copies of his first two cds that first weekend, and I used them as vocal warmups during the weeks of rehearsals and performances with the Pinetree Players in Canmore that autumn. I found parts of my old life in Ontario in those songs, the rush of wind through the reeds on the Rideau outside of Kingston, the weatherbeaten fenceposts along the rural roads, missing people I couldn't touch. We saw each other a few other times when he came through Alberta, and I eventually got to thank him, explaining how amazingly important his songs had been to me in that year I was alone, missing Ontario and the life I'd built there. Then, midsummer 2006, I was walking down Broadway St. in Nakusp and a poster caught my eye. It was for the 3rd Annual Shelter Valley Folk Festival (coincidentally, the poster highlighted the presentation of The Undesirables, Corin Raymond's band). I whooped out loud and cheered Aengus there on the sidewalk, from four and a half provinces away. He'd done it. 


Cars, movie soundtrack

Although we had successfully and self-congratulatingly trained Sloane onto an eclectic variety of great music (including Beastie Boys, Hot Hot Heat, Jai Ho, etc.), the introduction of the animated "Cars" Pixar movie into our lives last Christmas took all our hard work and smashed it into worthless smithereens. Enter Sheryl Crowe's "Real Gone", the Rascal Flatts version of "Life is a Highway" (we tried her on the Tom Cochrane original and she wouldn't bite), "Sh-Boom" by the Chords, and John Mayer doing "Route 66". ...Over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and OVER. And over. Plus a portion of the score, the part where Lightning McQueen and Miss Sally go for a drive past the waterfall. It took some doing, but after her repeated requests for this "song", Turner finally found it on iTunes or a torrent or something and BOY OH BOY was Dada a hero that day. Our girl clears herself a circular racetrack through the livingroom and around a hallway, setting up her stuffed animals with headsets (as her "pit crew") and giving us a cat toy to wave for the checkered flag, and then she sprints, for four or five repeats of the song, to "Real Gone", serious and focussed as she rounds the corners at top speed. We'd have to be made of stone to ignore our daughter's sincere love of, and delight in this music and its association with the movie. So although we tried our best, the lesson is that Disney'll getcha, and as a parent the best thing you can do is embrace it (within reason) with good grace.

Categories: Ash | Olden Days
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Whoo Hoo!

A letter came in the mail for me today:



Turner sez, "Dinner's on you tonight, Ash!"

Categories: Ash | Photography | Work work work
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Gears... Grinding...

Categories: Ash | Work work work
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25 Random Things About Me

I was tagged in one of those tell-us-about-yourself memes on Facebook, and thought I'd crosspost it here. There's an older one in the archives here on the blog, I think it's "83 Things About Me" from back in 2004. Here's the new & improved 2009 version.

Happy Monday!

1. I'm the best proofreader you know. It is my superpower.
2. It's -21C outside and I am in awe that people actually settled Canada. Sure, nowadays we have furnaces and hot water heaters and thermal underwear and vacations to Costa Rica. What did those poor suckers have in 1867? Earth houses, a few furs, and booze. Yikes.
3. Preggggg-nant again. I've reached the grunty-when-I-bend-over stage. Glamourous, charming: thy name is procreation.
4. Last summer we bought a soda water maker to feed the insatiable Bristowe-Turner thirst for club soda. It looks like one of those gizmos available on late-late-night television. But it's awesome, and you are jealous.
5. I renovate the house obsessively, in my mind. This place needs an upstairs. And a basement bathroom - with a giant shower. The back hallway floor has to go. And what's with the blue ceiling in our bedroom? We've lived here five years and I haven't ever found half an hour to fix some previous moron's "inspirational" blue bedroom ceiling? Yeesh.
6. Despite all my mad media and 'thought worker' skillz, I am secretly certain I'd be very well suited to dull assembly line work.
7. Can't. Eat. Some. Things. ...Like, you know what's in jello, right? And marshmallows? If you don't, and you like these "foods", I strongly suggest you remain ignorant of the ingredients.
8. I'm pretty sure ayurveda would label me a "kapha" type, but I sure like earthy smells.
9. I can keep my many plants alive, mostly for years. But making them flower? That's best left to going out of town for six weeks and leaving them to their own devices. Or solitary plant voodoo. Whatever - it works.
10. Grampa died on January 11th. I have a picture above my desk, and it brings me joy: He and Nanny are wearing Mexican hats and doing a little dance on the front concrete step of some unidentifiable townhouse. On the back it reads, "July 1977, Hinton Alberta". ...At the time, they lived in Thunder Bay. Why on earth were they in Hinton? Dancing? In hats? I'll never know.



11. Everyone has a stupid human trick. Mine? The ability to bend the first knuckle of most of my fingers. It looks spooky and wrong.
12. I believe in dark-coloured-wood furniture for the livingroom, and white-coloured-wood furniture for the bedrooms. The provenance of this belief is unknown. (Our current furniture does not, in all cases, adhere to this ideology. Still working on replacing the assorted post-university-era crap.)
13. My cat is on a common depression medication that starts with a "pro" and ends with a "zac". (I can't put the word in here properly because my site has been invaded by spambots populating the comments with dozens of ads for online meds. Brother John is fixing this, I think.) Apparently I am one of those people willing to employ pharmaceuticals to bend an animal into submission. But if that little bastard pees on one more duvet, I will drown him in the bathtub with my bare hands. So we thought perhaps a little course of pro with the zac might do us all some good.
14. We just invested in the stock market for the first time. Activision!
15. Those fuckers? On the road? Driving dangerously? I hate them with all my might.
16. I strongly believe, with the obvious exception of old school Sesame Street, that Toopy And Binoo is the best kids' program on tv.
17. Turner makes the best salad dressing. But for the last six weeks me an' Sloaner have been on a "bleu cheese" tear.
18. My current contract is a book about greening your 'personal care products', and the research is terrifying. Please, please, please: read your labels and avoid SLS, flame retardants, and phthalates at all costs. I'm begging you.
19. I've made myself sick on this one fabulous twirly-go-round at the park. Turner always warns me, but I never learn. Whee!
20. I'm currently reading The Forever War. Oh dear. C'mon Obama!
21. I ended up marrying a guy who could play hockey. He looks great on the ice, I was quietly super-proud yesterday. My 18-year-old self is in disgusted, insulted disbelief at the heathen I have become in my old age. Bah!
22. Sometimes I wonder why the hell I bothered with that master's in planning.
23. My back, it's finally feeling better. It only took eleven months and thousands of dollars in chiropractic, massage, osteopathy, naturopathy, physio, orthotics, muscle relaxants and prayer to save me from being a perpetually bitchy hunched-over cripple. Hurray!
24. I recently discovered that song "Crazy" by Gnarls Barkley. Where have you been all my life?
25. I think a lot about my teeth. I brush them three, maybe four times a day. I'm turning into Grandma Kay. I even have one of those little bronze-handled rubber teardrop tool thingees.

Categories: Ash
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Pregnant: 19 weeks

This photo was was taken in Costa Rica at about the 19 week mark. Turner and I did a roadtrip getaway, just the two of us, to Malpais, a small as-yet-ruined surfing community on the southern tip of the Nicoya peninsula. We're en route to the beach, hence the serious plunging neckline cleavage.

Categories: Ash | Pregnancy
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Whale Tale

I wrote this letter to Cousin Jenna, who lives in Hawaii, sitting on the deck here in Costa Rica.

Dear Jenna,

Do you ever see whales where you are?

When we were in Australia we went to the Great Barrier Reef off the Whitsundays to go scuba diving. Like a moron I checked the box “yes” under the question, “Do you take any prescription drugs other than the BCP?” They had never heard of my Canadian brand of thyroid medication and didn't want to take the chance that it would affect me while diving. I have dived several times since I started taking thyroid pills, and I begged and pleaded with them, explaining they're just a replacement hormone for something my body doesn't make anymore because of the radiation therapy. I even offered to put one in Sloane's mouth to show that they were harmless. I also beseechingly pointed out that, most importantly, this was probably my one and only time visiting the Great Barrier Reef, like, ever in my life. They were sorry, they obviously felt bad. But they wouldn't let me dive.

I had been gearing myself up for this dive for days (egad, coral! Clams! …And probably sharks!) and was, as you can imagine, very disappointed and angry. I had to go lock myself in the boat's bathroom and have a long sobbing cry sitting on the floor, jammed up under the sink rocking back and forth, and doing some championship hating of the dive staff on board. After I was somewhat sane again I went out back and stood in the open on deck, watching the boat's wake as we speeded toward the Reef. Out in the wind and spray I felt a bit better, but was still feeling really very sorry for myself, resentful and uncharitable toward all mankind, etc.

Then, way way way off in the very distant distance, I saw something come out of the water. And the big flapping paddle fin, then the splash. It was a humpback whale, breeching. Then I saw another, jumping, turning, splashing. It was all far, far away, just specks, really – honestly, so far away that it's really a miracle I spotted them at all on the great undulating expanse of ocean in every direction.

And although, as you well know, I am afraid of the idea of being in the water with whales, and although I'm really not much for the whole animal-human-spirit-world-connection blah-dee-blah stuff, despite all that – seeing those whales was truly soul-inspiring that morning, that morning of all mornings. Looking over the vast vast vastness of water and accidentally spying these magnificent mammals saved my day, completely. Yes yes, oh woe is me, the one tiny blip of a human life, aboard a tiny plastic boat bumping along the ocean, on a little planet in the middle of the universe. Me, I wasn't allowed to dive, boo hoo. I was very grateful. I was able to properly get on with my insignificant and yet eventually momentous-to-me day (which culminated in Sloane appearing on the cover of the Globe & Mail's Travel section in July, among other things).

So I was sitting here on the deck at Faro Escondito, looking out at the giant flat pancake of mid-morning water that is the Gulf of Nicoya from this height. I was watching for the whales that are migrating through here right now, looking for the whitecaps and surface irregularities that tell you they're making themselves known. And I was thinking about you, far away in Hawaii, and I know the whales are migrating through there, now, too. So I was wondering, do you ever see whales where you are?

love Ashley

Categories: Ash | Family
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Back On My Birthday

With a November birthday, it's important to get the hell out of the house and DO something on the birthday. Birthdays in general don't get me down, I don't care about getting older and the blah blah blah. But in November it's dark, it's cold, and in general the time of year is depressing. So we combat this! And this year, we went bowling!

Mandatory annual chip-up-the-nose shot of me & T

Fine bowling-goers John Johnston, John Bristowe, and Trevor Day

This is the one where Uncle JJ attempts to good-humoured-ly keep Sloane from ripping his ear from his head. (Lovely girl, we're all very fond of her...)

Margaret Drummond and the Birthday Herself. Even after all these years it still surprises me that I am taller than you in photos, Mar!

Shoesies. Shiny!

Alas, no shots of the action or the lanes themselves. I was given strict instructions not to include the incredibly cute photo of Turner and Sloane all hunched down together, watching one of her balls roll slowly down toward the pins. ...On account of the matching plumber-bum on both Sloane and T. We won't let those Farkers at our family photos, no sir.

Categories: Ash | Friends
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Amnio

The following is a rant I wrote this afternoon to my father, himself a doctor, following today's amniocentesis.

Please bear in mind that when I was 18 I had Hodgekin's Disease, a type of lymph cancer. I was diagnosed at a teaching hospital (Kingston General) and treated at a teaching hospital (Tom Baker Cancer Centre of the Foothills Hospital) and was, for my entire cancer experience, very cognizant of my role in assisting medical students and residents learn about my type of cancer. I was a very cooperative and genial patient. As such it was not uncommon for my tests to be attended by gaggles of medical students, and my checkups to be rounds of telling my background over and over to residents who'd guess at my condition until someone finally got it right. I was repeatedly thanked for my attitude and willingness to be a guinea pig.

That was then. Now, I'm older, I feel I've done my time, and I just want to go home. I want the real doctor to be my attending and if someone wants to watch, that's... okay with me, but please, don't touch. I am no longer the willing guinea pig.

Which leads to today's rant.

Dad -

So, I'll start with this, just this:

I think it is outright wrong to tell people in the amnio prep seminar that the clinic doctors are all fully qualified perinatalogist blah blah blahs who have each done QUOTE "tens of thousands" of amnios, but, then when the door opens, in come TWO doctors, one of whom is obviously the perinatalogist blah blah blah guy and the other is absolutely giving off WAVES of Inexperience. At this point in my career as a patient I can smell a student a mile away.

This perinatalogy Fellow proceeds to smear an absolutely unnecessary amount of sterile dye from stem to stern before she prod-prod-prods around in concert with the ultrasound deciding on an entry point. And then, of course, with a great deal of deliberation and slowness in general p-u-u-u-u-u-u-ts in the needle and p-o-o-o-o-o-okes it through the uterine wall and swi-i-i-i-i-i-rls it round and round and round and round and round until even Turner knew that she wasn't doing it right. I had to force my eyes closed because I was going to kill her with my newfound eyebeam lasers.

I was within about three seconds of saying, "I think that's enough, could the other doctor please do this?", when I guess it was finally sufficiently clear that she just wasn't getting it right, and the perinatalogist blah blah blah guy decided to take over. He had to take it out and start over from the beginning: pushing the needle into the abdomen and through the wall of the uterus, to squiggle it around bouncing off my spleen and ovaries and spine AGAIN. At least it was quick, the second time.

But Dad, and here is my issue, it is wrong, saying in the seminar that they're all so good and they're all fully qualified and then sending in someone who is clearly still learning what to do. That is wrong advertising, wrong all around. It's an uncomfortable, somewhat painful, rather scary test to begin with, and then they add the extra factor of having to deal with someone else's learning experience. I was livid angry by the end. I should have said something right at the beginning, when she was smearing the dye and I could tell, I KNEW she wasn't the attending. I should've just said that I'd prefer the perinatalogist blah blah blah guy do it please, and follow up with the whole yes-I-appreciate-the-teaching-hospital-thing-but-I've-been-the-good-lab-rat-thanks-and-I'd-really-prefer-the-attending-please spiel.

I think I would probably feel differently if I hadn't been such a willing pincushion when I had cancer, but I really really REALLY feel like I've "done my bit for science" at this point and I'd like to have the following plastered onto my forehead in gentian violet for my next hospital visit: RESIDENTS, FELLOWS AND ALL OTHER "LEARNERS" - KINDLY FUCK OFF AND GO PRACTICE ON SOMEONE ELSE... PERHAPS START ON AN ORANGE.

...That said, once I had my big cry in the bathroom afterward and got all my hate out, it was ok.


Alright, I'm ready, bring out the knives.

Categories: Ash | Pregnancy
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WorldChanging The Second

Turner's second column is now up at WorldChanging.com; this one talks a bit about Crystal Waters, the Australian permaculture community we visited north of Queensland back in July. As it happens, this column used one of the photos I included in the Nine show, that One Lane/One Planet shot I put up in an earlier post.

See the new column, here.

Categories: Ash | GeoHope | Turner
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The Daily Planet Book of Cool Ideas

Halloween - check. Ashley's birthday - check. Remembrance Day - check.

...I know what you're thinking! It's that time of year when thoughts turn to Christmas, and also to the horror that is Christmas shopping.

Oh, but fear not, my good friends and fans! Because Mrs Hilksom has the perfect thing for you to stuff into stockings this year.

You may have already seen it at the local bookstore or on the bestseller list, and here it is with a personal endorsement:
The Daily Planet Book of Cool Ideas, by Jay Ingram.



This was my contract for the first half of 2008, working on this book. I didn't talk about it on the blog mainly because it's just a good idea not to talk about your current work on your blog. ...So's to save yourself the understandable headache involved in possibly being fired, likesay.

This book was originally conceived as a published version of all the 'environmentally-themed' segments done over the last couple of years by Discovery Channel's daily science news show, Daily Planet. The show's host, Jay Ingram, well-known and beloved science popularizer, was on board to be the book's author. Eventually the project concept evolved into a book involving the complex re-contextualizing of these Daily Planet stories, plus other, new material gathered from around the world on what's going on right now in climate science and technology. Illustration and photo-heavy, it was designed to target the Daily Planet viewer demographics as well as having broad appeal to kids and adults alike.

The job basically entailed managing and coordinating the research and logistics between Jay Ingram, Discovery Channel, and Penguin Canada. I worked on designing the chapters and overarching themes for the narrative and guided portions of the contract negotiations; re-cleared all the publication rights to the material we already had from the television show, and sourced new material and imagery; screened, shortlisted and selected footage from Daily Planet and myself shot some new photographs for use in the book; and generally liaised with the source subjects, promised them copies of the finished book, negotiated use fees, and overall spent most of every single day, seven days a week, for five and a half months, constantly on the telephone and sending emails at all ungodly hours, even ones you've never heard of. Although it was a vaguely ungrammatical title, my email signature told people I was the "Managing Research Editor" for the book. Go slowly through the words, and yep, that's the best description, overall, of what I did.

And I loved it. As a contract it was a fantastic fit for my background and mad diverse skillz (yo). Jay Ingram and I worked fabulously together. He's a man who doesn't suffer fools gladly, has a fantastic work ethic and focus, and possesses a great absurdist sense of humour. And he's a real person. When I came to Toronto to meet the Daily Planet team in January, he picked me up at the airport.

I worked damn hard on this book and I was really, really proud of what we accomplished with this all-out-sprint of a project. When we left for Australia my portion was mostly complete, and after a few long-distance calls at really ridiculous hours to clear up last details, my contribution was finished. 

...And then, about a month ago, we came home from the September/October travels to find a little something in the mailbox. My contributor's copy. The book turned out beautifully - 265 pages of text and photos and illustrations, wonderfully laid out and clearly presented. Turner did one of the blurbs on the back cover: "The Daily Planet Book of Cool Ideas is as concise and accessible a primer as you'll find on the subject, and its calm and ultimately optimistic tone makes it that rarest of reads - an invigorating climate story."  True dat. Honestly, a great book for anyone interested in the climate question.

And then, in the back, from the book's author:



In case you can't read the text, it goes thusly:

This book might have set some sort of record for the number of people who made significant contributions to it, but one person stands out. Ashley Bristowe was, as she puts it, "managing research editor" of this book, but actually, she ran it. If there's anyone out there who's better at cajoling, researching, challenging, organizing, record-keeping, or working 24/7 to keep a project on track, I'd like to know who it is. (She's pretty funny, too.) Without her this book would simply not exist.

Yeah, I kicked out the jams, but it's not often that you get something like that as thanks. Talk about awesome. I've been joking with friends that I should have it silkscreened onto a tshirt and wear it to interviews.

So there you have it, your Christmas gift quandies are solved. You can buy the book online at Chapters, McNally Robinson, Amazon, etc., or pick it up at any bookstore in Canada. And say how your friend worked behind the scenes, and even see? see? (grabbing book, rifling pages) she's even THANKED in the back! Cool, eh? SO COOL.

...And for those interested in the inside scoop, I can talk ad nauseum on each and every one of our featured subjects, where I sourced each photo or graph, blah blah blah, all the gory details. Just ask!


(And here's the shoutout to friend and documentary filmmaker/visionary Ian Connacher, who recommended me to Jay for the job. WOOOOOOOOT.)

Categories: Ash | Work work work
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The Teeny Ones Are Best

Sometimes people tell me they'd like to hear what Turner and I talk about at home. Y'know, to be a fly on the wall and hear what the famous writer and the jane-of-all-media-trades talk about whilst kicking back at Chez Bristowe Turner. I think mostly they envy an idealized conception of the work-at-home life balance and some of the snazzier stories about our projects. Or maybe Sloane's impressive vocabulary is the culprit. She gets it from Toopie and Binoo, we swear! 

But so just to give these lovely folks a taste: Here's us, last night, in the midst of settling in for another dvd episode of Battlestar Galactica. We join the supposedly fascinating couple just as I'm stuffing a whole mini mandarin into my mouth.

Me: (through orange goosh) Y'know, we never shoulda bought these mini mandarins. They are so good. They totally make those regular xmas oranges taste like shit.

Turner: Laughing. Laughing and laughing.

Me: What?

Turner: Laughing. ...Like "shit". They taste like shit. The big oranges.

Me: ...Okay, possibly not actual shit.




Tah-dah! Excitement she wrote!
 
(Thanks go out to David Friese, who inspired this post.)

Categories: Ash | Married Life | Turner
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The "Nine" Show Opening

Ya, ya, how did it go? It went well. Fairly well attended, not as packed as last year but not bad. As I've told many people: Sloane ate her weight in chips, friends came to cheer me on, people said nice things about my work, and Turner got me a corsage for the occasion.

     
One Lane/One Planet, Queensland Australia. 2008. Colourchrome print and acrylic

From my "Artist's Statement" for the show: I’m interested in language and words, and in particular Found Words – misspellings, graffiti, ironies in signage, language as backdrop for larger themes. One of the pieces in this show, the One Lane/One Planet work, is from this series and was shot at the side of the road in Queensland, Australia. We were visiting Crystal Waters, the noted permaculture eco-village northeast of Brisbane, an environmental and idealistic enclave surrounded by very conservative farming culture and remote countryside. One road lead to the community from the bush highway, and a resident had, with two well-placed letters, provided a note-perfect introduction to their overarching philosophy.

Initially this photo looks political, and in word content it does skew that way. However, the reason I included it in the show was actually due to my pleasure with the background after a very long process of work & tweaking in Photoshop. Not evident at this size, the trees and grass and hills in the background have been distorted and rendered very "painterly" after much effort. I think 'artists' always have other reasons for why they like their own work - this is mine for this piece.


  
A-frame Advice, Nakusp BC. 2005/2008. Colourchrome print and acrylic

From the artist's statement: Another piece from my Found Words series featured in this exhibition is the “SMILE, SOMEBODY’S WATCHING” work. During the Vietnam War Canada took in many American draft dodgers, and communes sprung up along the remote valleys of British Columbia. One such group built an A-frame on land now owned by my mother outside of Nakusp. When we first began visiting this structure it was full of old clothing and kitchen utensils, Kahlil Gibran posters and letters detailing concerns that the FBI would somehow find and extradite them back to the US. This old bottlecap, bearing a cheerful phrase I remember from my own childhood, also echoes through the decades another message, the uneasy melody of paranoia and tension that affected the lives of these exiles.


    

L:  Motel Knowles, Saskatchewan. 2005/2008. Colourchrome print and acrylic
R:  Roxy Theatre, Coleman AB. 2006/2008. Colourchrome print and acrylic

From the artist's statement: I’m also interested in the neon signs still in evidence on the Canadian Prairie. Neon gas, brought into widespread use in signage during the 1920s, changed how we light the night, bringing amazing vivid colours and dancing shapes to the palette of our nighttime world. Even today, neon signs are compelling as a combination of practicality and nostalgia. But neon’s initial impact, especially on our rural Canadian landscape of wild space and distances, must have been magnificent beyond our imagining. There are two pieces from my Neon Signs series in this show, from Saskatchewan and Alberta.

     
Netcasters I and Netcasters II, Queensland Australia. 2008. Colourchrome print and acrylic

The Australia spiderweb 'diptych'. The green one should look greener and the blue one should look more teal-ey. Limits of the internet, etc.
...Only Melinda Topiko called me on the fact that this is not an actual diptych! (I would expect no less from you, Melinda!)

I didn't sell any work, but I didn't really expect to. There was a commission I had to factor into the pricing, and I'd decided to backmount my pieces to acrylic, which is an expensive process at the best of times. The prices were higher than the show's 'market' could bear, and in general people don't like to pay for photography, especially now in the digital age.

Mainly I was participating to nail down my Canada Council qualifications, which, for the Visual Arts category, seem to stipulate that you have to have a certain number of gallery shows. Never mind whether you make your living taking and publishing photographs, never mind the artistic merit of those publications, never mind the other work you may have done in other artistic fields... last year I didn't have three gallery shows on my cv and I was deemed ineligible for funding.

So, ok, whatever, fine. I've got the chops, and now I've got the gallery shows. Woot, hear me roar, august federal funding agencies!

Sloaner sez Mama's All Qualified Up!

Categories: Art school | Ash | Work work work
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Turner At WorldChanging

Hey hey hey. This is to announce a new GeoHope collaboration with the illustrious and definitive WorldChanging. Turner has been brought on board to do a monthly-ish column on his work, The Geography of Hope, climate change, hope in general, and etcetera-type-stuff. I have a tiny role as the contributing photographer to his columns, the first of which has now hit the site. See it here.

This photograph was taken down in Taber, Alberta in September 2007. I was originally down there to do a shoot for the Globe & Mail at the big Enmax wind farm south of the town. (For the record, this was indeed the same site shoot during which I lost my shit, spooked by the giant scary wind turbines whooshing high above, and I had to hide in/shoot from the car, with the radio on full blast.) This photo was taken out the passenger-side window, and of course the text on the mirror reads, "Objects in mirror are closer than they appear".

Enh! ENH? Symbolism, see? Metaphor! Wind turbines, wind power, sustainable and renewable energy are... CLOSER than we think! Get it?

Turner's blog posting about his new WorldChanging column, here.

Categories: Ash | GeoHope | Turner | Work work work
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"Nine" Show At Arthouse

Come on down, all y'all! (Free food & booze, yo...)
 

Categories: Art school | Ash | Work work work
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Happy Birthday, Past Present & Future

Hi! It's my birthday today! I'm 35 GLORIOUS years old.



Here's me and Sloaner a few days ago, visiting Jenny & Korey's new daughter, Emmanuelle. Lookit that grin on our Baloner, eh? Hopefully she's ready to be a big sister? Because I'm/we're pregnant. Due in May 2009. Hurray!

Categories: Ash | Mom-ness | Sloane
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Soundgarden Parenting

I'd been humming Black Hole Sun to myself all morning, what can I say?

Our in-house DJ ("Dada") put on the Soundgarden and I can report that by the second verse we had Grampa Brucio singing along to this grunge-era classic. As I was swirling the black marker around and around in the sun and giggling to myself, and later, dancing around the kitchen with Sloane in our hats, I was sure: This is exactly the kind of parent I want to be!

Categories: Ash | Mom-ness
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Stolen From Stephanie Nolen

On her personal website, Globe & Mail Africa correspondent Stephanie Nolen has an About page that follows this structure. Sitting around this afternoon building the pull quote list for the Daily Planet book, I rebuilt it for myself.

Spiritual Advisors: Margaret Mead, Karen Blixen, Allah

Advises against: Sneaking up on me (very easily startled, I’ve punched people in the face by accident).

Best piece of gear: Nikon D70. There are better cameras, but this one nearly bounces when dropped, and anyone can use it.

Can’t: Do math. Renew the car registration. Live close to everyone I love all at the same time.

Was a rabble-rousing student activist: Mostly in my mind, and behind closed doors. Women’s Studies: we got you where you slept. (Is that too… dirty to put on the internet? Mostly inaccurate for me, but I like how it sounds.)

Secretly: Is a trombone virtuoso. Fears caving.

Recommends: Bohol, Philippines. Skardu, Pakistan. The Blackfoot Truck Stop, Calgary.

Gets bloodthirsty over: Urban planning.

Happiest: Wearing earplugs.

Recently discovered: Adult friends with kids! Whoooooot!

Categories: Ash
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Old(-ish) wisdom

(Thanks to Sean, who probably doesn't even remember storing the letters described here!)

My beloved cousin is having a hard hard hard time of a brutal breakup. We were talking on the phone tonight and she referenced an email I'd written to her a few years ago, when she'd been in the midst of a similarly devastating break. I remembered writing it but not the details - then she said she'd forwarded it on to innumerable people, and that she herself had read it many many times, and I was like, Damn, let's see this again! So here it is (edited to protect some of the innocent), not half bad as a empathetic treatise, I think:

***
Well, hell. It is of absolutely NO consolation, but we have all been there. And I'll say it again: I know that is of absolutely no consolation. ...Wait - I suppose I think it'll be of some, miniscule consolation, or I wouldn't say it. So I suppose I'm offering you the only thing I think I have to offer: empathy.

Lord, I have SO BEEN THERE. Not the same circumstances, but certainly that exquisite surreality and gonging emptiness. The pain is awful.

I told Turner about this and he said, "Ah shit. That sucks for her. ...Well, everyone has to lose their first love. Sucks though." Basically that's exactly it: only 6% of all long distance relationships last through university. I remember A finding that statistic at some point and sending the article to me - she was in a long distance relationship with her high school boyfriend, a lovely boy named J who became a typical hockey asshole named J and who broke her heart all over the road.

Me, it was my high school boyfriend, and he cheated on me in the summer after high school. It is a LOT more complicated than that - he was a pathological guilt-tripper and he meddled in my life in all kinds of deeply inappropriate ways in high school and at university. We both ended up at Queen's and he stalked me all through my first year - finally I had to have Queen's Security bar him from my residence building (he would still get in, though - he had no shame or scruples - and I'd find him drunk and asleep, later beligerent and awake, at my room door). Actually, it makes me feel young and sick just thinking about that whole time. He was awful, but that didn't make it any easier - wait, maybe it made it the SMALLEST bit easier. Gave me lots of  permission to hate him. But I was still embroiled in the old relationship patterns in some ways, and yet I absolutely couldn't be with him anymore, and it was one of the weirdest, wrenchingest things I've ever gone through. [Ed. note: Boy did I learn LOTS from that one. All sorts of things about what I NEVER wanted to go through again, a whole treasure trove of invaluable learning. When girlfriends were being slain left and right through the 1990s with the myriod bullshit partners can sling, I was able to slalom right through. I'd seen (nearly) it all by age 18.]

Categories: Ash
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The Cavalry

Granny Val has arrived and has taken over the business of keeping us alive. Meanwhile I languish in a muscle-relaxant-and-codeine stupor on the couch. Thank you for your invitations!

Categories: Ash
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A Funny Thing Happened On The Way Down From Monday

Let me enumerate a few more of the "funny" things that have happened to me this week:

- Giant rash on my neck. My throat chakra is very angry. Must be all the screaming from which I'm refraining. The rash arrived on Tuesday, a product of the stress and related bullshit surrounding the hard drive crash. It truly looks like all the bile I have inside has been thrown around my neck like a bumpy red scarf. It's AWEsome, trust me.

- IPod connector to the car stereo, broken, for no reason. Part of it still stuck inside the cigarette lighter hole. Not putting my fingers in there, me. So, no Sloaner Songs in the car. Which leads to a lot of complaining by Ms. "Mama First I Want The Chain Song, Then I Want Kids In America, And Then Bad Reputation And Then Soak Up The Sun" herself. I've been singing "Unravel" to her over and over.

- Probably best of all, I threw my back out last night. I have been reduced into a hobbledy, bent-sideways, shuffling-along & groaning cripple. As I type, I am sitting on the couch, a bag of frozen beans on my back. Seems I've badly strained a ligament in my hip. Joy. It's a long weekend, and no one had any proper massage appointments open. At one point in the afternoon I was in such pain that I was hyperventilating and sweating, with the spasms blooming through my torso like contractions. I thought I was floating outside my body. It's been great.

- I'm currently between sizes, with just about nothing to wear. But I did have one pair of jeans I can use to leave the house. Note the past tense. Last night, getting undressed, the top button popped off. I stood there looking at the busted button, twirling on the linoleum. And had to laugh. My last pair of pants? My last pair of pants had to be a sacrifice on the altar of this week, too? Obviously there's no rock too small to turn.

I would say "well, it can't get much worse", but this week the universe has been very creative at finding new and untapped ways to make things worse. It's one of those weeks where I really shouldn't've been leaving the house at all, just hiding under the bed and petting the cats with glazed-over eyes. Would've been better for everyone.

Hey, have I mentioned that Turner's out of town for two weeks?

Categories: Ash
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Intrepid Al

Saturday night. Sloane's asleep. Not yet time to go to bed.

For the record, I have pretty much every letter I ever received, downstairs in "the archive" (more accurately described perhaps as "the shitpile of stuff"). Went down there tonight, pulled out a box at random. Brucio's just back from Victoria, where Grandma, at age 94 or so, has decided to stop eating, enough is enough and so on. As a result, and obviously, I have been thinking in the last few days about mortality, grandparents, last words, fatal decisions, and legacies.

In the boxes I came quickly upon letters from Nanny, who died last year. My epitaph for her is here. She wrote me lots of letters when she could still see. She was, basically, a storyteller, and a good one. She never wrote her stories down. Except for one. For me. "Intrepid Al", about she and Grampa knocking a wasps' nest out of their backyard tree. Because I asked for it, because it was a hilarious oral story. In her later years, after she was blind, I really begged her to memorize this one (as she had for "The Cremation of Sam McGee" to tell at xmas 2000) so I could record her doing it, for posterity/a freelance CBC piece. She just felt like her time had come and gone and wouldn't do it for me.

So I'm down in the boxes tonight, and I see Nanny's handwriting. She hasn't gone completely blind at this point, I can tell by the script. I pull open the first envelope and there it is: Intrepid Al. Since Grampa's in a home in Nelson and can't object, and since it's a great story anyway, here it is.

Intrepid Al, by Gloria Horbow

We had a beautiful warm spring and our crabapple tree bloomed in great profusion. Then came a heavy frost and winter returned for a brief but deadly visit. Clouds hung low and threatening, and when the snow came it mingled with the beautiful blossoms... and both drifted sadly to the ground. Of course, no fruit grew that year and the leaves were sparse.

One noon hour towards the end of July, as I mixed batter for a pancake brunch, my husaband stood at the kitchen window and while lamenting the lack of apples, something in the tree caught his attention. He asked me if I thought it was a large bird or a smal animal. I couldn't tell, so my golden age gladiator went out to have a closer look. He was amazed to find a wasps' nest, about the size of a football, hanging from one fo the lower limbs.

The wasps were busy doing whatever it is that wasps do, and my mate decided then and there that the nest must go, and right now.

In a previous incident, a long pole was the instrument used to rescue his spectacles from a nearby lake and Al decided it was exactly what was needed to dislodge the quonset hut from its perch. As such he drove quickly to our son-in-law's home and returned carrying the 14 foot pole alongside the car with his left hand out the window, whilst he drove, steering with his right hand.

"Now," he said to me, "you're going to old a garbage bag under the nest while I knock it off the branch and into the bag."
   
I looked at him in amazement, but being the dutiful wife I occasionally am, I promptly swathed myself in cap, gloves, and scarves for the occasion. I tightened my pants at the ankles and was ready to go forth with my man to do battle against the enemy wasp encampment.

It was a very hot day and sweat poured out of my from heat, fear, and excitement. My knight stood with his jousting pole at the ready while I squinted up through scarves and persperation at the huge nest just a short three feet above my head.

"All set," I squeaked. Alex barely touched the nest with the end of the pole when out the little buzzers swarmed, blood in their eyes and their stingers in strike position.

Somehow, by instinct I guess, they seemed to know the villain of the piece and most flew straight for Al. Our hero dropped the pole and dashed for the back door, leaving me literally holding the bag. I was terrified, disgusted, and fearing for my life. I threw down the sack and stormed for the back door myself.

"To heck with that job, get yourself another method or another sucker!" As you can guess, I get quite waspish myself at times.

It was then that our adventurer decided to place the garbage bag over the metal frame which usually holds it. Now isn't that brilliant? Next, he placed it carefully in position under the nest, where the wasps had retreated to regroup. I stood at the kitchen window peeling off layers of clothing but still a keen observer of the activities outside.

This time intrepid Al was filled with determination and he gave the nest an almighty whack. It flew off the limb, missed the bag completely, sailed through the air and landed with an ominous thump about four feet from the home wrecker himself.

Now a truth, of which you are unaware, is that this man was a sports champion at his high school in 1937, with medals and trophies to prove it. He won the 220 dash, the 44 sprint, the high hurdles, the low hurdles, and all other field day activities. But I'm writing to tell you here that an unofficial world record in the standing broad jump was set on that 1992 summer day right there in my back yard.

Al cleared the 12 feet between the tree and the door in one gigantic leap. Panting inside, he congratulated himself for remaining unscathed and unstung while the hoardes outside the back door swarmed and rioted in anger, frustration and bewilderment.

But. One of the wily creatures, swifter than his buddies, and with the scent of the enemy filling his being, had managed to get through the door with our Al, and was now circling for an opening to strike. Not without reason, this wasp had recently been elevated to drill sergeant. He knew his job and was determined to repay this villain for the humiliation suffered by his comrades.

Suddenly realizing his peril, the agility of a youth returned to this aging athlete in the back hallway. His arms flailed wildly but his legs moved like well-greased pistons. They propelled him up the stairs, across the kitchen, around through the living and dining rooms, and down the hall into the bedroom. With only one place to escape, Sir Al threw back the comforter and prepared to dive under it. All this activity had loosened the lower section of his baggy armour and a goodly stretch of flesh was now exposed.

I arrived at this point, with a skillet in hand, in time to see the wasp drill into my beloved with all the venom he could command. In the next moment I smacked down with all the strength I could muster. A great howl of pain and outrage nearly lifted the roof off our bungalow. While Al clutched a this posterior I beamed triumphantly while the wasp died the death of a hero on the bedside rug.

Meanwhile, back in the yard, unaware they had been somewhat avenged, the wasps again returned to their poor and broken nest for a council of war. They sensed the breaker of their home would be returning with a stinger longer than theirs. A strategy must be devised for a counter-attack.

While this conference was in progress, my husband, disregarding his wound, decided to strike while the weapon was hot. "Now, I'm going back out there, and you're coming too. I'm going to pick up the nest on the end of the pole and plop it into the bag. You be ready with a twist tie to close the top." Now there's a brave fellow for you! I wasn't about to argue. Knowing his tender condition and consequent frame of mind, I geared up again and meekly followed to do his bidding.

And believe it or not, it worked out exactly according to plan. And not one more sting to show for it! (Of course, the one he did get couldn't be shown, either!)

With the nest safely tucked away, my lord of the wasps decided he would give the yellow jackets a few days to expire completely and then present the trophy nest to the young lads next door. They would take it to show-and-tell when school recommenced in September.

The victor is jubilant and, omitting all personal indignities, tells anyone even remotely interested how he slew the dragon wasps.

In the background, I smile knowingly.

Categories: Ash | Canadiana | Family | Olden Days
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Re: Frankincense & myrrh

I sat in on a silkscreen class today. The class materials list had, as mandatory-for-next-week, listed "frosted Mylar".

Does this not sound similarly weird as the presents the Three Kings brought? As in, when you were a kid. Like, did YOU know what frankincense and myrrh were prior to age 20?

Yeah, I didn't think so.

Categories: Ash | Art school
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Gogol

And I'll say right now that when I was at Queen's I took a full-year course in Russian Literature in English. No Russian language training required, mind.

Kal Penn's character in The Namesake, talking about Calcutta rickshaws, running alongside his mom and sister in the seats, who are imploring him to shift over and come join them:

"No, you know... Because, like, being pulled by another human being is feudal, and exploitative, and... I don't want to be part of something like that."

Oh Kal Penn. Oh, we've all been there, princess. A few years of undergrad and it's all kinds of brutal to make the people work FOR you in the "third world".

Kal, you may have been cute when you were confined to the Toronto suburbs to film Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle, but let me tell you this: if you have 2.5 tonnes of luggage as the average traveller does, and you need to go even 600m to the train station at, say, 6am (as Turner and I might have needed to have done, per se), and there's no such thing as a motorized vehicle to help you, you BET you'll take the emaciated man and his cycle-rickshaw to help you make your non-refundable booking on time.

No questions asked, and all that socialism training out the window, too.

Categories: Ash | India | Wurldliness
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I Am Legend

We went to see I Am Legend the other day. I'd been fascinated with this movie since the trailers started appearing in mid-November. We'd recently returned from New York and the clip of the Brooklyn Bridge bombed by fighter jets was a jarring image.

Sometime around then, though, we were up late watching tv and on came the most disturbing commercial I've ever seen. A small girl, about four years old. Walking through a post-apocalyptic suburban landscape all alone. Black smoke rising in the distance. Tinkly music playing. Cognitive dissonance to the extreme. It was for a video game. It scared me right down to the bones. I was so freaked out that I had to stay up for another hour, watching Blade of all things, to get my mind off it.

I really can't see scary movies, they're too much for me. But I wanted to see I Am Legend. So I researched the hell out of it. I watched every trailer available online and scanned through all the interviews. I was going to get the book from the library, but then I found an early draft of the current screenplay online, and read the whole thing. Then waited a few weeks to let all the key plot details sink in. By the end of the holiday season, I was ready.

I wore a hat to hide behind, I won't lie. I knew what was coming for the most part, and that helped a lot. I'll tell you that they definitely improved the ending from the screenplay I read, though I won't spoil it for you. I walked out of the theatre... satisfied. Not exactly enthusiastic, but my curiosity and interest were sated. The whole premise is terrifying, and they do an excellent job of employing the tension.

We went home to Brucio's house in Douglasdale, had a family dinner. I fell asleep on the bed, singing to Sloane. Turner came down later and we crawled into bed properly.

Then at about 4am I woke up. Just, woke up. Thinking about the movie. Lay there in the dark for about five minutes, trying to get back to sleep. Sloane woke, came to bed with us. I lay there some more. Thinking thinking thinking about the movie. Thinking about how the culture of apocalypse is increasingly portraying the end of the world as an increasingly-not-so-distant future. Thinking about self-fulfilling prophesies in mass culture. Thinking about Bhutto's assassination, thinking about military research, thinking about all the Christmas consumption and rainforest timber from West Africa and built-in cappuccino makers. And thinking about that little girl walking all alone in the golden hazy light down that devastated street in an ADVERTISEMENT for a video game.

I had a shower, couldn't sleep. Went upstairs and read for a while, nearly falling out of the chair I was so tired. But couldn't sleep. Went back to bed, no good. Up to the livingroom couch, where I dozed until Brucio came out to stomp around the kitchen at 5am. Left for the basement couch, where I remained semi-stuporous but fitful until lights came on, people looking for the Thomas dvds. Finally I went back to bed, where I fell asleep, finally, for real.

Whereupon I dreamed of an eclipse.

Categories: Ash
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2007 Year In Review

I learned and re-learned some lessons this past year. Wouldn't it be great if we knew it all at 18? Think of the world = oyster situation. Amazing.




On metabolic regulation: Remember to take your damn thyroid meds. Yes, every damn day.

On owning cats: One day you have a cat, the next day he's eaten by coyotes. So you grieve, and pull it together and get another cat. And then one day that cat is run over and you find yourself digging a second pet grave beside the house. So you reflect on your animal track record, but decide you still want to be a cat owner, and you get two more cats. And Sloane says, "Mama, please may we not let these new cats die?" Heh. We'll do our best.

On getting what I want: Patience and humility have done wonders for my win ratio. From photo assignments to getting Sloane into the right playschool, shutting up and being polite and proceeding with grace have been such amazing lubricants this year. Shoulda learned this one at age 20.




On getting fired for other people's bullshit: Sometimes you get fired for other people's bullshit, nothing you can do.

On parties: People will not come at the appointed time. The best people stay late, but the worst'll hang around until then, too. Exits define your attendance, particularly if you stomp the shrubbery on your way out. If you're serving mulled wine and beer, some friend-of-a-friend will still march in and ask for a good scotch straightaway (and we will give it to them). And we'd still love a few more invitations to other people's parties, please... a reminder to publications and corporate friends: freelancers have no Christmas parties or schmancy fundraisers to go to unless you invite them to yours.



On accounting people at various publications: People will take as long as inhumanly possible to pay you.

On finances: It's good to be able to mean it when you say, "Well, if we have to sell the car and the house, I can live with that."

On funding: If at first you don't succeed, try, try again.




On freelancing: Turner - "You will sometimes do your best work for free, you will sometimes do the most work for the least pay. The tradeoff is that you are your own master. ...Most of the time." September 26/07

On continuing education: As it turns out, I'm a complete obsessive, bent on perfection. If only Farokh could see me now (Farokh Afshar, my M.Sc. advisor, 1947-2007, peace be upon you).

On parenting: There are tough days. There are days when you are so flayed and raw and every smile and moment of concentrated attention is a huge effort. We want to keep her away from sugar, and tv, and crappy plastic toys, and the moronic cult of the fairy princess pervading the under-six crowd. But grandparents will still give her Smarties for breakfast, and Thomas the train dvds are incredibly helpful in moderation. So you try to find the middle way and hope to keep the scarring to a minimum.

Also on parenting: We are such good parents, way better than the rest of the parents out there. Also better than our own parents, of course.



On Sloane: She's the best. The talking, my god the talking. Being able to see into her little 2 year old mind has been such an amazing blessing every day. Even her temper tantrums are the best. And the hair is getting fabulous! When she hugs my head and says into my ear, "Ma-mee, Ma-mee, Ma-mee!" in this purposely hilarious pitched voice, I know she's going to have a great sense of humour and inner dialogue.

On attending weddings: Still a good idea, particularly when you've arranged babysitting.

On photography: Everyone wants to have their picture taken, even the ones who say they don't. Creating a meaningful photograph is one of the greatest gifts you can give a person. When they're ninety-nine and in a home and the caregivers ask for a photo from when they were young and beautiful, you bet they'll choose one of mine.

On sending out photos I've taken of people, having promised to send them copies: Managing expectations does wonders. Once I started saying, "Don't expect to receive these for quite a while," people were more grateful when they finally arrived. Take note McConnell Reunion-Goers, you still won't get your photos for quite a while.




On drinking: Sourpuss shots have their time and place.

On politicians: Disappointing liars, 98% of the time. I'm cautiously optimistic about the other two.

On marriage: I'd still rather be poor with Turner than rich with anyone else.



On Turner: I had this awesome and terrible realization about Turner. He is well aware of my many many failings, my ego, the judgemental edges. You think marriage is about loving someone so much. But the worst of it is that you have the love of someone else. Turner loves me despite everything he knows, and in the face of this I am appalled, and thunderously grateful.

On building community and having good friends: Pick the good people who love us back. Get rid of everyone else. Life is too short.

Also on friends: Sometimes people drift away. There're all sorts of reasons. I try not to take it personally, I figure the soul mates will resurface eventually.

On changing the world: It's exhausting. When you can't even convince your family to recycle their cans and bottles, the uphill battle seems that much more uphill. But boy, you take pride in your work, and you know you're on the side of good. Call it sanctimonious if you like, but it feels good to work hard.

On holidays: There are no holidays.

Categories: Ash | Married Life | Mom-ness | Photography | Sloane | Turner | Work work work
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I'm A Real Photographer!

Okay. Like, remember I took a course in the spring semester? Art History? And I completely crazed out and became one of those lunatic mature students and ended up with the highest mark in the class? And swore that I'd never take another spring course again? Yeah. All that's true. But I did come away with the impression that I needed more out of ACAD. The Alberta College of Art & Design clearly had a thing or two to teach me. I might not know it ALL, see.

So at the end of August I dutifully trooped down to ACAD and, after a few glitches, received an official dispensation from the Head of the Photo department to sign up for MADT 305: Photography. A FALL course. For the record, let us all bow down before Mr. Mitch Kern, M.F.A., my benefactor and truly the most inspiring and generous professor I've ever had the honour of having. Under his able and open tutelage I've had the most amazing semester of my life. Folks, I have nearly eight years of post-secondary under my belt. Mitch Kern is the best.




Okay. So I put this on the wall first. Second class, first crit. We were told, "Bring something that tells us something about you." So: I was in southern Alberta, south of Taber. In the middle of fricken no-WHERE, all by myself, kilometres from all living life. Shooting the wind farm for the Globe & Mail. I drove onto the wind farm (with permission from Enmax) and got out at the base of this turbine. Nothing about this photo suggests how huge the windmill is. I've been to a wind farm before, I shot the McBride Lake farm near Pincher Creek a few years ago. But these turbines are newer, and they're much, much bigger. In truth, they were so big that I was truly, unaccountably, afraid of them. I was fighting the new phobia when I was taking these photos: setting up the shots for later when the sun was lower. Without fully realizing why, I was keeping my head down, so I couldn't see the turbines, turning hugely above me. I was taking this shot and then I realized there was... something. A sound. Above me. Shhoooosh. Shhoooosh. Shhoooosh. The blades, turning, somewhere up there. The sound of the turbines.

I panicked. For the first time in my adult life, in broad daylight (shown), I panicked. I bolted for the car. I sat there for five full minutes. I drove away, CBC on full blast. I shot from the car for the next half hour. Finally ventured forth to do the real shoot in the twilight. Terrified, I won't lie. But I got the shot (in the Globe: Sept 2007).

So it's not the best photo of my professional life, not by a long shot. But it was the only one that felt honestly relevant to the class critique, six days later. Mine was one of the last ones chosen to discuss. I wasn't surprised, the rest were awesome. But I didn't mind mine sucking - I knew it looked crappy there on the wall, next to the rest of them, but it had a good explanation. It was a great starting point. In some ways there was nowhere to go but up!




So. Crit #2. We had this field trip to Kananaskis, most of the Photo program and classes. I rode up with Melinda, who basically taught me what from what as far as art school is concerned. In retrospect, I realize that the conversation we had between Calgary and Kan Village that day was the best thing that happened to me all fall.

I've known Melinda for a few years, I met her first through Cousin Jana in Tuscany. But it was totally unexpected to find her at ACAD this year. She's in the middle of her second year, majoring in Fibre. We both have kids. We're older than many of the profs. She's smart, and articulate, and funny. She let me ask all the stupid questions (ex. Q: "is some of the stuff people put on the wall total shit?" A: "Yes." ...You need to know this kind of thing) and brought me forward about a hundred km toward being 'an artist' (whatever that is?).

This day I resolved to just be in the zone when I was shooting. I took pictures only of what was interesting. I ended up with a triptych: a "solid shot", something that could be the cover of a magazine. Black and white image, bare poplar trees with mountains and clouds in the background. Then another shot, way more "arty" - a fisheye shot from way close, of a barren and dead pine tree, distrorted and beautiful, mountain range in the background. The third was this one. This was the first "piece" that I've ever seriously/obviously Photoshopped, the first where I was like, "well, I'm not sure what the hell this is, I'm not sure what it says, or why I'm happy with it. But it's done." I have to say, that's a pretty cool first experience.



Number Three. This was my crit submission for "(Wo)man and the Environment". I amalgamated it from a number of photos I took in New York City, during our trip there in October for Carla's wedding. People called it "painterly". For my part, I have no idea where this came from. This looks like nothing I'd ever produced before, frankly. I was happy with it, and it felt finished. I'm not sure I would've liked it if someone else had produced it, and found this fact interesting. Something of a transition piece, to be sure.




Next crit, "Object obscured". I'd never done a self portrait before. But I knew what I wanted and after much pondering was not optimistic about convincing Turner to half-suffocate himself on the plastic bag that comes with our morning paper to achieve the look. I came to think these had a lot to do with my experience of motherhood. Although initially it looks like a really alarming image, you'll notice I'm not struggling. I was thinking a lot about how motherhood confines and constricts you, how it limits and binds you, and yet how we, or at least I, give ourselves to it without real struggle. I was thinking about the weird suffocation of the pre-parent life that motherhood brings about; alternately how it's a fair trade, and ultimately incredibly worthwhile, the only thing really worth living for. But also about how it's not easy - that everything about your old life still feels so close and accessible and real, tantalizingly so. And all those experiences inform and support you, how grateful I've been for this aspect of my new life. But, they're all, ultimately, gone, nonetheless. I'm on the other side of the jam wall now, and there's no going back, and I miss it, but I wouldn't trade it. A willing death of that old life, falling into the new.
 
Ah. These. Well, this is a diptych, and they both have borders, fyi for the weird formatting, above. I'm very pleased with these. They're the best thing that came out of this course.

The idea was "The individual in the city". We were sort of meant to go downtown and photograph ourselves amongst the buildings or something, I think. It was a fun day of "FIELD TRIP". We all took the train downtown, we ran into each other on the street, we all met for lunch together to scarf down bad Chinese and take funny pictures of each other, and went off in pre-enforced pairs in the afternoon.

I knew this area of downtown well. There's about two blocks square, an area that starts at the Palliser and diamond-shape ends at about the old Eaton's Centre, that I know backwards. Lived it on foot for years as a teenager. I did everything valuable that day within an hour of arriving downtown.

The one on the left is Devonian Gardens, the top floor of TD Square. It's an indoor botanical garden, been there for years. The photo is a re-imagining/revisiting of an event I lived, myself, at 16 years old. December, 1989. It was the first time I'd ever been turned on. Like, for real. Making out with a guy, turned on to all get-out. And like an idiot, I played it ice-cold. This photo grabs at all the moronic teenage embarassment and bravado and later disappointment and eventual re-living (over and over), I caught it here. Right from Napoleon Dynamite: IDIOT! Initially I'd tried it in focus, but it was wrong. Had to be blurry to smear the time in between.

The photo on the left is an image of something I've been talking about for years. In grade eleven I used to meet Melissa and Olivia and Margaret downtown and we'd drink in the Eaton's Centre bathrooms, all crowding into the stall together, passing the mickey of tequila around. It might have been once, or half a dozen times. But there was something about being young, and under the radar, and drunk on tequila in public in the late winter of 1990, that sunk into me and stuck to my soul. I've been carrying the glee of those few moments with me for years, infecting my everyday life in all manner of wonderful ways. In this piece I was consciously touching backwards to those moments, the reflection/shadow depicted is me reflected in the bathroom stall wall paint, both then and now.



This was my final crit image. It's not quite "finished". But basically I was really inspired by a few of my classmates who are true genius artists. One had drawn on top of a photo of him and his siblings, and another had shown us an animation she'd done for another of her classes. Although I have no drawing skill whatsoever, and was working with a clunky mouse for the first time, I wanted to experiment with doodling on top of a photo I loved.

So. This is a picture of me, rightso. Taken by Jenna, in the car on the way back to John's wedding reception in Kelowna, in July 2006. Me an' the cousins, we'd been drinkin' and such in the hotel after the ceremony. I was wearing a dress that, even if I looked fat in it, I could rest assured was as flattering a garment as possible under the physical circumstances. We're using my fisheye lens, which appeals in a most ridiculously huge manner to my inner idiot - a character in full force this day.

Basically I feel this photo captures me perfectly. As in, as perfectly as a photo can capture a person. But for the first time I saw the opportunity to IMPROVE (for me, the only viewer, mind) the image, to help it BETTER represent me in these circumstances. I do love it, but it's not "done".

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So there's two reasons for the post title. One, this fabulous book I bought at the International Center of Photography bookstore by Keith Arnatt, a visual artist and professor at an art college in the UK. Seriously, hilarious. Worth reading. The guy has produced a book of photos of his dog's poop. And notes to his wife. And shots of garbage from the back alley. I was thrilled with the title: "I'm A Real Photographer!" Exclamation point. On a book. Like it needed to be underlined or reinforced or told over again. I hear a specific voice when I think of that title. Mine. "I'm a REAL FO-TOG-RAFFER!" Smiling with all the zane. (Post-note: checked the book, there's no exclamation mark in the title. I made that up.)

The second reason is to thank the Alberta Foundation for the Arts for the official stamp of approval. On Christmas Eve the envelope came. They gave me a big grant, Merry Christmas. I'd applied to attend the "master class" of MADT 305 at ACAD at the invitation of the instructor. I'd proposed, way back in September, to expand my artistic sensibilities, to engage in an aesthetically rigorous investigation of my work and practice. Whoa. I re-read the grant I'd written and couldn't believe how my flowery-worded and hopeful explanation of what I'd officially wanted to achieve with the money had been so amazingly accurate and true to what I'd thought I quietly accomplished only for myself, in the end. Mabuhay to me.

And to AFA, and Mitch Kern, and the awesome & awe-inspiring classmates, and especially to Turner who took Sloane from 6am to 6pm every Friday every week without complaint: cheers. Cheers cheers cheers. And thank you.

Categories: Ash | Photography | Work work work
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Leopard Spots

Hear ye, hear ye. I have so much damn business to blog, I'll just start with this: no person should be caught dead or alive wearing animal-print anything.

I'm cool with leather, and even with fur. If we're going to, as a species, eat other animals, we might as well make longer-term use of their hides & etceteras as well. Please feel free to wear your heirloom ivory necklaces and deer antler bolo ties to my house and receive compliments on same. I do not necessarily approve of elephant-foot wastebaskets, but I understand them as colonial artifacts. And I apparently have Mexican second-cousins who, upon their first visit to my dad's family up in Canada, came equipped with the latest in 1970s Mexican elite fashion: real beetles (a slow-moving sort, I'm told) with rhinestones glued to their backs, which were then affixed to one's clothing and which would walk, slowly, around one's chest over the course of the evening. Creepy, yes. Offensive-to-me? No.

But. Animal print? Like, leopard print? Zebra print? Snake print?

N. O.

Don't do it. Please. If you're inclined this way, just print yourself up a tshirt (or better yet, a forehead tattoo) that reads: TACKY, and get it over with.

And that's what I have to say on the matter.

Categories: Ash
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The Darjeeling Limited

Possibly the greatest cinematic experience of my life. I stared, slack-jawed in awe, for most of the film. Don't believe the reviewers. This film is incredible. I am aware that I probably have a more nuanced understanding of just how colossal an achievement it is based on my understanding of India. But even just the brass arm-bands on the porters, the flimsy yellow plastic pharmacy bag, the shiny borrow-scarves at the gurudwara. You may not be able to spot the superficial details that made this movie so satisfying for me.

But do yourself a favour. Go see it anyway.

Categories: Ash
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Light The Night!

Hi all you walkers & woulda-walkers! I just wanted to thank you so much for being part of my life and being with me, in body and/or spirit, on Saturday at the Light the Night walk for Lymphoma and Leukemia, here in Calgary.



Self portrait of our fearless team captain.

This was my first ever "cancer walk", and I wanted to do the one specifically associated with lymphoma. It's been fifteen years since I was diagnosed, and I decided it was finally time to start "giving back" (as opposed to my previous plan of "be in denial of ever having had cancer"). So to it: I gathered up a small group of close family and friends and sent them an email. It read: book off September 29th for the Light the Night walk for Lymphoma. Walk we must! (Our team name is The Hilksom Hee-Haws. Wear green!)

Getting there the night-of, I was very pleased (selfishly, of course: trying to hold it together, over here) that it wasn't too emotional overall... I got a bit teary at the beginning when I was seeing the memorial tshirts for people who'd died or the stickers saying "I'm Walking in Memory Of...." Not sure why, really - I always knew I'd live through the Hodgekin's myself, but maybe it's just the mother in me now that makes me feel like Oh, that Could Be My Kid, Oh Jesus... I'd asked you all to wear green as a 'team colour' - this was a downgrade from my initial instinct to go full-on with the pixie costumes, tiaras, giant banner (green of course) and so on. I'd never done a cancer walk before, though, and so eventually re-thought these ideas on the basis that they might be too heretical to the 'in memorial' walkers. (In the end, I was very pleased to see many teams with tiaras, giant banners, and some even with costumes! Lesson learned for next year's walk!)



Val (Mem!, who came all the way from Nakusp for the occasion of my 15 years in remission): getting set for the walk

Overall, I was weirdly satisfied by the balloon colour arrangements. For those of you who weren't there, the balloons were different colours: red for "supporters", white for "survivors" and gold for "in memory of". I carried a white balloon of course (struck down, at 18, by CANCER, roll the 'r', that's me), and everyone on my team had a red balloon.




Looking north: this is about 1/20th of the crowd gathered at the start line, Eau Claire Market, Calgary, September 29th/07.

I kind-of ended up averting my eyes from most of the gold balloon teams, I'll admit. They were happy people for the most part, it's true. But I just couldn't take it. I'm not sure necessarily that that person who was missing, being "remembered" could have been me, or anything like that. Maybe it was just the loss inherent in the balloon colour, and the glad sadness in the holders' dedication to helping people who came after their loss. I was, however, totally overwhelmed by the red and white balloons. The red: because they represented all the people (and in this case, actually WERE some of the people) who loved people like me, and who supported people like me: people who'd known people like me who had suddenly and completely surreal-ly and unexpectedly been diagnosed with a completely improbable "cancer" (me at 18: 'Really? Cancer? Are you SURE? I don't think so...') .



Yer scribe & Brucio, who said I was "very brave" (i.e. at the time of the cancer).

I'll mention that ultimately we were kind of sucky-pants cynics at the overall idea of the balloons themselves, however, since 1. I'd expected candles, for some reason. Balloons with lights inside just aren't the same. Lacking in 'atmosphere' or something, I guess. 2. the balloons were all outfitted with a "light" inside that didn't really work (they blinked, or broke, or generally malfunctioned), 3. the string/wire between the "switch" you were supposed to hold and the balloon itself was too long, and got tangled around other people, and tree branches, and stroller handles, etc., and 4. the whole contraption was made out of plastic and was obviously meant to be discarded, somewhere, at the end of the run.

Which seemed grossly (and probably disproportionately) irresponsible to me & Turner, the former who'd just come off a recent contract with Connacher's plastics documentary (the world is going to hell in a leaching ball of phthalates, oh my) and the latter who's about to publish a book about sustainability (and, I was reminded by Margaret, who wrote a story about the ridiculous "disposability" of too many plastic products after their "temporary" use has expired in a Canadian Geographic piece published earlier this year).

Anyway. Despite the snuffly-ness and cynicism. Just wanted to say thanks.



At the beginning of the walk, we managed to stay in something resembling a group. From left: Victoria Coffin (yawning/singing?), Serene Ho (pushing stroller), John Johnston (in orange hat), Ashley (white balloon lady), Bruce Bristowe (in black jacket, looking backwards and yelling for people to hurry up), Turner and Sloane (middle, with green blanket), Valerie Bristowe (green hat, background), and Margaret Countess (formerly Drummond, foreground, holding red balloon and with snazzy 'belt').




Ania Wojciechowski and Karen Krull, members of the Hilksom Hee-Haws!

For those of you who couldn't make it - next year I think I'll do the Terry Fox Run, so you're on notice that I may recruit you for that. (I've always wanted to be the Queen Bee of the local Terry Fox Run!) This year was the preliminary, soup-up, 'get-folks-suckered-into-participating' pussy 5k "walk" (though some of us had screaming toddlers in tow and jumped ship at the 2.5k mark...). So you've been warned, be prepared and have a few goes on the treadmill this winter in anticipation for next September's Terry Fox Run. (Next year you have to fundraise, no more Ms. Nice Guy in that department!)




JJ & Ash get all arty with the lymphoma balloon self-portraiture...

Best to you all, love Ashley

Categories: Ash | Cancerous!
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Globe n' Mail

Today Turner's sustainability column premieres in "Canada's National Newspaper", the Globe & Mail. This first one was titled "The Secret Greening of Calgary", and talked about the city's quiet commitment to sustainable energy solutions, despite the larger city's love of sprawl, SUVs and all things bling.

I was contracted to do the photos, which took me to southeastern Alberta to shoot the Taber wind farm (colour, Focus section cover photo, below the fold) and to the Erlton Ctrain station (three times, with three different children, to try to get the b&w ctrain-and-pinwheel shot they chose for page F9).

Get out there and buy the paper today, y'all!

Categories: Ash | GeoHope | Sloane | Turner | Work work work
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The Truest Song

There are a lot of true songs out there.

But if you're from a prairie city. A Canadian prairie city, especially. (And if you're from a prairie city that you didn't want to end up back in, hoo boy.)

And you're missing someone... but it's over, really over. (And it's never going to be not-over.)

"Ah yes," I hear you saying, ironically, "Awesome." (Been there, fuck that, fuck me, gimme a beer.)

The song for you - and, I suspect, for all of us - is this one:


Left And Leaving, the Weakerthans

My city's still breathing (but barely it's true)
through buildings gone missing like teeth.
The sidewalks are watching me think about you,
sparkled with broken glass.
I'm back with scars to show, Back with the streets I know
Will never take me anywhere but here.

The stain in the carpet, this drink in my hand,
the strangers whose faces I know.
We meet here for our dress-rehearsal to say " I wanted it this way"
Wait for the year to drown.
Spring forward, fall back down.
I'm trying not to wonder where you are.

All this time lingers, undefined.
Someone choose who's left and who's leaving.
Memory will rust and erode into lists of all that you gave me:
a blanket, some matches, this pain in my chest,
the best parts of Lonely, duct-tape and soldered wires,
new words for old desires,
and every birthday card I threw away.

I wait in 4/4 time.
Count yellow highway lines that you're relying on to lead you home.

This song is about Winnipeg.

And although you could argue that although I've always loved Winnipeg (blindly, perhaps, as some have suggested?) for the wonderful childhood memories it provided me, it's true that I only lived there until I was eight years old. (Calgary, the city we landed in afterwards, and the city in which I spent my pre-adolescent and teenage years, is not generally known for its decay or angst, particularly.)

But for some reason, this song resonates for me. In some ways, maybe in the lives-unlived that I would have had in Winnipeg, or in Calgary if I hadn't left in 1991? I don't know. Maybe everyone who grew up Prairie knew and feared this future for themselves; lived it a thousand times in unremembered nightmares and panicked moments alone at university. Knew we didn't want to go back: might someday end up back there: and in such an instance, might need to kill ourselves.

It was a balance: make it, or die. Or, worse: face all those broken sidewalks and half-remembered faces and pound them through the glass door of your love, broken. (So really, might as well die...)

But even so, I see the St. Vital sidewalk this guy is pacing. The random smashed glass that didn't necessarily mean "trashy neighbourhood". The short summers that help make a southern Manitoba life barely worth living.

Me, I've been in those hopeful, hipster, far-from-the-centre mid-twenties venues where everyone is half-hysterical. Those ones with curtains for walls and everyone too excited (and somehow, embarrassed that they aren't who they were in elementary school, anymore. Apologetic. Defensive. And weird).

Really, I think the saddest, truest line has to be, "We meet here for our dress rehearsal to say: 'I wanted it this way' ": All of us, anywhere, everywhere, have been there. Lived this blow. Breathed this lie. Tried to live it. Failed. I've been that person, the one going about their business. And dying inside.

And, AND! the whole subtext of the city killing itself: so true to my own heart. Completely a true statement about Winnipeg, Regina, Calgary: My city's still breathing, but barely, it's true... Through buildings gone missing like teeth. I'm not that old, but I can still give you a tour of my adolescent Calgary landscape by what's gone. By what's not there anymore. All those buildings that they knocked down. The Theatrey. Studio A Go Go. The Westward Club. And so on. They live on in me, and they ache like a missing tooth.

So, me, right? I'm singing this sad song to Sloane tonight for the first time. It just came into my brain between Yoshimi and Country Roads, and I sang it through for her. And you might think, in the midst of singing it, as I did: should you really be singing this fucked-up, lonely, pseudo-stalker song about a dying city and its damaged man to your toddler?

But then, you (or me, for example, I) think:
1. That was all me, those lyrics. In ways. In feelings. In bits. And pieces. That was me. It is Truth. There is no more TRUE Canadian song. Blessed be.
2. And by the way, it's not like we're trying to hide Sloane from the actual truth bits of life. (See the "We showed Sloane Rooney's ripped-apart corpse and then let her watch Mama bury him in the yard" post from a few months back, for deets.)
3. Prairie childhood & upbringing, and the saga of same... she might as well hear it from us (in part by way of The Weakerthans, natch).
4. ... And heartbreak. You really, REALLY don't want your kids to know. But really, eventually, it'll happen to them. (And if it doesn't, they'll end up sociopaths. So you have to, in a weird and sadistic way, HOPE for your kids to undergo the torturous and revolting SAGA that is normal, everyday heartbreak.) And someday they'll be sitting there with the pain in their chests, just as sure as we were.
5. Plus, like, isn't it my JOB, like, as a parent, to, like, competely psychologically hobble my children? Don't all parents strive for this? (Shouldn't I be grateful that I was given such an early opportunity to do same?)

Or: it's just a song! Get over it! It's got a great tune! It's Canadian! It's slow and sounds like a lullaby to my toddler! She'll grow up with Canadian music pre-programmed into her subconscious, how lovely!

And: my life is great, it's not like I'm singing about the present. It's possible to be happy on the prairie. But there's a bunch of turmoil between here and there. Better to warn her, right?

Yer thots?

Categories: Ash | Canadiana | Mom-ness
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Post-AFA

After a fine weekend in Canmore visiting Auntie Jackie and Scottishing-it-up at the Canmore Highland Games (largest in Western Canada, you know, a post about which will follow sometimes soon), we arrived home and I had to immediately launch into my Alberta Foundation for the Arts grant application. Due today. I was up until WAY past my bedtime. Went into the portrait studio with giant blue swirls before my eyes, today.

As evidence, my email to Mark "Marky-Mark" Heard, confirming our Wednesday night dinner planz, sent earlier this afternoon:

Mr. Mark. You rock. I, possibly, do not rock. I am too blurry to tell. Today, I am a weeble.
...I have the Tom Wilson "Biff" song from You Tube in my head all the time. Does that disqualify me from rocking? I suspect it does...

Categories: Ash
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And Now For Something Completely Different

Aha, have I given you the impression that I am a photographer? Yes? Well! Suddenly, and minus the majority of the usual qualifications (I own not even a single cravat), I am also the curator of a gallery in a most hip and chic part of town.

Since last year I've been working with an aesthetics salon called Chic Studios down at Mount Royal Village. The owner, Amy Nicole, and I barter our services and generally cross-promote our businesses. I love working with them. All the people who come through are awesome, and everyone has good ideas and the energy to back them up.

The studio is on the lower level of a fabulous location on 16th Ave SW, facing the park on 17th Ave. The other businesses in the area include an Asian furniture importer, an art supply house, fancy clothing and shoes and flowers for the ladies who lunch in the area, a bunch of coffee and teahouses, and hip bars and restaurants. It's at the western end of what's known as "The Red Mile" when the Calgary Flames hockey team is doing well in the playoffs. In any case, it's a great location.

And so back in June, Amy and I started talking about turning the very wide and empty hallway space just outside the studio into a sort of gallery that I would curate. Eventually the arthouse-appropriate track lighting I bought will be installed in the ceiling, and the wall will be painted white (with the tops and end being the hot pink of Chic Studios), and we'll have gallery postcards and some signage. But before I left for out east in early July, I did the real jumping-through of the hoops, which was getting the art framed and hung on the damn wall, for starters.

This first show includes my two neon sign pieces that showed at the Vertigo space in early June with the Mob Hit festival, and three pieces from Erin Pasternak's winter oil rig series. Erin did the nameplates on her old-timey typewriter and there's a price list for the works behind the Chic Studios front desk. The next show will likely be two local painters, and then I'm looking to bring in some drawings from Tara Lowen Ault Chowdhry, an artist based in Mumbai. Later on I'd like to bring in a graffiti artist to paint the walls themselves. But first, we're going to have an opening show/gala in September. The date isn't set but will likely be mid-month.

The Hilksom Gallery, upon opening. July 2007.

Categories: Ash | Calgary | Work work work
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Grateful

Last Monday evening Turner and Sloane left for Nova Scotia and I was left here in Calgary by myself. This was by design. I needed a period of me-time, it had been decided and planned months ago.

I missed Sloane and Turner this week, but I have been using the time alone (the first alone time in more than 2.5 years) very wisely. Among the things I was grateful for, this week:

- My bicycle. Such a lovely and constant companion these last seven days. It totally deserves a tune-up, I realize. But I toodled my wobbledy way through the traffic every day to avoid the horrendous Stampede parking fees around town, and got enough exercise in the process to stave off totally gaining the 20 pounds I deserved to put on this week (I went off "the Plan" when Turner left and this week even had PIZZA. And REAL TEA. And a GELATO. And so on).

- The band at Fionna McSomethingsomething (the Sheraton hotel downtown bar)'s willingness to play our yelled-out 'requests' of "RIGHT UP YOUR KILT" (Wild Rover) and "AND SHE WAS" (Black Velvet Band), and their amazing, miraculous, and fortuituously perfect timing on "Home For A Rest", which pulled Victoria and I out of the bathroom to madly pseudo-stepdance our hearts out, channelling the old Clark Hall Pub spirit.

- Sourpuss shots. Thank you, David Friese, for introducing these into our world. Far too tasty & dangerous!



- The weather. During the week it was 28C every day. I ran around outdoors working and carousing in the improbably humid air, loving every second. Then today, when I woke finally exhausted and worn out from the week, it was 14C. Perfect timing for turning on the furnace.

- Chic Studios. Amy Nicole of Chic Studios and I have been working together to cross-promote since December and I've really valued her amazing and ultra-positive business sense. A few weeks ago we hammered out the details of turning her hallway into a gallery that I would curate. This past week this has become a reality. Please visit the gallery at 100 - 850, 16 Ave SW (lower level). This is directly across the park from 17th Ave where the kids juggle and people hang out with their dogs in front of Mount Royal Village. You know you go past there every week, dawg. Drop in to see our hip shit on the walls.

- My house. Though I usually spend a lot of quiet brain time wishing my house had higher ceilings, or a second storey, or a back extension, or a rose window for the attic, or a properly sealed front walk... etcetera, this week I found in me a huge amount of genuine and unconditional gratitude for my house as it is. I love our proximity to downtown, I love the hollyhocks that are finally sprouting in the front yard, I love our freshly painted croft shed. I love how the house is cool even when it's roasting outside. I love that we have windows above our bed that let in the fresh early-morning air. I love that we don't live in a show home, so that our messy lives with our toddler and cat and million magazines can spill all over everywhere and it's okay. Plus, we live close enough to Stampede for the nightly fireworks to rattle the windows, so we've got that going for us, which is nice.

- And of course, the peoples! Among the peoples I need to thank for this amazing week of amazing fun whist being amazingly un-traditionallly-encumbered are: Chris Turner (my spouse and father of my child) and Sloane (said child) for getting out of Dodge without complaint; Alexis Bahry for finding a lot of really fun things to invite me to; Karen Krull and Victoria Coffin for calling and yelling into the answering machine, "WHAT ARE YOU DOING TONIGHT???"; Bruce Bristowe and Peggy Bumanis for inviting me to the RCA Stampede party; Moonira Rampuri, Marcello DiCintio, Jenny Saarinen, Garth Kennedy, Jewels, Maryam Nabavi, Heather and Trevor for including me in their awesome, I-was-invited-last-year-but-couldn't-come Kensington House Crawl ('07)... what a wicked Georgian-toasting, bocce-playing, Reefer-Madness-watching, and piratey-minus-the-intended-eye-patches-ARR-me-mateys time was had by all! Thanks to my neighbour Rob Dermedy who was 100% cheerful about lending his electrical skillz to the Chic Studios gallery despite the repeated delays and logistical glitches. And of course three cheers to John Johnston, David Friese, and Bruce Manning, plus the guy Karen brought to the Sundowner. Thank you all for including me in your Stampede plans this year. (Marky Mark-Mark, we'll see you next year, yo!)

p.s. I read TWO BOOKS this week!!

Categories: Ash | Calgary | Friends | House | Work work work
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Camden

On watching the fated Japan - Argentina game, armed with the only silk-poured Guinness I've ever had in my life, in an old Camden pub in London, June 1998:

I love the tawny ripeness of these ancient London wood floors; lacquered, bumped and holding the shape of heavy heels, books and plates' corners (knocked off tables), the shuffle of chairs. They're all left behind as grooves, in subtle snailtrail dents, living orange where it meets gold-brown, and between, the deep dark knots like fists within the wood.

And when Japan was clearly starting to lose - badly - the front-toothless man to my left: "Aw, an' yew wer' rilly goin' fer them, wer'ntcha!" (Commisserating tone, this.) ...I have to admit, yes, I had been cheering for Japan, the underdogs.

Categories: Ash | Wurldliness
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O Cat Cat

As you might now be suspecting, I've been looking through my old journals. I kept a regular journal from about age 13 to my late twenties, when email and then blogging finally took over my writing output. I have no wish to publish these journals in their entirety, not "someday", not after I die, never. I'd say honestly that 95% of what's in them is complete navel-gazing bullshit, as any good young-person's-journal should be. However, from time to time I did write stuff down that I looked back on later and thought, ha-ha, that's pretty funny/interesting. So in my week off, here in Calgary, I'm mining a few of these gems for you.

This poem (please note: I do not fancy myself an actual poet) was written by my 24-year-old self. At this point I was living on my own in Guelph, in an apartment with no furniture. We (me & the cat) commuted, often, to Toronto, to visit Turner in his tiny cockroach-infested apartment on Bloor West.


Cat, o cat-cat
please don't diahrreah in the plant
KIT-ten, o puss puss
please don't bite my hand

I feed you dry food and
all my proscriptions, like:
Please don't piss in two places in the car
(or in the car at all, more like)

I drive around now with
baking soda carpetting the floor mats
But I don't mind.
Okay, yes I do mind

At first I think these are really only suggestions
but then I lock you in the bathroom
with the lights off
because I need to punish you for defecating in the wrong places

Categories: Ash
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Freedom, Glorious Freedom (F,GF): The Postscript

Obviously, in this house the aforementioned F,GF of finishing the ACAD course comes with the F,GF to dress like a gomer. Exhibit A:

Look at how pleased I am with myself. That's because I dressed myself in exactly this outfit, on purpose, in order to properly celebrate the completion of my course. Let's call it my Celebration Outfit. All the way home I was dreaming of sitting on the back porch swingy seat, drinking beer and revelling in how much I didn't need to know about the Italian and Flemish renaissances ANY MORE, wearing my Celebration Outfit. I got my wish. And even made Turner take a "before" photo to prove it.

I'll break down the ensemble for you, since there's much to behold. I'm wearing my favourite skirt of all time, a flimsy lycra/polyester thing, the waist of which died long ago and is now held to my body using a well-placed safety pin. Totally shapeless and mostly unflattering, it's my FAVE.

Underneath the skirt, black long underwear, the high-tech stuff that keeps you super-toasty. They were my wedding present from Cousin Tanya. I wear them all the time. Totally appropriate for my plan of sitting outdoors until the wee hours.

The sweater is a Granny Val thrift shop special, purchased for 25 cents or thereabouts somewhere in the Kootenays. It looks like wool, and it's warm, but it's actually made of polyester and as such is totally machine washable. Perfect outerwear for someone such as myself on this celebration evening, with plans to eat messy hot dogs with gross condiment combinations and drip them all over myself. (No photographic evidence of the "after" version exists, unfortunately.)

And underneath is a Thai Red Bull tshirt, purchased for Turner at the mall market in Bangkok. It has baseball long sleeved different-coloured arms. It's way too big on me and smells like Turner. I love it.

Finally, my slip-on blue Sketchers with the paint stains and the general overall slouchiness factor. I bought these when I couldn't procure for myself the same amazing funky runners that Anne Yourt had in the summer of 2002 and which I coveted so. These shoes were a compromise purchase. They have worn well and been good friends.

And the exam? I did well. At least an 85%. Marks come out this week.

Categories: Ash | Book Learning
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Never Again

Never ever ever ever evereverever again will I take a spring semester course. Never! (Nope! Nopenopenope!)

Two and a half hours to the final exam. Then: FREEDOM, glorious freedom.

Categories: Ash | Book Learning
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Ramsay Courts

Today we had another of those shoots where Turner was made to carry stuff and be the model, and this time it involved a lot of running around, because it had to do with tennis. So we got him all geared up in shorts and running shoes and went just up the hill to the public tennis courts, where I made him bang the ball around for about twenty minutes (with no partner) so I could get a good net-side shot of a pewter flask full of scotch. So he was in the background, but he did have to run and lunge and stuff like that, because you can't just pretend to be playing tennis in photos, for it to look real you really have to be trying at it. So Turner was a good sport, very helpful about trying to be Mr. Action Man in exactly the small range of the court where his body would fit in the proper part of the background of the shot of the scotch flask (which was the ostensible reason for the photograph in the first place). And after twenty minutes of me bunkered down near the net taking photos of him racing around the court chasing the balls he'd bang against the fence, I have to admit that the sun was nice and warm and I felt a bit snuggly and tired. Turner was all exercised and I'd done nothing but lie on my tummy on the warm court. When we came home I had to have a nap.

So here is an arty-type photo of the tennis court from the start of the shoot (from the part of my setup usually called "getting the light"), to conjure up for you the warmness of the court surface and the nice summer day with blowing clouds and whatnot that we are having here in Cowtown:




I love that long crack along the net line.

Categories: Ash | Calgary
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More About The Exhibition

As reported, I sent out this email saying "please come to the exhibition play" and told people that I'd be there on such-n-such dates. So as per the schedule, we headed down to the theatre as a family for repeat performances of the torture-of-watching-strangers-look-at-my-photos, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday this week. Turner would chase around after Sloane while I hid behind the structural pillars in the lobby, sucking on martinis. This, as part of our ongoing campaign to socialize Sloane into being one of those precocious kids who is at ease in 'thee-ah-tah' (and other "arts") circles.

We took some pictures (after everyone went into the theatre, so as to prevent me looking like a totally self-absorbed narcisstic asshole):

On the caption card:
Sydney, Australia. Taken during the Planet Simpson tour through Australia in November 2004. Turner was off doing an interview at some boobsy men’s magazine where women were definitely expected to be naked or absent. Instead of hanging around, I wandered through central Sydney. The shape-echo between the tricking bike and the birds at water’s edge always stuck with us as weird, and awesome. 
Metallic paper, 11 x 14. (2004/2007)




Quaich
This traditionally Gaelic vessel usually holds scotch during celebrations. Originally published in Swerve magazine, January 2007.
Metallic paper, 11 x 14.
by Ashley Bristowe (2007)



The captions:

Left -
Fort Macleod Java Shop
Home of the best buffalo burgers in Canada, this old building is perched at a corner, along the southbound Hwy 2 in the middle of Fort Macleod. Part store, part restaurant, part bus station, the corner is dusty. 
photographic ink print and laminate on canvas, 20 x 24.
by Ashley Bristowe (2004/2007)

Right -
Knowles Motel
Just east of Moose Jaw, SK off a feeder road to the TransCanada Hwy. The prairie sky was – obviously – doing one of its midsummer showstoppers. We were pulling a drive-till-we-drop cross-country sprint but roared onto the shoulder for this one.
photographic ink print and laminate on canvas, 20 x 24.
by Ashley Bristowe (2004/2007)

These are the ones that sold. I think I've agreed to a limited run of 5 prints (remember, many martinis): at this manipulation, this size, three sets are sold. We're going to keep one set. Which leaves one for the clamouring masses. If you think that based on this photo that you. must. have. a. set... Well? I suggest you contact me post haste: (403) 234-0176. They are awesome, but my natural inclintation to think my friends are humouring me leads me to believe that I shouldn't wait by the phone. (Prove me wrong?)





...Etcerera. Vertigo Theatre, Calgary. (2007)

There were others, but I got too self-conscious and had to go home and throw up.

My official apologies to Mark Heard, with whom I originally offered to share this exhibition but I didn't get my shit together in time. I am a big narcisstic asshole. Also I was registered in Art History 110 at ACAD and it seemed to suck up every moment of my free time (please see previous postings re: this) that I would have otherwise used to be not-a-narcisstic-asshole in the sense that I would've finally figured out a time to meet and get our photo choices sorted. Let's do something at ArtSpace in the fall? Sorry again. Love Ash

Categories: Ash | Calgary | Sloane | Work work work
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The Hockey Thing

I won't go on and on here, because I mainly just want to post this photo. But those who know me know that I'm not a particular fan of hockey. It's more about how men behave when they're watching hockey than anything, but there's also the thing where many boys are perfectly nice and normal and doing fine as teenagers playing hockey and then around age 16 or 17 the ones who get to pre-Junior-A sort of level turn into GIANT ASSHOLES. Almost to a one. It's really quite extraordinary.

Anyway, I'm not going to talk about that. I just wanted to post this picture. It's from the second-last game of the Stanley Cup Final, where Ottawa went on to lose on home ice. Turner was cheering vociferously for the Sens to choke. Brucio for his part had trained Sloane to chant out, "GO SENS GO. GO SENS GO!" Me, I hid in the kitchen, biting my fists.

Caption: The Brainwashing Of Sloane Turner.
Subtitle: Wherein My Husband & Father Conspire To Destroy Me And My Girlchild.

Categories: Ash | Sloane | Turner
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My First Exhibition (Not Counting Accidentally Flashing People On Dancefloors)

On Friday my first Calgary exhibition of photos opened. Long ago I was asked to be the artist in residence for this year's Mob Hit Old School theatre festival. They're doing a kick-ass Titus Andronicus, which we went to go see last Friday at the opening.

Two prints (photographic ink on canvas, 20x24) from my long-term prairie neon sign series. Photo by Chris Turner.

Friends very kindly got into a faux bidding war over the above pieces. I'm not sure, but I think we settled on having another set made. To that point I was hiding behind a seperate sculpture installation, too terrified to go anywhere near the easels holding up my work. Thank you, you people did exactly the most amazing thing at the right moment, and with sufficient sincerity that I could keep my head out of my ass for the rest of the evening. Even if you don't want the pictures after all!


This is the email I sent out the next day, after I'd calmed down and was sufficiently satisfied that I hadn't totally embarrassed myself:

Date:	Sat, 2 Jun 2007 15:39:32 -0700 (PDT)
From:	"Ashley Bristowe"
Subject:	Old School photo exhibition
To:	Select Calgary send list

Hi there. I was too crazed and nervous to tell anyone about this before, but I'm in the midst of my first artistic photo exhibition here in Calgary. I'm writing to ask for your support: send no money, just come see the pieces!

Running tonight, and next week from Tuesday until Saturday, I'm the featured artist at the Mob Hit Old School theatre festival centred at the Vertigo Theatre (in the base of the Calgary Tower on 9th Ave downtown). The play is Titus Andronicus and we attended opening night last night - definitely the most comprehensible Shakespeare I've ever seen performed, some really superb acting (especially by the Moor!) and lots of blood and gore - excitement, she wrote!

Basically the deal is this - you come to see the play, and whilst milling around beforehand and at intermission you peruse my photos and (please) make kind comments about same in the general vicinity of the easels. The exhibition of my work includes two canvas pieces from my ongoing prairie neon sign series (Ft. Macleod and Moose Jaw), and five pieces from across my portfolio. Hip, interesting people will surround you for a cool night out on the town. Easy Ctrain access. Ashley will be so very pleased that you are a wonderful person with only amazing gifts to bring to the world. You really can't lose.

If you want some assistance buying tickets, I can be your go-between if you like, but it's easy to call 221-3708 or just show up at the theatre most nights and buy rush tickets. I will be at the theatre on Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday next week (June 6th, 8th, and 9th) if you want to plan to attend on a night that I'll be there. Alternately, if you work downtown or happen to find yourself nearby the theatre during the daytime after 12pm, I'm certain that if you ask the box office to just let you go down for a few minutes to see the photos, they will.

All the best and thanks again for your continuing support!
Ash


Take that, Canada Council.



Sloaner sez Mama is so "a professional artist". Raise the roof!

Categories: Ash | Work work work
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I Totally Kicked Those 17-year-old kids' ASSES

Well, The Fear? From last week? When I had the midterm and everything? Well.

When the prof was handing back the exams, she was telling us that the class average was 74%. (I'm all, I know I did better than that.) And then she was telling us that for the first time ever, she had someone score a 99% on the exam. (And I'm all, Damn that girl who handed her exam in first, way ahead of everyone, damn her!) When I went to pick up my paper the prof caught my eye and smiled.

Whooot.

Categories: Ash | Book Learning
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The Nerditude

A funny thing happened on my way back to academia. I became a big nerd. It was an accident. It was a result of The Fear.

Since the beginning of May I've been enrolled, and embroiled, in Art History 110 at ACAD (Alberta College of Art & Design). Twice a week, Tuesday and Thursday, classes are three hours in the evening. The weekly readings number in the hundreds of pages. I've never been able to draw, or paint, or even make a good ceramic ashtray in grade four art class. I have no background in art history whatsoever and have been starting from absolute zero. I'm also 33 years old, 9 years out of my last round of post-secondary, I work full time, and I'm a mom.

I sound somewhat busy. It's true that I have "a full life". We try to keep it real around here, but there's always lots going on. I've got plenny of edjumacation already, there're several degrees on my wall. So you might be wondering: Whatever the sweet hell possessed you to take this course, Ashley? Or perhaps: Why now?

This is what happened: Waaaayyyy back in December, I applied for the Canada Council grant, under the Visual Arts category. I'm a photographer, right? I've been doing this ongoing project on sustainability, wanted to go to Toronto to attend the Contact Photography Festival (read: pay my way to Beau & Julia's wedding). It turns out the only non-kick-ass part of the application was the part where they ask you to list your "major influences". This was my answer:

The aesthetic or cultural tradition that relates to my work (optional)
I am a self-taught photographer and as such I’m not 100% sure of what this question means,
as I have no background in aesthetic or cultural photographic traditions from an academic or
“art school” point of view. I think I would be considered a ‘creative documentarian’, but I am
always working to expand my storytelling and technical abilities by reading and exposing myself
to other photographers’ work. (Maybe next year I’ll have a better answer for you.)

I shoulda opted out of this question, but decided honesty would be the best policy. Ahem. This didn't work for them. In April I received a letter from the Canada Council that stated the following:

Dear Ms. Bristowe,
Your application was received in December and after a preliminary
evaluation you have been deemed not to be a professional artist.
We hated your photographs and you will never amount to anything.
So there.

I'm paraphrasing.

So after stomping around the house for a little while and planning my vociferous appeal to the venerable CC and their racken-fracken gatekeeping bureaucracy, I came to a halt. And it finally occurred to me that their assessment was... accurate. I am not an artist. At least, not necessarily. I am certainly not an artist from the point of view of a jury of my so-called "peers" in the Visual Arts, a hearty percentage of whom would have slaved through lots of formal art school before going on to being the poncy cravat-sporting art directors in Toronto that we all know and love. I forgot that you should never, ever show the fleshy part under your arm. Never, ever give them a chance to tell you you're not qualified. I'd gone right ahead and told them point blank that I didn't know whozits from whatzits in the formal art canon, much less among photographers. Totally dumb.

So I thought about my answer on the Canada Council application. Am I really so lazy that I couldn't get to the damn library and read up on photography, photographers, techniques, style, history, innovation? Well... no. I guess I'm not THAT lazy. So it was off to the library for me. I brought home stacks of books. Henri Cartier-Bresson. Sebastião Salgado. Diane Arbus. Jeff Wall. Etcetera. After a couple of weeks it started to become clear that it was good to be learning about these folks and the photography canon of the 20th century, but that I should probably take some proper courses at ACAD to really force myself through the paces and learn about what and who art schools think are important. Likesay.

I'd already taken their non-credit photography course a few years ago, and knew I didn't need to take it again. As I read through the spring/summer course calendar it was clear that to get into the upper-level photography courses I'd have to do some of the first-year-level prerequisites. The first was Art History 110. Here's the description:

This survey course introduces students to selected
histories and methods of the visual arts. Western visual
culture is considered in its world context: artworks and
artifacts are discussed in terms of their function as
conveyors an complex cultural values and meanings.
Survey I deals primarily with visual art up to the beginning
of the 16th century.

Aw, man! What did the 16th century ever do for me? This was going to SUCK.

But I glanced at the Canada Council rejection letter. I guess I should start somewhere. And thinking about that, I got some other inspiration. After doing her nursing certificate, my mom earned her B.A. over thirteen years and finally graduated from Lakehead University just after my brother and sister were born. And over the last decade she's been taking her Bachelor of Science from Athabasca. She just finished her last course; she graduates in June. I've watched the slow-and-steady-wins-the-race approach to learning, so it doesn't seem COMPLETELY useless to plod, slowly, toward an academic goal. I resigned myself to learning about cave paintings and got my stuff together for the mandatory portfolio review. Which I passed. And into Art History 110 I went.

But let's back up a bit for a second.

In undergrad, I did great - after I failed a course in second year, I got my ass in gear.** The secret to doing well is fourfold:

1. Sit at the front of the class. I'm not talking about the front-ish part of the classroom. I'm talking about the FRONT of the class. I always sit in the front row. Right in the centre. That way there's no one flipping their hair in front of me, being a distracting asshole. I am that asshole, distracting others, while I get the great notes. Which brings me to...

2. Take great notes. I take amazing notes. I write down everything. Those people who sit there dozing, who write down a name or two every twenty minutes or so? That's not me. I'm the one feverishly scribbling away at my clipboard, destroying my fingers in service of higher education. You could re-build the lecture almost verbatim from my class notes. But the class notes aren't complete unless you go to all the classes, right? Which brings me to...

3. Go to all the classes. Don't skip. Viki's well-timed absence on the day of the Dawson shootings notwithstanding, never skip class, kids. It took me a long time to really "get" this one, still skipping classes like a moron, into my third year. But take it from me. Go to class. Don't skip.

And 4. Do all the readings. And I mean ALL the readings. I did them all. As many as were absolutely humanly possible, anyway. I remember telling Sean Nazerali about my new programme of academic-ness over the phone in third year - he had already graduated and was now far away in the Czech Republic. The line was always crackly.

Sean:      -crackle crackle- Did you say you're doing all the readings?
Ash:        Yes. I'm finally doing all the readings. I totally learn a lot more this way!
Sean:      Ashley, ALL the readings? -crackle crackle- On the list that they hand out at the beginning? Is that what you're talking about?
Ash:        Yes. What are you talking about?
Sean:      You're doing all the readings. -crackle-
Ash:        Yes! Why are you so surprised? I finally like my courses! Wait ...doesn't everybody do all the readings?
Sean:      Ashley. No. NOBODY does ALL the readings. Nobody. -crackle pop crackle- There isn't enough time in a week to do all the readings. How are you possibly doing all the readings?
Ash:        ...Um? I read fast?
Sean:      You mean you're doing -crackle- most of the readings. That'd be an improvement, anyway.
Ash:        No. Seriously. All the readings.
Sean:      ... -crackle crackle- ...
Ash:        Sean?
Sean:      ...Nobody does all the readings, Ashley.

I did all the readings.

Skip forward a few years. By grad school, this was my approach to academics:



I didn't like grad school. I'd really kicked out the jams in undergrad and needed a year off between. I didn't get it. I fell into a funk. Thab will tell you that halfway through January of my first year at grad school I snapped, developed nearly complete insomnia, and started reading novels instead of doing my assigned coursework. I'd be there in my room, pissed off and reading I, Rigoberta Menchu or somesuch and planning bomb building seminars. She'd knock on my door at, like, 4:15am: "Aaaaaahh! Aaaaashley! Goooo tooo beeeeeed." Good advice. I didn't heed it. I did okay anyway, academically, but didn't learn much. I, what you might call, "coasted" though. I really should have taken that year off, but if I'd done that I wouldn't've lived with Thaba and I wouldn't've met Turner. So I appreciate the purgatory of that school year for the other amazing things it brought to my life. But academically I stunk.

And by the time I graduated in 1998, I was done. Done, done, done. Toasted on both sides, crispy all the way through, done. NO MORE SCHOOL FOR ME, thinked I. I'M GOOD N' SMRT NOW. Off into the real world I fled for nine years. I took some courses here and there - at George Brown, through ATP, that kind of thing. But nothing with actual homework. Nothing with a permanent record. Nothing that, ultimately, academically "mattered".

So back to present day, and Ashley has deigned to join this first year ACAD Art History course at the beginning of May. It began in ancient Mesopotamia, moved through Egypt and the Aegean, on to Greek stuff and then finally to the Roman empire. I found I really liked the lectures, but I came home with aching, aching hands from the note taking (like many of us, I type basically everything I write nowadays, and my hands have almost forgotten how to do longhand). And after many years of falling out of practice, the reading was overwhelming. Too. Much. Reading. Hundreds and hundreds of pages, it seemed like. Slowly I started to consider the wisdom of piling a gigantic reading load onto an already time-intensive (6 hours per week in class) endeavour. Began pondering whether I was being selfish to be doing this kind of unrelated-to-my-daily-work course in the hopes of "someday" getting into a higher-level photography course at ACAD. And I started looking into dropping the course.

But then two things happened, right on top of each other. First, I heard back from the Alberta Foundation for the Arts. I'd applied under the Visual Arts category here, too, back in February. I'd known that the Canada Council application was a bit of a long shot with my background, but I'll admit that I figured I was pretty much assured some AFA money. Their letter was short.

Dear Ms. Bristowe,
Your application was received in February and after a preliminary
evaluation you have been deemed not to be a professional artist.
We hated your photographs and you will never amount to anything.
So there.

Jumping jesus on a pogo stick, even the AFA thinks I am a big loser. Obviously, some formal book learning in art history couldn't possiblly hurt at this point.

And second (more happily), the next day, I got my first course assignment back. I have always been a sucker for a numerical expression of my academic brilliance, I tells you. Because despite my concerns when I handed it in (I dunno what the prof wants with this paper? Maybe this isn't right? Did I quote these sources correctly? Oh jeez, I'm going to get a 50%... etc.), I got 100%. A hunnurrd! percent! Suddenly, of course, the race was on. Can't drop the course now, I thought. And blow my big early lead? No way.

So the second paper was an article review. I took a few days off to work on it. Worried like mad over that thing, an analytic discussion of the importance of veristic portraiture in Imperial Rome (a topic about which I know precisely nothing). Handed it in last week. Been awaiting its return.

But in the meantime, looming large was the approaching midterm. Slides with identification and multiple choice questions. I never did much in the way of coursework that required memorization in the past, Women's Studies and Planning both being disciplines more focussed on writing and reporting and suchlike. Surrounded by images of sculptures and paintings and architecture from places I've never been, made thousands and thousands of years before I was born, I was having serious trouble remembering the names and artists and stuff. That Demosthenes sculpture... Was it Pericles who made it? Or... Praxiteles? No: Polyeuctos? Or... wait, that other guy... Polyclitus? Yeah, yeah, probably Polyclitus... After slacking off so hard in grad school I began to feel like I'd totally lost my edge. Brain atrophy in my early thirties, here it was. All the articles say that it's easier to learn when you're younger. Panic setting in.

Wait, now, just wait. Slow down. Slow and steady wins the race. Increasingly nervous (?) but determined, I booked a couple more days off. Read everything in the textbook. Made notes on every sculpture. Revised my class notes. Figured out the difference between the Assyrians and the Babylonians and the Akkadians and Sumerians. Had very clear moments of feeling like those Korean and Japanese students who spend every spare waking hour studying so as not to crush the family honour. It became perfectly clear to me, that sense of urgency and need for perfection I'd witnessed in some past friends and classmates who'd study and study and study and study. It'd always been easy for me in the past. Even when I didn't study I'd squeak by somehow. But now: Oh. If you're going to do it, there is absolutely no sense in doing it half-assed; in fact, what the hell are you doing if you're doing it half-assed?

Riiiiiiiight. It was crystal clear: Learn it all, Ashley, or give up and accept your complete disgrace before the world. I got it, now.

By this afternoon I couldn't really talk or be social to anyone. Had. to. study. more. Must remember the difference between steatite (Minoan Crete) and diorite (Mesopotamia). Must remember that Khamerernebty has two "er"s. Must memorize the order of the Doric and Ionic column parts. Finally, in a fit of terror that I'd never be able to mash it all into my brain in time for the exam, I even decided to make my own flashcards:

      
When I was making these I kept thinking, Aw, I bet Thaba knows all of these things backwards and forwards, she could do this exam with her head tied behind her back.

Turner walked in on all this a few days ago - after already having seen me reading and revising and reviewing for days and days beforehand - and was like, "...Uh? ...Flashcards, Ash? ...Overkill?"

Ash:         (gluing things, not looking up) Shut up, you. Terrified, here.
Turner:     You're going to do fine. It's okay.
Ash:         You don't know. I might fail.
Turner:     You weren't like this in undergrad were you? I thought you said Women's Studies was pretty chill.
Ash:         Turner. In undergrad I had a brain that worked.
Turner:     Ash. Take it easy. It's a first year course. It's the MIDTERM.
Ash:         ...Alright, you're going to have to leave. I have a glue stick and I'm not afraid to use it.
Turner:     I'm going. Just calm down. ...Waving a gun around, Walter? (exunt)


In the end, Turner was right. It went fine. At the end of the exam I added up all my "absolutely correct" answers: I got at least a 93%. The Fear is a superb motivator.




** Despite this, there's no F on my official transcript: after I graduated from Queen's I was doing up papers for the Commonwealth Scholarship - which I later won - and wanted to have the best possible application. I petitioned to have that F removed from my permanent record on the grounds of having had cancer in my first year and then my parents divorced, obviously leaving me a battered shell of a student and ill-equipped to deal with Philosophy 228. The Dean of Arts & Science readily agreed. It was leaving that meeting, en route to Clark for Homecoming 1996, that I realized the power of being an alumna.

Categories: Ash | Work work work | Book Learning
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Chocoholic

If you'd asked me last year if I thought I was a "chocoholic", I would have said no. I do like chocolate, sure. But I've known people who are fairly bananas about chocolate and by comparison I was just a fan of the stuff. Now, in the weeks before giving birth to Sloane I was subsisting almost exclusively on giant Dairy Milk bars, chocolate chip cookies, and Tums, I do admit. And sure, one day back in high school Margaret and I decided it would be a super idea to eat a whole bag of chocolate-covered oreos. That was a long time ago, though. In my regular, non-8.5-months-pregnant, adult life, I ate what I'd call a "normal" amount of chocolate. I can't even tell you how much. But not every day, maybe not even every week. But some. I liked it.

So it was with some consternation and no small degree of surprise that I found, a few months ago, that I NEEDED chocolate. Like, BAD. I'd started in on this food-combining plan back in January to lose some of the tenacious baby weight I'd put on (and kept on) since the pregnancy. Works really well for me: no sugar, no alcohol, no caffeine, and lots of cheese can only be good, sez I. So it was going fine until about the six-week mark. I'd lost about fifteen pounds and I was feeling good. But suddenly I really needed some chocolate. Well, what to do? Chocolate has both sugar and (small amounts of) caffeine. I held off for a few days. Drummed my fingers on the counter, gazing into the now-bare cabinet where we used to keep the chocolate bars when I was pregnant. Ate some more cheese. Tried to ignore it.

Finally, I was trolling the grocery store aisles in search of something that could kill the chocolate craving, and I ended up standing in front of the baking section. There, in a flat blue box beside the "milk chocolate" and the "semi-sweet chocolate" was the "baker's chocolate". I peered at it: unsweetened, dark chocolate. Sounded terrible. But a little bit of caffeine wouldn't kill the food plan, I figgered, and maybe it wouldn't be as bad as I thought. I put the baker's chocolate in the cart.

When I got home I opened the package. Baking chocolate comes in big thick squares. It's meant to be used in cooking. I had to get a knife to chop the square in half to produce a piece small enough to fit in my mouth. That's when Turner arrived. "What are you doing - that's baker's chocolate, you know. It's going to taste awful." Me: "Shut up, you. The chocolate craving is killing me." In went the half-square of baker's chocolate. I chewed it up. It tasted like chalky brown wax. Turner peered at me from across the island: "How's that treating you?" I considered. My mouth was now lined with a thick, gross, bitter gloss. It was an effort to swallow it. "I dunno. That's pretty disgusting." I had a glass of water and walked away.

About five minutes later I was back. Staring at the package. Not because I wanted more, but because the chocolate craving was gone. Gone! It tastes like crap but whatdoyouknow, baker's "chocolate" can kill a "chocolate" craving! Whoot. I'd choke down about half-a-square per day. And within a week I was up to a whole square every day.

By a month later, I'd graduated to unsweetened cocoa. Blech? you're thinking. Ah, but what can you make with cocoa? That's right, hot chocolate. And there's no restriction on the use of artificial sweeteners like Splenda on this plan, and if I'm doing a "protein" period, then full-fat 18% cream is the recommended choice for adding to hot beverages. (I know, it sounds crazy. It works, that's all I know.) And in no time at all I was having a hot chocolate every day. Six packages of Splenda, lots of cream. Turner would watch me put this concoction together and cringe. "Are you sure this is a good idea? Six packages of Splenda?" Me: "Shut up, you. It's working fine and I'm wearing my old pants again finally." Turner, "Okay..."

So one hot chocolate per day (one-and-a-half teaspoons of unsweetened cocoa per) became two hot chocolates per day. I could see that this was escalating, of course. I only had the baker's square chocolate gathering dust in the back of the cupboard for 'emergencies' by this point. And we were buying cocoa every time we went grocery shopping. But I wasn't hurting anyone, and was eating really healthy otherwise, so what harm was one or two (...okay, sometimes three) hot chocolates every day? Not much.

But of course it begs the question: What happens when you run out of cocoa, Ashley? Well, um, that happened today.

When we were in Toronto I went completely off the plan and ate whatever I wanted - not crazy-like, just regular stuff like bread & butter, rice with meat, a can of Coke at one point. Drank some beers and even some tequila. Had a GRAND time, let it be said again. Monday morning it was back on the food-combining plan, sure thing, but I've had a few wobbly and overly-hungry days as my body gets rid of all the sugar and leftover alcohol and back into the calmer intestinal routine of the diet. Yesterday, among other things, I had three hot chocolates. (Also a lot of cheese. Although I'm talking about chocolate in this post I do want to stress that being able to eat cheese is definitely the best part of this plan. Cheese-o-holics take note.) Anyway, sometime yesterday evening we ran out of cocoa. I put it on the grocery list.

Today around lunchtime I had a blood sugar crash, had lunch, felt better. But later, I came lurking into the kitchen to make some hot chocolate. You know, to take the edge off. But then I realized anew that we're out of cocoa. Glanced at the clock: Hmmmm. Don't have time this afternoon to go grocery shopping. What to do... what to do. Looked in the cupboard again. The baker's chocolate, with no cream and no sweetness, is a crappy substitute for the hot chocolate at this stage. But there it was, one last square sitting in a dusty old blue box at the back. I hesitated for a few seconds. But then, shrugged. I guess it's my only option.



3pm: Turner just came in to talk about the family logistics for tonight.

Turner:     "You're leaving for your class at, what, 5:30pm? And your dad's getting here at 6pm... I need to leave right away after that. So if I go grocery shopping while you pick up Sloane at playschool, that should work."
Ash:         "You could go grocery shopping now."
Turner:     "Why? Why not do it while you're picking up Sloane?"
Ash:         "Uh, well... you might have enough time to walk with us, you never know."
Turner:     [looks at me funny] "No, you want the cocoa, don't you. You're jonesing for your hot chocolate."
Ash:         "No I'm not, I..."
Turner:     "You are. I saw that mess of... whatever the hell it was you cooked up in there. Left it in the sink for me to clean. Okay, I'll go get your cocoa."
Ash:         "I don't need it."
Turner:     "Suuuuuuuuuuure you don't."
Ash:         [gesturing at the computer screen] "...That's what this blog posting is about."
Turner:     "Your cocoa? The hot chocolate thing? The six packages of Splenda every day? Tell the people about how your kidneys are disintegrating under all that Splenda."
Ash:         "Maybe just my brain."

Categories: Ash
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The Months Flew By

I am totally borrowing this idea from Sean & Keitha over at House of Hot Sauce, who had a similarly quiet few months on their blog. From Christmas to mid-March it was pretty quiet around this url. Here's what we were up to:

- Christmas!


Thab came to town with Seung-Yi and we managed to cross paths in the airport when she was on her way back to Toronto and Margo was coming in from Nova Scotia! Posing in front of the giant Sam Livingston head at YYC.



Official Chez Bristowe Turner family Christmas photo. I think Turner and I are on our way out for a date or a party or something here, Sloaner to stay home with Gamma.



Strawberry Hill, winter wonderland edition. Christmas 2006.


Christmas Eve Dinner with all the trimmings, fixings, doo-dads, and whatnots.  


This brass planter was my gift to Granny Val on Christmas Day - presented with a bonus Sloaner in on the deal.

Margo and John came to Calgary, we rented a giant SUV and drove out en masse to Nakusp for the holidays. Uncle Johnny-John and Cousin Liam joined us the day after Christmas. There were toboggan parties and Granny Val's birthday, Thomas the train presents and dogs aplenty, trips up to the spring, a fab snowmobile/drinkfest up at the Gustafsons', a ski day down in Rossland, a German meal 'in town' (fancy-fancy!), Grampa/Oompa got a bit upset and threw a few things down the stairs and had to be taken back to Nelson in the middle of the night, and in the end we fortuitously made our departure just ahead of what ended up being a Gi-Gan-Tic storm which shut down the Trans Canada Highway in every direction only 24 hours later.

- Happy New year! We rang in the new year in Nakusp, in the fine company of Granny Val and Papa Mike, Turner's parents Margo and John, and Turner's brother John and cousin Liam. My new year's resolution was to go on this food-combining plan that I've done in the past and works well for me: no sugar, no caffeine, no alcohol, no white starch (white bread, white rice, corn), lots of vegetables and fruit, and you seperate eating 'carbohydrates' and 'proteins'. In the end these categories contain foods that of course include various amounts of both, but in essence you're separating meat/cheese/oil and carbs, eating them three hours apart. I've lost 35lbs so far: 20lbs to go to hit my pre-Sloane's-birth weight.

- We switched phone & internet companies. I've long hated Telus, the company that refused to allow unlimited long distance into Alberta until approx. 8 months ago (Ontario and the rest of Canada have had the $20/mo plan since, oh, 1995). Great ads, shitty service and idiotic billing. Our internet bill came in differently every month. When I'd call to ask/complain, the operators would do some kind of complex math on the phone and tell me that it all worked out to the same amount per month over time, so shut up about it already. So when Shaw came out with a bundle that allowed you dedicated phone service (with your same telephone number as before), plus internet, plus cable for less than my previous internet + phone service from Telus, we wuz like, SIGN US UP. Of course, there've been some snags. Telus wants their modem back. They didn't shut off the internet service and continue to charge us for it - this one is going to end up in small claims court, unfortunately. And the "Retention Department" keeps calling to try to woo us back. I tell them that if they'd like us to think better of their company perhaps they might start by STOPPING CHARGING ME FOR INTERNET SERVICE I'M NOT USING.

- In mid-January we billetted an actor who was here for the One Yellow Rabbit High Performance Rodeo theatre festival. Kevin of Albequerque's Tricklock Theatre was neat and tidy, interesting to talk to, left the house early every day under his own steam and came home late (but quiet) at night, and when we attended the show we realized he was also the lead character (and damn good at his job, too). After the many many many kindnesses of strangers we've availed ourselves of over the years in foreign locales, we felt good about giving back to the international travel karma jar.

- Cousin Jessica came to visit again. We've been seeing lots more of Jess since Leo's stroke, obviously. When she arrived in late January Sloane and I decided to decamp out to Brucio's in Douglasdale, the better to spend time with her. Also to give Turner some space at home to write and wander around bleary-eyed and writer-like, without wife and child demanding his attention in the midst of this, the mid-home-stretch of the book writing process. So out to Douglasdale we went, and Jess guest-starred as the hookah-smoking lass in one of my photo shoots for Swerve, and Uncle Larry arrived from Aylmer for a visit too, and we had a good ol' family reunion there in south Calgary.

- We had our first-ever Sunday brunch. I'd been feeling decidedly out of the socializing loop, and Turner was getting that nocturnal lemur-locked-in-the-basement look he takes on after a long stretch of working solitude. Obviously we needed to rectify the situation somehow. Going out at night is expensive and inconvenient and requires a babysitter, besides interfering with our patented (and necessary) "third shift" of work after Sloane goes to bed. So there had to be some other way to see people... and to get Sloane involved... and finally we hit upon the idea of Sunday brunch. Having people over. Eating, and some potluck stuff too so we weren't completely swamped with prep. Our first brunch was inaugerated on Sunday January 21st. Although we forgot to invite a few people (and didn't realize we'd forgotten to invite them until we started to wonder why they hadn't shown up yet), it was a great first go and eventually we hope to make the Bristowe Turner Sunday Brunch a monthly "thang". Here it is March already and we haven't had another one yet, so obviously we're working up to this goal slowly.

- From January 25th to February 9th, Sloaner and Auntie Alexis and I went to Costa Rica. Our travel partners included Brucio of course, and for the first week we were joined by Fifi and Brother John. Turner flew down for the second week of our stay. The route took us from Calgary to Houston, where we had a seven hour stopover (and a special guest-star appearance by my old friend Amy, Houston-based friend from long ago in France), and then on to San Jose, where we stayed the night. The following day we drove cross-country to the west coast and set up shop at Brucio's place in Faro Escondito, outside Jaco, on the west coast. We went swimming in the ocean, and watched fabulous sunsets from the balcony, and ate mountains of seafood, and Sloaner learned to swim in the (cold) hot tub, and we did bird-watching and snake-watching and monkey-watching and butterfly-watching, and we all learned the requisite 5 phrases in Spanish and used them prodigiously.



Ash (looking like a hatted dork) & Alexis (looking jolly & festive) at Playa Hermosa.



Sloane learns to swim with Grampa. Note the fancy "PolyOtter" suit with insertable "floaties", brought all the way from South Africa for Sloane by the ever-awesome Dr. Garth Kruger.




The Bristowe-Turnersesses at the fabulous hilltop restaurant at Villa Caletas.

- Upon arriving home in mid-February, the craziness cycle began anew with work. I started in on the provincial arts grant applications, due February 15th. Transcribing the interviews for Cryptic Moth I shoulda done in Costa Rica. Shooting the Swerve column photos. There was a lot of work to do. Sloane went to playschool during the day and Turner and I worked our brains out. I'll mention only once, and very briefly, that we were owed an absolutely tremendous amount of money by a variety of publications during this period. Everyone took their sweet goddamn time paying. Or, rather, not paying, as it turned out. We went through another terrible financial crisis. It was basically all I could think about day and night from about the beginning of December all the way through to mid-March. I hated a lot of people very intensely. I wrote three huge blog postings about it, all of which I deleted before I posted them to the site. I couldn't just post blithe bullshit about how great our lives are when our lives were really not great (Costa Rica trip notwithstanding). Financial stress is awful stress. Basically that's what caused the silence for three months.

- In the midst of all this, Brucio bequeathed to us the second-most-giant-est tv in all of creation. (Why? you may ask. Because Brucio got an EVEN BIGGER tv and didn't need the "little one" anymore.) If you know us, you know we don't even have cable. So to receive, unsolicited, a truly humungous television (it has three remote controls. THREE) was... unexpected. When you're truly poor and are suddenly given a six-foot-wide television that can be seen from two blocks away, a giant pulsing beacon of postmodern opiates beaming straight into your brain, it does make you wonder about the rationality of the universe. Can't afford groceries... maybe we can eat the images being shown on the television...? They do seem so life-like... We are not the ungrateful assholes we seem. Thank you Brucio for the giant tv.



Aforementioned giant tv. Those are Brucio's feet sticking out at bottom right. He's putting the approx. 1.7 billion cords into the right connections to make everything... "go".

- Then, in mid March, we got the Canada Council grant. $10,000 is nothing to sneeze at. I'd been running to the mailbox every day for four months, WILLING the Canada Council grant notification papers to arrive. Turner had basically given up hoping. But I knew we stood an excellent chance: I was once a funder, remember. And I also wrote the grant application. Then, one day, while Turner was away in Seattle at Lebowskifest and feeling guilty about spending money we didn't have on another trip for the book... it came. I tore it open. And called Turner. We were both able to sleep properly for the first time in months. If any of my readers have some kind of philosophical stand against government funding for the arts, you are personally invited to leave the blog right now and never come back. All hail the Canada Council.

And that kind of brings us to the present. That's what we did when I wasn't posting.

Categories: Ash | Calgary | Family | Married Life | Mom-ness
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Gar! Gar! Gar!

It's the first free moment I've had in weeks, so I was checking out the features on my 'new' computer, one of which is called "Photo Booth". I LOVE THIS THING.

Hee!

Categories: Ash
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Hairy Mama

All my life, I've had a lot of hair. I've never had to worry about my hair the way many women (most women?) worry about their hair. I don't dye it or primp it or frost it or cut it or mess around with highlights/hot oil/colouring. The stuff that grows out of my head is thick and shiny and a nice hue (and still mostly brown), and it's pretty cooperative as hair goes.

I went through the whole hairspray-the-hell-out-of-your-bangs phase in junior high of course, and I ill-advisedly doused my head in peroxide one summer (result: orange) but once I had that out of my system me and the hair arrived at a good place. During university I cut my own hair, using pinking shears and a rather haphazard approach which involved hunting around for split ends and chopping them off. To the ongoing horror of friends who staked their egos in their hairdos, I often had mismatched lengths and pieces hanging every which way. Now that I'm older I do get my hair cut "properly" every 8 or 10 months. I sit in the chair and say, "cut off anything that's dead, even if I lose length. And please layer it a bit". I condition it with a fancy Redken product that comes in a gold-ish bottle, and I rarely, if ever, use a blowdrier. And through this rigorous regimen of upkeep... voila, the hair abides.

Having a lot of hair, it's logical that a lot of hair falls out. And my hair being long, the hair falling out is... also long. Most people lose hair to their brush on a regular basis, and everybody finds stray hairs periodically, stuck to clothing and sprinked across the bathroom floor. But me, I lose pounds of hair. Always have, everywhere. Back in high school my best friend Margaret used to find my hair all over the place, even in her house - she'd seemingly carry it home from school on her clothes and it would end up in her room even if I hadn't been over in months. I loved her "Aaaaaughhh!" yell and subsequent getitoff!getitoff! flail when she'd find one of my hairs in her pencil case or in her backpack. (Margaret's hair was, I should add, blonde and quite short in high school. There was no mistaking my random hairs for hers.) There was really nothing I could do about it - I brushed my hair morning and night, I mostly wore it tied up. That some of the hair would flee my head and end up in other people's books and lockers was simply beyond my control. I could live with the situation knowing that any hair of mine that people found on their person was, at least, clean.

When Mum and Mike were last visiting here on Spiller Road, I was petting their new puppy Beau and commented on the shedding. How, when Pony left us, one of the actually nice things was that we didn't have to deal with dog hair all over the place anymore. Then Val pipes up, "Dogs? You think DOGS shed? I'll tell you that YOU shed, my dear. Worse than any dog! Every time you come to my house I spend the next week picking your hair off my clothing and vaccuming it out of the rug! ...You should talk. Dogs! Bah!" And, yeah, she's right.

Cleaning up my own hair is part of my everyday routine. I don't really think about it much anymore. I find hairballs under the bed and in corners, and not just a few times have I had to take apart bathroom drains to fix a clog caused by my hair. And due to the sheer volume, inevitably I miss a lot of it, so if you come to my house even 12 hours after I've vaccumed and you drop something on the floor, I guarantee it'll come back up covered in my hair. I'm sorry, but that's the way it is. I can't keep the house hair-free - I wouldn't be able to hold down a job, and I wouldn't sleep. God has granted me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, in this case.

Now, a few weeks ago, Sloane started noticing my free-range hair. She'd seen it before, on the floor and stuck to her clothes, but it's started to actually bother her recently when she finds my hair wrapped around her fingers or clinging to her shirt. We shower together in the mornings: she sits on the floor pouring water between cups and playing with her model hippopotamus, and I stand above. Inevitably I have soap in my face when my hair makes its first attack and I hear the Uuuuuuh! UUUUUUUUGHHHH! and the sounds of Sloane flinging her hands around, trying to shake off strands of my hair stuck to her wet skin.

I should mention that it doesn't look like Sloane has inherited my hair. Hers is a bit curly at the back, but otherwise it's blonde and wispy, tangly, and unfamiliar. Brucio and I look at her hair and we roll our eyes: Obviously not Bristowe hair. 

So it falls to me instead to teach Sloane to chill out about my hair, since it's a fact of life - my life, and the life of anyone who spends any time anywhere near me - that my hair is going to be around, waiting to pounce. We can't have her freaking out on a thrice-daily basis when my non-attached hair floats onto her toys or lap. We've started teaching her: That's Mama's haaaaaaair. She says it back to us: Ah-Mama haaaaaaair! I show her how to stick it to the shower curtain (for post-shower collection and removal). I show her how to ball it up between her hands and roll it into a little knot, to throw away. I always put a big smile on my face and lift the hair off her clothes and gently drop it to the floor, watching it fall. Because that's the way it is. I'm not shaving my head, and so we all have to live with the hair - even Sloaner.

Categories: Ash | House | Sloane
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The Canada Council Application

For those of you who have not had the pleasure of being grant-seekers in the arts, let me tell you all about it in a word: hell.

No, not really. But it's a damn sight more difficult than "easy". I write lots of grant applications, but the Canada Council ones always carry the extra anxiety. First off, they're the big money. And furthermore, if you've got a CC grant on your resume, you're pretty golden for the next few years in terms of applying to other funders. Everyone likes to see that Canada Council stamp of approval. So there's extra pressure to win.

I should mention that not necessarily everything Canada Council funds is 'good' (but that's just, like, my opinion, man), or that all good artists are funded by the Canada Council. Turner was turned down on his first CC application back in 2002, even though he'd won 7 National Magazine Awards and was in the process of negotiating his Planet Simpson book deal. We're waiting to hear on this year's application - c'mon, Canada Council! Sloaner needs a new pair of... everything! Canada Council, hear our prayer.

On Friday, I applied to Canada Council for the first time, in the category of Visual Arts - Photography. There are 160 grants that go out in this category, which also includes painting, printmaking, etc. I think they receive application numbers in the many thousands. I am not "art school" trained, so I don't fit the typical applicant photographer profile. One of the questions was, "To which aesthetic or cultural tradition does your work belong?" I answered, "Um, I am self-taught and work alone, so I really don't have a fancy answer for you... maybe I'll have a good answer for you next year, if you fund me?"

It's really killer to pick which photos will go in to represent you. You can only send 15. The project I proposed for funding involves energy-efficient housing and other forms of 'alternative' building techniques in Ontario & BC, and the people who build and work in these houses. So I had to send in some architecture and sustainability stuff. But you also have to demonstrate your range, I think. And you have to make sure they perceive you as sufficiently "arty" or damned if you'll squeeze even a drop of cash from that crown corp. So picking the final fifteen is a challenge, to be sure.

I've put my shortlist and finalists here - peruse at will.

Categories: Ash | Work work work
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Mr. Vicious Goes To The Cat Show

Well, I was thrilled when Shelley over at Swerve said she'd take my cat show story. I'd been obsessed with the idea of taking Rooney to compete at the Southern Alberta Cat Fancier's fall cat show for a few months, and wanted to find some way to fund it. (Attending a cat show as a participant/competitor/exhibitor is not a cheap pastime!) Initially I thought Rooney, my wee household purebred Abyssinian, might win a ribbon or two that we could hang in the back hallway. But when he hit the first ring it was clear that things were going to go a bit differently than I'd planned. Basically, he went insane and attacked everyone - me, the judges, and the head of the international cat fancier's association. And he earned himself a nickname among the other competitors: Mr. Vicious.

And that's what made the story.

I won't lie to you - I'm floored: a six-page feature, a cover article plus a teaser on the Calgary Herald's front newspaper banner! Sixteen photos total, in the feature and scattered through the rest of the issue, all shot by me. And I daresay that you'll laugh at the story. Yes, I'm predicting that you'll chuckle at my little tale. It's funny.



First page of the article: Rooney looking piiiiiiiiiiissssed off.



One of the photo pages - the cat jewelery and other scenes.

The Swerviettes did an absolutely inspired and spectacular job of this issue - there are dozen tiny details that were carefully handled and finessed. The editing of my piece, done by Executive Editor Jacquie Moore, was marvellous. A nuanced hand, she is a writer's editor, the best kind. My huge thanks for taking a piece I thought was finished and making it even better! Bundle of thanks!

Swerve comes free in the Friday Calgary Herald - and next week marks the start of the Ashley-Turner-Koentges collaboration on the weekly Eats & Drinks columns... more info to follow. But for now: chase down those covers with the orange cat licking his chops!


Full text below:

Okay, I admit it. I thought our cat had a shot at winning the big ribbon at Calgary's fall cat show. I thought he was maybe even a contender for first prize. I wasn't at all prepared for the disqualifications, and I certainly didn't think he'd attach me -- or the head of The International Cat Association. None of it went according to plan, not in the slightest. But let me explain.

A year ago we acquired a purebred Abyssinian kitten, and named him Rooney. He's a friendly little imp who shamelessly helps himslef to my morning granola, and he's a fanaticaly fan of fetch played with tossed paper clips. But most of all, he's gorgeous. Giant amber eyes and huge bat-like ears. Plus, the Abyssinian coat is "ticked", which means that Rooney actually seems to glow from within, as though he's irridescent. The kind of cat you'd see and think to yourself, "I bet he could win first prize in a cat show that handsome devil."

I heard about the fall Southern Alberta Cat Fanciers' Show over the internet and was immediately intrigued. Judges would be coming from across Canada, the US, and Europe; upwards of 125 cats would compete. Certainly Rooney would prove fancier than 124 of them. And wouldn't a nice "Top Cat" laurel look perfect hangin in the back hall above the litter box?

So, at a much-too-early hour on the last Saturday in October, I unceremoniously stuffed a befuddled and half-asleep Rooney face-first into his carrier and zoomed off to the Ogden Legion Hall -- our home for the next two days of competition at the fall championship cat show.

A cat-show neophyte, I arrived with some preconceived notions. Would it be a bunch of eccentric cat-ladies feeding their babies crushed caviar with infant spoons? Or would it be mean and brutally competitive – a hierarchy of bitchy breeders elbowing out the competition with poisoned mouse toys? I just didn’t know. And it didn't matter, for in the days and weeks leading up to the show I had but one simple, lingering fantasy that involved Rooney collecting a bevy of fancy ribbons. How wrong I was.

We arrived at the hall around 7:45am and I found our assigned “bench” in the way-back far corner, next to the fire exit and the kitty litter station. After setting up his cage I put a now hissing and decidedly cranky Rooney inside and taped on the sign I'd printed that morning: “My name is Rooney Roo! I am a red male Abyssinian. This is my first show!” Though ridiculously naïve in retrospect, the sign gave me a strange sense of satisfaction at the time. I’d gotten the idea from a website discussing ‘show hall etiquette’ which suggested preparing a sign because otherwise you’d spend half the time explaining your cat’s breed to the general public attending the show. I also wanted the competition to know Rooney was a newbie, an innocent first-timer, which would, of course, make the pile of ribbons he'd garner that much more enviable.

From our vantage point near the kitty litter we could see the whole exhibitor’s hall laid out before us: rows and rows of tables topped with identical wire cages. Some of the seriously serious breeders buy up whole rows of benching and have photos and new kittens on display in elaborate customized fabric benching ‘condos’ with zip-fronts and fuzzy beds. Circling the outer hall walls are the rings where the actual judging part of the show goes down: tables with raised judging platforms, surrounded by unadorned judging cages and overseen by small teams of earnest young people responsible for the vital clean-up after each round. And at each end of the hall, the vendors: cat toys, cat jewelry, enormous scratching-post-trees, cat carrier bags, cat picture fames, cat blankets, cat mugs, cat pins, cat hats, cat pencil jars, cat slippers, and pretty much anything else you could possibly festoon with the image of a cat. As well, ther ewas a booth advertising cat cremation & funeral services. for planning types. Indeed, at five bucks for a daylong gander at this subculture spectacle, I'd say it was the cheapest wholesome entertainment in town.

By 9:30am the whole hall was a flurry of activity. Judging began in the rings, and the room echoed with cryptic announcements from the PA system. Exhibitors walked their cats back and forth through the rows, or elaborately wiped them down with special gloves and combs designed to eliminate static. I did my best to fit in, pulling out a grooming brush (used not even half a dozen times) and went to work on Rooney’s luxurious ginger coat. The nice lady running the nearby raffle table told me I would have to take off the cat’s collar for the judging, so I did – revealing a bald ring around his neck that wouldn’t brush out.

While we waited for Rooney's turn in the ring, I took a tour of the hall myself, sneaking covetous glances at the giant wall displays of satiny, shiny, riotously coloured ribbons. They numbered for places all the way down to “Tenth Best”. Surely, I figured, Rooney was at least tenth best in some Byzantine category or other. Most of the time, though, I sat there beside the cage, periodically flipping through the workbook-like “show guide”, which seemed to be a collection of pages full of acronyms and other jibberish, incomprehensible aside from the advertisements. I was a bit confused about how to know where and when to take Rooney for judging, though I’d been told that I should just listen to the PA for an announcement. I missed it, of course. The raffle table lady must have been keeping a watchful eye because suddenly she came running down the aisle, waving and pointing at the ceiling. “That’s you! That’s you!” Instantly nervous, I yanked open the cage, pulled out my cat, and went shuffling down toward Ring 4.

Rooney hissed and struggled as I jammed him into the appointed cage at the judging ring – a mild portent, as it turned out, of the storm to come. I wasn’t completely surprised – cats don’t think much of each other when they’re strangers, and now he was under unfriendly flickery fluorescents and within easy earshot of his rivals. As I settled into a chair to watch the judging, Rooney and a cat in a nearby cage faced off with a big round of back-arching, tail-puffing, and yowling. And then suddenly it was Rooney’s turn.

As the judge approached his cage, Rooney spat and moaned, and when she tried to pick him up he swiped at her. Unfazed, the judge asked for his owner to put him on the judging bench. I leapt up and went to his cage, and reached in to get my cat. That’s when the kitty litter hit the fan. It happened so quickly I can’t recall all the details, but I remember that it sounded just like a cartoon cat fight, complete with bouncing-off-the-inside-of-the-cage reverberations and caterwauling screeches.

Welts rising up my forearm and bite marks on my fingers, I scanned the crowd. The people I’d met that morning were politely averting their eyes from our disgrace. To buy time, I pulled down my sweater sleeve and pondered my next move. I was pretty sure that most prize cats don’t attack their owners, in the ring, right in front of the judges. Visions of Rooney winning ‘Best In Show’ were definitely fading… though somewhere north of “Tenth Best” still seemed within reach.

The judge saw through my thin veneer of calm immediately. "You didn’t expect this, did you?" she said in a broad Texas drawl. I shook my head, at a loss for words. Rooney was doing that deep-pitched feline warning growl, tail swishing, eyeing me from a corner of the cage. "It’s his first show?” she asked. I nodded. She leaned in. "Now, don’t you let him win," she warned, voice low, pointing at Rooney. "This is a control game for him. I’ll judge him if you get him to the table. But don’t you let him think he can just have a temper tantrum and that’s it. If you give in, he wins. You’re the boss. You show him."

I turned back to the cage to find Rooney clawing at the ceiling bars, hissing. Where was the lovely cat that follows me around the house, the affectionate little bug who watches over my workday from the windowsill? He’d been replaced by a crazed, judge-hating lunatic. I didn’t know this cat.

I grabbed at Rooney a few more times, trying to get him back in the game. I wanted that ribbon. Even tenth place would be – swipe –  just – bite – fine at this point - screech, backflip out of my grasp. After a minute or two it was clear that we were holding up the competition and that Rooney was definitely not going to allow himself to be judged. "I’m going to withdraw him from this ring," I told the officiants, and our judge nodded.  I made a blind final grab with both hands at once and managed to get Rooney by the face and tail. With that hold I yanked him out of the judging cage, pinned his head under my armpit, and hurried back to our bench with whatever phlegmy furball of dignity he and I had left. I was suddenly very glad to be exiled at the far end of the show hall, beyond the curious gazes of the more experienced exhibitors.

Initially, it seemed to mark the end of our brief cat show career. In the melée Rooney had somehow torn a significant chunk of fur from his own head. He’d also split a nail. And now he was stalking around the cage, hissing disgustedly at fifteen second intervals and clawing at any attempt I made to pet him. I spent about ten minutes wondering what to do with the rest of my weekend, now that my whole flawless plan of winning the big show prize was clearly shot all to hell.

However, to my enormous surprise, however, it soon became clear that I wasn’t expected to leave. Even better, people started coming by the bench to give advice and buck me up. It happens to everyone, they said. Some cats just take time to get used to the overlit pressures of the show hall, they said. Many of them suggested that I walk Rooney through the aisles and past the judges a few times before the next ring, to give him a chance to get used to the smells of the other cats. The next ring? Like I was going to go through all that again? On the other hand, I’d paid the show’s steep entry fee, and there were still two days and fifteen rings to go.

Halfway around the hall on our first "orientation" tour, I started hearing greetings from the crowd: "Hello Mr. Vicious! How are you today, sir?" and "Oooh, lookout! It’s Mr. Vicious! Get ’im, tiger! Grrr!"

People were coming up to greet Rooney directly, not looking at me at all. With just one appearance, Rooney had managed to earn himself a nickname and something of a following among the other competitors. By the time we got back to the bench, I was laughing to myself and willing to give him another shot.

After several hours of constant petting, playing, and other forms of bribery, Rooney chilled out a bit. He was immediately disqualified from four of the next seven rings for hissing and scratching at the adjudicators, but he did win first in his division in every ring that didn’t disqualify him. Granted, he was the only cat in his division (Abyssinian “alters” – which means he’s been ‘fixed’, i.e. doesn’t have his… ‘equipment’ anymore). Unfortunately, it’s just a designation that doesn’t come with any take-home prizes.

Still, Mr. Vicious seemed to be winning an unofficial popularity contest. He was the punk-rock demon of the show, hissing and sputtering while the fêted champions lazed around placidly, gently pawing at feather toys and allowing themselves to be manhandled by the judges. By the time of his final ring show mid-day on Sunday, people were coming to see Rooney the way crowds used to flock to see the Sex Pistols, wondering what stunt he’d pull this time on the judging table. And let it not be said that Mr. Vicious let his fans down.

But Rooney’s last ring started out as one of his best. The calm at the eye of the storm, as it turned out. I’d taken to scruffing him (clutching the neck fur below the cat’s ears) as a control measure, and bringing him to the ring just in time to be put directly on the judging table. As I set him down in front of the benevolent Texan judge for this final contest, she also scruffed him and began telling the assembled gawkers what a long way Rooney had come since his first ring the day before. I allowed myself a moment of what turned out to be hubristic pride in my troubled boy. Things seemed to be going just fine, I thought. Finally.

And that’s when Rooney made his move. I was taking photos like a proud parent as it went down: he flopped on his back, working himself into position for his final volley of spite. The judge managed to maintain her hold on him for a few more seconds as my cat rolled around figuring out the best angle for his finale. But then Rooney exploded, becoming what can only be described as a flying ball of fur, teeth and claws. I learned later that our nice Texan lady judge is the head of TICA, the international cat fancier’s association. When my cat decided it was finally time to go completely batshit insane, he did so by attacking the highest ranking official in the cat fancier’s world, and with his whole fan club looking on.

To my horror, Rooney managed to fight his way out of the judge’s expert grip, and escaped down onto the floor. Immediately, calls went up throughout the crowd: "CAT OUT: SHUT THE DOORS!", from which I took a nanosecond's consolation that it wasn't the first time this sort of thing had happened. As I scrambled around the tables and under the displays in pursuit, I heard the fire doors slamming closed one after another at the other end of the hall. Judging came to a halt in the other rings and the whole show went quiet, hundreds of people now waiting on the recapture of my cat. A nice Singapura breeder from Lethbridge came out of the crowd to offer to hold my camera equipment so I could better throw myself around corners trying to nab Rooney in mid-escape. Others were scurrying around, calling out updates: "He went this way! He’s under there!" - until the PA boomed, "PLEASE LET THE OWNER OF THE CAT CATCH THE CAT." Finally, over near one of the cages belonging to a particularly snobby Russian breeder, I managed to grab hold of Rooney’s hind legs from between some chairs and haul him into my arms. He was not pleased. But by then, neither was I. Not. At. All.

"Thank you, I’ve got him!" I announced to no one in particular. Some cheers went up from his fans back at the ring at the far end of the room, but I knew it was time to thank the crowd, turn out the lights and head home. Owner and pet marched back to our bench, our disgrace now complete.

After retrieving my camera, I went around to the remaining rings, striking Rooney’s name from the rest of the judging rosters. "You’re wise to know when to call it quits," said one judge who’d seen the whole great escape sideshow. I made a special effort to thank the judge from Texas, who’d been exceedingly kind and understanding about everything. "Some cats just hate the cat show,” she said, rubbing a fresh welt on her wrist. "Yours, I’m afraid, is one of them….But he’s a good pet, isn’t he?" I nodded. "Sure he is," she continued. "You take him home and love him, y’hear? He’s a good one, got lots of fight in him." She paused. "But don’t show him anymore." I promised I wouldn’t.

And with that, I packed up our stuff, dumped out the kitty litter, and took Rooney on a final tour to say goodbye to his fans. And then we hightailed it out of there, nary a ribbon on the cat carrier, and never again to darken the door of the competitive cat show world with the ominous shadow of… Mr. Vicious.

Categories: Ash | Calgary | Rooney | Work work work
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Carpal Tunnel Syndro... Fffffffuck You!

In case you don't know me, the title has a very tenuous tie to the fine film, A Fish Called Wanda. Kevin Kline's character has to apologize to John Cleese's, and he's in massive denial that he's done anything wrong, so he only gets to the "I'm very very very ssssss...." before it pivots and becomes, "ssss...Ffffffuck you!" So, you know, I'm not just being vulgar. I'm in denial about the carpal tunnel syndrome, so I'm also being funny, see?

It's been a sad and hard week. Nanny died on Saturday, as my previous post would suggest. There have been a lot of long weeks in the last few months, but this was one of the longest. I love my portrait studio job, but the place is understaffed and a few of the people who do work there shouldn't be out inflicting their brand of antisocial craziness on the public at large. Which is to say, we're very busy, and I haven't been fully trained yet, and some of my co-workers don't make it easy to do your job as part of a "team". I love the clients, though. Can't beat working with all sorts of different children for very short bursts of time. I've been sent agog by the success rate of the ol' "ah boo-boo-boo-boo?" thing you do in babies faces that makes them smile. You'd think they'd catch on.

But yeah, it's been a long week at "work"-work, being the portrait studio. I end up staying late every day because it feels inhumane to leave my colleagues facing that sea of people in the waiting room. And the freelance gigs are wonderful, but they involve a lot of driving and in some cases trying to deal with powertripping building superintendants who refuse to help me do the job their employer has scheduled them to help me with. For example.

Plus I'm working on this film with Connacher, chase producing the India segment of the documentary. It's been great fun and there's just about nothing I love more than cold-calling people who will, once they give you a second to pitch them, be very interested in what you have to say. I. Love. It. So that's been great, but India's 12.5 hours ahead of Calgary. Which means that to get anyone coherent on the telephone, I have to work at night. It's been 2am every night this week before I go to bed.

But these are pretty straightforward realities in life. Suck it up, right? But see, in the midst of all this I was dealing with a (very) sudden affliction by carpal tunnel syndrome. Yes, seriously. I used to think this was a bogus condition for bored office workers. For someone who is typety-typing on the computer as much as me, I figured that if carpal tunnel was real I would have been struck by it yeeeeeeeears ago. That said, I've always been very careful about my wrists and I tip the keyboard down and forward as much as I can, and I shake my hands out regularly, etc. I wasn't going to tempt fate, you know.

Well, fate found its own way in because on the weekend I started getting a serious tingling in my hands. The middle and fourth fingers on both hands were almost completely numb - a lack of sensation to the point where it started to become clear that I could very probably seriously hurt myself and sincerely not notice until I'd tracked blood all over the kitchen or something. I was waking up in the night with my forearms buzzing, and I couldn't get back to sleep. For whatever reason, a few days ago it tapered off a bit in my right hand, but my left still feels 90% anaesthetized. So on Thursday I went to the doctor because lord knows if I have MS or a crazy pinched nerve in my shoulder or something I want to know about it right now.

She listened to my list of symptoms and suggested that I get a neurological test done by a specialist (scratching out referral sheet), suggested that I get some wrist braces.... and told me that I was displaying classic carpal tunnel syndrome. That depending on the test results I might have surgery as an option. But that otherwise it was generally a chronic condition and most people just learn to live with it.

If you can help it, I recommend against developing carpal tunnel syndrome. My usual approach to health stuff goes more in the attempting a stiff upper lip direction. But with this, I'm very cranky about it all. Can't type very well. Have to wear these stupid arm braces that scare the younger kids at the photo studio. Am still waking up with buzzing arms, and my fingers are still numb.

What I don't understand is why there was no lead-up. A week ago everything was fine. Proudly able to type 65wpm. Could trust my left hand to be able to correctly assess the temperature of the shower before I hopped in. Was able to do up my belt without looking. Etcetera. But over the course of about 24 hours, wham: the end of sensation in my hands as I'd always previously known it.

Suggestions?

 

Categories: Ash
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India On The Brain

I'm pining for the fjords. Or for the "Relax" stoplights. ...Something.

First off, I should come clean and tell you that for the last five months or so I've been scheming to get myself to India again this year. Yes, again. Tamil Nadu in February just didn't sate my India thirst this year, I'm afraid, the Chennai airport bathrooms notwithstanding. ...Mainly it's that Angad and Tara are getting married in what will certainly be the awesomest most Punjabi-and-Jewish-est wedding ever, anywhere, on earth, and the festivities begin at the end of November and go clear on through the first week of December. I want to go to that wedding. So. Much.

But we's broke. Most people don't pay us in any kind of "prompt" manner. Although we have done our work and people rave lovely feedback at us and we've invoiced them long ago, many decide, for example, that they're going to pay until June next year. And if we don't like it, tough titties (you know who you are). Imagine working, but some arbitrary and unexpected decision suddenly sets your paycheque back 9 months. I'm not talking about being paid poorly. I'm talking about NOT BEING PAID for months and months. A perfect shitstorm of unethical jackass behaviour of this sort from various people has set us back tremendously this year. Even now we're owed more than $10K in outstanding invoices. Can you dig that? I can't. It's beyond me to dig, at this point. All I know is that we have a new toilet flushing policy to conserve water (the ol' "if it's yellow, let it mellow/if it's brown, flush it down"), and we're on our fifteenth straight day of rice & beans. A few weeks ago I took some books on Quaker frugal living out of the library to look for ideas.

Anyway, recently I realized I probably wasn't going to be flying out to Angad's wedding at the end of the month. Paying the mortgage and the daycare bill and keeping up with our car payments alone has been impossible without some outside assistance (thank you thank you, you too know who you are). Soooooo.... yeah. It's really NO time to be putting a couple thousand dollars on the credit card.

But this month the whole universe seems to be conspiring to make me live and breathe India all the time. Thaba and Phet are currently in Delhi scoping out their new digs and I'm following them around the city through Thab's update emails, sighing as we whiz through Jor Bagh and shop at Fab India. John Johnston is on assignment in Bangalore, and I'm following his southern India adventures via his blog. Then I got a gig with a lovely prominent Ismaili Calgarian running for mayor next year, and he and I have been singing along to Kuch Kuch Hota Hai during the photo shoots and comparing notes on where to eat in Old Delhi (my vote, as always, goes to Karim's near Jama Masjid). Our friends Bauer and Karen are finally in India (Varanasi-Delhi-Rajasthan-south) after nine months on the road in Asia, and we've been emailing back and forth, comparing stories and travel advice. Then Ian Connacher & Cryptic Moth brought me on as the production coordinator for the upcoming India leg of the film schedule (check out their recent stuff out in the Pacific ocean aboard a Greenpeace ship, here: www.crypticmoth.com), so I spend my evenings chasing cool plastics leads on the Subcontinent, putting in long-distance calls to lovely erudite Indian friends-of-friends to get ideas and suggestions, and to book them onto the doc's itinerary.

And of course there's Angad's wedding. Let's face it, you get to attend very few great, grand weddings in life. You know, the sort where you look at the couple and think, YEAH. These are soulmates. Aside from the hoopla of this mixed-race mixed-religion wedding that's going to involve chartered busses to bring everyone from Part 1 (Chandigarh) to Part 2 (Delhi), I love Angad, and everything about he and Tara has been right, and good, and solid from the word go. I am so proud of him and pleased for him. I am grieving not being able to be there. It's been good to feel so connected to India again these last few weeks, but it's also just so tantalizingly close.

Back to work, Khabi Khushi Khabi Gham in the headphones...

Categories: Ash | Friends | India
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It's My Birthday!

Hurray, BIRTHDAY! I am 33 years old today.

The plan includes the morning run clinic, starting my DVD-based Photoshop tutorial course (everyone deserves to learn software on their special day), and in the evening an arrangement for homemade pizza followed by a movie at a real movie theatre whilst Grampa Brucio babysits the SloanerBaloner! Whoot!

Categories: Ash
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Shameless Self-Promotion Friday Fun!

Categories: Ash | Work work work
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A Short List Of Sh*t Going Down 'Round Here, Y'all

Let me preface this post by stating that, of late, we've been working batshit insane hours. Sloane started playschool last week (Turner found a daycare nearby that had a spot: I'd say more, but I get too mad about the whole situation. Suffice it to say that she's got a spot, not the one we wanted, but it's a nice place and it's close) and since the moment we first dropped her off it has been go go go go go.

Contracts ahoy: thanks to recommendations provided by the ever-lovely Alexis Bahry, I've been running around on architectural shoots for the last two weeks, taking photos of buildings in Midnapore and Cochrane and southeast Calgary. These being my first forays into industrial work, I've got The Fear. (Hell of a motivator.) When the weather forecasts are incorrect, I have anxiety attacks. You may be aware that in recent years the tv meteorologists are basically making shit up, right? You should see my blood pressure.

Turner and Koentges and I have been negotiating a collaborative contract that we can't really talk about just yet, except this: they'd do alternating biweekly pieces, and I'd do the photography for both. The idea was proposed to us back in August by an editor we all love. We've been at the negotiating table for nine weeks, sending samples and shooting head shots and mainly asking every so often what's going on, since we as the "talent" remain mostly in the dark while the money people talk to each other. Turner and Koentges and I could really use the income, if you dig, and boy, we were salivating at the prospect of "being paid properly" as per the original terms of the pitch. ...But suddenly, yesterday, the deal started skating on thin ice. We're not sure why. It's not over yet, but it's been stressful. We still don't know what's going on.

LOST is finally back on television, thank god.

Turner's in the second round of a pitch for a big American magazine that we've all heard of. The editor has given him guidelines for the re-write and once this new draft goes in he'll take it to the editorial board with his recommendation. Turner's been slaving over the fifteenth draft of the thing for a few days, and starts to sweat whenever I bring it up. If they take this piece, it could save our year and make Turner's name in the US. Cross yer feckin fingers for us.

In more plebian news, I applied for a job at a well-known department store photo studio, and got it. At $12.50/hr it's not the hottest job in this market, but the next stage for me is learning a lot more about studio lighting and I'd rather be paid than have tuition for a course come out of my pocket. It'll be mostly babies and families. I start training next week.

I smashed a veddy expensive lens. I had rented it to do some extra-snazzy photos on the weekend, and I dropped it. For any of you Nikon fans out there, it was the AF-S Nikkor 17-55mm 1:2.8G. ...Yeah. It retails for almost $2K. Accidents happen, sure. And the ever-amazing Kevin of the Calgary Vistek rental department was supportive and nice about it, but in the end I have to pay for the damage (of course), and we won't know the repair bill for about a week. So I'll just shit my pants until then, if that's ok with you.   

John and Fifi are pregnant. Not that we've seen them yet in person since the news was announced, but hopefully things with them are well. In the midst of the rest of all this: Congratulations, Mr. & Mrs. Bristowe of Mackenzie Towne SE!

The doors. They're not in, yet. Stephanie and Mike have shouted themselves hoarse at the Totem down in Midnapore, to no avail. We don't know what's happening, except that all of western Canada is in a labour-and-supplies deadlock because of the black hole of the tar sands up in Fort Mac. Resources and energy and time and money and people from all across the country are inexorably sucked into the gravity of Fort McMurray's economy, and we can only assume that our doors have ended up there, along with everything else. We're getting set to seal the back and side doorframes with insulating plastic to keep out the "winter".

I joined the "Learn to Run" clinic at the Running Room with Alexis. I am not in shape, anymore. I come in last. Okay, not quite last as in absolutely the last person, but I'm always among the last 3 or 4 people to finish. I can't run the 2:1 (two minutes running to one minute walking) and at today's run we move on to the 3:1. I enjoy the running clinic in retrospect each week, but during the running clinic I have a rough time. I feel like a big wobbly sausage. Y'all, nobody wants to feel like a big wobbly sausage.

The Canada Council application. It went in, at the beginning of October. All of you out there in internet land who've done a CC application know the pain of which I speak, here. The tension, the meticulous detail-checking, the taking everything down to the post office and insuring the hell out of the purolator envelope because damn, that pile o' paper is potentially worth thousands and thousands of dollars if the stars allign correctly: yeah, that. 

I've been assigned to do photos on a story Turner's writing about urban sprawl. Which means that I'm chasing around town trying to find shots that can properly illustrate the piece, but without falling back on the typical pictures of identical houses or traffic jams. I'm finding myself picturing various scenes I'd like to shoot, all of which would necessitate the hiring of models. I don't have the budget for models, and I've mentioned about how the weather forecasts are total guesswork, so there's no certainty that I could even use the models on any given day if I actually did hire them. As an M.Sc. in Planning I'm also feeling professional pressure on this shoot to produce a set that's absolutely spectacular... or at least something I can send back to my advisor at Guelph with a post-it attached: "I know my thesis sucked, but check this out". Last night I was roaring around northwest Calgary at midnight in the fog, getting lost in the swirly cul-de-sacs of Royal Oak. Please. Please. Please help me find the decisive moment somewhere out here in suburbia. I have four days left.

And, the best for last: Out of the blue this week Brucio invested in my burgeoning photography business with the surprise purchases of a Nikon D200 and a new Mac powerbook. From whence the provenance of these gifts come is beyond me, but lord knows we do not look the Brucio gift horse in the schnoz. Thank you, Brucio!

 

Categories: Ash | Calgary | Work work work
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Feeling The Weight

I tell you, I would be a hella lot slenderrrererr if we lived in Toronto. I forgot how much you can walk to if, say, the city has been designed so you don't necessarily need a car to get around. Yesterday I walked and walked and WALKED and walked all around downtown Toronto doing errands, with Sloane in the backpack yelling at the streetcars ("STEEEET-CARRRR!"). It was great. At the end I was fricken exhausted.

And in Antigonish, I walked and walked and walked, because we were close to downtown, and it was just plain lazy to take the car most places. Even though we live in the "inner city" of Calgary, our community is still pretty spread out, and it's still a long hike to anything resembling a commercial district. I miss all that ambient exercise that used to pervade my life. In Calgary I consciously try to make up for it by taking the stairs, and doing lots of gardening. But it's just not the same, really.  

 

Categories: Ash
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Thankful Musings

 

Sloane also sez "Thanks!"

 

Categories: Ash | Ontario  | Work work work
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Eastern Pilgrimage 2006: Part II

Otherwise it's brunch fun with Toronto folks and waiting for Thab's new baby to make her debut.

September 6th (Wednesday): Turner heads home to Calgary to start writing the book.

September 7th/8th (Thurs/Fri): Ash and Sloane head to Montreal by train. The first 1-2 nights we'll crash with Cousin Viki, and on Friday we head over to the House of Hot Sauce.

We head through Gatineau and then on to Kingston, to swim in Buck Lake and carouse at Queen's Homecoming, before heading back to Toronto on September 17th. We get a few more days in the Big TO, to paw at the new Sayo and click pictures with pals and wish everyone a happy fall, before Sloane and I return to Calgary on Thursday September 21st.

 

Categories: Ash | Canadiana
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Tidal Bore Rafting: Unboring!

Even if you know me well, you might not know how much I love rafting. Mostly I like white water river rafting where you get to paddle and be involved, but I'l take most kinds of being-on-a-boat-in-waves nearly at par. I've rafted in Canada (the Kicking Horse and Slocan rivers), India (doo-dee-doo'ing down the Indus in Ladakh), and Nepal (some famous yip-yip-yeehaw river northwest of Kathmandu), and if I had lots of money rafting would be my 'extreme' sport of choice. I'd have my own monogrammed lifejacket and a selection of fancy lightweight paddles, if you know what I mean.

For a few summers now, I've looked into rafting in Nova Scotia, which the internet will tell you mainly takes place on rivers off the Bay of Fundy that experience the tidal bore. It never worked out in the past, but his year, I mashed the river rafting onto our agenda, rounded up the husband and the brother-in-law and the nephew, and off we went to conquor the Shubenacadie River near Truro (home of the highest tides in the world!).

Here's my homemade postcard from the adventure:

Dig my yellow nor'easter slicker, eh?

Lots more rafting and other Nova Scotia photos are up on my Flickr account. (If you're looking for info on companies who run the bore, lookee here.)

 

Categories: Ash | Canadiana | Nova Scotia
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Bottle Wall

I got all in a lather at the Earthship seminar in Taos, inspired by the bottle walls. Sure, the concept of Earthships in general was FABULOUSLY inspiring, but time consuming and with an inherent, serious time and money investment. An idea at least five years off for us, at this stage. Someday: our Kootenay Earthship retreat. Or maybe in Antigonish if the entire current city council is hit by a meteor. But nowadays? It's Ramsay until further notice.  

However - just a bottle wall? C'mon! Collect a buncha bottles, set 'em in mortar, and voila. I've got a pretty ghetto yard where anything goes, and any moron can erect a bottle wall if they really want to, right? ...Well, this moron is going to try. In the Spiller Road yard, no less.

First off, like any good artist/planner, I figured I'd "work with the materials" to get a feel for bottles as an artistic-architecturo medium. So I thought a border for the garden would be a good start.

(photo to come of initial bottle border)

Ah. Working on the first border in the location where our carport will eventually be erected in the fall taught me a few lessons. Said lessons:

1) Take labels off bottles

2) Put a time-consuming bottle border in an area of your yard where you are not going to have to tear it out in less than three months

With these new ideas in hand, I selected an area of the front garden where I'd been digging up the grass and sod, with the intention of putting in a shade periwinkle garden a la Sharron & Mary's front yard on Major St. in the Annex. I had a leftover plastic runner in place from the previous jackasses who owned this house, but it was thence jettisoned to make room for the bottle border.

I collected bottles from our own leftovers, Brother John's recycling pile, and through direct recruitment of a few neighbours and friends. In waves as they came in, I soaked the bottles to loosen the labels, and scraped and scrubbed and brushed them clean and anonymously shiny.

This is just a few days before Brother John's wedding - I'm trying out the dress I eventually wore to the rehearsal dinner as I scrape the labels from this night's load of bottles.

Then I dried the bottles in a rather general way by laying them in the yard, near the pre-determined shallow trench where they'd be inserted into the ground.

Akin to drunken gardening, drunken bottle border construction is an equally fulfilling late-nite undertaking when you're a parent of (a) young kid(s).

Photo of finished bottle wall to come!

Categories: Ash | Calgary | House
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Beware The Canadian Wildlife

After the wedding we roadtripped back to Nakusp with Jenna, to spend a few days with Val and Mike at Strawberry Hill. Having Tawn visiting from Hawaii gave us all the chance to be the Canadian know-it-all smartypantses we like to be, so he got the full Nakusp show of getting lost trying to find St. Leon's hotsprings, being chased out of the water by 40-cm leaches and a truly terrifyingly large water bug at Box Lake, rafting on the Slocan River accompanied by a guide who learned the river in his youth "like, totally ZIPPED on shrooms, eh?", the Lesbian Bakery in New Denver ("Spicy Buns!" reads their sandwich board), and the old Nakusp Dairy Farm that we've been eyeing for five years and would buy in a flash if only it wasn't $498,000... so, you know, the usual tour.  

And of course we maintained a running multi-tiered monologue of informational tidbits - Oh, see that plant there? It's called Devil's Club. Spikey stalks, and they get HUGE. But the leaves are good to use as toilet paper in a pinch... Ah, keep your eyes peeled for the osprey nests built along the wood hydro towers here as we head north out of Fauquier, they're so enormous, it's like they're built of whole tree branches... Etcetera. You get the drift. The insider's view. The sights, the sounds, the flora.

Ah, and the fauna. Although there's plenty of wild animals here in the Kootenays that can eat/maim you - bears, snakes, cougars, and so on - I provided Tawn with a close-up view of a different animal attack, that of the common black fly. Goddamn those little fuckers.

Here's the good (unbitten) ear:

And here's the sad ear. Bitten in at least four places, it's all hot to the touch, and hugely swollen:

Turner tells me that last picture doesn't truly represent the swelling (I can't see my own ear that well in the mirror, of course), so here's a closer view. Dig the redness, the shiny-ness, caused by the swelling:

The first night, it was just itchy. But over the whole next day it got worse and worse and bigger and bigger, until I had what felt like a Dumbo-sized ear on one side, and my little normal ear on the other. Back at the ranch here I took a couple of expired antihistamines (1995), and soon thereafter succumbed to the sedative therein, and promptly fell asleep right on the ear.

Today I woke up and the swelling had moved further down my neck and there was a discernable difference in my hearing on the right side! Off to the Emergency Ward at the Nakusp hospital, where my chart eventually read: Severe reaction to fly? insect? bites inside right ear. Recommended - ice packs and up-to-date antihistamines to bring down swelling and prevent spread. In the end the only thing that really provided any proper relief was slathering the whole damn thing with calamine (expired: 2001). Ferris Bueller, you're my hero:

Let that be a lesson to all you would-be hometown tour guides in Canada this summer - wear your bug juice.

Categories: Ash | Canadiana
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Yet Another Reason

Um, the United States terrifies me a little bit.

Last night we went to Walgreen's. It's a drugstore down here. I have thoroughly enjoyed myself browsing in Walgreen's on past visits to the States. They carry the most ridiculous stuff, for a drugstore. I still have a lovely pair of fuzzy neon-pink socks from a Walgreen's in Chicago, and I think fondly of the store whenever I put them on.

But last night I saw this:

At first it just looks like your basic wall of baby formula and accoutrements. But then I noticed at all the formula (and nothing else) was locked inside plastic cases:

Now. Look closer at those little red labels on the locked cases. What do you see?

Can you read that? It says: SECURITY ALERT! To keep our prices low, we have secured this product. Please see any store associate for assistance. We apologize for any inconvenience.

Cans of formula like that cost between $14-26.

I walked around the store a bit. Items that are not locked inside plastic cases: makeup ($3-45), cough syrup ($6-18), new-fangled lazy person's gizmo for picking things up off the floor if you drop something and don't want to bend over ($11.99), fake leather bags ($8-30), and magazines ($3-12). This is just a random survey. But I should note that nothing else that could be considered an "essential" - milk, cheese, bread, aspirin, or even diapers - was locked up. You could reach across a counter and grab your own smokes at the till, if you really wanted to.

So it really begs the question: why lock up the formula? Well, the obvious answer is because people steal it.

Which begs the next question: why do people steal baby formula? Of all the people I've known who shoplifted anything from drugstores, condoms (not locked up) were the #1 item of choice.

I can afford formula, myself. It's expensive, but we can manage it on our grocery budget. And we're in the process of weaning Sloane onto soy and milk right now, so I haven't given it much thought for a while.

I can't remember the ins and outs and fidgetty details of the argument, but at one point in my undergrad, we Women's Studies majors did a whole thing about the evils of Nestle and the other manufacturers of formula. How, in underdeveloped countries, they used to give incentives to hospitals to supply new mothers with formula to discourage breastfeeding. Infant formula has been implicated in millions of baby's deaths by dehydration and poor development, due to either underfeeding or mixing with tainted water. Once a mother's milk dries up, it's incredibly difficult to get it going again. And thence families are locked in to buying formula, which in some parts of the world could account for 50% or more of a daily household income. Yes, I'm serious - google it and see for yourself. I've seen a huge difference in the advertising of formula in Asia, in just the last ten years. When I first went to the Philippines in 1995, formula ads were everywhere. In tiny grey script at the bottom of the tv screen or billboard, by law the companies were mandated to include the text: breastmilk is best for babies. If you weren't looking for it (I was), you'd never have seen it. Now the government obligates companies to have full narration about how mother's milk is recommended at least to six months, and that formula is a substitute. Huge education campaigns worldwide have apparently hit formula companies' developing-world profits, hard.

So what does this have to do with the locked-up baby formula in Walgreen's? I'm not 100% sure if it's completely related. But I look at a wall of baby formula locked up behind plexiglass, and something in me shudders uncontrollably. There's something yucky, and evil, about it. Sure, if people are stealing formula, the obvious conclusion is that it's priced too high for the market to properly bear. You never see bananas or bread or eggs go over a certain price threshold, because it's been demonstrated that people will actually stop shopping at a store which charges "too much" for what are considered "essentials". In some households, formula is an essential. As in, the baby isn't being breastfed, and is younger than a year old. In this scenario, the child should be getting most of its daily nutrition from a fortified formula. Bananas and bread and eggs all cost less than $4. In some households $15 is too much.

When a household "essential" costs too much, there are only three options:

1. Buy the item anyway, and go into debt to service the need, or do without some other "essential" good (You choose: Heat? Insurance? Rent? Etcetera).

2. Steal it.

Or, 3. Go without.

Once when I was visiting Jenn Foley down at UGA, I met her housemate who did volunteer work with Athens families living on welfare. She told us crazy stories about coming into homes and finding babies, 4 or 5 months old, sucking on bottles of blue Kool-Aid. She seemed to think that it was because the family didn't know any better. A few years later those kids would be carrying around Hallowe'en-packs of Reese's Peanut Butter Cups as their "lunch" when they'd go outside to play, apparently. Those two images: the blue Kool-Aid bottle, the 4 year old with the Reese's cups, they've stuck with me for years. I remember being speechless. And empty. Terrified. I couldn't fathom a world where blue Kool-Aid seemed like a good idea for a little new baby. I exaggerate not in the slightest when I say that I came back to Canada and looked at my family, my city, and my life very differently from then on. A scary basis for comparison is always jarring.  

Which comes vaguely around to my point. Which is, we've had a great trip so far. And most Americans are awesome. But.

This is a country where fast food is cheap, health care can bankrupt a family, and baby formula is locked up to protect a store's profits. Conclude what you wish.

 

Categories: Ash | Mom-ness
Comments [5]

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(Use The Franglais Pronounciation): Frustration!

Categories: Ash
Comments [0]

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Keep On The Sunny Side

You know that song? It's on the Oh Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack. Yeah, that one. Get it in your mind:

Get on the sunny side, always on the sunny side; Keep on the sunny side of life!

It will help us every day, it will brighten all the way; if we'll keep on the sunny side of life...

That's it, you've got it. Now - speed it up, just a little. Picture your old record player, and that switch that would let you (for what reason, I dunno) speed the sound up about 33%. Just that much. Enough to sound manic, and wild-eyed rocking-back-and-forth giddy, possibly cracked.

...Riiiight. There you go. That's where I'm at today. Right. There. Right now.

 

A Matter Of Tardy Arrival

So. Last night we were at Marcello and Moonira's wedding, and it was great fun and we were damn lucky to get invites, having just met them this year, really. It was at the Cochrane Ranchehouse, and it was beautiful and fun and we cried and ate and danced and handed out bindis and bashed Rob Payne and posed for photos and ate our weight in cheese, and generally had a super time. And I was even the designated driver, so there was very little booze involved in my version of events. (See, kids? You don't have to drink to have a good time - let this be a lesson to you all.)

But anyway, we were a bit late in leaving. Like, not late exactly, but we had juuuuuust enough time. Having been married so recently (2 years ago) myself, I remember pulling up to the hall, mad as hell that I was twenty minutes late. Every wedding I've ever attended started waaaaaay late of the posted time, and always because of the bride. And I was fricken DETERMINED that that wouldn't be me. I don't know why I staked a portion of my anxiety about my wedding day on whether or not I made it to the hall on time, but I did.

In any case, as Uncle Leo (who was driving) pulled up to the hall, Uncle Larry came down the steps and opened the door of the car for me. As he helped me out, two friends from Calgary scurried past us, obviously just arriving. "Hiiiiiii! You look beautiful!" they gushed, as they grabbed my hands and beamed. And - uncharitable me - all I could think was, "Get in the fucking hall! I'm twenty minutes late! If I'd been on time you would've walked in right as the ceremony was ending? What the fuck?" But I grinned and hugged them and was like, Yay! You're here! even though inside I was being a judgemental asshole.

So. Before I was married I always arrived early mainly because I didn't know you could arrive "on time". And now I arrive early because I never want to be those idiots arriving late - and lucky - that weddings don't start on time.

 

The Babysitters: An Introduction

Now. It's the World Cup, right? And Brucio just installed a whole home theatre thing, specially for the occasion of the World Cup. We're talking a ridiculously giant 9 foot x 15 foot screen, a whole projection unit (which apparently requires some kind of crazy burns-out-in-a-few-months $1000 bulb), and blackout curtains that render the entire basement completely dark. Like, black as the dead of night in a tomb. I went to Douglasdale to check it all out, and completely barked my shins on the stairmaster in the gloom, after ill-advisedly coming in through the back door and, hence, directly from the direct sunlight into the Pit Of World Cup Darkness. Brucio and Leo, deep into the Poland vs. Ecuador game, didn't even notice me arrive. To call my male relatives "soccer fans" would be to understate things to a grotesque degree, is what I'm saying.

Brucio was our first shift of babysitting for yesterday. We needed to leave for Cochrane by 2:30pm at the latest, in order to make the ceremony. But because our departure fell right in the middle of the afternoon game, we had to deliver Sloane down to the guys glued to the tube down in Douglasdale. Brucio sez to me on Friday, "Lookit Ashley, for the next month it's the World Cup and that's my first priority. But my granddaughter TOTALLY comes second, like, above everything else. She's completely the focus. Except the World Cup, because it comes first. ...So bring her over and she can watch the Argentina - Cote d'Ivoire game, but I can't come get her, because halftime is only about fifteen minutes and it's not enough for the round trip to your house."

I guess you can't fault someone when they're that clear on their priorities. Or, perhaps more to the point, when you don't have any other options for babysitters than your photophobic Calgary football hooligan relatives.    

So in the end I sent Turner to deliver Sloane, and I stayed home to write out the bedtime routine instructions and set out Sloane's dinner for our second babysitting shift, the incomparable and beautiful Alexis Bahry. (...Ladies and gentlemen, Alexis Bahry. Thank you.) Also to do my toenail polish. Because if there's one thing that my old friend Jenn Foley taught me, it's that you can't go to a wedding without polish to match your outfit. Which I had, so it was applied, and I flapped around the house finishing my hair, packing the wedding bag (camera, tums, eyeliner, money, extra underwear, and toothbrush & toothpaste), and writing out the gift cheque. And getting increasingly stressed about the time. I wanted to arrive on time. Things were not looking good.

 

Just Under The Wire

Turner finally made it home, changed into his wedding gear, and we roared over to pick up Chris and Meike in Crescent Heights. And then made our plodding way out of the city, confounded at every intersection by the worst timing in traffic lights that I've. Ever. Had. We took the lesser of the two routes (Koentges totally suggested a better way and I overruled him), and I did some serious speeding, not to mention a ballsy passing-at-the-last-minute-before-the-exit of a huge truck on our way into Cochrane. And we roared down the hill to the Ranchehouse in a cloud of henshit and small stones, ran across the parking lot, and, panting, signed the register, with (barely) enough leeway to pee before the ceremony started, nearly on time. Folks, my nerves were shot before "Hello".

We had a great evening, but I was sober, and we left for home reeeeeeeally late. I never quite wholly calmed down from the frantic driving-to-Cochrane adventure, so I was nitpicking at Turner the whole night, uncharacteristic behaviour for us (at least, in public). We got home around quarter to three, fell head-first into bed, and slept. I dreamed about biting my hands, and clocks, and general anxiety. I don't know what the hell had gotten into me, but it stuck.

 

Those Patio Lanterns, They Were The Stars In Our Eyes

So. Today. I got up and I knew we had a buncha things to do. I didn't look at my daytimer, but Turner was going to the Herald Book Sale at Crossroads Market, and Jenny Repond's going-away-forever-to-England party was this afternoon, and I was picking up Jenna and Jackie at the airport at 3pm. A busy mid-June Sunday to be sure.

Sometime around 1pm, Brucio showed up and suddenly decided that This! Was! The! Day! to make a gift of new patio furniture. Which is to say, he announced that he'd buy us new deck furniture, but only if we left right then, and only if I'd choose it from the one and only store he was going to take me to. When we arrived, I was overwhelmed by the lovely and scary outdoor sets, all snazzed up with placemats and stylin' umbrellas and fake plants. And the sale was ending today, so tomorrow all the prices would jump 25 - 30%. So I didn't have the option of coming back. I wandered around, a bit paralysed, looking at the beautiful furniture, trying to picture any of it on our (lovely) deck in our (ghetto) neighbourhood, and wondering how long it would last if we didn't bolt it to the deck surface with locks. Then Sloane started to get grumpy. And hungry. And began calling for the bottle and the baba. As I paced around the store with heightening blood pressure and unable to choose which set I "wanted", I was also obsessively checking the time, which was growing shorter and shorter before I had to leave to meet Jenna and Jackie at the airport.

Finally I picked a set; it took nearly fifteen minutes to pay for it (those fancy furniture store people have to earn their commission even at a psychological level - "Sooo I need to staple all these things together... aaaaaaand take your address... aaaaaaand have you sign four forms... aaaaand now I have to inexplicably go to the back room for a while..."); and then it started to rain. It was five minutes after 3pm, and I prevailed again on Brucio to PLEASE just accompany me to the airport, but he had some other vague-sounding "errand" to run and he "couldn't" come to the airport, and I "had" to drop him back at Spiller Road so he could collect his car there. And then Sloane wailed the whole way home, baaabaaaa.... botttt-eeee... baaaaabaaaa... bott-eeeee... You know, it wasn't the end of the world, but I was pretty strung out by this point.

 

But, When It Rains, It Pours

The rain turned into a downpour. The sort that, in Calgary, usually twists a bit to the left to suddenly become hail and irredemably pock your paint job. Through this, I was weaving down Deerfoot with the wipers on Ludicrous Speed, them whapping back and forth, and in my mind going Fricken racken-fracken Dad, why the hell can't he just fricken come to the fricken airport for ten fricken minutes so I can make it on time for Jenna and Jackie... racken fracken ME and MY fricken weekend time management, why couldn't I fricken just tell Dad that I couldn't do this today? Forty-five fricken minutes is no kind of fricken timeline on which to buy fricken expensive deck furniture... But on the outside I hoped I was achieving the grateful-yet-hurried outer demeanor I meant to convey to Dad, who had, after all, very kindly gifted us a beautiful (if speedily-chosen) patio set. Even if I did have to drop him at his fricken car, which was parked at our house, necessitating a fifteen minute detour. And, you know, if you're at home now anyway, you might as well run in for ten seconds to get the damn baba and make a damn bottle for the poor daughter all bent out of shape, back in the car.

 

Put On The William Tell Overture

So. I leave Dad standing on the side of the road in front of our house, and PEEL away from the curb with a true screech of the tires. (Let me just note here, just in case you don't know me: I'm really, really not that kind of driver. At all. Ever.) It's 3:15pm, and if the flight is on time, Jenna and Jackie are walking off the plane as I navigate my screeching route through Ramsay and Inglewood, back to the Deerfoot. God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change... Squealing through the Spolumbo's intersection on a very stale yellow light... to change the things I can... Breaking my own iron-clad rule for never using the cel phone while driving, trying to change the message on our home answering machine while merging onto Memorial from the Zoo bridge, and realizing, on the trunk down to Deerfoot North, that our cellular service provider obviously isn't Telus, because it won't allow access to our phone-company-controlled home voicemail system... and the wisdom to know the difference... Giving up on the phone and just concentrating on getting to the airport a) at top possible velocity, but b) alive.

I pulled in to the Calgary airport's short term parking garage at 3:42pm, now nearly a half hour late for Jenna and Jackie's flight. There were no parking spots anywhere remotely near the WestJet end of the garage, and, in a momentary fit of complete and context-necessitating shitheadedness, I parked right in front of the door I needed, in a handicapped spot. (In case you're wondering, I'm not in any way physically disabled.) Unceremoniously yanked Sloane out of the car seat. Slammed & locked the car doors. And then I RAN like I haven't run since way before I got pregnant, two years ago. Bang, out the doors and across the "Caution: bus" talking intersection. Started scanning the faces in the taxi queue near the terminal doors. Sprinted across the intersection, boobs and baby bouncing merrily below my crazed head. And burst through the WestJet doors, into the lobby. Heh! Heh! Heh!

Looking at every face, every chair, looking for Jenna and Jackie. Are! They! Here!? Jogging down to the baggage carousel, zipping through the crowd, bobbing among the faces, looking for my cousin and aunt. I checked the clock: fully a half hour late. I pounded around the lobby for a good ten minutes, checking the flight schedules, hoping they'd come around a corner, out of a store, from behind a pillar, down the escalator. ...But no, it was increasingly and finally clear: they weren't there. I'd missed them. I called John to tell him what I'd done, and he hadn't heard from them. I called Dad to tell/guilt trip him that I'd missed them at the airport. And then I just stood there, holding Sloane's hand, looking forlornly at the arrivals gate doors. And knowing that Jenna and Jackie weren't going to miraculously come through them, now, 45 minutes after the plane landed.

 

Nobody Likes Me, Everybody Hates Me, Think I'll Go Eat Worms

That was the point when I quietly removed myself from the public eye with as much dignity as I could muster. I herded Sloane into the ladies' washroom and sat down on the floor of the wheelchair access stall, handed Sloaner my wallet to keep her busy, and had a giant cry, looking at the air vent in the ceiling.

Oh woe is me. Oh, I am a bad cousin/niece. Oh, I shoulda never gone with Dad for patio furniture if it was all going to be such a rush. Oh, now Jenna and Jackie have taken a cab to my house, and I'm not there, and I've got Jenna's keys to her car. ...I guess the fair thing would be to reimburse them for their cab ride since this is all my fault. Fuck, that's about $35 I don't have. ...And I'm such an asshole. I was paralyzed by the patio furniture. I never should have gone, today. ...Oh man, I hate having to drive that fast, it's not safe. ...I wonder what my blood pressure is, I can feel my heart pounding in my eyeballs, that can't be good. ...Oh LORD, I can't believe I took a handicapped spot out in the parking garage! I wonder if I'll be fined. Super, a couple hundred bucks for sure. ...Oh jesus, poor Jenna and Jackie, they totally don't deserve this, Jenna's graduation weekend, oh man. ...They've both always been so loyal, they've always stood by me and been so supportive. ...What an asshole I am, they're on their way back to my house in a cab, thinking I forgot about them. ...I SO SHOULD HAVE BEEN HERE ON TIME, I'm an asshole, I never shoulda let Dad talk me into the patio furniture thing today... I...

...I ...uhh...

That's when it hit me. That, uh, I was there a day early. Yes, Jenna and Jackie were coming in tomorrow, on the 3:15pm flight, on Monday. ...That I'd completely lost my mind, I'd rushed the patio furniture thing, I'd gotten SO mad at Brucio, I drove like a maniac. I'd completely ruined the whole day, over NOTHING. Over a mistake, a logistical scheduling error.

 

Keep On The Sunny Side

So. Crisis averted. Or, perhaps I should say, Non-Existant Crisis averted. No need to be mad at anyone. No need to self-flaggelate about being a crappy airport picker-upper person. No need to lament my own time management prioritization, or regret the patio furniture foray. No, no need.

I very quietly gathered up Sloane, washed my face in the airport bathroom washroom, and walked back to the car. We drove home silently, at a normal, safe pace. I handed our girl over to Turner, and as he put her down for her nap, I set about doing the needful for my shattered nerves: frozen vodka heals all wounds, particularly on an empty stomach. Numbs them, anyway. After my shot, I pulled out the food processor and whipped up a giant pile of hummus, leaving all the dirty bowls and utensils and empty cans everywhere, and set myself up on the couch, to stare into space. Strangely zen. Completely cooked and done. Serene but a bit on the "gone" side. As in, "Gone Fishin' ". I couldn't even reflect much on the lessons that were sure to be on parade through this experience. Just needed some time, let the vodka & hummus do their work. I very rarely get worked up about stuff, so I'm somewhat poorly equipped for those periodic days of frothing stress. I felt like a zombie. And then the soundtrack for this whole fricken 24 hours came to me, and started to smile. Then laugh.

A: "...Turner? Please? Could you put on that song? [humming]"

T: "Which one, madam?"

A: " ...'Keep On The Sunny Side'. That basically sums up everything right now."

T: [laughing] "...You got it."

A: [laughing] "Keep on the sunny side, all-ways on the sunny side, KEEP ON THE SUNNY SIDE OF LIIIIIIIIIIFE!"

T: "True enough."

 

Categories: Ash | Calgary | Family | Friends
Comments [9]

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Chez Bristowe Turner: Now Asbestos-Free!

Postscript: This post got a little long. I had this little story to tell and then I realized there are all sorts of important little side-stories attached. And so for those of you literateness-disinclined, in the tradition of The Believer, I provide a point-form review. ...So you can pretend you read it when you come over to visit Sloane.

Discussed:

• Zonolite, the viciously carcinogenic insulation found in more than 335,000 Canadian homes
• dreams of Chez Bristowe Turner attic renovation, destroyed
• manual labour, a collapsed lung, and obsessions about our backyard barn
• the Calgary real estate explosion
• light at the end of the asbestos-caked tunnel, and a flicker of hope for the ressurection of the attic plans, and
• ...VICTORY!

There you go. You can come over now and nod sagely when I ask if you've heard the good news about our house. Be advised that the above executive summary is a SUMMARY and also includes a subtle red herring. So you're taking your chances not reading the whole post, but that's your prerogative.   

...So. When we bought this house back in November of '04 '03, it was a strategic decision. I'd been desperate to buy a house for years and years and years, so when I got my government job I socked away half my paycheque, every paycheque, towards my future downpayment. I didn't go out, I'd sworn off the booze until further notice, and my rent & board were covered by Brucio. Basically my only expenses were the exorbitant $11/day parking fee near my building, and my thrice-weekly salad rolls from Vietnam Village around the corner from work.

A few months before the wedding I finally decided enough was enough with living in Douglasdale - what was I going to do, get married and then move back into Dad's basement? - so I went out looking, and chose a house in Ramsay. (This one we live in, as I type, in fact.) I took my savings, plus all the money my parents had given us towards the wedding, and I unrepentantly poured that whole glunk of cash down into the house, right away.

Ahhhhh! Home Ownership, At Last!

I loved the back hallway with its corner cupboard like at my grandparents' house in Thunder Bay on South Hill Street; Turner loved the kitchen. Although by many people's estimations our house was considered "a piece of shit" in "a crappy neighbourhood", I didn't completely agree. I could see that it LOOKED like a piece of shit, and I understood that the neighbourhood had crappy ELEMENTS, but I knew the 50' double lot was a great investment and the house was solid. Plus, I figured we would be here for a year or two, maybe five years on the outside. I had vague plans that we'd flip it and move closer to Inglewood, or Nakusp, or who knows - but at least to a bigger house where we'd start our family.

Nevertheless, the first time I went up in the attic I was THRILLED to discover it was a whole seperate floor! Like, unlike your standard attic with exposed joists and insulation and whatnot, our attic had a real, load-bearing floor. And it had cupboards, closets, painted walls. We asked our neighbours about all this and it turns out that our attic was once the second storey on the house, and about forty years ago the owners closed it in as an attic, poured insulation all over the floor, and removed the stairwell. Why they did this will remain a mystery.

In any case, I suddenly had dreams of renovating the attic. In the UK they call this a "loft conversion" and it's done all the time. In fact there are construction companies and contractors who work exclusively in the field of loft conversions, and sell the whole job as a package. Do you want one room? Two? A bathroom? Skylights? Please peruse our brochure for package rates and fittings options. Etc. I began to talk excitedly with my family about the possibilities, about the increase in the value of the house if we added another 600+ square feet to the place. Think of the vaulted livingroom ceiling! Think of the dormer windows and the extra bathroom! How wonderful!

Then Brother John was poking around in our attic one day, setting up the wireless network, and took a good look all around. Then he came downstairs and called me at work:

   J:    Ash, I think you have zonolite in your attic.

   A:    Heh? What?

   J:    I saw it on The National about two or three days ago. It's this carcinogenic insulation that's in old houses. It looks like wood chips. It's more dangerous than asbestos.

   A:    HEH! WHAT!?

   J:    I didn't touch it, I just looked at it, but I think that's what's on the floor of the attic.

So! What to do? Well, after hanging out the "Gone Fishing" sign on my cubicle door, I got straight on the internet. And it didn't take long to find out all sorts of scary stuff about zonolite, a type of vermiculite insulation used widely in Canada throughout the 1970s and early 80s (it's estimated to be present in more than 335,000 Canadian homes) which is, in some forms, apparently 20x more carcinogenic than asbestos. ...Asbestos being somewhat carginogenic in its own right, you may have heard.

After quietly shitting my pants right there at the desk, I did more research. Turns out having zonolite in the house is okay so long as you don't disturb it. So long as you don't, for example, sweep it up. Which we very nearly did on a few occasions in our enthusiastic visiting-the-attic trips up the ladder to consider the renovation prospects. Later that week I spent some time asking our realtor and a few acquaintances about what it would cost to get the zonolite removed, and everyone estimated the job at $25,000+. My dream of renovating the attic level died a quick, wheezing, mesothelioma death. We decided to blow fibreglass insulation in on top of the zonolite, to extra-insulate the roof, and shut up the attic. Forever, we thought.

I spent the next year getting over the disappointment of losing my vision of a magnificent second story on our home. And finally I turned my attention to our "shed". It's not really a shed. It's more like a small barn. With a root cellar, a greenhouse, electricity and its own ancient furnace, I'd long ago decided that this 700+ sq.ft. wood structure out back of our house would make a perfect office for Turner. We set him up in the basement initially, because our neighbour was storing a great huge heap of wood in our shed, and there was no way to work around it. But the neighbour said he'd get rid of the wood "soon", and we believed him, so we put Turner down the basement while we figured out how to finance the renovation of the barn.

Yes, it's a piece of shit. But you don't even have a piece of shit - you have to envy mine.

With the shift of my mental energies towards the barn came an upswing of energy for clearing it out. Which lead to the February 2005 Great Dump Of The Old Renters' Shit, the disposal of a giant pile of suitcases and general detritus in garbage bags which someone had piled up in the greenhouse (after they'd smashed up half the windows, of course). We'd been hesitant to throw this stuff out, mainly because it was very clearly someone's entire world possessions, including clothes and photos, plus a lot of simple personal crap like old Hallowe'en masks and stickers and a mug from an agriculture company. Garbage to us, but I thought these people would get out of juvie or come back from wherever they'd gone and retrieve this stuff. Letters from grandmas, that kind of thing. I'd come back for it, if it was me.

Anyway, by last spring it was clear no one was ever coming for this shit. So I threw it all out, piles and piles and piles of it going into the back alley for the Tuesday-morning pickup. Besides the general chaos in the greenhouse, there was old dirt and cat poo everywhere, dust and pieces of broken cardboard from where the ceiling had caved in due to water leakage. When I finally reached the clear floor of the greenhouse after hauling all the stuff away, I was sweeping up the extra soil and feathers and shiny flakes of what I figured had to be fertilizer or a strange broken glass substance. But then for some reason, something made me stop. I took a good look at the dirt on the floor, as fibres of insulation floated in the air all around me. And all at once my stomach fell. I looked up: the cardboard ceiling had caved in? Insulation was leaking out? I poked the edge of the hole with my broom. And what was very definitely zonolite trickled over the cardboard edge and fell to the floor.

After I'd run THE HELL out of there, I took off my clothes and threw them away. Then I spent a whole (possibly-hypochondria-induced) afternoon retching and convalescing in the livingroom, although having just done two hours of heavy lifting with no mask in all that dust and accumulated mold, I probably earned myself a temporary lung condition even if the zonolite wasn't working 20x overtime at shortening my life. (I was eight months pregnant and really not in any condition for manual labour, so maybe I should have known better?)

For all intents and further purposes the greenhouse was effectively abandoned, although I rushed in there a few days later with a mask over my face to remove the last of the garbage and to set up our various garden tools on the shelves. Since the window walls are half busted-in, I think there's probably enough ventilation in there to guard against imminent death if we only pop in once a week or so to grab a trowel or the rose food.

So! Having been twice thwarted, do you think all this zonolite dissuaded me? No sir, it did not.

Whenever I was in the barn, I found myself looking at the ceiling. It consisted of painted cardboard, erected from above between the attic joists. I poked at it. It didn't sound like there was anything above it, let alone little wood-chip-type bits of carcinogenic insulation. I don't know why, but I hummed and I hawed and I prowled around out there, during the day and at night with a flashlight, obsessed. I had a hunch about the barn: WHAT IF they'd insulated the greenhouse, but NOT the rest of the barn? Hmmmmm.... But try as I might, I couldn't find a way into the attic. I walked around and around, surveyed the outside walls, stood on tiptoe and pushed repeatedly at what was very obviously the official trap door to the attic, nailed shut from above with about a squillion nails. Even as yet without a route to the upper level, I found myself perusing the books section at Rona and Home Depot, going through the "Garden Cottages" magazines, looking at possible design ideas for when I renovated our barn for Turner.

Because boy oh boy, I was a-gunna renovate that barn for Turner, so help me god. No author husband of mine will be banished to the basement when we've got a perfectly good barn out back just aching to be turned into a writing retreat! Mordechai Richler's third-floor attic office will have nothing on Turner's BARN, thunked I.

...Mostly it was dreaming, I'll admit. We are broke, and we don't gamble, so there are no lottery jackpots coming our way even in theory. I am untrained and basically incapable of starting home renovation projects on my own; I'm enthusiastic, and I'm a willing and energetic worker bee, but when it comes right down to brass tacks, I just don't have the skillz to do stuff myself. Plus, dude: I was fully thinking skylights and new dormer windows and wiring it all up for internet and that kind of thing. Specialized stuff like putting in a bathroom and a loft where guests could stay, and an area for bikes and the lawnmower and tools. Yeah, if it ever happened, it wasn't going to be done by Ashley K. Bristowe in her spare time. And given the budgetary constraints, we were also in no position to out-bid every Tom, Dick and Sanjay in Calgary frothing at the mouth to get in skilled home renovation people.

...But? Then? Calgary's housing market went all apeshit? ...And like? Our house? It rose in value? ...Like, a lot? ...Like, a WHOLE lot?

As any homeowner will tell you, having the price of your house suddenly jump is dizzying and disorienting, but ultimately it's good news. That is, if your house jumps in value relative to the other houses around you. If everybody's house jumps in value, like in Calgary, then everybody now has more equity in their home. Everybody wants to sell their now-more-valuable house and move into a better-but-relatively-cheaper house, to take advantage of the situation. But for most of us, we're living within our means without too much wiggle room. Our mortgages are set in a place that we can (barely) afford, and we can't take on more monthly payments. So it comes as a disappointment when everyone rushes out househunting or goes online to the MLS listings and they all realize they can't afford to move. While YOUR property has jumped in value, EVERYONE'S property has jumped in value, and EVERYONE wants their big new money if they're going to sell. So unless you're going to cash out and move to Nova Scotia, there's really no sane way to upgrade your lifestyle by moving into a different house in the same city. And so everyone comes to the same conclusion: I've got all this new equity in my house, and I can't afford to move anywhere else. ...I know! I'll renovate! That way I can live in a nicer house now, and flip it later! Yes yes. We all know this route.

In general this kind of thinking and activity is good for the overall housing stock. Conditions improve, are upgraded. But everyone is looking to flip and nobody is willing to sell for a bargain. So you can take equity out of your house to renovate, but if the market crashes, you're on the nut for the bigger loan. If the market doesn't crash, you're making your property better - but remember, so is everyone else. It's sort of a single-blind experiment where all the homeowners are the mice, unaware of their also-sprinting competitors.

Now, knowing all this isn't going to stop us. No no no. I have a lather all set to go for home renovation, anyway! Damn the market and its vagarities! I'd pour every last cent into our house, learning how to do stuff, if we had the capital. Tiling the floors by myself! (Probably rather badly.) Framing the basement! (Ditto on the badly.) Etcetera!

About a month ago we started talking to Brucio about building a deck on the back of the house. I think Dr. Bristowe had finally had enough of sitting crookedly on our uneven back "lawn" (I shudder to think you might be picturing a manicured garden of grass.... noooooooo) perched sideways on his own old, peeling lawn chairs (we're not shy about accepting family hand-me-downs, you may have heard). So he snapped one day and the idea of putting on a deck was set in motion. Our deck-building friends arrive on Monday: deckwarming party to follow in early July.

This process evolved into further discussions about Brucio investing in our house as a partner, to improve the house in general of course, but also to make some money if/when we ever sell it. We're talking painting the stucco, replacing the windows, maybe doing new front steps, fixing the gate, and so on. Meanwhile we were also perusing the housing listings, trying to ascertain if we were truly fucked in the moving-onward-moving-upward process of finding ourselves a house that might not be right beside the 7-11, for example. Only the barest attempt at cursory research revealed that yes indeed, we are never, ever in our lifetimes, going to ever be able to afford to sell our house. Unless we are picking up and leaving Alberta with our lives and profit, which we aren't doing anytime soon, or so goes the plan.

Anyway, in the midst of finding out the market value of our house (a terrifying number too large to count, really) and planning these investment-renovations with Brucio, and actively looking at some of the other real estate options nearby (too small, or too expensive), the zonolite problem re-appeared in my brain. When it was going to cost $25,000 and we owned a house worth X number of dollars, it was simply out of the question. But now that we own a house worth X plus the drastic and terrifying appreciation, suddenly it might not be such a crazy idea. I got on the horn and arranged for an asbestos remediation company to come and assess our house.

Could be that we have no problem whatsoever. I doubted it, but could be. Like, in theory. But in any case, I priced the zonolite remediation (removal and air quality guarantee) and it came in at about $10-15 per square foot + $350/day air quality monitoring. Which brings the price tag of getting it the hell out of our ceiling at between $11-15K (the earlier estimates had been a bit high). So... then let's say we put in a few windows, a skylight, a wall or two, some plumbing and electrical, paint, and a stairwell. Maybe even a little second-story balcony landing on the back. In this scenario we've increased the square footage of our house by at least 800 sq.ft. and put in another bathroom and a bedroom, all for the investment of about $35,000 - 60,000, give or take.

Does it seem extreme to dump that much money into my ugly-much house? Well sure. But it begs the question: could I buy a different Calgary house that's 2000 square feet, and has four bedrooms and two bathrooms, for a mortgage price I can afford? Abso-smurfly not, not in a hundred years, and not even way out in the suburbs. Right downtown on a double lot? Sure, that'll be your first born child plus your nuts. No way.

OR: or, or, or, putting in a bit of elbow grease and investment into the barn to renovate it into an office for Turner. This project wouldn't raise the value of the house/property to the same degree (if at all), but I think it would actually be easier, besides feeling like a gigantic accomplishment. I love the idea of Turner toodling out to the renovated shed, mason jar fulla whisky in hand and all them clever words in his head. I get all shivery and excited about providing that space for Turner to work. He loves his basement office, but I know that once we had the barn all fitted out how he liked it, I'd never convince him to move, not ever. We'd live on Spiller Road for all the livelong days of our lives, prying it only out of our cold, dead hands.

So suffice to say, I finally called in the remediation people. And they came a few days ago. And lemme tell you, we got all kinds of value for our money.

Worth the price of admission, Point 1: Sean, the very nice asbestos remediation man and Dave, the very nice environmental engineer guy were interesting, polite, engaged in the process, and not in a hurry. If I'm paying you (or I might end up paying you for your grotesquely expensive and specialized services), I don't want you to act like you're doing me a favour. And these guys didn't. Contact me for a recommendation if you need either asbestos remediation at your own home, or any kind of environmental engineering-type stuff - they were professional and very reasonably priced; free consultation is the best kind of consultation, sez I.

Worth the price of admission, Point 2: Turns out there is no insulation in the barn attic, whatsoever! (No wonder it's so goddamn cold in there!) And we know that because...? Because Dave, the (tall) environmental engineer guy managed to figure out that I was pushing on the wrong side of the attic hatch. It's on hinges! And I was pushing on the wrong side! Those squillion nails weren't holding it down, they're holding it together! We put up a ladder and lo and behold we found... more of our neighbour's wood! (That he claimed, to my face, the other day that he had no idea how to get into the barn's attic is something I'm now calling into question...) But: Nothing Else! No zonolite! No lab testing necessary! (The greenhouse is insulated seperately, just as I suspected.)

HURRAY!!!

Worth the price of admission, Point 3: It turns out that only about half of the zonolite found in Calgary homes contains asbestos. Given the internet sleuthing I'd done (and we all know how dependable the internet is when it comes to verifiable, abso-toot-ly true "facts"), I had definitely given up hope that what was up in our attic could possibly NOT be terrifyingly toxic. I'd even had a huge temper tantrum on the electrician who installed our bathroom ceiling fan last year because he wasn't being 100% diligent about keeping zonolite from falling down through the hole as he worked. But here were these asbestos-industry guys standing in my kitchen telling me that we basically had a 50-50 chance of getting away lucky.

Folks, we've established that I'm not a gambler, BUT I LIKE THOSE ODDS!

So they went up into the attic, and they gathered up a giant bag of the zonolite (me hiding around the corner, cringing, imagining the little asbestos fibres floating all around us and getting sucked into Sloane's lungs), and took it away for testing. They also tested the drywall paste, since if you don't already have enough to worry about as a homeowner, it turns out that basically everything used in construction prior to 1980 may or may not have contained asbestos, particularly drywall paste. You're just in a game of Russian roulette to see whether or not YOUR house has it. So they took some chunks of drywall for good measure, and I wrote a cheque for $140 to cover the lab work, and we all shook hands and wished each other luck (luck for me = no asbestos in the house; luck for them = attic stuffed full of asbestos, ching-ching, giant remediation project!).

A few days passed. And then we came home on Friday to a message on the answering machine from Dave, environmental engineer guy. All the samples came back negative. He was preparing an official report for me and would send it in the mail, but the jist of it is this: NO ASBESTOS.

No. Asbestos. None. The zonolite in our attic is safe. The house is clean.

I stood outside on the lawn, where Turner had brought me the phone. I was just stuck there, looking at the house, contemplating the roofline and the attic, below. Actually, I guess I really didn't believe the news. I'd spent two years thinking that our health was at potential risk, living here. And that we couldn't really invest any energy or funds into the house, because eventually it'd just be torn down. Suddenly this whole world of possibilities was visible. Suddenly it didn't seem so bad to be five doors down from the 7-11.

Turner came back outside. "What're you doing? ...You don't believe it, do you?" No, I didn't.

"Well, believe it, Ash! Best $140 you ever spent, eh? Anything you do to the attic now, starts out $15,000 cheaper than it woulda been. ...Could've been worse! Could've been the carcinogenic insulation you've spent the last couple of years stressing about! Eh?!"

Yes, indeedy. It's starting to sink in that all that worry was for nothing, thank god. And that it's nice to be lucky.

 

Categories: Ash | Calgary | City Planning | Family | House
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What The Hell Is Going On With Canada Post?

I can't ignore it any more: something wonky is happening down at Canada Post. Yesterday I received a letter from my bank stating that my mortgage payment had bounced and that if I didn't immediately rectify the situation that my credit rating would be adversely affected. That letter was dated April 27th - almost two weeks have passed since the bank sent me a warning that I'd MISSED A MORTGAGE PAYMENT. Now, actually, I'd caught that error myself about a week and a half ago, and fixed everything, so we're not sliding into credit hell here at Chez Bristowe Turner (at least, not yet). But two weeks for a local letter, seems a bit looooooong, don't you think?

Then there's Mum, who sent Brother John his birthday card three weeks before May 7th, and it still hadn't arrived by the time we went out to dinner to celebrate his 30th birthday. We've been getting incorrectly addressed mail for months now, for addresses that are nowhere near ours. The postal codes aren't even similar.

I won't go into the deets of the gigantic XpressPost delivery fuckup that was our pre-Thailand adventure of getting Sloane a new passport two days before we left. Because we're still very touchy about that GIGANTIC FUCK UP and it's better for the collective blood pressure around here if we just quietly go about our business of putting the finishing touches on our open-and-shut pending lawsuit on the matter. (It cost us in excess of $450 cash money to fix that last-minute disaster, even before you start counting up the time lost, stress undergone, sleep missed, etc., not to mention the seriousness of the form we had to sign - and get notarized by a lawyer in the middle of the night - stating that we hadn't received the first passport, signatures by us releasing the government to incarcerate us if it's ever found that we were lying. Which we weren't, but nobody likes to be threatened with jail - c'mon.)

Last fall our postal worker left our mail out in the rain two delivery days in a row and it was all destroyed. And although we have a nice, neat, large brass sign on our house which reads, "PLEASE USE SIDE DOOR" (with arrows showing you the way), Canada Post workers (and only Canada Post workers, I might add) always ignore the sign and ring the front bell, or just leave packages propped on the front porch. Because apparently our government mail service is now employing illiterate people. Or maybe they're just obstinate. Or perhaps our mail carrier is getting back at us for reporting those two days of sopping mail found on our sidewalk inside the gate. Frankly, I do reserve my right to report shitty service ANYway, so there.

Lastly, it's gotten fricken EXPENSIVE to send stuff. Letters have weeny little variances in the size and weight allowances, but if you keep within the limits I'm the first to say that it's a true bargain to be able to send something through the post for 52 cents. But god help you if the package is, say, a small paperback book. And, say, you want to send it to Ottawa. $18 later (no insurance included in that price - to which I always respond, "...Do I want insurance? Why? Are you going to lose it? What am I paying for with the $18 itself?") and they won't even use pretty stamps - just a utilitarian machine-produced label. Uh? ...Uhhhhh? Zillions of dollars put into advertising: send xmas gifts to your family! Send your EBay stuff with Canada Post! E-cards! Online tracking (for a price)! And yet it's $45 if you want to send some maple syrup to Thailand. For example.

Is it just us, and our family? I don't think we're being targetted per se, but Canada Post seems to be falling apart at the seams. I'm a lover of stamps and I like the idea of "the post" very very very much indeed. The mythology, the lore, the idea that the mail 'must go through', etcetera and so forth. However, I can't help but let my brain hover around the notion that Canada Post is subcontracting out the meat of its business to 1968 Czechoslovakia.

 

(Usually I put a little graphic or photo in posts like this, to ground the text with an image. When I went to the Canada Post site to pull their logo for this purpose, I found the following warning:

Canada Post Logo Permission Request Form Because it represents the highest level of trust for the people and businesses of Canada, the Canada Post corporate logo is valuable property of Canada Post. It is the most visible and recognizable expression of the Canada Post brand. Canada Post acknowledges the desires of third parties to show a connection or relationship to Canada Post. However, you should not use the corporate logo to imply affiliation with or endorsement by Canada Post without express written permission from Canada Post.

Somehow I just don't think they're going to give me permission.)

 

Categories: Ash | Canadiana
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Up! Magazine!

See "Mall In The Family" feature, above

It's a little late in the month to be announcing this, but if you're going to be on WestJet anytime in April, make sure you dig that in-flight magazine out of the seat pocket in front of you. Turn to page 52. And lo, behold the West Edmonton Mall story Turner and I did back in December, in all its Sloaner-ific glory:

 

 

Aw yeah: Five page spread, 13 photos, and all the masterly writingness you'd expect from Turner for the text (including a Motley Crue reference). One free December vacation in West Ed Mall, and the Bristowe-Turners bring it to the masses. 

 

Categories: Ash | Sloane | Turner | Work work work
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For A Long Long Looooooong Time I Have Been Complaining About Calgarys Climate I Just Seem To Be Hardwired To Prefer At

For a long, long, looooooong time I have been complaining about Calgary's climate. I just seem to be hard-wired to prefer, at, like, a core and cellular level, humidity - even though I grew up in Alberta. ...I'm talking about 90% humidity. And it's not just the hair thing - my hair goes all corkscrew-crazy and huge in humid climes, a phenomenon I didn't properly appreciate until I got the hell out of Alberta for university. No, it's more than that. My favourite weather calls for about 24C, windy, and deeply humid. All you meteorologists out there might notice that that's usually the situation immediately prior to a summer storm in Ontario. And sure, Toronto's summers were pure awesomeness for me. The closer the air came to a soup-like consistency, the better, as far as I was concerned. I'd run around and dance in doorways and rush outside to revel in the surge before thunderstorms, while everyone else was battening down the hatches. I miss that weather, irredemably.

Most Calgarians keep lip balm in their car, particularly if they're headed to the airport to pick someone up. Because it takes only about as long as the walk from the airplane to the parking lot for the visitor to realize that every pore in their body is crying out for moisture - certainly their lips might actually be falling off. By the time you get to the car and you're putting their stuff in the trunk, you turn to find them patting their own pockets for non-existant lip balm, affecting increasingly-desperate twiddly fingers and lip-licking techniques (these are, for the record, never helpful). I won't go on and on and on, but what I'm driving at is that it's dry here. Very dry. This part of Alberta, while arable, is just this side shy of being a high-altitude desert plateau. I've always disliked the fact that my hometown wasn't a great deal more humid, and have made elaborate gestures (such as, "working overseas" and "living in eastern Canada for 11 years") towards trying to establish myself somewhere that the climate was more to my soul's liking. 'Twas not to be, and I ended up plunked back in Calgary anyway.

But over the last few weeks I discovered something extraordinary. Spring finally arrived and I got out in the yard to water the new little trees we'd planted. And I'd done some preparatory gardening over the fall and winter to prepare the beds for poppies and beans, and Turner has planted Uncle Ron's garlic, so those needed water. Dad had stepped up and arranged to have the giant tree stump out back removed, and we are getting ready for this year's tomato growing extravaganza, so I've also been watering those areas, to pack the soil and get things conditioned. So while I was out there having at 'er with the hose, I figured I'd water the huge row of lilacs on both sides of the house, since we'd massacred them during the fence building campaign of '04 and last year they looked a bit spindly. And there were the standard yellow/brown patches on the lawn because of the trampoline, so those needed a bit of water, too. Plus we have this fancy-dancy new hose head with, like, twelve settings, so watering the garden has a sort of low-rent video game feel to it; testing out and identifying which settings best suit which circumstances, etcetera.

It helped of course that it's been absolutely glorious weather-wise here for the last three weeks, so getting out there and communing with nature hasn't been the cold and dreary chore it usually is at this time of year. But besides all that, I realized something, and it might have changed everything for me, here. I've spent all this time out in the yard, watering all the plants and trees, and I was finding myself out there, without fail, twice a day, morning and evening. There's not much that I'll do twice a day, errand-wise. Brush my teeth, sure. Not much else. And it's not free to water the yard, mind - we're on a meter and so whenever I turn on the hose I'm well aware that I'm pouring our hard-earned money all over the lawn. But for some reason I felt so GOOD about watering everything in the yard. I felt so alive, and happy, and so at home, somehow. I couldn't help myself, I wanted to be out there, so much.

And then I suddenly realized, with a start, mid-water (water shooting out over the sidewalk, as I stared off into space, in the midst of my realizing-ness), that it's the smell. Aside from the practical benefits of watering the trees and shrubbery and flower beds in my yard as they're getting started on this year's growing season, it's the smell of the water - soaking into the soil, the mist falling through the air, the dripping drops showering out of the branches. I realized that I had gotten addicted, all at once, to the smell of a humid Calgary - my tiny piece of land being moisture-soaked in the midst of this arid plain - and that it had made this house and yard feel more like home than Calgary ever had.

So to hell with the water bill, I'm digging in, working on my microclimate. 'Scuse me.  

 

Categories: Ash | House
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Ah, The Quote Board

When visiting Cousin Jenna in Lennoxville I was re-acquainted with the staple of student decorating: The Quote Board.

How true. How very, very true.

 

When I was in undergrad at Queen's in the early-mid 90s, we had a similar ongoing group project at our house, the Rules Learned Through Experience, (Vol. 1 - approx. 20), a compendium of knowledge accumulated by the rotating cast of seven-or-so paying tenants and various honourary housemates who wandered through our house over the years. We were young, barely out of our teens, and loose on the world. We learned some stuff.  

"Beer left too long in the freezer explodes."

"When cooking pancakes, do NOT touch the pan with your hand."

"If you squee-gee the mop toooooo hard, the rod is liable to suffer a fracture, and thus become two seperate pieces."

...Like every other set of random Canadian undergrads, we didn't know shit about shit. I dunno what the hell our parents were teaching us at home during high school, but it obviously didn't involve any cooking, cleaning, financial management, or common sense.

"When preparing Kraft Dinner, it is a good idea to remove the noodles from the strainer before adding the milk."

"Never go grocery shopping when you're hungry."

"When walking in the ghetto during a thaw, avoid all puddles - due to the irregularity of the level of the sidewalks, a puddle that looks like only surface water may well teach you that things are not always as they seem."

We had to learn it all from the beginning. So looking back on these lists now, I see so much that is now, of course, SO OBVIOUS. But the Rules, as a collection, serve as a (valuable!) reminder that we all have to learn these stupid things once, and more often than not, as a result of our own stupid behaviour - sometimes (gasp!) even drunkenness.

"There are no pasties like wine pasties."

"If you have to get up the next morning at 6am and drive 9 hours, don't go to Pub Nite and get really drunk the night before."

"If you are at the SkyDome watching the Vanier Cup, and you fall and crack your head open, and you don't notice the pint of blood that has gushed all over the front of your white shirt, the First Aid people are likely to strap your ass to a stretcher, accuse you of having a spinal cord injury even if you can prove you can wiggle your toes, and then toss you in an ambulance. Then the medical community may, depending on the amount of sadistic glee they get from watching you struggle, belt your chin and arms to the bed, ask you stupid questions like, 'What's your surname?', and finally try to coerce you into peeing in a bedpan before finally, 4 hours later, releasing you into the free world armed only with a photocopied page of Head Injury Instructions."

Overall, the idea was that any Rule had to be true, and thus any Lessons we learned were - natch - begot Through Experience. And some of us were... not so bright.

"Spaghetti sauce that has been opened and is left in the cupboard goes moldy."

"Don't set hot frying pans on linoleum."

"Styrofoam melts in the microwave."

Oh, university. Oh, youth. Oh, I'm so glad it's over and I only have stupid tax-and-parenthood-related Rules Learned Through Experience (Adulthood Edition) to look forward to in my 30s.

...Some of my other favourites included:

"Always remove the layer of foil from the neck of a wine bottle before using a corkscrew, or you may discover that that 'sticky cork' was not a cork, and you've just successfully drilled a perfect hole through the bottle's screw-top."

"The wrapping chicken comes in to stay fresh in the fridge? It need not remain on to keep the chicken fresh while cooking."

and of course,

"If you happen to be stirring two pots on the stove (at the same time)  you will be treated to a 240-volt surprise as you complete the circuit with your upper torso."

 

Categories: Ash | Friends | Olden Days | Ontario
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Continuing Sickness-ness

I am sicker than I've been in a long, long time. When we finally arrived in Calgary on Friday I felt like I'd been run over by a lumber truck. I had to ask the WestJet people to call the little gimpy-traveller golf cart to come and ferry us from the gate to the baggage carousel; I felt like I might fall down if I had to carry Sloane and all our stuff down that endless hallway. But thank christ, there were Turner and Margo, waiting for us, all smiles and helpfulness and sympathy. I thought I was pretty sick while we were still in Ontario and Quebec, but the focus was Sloane, and getting her better, keeping her safe and warm and (relatively) happy, as happy as you can keep a hugely snotty and underslept and croupy baby while far away from home. The antibiotics were working, and her ears were pretty much okay on the airplane, and at least she wasn't feverish all the time anymore.

But as for me, I guess my body knew that it would be only a few days, only a few days more, before we got home, and was holding off on the actual crash. Because I just fell apart when we got here. Sparkly spots before my eyes, nausea, laryngitis, and a truly spectacular chest-rattling cough. I'd bought about $24 worth of various cough suppressant remedies in Lennoxville, but my lungs were like, Ha, Double Ha, at all the syrups and pills and losenges. I've spent QUITE enough time dealing with the health care system lineups this week THANK YOU, and since Brucio was still in Argentina (or Chile? ...we just can't keep track these days), there's no queue-jumping service available. So we just slapped me directly onto the Cipro stash left over from the India trip, knowing that it's pretty good for respiratory stuff. It's taking its sweet time bringing me back from the brink, but yesterday I finally felt like I turned a corner away from consumptive death at the hands of my KGH-labelled "overreaction", or as I like to call it, "Fucking Bronchitis (Now Possibly Edging Toward Pneumonia)".

I'm in a convalescent state now, wandering around in the (truly magnificent) $9 satin dressing robe I got in Hong Kong and accepting tea and rubs from Turner. Sloane is doing great, just a bit snotty and the last-bits-of-coughy, and sucking back the oatmeal like nobody's business. And last night Margo made a truly perfect prime rib roast.

 

Categories: Ash
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On The Go

At one time in my life I was so pleased to be moving around all the time. Oh, the jetsetting life I lead!, I thought. Then I got older, priorities changed, and I got married, bought a house, had a kid. And it turns out that I haven't changed my habits, but my disposition has altered greatly.

Having just gotten home after two months in Asia, and having worked like a maniac to finish up my contracts since I got home (to the detriment of all efforts at beating jet lag and the journey-induced exhaustion, etc.), and only in the last couple of days having started to feel like a regular human being, all I want in the world is two things:

1. To go see my sister and her new baby, Luke (Welcome, Luke Dominic!)

2. To stay at home and go absolutely nowhere for the next six months

These things, as you can see, are mutually exclusive. Since the latter isn't realistic (we're going to New Mexico in June for research, to Kelowna for Brother John's wedding in July, Nova Scotia and Ontario in August, and Africa in September...), Sloane and I are leaving for Ottawa tomorrow morning. We bought a collapsable playpen today for Sloane's napping/sleeping comfort en route, and we'll have the car seat in tow. We're staying with Great Uncle Richard (Turner's middle-namesake) and Great Auntie Steph in Nepean, commuting to Sandy Hill to visit Ains and Luke and Jonathon. And we'll be spending the weekend with Cousin Jana near Kingston, and seeing a variety of other folks around Ottawa if the opportunity arises.

That's the size of it. Can't wait to see Ains, but don't want to leave home. Pack of ungrateful assholes, us, eh?

[...p.s. If I'm honest I'll also admit that I want 3. My grandparents to be in full-time nursing care that a) doesn't compromise their idea of how they want to live out their 'golden years', but also b) no longer involves living in the cottage on Strawberry Hill. I can't talk about this situation now; perhaps once Nanny and Grampa are gone.]

 

Categories: Ash | Family
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Beverage Swag

Well, Keitha's swag water bottle story has reminded me of my own tale of winning-a-CBC-beverage-container.

This was probably just more than two years ago - early February 2004 if I had to guess, now that I think of it. It was back when I was still working at Canadian Heritage, and Turner and I were newly married, and John had only just started dating this gal named Fiona. (Those of you who might doubt Lava's efficacy, I'll refer you to this site.) I'd been invited in a semi-official capacity to attend the Calgary $100 Film Fest down at the Alberta College of Art and Design, and although as a funding person you get invited to all kinds of stuff about-townish, I decided to go since my neighbour Xtine Cook was going to be singing with her band. Besides which, I was the only funding officer in town who ever deigned to attend anything subbacultural, so I felt a sort of duty to go and wear the stripes and such.

However, the $100 Film Fest being a predictably shoestring event (and unqualified for the programs that I adminstered, besides), I didn't feel obligated to arrive completely in my right mind. After a few warm-up drinx here at home on Spiller Road, Turner and John and Fiona and I trooped down to The King And I on 11th (via taxi) for dinner. A great deal of beer and pad thai and goong curry and sticky rice and wine later, we took a lot of rather instructive photographs with the giant fighting (dancing?) garuda sculpture in their entry lobby, before going in and getting a last traveller beer at their bar, and finally stumbling out into the night to catch the Ctrain up to ACAD.

So it's one of those nights in Calgary: it's snowing, but it's warm, the night is still, and the streetlights are all glowing pink and yellow in the frosted air, and you're putting fresh footprints on the sidewalks ...which are weaving a bit, but that's okay, because your tum's full of Thai food and you're on your way to a Cultural Event to which you have the coveted perk of all funders everywhere: the free pass for you and all your friends.

We get the Ctrain at 8th & 8th and roll the rails up to SAIT, and get off at the Jubilee station, wobbling our way over the Plus-15 and down the stairs into the milieu of the film fest, proper. Which hasn't even started yet, though this is SUPER news because that means what? ...Yes folks, it means there's time for a beer or two at their please-god-buy-something-this-is-our-only-form-of-fundraising bar cart parked in the overlit brick-walled lobby. Being employed and already-semi-inebriated people, we decided to invest some of our hard-earned dollars in their fundraising efforts. (...What can I say? It all seemed like a series of very good ideas at the time.)

Anyway, we said hi to the various people with whom we had passing acquaintances and/or prospective funding applications, and we finally got our (free!) tickets sorted out. And as we shuffled into the theatre we were given back our stubs to keep - "For the door prizes!" said the stoned-to-the-bejeesus & unwashed art student manning the door. Now - I've never won a door prize. Never. Even at those events where everyone's supposed to win something, no. Not me. But when that spiral-eyed kid gave me that stub and said those words: door prize, I knew I was going to win. Yes, I did. I swear I knew.

So we took our seats, and the lights dimmed, and the "films" began. I think one of them was about melting down plastic dolls and then mixing them with paint and smearing them on walls. One was simply a political manifesto read overtop a shaky b&w shot of a windowsill (nothing was happening outside, either). There were people going up and down stairwells - holding the camera. And I think one of the films featured hands taking the wrappers off of successive hard candies from a dish, but the point of view was so close up and out of focus that it wasn't at all clear that the person "making" the film even knew that the camcorder was on. By about ten minutes in, I think I was able to speak for all of us when I muttered to Turner, "Thank god we drank so much before we got here - these films BITE."

"Ssshhhhhhh!" said Turner, supportively.

The whole point of the "$100 film fest" was that you were supposed to make the film with a budget of $100 or less, hence the name. Most entries certainly fulfilled this requirement, no question. More creative talent had gone into lighting design for the auditorium (two switches by the door - one lit the stage, the other lit the audience) than most of the films, I'm afraid. We were basically waiting to see Xtine perform and then get the hell out of there, though in the meantime we applauded politely at the end of each "film". As an arts funder, I'd seen some shite in my time. I won't say it was all shite this particular night, but I will say that I stole one of the film fest's posters to put in my office as an incentive: you too, with a minimum of fuss and bother (never mind "talent") can make something worthy of being screened in a "film fest", even if you're waaaaaay too high and/or unconscious.

Finally our neighbour came on, dressed all in orange. Overtop of a film depicting her walking around Inglewood and some shots of her daughter, the band (complete with a guy playing "the tub" and one on a real bass violin) played, for quite some time, the song written to accompany the film: Orange is the colour, orange is the colour, orange is the colour, orange is the colour, orange is the colour, orange is the colour of IN-SAN-I-TY! ("Orange Is The Colour Of Insanity", for short, I believe.) They'd digitized orange splashes and designs overtop of the action throughout the film. It was the best by far that we'd seen and I was so relieved. At least I didn't have to lie when I would later tell my neighbour that her film was the best thing on offer that night. And blessedly, the intermission was next.

Before we were let go, however, the host came on stage. Door prize time - everyone get out yer tickets. ...Ah yes the door prize I'm going to win! I thought casually - we can stay just a bit longer. In that inebriated zone of certainty I was completely assured of my win, and I composed (what I thought to be) an appropriately humble-and-yet-surprised-and-excited look on my face. But it was of no surprise whatsoever when the MC did, actually, call out my number. "535008? 535008? Does anyone have five three five zero zero eight? ...Oh-oh-eight?"

I barely glanced at the ticket, actually: I knew it was mine. "ME!" I yelled, triumphantly. "ME, ME, ME! I WIN!" I bellowed into the theatre. "Ah, an enthusiastic winner, excellent!" called the host from on stage.

"I WIN!" I yelled again, standing up and punching the air with both arms, ticket held high. "ME!!!"

"Ah. ...Yes, congratulations," said the host, now slightly less jolly, and turning to get my prize.

"I KNEW I WOULD WIN!" I shouted, turning from side to side, nodding. Nobody believed me, I don't think, though by this point I'm sure some people had began to suspect at our drinking activities prior to arriving.

The host held up my prize: an insulated mug from ZedTV (the late-night CBC show that screens experimental short films), one of the film fest's 'sponsors'. "THROW IT!" I yelled, holding out my hands, exaggeratedly. I was only about ten rows from the front, and the theatre wasn't that crowded - it was an easy toss.

So after a "oh shit, well, fine" look, the host threw me my cup, and Turner caught it when I fumbled the catch, and I snatched it from him and turned around to show the crowd. "I WON!" I told everybody. I was very proud of myself. And in return I got a polite smattering of applause. I bowed (slightly), and sat (Turner was pulling at my belt loops, John was making the "SIT DOWN" motion with both hands, Fi was pretending to look for something in her coat). I turned to Turner: "I won!" I whispered. He looked at me. "Obviously," he said. "Now: should we go?" "...Oh yes!" sez I, even though they were still giving out more door prizes. I somehow knew I wouldn't win again.

So we all stood, and without further ado, we left. The house lights were up, so there was no mistaking our departure. After I'd made a big show of myself and everything, yes, we got up and we very obviously gathered our coats and We Left. "Bye-bye!" I called from the doorway to the still-trapped & -assembled crowd, giddy from my win.

Everyone in our party bolted for the C-train station, hoping not to encounter anyone from the film fest. We went downtown and caught some jazz and beers at the BeatNiq club, and wandered through a nearby art gallery (another agency funded by our ministry, and I had to make a hasty exit, finally recognizing my own drunkenness), and then made our way to the Auburn (at the base of the Calgary Tower), where we found our pal Lawrence. A few drinks there, yadda yadda yadda, lemme show you my amazing door prize that I won, etcetera, and finally home again home again riggy jig jig.

...Unlike Keitha, I still have that mug. It serves me well. My reputation, however, sustained a bit of a knock. But I'm assured of a win if I ever enter anything in Calgary's $100 Film Festival, I'm sure of it.  

 

Categories: Ash | Calgary | Work work work
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Nobody Thinks That Sake Is A Good Idea At This Hour, Not Even Me.

Hullo hullo, we're back in Canada. It's 3:09am and I'm exhausted and jetlagged and on deadline; there's only sake left in the house, but I'm not above bringing it up to snuff in a saucepan and sitting down in front of the ol' blog to tell a few tales.

A few weeks ago I did a foolish thing. I'd had a pretty good run of stories and after years of officially Not Giving A Shit What Other People Think, out of the blue I decided to submit my blog for review by a hilarious snarkfest weblog review site, I Talk Too Much. Ha ha ha, I'm so funny, thinked I. Oh, Dad and Leo and the house alarm - guffaw! The abysmal state of Indian bathrooms! Har har har, DO go on, Ashley. So I submitted my site and thought Oh Goody, Can't Wait.

Except then something happened. Then I didn't want to post anything. I didn't want to say anything that might compromise the coming review. I couldn't think of anything quite good enough to say on here that didn't seem banal, or lame, or self-indulgent. And then I got into this big merry-go-round of thought wherein Of Course everything is self-indulgent, it's mine own blog and I say what I like and mainly write to amuse myself first and foremost, etc. But them ideas and thinkingness didn't help matters at all, and in any case, I just stopped posting.

We got busy in India of course, and it started out like that - busy, and lack of internet access, and then the internet access we had was shitty and spotty and slow, and Sloane got a fever and scared us a bit that way and I had to be with her all the time. And then we came back to Bangkok, and Sloane was still a bit sick on and off, and then Turner left to come home to Canada, and I was on my own, but I was starting these two contracts and was busy like mad getting some documents whipped into shape for an NGO based in Laos. Which was great an' all, but it was our last two weeks in Bangkok, and I was working day and night, and trying to pack, and Bauer and Karen came through town again. And then we had to take Sloane to the hospital, and the deadlines changed, and I had to pick up last minute gifts at the Weekend Market, and so on. And I kept thinking I'd post about this and that, but I was, underneath all the running-around, kind of paralysed, waiting for this review from "The Bitches" over at I Talk Too Much.

But finally I said Ah fuck it, this is retarded, I miss my blog. So I wrote to the site to say, Uh yes I'm a moron but please take me off your list to be reviewed - I'm not posting anything anyway because I have stage fright or something. And I got an email back about a day later: "Oh, sorry, I'd take you off the list, but I think you've already been done." I'd missed it, because I was avoiding the internet.

When I saw the review, I laughed. LAUGHED, because oh lord I guess I asked for it. Back to Not Giving A Shit for me, frankly, because if this is what Those Who Review think, I'm MUCH better off talking to myself online as per usual: my review, here. In truth I have to think that this woman didn't read anything beyond the header, since she seemed to hate it so much. But that's fair - the site is brutal and nasty and I love many of their reviews because they're so creatively mean, though I am disappointed I didn't raise enough ire to earn an inspired version of being handed my ass. I knew full well that if I'd wanted a warm fuzzy I could've asked my mom to review the site (hi Mem!), so I was a bit sorry that the header got dissed and there was nothing more interesting than that. Personally I thought the Uncle Leo & Brucio house alarm story was pretty funny and worth the price of admission at this point, but maybe it's just because I know the people involved. In any case, despite the dismal review I got interesting traffic and emails from lovely people complimenting me on my site content and also a few telling me I was an international bigot ("more like an American, I'd have guessed, than a Canadian - most Canadians are tolerant" said one guy) due to my cultural 'insights' about the Indian toilet situation. Uh, okay.

Anyway, Sloane and I have been back for a few days, dizzy and disoriented and jetlagging... but slowly getting back into the Calgary groove. More to come from Spiller Road HQ after some sleep.

Categories: Ash | Internet
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History Lessons

Years ago, and I'm talking years and years ago now – like, probably 15 years ago – John Johnston was on his way across Canada. At Winnipeg he decided to do a day trip to Fort Garry. The guide was dressed, as guides often are at Canadian sites of Historical Importance, in period costume (as a blacksmith, as I recall). They were taking a trip back to 1875, and everyone was given an explanation of Fort Garry's importance – in westward expansion, in trade and policing, and as an administrative centre for what was, at that time, Metis country and bald prairie.

 

The guide explained that the Fort was an important, working, nearly self-sufficient community, and everyone living there had to have something to offer – no layabouts or loafers, no dead weight. And then he looked around the group. "As newcomers, you have to have something to offer. It's 1875 here at Fort Garry: what skills do you have that could be of any use to us?"

 

The group looked around, one to another. The Winnipeggers of the group were a buncha lumpy civil-servant descendants of Ukrainians and Scots, most probably. The German and Japanese tourists hoped to hide behind the language barrier. Shuffle-shuffle went the feet, the feet of late 20^th century occupants of the first world: service industry paper pushers, none of them could shoe horses, or read the weather for farming, or build anything that didn't come with instructions from Ikea. Of this big group of people, nobody could think of anything they’d have to offer to the 19^th century frontier.

 

And then John – good man, our JJ, as always - stepped forward. In his best cockney shipboy accent: "I kin read n' write, sir!"

 

The blacksmith exploded, laughing: "…Yes! Excellent! We always need people who can read – most of us here are illiterate and they’re always sending orders from Ottawa that we can't figure out. …Anyone else?"

 

...When we got to Bangkok, I thought it'd be good to pick up some work while I was here... some editing would be great. Lots of NGOs and international agencies in town, it shouldn't be too hard. Well, you should watch what you wish for, because thanks to Phet's networking, within a month I'd landed two contracts. Now I'm neck deep in the thick of it and wondering what the hell I was thinking, taking on work when there's markets to be explored and Thai food to eat, and a swimming pool to enjoy and all the wonders of Bangkok lying here at my feet. (In short, I'm an ungrateful wretch!)

 

John's quip has been bouncing around and around in my head, but in my voice the tone is more whiney and snivelly: I sure put my foot in it - I can read and write, sir!

 

 

Categories: Ash | Asia 2006 | City Planning | Work work work
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Ashley Bristowe, Global Snobizen

As we stepped off the plane I figured we should hit the bathroom before wading into the customs lineup. Chennai’s Anna International Airport: as I walked up the hall from the plane and through the glass hallways, I sussed it out: not bad, not bad… newish but not sparklingly ‘global’ in feel, various television screens telling us to head for the customs clearance desks and from which belt to gather our luggage, friendly-looking Indian Police officials with giant guns and miles of decorations leaning in doorways, watching us pass.

 

So the toilet, the toilet… where is the toilet? And then I saw a sign, toilet this way, with an arrow, just before the giant lineups to get our passports stamped, so I hung a right.  And there it was, in all its welcome-to-India glory: the shithole bathroom indigenous to every transportation hub on the Subcontinent. I can’t believe that I was expecting a standard airport bathroom: shame on me and my terrible sieve-like memory!

 

Oh, it was everything I hadn’t remembered and more: Despite the entirety of the rest of the airport being a sealed and air-conditioned international space, they managed to build this bathroom on an outside wall, obviously to allow for the circulation of hot jetfuel-scented air and the free passage of the obligatory 1001 flies. Single tinny fluorescent tube lighting the whole place. Water all over the floor, even way over by the door. An ill-hung mirror, the back silver of which was fading away in a sort of top-down watermark smear. And of course, in the stall itself, the lock, broken; holes in the door (though this let in some badly needed light – I should have been more grateful); dripping hose with cracked blue plastic pail underneath; and brand new toilet with stained, side-slung seat (though I should give props where due: usually there’s no seat at all). It goes without saying that there is no paper provided, ever, anywhere in India. As I did my business I balanced the baby on one hip and held the bags over my head: there was nowhere to put her or them down.

 

When I was a resident of India, the filth and refuse bothered me, but I could live with it. You have to. When you’re young you can sort of say to yourself, okay, they’ve got this caste system that no one will properly explain, but it seems to prevent anyone from actually caring for washrooms, except in private homes. You end up going to that place in your mind that says, “Well now Ashley, don’t be such a judgmental asshole, this is their culture and you are the outsider here.” No matter what the venue or business or locale, a bathroom with even the vaguest hint of public access in India is, always, a complete disgrace. Ainsley and I finally snapped one day on the Shatabdi train between Delhi and Chandigarh and, armed only with paper towels, a bar of soap, a credit card (to scrape up the grime), and the water provided in the basin tap by India Rail, we scrubbed that bathroom from top to bottom and emerged damp and exhausted, but jubilant and grinning: BEHOLD, THE ONLY CLEAN BATHROOM IN INDIA, AND LO, WE MADE IT SO.

 

But after a while – and I’m talking about a few months here – if you have any sense of cultural relativist decency, you do, finally, bow to the seemingly endless parade of revoltingly spartan and broken water closets and give up your pretentions. Without actually going “native”, as Rudyard Kipling so condescendingly put it, you do suck it up, so to speak. And in truth, this is a survival tactic, and being inured to the filth is a precious resource in the battle to preserve your sanity here. If you know me personally, I’m sure you’ve heard the ol’ busride from Leh to Manali story, which features a terrible case of the shits and me, half-collapsed and feverish at a bus station urinal, looking over to realize that a man was masterbating in the gloom, looking at my hunched and sickened self. Yeah… so. Can you see that getting to a zen place as to the quality of public toilets can save your soul? Yes. It truly can. And I know this. But it does take time, a long time.

 

Now, I’ll remind you that Sloane and I are only going to be here for 10 days this time ‘round. And as such, I fully realize I don’t have the dubious ‘luxury’ of attending to the whole wearying process of having my snotty superior spirit broken on the matter of public toilet cleanliness. I’m going to blame my stubbornness at least in small measure on being a mother and having my baby ‘on board’, but I’m holding firm and this is my decree on this day: good god the toilets in India are awful, and I won’t apologize for my snobbery. Wet, dank, dirty, insect-infested, unserviced, broken, neglected, abandoned: you’d hardly think that there were a billion people in this country, all of whom, I assume, have to shit once or twice a day. Really, you’d think that the Indians would’ve really had it all figured out by now on these matters. (Which, considering the age of the culture and the history of civilization here and whatnot, begs the chilling question: What if they do have it figured out, and this is it?)

 

So I’ll be unrelentingly bald and cold when I say: shame on you, the management of Chennai’s Anna International Airport – you are running an AIRPORT. People pay hundreds, if not thousands of dollars for the privilege of transportation via airplanes. And as the air terminal, you are the first and seminal welcoming can-can line when people arrive in this country – and given the uncompromising filth we’ll find everywhere else, there’s no worry that we won’t encounter “the real India” in this realm. So the very least you could do is break us in slowly. For the love of god, renovate and maintain your goddamn toilets, I beg you.

 

 

[You know, it’s only fair to report that I’ve seen and used plenty of public toilets in Canada that totally rival the Indian ones for disgustingness. The around-the-back gas station toilet at the Hwy 6 corner mart in New Denver, BC, leaps to mind (mainly because every time I end up having to use that bathroom, I think to myself: “I should never complain about the toilets in India as though Canada is so much better, because this one SUCKS.”) So I should be kinder – but for now, I won’t be.]

Categories: Ash | Asia 2006 | India
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Overheard At Muay Thai

So I don't know about you, but I'd heard of Thai Kickboxing before I'd ever been to Thailand. I'd heard that it was some kind of extreme sport, and the main jist of most stories centred around the fact that the boxers are allowed to basically do anything to win, including kick each other in the nuts.

Men say that women can't picture that kind of pain. I say to them: have you seen a woman go through childbirth? Yeah. No. I guess I can't picture your 5-minute doubled-over hyperventilating pain, and you can't picture my 20 hour labour. We'll call it uneven and leave it at that.

But, yes - getting canned: even if you can't empathize with the actual experience, most girls are told by their moms at some point that if they REALLY need to physically defend themselves and there's no other way out, kick a guy in the balls. They get to make bigger money and start wars and father children they don't support, but there's this one chink in the armour? DANG. That's a pretty serious gap under the armpit. Kind of makes you understand why men aren't that hot for even having their 'nads slightly jostled in the wrong way.  

So it makes muay thai sound pretty hard core, to hear that the fighters can bash each other in the crotch. Hence the infamy.

Karen and Bauer had one night left in Bangkok, and decided that they wanted to see some kickboxing. Alrighty sez I, and arranged to come along. When Thaba heard the plan, she mentioned that everyone who comes to visit them in Bangkok goes to see muay thai, and most people are satisfied with their kickboxing experience after the second or third fight. I'm familiar with the phenomenon of getting "enough" of an experience, when attendees with perhaps a more nuanced understanding of the event are just getting warmed up. Bullfighting, for example. As a tourist in Mexico or Spain, it sounds like a good idea to go see a bullfight. How daring! ¿Cómo usted dice? ...So local! So authentic! Okay, let's go.

...And after the first fight, you get it. You know what's going on, you can identify the picadors from the conquistadors, you've seen them actually kill the bull, and it's not at all like the Bugs Bunny where he should've taken the left turn at Albequerque. But you've paid $20 or $30 or even $100 for the ticket, and the true fans all around you are having a great time, cheering and yelling at each other in Spanish. So you stay, and try to stick it out.

But eventually the certainty sets in: I want to leave. And you do. You shoulda left after the first bull. So when I heard this news from Thaba, I knew of what she spoke. I wouldn't be shy about jumping ship on the muay thai early on in the rounds, if necessary.

I met Bauer and Karen at Lumphini BTS and we walked over to the venue, where we bought the 3rd tier Foreigner-class tickets (the cheapest seats at 1000B, vs. 150B for Thais in the same class of seats. Methinks they're trying to make some money off the falang) and headed into the 'stadium'. When I say 'stadium', don't think of an American college football stadium. Don't even think of McMahon stadium in Calgary before the reno. Picture instead a circular, tiered Roman stadium, but small. And with an aluminum roof. And wooden benches, erected over what looked like a decidedly malarial swamp of muddy filth and detritus from the stands. Then, fill the stadium with approximately 4000 screaming Thai men, wrigging their fingers at each other and jumping up and down, betting like mad and tearing out their hair. Also insert view-blocking advertisements, about 200 low-watt fluorescent bulbs dangling from the ceiling on wires, and a quartet of musicians in matching neon-green jackets who thump drums, a bell, and an oboe along to the tempo of the fight.

(When we chose our seats, an older guy came over to ask us where we were from and tell us a bit about the event. He pointed out that we'd chosen excellent seats: right in front of the music booth, so no one would stand in our way. Music booth? we said, expecting a dj or sound effects or something. But then the squealing band stuck up their tweedley tune and we all looked at each other: Huh? Karen: "Hey! A band! I love live music!" Approximately two minutes later, as the full force of the repetitious and honkingly grating nature of the "music" was becoming abundantly apparent, Bauer: "When Thab said people only lasted one or two fights, do you think she meant because of the fighting? Or because of the music...?")

Basically at a night of muay thai you get to watch a roster of wiry guys in fancy shorts bash the hell out of each other. Which makes it not that different from North American boxing, except in Thai kickboxing they can kick. KICKboxing, see? And use their elbows. And trip their opponent, if they can manage it. One guy actually got knocked out cold, and I had a weird shiver run through me when the paramedic chucked him on the chin to see if he was conscious, and his skull rolled around like a teatherball. We only lasted one more fight after that one, four fights total. Aside from the music, the mosquitoes were eating Karen and I alive. And really, there is such a thing as "enough" Thai kickboxing, especially your first time out.

And as it turns out, I don't think you're allowed to go for the balls. I didn't see any punching down near the family jewels, and there were plenty of opportunities. Imagine the disappointment in that small part of my brain still devoted to hating men (I had to sign out a 99-year lease on that section when I transferred into Women's Studies in undergrad).

I never really claimed to be a sports photographer. And I'll remind you that we were in the cheapest seats. But I think you get the point.

So, but really, the highlight for me was when the drinks lady came around. We were approached by a little woman calling out quietly, "Beer? ...Beer?" When she came over to show her wares, her tray held bottles of water and green tea, and then open cups of what looked like brightly coloured kool-aid. There was very clearly no beer on the tray. I don't know what I was thinking - I chose the green cup.

Ash:    How much? Thao rai?

Lady:   Thirty five baht.

I'm thinking that 35 baht is more than a dollar, but enh - supporting the local economy and all that. Plus I'd just dropped 1000B on the entry ticket; at this point, what was another buck?

Ash: Okay.

Pulls out money, pays with a 100B note. Lady starts digging for change in her waistbelt.

Meanwhile, Bauer and Karen are looking over the drinks situation. Bauer nods at the tray with a suspicious glance: you want any? Karen decides she wants a bottle of green tea, and with a shrug Bauer hands it over. Meanwhile, the drinks lady hands me my change: 65B.

Ash: Thanks.

Karen: How much for the green tea?

The lady waves us off, yes, no problem. She makes a move to leave.

Bauer: Wait. What?

Karen: Huh? How much is it?

Lady crouches down again.

Lady: ...Fifteen baht.

Karen pulls out the money, hands the lady a 20B note. But something's going on. The lady seems to be indicating that Karen has already paid. Which would make sense, if my drink wasn't actually 35B, and had been 10B or something like that, and Karen's is now 15B.

Ash: What's going on here? I think she's saying we've already paid for Karen's.  

Bauer: We're ... not... sure. Karen chose her drink after you got your change. I think there's a mistake somewhere.

Meanwhile, some of the men in our vicinity have started to take notice of our situation. They start calling out advice in Thai. Lady pulls out fifteen baht change and hands it to Karen. Everyone is confused by this point.

Ash: [sipping my drink] Why is mine 35 baht and hers is 5 baht?

Bauer: What do you mean?

Ash: [more sipping] Well, hers is packaged. It's got a recyclable container. It's made by, like, a multinational beverage company. Mine is just a glass of juice with some ice. Mine should be cheaper. ...Unless...

Ash suddenly puts the cup down. Everyone looks at my cup of green juice & ice, now 1/3 gone.

Bauer: Well... uh... well!

Ash: What the hell!

Lady suddenly comes back. Hands me a 20B note. Is talking to me in Thai. I don't know what she's saying. I'm distracted, looking around at the ceiling and pillars nearby, trying to discern if there was any alcohol in the kool-aid. I'm thinking, I didn't taste any alcohol...? But purple jesus works that way too... you can't taste it... hmmmm. Lady is still talking. Bauer is looking at her like, We got nuthin', here.

Ash: [starting to laugh] Make her go away. I just want her to go away, now.

Karen: ...Well, I paid 5 baht for mine. She gave me 15B change. And you paid a 100, but she gave you 65B back. And now she gave you 20 more baht. So yours... yours was fifteen baht, in the end. She said mine was fifteen but maybe she meant five, and yours was actually the one that was fifteen baht.

The lady is still talking to us. The men are still calling out friendly advice. The lady pulls out coins, starts to gesture with them. Bauer's still looking at her, friendly, but noncommittal. The lady stands up, still talking.

Ash: Make her leave. I just want her to go away.

Karen: [To the lady] Kap koon kah! Thank you! We're fine, we don't need anything. Thank you! [Turning to us] So yours was 15B in the end. She must have said the wrong number. Or tried to overcharge you, but it all got too confusing, so she refunded your money.

Ash: But... wait. 15 baht? ...That STILL makes mine 3x more than yours. [Absentmindedly picks up the glass of juice, takes another sip.] ...Aahhh! What the hell am I doing? [Slams the cup down with a crash, on the bench.]

Bauer: [Watching, bemused, this whole time] ...Like, I don't know! I don't know what the hell you're doing! The beer lady comes and you get what looked like a 10 cent glass of freshie, full of ice from god knows where, and it's A DOLLAR. And you paid her, and drank it up! The mosquitoes are the least of your problems! You're breaking all the rules! No ice! No open cups! What did you think you were buying!?

Everyone is doubled over, gasping,