Obama and Harry in Toronto: swoon

Wednesday, so scorching hot we could hardly breathe. Thursday, temperate. Today, so wet and chilly that I turned on the furnace. That is something of a record, that huge a switch in temperature in 48 hours. Welcome to Canada.

I am so immersed in my volunteer activities, it's a miracle I get any work done at all. And many days, I don't. I'm writing a speech to give next weekend at the 25th anniversary of my son's high school, and another for a talk in October, with Powerpoint, in Fairfax, Virginia, plus arranging that trip. I'm finding speakers for the English conversation group, setting up a meeting about our Xmas Eve pageant Babe in the Barn, and spent the whole morning making lists of possible speakers for next year's Creative Non-fiction conference. I have to stop saying yes. Repeat after me: NO. Sorry. I have work to do.

Sigh.

This is a good time for me to do other stuff, though, with the manuscript floating about in two different places. Waiting for the no. Real writers would be starting their next book. I'm making lists of real writers to invite to our conference. And picking the basil in the garden that has to be cooked now, which is the only time I went outside all day. Didn't move all day. Sat here emailing constantly. Bad.

I did cook a delicious Japanese eggplant with garlic and basil dish, however, and spent a delightful hour delving into the file box of my son's life for material for the talk at his school. Did spend a great hour talking to him and eating a superb omelette he cooked for us both, on a quick visit to his old mum. It's a busy busy life, and I would not change a single thing. Except the presidents of the United States and North Korea - those I would definitely change. Particularly because, as a reminder of what can go wrong on our planet, Hilary Clinton was in town yesterday.

Speaking of being in town - the Invictus Games for wounded veterans have been going on all week here, and for sheer joy, how about this picture of the audience for wheelchair basketball? Two of the most adorable manspreading men on the planet side by side. And I'm not talking about Joe Biden, though he's not bad either. What I would like to say is: good job, mothers of these fine men. You done good. (Though truly, look at room taken up by the women's legs and the men's. Vive la difference!)

P.S If you want a smile, go to YouTube and find "B.C. man politely asks bears to leave his backyard." I've tried to put it here but can't. It's the most Canadian thing you'll see all day. Except for the photograph above, in which not a single audience member is paying the slightest attention to two of the most famous men in the world, seated in front of them.

some crazy stuff

The weather has turned, praise be - it's normal out there, lovely, sunny with a bite in the air. I just sent the manuscript to an agent. So am feeling that bite in the air more than usual.

For your daily smile, today's absurdities from the internet:

Someone wrote, in a great Harry Potter reference, "This is the Platform 9 3/4 of bicycle lanes."

Really?

And best of all ... The Snurds. Where are they now?

and now for the good news: Macca in NYC

We are living, my friends, through a time surreal with horror, when the base side of human nature is not only disclosed but encouraged and lauded. A time when citizens respond to inevitable change not with interest but with terror, revulsion, and violence. May this time pass quickly and vanish. May we think back on the Trump era, shaking our heads, wondering how it happened. May the dystopian literature that's bursting out not be proven true. In the meantime, I cling to newspaper columnists and sharp-tongued comedians to keep my sanity.

In the meantime, all I can do is tend my garden, not just the plants, but the neighbourhood - this morning, the English conversation group in Regents Park. There was a surreal moment when I saw me and my friend Linda surrounded by brown-skinned women, Jesmin, Razia, Nurun, and the others, wearing yards and yards of beautiful material, huge swaths of multi-coloured cloth enveloping their bodies and heads. Some new women came today, younger ones who did not wear the veil, which made me glad. But still, even those who do wear it, when they flip up that black cloth, I see beautiful lively faces anxious to learn English, full of laughter. It's a joy.

And then they flip the veil back down and go back to their lives, their many children, and Linda and I go to the Y for Carole's class where we met, running around puffing and panting and wearing very little. Not something our new Bengali friends have ever experienced.

And then I come home to my empty quiet house and think about the rest of the day, which somehow goes by, much of it sitting here with my fingers tapping - editing pieces for students, for the next So True, writing to friends, this blog, about next year's conference, preparing talks, reading online and on paper, trying to keep my head above the water of my responsibilities. My own work, buried for now. Cooking cleaning volunteering - when it's so difficult to get to work with only that, however did I do any writing when I had young children? The honest answer: I didn't, not very much.

And the New Yorker, another task, that gorgeous magazine arriving once a week in my mailbox. Impossible to keep up. But flipping through today's, I could not help but see this small mention of one of my greatest loves - yes, a mention in the coolest of the cool in NYC.

The New Yorker, Oct. 2, 2017

Night Life, Rock and Pop

Paul McCartney

McCartney’s “One on One” tour has rumbled into its last week in the tristate area. The tour was advertised with billboards featuring a simple image of his signature Höfner bass, devoid of his likeness – a cryptic campaign few other rock stars could pull off. McCartney has somehow grown from his association with a band that was “bigger than Jesus” to something even larger: a living, breathing time capsule from possibly the richest, most fawned over period in popular music. He’s also become cooler with age, and his infrequent collaborations with artists generations his junior (including his sitting in as a drummer on an upcoming Foo Fighters record) only further stoke his legend.

The writer is wrong in one thing - Macca has not at all "become cooler with age," he is just the same; it's just that cool people have finally recognized how extraordinary he is. Go Macca. Could you please save the world, while you're at it? 

reasons to drink

Love this press release from the White House:
Melania Trump embarked on her first solo overseas trip as First Lady when she attended the Invictus Games in Toronto on Saturday. 
Melania visits Canada, that great country overseas. I'm not sure exactly which seas - does Lake Ontario count?

I'm listening to CBC's The World at Six, drinking white with ice cubes, wearing as little as possible in the on-going sweltering heat - the last few days indeed record-breaking, 32 degrees feeling nearer to 40 with the humidity. Tomorrow only 38. The news on CBC is  devastating. Do we even remember Barack Obama, his idealism and grace? Yes we can? It seems a lifetime ago.

I am going next month to Washington D.C., for a talk on my great-grandfather near there, in Fairfax, Virginia. I actually wrote yesterday to the woman producing the event to say - if it looks like nuclear war is going to break out, I will not be coming. I had a nightmare of war starting with me stuck in Washington, just the worst place to be. Hard to believe I'm even saying this. My father spent much of his life fighting nuclear proliferation; I grew up with the words "Strontium 90" and "nuclear proliferation" ringing in my ears. And now - two lunatics with their fingers on the button.

Spare us.

Teaching has started, two very full classes full of interesting people - I love my job, though I come home drained. I am not getting enough done. The manuscript is in limbo. Yesterday was Glenn Gould's birthday. Happy birthday, dear genius.

Word on the Street in the heat

Again, I apologize for the blowing-own-horn that follows, but what I received today via email is so beautiful and means so much to my battered writer's heart that I must share it with you. I've been corresponding with a writer who wants me to work as editor or coach on her next book, so I got her last memoir out of the library and loved it, found it powerful and profound. I wrote to tell her so, and she wrote back that she is reading "All My Loving."

Sometimes I read at night if I can’t sleep. I can usually do that without waking my partner who is a sound sleeper. But I’ve been waking him up lately because All My Loving is so damn funny it’s making me laugh out loud. You have drawn such a wonderful portrait and I am so drawn to her and all her trials. I also realize that over time I forgot the details, not just of us, but of our time, and you have brought all of it back to mind so beautifully, with such virtuosity and detail and intelligence. I am in awe. 

I forgot to adore myself at least as much as I adored Paul, and the portrait of your character is so hilariously potent and magnetic that I’ve now remembered how wildly potent I was too! It’s like reading a really smart love letter and the title so perfectly reflects the warmth that I’ve felt reading it. It is a gift to us on so many levels, and I am grateful.

Not as grateful, dear reader, as this author. As I wrote to her - we send our slaved-over, beloved works out into the world like defenceless children, without knowing if they will ever matter to anyone. So to receive something like this means more than I can express.

Okay, though I'd like to linger here ... moving on. The weather, insane, surely record-breaking heat, broiling, brutal, like a mid-summer heatwave only it's nearly October. And unfortunately, today was Word on the Street at Harbourfront, where there's no shade. I heard someone lamenting the past venues for this great festival of the printed word, and I couldn't agree more - I've been going for decades, since it was stretched out along Queen Street, and then in Queen's Park where there were TREES and real grass. And now Harbourfront where it's very crowded, all the little tents packed together, madness in the heat.

I was there first with Eli; we watched a show at the TVO marquee but mostly he wanted to run up and down the wavy wooden street over the water, so when his mother arrived, we sat in the shade and he ran and slid in the sun with a new friend. He is indefatigable and wherever he goes, he makes friends. Yesterday I took him to the Wellesley Street waterpark and he ran screaming through the water for a solid hour with his new BFF who was certainly on the autism spectrum, at one point punching the jets of water and shouting, "I hate you I hate you!" Eli just kept running and jumping and getting wetter. He'd just lost his first tooth, pulled out by his mama with dental floss, as her father did with her's.

And then a sleepover with Glamma. He climbed into my bed at 3 a.m. and proceeded to thrash about and snore, so I got up and carried him back to the spare room. Once I appreciated having a handsome young man in my bed; not so much now.

Later today at WOTS I met up with Kirsten Fogg, who is also on the committee to produce the creative non-fiction conference next year, and we went about listening to possible candidates for our event and then hiding in shady places. Two more days of this blazing heat, apparently, and then it starts to fade, and soon we'll be complaining about the cold. We're Canadians.