info for students

The count is nearly at 93,000! Be there or be square.

For anyone interested in taking my courses, here's the latest: True to Life at Ryerson begins this coming Monday at 6.30, and at last count, there was room. The advanced section of this course, scheduled for Tuesdays, has unfortunately been cancelled.

I am teaching an advanced course, however, at U of T, starting the following Monday. It's the same approach to the work, taught in the same way in a different part of town and called Life Stories. Please see this website under "Teaching" for links to both Ryerson and U of T.

Or else, please contact me. I'm available to work one-on-one on memoir, personal essay, family history - getting you going, guiding you along the way, and editing.

Just came back from a photography gallery opening, the friend of a friend's shots of Venice. Made me want to jump instantly on a plane and into a gondola, though I do realise that, in fact, I've only been back a few months from my grand European adventure. It seems a long time ago already. Perhaps you, my readers, miss that adventure nearly as much as I do, as I drone on and on about films and TV programs and horrible Harper. I apologise if it's dull. But this is Toronto in January. Films and television and the anti-proroguing movement are as exciting as it gets.

So, for today's excitement, let me tell you about the tail end of a program about happiness that I watched last night on PBS. I didn't turn it on earlier because I was busy and also thought, I don't need that, I'm pretty happy already. But it was so interesting I was sorry I'd missed the first bit. The show talked about the contagiousness of happiness - that it's been proven that the happiness of one person spreads manyfold through his or her acquaintances.

They showed "forgiveness courses" - designed to teach how to let go of pain, resentment and anger, and move on. Another example of moving on showed a couple whose 17-year old daughter, their only child, was among the scores of kids murdered at Virginia Tech. Their daughter used to work as a volunteer, helping to repair homes in Appalachia. What her parents do now, to keep the memory of their child alive, is to regularly take groups of teenagers to Appalachia to do the same thing. That way, they have young people in their lives, and they are visiting people she used to visit. It was a very moving segment.

The show presented research that's been done on the brains of Tibetan monks, intense and motionless while meditating; the scientists had presumed their brain scans would be pretty flat but instead found a great deal of activity, primarily in the part of the brain where happiness resides. So - meditating makes you happy, having happy friends makes you happy, forgiving makes you happy.

And, amazingly, so does getting older. Getting old. Young people think that the elderly are miserable because of ill health, the death of loved ones and the other misfortunes of aging. And these things are saddening and difficult. But the measurements of relative happiness, apparently, are lowest in young people and highest in the elderly. Aware of mortality, the old have a sense of perspective and truly relish what's important, in a way those younger do not.

In the end, was the conclusion, the most important prerequisites for happiness are our social networks and relationships, whatever those may be. We need each other. Even if, in these modern times, we make many of our bonds with invisible strangers through a computer screen, they're still bonds.

These days, what makes me happy is my connection, not just with all of you out there reading this blog, but with my 95,429 (I just checked) brethren who also want the Canadian government to get back to work.

a reader's glass regularly half full

Dear Beth: Have adopted your wise idea of drinking wine from a small glass and

would like to point out its secondary advantage--the regular exercise involved in

getting up to refill the small glass......

Cheers! Elizabeth

PS 10.30 p.m. 76,356 members. I'll stop doing this soon. But it's so much fun.

onward and upward

Since this morning's post, ten thousand more have joined the movement - how amazing is that? Membership is now at 68,372. It makes me feel warm just to think about it. And feeling warm, right now, is a very good thing.

*******************************

This is a story about how the right friend at the right time can save your sanity. I was sitting at my desk two mornings ago going nuts, papers piled high, struggling with reams of material. I used to compare writing my Jewish Shakespeare book to wrestling with an octopus, and the memoir was starting to feel the same way, always one snaky tentacle or two around my neck. How to make this work? I'm dealing with two interconnected but separate stories, one all the tales of childhood up to 1964, and then, just as I hit adolescence, the story of the Beatles arriving in my young life, how they transformed everything, how my love for Paul was the sustaining fantasy for many years.

But these two strands, no matter how hard I tried to weave them together, were not working. As I told you a while ago, I showed Wayson some of the Beatles material, and he dismissed it in seconds. A light, humourous take on teenaged angst and fantasy romance in the Sixties is not what he wanted to read. But it's one of the things I wanted to write.

I thought, I need help, and though it was only 9 a.m. her time, I called Patsy in B.C. She's one of my dearest friends; we've known each other since 1970, when she was already a professional actress and I an aspiring one. Through the years, we both moved from the stage into writing, teaching and editing, though I did so in downtown Toronto and she on a remote Gulf Island. Patsy is a superb teacher and script editor (and writer and poet too.)

After listening to my sad tale of confusion and despair, she said, "Beth, you say you're dealing with two separate stories. So why don't you tell them as two separate stories?"

I am embarrassed to say that this most obvious of solutions had never occurred to me. I'd spent endless hours trying to jam together two things that do not fit. Separate them, said Patsy. You have a fine journalistic voice, the relaxed, chatty voice you use in the blog that details the ephemera of daily life. That's the voice for the Beatles' saga. The childhood memoir voice is deeper and darker, different altogether.

The skies cleared and the birds sang and from one moment to the next, I saw what I had to do. Praise be.

This is a story of how we make life so much more difficult and complicated for ourselves than it needs to be. However, if we're lucky as we flounder and sink, a dear friend is out there with a life preserver.

Later that day, I spoke to Lynn in France. "I've been thinking," she said. "Your voice in the blog really works. Perhaps that's the way you should tell your stories."

"Funny you should say that just at this moment," I said.

Once more to quote my beloved Wayson: Onward!

*****************************

Just checked again - in the half-hour hour it took to write this, almost 1500 Canadians have joined the fight. Membership now at 69,848. I love them all.

Canadians against proroguing Parliament

A call to arms, my fellow Canucks. A young man in Alberta created the Facebook site Canadians Against Proroguing Parliament only a few days ago, and at last count, there were 58,205 members!

I beg you to join too. Log on and sign up, and while you're there, read Rick Mercer's brilliant rant, pointing out that if Karzai, the Prime Minister of Afghanistan, decided to cancel his parliament for two months, there would be a worldwide outcry. Five young Canadian soldiers are the latest in a list of hundreds of Canadians who've given their lives trying to bring democracy to that country.

And yet in their own country, elected officials have been given two months off to twiddle their thumbs and watch the Olympics, so that the Conservative government does not have to answer questions about detainee torture and much else. It's appalling, and the outcry is growing. This is the thrilling spectacle of true democracy in action.

There will be demonstrations across the country on January 23rd. See you there.

classes starting next week

The word of the day is "hunkering." As in, down. That's all a Canadian can do in the snow and pale grey light of January - hunker in the lair and try to keep sane. I think of my neighbours from Sri Lanka and India, from Jamaica, lands of vibrant colour, rich in smell and community, people living their lives in noisy abandon outside, under the sun. Here the world is white and grey, outside is bitter and unwelcoming, people huddle in their black parkas with faces swathed in scarves and vanish as quickly as possible. No colour, no smell, no sound - no faces, even. If it's hard for us, Canada in winter must be a frozen hell to those from warm places.

The good news: I gather protest is growing about Harper's arrogant dismissal of Parliament, and there may be demonstrations. Hooray! Nothing like a good demonstration to brighten a dull January day.

Tending to business: first, FYI, my Ryerson "True to Life" classes start next week, Level 1 on Monday and Level 2 on Tuesday. If any of you are interested, the time to register is NOW. Level 2 is undersubscribed at the moment and will be cancelled unless some keeners appear. I also have a Level 2 at U of T, starting the following week. So, keeners - let's get through winter together. Here's an image stolen from the latest New Yorker - a can has just been opened, the top pried up, and lots of worms are spilling out. Another worm hastens toward the open can. "PAR-TAY!" he cries.

Winter term 2010 - we'll open cans of worms and partay.

Also, I've had a few emails from regular readers about how difficult it is to respond to this blog. I don't know why - last year there were lots of responses, so something in my set-up must have been switched without my knowing it. In any case, I have tried to change the settings to allow you to post a reply more easily. Please feel free to give it a go and let me know if it works.

Twice yesterday, even in the fog of winter, pure joy. I grabbed the new New Yorker before heading out the door, opened it on the streetcar and read a poem by Donald Hall. Instantly, I was no longer on the grubby streetcar surrounded by black parkas. I was immersed in my own "unforgettable detritus," of which there is so very, very much. This poem is particularly meaningful to hoarders like me, but I hope the rest of you normal people enjoy it too.

THE THINGS

When I walk in my house I see pictures,

bought long ago, framed and hanging

-de Kooning, Arp, Laurencin, Henry Moore -

that I've cherished and stared at for years,

yet my eyes keep returning to the masters

of the trivial: a white stone perfectly round,

tiny lead models of baseball players, a cowbell,

a broken great-grandmother's rocker,

a dead dog's toy - valueless, unforgettable

detritus that my children will throw away

as I did my mother's souvenirs of trips

with my dead father, Kodaks of kittens,

and bundles of cards from her mother Kate.

***************************************

Somehow, in so few words, he gets right to the heart of something so moving and human - dealing with the past, with memory, with loss, and, of course, with death. How can we forget good old death, in January?

Then, last night, I watched a documentary called "How the Beatles rocked the Kremlin." A Liverpuddlian called Leslie Woodhead, who filmed the Beatles in their earliest incarnation at the Cavern Club, went to Russia to chronicle what the Beatles had meant to people there. The premise of the film, coming from those interviewed, is that the Beatles had more to do with destroying Communism than Gorbachev - that they started the process of, as one said, "alienating kids from the Communist motherland."

Woodhead shot the crowd in the Kiev Kavern Club - one man wearing a t-shirt with "still pissed at Yoko" printed on it - and in the Kiev Beatles Museum, and at McCartney's concerts there in 2003 and 2008. The Beatles playing in their land was, one said, "a holy day. There were rivers and waterfalls of tears." In the early Sixties, kids were not allowed to listen to pop records or even to grow their hair; embracing pop culture was done in secret, and so the revolution began. A Deputy Minister in Putin's government remembered with glee that listening to bootleg Beatles taught him English. "'Dragged a comb across my head,'" he said. "I learned what 'comb' meant." Hair was a huge issue. "I was always trying to stretch my hairs," a woman solemnly told the camera.

Over here, we just had to save enough babysitting money to buy the latest LP at the mall. Winters may be terrible and our current Prime Minister too, but we've always had freedom, blessed freedom in this marvellous, frozen land.

Time for wine in a small glass, more spaghetti and chocolate, and a taste of "Rubber Soul."