hating stupid Mayor Tory today

Giant hate on for Toronto right now. City council just voted not to take down the hideous, crumbling, lake-blocking Gardiner East expressway and replace it with a boulevard, as any civilized city would. No, our stupid stupid stupid city is going to keep it and fiddle around and waste time. Transit is at ZERO in this city! Zero! Stupid stupid stupid!

Okay, enough of that. No point. We voted John Tory in, after all. The bar for Toronto's mayor was so low after Rob Ford, we would have voted in a piece of blue cheese. Instead we got a conventional right-wing businessman, and now he'll keep the Gardiner and the suburbs will be happy. Thank you once again, horrible Mike Harris who destroyed this city.

Sigh. Moving right along.

I try to keep my email inbox at or below 30; after a couple of busy days, it's now at 119. Just crazy - stuff coming in and not going out. It feels like a meteor shower sometimes, points of light shooting at me.

Yesterday's misery - because poor weather was predicted, I got downtown to Ryerson at 6 for a 6.30 class, but since I was so early, I thought I'd drop into the new Muji store across the street. It's so gorgeous, Japanese design, file folders, storage boxes, pencils and notebooks, plus the usual clothing - just lovely. So I meandered, and suddenly the skies opened. It was 6.15. After waiting a bit, I made a dash through hurricane level wind and rain, and in just seconds, running across the street, I was drenched, my pants clinging, freezing and wet, to my legs, my sweater soaked, my shoes and socks sodden. And now I had to teach a class.

What the storm looked like from the Toronto Islands. That's me, running like crazy right underneath.

I rubbed my legs to keep them warm, but cut the class short so I could go home and change. Everyone had a chance to read, but there was not as much discussion as usual, because Teacher was sopping wet. I owe them an hour.

Went home to get warm and then set off across town to spend the night at Anna's. She had an ultrasound early this morning, so rather than having to wake Eli and take him with her, she accepted my offer to sleep there. This morning, heaven - an adorable semi-naked man got into my bed, looking at me with big brown eyes. We had some pillow talk. He was listening, with his extremely keen ears, to what was going on just beyond our walls, on King Street. "Dere's people going fast and some of dem is walking," he said, and I said, "And there's people in trains and cars and streetcars too," and he said, "Some of dem is walking." Then, huge smile: "And some of dem is doggies!"

Some of dem is doggies. So true. Later he was standing at the sink, filling a bucket to do his favourite thing, water the garden. "Glamma," he called, "de bucket is fulling."

We played one of his favourite games, "Smash crash," with the monster trucks; he rode his birthday Ironman bike in the yard; we ate a peanut butter sandwich for breakfast - he had the centre and I the crusts. And then his mother was home with the best news: "HEAD DOWN." Her babe is no longer in the breech position. Ready to go. A few weeks yet.

We went for brunch at Mitzi's nearby and then they to the playground and I home, through the clogged streets of this benighted city where my favourite people on earth live, and stupid mayors and their brainless minions, God help us, live too.

good reading from blog readers

Just got this from a reader who'd just read Finding the Jewish Shakespeare. Good to know it's still out in the world, making its slow way around.

Congratulations on Jewish Shakespeare. Finished it last night, and as with all books that are so enjoyable, wanted there to be at least one more chapter. Its very moving but also such a work of research and beautifully told. Its also an important work that captures a number of historic and cultural moments and movements. Thank you!

No - thank YOU.

And many thanks to another blog reader, Pam from the province of Quebec, who wrote that she and her daughter attended one of the First Nations Truth and Reconciliation sessions at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel in Montreal and wanted to share the experience with us all.

As Stella and I strode down St. Catherine Street and turned left towards the "Queen" we seemed to be caught in a magnetic pull towards the event, the streets were alive with people drawn to its special significance, its powerful reckoning. 

We had no idea what awaited us, every floor and conference space, every elevator and escalator, all nooks and crannies buzzing with energy, with love and sorrow, and hope. Who could know, how could we ever know or understand?

Photocopiers, archivists, representatives of all the "Christian" denominations. Piles of papers, schools yearbooks, people seeing for the first times their transcripts, their lives. I cannot tell you the power on every floor coursing through the mass of people. Grief, sorrow, connection. The hum of the photocopiers spewing paper would have made you proud. In the beginning was the word! How to move forward, how to love and care? 

I know that it takes love and guts to look at how we have failed to make the mark, how we have allowed systematic cultural genocide to become government policy. We move forward. I applaud the effort, the intention, and outcome.

Wayson talks, the Tonys sing

Wayson is in Vancouver partly to visit his family, but also because he's receiving the prestigious George Woodcock award there for his contribution to literature and to society. Here's a local CBC interview with him:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/wayson-choy-on-life-death-and-the-hallucinations-that-saved-him-1.3103859

Last night, one of my annual rituals - the Tony Awards, which some time ago were produced, twice, by my ex-husband. So now when I watch, it's a relief to enjoy actors and singers and not worry about the length of the speeches and diva hissy fits. (He has some stories!) They were celebrating, wonderfully, the best Broadway season in years - and what a lineup of talent in both production and acting.

The great surprise was the top win of the evening: Fun Home as best musical, from the book by Alison Bechdel. Bechdel started her career as a graphic cartoonist detailing her life; her first book, Fun Home, was one of the first "graphic memoirs," the story, with pictures, of growing up in a funeral home run by her unhappy, angry father who eventually committed suicide and was, she found out, a closeted gay man watching his daughter grow up to be a lesbian. A complex, dark story, movingly told in her book.

Somehow, an extremely talented team have turned this book into a musical, which won the Tony last night. An autobiographical graphic memoir turned musical - now there's a concept. Except that the same team had done it before with Tony Kushner's Caroline or Change, the story of his growing up in the South and his bond with Caroline, a strong black woman who was the family maid. That also was an autobiographical musical. And my friend Chris has done the same with his life, twice.

There was an excerpt last night that I missed because I was watching the superb Danish drama Borgen (a great show about an ethical female politician - very stirring). But found it, and here it is, absolutely beautiful. Makes me want to go straight to New York.
http://www.broadway.com/buzz/181135/tony-poll-results-11-year-old-fun-home-dynamo-sydney-lucas-delivered-the-performance-of-the-night/

Hmm: Kaplan, the Musical. No, I have to say, it does not make my heart soar like an eagle.
What did make me soar was lunch with my editor Rosemary today. I'd sent her the first 30 pages of the new memoir, rewritten in Paris when I was stuck without the internet, and she confirmed what I hoped and suspected - it works better. Lots more to do, much further to go - but a more solid start.

And then a visit by my little friend, who watered the garden today with his own "lello" watering can, even though we'd just had the most torrential rainstorm of the year. Still, the plants can always use a little help. "There were three rains!" he said.

He spent the afternoon here, and I'm exhausted but blissed out too. His mother and I dug out all the baby clothes she has stored here since he outgrew them, for her to take home and wash. Eli talks openly now about his baby brother, and at one point kissed his mother's tummy. He'd just come from his third birthday checkup with his paediatrician - he's in the 98th percentile for weight and the 100th for height. He's the size, said the doctor, of a fairly big four year old.

We make 'em big in this family.

lush

Tres tres fatiguee - but what a wonderful day. People - and there were a lot of people - said the nicest things. But the nicest was a woman who said, "Your garden is so comforting." Now, that's a beautiful word. And it's true - all that green is comforting. The birds were very impatient with all the visitors, but one amazing fuscia clematis bloom came out just for this day.

They start to arrive.

Always a marketing opportunity - and I actually sold six or seven books!

Getting crowded in here.

 The empty bird feeder - the trees around full of hungry birds, waiting.

All that rain helped - yes, it does look lush. And comforting.

After a full day greeting people and talking gardening, trying to sound as if I knew what I was talking about, I had to dash across town. Anna's best friends Holly and Lana threw a surprise baby shower for her, in her backyard - got her to go to a movie while they set it up, and she returned to food, drink, balloons and many friends.

Anna with Oksana, her Grade 2 and 3 teacher and a dear friend of the family.

Sam with his best friend Mike, who went to school with Anna. I have a picture of Mike, during a wild party here, wearing Anna's prom dress. It did not fit very well.

Oh dear - the small ones are already hooked on electronics. Eli's t-shirt says, "Being annoying is my full time job."

The gang. Lana and Emily, Anna's friends from high school. All grown up.

Welcome! This is my garden.

Yesterday's party was sublime - oh, there's nothing like a bunch of old, old friends. Sandy Stagg was there, the amazing woman who was once owner of Peter Pan restaurant and one of the most successful vintage saleswomen of all time - including, she told us last night, a store on Portobello Road haunted by Ralph Lauren designers and others. Larry and Barry were there, but not Fred. Joanne, an actress I did a show in Toronto with in 1973, was there; then her hair was platinum and now her hair is rusty red. Dee and I were the only women who've gone grey; the men were all au natural but the other women had multi-coloured locks. The men may have been grey but at least they had HAIR.

We drank prosecco and sat in Suzette's beautiful garden and ate superb food and talked talked talked about past and present. Loved it.

This morning, to work in the garden. At noon, I grumbled, "I will never do this again!" But I said that the last time I volunteered my garden for the Cabbagetown Garden Tour - though that time really was a nightmare, a whole section of the garden was unfinished and required slave labour at the last minute to make it presentable. What makes me saddest, in that memory, is that my friend Greg called Saturday afternoon to say he had an extra ticket for Leonard Cohen that night, did I want to come? I was filthy and exhausted with a mountain more work; I had to say no.

But this time - a relative piece of cake. Though still, it has been considerable work to get the site ready for the 700 people they think may go through all the gardens tomorrow. Not to mention the "international garden bloggers" who are apparently coming too. A bit intimidating if I cared - but I do not. I'm not trying to impress anyone; I just hope they like my sweet green space as much as I do.

Here's Bill, who arrived this morning to cut the grass and help wash dirt off things.

And here's the name tag that was delivered for me to wear tomorrow.  I may never take it off.