The literary education of Stephen Harper
I love this.
Canadian author Yann Martel, perhaps best known for his book Life of Pi, has taken on a project of sorts. He has appointed himself literary tutor of Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, in an attempt to make Harper “a more arts-friendly prime minister.” Part of that campaign is to mail Harper a new book every two weeks as long as Harper is prime minister. Not only a new book, but a book inscribed by Martel and introduced with a personalized letter explaining why a particular book was chosen. Martel is chronicling the experience on his Web site called What is Stephen Harper Reading.
Martel writes on his Web site:
Who is this man? What makes him tick? No doubt he is busy. No doubt he is deluded by that busyness. No doubt being Prime Minister fills his entire consideration and froths his sense of busied importance to the very brim. And no doubt he sounds and governs like one who cares not a jot for the arts.
But he must have moments of stillness. And so this is what I propose to do: not to educate—that would be arrogant, less than that—to make suggestions to his stillness. For as long as Stephen Harper is Prime Minister of Canada, I vow to send him every two weeks, mailed on a Monday, a book that has been known to expand stillness.
That book will be inscribed and will be accompanied by a letter I will have written. I will faithfully report on every new book, every inscription, every letter, and any esponse I might get from the Prime Minister, on this website.
The first book is Leo Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilych. I haven’t read it, but I’m thinking about it now. Here’s what Martel said about why he recommended it in the introduction to his letter:
The Death of Ivan Ilych, by Leo Tolstoy, is the first book I am sending you. I thought at first I should send you a Canadian work—an appropriate symbol since we are both Canadians—but I don’t want to be directed by political considerations of any sort, and, more importantly, I can’t think of a work of such brevity, hardly 60 pages, that shows so convincingly the power and depth of great literature. Ivan Ilych is an indubitable masterpiece. There is nothing showy here, no vulgarity, no pretence, no falseness, nothing that doesn’t work, not a moment of dullness, yet no cheap rush of plot either. It is the story, simple and utterly compelling, of one man and his ordinary end.
He goes on for quite a bit longer; you can see the full text of Martel’s first letter to Harper on the Web site. But I loved the concluding paragraph and wanted to share that, too:
I know you’re very busy, Mr. Harper. We’re all busy. Meditating monks in their cells are busy. That’s adult life, filled to the ceiling with things that need doing. (It seems only children and the elderly aren’t plagued by lack of time—and notice how they enjoy their books, how their lives fill their eyes.) But every person has a space next to where they sleep, whether a patch of pavement or a fine bedside table. In that space, at night, a book can glow. And in those moments of docile wakefulness, when we begin to let go of the day, then is the perfect time to pick up a book and be someone else, somewhere else, for a few minutes, a few pages, before we fall asleep. And there are other possibilities, too. Sherwood Anderson, the American writer best known for his collection of stories Winesburg, Ohio, wrote his first stories while commuting by train to work. Stephen King apparently never goes to his beloved baseball games without a book that he reads during breaks. So it’s a question of choice.
It’s a question of choice. I’m tempted, so tempted, to turn this into my own personal book club and read along, but I acknowledge that there are simply too many other priorities competing for my time right now and I choose to delay reading these books until some future date when my life is a little bit less full of the joys of life with preschoolers.
But I do love the idea. If you could recommend a book, any book, to send to Stephen Harper – or, for our American cousins, George Bush – or to any national leader, for that matter; if you could choose a single book to send to your prime minister or president, what book would you choose?
Choose the gift of life
It’s National Organ Donation Week in Canada.
Those of you who have been reading for a while know that this is an annual post for me. I wrote about it in 2005 and again in 2006. And you know what? I’ll write about it again in 2008 and 2009. I’ll keep writing about it, and I’ll keep talking about it, because somebody in Canada dies every three days waiting for an organ donation. Every three days a family loses a father, a mother, a brother, a sister – or a child – because there simply aren’t enough organs for all the people on waiting lists. A single donor can make a difference in as many as fifty people’s lives. And that’s just the recipients; think of the families of all those people given a second chance at life, or the chance to overcome blindness, or the chance at restored mobility through a bone graft.
Here in Canada, we have one of the lowest donor rates in the industrialized world. There has been a call for a national donor registrant database (but because health is a provincial / territorial jurisdiction, it would be hard to manage on a national level.) In a pilot program in BC, living donors are reimbursed for expenses like travel costs and lost wages. Ontario is considering a similar program. Ontario has recently decided against an ‘opt-out’ approach to organ donations after an expert panel recommended against it. The same article noted that almost half of the families of people who would make good donors are saying no.
That’s one of the major problems: even if you have signed an organ donor card, that information may not be immediately available when it’s most needed. Doctors often must rely on family members for consent, and if your family doesn’t know what you want, your wishes might not be respected. Another article notes: “Studies show about 50% of Canadians are unaware of what their loved ones wanted regarding organ and tissue donations. Yet 96% of relatives in Canada agree to organ donation if they’re aware that their deceased loved one was in favour of donating.” It’s not enough to simply register as an organ donor; you have to talk to your family and make your wishes known.
Organ donation is an issue close to my heart: my dad had a life-saving liver transplant in 2001, when I was six months pregnant with Tristan. My boys are blissfully oblivious to how close we all came to losing Papa Lou. I never forget it.
I was playing with Simon in the car the other day. We were being silly, laughing together, and I said, “Who loves you the most in the whole wide world, Simon?” And Simon didn’t even stop to think about it. “Papa Lou!” he cried with delight. Not me, or Beloved. Not even Granny, who spoils him with lollipops and marshmallows and just about every other thing his little heart desires. Papa Lou, whom he would have never met if it weren’t for the lifegiving generosity of an organ donor and his or her family.
Sign your donor card and tell your family. Choose the gift of life.
The betrayal
We’re at my folks’ place for the first bbq steak dinner of the season. The grown-ups are still lingering over dinner. The kids have scarfed down their food and resumed their soccer game in the back yard.
Overheard through the open window:
Tristan: Don’t tell, okay Simon? Don’t tell!
Simon: Mo-om!
Tristan (stage whispers) : Don’t tell!
Simon: Mom! My brudder was in the dirt when you told us not to go in the dirt but my brudder went in it.
Tristan: I’m not your brother!!
Perhaps the first time he ever denies it, but I’m willing to bet it’s not the last!
What’s that you say? You need to know even MORE inane and excruciating details about my exciting life?
James tagged me for this mammoth meme, and I couldn’t resist.
FOODOLOGY
Q. What is your salad dressing of choice?
A. Paul Newman’s Balsamic Vinagrette
Q. What is your favorite fast food restaurant?
A. Dairy Queen
Q. What is your favorite sit-down restaurant?
A. Lone Star Texas Grill – partly for the fajitas, partly because it’s a great restaurant for families
Q. On average, what size tip do you leave at a restaurant?
A. 15 – 20% – usually, the larger the bill the smaller the percentage
Q. What food could you eat every day for two weeks and not get sick of?
A. Chocolate chip oatmeal cookies
Q. What is your favorite type of gum?
A. Dentyne Ice peppermint
TECHNOLOGY
Q. What is your wallpaper on your computer?
A.
Q. How many televisions are in your house?
A. One that works, two more that collect dust and work capriciously only when we don’t want them to
BIOLOGY
Q. What’s your best feature?
A. Um – I’ve always liked my dimples. And I’m vain about my hair, though I’m not sure it’s my best feature.
Q. Have you ever had anything removed from your body?
A. Two massive boys (nine and ten pounds respectively) and a couple of teeth. Other than that, I don’t have any aftermarket alterations.
Q. Which of your five senses do you think is keenest?
A. I like James’ answer about a sixth sense – I think my mother-radar is the most finely honed of my senses.
Q. When was the last time you had a cavity?
A. I can rarely go a year without them. The only thing holding my teeth together is the fillings, crowns and caps. Lucky for us, Tristan has inherited my cavity-prone teeth. Sigh.
Q. What is the heaviest item you lifted last?
A. Tristan decided he needed to be carried upstairs to bed last night. That’s a good forty-plus pounds. The wheelbarrow I built yesterday probably weighed near that.
Q. Have you ever been knocked unconscious?
A. Only by drugs (the kind an anaestethiologist administers), not by concussion.
BULLSHITOLOGY
Q. If it were possible, would you want to know the day you were going to die?
A. Nope.
Q. Is love for real?
A. If love isn’t real, nothing is.
Q. If you could change your first name, what would you change it to?
A. I was about 11 when I started asking people to call me Dani. Now the only person left who calls me Danielle is my mom and I kind of miss it. (All this to say I seem to have more than enough names as it is.)
Q. What color do you think looks best on you?
A. Depends on the season, but I look good in bright colours like yellow, coral and orange. Navy blue and black are flattering, too,
Q. Have you ever swallowed a non-food item by mistake?
A. This seems like the kind of thing one would block from one’s memory.
Q. Have you ever saved someone’s life?
A. Not that I’m aware of.
Q. Has someone ever saved yours?
A. In a physical and literal sense, no. But there are many people I credit with shaping who I am or helping me choose one path or another which, to paraphrase Robert Frost, has made all the difference.
DAREOLOGY
Q. Would you walk naked for a half mile down a public street for $100,000?
A. Heck, I’d do it for $20. (How far is half a mile, anyway? A kilometer or so? Can I at least specify that it be during the summer?)
Q. Would you kiss a member of the same sex for $100?
A. I almost did it at a party a few years back just for the shock factor.
Q. Would you allow one of your little fingers to be cut off for $200,000?
A. Ick. No.
Q. Would you never blog again for $50,000?
A. I loved James’ answer to this: “No, but someday I might never blog again for free.” I don’t know what my answer to this question would be – but I don’t think I’m offensive enough as a blogger (yet) that someone would actually pay me to stop.
Q. Would you pose nude in a magazine for $250,000?
A. For a quarter-million? Could I at least have a feather boa?
Q. Would you drink an entire bottle of hot sauce for $1,000?
A. Gotta agree with James’ answer here: “Hell, I might do that just for the bottle of hot sauce.”
Q. Would you, without fear of punishment, take a human life for $1,000,000?
A. Of course not.
Q. Would you give up watching television for a year for $25,000?
A. That one would be painful. I’d do it, but I would get awfully twitchy after the first couple of days.
Q. Give up MySpace forever for $30,000?
A. Yes. Where’s my money? (Never actually been on MySpace. Now Facebook…. that’s a different matter.)
DUMBOLOGY
Q: What is in your left pocket?
A. It’s 7:30 on a Sunday morning and I’m wearing track pants. No pockets. Besides, most women’s clothing doesn’t allow for pockets, let alone pockets you can actually put stuff in.
Q: Is Napoleon Dynamite actually a good movie?
A. I haven’t seen it.
Q: Do you have hardwood or carpet in your house?
A. Carpet. Ugly faded blue carpet in every. single. room of the house that I hate with a burning passion. Stay tuned for the really tedious series of posts where we endlessly angst over installing laminate on the main floor and do absolutely nothing about it.
Q: Do you sit or stand in the shower?
A. Sitting is an option? That opens up a whole new world of choices, doesn’t it?
Q: Could you live with roommates?
A. Hell, I can barely share a room with my husband.
Q: How many pairs of flip-flops do you own?
A. Flip-flops are nasty. I absolutely cannot wear footwear that jams things between my toes. *shudder*
Q: Last time you had a run-in with the cops?
A. I got a ticket for an illegal right turn from Bank onto Slater about six years ago. (Livin’ on the edge, baby.)
Q: What do you want to be when you grow up?
A. Once again, I couldn’t improve on James’ answer: “This.”
LASTOLOGY
Q: Friend you talked to?
A. Went to an Ottawa blog chix night out last night with Andrea, Alison, Chantal and Alison. Good times!!
Q: Last person you called?
A. Er, um, ahhh – I have no idea. Oh wait, Lone Star last night to order takeout!
RANDOMOLOGY
Q: First place you went this morning?
A. The porch (to get the newspaper)
Q: What can you not wait to do?
A. Um, win a million dollars? I’m drawing a blank on this one.
Q: What’s the last movie you saw?
A. Cars. It’s babysitting the kids as I do this meme. I’m such a good mommy.
Q: Are you a friendly person?
A. Mostly.
Want to be tagged? Let me know and I’ll link back to you!
Edited to add: tagged – Loukia and Karen and ScatteredMom and Bex and Nancy!
Confessions, candy swaps, connections – and books
This is going to be another of those posts where I dump the contents of my brain (and my in-box) into your lap and let you sort through it like bargain hunters at a flea market to find the shiny bits in amongst all the drivel.
First and coincidentally, I think it was the last brain-and-inbox dump that I told you about the cross-border candy swap that Notes from the Cookie Jar hosted. I was partnered with Jennifer from In Case You Ever Wondered, who sent us a great package including Easter Tootsie Pops (the boys love these!), cotton candy and green marshmallow Peeps! Did you see that, Andrea? Peeps!
I fell down on the job and completely forgot to take a picture of my outgoing package, but I tried to find candy that I thought was uniquely Canadian. While I couldn’t find any Mack toffee, I included a Kinder Egg (okay, not Canadian, but not widely available in the US, from what I understand), a mix of mini-chocolate bars including KitKats, Coffee Crisps and Smarties, some Kerr’s gumdrops, and a box of Thrills Gum. Jennifer’s son said they should use the Thrills Gum for punishment!
Thanks to Scattered Mom for inviting us to play along! It was fun!
***
Speaking of good things that come in the mail, after a rather long drought that I sated by reading The Calligrapher, I have been blessed by the book gods lately. Nadine sent me two “just because” books, both of which will likely turn up in the 10-page-in reviews soon. (It’s good to have friends who work for publishers!) Then I was offered a review copy of Missy Chase Lepine’s The Sneaky Chef cookbook – review also pending.
And finally, have you heard about MotherTalk? I had the great priviledge of being a part of a MotherTalk salon back in October when we were in Toronto for the Motherlode conference, and I’ll be blogging on the upcoming tour for the Dangerous Book for Boys (which arrived in the mail the very same day as The Sneaky Chef!)
But what I wanted to tell you about today is another one of MotherTalk’s new initiatives: the MotherTalk Blog Bonanza. According to the e-mail from Miriam Peskowitz, this is how it will work:
MotherTalk will suggest a topic, post it on our blog and email an announcement. Whoever wants to blog, join us. This is not about an elite in-group with a secret code. No way, it’s about sharing an experience, writing together, and feeling connected through our blogs. I can already imagine what fun it will be to click through each other’s blogs and read all the posts.
For each MotherTalk Blog Bonanza, we also hope to have an informal contest, where the author might pick a favorite post, and send that blogger an autographed book, say. We’re not big into competition, we just want to spice it up, and send you a MotherTalk Blog Bonanza Winner emblem for your sidebar.
Next Friday (April 27) is Fearless Friday, inspired by Arianna Huffington’s book, On Becoming Fearless. From the MotherTalk blog:
Let’s all write about times in our lives when we stepped out of our comfort zones, when we challenged our usual fears and anxieties and all the nervousness that keeps us in line, keeps us in our places, and prevents us from having as much fun, as much influence, as much personal, inner-voice purpose in the world. Whether this stepping-out, this fear-overcoming, happens at home, on the playground, at school, work, in writing or in the aisles of Congress, let’s tell our stories, inspire each other, and make a place for ourselves in the world.
Click through to the MotherTalk blog for further instructions if you want to play along!
***
Have you seen True Mom Confessions yet? It’s part post-secret, part group therapy. I first found it via one of my government / social media buddies, Ian Ketcheson, and Ali had a post up about it yesterday. I found it irresistibly compelling for the first little while. I love how you can vote “me too” but not “you’re a moron” or “are you kidding me?”, and I love that there is no commentary. But since the last time I checked, now they’ve added discussion forums and I think it takes away from the elegant simplicity of the original concept. Still madly addictive, though.
Yay day
Back in the day, before I had all things bloggy (and Facebook-y) to satisfy my online urges, I spent a lot of time on bulletin boards – in particular, on IVF Connections.
One feature I always liked was the brag thread, where people would talk about how baby rolled over for the first time, or ate her first cheerio, or slept more than two hours in a row. Sometimes it was something major like ‘we just bought a new house’, or ‘I just earned my dream job’, but sometimes it was as simple as ‘I managed to take a shower and feed the kids breakfast before the schoolbus arrived this morning.’
We don’t do enough bragging, in my humble opinion. We need to speak up more often about the simple joys and subtle victories in our daily lives. Want to play along?
I’d like to know what’s going on in your life today that makes you happy. What’s worthy of commentary? What are you proud of? Why do you (or someone you know) deserve a pat on the back? Share an anecdote of how life is good in your little corner of the universe right about now.
Here’s a simple one for me: my pants are too big. I have had to give up many, many pairs of pants in my life because they were too small, but aside from maternity clothes I don’t think I’ve actually had to stop wearing a pair of pants because they were too large – and I’m not averse to wearing baggy, oversize clothes either! But the pants I bought just after Christmas to accomodate my burgeoning butt are no longer fit for public consumption. I knew they were getting looser, but I’ve been trying to keep them in circulation until the weather improved enough to transition into my spring pants. After two colleagues pointed out (with great kindness) that they were more than a wee bit saggy in the butt, I’ve had to face the truth. The pants are too big.
Yay me! I’ve only lost about 6 pounds in total, but I’m getting there.
Edited to add: another thing that makes me happy – I just found out that Loukia nominated me for one of the Blogger’s Choice Awards!
Thanks Loukia! And if you happen to feel like wandering over there and voting for me (you have to sign up to do it – what a pain!), then make sure you vote for Marla while you’re at it!
And now – what about you?
Fancy feets
You know that snowstorm that wallopped the Northeastern USA, Ontario, Quebec and the Maritime provinces on Monday? Yah, sorry about that. Mea culpa. You see, I bought some new spring shoes on the weekend, thus condemning us to at least six more weeks of winter (I’m far more reliable than Wiarton Willie or Punxsutawney Phil!)
I’m not really a shoe person. Mostly, I buy shoes because it’s not socially acceptable to pad around in my socks all day. Not terribly comfortable in February, either. So shoes are a functional thing for me. I have some black ones, some brown ones. I have a couple of pairs for work, one of which is good for skirts. I have my winter boots (new and a steal from Globo this year) and a pair of Guess backless canvas tennis shoes that have come a long way from their original white. I have a pair of sandals for summer, of course, and a kicky little pair of cream coloured dress sandals with kitten heels I got last summer to wear to work. I have a pair of Timberland hikers that I have worn within an inch of their lives, and a pair of Saucony runners that I paid a comparatively small fortune for, but I love them. My single foray into the world of fashionable shoes has been this adorable pair of navy ballet flats with orange and cranberry and emerald embroidery and (gasp!) sequins that I bought last summer.
(Aren’t they cute? And I paid a stunning TWELVE dollars for them.)
So I own probably ten pairs in all, maybe a dozen. It seems to me an excess of shoes, shoes for every occassion. They’re all very nice, very functional, mostly comfortable and (with the exception of my fancy little ballet flats above) terribly uninteresting shoes.
My skirt shoes (I really have just one pair, a staid black pump with a two-inch heel and a square toe) had worn down considerably in the four years since I bought them to wear to work after my maternity leave with Tristan had ended. So this season, I found myself in need – okay, in want – of a new pair of skirt shoes.
I was in the mall on the weekend looking for new pants for Tristan (post for another day = what the holy hell do boys do to their pants that is so hard on the knees?) and I just happened to pop into Payless on my way by.
I started off looking for something in a staid black pump with a two-inch heel and a square toe. What I found was a sassy little patent leather(ish) slingback with kitten heels and a flirty little bow. LOVED them! I haven’t worn patent leather shoes since I was six years old, but I immediately and deeply loved them. I had to have them.
You’ll be shocked to hear that I was then mesmerized into buying a second pair by the buy-one-get-one-half-price devilry of Payless. As I mentioned, to date all my shoes have been variations on a safe neutral palette and conservative styling. But I’ve been studiously taking notes while watching Friday night episodes of What Not To Wear, and Clinton’s exhortation to punch it up with a bold splash of colour was rattling through my brain when I set my sights on a gorgeous pair of (he says red, she says coral) strappy summer shoes with a skinny wedge heel.
Aren’t they lovely? Red, strappy shoes. I feel so fancy! And so thrifty, too, because I paid only $40 for the lot, including tax.
(insert smug and fancy grin here)
But can I just take a minute to say that taking pictures of your own feet is not nearly so easy as it looks? Oh sure, the taking of the picture is easy enough, but the not making your legs look like sticks or amorphous blobs? Not so easy. Props to Marla, whose carefree feet photos seem as effortless as they are adorable. She is an unacknowledged master of the foot-photo, and of the foot family portrait.
So, bloggy friends, having just endured an entire post about my feet, do tell me about yours. Are you a shoe person? What are your favourite shoes?
How cool am I?
How cool am I? Why, thanks for asking. I am, in fact, way wicked cool. And terribly impressed with my sassy self at just this moment.
What’s got me so excited? Tickets to see Rush in concert, baby! The last great concert I need to see. I’ve been a Rush fan since I was ten years old and Moving Pictures came out – it was one of the first LP albums I ever owned. Geddy Lee is one of my personal heroes and Neil Peart is a demi-god. Rush!!
And not only am I cool enough to be going, but I’ve already got my tickets when they don’t even go on sale to the general public until Friday.
*pauses for ohs and ahs of befuddled wonderment and whispers of amazed curiousity*
I was futzing about on the ticketmaster.ca site, trying to figure out the prices, and I found something about advance fan-club sales. So I went on the Rush site, and followed the links on tour portion of the Web site. It gave me the secret code and I was in like Flynn! (And ya gotta know that only people who are so secure in their ultimate coolness are comfortable to use a phrase as hokey as “in like Flynn”, let me tell you.)
Rush! Me! In September! Squee!!
Post script – the conversation
I wanted to tell you that I finally managed to find enough courage to call our daycare provider and talk to her on the weekend, but I feel sad and melancholy about it now. It’s surprisingly hard to talk about it.
I had called her Sunday morning with the intention of meeting up with her later in the day, but she was getting ready to go out for the day and before I knew it I was spewing everything into the phone. While I managed to hit on all my salient points – she’s a great person and we were priviledged to have her caring for the boys for four years; it’s not about her so much as the circumstances of too many kids, one troublesome kid in particular and the fact that she’s geographically just a little bit too far away for easy convenience now that Beloved will be taking on more and more courses and working later more frequently – while I know I managed to say all of this eventually, it was with a complete lack of grace or eloquence.
She listened rather quietly while I rambled for a while, and said she wished we had brought up more of this earlier (which twisted a little knife of guilt in my heart – she’s right, of course, but I didn’t feel like I had a lot of right to be dictating her business to her and I am in the end a conflict-averse coward). She also said the key personality with whom I was having the trouble would be leaving at the end of June, and that made me feel really bad, too.
In the end, though, she was very graceful and told me that she would only consent to any of this if she could maintain contact with the boys and see them regularly – which is of course the point at which my chest and throat seized up and my eyes started to leak. Barely able to squeeze out any more words, I told her that I was near tears and had to go but that I was sorry, and grateful, and sorry again. I barely hung up the phone before bursting – surprise – into noisy, messy sobs.
My knee-jerk reaction was fear -again – that I was making a huge mistake. The fear of the unknown is a terrible, crippling monster. It took a long, hot shower and close to an hour before I could again remember all the things that brought me to this point in the first place. But I’m still a little numb with fear that we’ve made the wrong choice, that we’re being greedy and unrealistic in our expectations, that we’ve underestimated how good we have had it and that we’re in for a rude awakening. Time and only time will answer that question.
When Beloved dropped off the boys yesterday morning, she and he pretended blissful ignorace of my inelegant call the day before. When I picked them up, it seemed we too were going to follow that pattern. At the last minute, with both boys outside and one foot out the door myself, I turned briefly back to her and said, “I’m really sorry about yesterday, about all of this. I really meant it when I said we’ve been lucky to have you.” She replied by insisting that we stay in contact, because she’ll miss the boys. After a brief hug and more inane mutterings on my part about how much we like her, I managed to get out onto the porch before I started crying again.
They never tell you when you are glowing and blissfully round of belly, busy gestating your first baby, how many times your heart will be broken by this mothering thing. In the most unexpected of ways.