Mind Picking : Happy Halloween III

Southern Ontario is known for haunted locales – everywhere from Windsor to Toronto – and my family lives right in the middle of it all. As I've said before, I haven't experienced any ghostly occurrences myself, and to be honest, I don't really want to. That doesn't mean, however, that I haven't been privy to some moments of strangeness, so here's a focus on the local for this Halloween.

Kennedy and I can watch some pretty bad TV together – cooking competitions on the Food Network, quasi-educational shows on the History Channel, anything with Penn & Teller – and sometimes, when nothing else is on, Paranormal Witness or Celebrity Ghost Story. The connecting theme between all of these shows, I'd guess, is a reality-lite vibe; nonfiction that sits between manipulated competitions like Survivor and serious news shows like 60 Minutes. One night, when there was really nothing on in our 500 channel universe, we started to watch My Ghost Story. This show follows the familiar format of witness narration plus actor reenactment, but the look was cheap and cheesy. Halfway through, just as Kennedy and I stood up to go to bed, the teaser clip for the story that was to start after the commercial break showed that the next haunting would be set in Kitchener – ten minutes from home – so we sat back down and watched.

It was a strange story too: The Unity Church was experiencing unexplained phenomena and had called in some investigators (we have ghostbusters in Kitchener?) The story was told from the point of view of these investigators, so they started by explaining that the Unity Church is basically Christian (and they showed a huge stairwell covered in crosses and Jesus portraits) but they also incorporate New Age elements like chakra opening sessions and candle lighting ceremonies. After recording many light and sound events, the investigators played a recording that they said sounded demonic (but over the TV, it was hard to tell what it sounded like) and they concluded that since this church was actively trying to communicate with the spirit world, they had likely unwittingly opened a channel that had let through a dark spirit. As these were just investigators – not cleansers – that's where the story ends; some inconclusive photos and audio. Kennedy and I shrugged and said we should keep an eye out for this Unity Church, and that was that. But...just three nights later, after dropping Mallory off in Kitchener for a dress rehearsal, as we got onto the 7/8 back to Cambridge, we both turned our heads and saw, at the same time, the Unity Church – where we have passed by dozens and maybe hundreds of times before – its name lit up in large white lights overlooking the highway. Now, it's logical to say that we, having passed it so many times, were both subconsciously aware of this church's existence and knew to look for it there, but it was an interesting enough coincidence to be slightly chilling.

Interesting enough that I told Rudy about it the next time I saw her. And Rudy said that that reminded her of a story a client had told her. Apparently, this client was a single mother, and after scrimping and saving, she was able to put a down payment on a small house for herself and her daughters to live in. In their last walkthrough before taking possession, the Mom was able to finally bring her girls through to see where they would soon be living. The homeowners were present for this walkthrough, and they were very friendly, asking the girls which room each would be picking and advising the new owner about anything she should know. Feeling really positive, the Mom and her girls went to leave, and the current homeowner said, “And you don't need to worry about all that stuff you see about the house on the internet. We had a cleansing and the ghosts are totally gone now.”

Cleansing? Ghosts?

This was the first Rudy's client had heard about any of this, and her girls were suddenly terrified, and the homeowner realised that she had made a mistake.

“I'm so sorry,” she said. “But if you put the house's address into Google, you apparently get all the links to the story and the TV show we were featured on. I assumed you knew. Everybody does.”

TV show? Everybody knows about this?

“But, really, don't worry. It's been cleansed.”

The woman went home, popped the address into Google, and watched the My Ghost Story that featured the house she was about to move into. Great. Having no other choice, the woman and her girls ended up moving into the house, and happily, it certainly appeared to have been cleansed (if, indeed, it ever needed to be). She has never had a paranormal experience in her home, but since she is now planning some renovations, she told Rudy that she's keeping her fingers crossed that they won't reawaken anything. Dun dun. 

When I took Mallory on a campus tour at the University of Toronto, I told her that I heard that the school has some good ghost stories (something I'm vaguely aware of since Robertson Davies was a master at Massey College and set some haunted tales there). That was intriguing enough for Mal to ask the tour guide for details and this is what she said: Something like a hundred years ago, two stonemasons were building a tower that was to have parapets at each corner. As they were working on the final corner, one found out that the other was sleeping with his wife, and after some fearful axe and trowel fight (there is still a heavy wooden door scarred from the battle), one of these men was killed and the other disappeared. Efforts were undertaken to later finish this final parapet, but accidents always befell the workers; masons who would ultimately refuse to return to the project. Eventually, a fire revealed a skeleton in an airshaft that no one had known about, and at that point, it was decided to leave the tower unfinished. The story wasn't particularly spooky, but Mallory said that the presence of ghosts actually made the school more attractive to her.

Note the unfinished tower at left.

Even closer to home, Kennedy was recently telling me that she heard a story about someone who was working as a security guard at the abandoned property formerly known as the Preston Springs here in Cambridge. In its Victorian heyday, this hotel offered its guests restorative sulfur baths and the accommodations themselves were lavish and posh. Likely due to medical advances, the sulfur baths eventually fell out of fashion and the hotel sank into disrepair. Long before we moved into the area twenty years ago, the boarded up building was a magnet for homeless people and partying teenagers, and over the years, there have been numerous small fires and other mischief at the site.

Some years ago, a development company bought the Preston Springs – I believe to turn into condos – but other than completing a much needed facelift for the outside, the company didn't achieve much before going bankrupt. As it sits now, the property is once again for sale, and in order to keep vandals away from what little value the site holds, someone or other has retained a company to watch over the hotel at night. Enter our security guard.

According to this fellow, he showed up one evening, and to his surprise and dismay, he could see light coming from one of the upstairs windows. Suspecting a fire and armed with only a walkie-talkie and a flashlight, he unlocked the front door, entered the foyer, and was shocked to see that a grand chandelier was glowing at the top of the stairwell. He had never noticed this chandelier before, and assuming that renovations had begun again without his knowledge, he climbed the stairs – spiralling up, landing to landing – to see if there were any workers left in the building. He went from room to room, and after satisfying himself that there was no one around, he called in to his supervisor to report what he had seen.

The supervisor listened carefully to what our man had to say and then replied, “You know there's no electricity at the hotel.”

“Yes,” the guard replied, “I know there wasn't before, but it's hooked up now.”

The supervisor told the guard to re-search the area for intruders and to turn off the chandelier. The guard rechecked the entire top floor, was once again satisfied that there was no one present, and when he approached the top of the stairs, he felt two hands push him hard between the shoulder blades. As he toppled uncontrollably down to the next landing, the stairwell went black; the chandelier had turned off.

The guard scrambled down the rest of the stairs, hightailed it out the front doors, called in to his supervisor again, and waited for the police to show up. When the cops heard the story, they led our man back into the foyer, and with a flip of a few switches, discovered that there was indeed no electricity in the building. When the guard tried to protest that the chandelier at the top of the stairs had certainly been working earlier, a sweep of flashlights revealed that there was no such chandelier up there. As you might guess, a search by the police found no intruders present, yet with all exits firmly padlocked, the only way out was through the front doors which the security guard had been too afraid to stray away from; and he could confirm that no one had gone past him.

We've always thought that the Preston Springs is a beautiful historic building and that it's a shame no one has been able to do anything with it. Perhaps – just perhaps – some force has been at work to scupper such efforts as all attempts at renovation have been plagued with accidents, setbacks, and money issues.

When I asked Kennedy to confirm the details of that story for me, she reminded me to mention something even closer to home. Kennedy has always enjoyed a good ghost story and has collected all of the Amityville Horror movies (and not just because she was crushing on Ryan Reynolds after the 2005 remake of the movie came out). One summer, we decided to drive back from Nova Scotia through the States. We went to Boston (because we saw on the Food Network that the lobster roll at B & G's was named the best sandwich in America – see? It all comes back to these reality shows) and as we then planned to drive to NYC, I suggested we detour to Long Island on the way and eyeball the actual Amityville house.

Because the house happened to be for sale at the time, Dave was able to easily find the address online and we drove past it, parked and let Dave and Kennedy walk past it, and when we didn't want to appear too stalkerish by hanging out overlong (as if any dog-walking neighbours didn't know exactly what we were doing there with our Ontario plates), we drove to the other side of the river where there was a little park and we could sit and stare at the infamous boathouse area at the back of the property. Kennedy had eventually had her fill and we headed for Hoboken (to buy some incredibly delicious lobster tails at the Cake Boss' bakery – see where reality TV leads us?)

What Kennedy wants me to remember here were the flies that got into our van somewhere along the way, and no matter how we tried to shoo them out the windows, there seemed to be at least one fly buzzing around in there for the rest of our vacation. Flies are, obviously, not some totally paranormal phenomena, but Kennedy remembers being plagued by flies for a year (like a scene right out of Amityville Horror itself) and she was especially distressed when she found a fly buzzing around her bedroom in the dead of winter.

Of course none of these stories suggest that I've been haunted, but it seems that you can't swing a (toy) black cat by the tail around here without hitting someone who thinks that they have. Who am I to judge?

Happy Halloween!


Strange stories from previous years:

Halloween I
Halloween II

The Round House

Together they had built the round house, the sleeping woman, the unkillable mother, the old lady buffalo. They'd built that place to keep their people together and to ask for mercy from the Creator, since justice was so sketchily applied on earth.

Justice, and its sketchy application, is the major theme of The Round House. Set in 1988 on author Louise Erdrich's familiar fictional North Dakota Ojibwe Reservation, a violent rape and attempted murder not only threatens to tear a family apart but it seems likely to go unpunished as the victim refuses to – or is unable to – identify her attacker. Not bound by the technicalities that prevent the authorities from meting out justice, the victim's 13-year-old son Joe engages in an investigation of his own. Ultimately, it's up to the reader to decide if justice is served in the end.

In the afterword, Erdrich explains that while one third of Native American women will be sexually assaulted in their lifetimes (likely higher due to under-reporting), and while 86% of their rapists will be non-Native men, a quirk of law didn't allow non-Natives to be prosecuted for any crimes that occurred on reservations (a loophole that appears to have been closed in 2010). This is such a tragic situation that it certainly deserves the in-depth examination that a fictional approach can provide, but after finishing The Round House, I'm not certain that Erdrich pulled it off. And I think the problem lies with seeing the entire story through young Joe's eyes.

This is a coming-of-age story for Joe, and although the reader is privy to his emerging and evolving adult judgments – which is interesting – there's no immediacy to the tragedy. We don't feel the victim's pain, we see how it affects Joe – no family dinners or warm welcome when he returns home if Mom's taken to her bed – and that somehow makes the attack merely a catalyst as he proceeds to spend his summer hanging out and getting drunk with his pals in the sudden lack of supervision. Joe is in pain – desperate to help his mother – but it's his pain we're focused on. Part Stand By Me, part To Kill a Mockingbird, this book never seemed to capture the easy believability of the former or the gravity of the latter.

And I had a problem with the plotting. Repeatedly, Erdrich found inorganic ways to insert stories: Joe listens to his grandfather orate a fabulous tale over two nights in his sleep; a guest who comes to visit decides to share her entire life history; when Joe's Mom doesn't want to talk, his father fills the silence with family mythology. Joe also breaks the fourth wall a couple of times to explain to the reader that he's relating this whole story from some future time, after he's become a lawyer and returned to the Reservation. Every one of these instances only broke the momentum of the plot. And I didn't like either the cartoonishly evil villain or the Lark/Linda doppelgänger bits.

As an examination of justice, however, Erdrich had some interesting things to say. Just as the round house – the site of the attack – sits at the conjunction of three different jurisdictions (and it's the question over whether the state, federal, or reservation justice systems should take precedence that provides the loophole for the attacker to escape through), so too does the attack sit at the conjunction of different notions of justice. As Joe's father is the tribal judge, he has devoted his life to impeccable jurisprudence, hoping that playing by the white man's law will eventually bring the law back into tribal hands. The Catholic Church figures prominently in this book, and as much as I thought Father Travis – ex-marine and Michelob-drinking videophile – was a fantastic character, his notion of Divine Justice was troubling:

We are never so poor that we cannot bless another human being, are we? So it is that every evil, whether moral or material, results in good. You'll see.

As I couldn't find any instances of good resulting from evil in this book, I'm assuming that Erdrich includes this passage as just another meddling white man belief system. Mooshum explains that when someone kills a person possessed by a wiindigoo, that fulfills Indian Law and is therefore totally justified. But no matter what man-made belief system one subscribes to, it would seem that there is no escaping a type of cosmic justice – an attack in a grocery store leads to a heart attack, sexual blackmail leads to losing a rare ally, and although the ending might seem to come out of nowhere, there was a cosmic debt to collect. While I didn't really see the need for the Mayla subplot, in the end, it did underscore that this cosmic justice would have set everything right eventually – if only people had listened to Bugger's dream. 

I enjoyed the reservation setting and the incidental description of everyday life, but I missed the lyricism that I so enjoyed in Tracks: if a book is going to include ghosts and visions, I'd like the language to rise about reportage. Ultimately, The Round House didn't so much highlight the inequity of tribal justice as it used that situation to trigger Joe's leap to adulthood. In the beginning, Joe and his father exchange their first man-to-man glance, and by the end:

And there was that moment when my mother and father walked in the door disguised as old people. I thought the miles in the car had bent them, dulled their eyes, even grayed and whitened their hair and caused their hands and voices to tremble. At the same time, I found, as I rose from the chair, I'd gotten old along with them.

The Round House wasn't a complete disappointment – and I'm still looking forward to The Plague of Doves – but despite a National Book Award, I don't think this is Erdrich's best work.

The Secret Chord

When I realised that The Secret Chord was about King David, I mused that all I really know about him is that he took down Goliath while still a boy and that he played the harp to please the Lord (Hallelujah). That's pretty much the point of this book: Early on, David's resident prophet and advisor, Natan, proposes that a proper biography should be written about David, so that his name alone doesn't become his entire legacy (like those of old heroes whose steles now serve as building stones) – 

Your line will not fail. You know this. Yet memory surely will. Your sons – what will they remember? Or their sons, after? When all who knew you in life are but bleached bone and dust, your descendants, your people, will crave to understand what manner of man you were when you did these deeds, first and last. Not just the deeds. The man.

When David then gives a list of three names for Natan to interview – that of his mother, an older brother, and his first wife – I thought, “Well, that's an intriguing way to fill in the historical record; flesh out the man.” But these interviews are completed by the first third of the book, and as the timeline then proceeds linearly (from the point when David spied Bathsheba bathing on a nearby roof – turns out I did know one more David story), the beginning felt like a misdirection. Two more complaints: Author Geraldine Brooks chose to use “the transliteration from the Hebrew of the Tanakh”, so a familiar name like “Solomon” becomes “Shlomo” and a familiar place like “Bethlehem” becomes “Beit Lethem”. With many characters and settings, this became confusing for a reader like me who isn't acquainted with such transliterations. And the second complaint is less trivial: If the point of Natan's project (and by extension, this book) is to understand King David as a man, seeing him through Natan's eyes makes little sense – we may see David's actions and reactions, but we never get inside his head. And at first that bothered me. But then I had an aha moment.

Brooks opens The Secret Chord with the only two known references to Natan (from the First and Second Chronicles, where he is known as Nathaniel). As King David has indeed had his biography recorded in word and art for the past three millennia, and as Natan's contribution has been limited to two lines, perhaps this is Natan's story after all; the story of a reluctant prophet in service to a mercurial ruler. Seen as Natan's story, this book makes perfect sense and I ultimately wasn't disappointed.

Geraldine Brooks is a master at filling in the gaps of history, at taking a fragment of a life and imagining it whole. Without florid or romantic language, she is able to set scenes that I find totally believable, and with The Secret Chord, I was transported to biblical times; led from olive grove to throne room to killing field. Ultimately, the abiding respect and affection that Natan has for David tells more about the storyteller than it does about his subject – 

I have set it all down, first and last, the light and the dark. Because of my work, he will live. And not just as a legend lives, a safe tale for the fireside, fit for the ears of the young. Nothing about him ever was safe. Because of me, he will live in death as he did in life: a man who dwelt in the searing glance of the divine, but who sweated and stank, rutted without restraint, butchered the innocent, betrayed those most loyal to him. Who loved hugely, and was kind; who listened to brutal truth and honored the truth teller; who flayed himself for his wrongdoing; who built a nation, made music that pleased heaven, and left poems in our mouths that will be spoken by people yet unborn.

Funny that as often as I used to take the girls to Mass, and despite hearing Old Testament readings every week, I'm not all that familiar with the stories of David or Solomon or Moses or Abraham. Must not be a Catholic priority to study the early fathers.

For a while when we were still attending Mass, we had a guest priest. His name was Fr Kevin and although he had graduated from Seminary, he hadn't yet taken his vows. He was a young man, and with an Ichabod Crane physique and scarring acne, a homely man. When I, with the other parishioners, would line up after Mass to shake his hand and thank him for an interesting homily, he'd turn beet red and be unable to hold my gaze. There was something about his manner that made me think that he was struggling with attraction to women; to me, anyway.

But I did mean it when I said I thanked him for interesting homilies. Before coming to our parish, Fr Kevin had completed a tour of the Holy Land, and he was often able to add perspective to readings that were set there. I remember one week the Gospel was from when Jesus referred to himself as "the shepherd and the gate". Fr Kevin explained that when a shepherd would pen his sheep for the night in biblical times, it would be inside a stone-walled circle with a gap left at the entrance. Since wood was so scarce at the time, the shepherd would fold himself into that gap to sleep at night, becoming both the shepherd and the gate. Why would no one have ever told me that before? What a vivid image.

Even more vivid: One week the Gospel was about "it will be easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven". I've always thought that's a pretty extreme judgement, but it's beautiful in context. Fr Kevin explained that in the original walled city of Jerusalem, there were many gates. One of those gates was narrow, low, and almond-shaped, called The Eye of the Needle. Although a merchant would be unlikely to try to bring a camel through that gate, it could be done if the camel was unburdened of all it carried and led through on its knees. Imagine the rich man -- unburdened of his riches and down on his knees -- and suddenly the parable is a powerful metaphor. I can't believe I've only heard that explanation the once.

Ultimately, we were informed that Fr Kevin declined to take his vows and had returned to secular life. I had my private thoughts as to why that might be, but I hope that Kevin found a way to continue to teach. I think that Geraldine Brooks did a real service by turning to a biblical story this time -- no matter how secular we become in the west, Bible tales are as important to our social underpinnings as the writings of Plato; as culturally relevant as Shakespeare. 

Tunesday : Money

Money

(Lennon-McCartney) Performed by The Beatles

The best things in life are free
But you can keep them for the birds and bees
Now give me money
(That's what I want)
That's what I want
(That's what I want)
That's what I want
(That's what I want)
(That's what I want)

You're lovin' gives me a thrill
But you're lovin' don't pay my bills
Now give me money
(That's what I want)
That's what I want
(That's what I want)
That's what I want
(That's what I want)
(That's what I want)

Money don't get everything, it's true
What it don't get, I can't use
Now give me money
(That's what I want)
That's what I want
(That's what I want)
That's what I want
(That's what I want)
(That's what I want)

Money don't get everything, it's true
What it don't get, I can't use
Now give me money
(That's what I want)
That's what I want
(That's what I want)
That's what I want
(That's what I want)
(That's what I want)

Well now give me money
(That's what I want)
A whole lotta money
(That's what I want)
Whoa yeah, I wanna be free
(That's what I want)
Oh, a lotta money
(That's what I want)
That's what I want
(That's what I want)
(That's what I want)

Well now give me money
(That's what I want)
Whole lotta money
(That's what I want)
Whoa yeah, you know I need money
(That's what I want)
Now, give me money
(That's what I want)
That's what I want
(That's what I want)
That's what I want

Here's another dumb story I'm going to tell on myself:

When I was twelve, near the end of grade seven, the owner of the local variety store asked me if I'd like to work there. I felt uncomfortable about the offer because I knew that I was oddly young and certainly unqualified for such a job, but when I told my mother about it, she figured it was too good an opportunity to pass up.

On my first day, this store owner said, "Ah, there you are. And here's someone who's happy to see you." And he gestured to his son Donny, one of my classmates from school. Donny looked really awkward and I started to think, was I given this job to get me closer to Donny who never even talks to me at school?? Was this his Dad's idea or his? I felt oddly pimped out, but even if that was the case, I was stuck with the job for now.

As it turned out, I never actually worked with Donny, even though it was a family-run store. I was there pretty much to assist either his older brother or sister as they rang through the customers; assisting primarily by fetching cigarettes. There were probably more than twenty brands and every type came in small or large (20 or 25 per pack), regular or king-sized, and some odd brands had a 100mm option; brands like Players came in light, ultra light, and filter; and brands like Craven A or Benson & Hedges had a menthol option. It took a little while to learn the lingo and make grabbing the right packs automatic, but the challenge made the time fly. There was an after-dinner rush every night and I would be kept hopping grabbing down the packs of smokes, and when the stacks would run low, it was my job to open cartons and fill them up. The milk at this store was sold in 4l plastic jugs (and we would collect the empty jugs from customers because there was a deposit on them), and as the cooler was directly behind us at the cash, it would also be my job, after the rush, to go back in the cooler and fill up the racks from milk crates, putting the empty jugs into the now empty crates. Sometimes I would be given a box of items to put on the shelves out in the store -- and the rare times I was allowed to use the price sticker gun was the most fun I ever had -- but for the most part, standing behind the counter and helping the big brother or sister was my whole job.

What was terrible about this job was that neither the older brother or sister would talk to me outside of asking for things. So if there were no customers in the store it would be just the two of us, and we would stand there silently, awkwardly, and the longer this went on -- for days, then weeks and months -- the more entrenched the never-talking-together became. I grew to loathe going to work.

Every week, the Dad-owner would hand me a pay packet in a small manilla envelope, all cash, down to the penny. Of course, this was the best part of this or any job. But having cash money every week also made me a target: this was also the period of my big brother's juvenile delinquency and he would often strongarm my money out of me. I remember once, when I had hidden my pay, Ken came in my room and when I wouldn't hand over my money, he took a music box off my dresser and threw it on the floor. This was just after Christmas, and even though at 13 I was maybe too old for a ceramic skater on a windup music box base, when I opened it my mother said that it was something she had wanted at my age. When I later tried to complain about Ken breaking it -- surely this would be personal enough to Mum for her to intervene on my behalf -- all my mother could do was throw up her hands, once against powerless against my brother's acting out. So, yeah, even the money wasn't exactly worth it.

I remember I was working the evening of Dec. 8th, 1980, and it was over the radio at the store that I heard about the assassination of John Lennon. Of course I was stunned (I don't think I knew Lennon had actually died until the next day) but I was there to do a job and I fetched the cigarettes and restocked the milk and was ignored by Donny's big sister, wanting to be anywhere else in the world just then.

So I pretty much hated this job -- the weirdness about Donny and his father, the uncomfortable silence when there were no customers, losing my wages to a brother with reefer madness, the bad connection to John Lennon's death -- but it doesn't really explain what happened next.

Sometime the next spring, when I was back in the cooler to restock the milk, I wiggled a Cadbury's Fruit and Nut chocolate bar out of an unopened carton, ate it, and shoved the wrapper into an empty milk jug. I can't explain what possessed me: I had money, I wasn't a particular fan of that candy, and I didn't even try very hard to not get caught (I certainly could have at least put the wrapper in my pocket). Of course I was found out, but instead of confronting me, Donny's mother and his sister acted out a little scene in front of me with the Mom describing what "someone" had done and saying that if the money for it was put on the counter, no questions asked, all would be fine. That was way more generous than I deserved, but I stared off into space blankly, and when no repayment appeared on the counter, a week later Donny's Dad had to tell me, with regret, that the store wasn't busy enough to justify my employment anymore (also more generous than I deserved). That was the story I told my mother for why I was let go, and as the job had appeared so mysteriously in the first place, my sudden unemployment was also met with a shrug.

I can't justify what I did and I understand that it somewhat explains Ken's actions, too: something about being a kid leads to impulsive behaviour; to not connecting actions with consequences; even when you know better. I was relieved to have lost that job, but I can't claim to have knowingly plotted my downfall. And, yes, this was the same Donny and the same store that I wrote about before -- an event that happened a couple months after I was let go -- so I suppose this is a story about how we were all criminals in the end. But I can't really explain what caused any of it, and that leads me to my ultimate question: were we products of a particular time and place? Or have my own perfect daughters also been liars, thugs, and thieves and they were just never caught?

Red Jacket

She off-loads her cargo of grief, the burden of a self that she now judges to be ruined at the root: Grace the dump pikni; the red jacket in a black family; the child too terrified to open her mouth; the sibling with a sister who disclaimed her; the misfit at St. Chad's.

The beginning of Red Jacket was certainly intriguing: We meet Grace Carpenter, a little girl living on the fictional Caribbean island of St. Chris who has a close relationship with her large family and especially with her Gramps; a man whose voice has a “deep, sweet sound” from “long life, white rum, and years of singing in the gospel choir”; with wisdom, education, and a morality built from grappling with his God, Gramps is probably my favourite character of all. Grace herself feels like an outcast – she's the best student in a family that values academics, but as her freckled bronze skin and smooth red hair make her stand out from everyone else's dark colouring, she must endure the whispers of unkind neighbours; those who would infer that Grace is “ 'a jacket', unsanctified fruit of a union between Pa and some red woman.” Interspersed with chapters detailing Grace's developing years are letters from a woman in NYC who, along with Gramps, keep the secret of Grace's true origins. As I said, this beginning bit is very interesting and I thoroughly enjoyed the way that author Pamela Mordecai was able to evoke life in various settings around St. Chris.

When Grace moves to Toronto for university, however, this book starts to become something else – after years of being discriminated against for being too light, Grace is suddenly too dark among her fellow students at the U of T and she must endure discrimination, dismissal, and constant rudeness from staff and students alike. I don't know if this was based on Mordecai's experience after emigrating from Jamaica, but it felt tedious and overblown. For example: when Grace writes a respectful letter to the editor describing the death of a little boy from starvation and wondering if he fell through the cracks because he was black, the immediate blowback was other letters saying, “If you don't like Canada you ungrateful immigrant, there's the door”. But reading and rereading the original letter, I can't see anything that would have identified “Grace Carpenter” as an immigrant, so the whole setup fell apart for me; and if I can't believe the big things, I won't believe the small. In Toronto, Grace finds and joins a wonderful church, but then stops going for no reason. She initially spurns her roommate's attempts at friendship. She finds out who her birth mother is but doesn't want a relationship. Every bad thing that happens to her, Grace blames on wiley Papa God. And I'm supposed to have empathy for her disconnectedness?

In between chapters about Grace, we also have some from the point-of-view of Jimmy (a Jesuit who has visions of the future) and Mark (Chancellor of a Caribbean bank, some kind of NGO). As Mark's sections happen in the future, we get a glimpse of what kind of work Grace is educating herself for and the timeline jumps around until all three of these characters meet up in the end. I don't tend to be confused by time jumping, but when you throw in someone with premonitions, the whole thing can get messy. The first time Jimmy had a seizure, I had no idea that his vision was meant to be a premonition, and when the manner of his wife's death wasn't revealed for hundreds of pages, I had no idea that that was supposed to have been a premonition of her death. As the Mark character didn't really matter in the big picture, and as his story wasn't fascinating in the details, I don't know why his sections are even in the book. 

Mordecai is primarily known as a poet (Red Jacket is her first novel), and while there was some lovely writing, there were many passages that I simply found confusing:

Gatekeepers. Their visitor misunderstood about the gatekeepers and the palm greasing. G words – gatekeepers, grease. Is it narrow, western, stupid? Why is the greed always in African governments, never in the European lust for gold, oil, diamonds? Why is it never in the foreign letch for immoral local partners in depredation? Perish the thought! That's good business, not greed.

Note the exclamation mark there! I don't know if I've ever read a book that contained more exclamations! Often, dialogue read like a police interview transcript. Events happen late in the book that don't seem to have had any foundation laid for them, and while the ending has some very interesting writing, I found it unsatisfying. I appreciate Mordecai's efforts to describe both the Caribbean and African settings in detail, but too often details felt crammed in and not organic to the story flow:

The sun, set upon by feisty grey clouds, isn't giving in. It elbows its way to a thin splinter in the murk, breaking through in an apostrophe of pure light that falls on his father's most recent undertaking, a grove of red sorrel. Funny, he thinks of it by its St. Chris name, sorrel, rather than bissap, the name they give it in West Africa. Bissape is a popular drink in Mabuli. Sappi is a beer brewed from the flowers of the plant.

And I found it strange to cram in all these facts about two fictional locations – I may have appreciated Red Jacket more if St. Chris and Mabuli actually existed. I feel bad that I didn't much enjoy this book, especially after thinking that the opening was so charming. It's not a total waste of time, but Red Jacket wouldn't get a very high recommendation from me.

The 2015 Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize nominees:

André Alexis - Fifteen Dogs

Elizabeth Hay - His Whole Life

Pamela Mordecai - Red Jacket 

Russell Smith - Confidence
John Vaillant - The Jaguar's Children

*Won by André Alexis, a good result in my opinion

*****

There's a throwaway line in Red Jacket that grabbed my attention:

There's a children's storybook called Waiting for the Thursday Boat in which God is a little black girl. I daresay he could manage to be a trickster spider as well.

Naturally curious, I looked into the storybook, and when I discovered that it was an old title by local, beloved author Robert Munsch, I thought, “Oooh, I need to read that.” But...this book, released in 1989, had caused some degree of controversy – including being banned (or maybe just restricted) by a nearby school board – and as a result, was out of print and not available to borrow from the library or to buy from a store. Robert Munsch! Banned and restricted! How can I get my hands on this dangerous and subversive title?! Rolling up my sleeves and prepared to scour the dark recesses of the internet, I found it, used, right away on amazon.com – for a penny plus shipping – and sat back and waited for it to arrive at my door. And...it's pretty okay. Since it's not readily available, here's the story:

McKeon is the last giant in Ireland – the rest having been tossed out by St Patrick when he was clearing the land of snakes and elves – and when McKeon decides to complain about these actions directly to the saint himself, Patrick declares that he was only doing what God wanted.

Then send out your God.
I'll kick Him in the knee.
I'll knock Him on the head.
He'll never recover.

When St Patrick laughs at this threat, McKeon goes on a rampage, tossing all the church bells in Ireland into the ocean. Finally, St Patrick warns the giant that he's made God mad and, “God is coming on the Thursday boat.” McKeon is pleased and plans to pound God into applesauce. When God does arrive in the form of a little black girl, McKeon doesn't recognise Her as God, and even when the giant and the little girl later jump right up to heaven, McKeon mistakenly thinks that God must live in the biggest house and is confused when He can't be found. Finally, the little girl declares, “Saints are for hanging up church bells and giants are for tearing them down. That's just the way it is. Why don't you two try getting along?” The book ends:

Then she started to laugh. She laughed til the mountains shook, rivers moved and stars changed directions. For a little girl she had an enormous laugh.

McKeon is still throwing church bells out of heaven.
They become shooting stars.
Go out some night and look for one.

This book follows the familiar Munsch themes of accepting differences and learning to get along, and it certainly suits Munsch's outrageous streak (imagine threatening to kick God in the knee or to pound Him into applesauce?), but I have to wonder who it was written for. A religious family might find aspects blasphemous, and nonreligious (or at any rate, non-Christian) parents might feel uncomfortable reading to their children about God and St Patrick in heaven. By having the story feature a giant who throws down church bells that we mistake for shooting stars, I suppose we cross the line into pagan myth. Is Waiting for the Thursday Boat, then, for secular agnostics who can accept all of the above as mere mythology, as suitable for picture books as tales of Zeus and Odin? I wasn't personally offended – why not have God portrayed as a nonviolent little black girl? – but because it's a story about God, I couldn't stop wondering what other people think about it. In and of itself, Waiting for the Thursday Boat has beautiful illustrations, some provocative ideas, but it doesn't have the urgent energy of Munsch's funniest books (Good Families Don't or Mortimer) or the poignancy of his most thoughtful (Love You Forever or The Paper Bag Princess). This is a middle of the road book, and as I can't find evidence of a widespread controversy after its release, I'm going to assume that it was lack of interest – lack of an audience? – that caused Waiting for the Thursday Boat to go out of print.

Mindpicking : Weekly Roundup

Okay, so I haven't done a Weekly Roundup in nearly three months; does that make this a Quarterly Roundup? I choose to ignore the nonsensical name I've given this and stick to my tin six-shooters: Pchoo! Pchoo! Weekly Roundup it is.

I took Mallory into Toronto yesterday for a campus tour of the U of T. I don't know if it has the program she really wants, and as the hour and a half walking tour didn't even involve seeing inside a residence or a building that hosts lectures, I don't know if she'll end up being impressed by the actual school, but there's no denying that Mallory is intrigued by the idea of living in the big city -- who wouldn't be? Here's hoping she ends up picking a university for all the right reasons.

I didn't really want to talk about U of T, though. We had a much more interesting time going on a campus tour to Ottawa a few weeks ago. First of all, Dave was able to get us free accommodations at the Chateau Laurier (because of a mixup with a reservation he had there for a business trip over the summer) and the gorgeous suite made for a lovely vacation vibe. When we first got to Ottawa, we headed straight for the Museum of History (actually in Gatineau) because Mallory wanted to see the temporary display on Alexander the Great. While she and I carefully examined every artefact (and I mean carefully; I didn't want to make Mal think her passions are dull, so I stayed with her forever) from Ancient Greece, Dave and Kennedy went to the Terry Fox exhibit. When we finally met up with them there, we kind of breezed through it (even though Dave kept directing me back to things I probably missed; worn out running shoes and the spare prosthetic leg; again, I was obligated to be interested in those things which are specifically interesting to someone else) but we were struck by an interactive feature at the end. Surrounded by a display of actual letters that were written to Terry Fox during his Marathon of Hope, there was a keyboard that you could type your name into and see if your letter had been archived. I knew I hadn't written him a letter but we tried my name anyway, and Dave's (no luck), and then his sister's, and there it was, projected on a giant screen overhead:

We took that picture and sent it to Rudy and she said she was in tears imagining that the family had actually cared enough about the support they received to keep those letters all these years. Just Rudy's reaction was enough to make the museum trip totally worth it. What we didn't realise was that the museum closed at five and we were shooed out before we could check any more names, or even other exhibits. 

We went out for dinner, walked around Parliament Hill (where we saw some cops in the aftermath of taking down a guy with a paintball gun; a story that I never saw make the news; wonder how often that sort of thing happens?) and then headed back to the Chateau Laurier, where Dave wanted to walk around and check out the hotel. As we were looking into a darkened room, a staff member came up behind us and said, "What are you doing here?...When you could be seeing those paintings close up?" He then turned on the light in the room and said that if we exited through the door at the other end, we would end up on a patio that had a breathtaking view of Parliament and the Rideau Canal. We walked through as encouraged, and when we reached the exit, Dave checked and sure enough that door was locked from the inside -- so even though it was obvious this employee assumed we weren't guests of the posh hotel and was attempting to shoo us out in the most gentile of manners, we took his advice and went out to the patio and enjoyed the view before walking around and reentering the lobby. 

The next day, we went on the campus tour (which was no different from the tour we did before when Kennedy was contemplating Ottawa), and while afterward Mallory went to hang out with a friend who attends the school, the rest of us went to Carleton for our other reason for the trip: to see the Walking With Our Sisters display at Carleton's art gallery (frustratingly impossible to find with a GPS). Conceived of as a memorial to the missing and murdered Native women of Canada (with a smaller area devoted to the children who died in Residential Schools), this display consists of nearly 2000 pairs of moccasin vamps -- just the embroidered tops, left unfinished to represent unfinished lives -- laid out in a sinuous line that you walk along. When we first entered, we were greeted by an elder who explained that we were to remove our shoes, refrain from photography, and prepare to be cleansed. On the lower level, a Native woman smudged us with sage and explained that we were about to enter a ceremonial space. Next, a young volunteer offered us a small packet of tobacco to carry with us that we were to pray our intentions into and leave in a basket at the end for an elder to burn ceremonially. Just picking up the tobacco put a hitch in my breath and I was solemnly affected by this display: by the love and effort put into the vamps by the women who had lost a family member and also by the sheer number of vamps -- it was impossible not to remember that each pair represented an actual person and in my mind they were the equivalent of bodies stacked up in piles around the room; nothing short of tragic. This is what needs to be done in order to reach the non-Native community; the more I learn, the more I believe that healing must be Native-initiated and that they hold the keys to building bridges within society. 

We have more campus visits lined up for the next couple of months, so who knows where Mallory will end up?

Just a few more stories worthy of a roundup:

When we were on our way to Ottawa, Kennedy received an email saying that she is invited to an awards ceremony: as the "student with the highest cumulative average in the fifth semester of her program" (oddly specific, eh?), she is to be given an award and scholarship. "Scholarship" made all of our minds fill with visions of sugar plums and dollar signs, but when Kennedy googled the name of the award, it said that the scholarship consists of "one book prize". That made us all giggle, assure Kennedy that it's still an honour, and as she says I can come with her tomorrow to receive the award, I'll soon enough know just how much of an honour it is. (My mother pointed out that being smart enough to immediately google the name of the award, and therefore avoid disappointment, is a sure sign of why Kennedy is getting this award in the first place. Ma ain't wrong.) Added later, here's her scholarship; still a big deal:

A couple of weeks ago was honours night at Mallory's school, and even though she knew that she would be receiving an honour roll certificate, she said she didn't want to go and didn't want to put us through the interminable ceremony, watching all the other kids march up on the stage, shake multiple hands, and march off again. I did protest that I would be happy to go and watch just for her, but Mallory wasn't interested, and I didn't push. And then she found out later that she had also won an arts award and I felt awful for not pushing her harder. Awful; Mal deserves to be celebrated, too.

This past week, even after assuring us that she would be neither performing in nor hosting the Coffee House that she had arranged for school, Mallory texted me at dinner to say that she would be performing after all, in less than ten minutes. We hightailed it over to the school in time to see the sweetest performance ever of Dream a Little Dream of Me. (A performance, by the way, that she decided on two weeks ago. Brat.)

Sort of a long story: The inlaws adopted a dog from the pound a year and a half ago; a sweet-faced Cockapoo named Stewie. They felt good about rescuing a dog and he was just what they wanted until the first time he bit Grannie. They contacted the pound, and while they said they were surprised to hear that he's a biter, they warned the inlaws that if they tried to return Stewie, it would be an automatic death sentence. Being lovely, dog-loving people, they decided to keep the biter, and of course, he bit again. And again. He even bit me when we were dog-sitting for them and I saw for myself that Stewie was just a broken animal with a crazy switch in his brain -- unprompted, he clamped on my fingers and then cowered as though waiting to see what I would do. The wound needed antibiotics and I have permanent tendon damage in one finger, and maybe I shouldn't have, but I kept that bite from the inlaws. Stewie can't be groomed without sedatives (and even then, the groomer refuses to go near his face), you can't take anything that might hurt him out of his mouth, and he's proved himself to be a maniacal killer of baby birds and squirrels. Maybe six months ago, they decided that they couldn't keep an untrustworthy dog around, but when they called their vet to make an appointment to put Stewie down, this vet protested that they hadn't tried hard enough to rehabilitate the dog. She put them in touch with a dog whisperer, who gave the inlaws lessons in how to create and maintain dominance, and although they thought he was doing pretty good after that, none of us wanted to be around Stewie -- Dave even refused to let them bring Stewie to the cottage we rented this summer. When someone told them that dogs were indeed allowed at that cottage and Grandpa confronted Dave, Dave said, "I didn't say there were no dogs allowed. I said you couldn't bring your dog." So, this past week, the inevitable happened: Stewie bit Grannie and she needed twenty stitches on her hand. The only upside to Alzheimer's is that Grannie couldn't remember all the other times Stewie has bitten people ("It's funny because he was a perfect dog until just recently"), and although the vet tried to protest again, Stewie was put down this week. It feels terrible to be relieved that this dog has been killed, but I honestly don't think he was fixable, and when none of us were willing to scratch the little guy's ears when he'd come say hi, that's not a happy life for him either. As a footnote, Dave refused to call his parents and give his condolences because neither of them showed him compassion when our own beloved Libby was put out of her suffering this summer. Childish, yes, but he is their child after all.

Okay, a few amusing tidbits to end with:

Lolo's sister was visiting with her family last week, and while I was upstairs folding laundry, I heard Ella burst through the door and say, "Who wants to see a baby?" Kennedy ran to the door and was talking with Ella (who had brought her nearly two-year-old and five-year-old cousins over) and then I heard Kennedy say, "I'm Ella's cousin, too." Then Zeke, the five-year-old, said, "You can't be her cousin. You're a grown up lady." That tickled me.

The other day, Mallory told me that, after seeing me drop her off at school, some guy told her, "No offence, but your Mom looks just like Brave." Mal thought this was hilarious because of the "no offence" part. Why, according to her, would someone pushing fifty be offended for looking like a sixteen-year-old? Of course, I was offended by her saying that I'm "pushing fifty". Pfft, I'm pushing forty-eight.

Over the summer, my Uncle Mike came to visit and he brought his longterm girlfriend Carol with him. We had met Carol before but this was the most time we had spent with her and we all got along really well. I was going to avoid mentioning the federal election again, since I whined about it at length already, but I just need to share a photo that Carol posted on facebook the day after the election:

I really wanted to comment, "Great picture Carol but I think you have a piece of crap on your sleeve". But I didn't. 'Cause I'm too classy.

And finally, now that Mallory has had her driver's license for a month, she told me the other day that sometimes when she's driving along by herself she gets a feeling of unreality, like she's too young to be actually driving; like a little kid playing around in Mom's car in the driveway. "I just think sometimes," said Mal, stabbing her finger at the air for emphasis, "somebody put that baby in a carseat." Lol, she'll always be my baby. 

And that's my weekly (technically quarterly even though these were all events from this month) roundup. Pchoo! Pchoo!