Reconaissance

Fishy eye.

I spent yesterday wandering about the city, peeking in on Olympic sites and pavilions.

All was quiet. Aside from the bunches of blue-coated volunteers huddled about skytrain and subway stations, and the usual rush of commuter traffic, the Olympic Spirit is apparently still en route.

Sure, there are flags everywhere, draped from downtown department stores, bridges, apartment windows, and car antennae. Every few feet one is bombarded by official advertising and multi-lingual signage.

I began my foot-soldiering at the top of the city, where the new hockey rink resides behind blue barricades on the UBC campus, and descended further and further into the quiet of a regular urban Monday.

Granville Island, home of the French Quarter and Atlantic Canada House, (appropriately taking over the Island’s liveliest oceanside pub) was practically deserted. Workmen drilled, art students mingled, and the Coca-Cola “eco” trucks sat idle as seagulls poked about, waiting for the generous crowds.

Red eye.

Of course, there are a few hints of what is to come this weekend – the sly political messaging and the ubiquitous flags catch the eye.

So clever, it's incomprehensible to us mere mortals.

After pondering one such artistic stand against “the late winter of 2010,” I hopped on the demonstration streetcar that carries folk from the Island to the Village of the Athletes. (Well, technically, it stops outside the Village, as none of us are security-cleared to enter said commune.)

Deluxe demonstration

Replete with leather handholds and a faux luxury interior, the demonstration cars are piloted by volunteer drivers, whose job it is to make sure the train doesn’t exceed 20km per hour. Our driver was red-coated and grandfatherly, saying that driving the cars is easy, “just pushing buttons, really.”

Bombardier, who designed the tricked out shuttles, is hoping to convince city investors to keep the line running permanently. The message is, “Look Vancouver! You, too, could ride in lazy luxury.”  The attendants at the stations have time to lean, and so do you, as the scenery crawls by.

By the time I arrived at Yaletown to find the LiveCity concert venue, I was looking for some excitement, but all I came across were more barricades, empty streets and distant white tents.

I was still in the desert of downtown and doubting the promise of Fantastic Events, when I spotted some very expensive cars and very beautifully dressed women.

Bella, bella! I had found the Casa Italia, comfortably housed in the classy brick of the Roundhouse Community Centre. Surrounded by casually parked porsches and gleaming beamers, men in tailored suits and cashmere overcoats, and resplendent women, I felt like a country rube in my hoodie and jeans.

Now that's what I call a great vacation rental car.

Leaving the glitter of Rome behind, I wandered into the heart of the city. Twilight descended on the skaters at Robson Square, and I was caught up in a line-up for tickets, entertained by the griping, suburban political comment of several well-provided for, middle-aged women who were there to pick up tickets for their families.

Paper lanterns and camera-ready silhouettes lit up the carless Granville street, as a small clutch of Bulgarian athletes were momentarily stunned by the BC Pavilion’s seizure-inducing strobe light display outside the Art Gallery.

The line took half an hour, and as I clutched my (heat-sensitive) cheap ticket to a mid-week victory celebration at the big old BC Place, I wondered whether all the predictions, the protests, the shiny new infrastructure, and the advertising had failed to move the citizens of Vancouver. We’re like children at the circus, somewhat bored with the elephants and the chimpanzees already, and wondering where the bathroom is.

Battered!

First, a moment of silence for the Hustler. It had a good run, and I’ll always regret not learning to drive it. Oh, how I will miss its unique character – popping out of fourth gear at every opportunity, the compromised security of its tailgate lock, the spastic tachometer, and the distinctive rustic profile it maintained proudly at every parking lot, not to mention its use as a mildly offensive conversation piece.  It’s now in the palliative care of ICBC, nursing its cracked gas tank and crumpled bumper.

My pride, I suppose, is also a write-off, as I stepped out of the truck last Sunday morning, covered in pancake batter.

When I say covered in batter, I mean covered. From head to toe.

We were coming to a stop at the bottom of a slick hill, on our way to make up some pancakes for about 100 folk at church. A fundraiser. A good idea – and of course, I thought the safest thing to do with a giant pot of goo would be to put it on my lap for the drive. That way, I could keep it from spilling.

When I was little, my family and I watched loads of kids’ movies – the kind where the villain falls into a pile of mud, trips into a cake, has the paint cans spill on his/her dastardly head, or gets sprayed by the fire extinguisher, as the heroes escape with the treasure, the puppies, or the letter that needs to be mailed to Santa.

In Sunday morning’s mini-movie, (slippery hill, brake failure, rear-ender, not our fault), I was that villain, covered in goo.

My husband was the hero – painstakingly cleaning out the truck before we knew it was a goner, (we didn’t notice the gas tank leak until the afternoon).

I’ve always wanted my life to be more like the movies. I just never thought I’d be cast as the tragic/comic relief. I was thinking more along the lines of dramatic heroine, good-hearted, moral crusader, or undiscovered princess.

But here I am, the clown. For every time this week I’ve told the epic story of the Pancake Peril, someone has had a great laugh, and I’ve giggled along with them. Even my pastor (as he freely admits) chuckled “very unpastorally” at our latest mishap.

In fact, some of my dearest friends have become so through my comic incidents.

Believe me, I’ve had some truly deeply awkwardly moments. From peeing on my shoes (in university!) to accidentally vacuuming my lacy underwear into the central cleaning system and clogging it up entirely, to inadvertently showing a ferry-load of passengers my granny underwear while enjoying the bracing breeze…each moment of excruciating personal misfortune has either been witnessed by someone who came to my rescue and became a friend, or shared as a story in retrospect that allowed me to bond with someone instead of appearing distant and ‘together.’

My other major role these days, is as Pollyanna. Considering my penchant for cynicism so carefully cultivated in university, it’s a surprise part for me, but one that I’m warming up to.

So let me lay down some bright sides to this latest unfortunate incident  – I’ve been able to get through lay-offs, bug infestations, house fires, car crashes, illnesses, toenail terrors and bad days at work just by looking more closely at the details behind the calamity.

We invited folk over to eat the remaining pancakes, and I got the chance to connect again with a dear, dear friend and her sweet boyfriend, who I’d never met before.

My husband and I got to come home and have a day off together.

I don’t have to learn how to drive standard! (Yet).

Our old rusted truck gave us back, through its demise, more than we paid for it – and who knows how long its structurally unorthodox carriage would have lasted, and what a loss we could have taken on it.

We’re safe, and uninjured.

And now I know what it’s like to be covered in pancake batter, a thing I idly wondered about as we drove happily along to church, just before we were smacked.

It’s not actually that bad. Sticky, surprising, and food for thought.

Eternal vigilance – or, Dear Mr. Harper

I was in the rush of customers, trying to maintain my civility, when a strung out young man started to push his way to the front of the line. Firmly, I told him to wait – and his reply, almost hilarious in its paradox, made me think about that delicate balance between liberty (doing as one wants) and courtesy (doing with others in mind): “Hey man, I respect your rules, but do you have to be anal about it? Can’t I just have my toast now?”
So – eternal vigilance – Monday’s question – and Mr Stimpson’s descriptive, but non-philosophical answer:

‘Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty,’ one of the most widely quoted of all sayings on the subject of liberty, is variously attributed to Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry, Thomas Paine, Voltaire, Wendell Phillips, and John Philpot Curran. It is most generally attributed to Thomas Jefferson or Patrick Henry, but it does not occur in any of the known speeches, letters or other writings of either of these two great lovers of liberty, and there is no evidence that either of them was the author of it.

The available evidence points to the conclusion that Curran, the Irish statesman  and orator, was author of the general idea, and that Phillips, the American orator and reformer, was author of the exact phraseology. On July 10, 1790, Curran delivered a speech upon the right of election in which he said in part: ‘It is the common fate of the indolent to see their rights become a prey to the active. The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is a once the consequence of the crime and the punishment of his guilt.’

This speech, along with others by Curran, was published at Dublin in 1808, a fact that probably accounts for an oft-repeated statement that Curran said ‘Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty’ in a speech at Dublin in 1808. The earliest known occurence of ‘Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty’ is in an address delivered by Phillips before the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society January 28, 1852. Phillips did not enclose the now famous sentiment in quotation marks, and in 1878, when the authorship was disputed, he wrote a letter in which he expressed the opinion that it was original with him.

Well, vigilance on the part of both speakers and writers, as well as Stimpson, gives us the occurrence of the phrase, but not its meaning.

Freedom is a gift, that came at great cost, and as I myself have often proved through laziness and love of convenience, is easily lost if one does not pay attention. So many things can slip away through bureaucracy, court rulings, precedent, or the fact that not enough people knew in the first place to cast a vote, make a noise, or raise a protest.

I can think of many examples of this sleepy attitude to freedom, one, being our country Canada and the current proroguing of parliament with a prime minister, who, based on the polls, thought the country was asleep, and sought to do what he pleased. Be a vigilant here.

The other is more fanciful, but equally instructive, and taken from the inimitable Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams. The earth is about to be destroyed by an alien race, and as the face a tide of woeful humanity on the brink of doom, their response is this:

“There’s no point in acting all surprised about it. All the planning charts and     demolition orders have been on display in your local planning department in Alpha Centauri for fifty of your Earth years, so you’ve had plenty of time to lodge any formal complaint and it’s far too late to start making a fuss about it now”

(Adams, 36).

I need to pay more attention – to the little things that make me utter useless frustrations like, “If only I had known!” and to the bigger things that affect others who may not know or be able to speak for themselves about the liberties they are losing.

But back to the trivial and the next question:

Why is a gemstone called an amethyst?

Back to the Balkans

Well, shall we resume our pursuit of the trivial?

My last question, from A Book About A Thousand Things was about the Balkans, the mountainous region in southeastern Europe.

Mr. Stimpson has something to say about this mountain landscape, although it’s from a time before civil war and international intervention:

“Balkan is derived from a Turkish word signifying ‘mountain’. The Balkans are a range of mountains extending from the Yugoslavian frontier through central Bulgaria to the Black Sea. From the Balkan Mountains (really a pleonasm) the Balkan Peninsula received its name. It is the easternmost peninsula of southern Europe and is occupied by the Balkan States. This name was first applied in the nineteenth century to several small countries that had lately won their independence from the Ottoman Empire. At present the Balkan States are Bulgaria, Turkey in Europe, Greece, Albania, Yugoslavia and Rumania.”

He’s slightly critical, our Stimpson, of the place name (pleonasm is the use of more words than are necessary to convey meaning), and he died long before that wild region was carved up into smaller states and bombed by NATO. The new Balkan states are :

• Albania
• Bosnia and Herzegovina
• Bulgaria
• Greece
• Kosovo (disputed independence)
• Macedonia
• Montenegro

Countries which are significantly located in the peninsula:

• Croatia
• Serbia

(taken from Wikipedia.)

And while it remains to be seen if the price of liberty in this collection of countries was fair, let’s move on to Stimpson’s next question.

Who said, ‘Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty’?

Meditations on milk

Three weeks into January, my Christmas is finally over.

I have to confess that recent turmoil has translated into a distaste for writing. I’ve been keeping busy and anti-contemplative to avoid being sad. But a sudden and painful reckoning with all the forbidden foods in the dairy camp that I’ve been quietly consuming for the sake of the holidays has kept me home instead of at work on a Saturday, and now I have nothing to do but write.

(All other activities are beyond the bounds of physical strength I possess just now, in the wake of my body’s allergic revolt.)

I grew up loving milk, butter, cheese, cream. More so because we had powdered milk in our house, and so any visit to relatives or friends meant a hallowed moment with a rich glass of (2%!) milk. My brother and I loved to comment on how thick and creamy it was.

Taco salad was a staple in our household, along with those big blocks of orange cheddar – I spent most of my teen years snacking on cheese melted to the point of perfect crispiness on salted crackers, and large glasses of cold milk, along with delicious helpings of mint chocolate chip or black cherry icecream. My favorite thing to eat after playing a basketball game was hot french fries, dipped in vanilla icecream.  In my first year of university, I nourished myself almost entirely on cheese perogies. After a long day of  managing a ranch kitchen, I’d curl up on the couch with a bowl of homemade ranch dip (heavy on the buttermilk) and some crisp ripple chips. I can’t even talk about homemade scones without getting slightly upset at their tantalizing memory.

My anti-milk bent runs in the family. My brother, I think, had an early intolerance for milk – I remember when our uncle babysat us for a week in the wake of my younger brother’s death, and I brattily told our caretaker that my brother was required to drink a full glass of milk with his meal. I’m sure such an action didn’t help his lactose intolerance – instead attaching an emotional dislike to a physical discomfort.

But how strange it is to have grown up enjoying something (cheese and crackers, buttermilk pancakes, chocolate mousse, icecream, whipped cream, strawberry shortcake, all manner of delicious Italian foods, butter on toast) and then suddenly find it intolerable and indigestible.

I’ve cheated a bit since my days of non-dairy began – a milk chocolate here, a bit of cake there, and suffered mildly for it. I clung to feta cheese and butter, as they didn’t cause any noticeable reaction.

I’ve done some considerable research into non-dairy substitutes from:

- the well-known soy bean, (generally good, although possibly cancer causing and sometimes silty)

- the fortified almond, (creamy and consistent, high in iron, makes pancakes a little too heavy for their own good)

- the versatile rice grain (perfect for pancakes, but tends to get a bit grainy, and turn greyish over time)

to the weirder realms of alternative food:

- Hemp Milk (their new, improved flavour tastes like pureed creamed corn – although they made somewhat bizarrely refreshing popsicles)

- soy cheddar (think orange silly putty, never minding that it doesn’t melt)

- goat mozzarella (the boldness of goat doesn’t mesh well with the desired subtleties of a good, quiet, white mozza).

- mystery milk, aka English Bay Non-Dairy (claims to have no “lactose, fat, protein, preservatives, soy, rice, gluten, MSG,”  begging one to wonder, what, exactly, is it made of. My guess is potatoes.)

But this Christmas, I decided that I was going to ignore all subtle suggestions of possible illness, and forays into sub-satisfactory alternatives and simply indulge. The irrational nature of my allergies (can have this, can’t eat that, varying symptoms from throat-closing to a random rash) could be overcome. Mind over milk.

And for awhile, it seemed to work. I ignored the increasing discomforts and symptoms. I politely (and happily) consumed offered desserts and gifts of homemade chocolates.  I made sure to test all the Christmas baking I was crafting at work – from delicious roasted red pepper and cream cheese pastries, to fresh parmesan and basil pesto. Somebody had to make sure that freshly whipped banana butter-cream icing was tasty, right?

But the dairy fought back with a vengeance, and now I’m relegated once again to the culinary wasteland without milk. I do have a few comforts at hand – nuts and beans, almonds and soy, are still able to execute a perfectly tasty cereal breakfast or a hot chai latte, but it’s not quite the same.

My husband, a dairy aficianado, has his own cheese drawer in our fridge, (used to be a cheese-bucket) and has kindly learned to cope with more cheese-less dinners. He fares pretty well, adding toppings at the end, but cream sauces and rich desserts are, sadly, to be consumed at understanding friend’s houses only. On days I feel especially guilty for depriving him of a fully complemented creamy menu, I buy him a pint of his favorite ice-cream as a gesture of goodwill.

I suppose being forced to return to a strict non-dairy diet coincides nicely with the coming Christian season of Lent, in which believers are encouraged to give up eating all animal products as a way of purifying themselves for the Easter season.

And it reminds me, in parallel with some emotionally difficult situations of late, that sometimes in this ever-changing life, you lose people you love or things that were a comfort or a marker of identity. A home, a job, a friendship, or a way of being.  And you have to cope somehow – grieving over what has gone, missing the flavour of happiness past, but pressing forward into something healthy, something nourishing, something new.

The pain of letting go is excruciating – but it’s a passing, freeing pain. The pain of staying in a place that your heart and soul can no longer handle, is a worse pain, an affliction that only causes more illness, the harder you fight to keep things from changing or slipping away.

So goodbye, milk! Perhaps someday we’ll meet again in slightly more pleasant circumstances.

Far and away

Resolutions – some crumble faster than others. Well, my plan to have a daily trivia post succumbed just eight days into the new year.

And now, my sweet man and I will be away on an island, celebrating Christmas with his folks. So apologies to all those who came here looking for answers – I’ll be resting, instead of resoluting.

Stay tuned for more from the Book of a Thousand Things. More snakes, more Balkans and more bread and circuses coming up.

From Barnum to the Balkans

Well, the answer to the question, “What does ‘Barnum was right’ mean” is one of my favorites from the Book About A Thousand Things. It’s a self-fulfilling  monument to popular myths that we’ve all forgotten – a harbinger of the kind of trivia that engrosses us today, only to be erased in 200 years from collective memory. Even as Stimpson is writing about Barnum and trying to put him into context, his use of popular language is outdated itself. (Although maybe we could stage a comeback of humbugging as a verb.)

Barnum himself faded into the past as a cultural reference, and is only remembered for something he didn’t say:

“The common saying, ‘there is a sucker born every minute’ is popularly attributed to Phineas Taylor Barnum (1810-1891), the famous American showman. ‘Barnum was right’ is often resorted to when a person wishes to allude to the saying without quoting it.

There is no evidence that Barnum actually said ‘there is a sucker born every minute,’ and its origin in all probability is lost beyond recovery. It does, however, succinctly express the great showman’s philosophy of the credulity of the public, and it has become a sort of American proverb.

He once declared that ‘the American people like to be humbugged,’ and his outlandish hoaxes are proverbial. In England he delivered a lecture entitled The Science of Money Making, and the Philosophy of Humbug.”

Horace Greeley expressed a somewhat similar idea in more stately language when he asserted that ‘the public is one immense ass.’ Sucker as a slang term for greenhorn, simpleton, fool, victim of sharpers or one easily duped or imposed upon was in general use in 1857 and probably earlier. At one time, jay was a common slang word for chump, fool, or gullible person, and an old song that was very popular contained the line, ‘There’s a new jay born every day.’”

Ah, Mr Stimpson, if only you knew how little had changed. From banking scandals to Britney Spears, 60 million people can be wrong.

But from molehills to mountains, and Stimpson’s next question:

Why are the Balkans so called?

What does “Barnum was right” mean?

Dollars and cents – that’s how I spent my day – counting them out. Or asking people to give me five cents more or ten cents less.  In fact, I receive about 100 pennies a day. Usually the folk using them are shy, apologizing for their copper cents piled up on the counter. But pennies are money, too, and sometimes, that’s all you have.  Cents can be overlooked, thrown in the garbage, rounded up, but they still count.  (I always remember that Superman movie about the villain who built a computer program to steal the world’s rounded up pennies. He made millions.)

A cent is like a person deciding to do something kind, or good, or tiny but useful. Cents and acts of good conscience all add up.

Here’s what our dear Mr Stimpson has to say about the word cent, while waxing somewhat poetic, and showing off his knowledge of Shakespeare.

“Cent as the name of an American coin was first suggested by  Morris.  In 1782, when assistant to Superindendant of Finance Robert Morris, he prepared for Congress a report in which he suggested that the monetary unit be 1/1440 of a dollar and that the lowest silver coin consist of 100 of these units and be called a cent. These proposals were not adopted, but they became the basis of the system of coinage worked out later by Jefferson and perfected by Hamilton.

Undoubtedly congress borrowed cent from Morris’ report when in 1786 it adopted a system of coins based on mills, cents, dimes and dollars, and prescribed that the cent should be ‘the highest copper piece, of which 100 shall be equal to the dollar.” Morris had studied French and he probably derived cent from centime, rather than directly from Latin centum (hundred).

Cents occurs in Shakespeare, but in French instead of English. In King Henry V a captured French soldier, pleading with Ancient Pistol to spare his life, says: Je vous donnerai deux cents ecus (I will give you two hundred crowns).”

Today’s question: What does “Barnum was right” mean?

Scrubbing New Year’s

After wearing a mad pink party hat and well-wishing customers all day, I came home expecting a quiet New Year’s Eve. But a flood in the kitchen changed such wistful dreams, and in the course of that clean-up project, I ended up on my knees in the bathroom, scrubbing the tub. Yes, that’s right. My 27th New Year’s Eve, spent with a rag and a bottle of Lysol.

New Year’s Eve and I don’t always get along.

When we were small, we’d hole up in the living room with movies and popcorn, and usually a few minutes after midnight, my dad would wish us well and send us to bed. That’s when the disparity between my hopes and the reality of the Eve began to dissapoint me, I think.

When we got a little older, we’d rush out into the street with pots and pans and bang them together, screaming gleefully. Our neighbours kindly joined in the raucous, screaming at us.

Some of my most memorable and awkward Eves involve non-dates. Once I hit adolescence, New Year’s was all about Having Someone to Kiss.

I dragged my brother along as a reluctant chaperone, while I flirted in the front seat with his friend.

I invited another suitor to my workplace, and we spent the final minutes handing out cake and cookies. It was awkward. No sweeping me into his arms, just “Would you like a napkin?”

The day before my husband and I started dating, we spent the wee hours at a friend’s house, while I cringed in the corner and tried to ignore him. Secretly, I wished he’d kiss me when the clock struck midnight. He didn’t. But how could he? I was too busy ignoring him, while jealously watching other couples ring in the New Year.

The year I didn’t lack for kisses involved another guy – one that I was trying to make jealous. I wore a handmade button on my jacket, saying kiss me – and before the clock struck midnight, I’d garnered 47 kisses, none of them from him.

Even last year, my first as a married lady, was a rather flat evening – I came home from work, kissed my husband and went to bed at 8:30. He had to wake me for midnight.

So it’s no wonder that this year, I was scrubbing the tub.

But guess what? I’ve made my peace with New Year’s Eve.

Like my sparkling white bathtub, I feel clean today. All of the gunk of my romantic expectations and unreasonable personal ideals and demands on my life feel scrubbed away by this year’s circumstances. I’ve had some extrordinary true and real moments amidst the dissapointment.

It’s a New Year, just waiting to be realised. How marvellous.

Who originated the word, “cent”?

Mr Stimpson didn’t seem to feel like answering yesterday’s question very thoroughly:

“We often hear a person described as the spitting image of another. The phrase is believed to be an incorrect variation of spit and image, which became first sp’t'n image and then spitting image. There appears to be no foundation for the belief that spitting in spitting image is a corruption of spirit.”

Well, that was a masterful paragraph on the art of saying nothing more. But perhaps Stimpson’s next question was already knawing at him. After all, doppelgangers are found everywhere, and most of us avoid mirrors, but we all wonder and worry about money.  And here’s hoping that Stimpson’s two cents on the word cent prove more conclusive than his spitting about spitting.