Montreal Book Launch Sept 2024

Here I am speaking with Elise Moser at the Montreal launch of my new novel, Colours in Her Hands, which was published in September by the Freehand Books in Calgary. Ask for it at your favourite bookstore or library! I want people to meet Mina. 

 

Mina, the central character of the novel, has Down Syndrome. I don't think that's the most important fact about her, but it is what you would notice if you met her walking down the street. What I am hoping will happen as you read the novel, is that you will see the whole of Mina's life--everything else that matters. 

When the novel opens, Mina is living by herself, has a job and a boyfriend. This has been the status quo for almost 20 years, but Mina is now middle-aged and beginning to have difficulties. This raises the question for those close to her whether she is safe on her own. Autonomy and dignity as we age is an issue that we all have to deal with. 

I also explore creativity and disability--how an individual may not be able to explain in words but can still express herself powerfully. 

It felt important to write not only about Mina but also the people involved in her life: her brother and legal guardian, Bruno; his girlfriend, Gabriela; Mina's new friend, Iris, who designs and sews clothes and therefore appreciates the wildly inventive embroideries Mina creates. This is Mina's world.

 

In this clip, Elise has just asked me about writing in English and occasionally including French.   https://youtu.be/P9mnF2bKuec?si=Qrv1Bki-nOPHS8zM

The launch was held at Librairie Pulp Books in Verdun in Montreal. The top two photos were taken by Jack Ruttan who was at one end of the room; the last two photos and the video were taken by Robert Aubé who was at the other end of the room. Thank you, Jack and Robert.

Elise is well-known in the Anglo Quebec writing community and also farther afield. She's written three great books: Because I Have Loved and Hidden it, Lily and Taylor, What Milly Did: The Remarkable Pioneer of Plastics Recycling. I am also fortunate in that she's a friend. We often go on long tromps together.

Here's the star of the evening:

life of a sidewalk tree

Our front door abuts the sidewalk. Anything that happens on the sidewalk I hear through the windows. People walking past, talking, laughing, arguing and scolding, walking dogs, bouncing a basketball, rolling a grocery buggy or a washing machine strapped onto a dolly. They pass so closely that I could reach out and touch their heads. They can see into my windows as well, although generally they don't look because that's the unspoken understanding (cf Jane Jacobs on the "intricate ballet" of sidewalk behaviour), which I have to admit I don't necessarily respect myself. The sidewalk is the border between private and public. Cats, squirrels, and raccoons use it too. 

Given that it's a length of concrete, it's fabulous to have a few trees shading it. When we moved here 20 years ago, there was a beech tree in front of the house. It gave me a screen of leaves throughout spring and summer, and in the autumn the leaves turned brilliant yellow. Even the bare branches in the winter were preferable to seeing directly into the neighbours' windows across the street. (Sure, I could put up curtains but then I might as well have a wall.) 

Sparrows liked taking the morning sun in the tree, even though I didn't always like how loudly they CHIRPED about their prowess or the sun or food source or any of the many topics of sparrow communication. My office is on the second floor, so I was as close to the sparrows in the crown of the tree as I would be to passersby on the sidewalk below. When the sparrows got too loud and monotonous, I CHIRPED back at them until they moved along. Starlings visited the tree too, though they preferred the larger century-old cottonwoods in the back alley. Starlings congregate in larger groups.

The birds were loudest in the spring and summer. The part of the avian brain that controls song shrinks at end of breeding season. Their testes too--for a sparrow from the size of a baked bean to a pinhead. No, I don't know what kind of baked bean, nor what size of pin, but you get the idea. My source for this is the excellent book by Tim Birkhead, Bird Sense.

In winter the sparrows still came to perch in the tree with their feathers fluffed out to keep warm.  

Then a kamikaze cowboy crashed a sidewalk snow plough into the tree, damaging the trunk so badly that the city had to cut it down.  

The following summer the city planted a mountain ash, and for the first few years, the tree was healthy. It bloomed white in the spring, followed by clusters of orange berries. The starlings and squirrels had a heyday. 

Then the tree became infested with tent caterpillars which we tried to control by cutting away the affected branches. The following year we saw dieback--dried brown leaves and leafless branches. I called the city to tell them the tree wasn't well. They sent an arborist whose report said there was no significant dieback. I would have liked to invite the arborist into my office for a clear view of the significantly dead crown of the tree. 

After two years of increasing dieback, the city cut the tree down. I came home one day to a stub of trunk. A few weeks later a machine must have been sent to grind the trunk and part of the root. I came home to mound of sawdust. 

For the rest of the summer we had no tree. The neighbours across the street had no trees either, because theirs had been cut down as well.  

A couple of weeks ago trees were left on the sidewalk with No Parking/Horticulture signs along the street. It looked promising! 

The next day the trees had disappeared. Were they stolen in the night? Had the city reconsidered planting trees? Did whoever delivered the trees put them on the wrong street? In Montreal there are always many possibilities. The workings of the city and its employees are not transparent.  

Last week I came home to a new tree on the sidewalk. The tag on it said it was a Malus Dreamweaver which sounds to me like a word for Nightmare. Malus means bad. However, I looked it up and discovered that Malus also means apple. As in Eve and the apple? 

A Malus Dreamweaver is a flowering crab apple that is described as columnar with nearly vertical branches. I would have thought the city might want to shade the sidewalk, though perhaps a narrow tree makes more sense with power/telephone/cable lines overhead. 

The new tree, the Apple Dreamweaver, is still a small tree. The sparrows aren't interested in it yet. I hope it flourishes as well as it can in a city where the drivers of sidewalk snow ploughs crash into trees. I will pick up the litter around it and water it and plant a few flowers next spring. 

I look forward to it growing to within view of my desk.     

Thank you to Joanne Carnegie for pointing out errors in an earlier version of this post. 

grey day for walking to the Bronx

Last Saturday was cloudy, hot and humid, but I wanted to go for a walk, so we set out in the morning. 

R suggested we head to the Bronx. I had never heard of the Bronx in Montreal but there's a neighbourhood called Lachine (in French, China is La Chine), so who knows? 

I was ready to head any which way but didn't expect that we would be walking west along the river. The path was shady, the light silvery on the water. 

One used to have to walk single file along certain stretches of the path, but a few seasons of social distancing have made it wider. What you see here is the work of many feet.

I've wondered if people will keep walking and cycling, once stores and cinemas and events and restaurants are available again.  

I wonder what the children will remember. I wonder what it will be like for dogs and cats when their people leave the house to go to work again. I don't know enough about birds who live in the house. The mice will be happy.  

The roses grow wild. I would even say rampant. They have a fibrous root system that can invade even marsh grass. 

I walked along here with a friend a few years ago, and she took pics of a kitchen chair--chrome legs, vinyl seat--hidden in the marsh grass. A seat for fishing? I looked for it now but it's gone. 

Here's Montreal seen from the eastern tip of Parc des rapides and those are the rapids that made the river impassable and necessitated the building of the Lachine Canal and later the St. Lawrence Seaway. Aren't we lucky the rapids weren't dynamited? 

 

The Bronx is the old name for the residential area next to Parc des rapides. It's now called... Village des rapides! 

It was called Le Bronx after some brokers from New York who bought several lots in 1919. 

That's as much as I can tell you about Le Bronx. 

what is wrong with this photo? / subway pics

She looks good. She takes the time to make sure everything she wears matches. My guess is her panties and bra match too--not just with each other but her whole outfit. A checkerboard bra for example?

The dialogue bubbles on the paper bag the grocery store gave her say: Do not forget... do not forget... your bags the next time. 

But she did forget. In fact, does she ever bother? Though look at how nicely she's turned up her cuffs to show off her smooth ankles. 

 

This photo was taken 5 minutes earlier. Same weather outside but he's wearing a parka and gloves. He doesn't "fit" into the general picture of Montreal in early summer as well as she does. 

But he knows how to read. His bag has been recycled many times. 

It says: Choose to recycle this bag. 

 

This bag is doubly green when you use it on the bus or subway.

me and old dogs

So what I had was old dog disease. Of course, the neurologist didn't use those words. He called it a vestibular episode. I didn't know what vestibular meant so I asked what the etymology was. That's a trick btw. If you don't know what a word means, ask about the etymology. If the person doesn't know, perhaps they shouldn't be using the word. If they do and they tell you, you'll eventually get a hint.  

My neurologist likes those kind of questions. He said, hm, probably the same as vestibule. From the Latin, vestibulum, entrance. The inner ear is like a vestibule, don't you think?

Inner ear. Okay. When I was in the ER, one doctor said vertigo was an inner ear problem, but I only saw him once and the rest of the team was ready to fly with the diagnosis of a migraine since I have a history of complex migraines.

My neurologist did some easy, on-the-spot exercises. I had to high-step with my eyes closed, follow his finger with my eyes, he jerked my head abruptly, he used a tuning fork. No need for an MRI or a CT. Vestibular, he said. 

I came home, looked it up, and discovered that old dogs have vestibular problems. It's called old dog disease. Humans can get it too, but not as frequently. It may be caused by a virus but not one that's been identified (as far as I can tell). I don't know how I got it, since I haven't even had a cold or flu since we've been wearing masks and social distancing. In fact, I may continue to wear a mask from now on when taking the subway or going into a public space where I come within breathing distance of others. Their moist breath zone. 

The good news for me is that if I'd had a migraine, the lingering imbalance/vertigo I still experience would be a neurological deficit. Now I only have to wait -- one month? three months? -- for the virus to dissipate or whatever viruses do. In the meantime my head sloshes every now and then and sometimes I veer when I walk. 

But I still walk.     

Two weeks ago I had a date with a cardiac electrician who zapped some malfunctioning circuitry in my heart. He couldn't get all of it because of my metal valves. He got enough of it. The procedure is called an ablation and if you need to have one, go for it. IMO. Even though I'm still not 100% regular, my rackety-clackety heart valves are decibel levels calmer than they were.

On Monday R and I walked across the bridge to Nuns' Island/Île des soeurs, and around the island to the back through the wooded area. It's a good walk. We were gone for almost 4 hours with a few rest stops along the way.

Winter reeds, lilacs, chestnut trees in flower, a heron with yellow eyes among the yellow water lilies. Some black flies. 

Then across the bridge again with the cyclists. 

Snake-stem poppies in the Pointe. 

And home.   

ps I would think Google makes enough money that it could continue to provide whatever services it provides on this blog platform. However, I have been getting visually intrusive messages that the email notification of new posts that it was sending people who requested it is being discontinued.  I have tried to switch to Wordpress but it is not user-friendly--and I need blog writing and formatting to be easy. 

For now I will continue with Blogger, though it will stop sending emails to followers as of July, I think. My apologies. 

Do please check in now and again to see if Rapunzel wrote anything.  

first cycle of the year

Toward the end of April is when we usually get out for our first cycle. *Our* first cycle. R has been out many times already. I don't have as much energy nor endurance as he does. Though I think I do pretty well given my cardiac irregularities and that I'm an older spring chicken. 

I wasn't sure how far I was ready to go today, but I have a dangling carrot mentality and had secretly promised myself a croissant au chocolat and a latte at a certain café halfway. 

We followed the Lachine canal for some post-industrial urbanscape, stopped at the aforementioned café in Lachine, and then crossed over to the river.  Greys and greys, sometimes silvery, winter ochres and browns, only the rare fresh sprigs of greenery. Lots of magnolia trees!  

R and I were sitting on a bench when a woman walking along the path called across that with my hair so short, it would be very easy to dye. Any colour I wanted. Now, what colour would that be? R suggested my original strawberry blond. Not, he assured me, that he minded it grey. 

Oddly enough, I'd noticed the natural hair dye only yesterday when in the Branche d'Olivier, a healthfood store. But the colour I was looking at was called Sunset Red. I mean, if I'm going to dye it... 

I was, of course, wearing a helmet while cycling. 

Those little black bugs that fly up your nose when you're cycling? It's still too early in the year for those, but R pointed out that wearing masks against Covid will finally solve that problem. 

Once we got home, I collapsed on the bed for a snooze. He made a grocery list and cycled off across the city. 

  

smiles seen while walking / montreal

There are smiles out there.

They're under snow.  

Made with stones. 

Hidden under a bitten-off nose. 

Upstaged by buttons. 

Under the jowls.  

Minimalistic.  

Proferring a frisbee.

I'm smiling too because I'm out walking.

Though I'm guessing the cat wasn't smiling. 

january #walking

Remember making snow shelters or forts or whatever you called them? Packing the snow, digging out a hole, crawling inside. The light  through the snow, seeing how snow wasn't really *white*. Peeking at the world if you'd made a few windows.

I saw lots of snow sculptures in the last week--lots of people taking pictures too. But no one was looking at this grimy snowperson slumped against a pole, gravel eyes and twig arms. So I did.  

How lucky can a person get? Not one but TWO truss bridges only a few moments' walk from where l live. Both cross the Lachine Canal.

holiday #walking

I didn't imagine this exact scene when I bought R the hat in Mexico in 2019, but I imagined that we would one day be walking in a monochromatic Montreal winter and he would be a spot of bright colour. 

We didn't have snow, we did, then we didn't again, then we did.  

Croissants don't--and shouldn't--belong to a healthy squirrel's diet, but it probably shouldn't belong to mine either, so I finally shared mine. Holiday time after all.

I was always glad to see people out walking, moving, striding along, whether with a friend or alone. 

I wondered if the dog would have liked to take his human to the parlour for grooming.  

I stood below this tree and saw a torso twisting up into the night, branches raised in song, a gown of snow. It was New Year's Eve--an aria of farewell to 2020. 

 

Happy New Year and stay safe as we wait to see what 2021 holds...