It struck me that this faulty method of understanding North American history (or New World history in general) is that the reason we question it is because the people it displaces are around to complain about it -- or for "us" to feel guilty about. Romans displaced previous cultures, but Rome's origin myth is not subjected to scrutiny. Had fragments of those cultures and peoples survived, I'm sure talk of Rome having been the founded by twin sons of Mars that were suckled by a she-wolf would be challenged.
I'm going to explain what I mean by this in my next post, but the next five hours of my life will be sacrificed to last-minute paper writing. My apologies and check back soon for the full version of my comment.
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Breathing life into LitCrit
Further to our discussion in class today, I too disliked "How to Breathe Again." I disliked it because I'm bored by stories about drug culture, and because the dialogue technique left me confused more than once. But more than that, I disliked it because I didn't feel it said anything new or specific about Edmonton. Given that it's in an anthology about Edmonton, it should have told me something new about the city. All it told me was that there's drug addicts here. Quel surprise. Take out the place names and you could situate this story in any other city.
Another thing. I think in English we get really caught up with "the text." We reify it; we act as if it could exist without an author, without a reader, without paper or ink. Why and how the author wrote it, who reads it and how and why they read it, and what it looks/feels/smells/tastes/sounds like are usually overlooked, but I think they are just as important as asking "does it work," as if "it" exists in isolation from these other things.
If the writer really doesn't matter in discussions about "the text," why have Darrin Hagen come speak to the class? I don't think the answer is "because he's a drag queen, and we want to know more about that scene." Well, it's not the whole answer. If it were, we could have had any queen talking to us and it wouldn't have made a difference. Most people would say having had Hagen in added to the depth of their understanding of the book, I think.
I recognize that none of these are new ideas, but I think it's too bad we English-types don't consider them more often.
Another thing. I think in English we get really caught up with "the text." We reify it; we act as if it could exist without an author, without a reader, without paper or ink. Why and how the author wrote it, who reads it and how and why they read it, and what it looks/feels/smells/tastes/sounds like are usually overlooked, but I think they are just as important as asking "does it work," as if "it" exists in isolation from these other things.
If the writer really doesn't matter in discussions about "the text," why have Darrin Hagen come speak to the class? I don't think the answer is "because he's a drag queen, and we want to know more about that scene." Well, it's not the whole answer. If it were, we could have had any queen talking to us and it wouldn't have made a difference. Most people would say having had Hagen in added to the depth of their understanding of the book, I think.
I recognize that none of these are new ideas, but I think it's too bad we English-types don't consider them more often.
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Downtown Deadmonton
Having grown up in Edmonton, I knew about downtown's bad reputation. It was dead after 4:30, they said. There were lots of bums, they complained. Eaton Centre and Edmonton Centre sucked the life out of the streets, they ranted. Mostly I had ignored these comments. Downtown was very far away from my neighbourhood, so why should I care?
When I started working downtown in 2002 I didn't much consider these issues. My office tower seemed hermetically sealed; all I could ever need between 8:15 and 4:30 was within its confines, from convenience store and dry cleaner to bakery and shoe repair. But one day as I sat in my beige-walled cubicle, staring at my 15 inch CRT monitor while the florescent lights flickered overhead, I decided I wanted a bagel. And not just any bagel: no, I wanted a whole wheat and honey bagel, toasted with strawberry cream cheese. That's right, a Tim Horton's bagel.
I leaned back in my ergonomic chair and reviewed my mental map of downtown for the nearest Timmies, but after a few minutes of searching came up empty. I expanded the search parametres and tried again. With a sinking stomach I stared up incredulously at the greying ceiling tiles. Could it be? The nearest Timmies was in Oliver Square? This was downtown. I thought everybody drank coffee downtown. Why on earth didn't Tim Horton's, that one business in Canada that was ensured of instant franchise success, have a location in the heart of the city?
In that moment of incredulity, I finally understood the concern Edmontonians had for our downtown. In that moment, I was transported from my cubicle down to the middle of a dead-empty Jasper Avenue to witness a tumbleweed roll down the street as a vulture circled overhead and old West music played out of nowhere. If Tim Horton's didn't think it could survive in our downtown, things were a lot worse than I thought.
Seven years later there are three Tim Horton's within a seven-block radius of my old office tower. The Bay building is no longer empty, and Jasper West has experienced a revival. Still, Front Page News closed last fall and a ridiculously big club opened down the road. (I shudder internally any time I open the door to Audrey's, hoping nobody peed on it the night before.) Two steps forward, one step back.
The place isn't perfect, but she's got good bones. And when the soul-sucking cubicle walls close in, a soothing cup of steeped tea is only a block away.
When I started working downtown in 2002 I didn't much consider these issues. My office tower seemed hermetically sealed; all I could ever need between 8:15 and 4:30 was within its confines, from convenience store and dry cleaner to bakery and shoe repair. But one day as I sat in my beige-walled cubicle, staring at my 15 inch CRT monitor while the florescent lights flickered overhead, I decided I wanted a bagel. And not just any bagel: no, I wanted a whole wheat and honey bagel, toasted with strawberry cream cheese. That's right, a Tim Horton's bagel.
I leaned back in my ergonomic chair and reviewed my mental map of downtown for the nearest Timmies, but after a few minutes of searching came up empty. I expanded the search parametres and tried again. With a sinking stomach I stared up incredulously at the greying ceiling tiles. Could it be? The nearest Timmies was in Oliver Square? This was downtown. I thought everybody drank coffee downtown. Why on earth didn't Tim Horton's, that one business in Canada that was ensured of instant franchise success, have a location in the heart of the city?
In that moment of incredulity, I finally understood the concern Edmontonians had for our downtown. In that moment, I was transported from my cubicle down to the middle of a dead-empty Jasper Avenue to witness a tumbleweed roll down the street as a vulture circled overhead and old West music played out of nowhere. If Tim Horton's didn't think it could survive in our downtown, things were a lot worse than I thought.
Seven years later there are three Tim Horton's within a seven-block radius of my old office tower. The Bay building is no longer empty, and Jasper West has experienced a revival. Still, Front Page News closed last fall and a ridiculously big club opened down the road. (I shudder internally any time I open the door to Audrey's, hoping nobody peed on it the night before.) Two steps forward, one step back.
The place isn't perfect, but she's got good bones. And when the soul-sucking cubicle walls close in, a soothing cup of steeped tea is only a block away.
Thursday, February 5, 2009
The inhabitants of Nice reclaim their walkways
Nice on Thursday during a nationwide strike.
(Lionel Cironneau/Associated Press)
Unions said more than two million public and private sector workers took to the streets across France to protest against President Nicolas Sarkozy’s handling of the economic crisis, saying too much had been done to bail out fat cats and banks, and not enough to protect jobs and help workers make ends meet.
Air traffic controllers, train drivers, teachers, nurses, and tax inspectors were joined by private sector workers including bank clerks and staff from the firm that runs the Paris stock exchange. Some schools were shut, flights were cancelled, and the Palace of Versailles cwas losed in a rare show of unity between unions, although “Black Thursday” did not bring total transport paralysis.
From The Guardian via evanmorris.com.
Read the article here.
Springtime predictions
Bold prediction: the potholes are going to be atrocious this spring.
Calm down, I'm not psychic. I'm merely an acute observer of winter weather. Having experienced the continual periods of freezing and thawing this January and given my (somewhat sketchy, granted) knowledge of H2O chemistry, I have deduced that come April, drivers' tempers will fray and the airwaves will again be filled with pothole-induced vituperation. They're already evolving, those potholes. Yesterday I just missed falling into one on St. Albert Trail. By April it'll be a monster.
We live in an environment hostile to asphalt. This should be obvious to anyone who has a rudimentary understanding of grade six science. Yet each spring we forget this as completely as we forget each fall what 'winter driving conditions' means. Holy short-term memory, Batman.
But this post isn't about potholes, regardless of the passion that tangent drew forth. It's actually about roller blading. Yeah, I know it's leap. Stay with me. Potholes are caused by ice, and when ice makes an appearance, the sanding trucks get to work. That's good in the short run -- I like skidding across busy intersections as little as the next person -- but in the long run sanding trucks kill my soul a little bit. Come April, not only will potholes dot the roads, but sand will grime the sidewalks.
To walkers like Rebecca Solnit, sandy sidewalks are no big deal. Their shoes are made for walking; sand is no obstacle. But to a rollerblader like me, sand erases any chance of non-car transportation. I simply cannot blade if there's sand on the path. I'm merely an adequate rollerblader; maybe for those more advanced than me sand is no big deal. For me it is a big deal.
I like rollerblading because it's faster than walking, less tedious than biking, and great exercise. Unfortunately, the conditions necessary for rollerblading are more exacting than those for other modes of transportation. The path must be clear and smooth. Crumbling concrete, multitudinous cracks, and above all, sand preclude blading. It's damn frustrating.
I love this city for cutting down on salt use on roads, and I hate it for piling sand on my thoroughfares. I hate it for not sweeping the streets until May, and for missing the sand on the sidewalks on which windrows have melted. I hate it for the lack of city-spanning bike (or blade) paths.
Solnit and the walkers have it easy. All they require for their favoured mode of transportation are their feet. I need the cooperation of the city for mine, and as we all know, the city is niggardly in its handouts.
Another bold prediction: it'll be at least May before I can take to my blades.
Calm down, I'm not psychic. I'm merely an acute observer of winter weather. Having experienced the continual periods of freezing and thawing this January and given my (somewhat sketchy, granted) knowledge of H2O chemistry, I have deduced that come April, drivers' tempers will fray and the airwaves will again be filled with pothole-induced vituperation. They're already evolving, those potholes. Yesterday I just missed falling into one on St. Albert Trail. By April it'll be a monster.
We live in an environment hostile to asphalt. This should be obvious to anyone who has a rudimentary understanding of grade six science. Yet each spring we forget this as completely as we forget each fall what 'winter driving conditions' means. Holy short-term memory, Batman.
But this post isn't about potholes, regardless of the passion that tangent drew forth. It's actually about roller blading. Yeah, I know it's leap. Stay with me. Potholes are caused by ice, and when ice makes an appearance, the sanding trucks get to work. That's good in the short run -- I like skidding across busy intersections as little as the next person -- but in the long run sanding trucks kill my soul a little bit. Come April, not only will potholes dot the roads, but sand will grime the sidewalks.
To walkers like Rebecca Solnit, sandy sidewalks are no big deal. Their shoes are made for walking; sand is no obstacle. But to a rollerblader like me, sand erases any chance of non-car transportation. I simply cannot blade if there's sand on the path. I'm merely an adequate rollerblader; maybe for those more advanced than me sand is no big deal. For me it is a big deal.
I like rollerblading because it's faster than walking, less tedious than biking, and great exercise. Unfortunately, the conditions necessary for rollerblading are more exacting than those for other modes of transportation. The path must be clear and smooth. Crumbling concrete, multitudinous cracks, and above all, sand preclude blading. It's damn frustrating.
I love this city for cutting down on salt use on roads, and I hate it for piling sand on my thoroughfares. I hate it for not sweeping the streets until May, and for missing the sand on the sidewalks on which windrows have melted. I hate it for the lack of city-spanning bike (or blade) paths.
Solnit and the walkers have it easy. All they require for their favoured mode of transportation are their feet. I need the cooperation of the city for mine, and as we all know, the city is niggardly in its handouts.
Another bold prediction: it'll be at least May before I can take to my blades.
Thursday, January 29, 2009
How sometimes archives can be fun... or at least not boring.
Bigger than a breadbox.This is a picture of the Alberta Records Centre, where the provincial government stores its inactive records. (Inactive records are the ones the government no longer accesses regularly. They will eventually be either destroyed or transferred to the provincial archives.) To give some idea of the size of the place, the guy in the picture is about 6'3, and he's standing at row 1 of 24. The records centre has a capacity of 710 000 boxes. The Provincial Archives of Alberta accepts only 3-5% of inactive records from the Alberta Records Centre. Even so, their collection is huge.
This fall I worked on a project for a government department that involved reviewing records that the provincial archives had accepted but no longer wanted. Even though most of the info was pretty boring, there were some nuggets among the dross. The thing about archival research is that you never really know when you're going to hit paydirt. A really interesting document on medical ethics in Alberta, for example, may be tucked into in a file on the day-to-day administration of the mental health program. Or a file on the provincial government's response to the 1987 tornado stuck in a box full of accounts payable info.
If you've ever been interested in stuff like why Edmonton felt the need become an architectural wasteland, those clippings files the archivist was talking about today are a good place to start. I learned from them that one of Edmonton's mayors in the 1960s said old buildings like the McLeod Building and the old post office "have no value" whatsoever. And the editorial this was quoted in agreed with that sentiment!
Nobody, least of all I, claimed archival research, or for that matter records management, is exciting. But it's pretty cool when you come across those gems.
Thursday, January 22, 2009
Why all the excitement? It's only Edmonton.
Exclamations of affect punctuate this class, have you noticed? Almost every day there is some topic that will set us galloping merrily down one tangent or another, eagerly shouting out our experience, our feelings. It began with hockey -- fierce declarations of love or hatred -- and lately our meanderings have included traffic here and elsewhere and the worthiness of Edmonton as a place to live.
Most of us are in at least our third year of university and, one would imagine, sufficiently educated by this point to feel a sense of ownership over the stuff packed in our heads. But I don't think that's the case. I think we sound out so much in this class because we are finally in a class in which we do know what we're talking about, and the novelty of it is overwhelming. Despite having learned so much, and perhaps because we're constantly in subordinate positions in our classes where we couldn't possibly be the expert on anything, we don't own our knowledge.
I know I know Edmonton. I know 167 Ave turns into Castle Downs Road and then into 113 A Street before running into the dead end of the rail yards; I know that the 9 bus to Southgate carries old grandmas going shopping at Kingsway or downtown, teens on their way to Vic Comp, middle agers heading to their office towers and desk jobs, the odd drunk, lots of moms and dads with strollers and me going to work or home or who knows. I know the petty rivalries of West Side and North Side with their silly, contorted hand signs signaling membership. I know I miss out on a parts of the city familiar and beloved by some because of my particular background, and I know those others miss out on things I love too. I know these things because this is my city, the place I grew up, the place I choose to call my own.
I'm not an Edmonton booster. A lot of the time I think this city is so mediocre, so average, I wonder why people choose to live here. But I know it and it's mine, and the opportunity to speak on a subject I know, with a knowledge I own, is exciting.
I know not everybody feels Edmonton this way, but we all feel this way about some place, the place(s) we call home. Edmonton is enough of a wallflower city that it can stand in for those other places too.
This class is about getting to know this city through the the literary lens. We're learning new things, yes, but for once we're all experts.
Most of us are in at least our third year of university and, one would imagine, sufficiently educated by this point to feel a sense of ownership over the stuff packed in our heads. But I don't think that's the case. I think we sound out so much in this class because we are finally in a class in which we do know what we're talking about, and the novelty of it is overwhelming. Despite having learned so much, and perhaps because we're constantly in subordinate positions in our classes where we couldn't possibly be the expert on anything, we don't own our knowledge.
I know I know Edmonton. I know 167 Ave turns into Castle Downs Road and then into 113 A Street before running into the dead end of the rail yards; I know that the 9 bus to Southgate carries old grandmas going shopping at Kingsway or downtown, teens on their way to Vic Comp, middle agers heading to their office towers and desk jobs, the odd drunk, lots of moms and dads with strollers and me going to work or home or who knows. I know the petty rivalries of West Side and North Side with their silly, contorted hand signs signaling membership. I know I miss out on a parts of the city familiar and beloved by some because of my particular background, and I know those others miss out on things I love too. I know these things because this is my city, the place I grew up, the place I choose to call my own.
I'm not an Edmonton booster. A lot of the time I think this city is so mediocre, so average, I wonder why people choose to live here. But I know it and it's mine, and the opportunity to speak on a subject I know, with a knowledge I own, is exciting.
I know not everybody feels Edmonton this way, but we all feel this way about some place, the place(s) we call home. Edmonton is enough of a wallflower city that it can stand in for those other places too.
This class is about getting to know this city through the the literary lens. We're learning new things, yes, but for once we're all experts.
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