Thin Ice

barely there: new ice

In November, my biking plans are tenuous. In addition to the usual kid logistics (who needs an after-school ride where?), questions of cold weather and personal toughness (usually nil) must now be considered. What predictions have the shaman meteorologists offered? Has any actual precipitation materialized? Is the trail wet enough to leave mud spatters on my back? On arrival, will my fingers be numb, my clothes soaked, my nose running? It's a judgement call, usually made at the last minute.

Let's be clear: I'm no hard-core cyclist, far from it. I won't be joining the admirable waterproofed warriors in their technical layers, riding through Canadian winters come what may, but I might be edging just slightly in their direction. Last weekend, when Tim was putting the bikes in storage for the season, I asked him to leave mine out. We could still have good biking weather, I said. And yesterday, we did. So I seized the brilliant day--4 degrees C (39 F), windy, sunshine, snow patches in the grass, new ice cross-hatching the surface of ponds and ditches--and landed at work happy.  

The thing about biking is, it makes you feel twelve again. And unhooked from the schedule long enough to stop and take a picture.

Faster Smile Improvement

Today my youngest hit a milestone he wasn't too excited about: orthodontia.

That's okay; I'm not excited either. Three out of four children in this family have needed dental realignment. Reminded of this, our dentist shrugged. "They owe you a car," she said. "It's a car you didn't buy."

Funny, but wrong. She must not know about our habit of driving cars until they drive no more. Somewhere I have a photo of a 15-year old van in the wrecker's parking lot, where it died after eking out one last trip for us. We had to push it toward the violent commotion coming from the yard behind the office, where someone paid us $200 for salvage.

Anyway, I don't subscribe to the opportunity-cost school of parental accounting, because where would that end? With me owing my parents five cars, that's where. Or maybe even ten, depending on the scope of the audit and the make of the car. The point is, everyone concerned knows that zero automobiles will be paid back.

My boy was stoic through the metallica installation and the brush&floss briefing afterward. At home, he flashed the braces on command but didn't get much sympathy from resident siblings. With my phone I sent a snapchat pic of his teeth to his sister in Halifax, and she obliged by snapping herself horrified--"The Scream" face--which would have made him laugh if I could have shown it to him before the image disappeared. Ten seconds of connection is all you get before your message self-destructs.

That's the essence of this strange snapchat app: repetitive disappearance. There's an adrenaline rush of captioning and sending, followed by emptiness. Supposedly you can save screenshots, but I haven't figured out how yet. My daughter gave me a snapchat tutorial this week (over Skype--extended meta moment as we faced one another virtually, worked our phones, showed each other the phone screens on the computer screens, finally got the app to work for me, became distracted by news...) and still, the appeal of digital charades escapes me. 

What we do not need, at this moment of our history, is faster-and-lighter communication. I'm down to my last nerve here, my attention span sliced and diced. And consider our lecture halls, where hundreds of snaps per hour will now zap around the room: quick pics of a slide with too many words/a fly crawling across the wall/a student sleeping/a teacher talking, across which will be scrawled, "Time-suck!" and it will always be true.     

You know what is genuinely faster and better these days? Orthodontic technology. When I was young, it was the full train tracks for two whole years of high school. My brother's treatment went on even longer. On the cusp of joining the Army, he had to threaten to rip the bands out of his mouth himself before the orthodontist reluctantly agreed to do it. Today's braces are lighter, stronger, and much less visible. They come off in a year or so. There are fun coloured elastics and customized retainers to choose from, even camo patterns--more than a few options to raise the excitement factor for my (latest) kid with braces.       

(re)visiting New York

It seems I took a long vacation from this space. Don't worry, it was an unpaid vacation, full of busy business. Post-blur, a few choice events stand out as worth revisiting in the coming days. Let's hear it for time travel--and what else is reading, anyway? 

The best blogs feature selected shorts, quick hits of significance. That brevity is precisely what I find hard to achieve on this blog, my labor of love. I have to remind myself that the LOG in BLOG signifies crisp daily entries. Like a ship's log, which I've never had occasion to keep, darn it. Or how about an annotated timeline of Toronto Mayor Rob Ford's dealings with petty criminals? That would make a great search-engine-optimized hunk of writing--Oh wait, it already exists, thanks to the judge who released hundreds of pages of police findings (*unproven allegations*) on October 31st and today ordered that more information should be made public. Cheers for him! By the way, anyone wishing to buy a limited-edition Rob Ford bobblehead, you are too late. CBC Radio reported this afternoon that, after finally admitting he purchased illegal drugs, the Mayor spent five hours (!) outside signing the wobbly effigies. No shame. And I noticed something while stuck in the car with the radio playing fresh Ford allegations: the CBC used the term "sex workers", while our small-city local station preferred "prostitutes". That cultural shift is not yet a done deal throughout the land. Perhaps the word prostitute will eventually disappear like other pejoratives we once hurled freely but now frown upon. I do hope, however, that a usage will be retained for those senators and others holding high public office who simultaneously sit on corporate boards. Until the Senate expense scandal hit, I didn't even know that was allowed. Why is it allowed?

Behold a digression of Fordian proportions. Sorry, but everyone is fixated on political scandal here in the true north strong and free.

Back to the recent past we go, to my trip to New York in early September to attend a writing conference (weird and wonderful) and visit my brother in his natural habitat. It's his birthday today, so what better time? Also, these photos, all taken in Brooklyn, suggest the higher calling that public service can be.    

Borough Hall

Borough Hall, a massive municipal building, anchors a long stretch of parkland. I wish I'd taken this picture when the steps and plaza were filled with screaming, sign-holding Bill DeBlasio fans rallying for the Democratic mayoral primary race (runup to the general election on November 5th, which DeBlasio won, of course). The same weekend, I passed a Christine Quinn rally (smaller) in Manhattan and saw Anthony Weiner on TV trying to defend himself--but look, at least he doesn't smoke crack. 

This bronze bust of Robert F. Kennedy sits atop a granite pedestal. On each side of the base, an RFK quotation is inscribed. Here are two of them:

FEW WILL HAVE THE GREATNESS TO / BEND HISTORY ITSELF, BUT EACH OF US / CAN WORK TO CHANGE A SMALL PORTION OF EVENTS, AND IN THE TOTAL OF ALL THOSE ACTS WILL / BE WRITTEN THE HISTORY OF THIS GENERATION.

WHAT WE REQUIRE IS NOT THE SELF- / INDULGENCE OF RESIGNATION FROM THE / WORLD BUT THE HARD EFFORT TO WORK OUT / NEW WAYS OF FULFILLING OUR PERSONAL CONCERN / AND OUR PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY

Here stands Christopher Columbus in marble, created by sculptor Emma Stebbins in Rome in the 1860s, donated to the city but not displayed until the 1930s, and then moved to the newly named Columbus Park in 1971. The city's blurb mentions an emphasis in public lore on CC's "discovery of the Americas, as opposed to colonization of the area"...speaking of cultural shifts.

Henry Ward Beecher

This bronze grouping, dedicated in 1891, honors the charismatic and controversial 19th-century preacher, abolitionist and supporter of women's suffrage Henry Ward Beecher. His sister, Harriet Beecher Stowe, wrote Uncle Tom's Cabin. 

One park blends into another, this one dedicated to that poet and celebrant of the common man, Walt Whitman. Interestingly, there are no statues here, only a large, circular plaza with Whitman quotations carved into the stone--sprinkled by a hidden fountain? There were puddles near some of the quotations, but it hadn't rained the day I was there. And why close at 1 am? Does someone actually come around and lock gates in the middle of the night?

lines from To the States: "resist much, obey little"

lines from Crossing Brooklyn Ferry: "slow-wheeling circles and the gradual edging toward the south", which is about seagulls but also reminds me of my walk that day