Money is the root of all. . . good

I like to deal with certain common statements in my blog, “conventional wisdom” I guess, which I don’t think is wisdom at all. These are things I've heard over and over again (like "everything happens for a reason": I think I've put that one through the macerator already) and "God doesn't give us more than we can handle."

There's one I hear over and over again,  and it kind of makes the hair stand up on the back of my neck: “It’s good to make mistakes! Go ahead, make lots and lots of them. It’s the way you learn.”

There's only one problem with that one. With the current atmosphere in the workplace, which I hear is pretty poisonous and competitive, most bosses won't allow much more than one big mistake (or a few minor ones) before dropping the other shoe.

One mistake, in the wrong place, can be a disaster. It can even cost human lives. Or it just puts people out, or alienates clients who form the backbone or glue of a corporation. It' s just not a good thing. 

A person can pay for one mistake for the rest of their lives.

ONE mistake can cost you your job, not to mention your whole career. It shouldn't be that way, but it is. This is why workers become unhappy, because they really should be free to make mistakes and learn from them. I'm not saying the homily/truism is a lie, just that it doesn't pan out in the "real world".

Another one: “Success/money doesn’t make people happy." Oh yes it does. Poverty isn’t such a lark, is it? Being underemployed; is that so much fun? With the exception of a few neurotic Hollywood starlets who seem to throw their good fortune away with both hands, I think success is good for people.

I think of the "successful" people I know (meaning: financially stable; happy and accomplished in their work; satisfied in their personal lives) and they seem to possess a stability, not to mention a solid self-esteem, that I don’t see in “failures” (people who seem, no matter how hard they try, unable to fulfill themselves).

Money? If you have plenty of it, you don't need to worry about it. It’s still seen as evil, wicked and dirty in our culture, not to mention indispensable. Everyone wants more – look at the lottery! – but no one wants to admit that what they have isn’t enough. We're a consuming culture, and if you get caught up in it you'll never be happy at all. But if you always need, always chase, always scrape and scratch and sink in debt, how happy is it possible to be?

OK then, before I wrap this up. . . I often hear this one, usually said to young people just starting out, and I think it's the most destructive thing I have ever heard.

"You can do absolutely anything you want to in life, if you just want it badly enough."

It sounds great, but it just doesn't pan out. If a person with an IQ of 100 wants to be a doctor, it isn't going to happen. If a person has no aptitude for medicine, it will be the same (or law, or landscaping). Yes, there are always people who rise to "the top", whatever that is (like oil on a slick, maybe?). But they have boosts along the way, often financial. Or they are raised to have a high and very sturdy sense of self-esteem.

Once in a while we hear a wonder-story about a kid from the ghetto or some other harsh, limiting circumstance who goes on to achieve dazzling deeds. It's rare as hen's teeth, but it does happen, and generally leads to talk show appearances and a book deal, if not a movie of the week.

For the rest of us, well, life hands us limitations. If I have ALS, I may not be able to run a marathon. If I'm a writer, unless my work is super-extraordinary, I won't win the Nobel Prize.

To my mind, it would be more realistic to say, "Life will hand you limitations. It's absolutely inevitable. But what you do to deal with those limitations is crucial. If you are realistic about them and find ways to make them work for you, you can achieve things you never dreamed of."

That takes up too much space, I suppose. But wouldn't it make a great commencement speech?

Little mermaids

When two little blonde mermaids scamper out into the living room, when two sisters put on their tap shoes and pound the floor until it shakes, what can you do but give thanks?

Thanks.

Nancy and Kate. . . are they really the same person???

(Also known as Sort Out the Cloned Brunettes). Half of these photos are of Kate Middleton, and the other half of Paul McCartney's new 51-year-old-but-looks-30 heiress bride, Nancy Shevell.

Can you tell whom is whom, which is which, and (most importantly) why is why? I think I've lost track, myself.

(Confused? Me too. Does Kate have a twin?)

Oh. NOW I know. . .

The Edmonton Journal: the one that walks the dog

I've been at this forever. Writing, I mean. Writing for print/the public or whatever you want to call it. More than 25 years ago, I lived in a small hamlet (actually, more of a teeny-tiny town) called Hinton, Alberta, in the foothills of the Rockies. There wasn't much to do there, so I wrote. Wrote feverishly, tried to write novels, fell short. My letters to the editor were ubiquitous. Then I had this idea:

What if, instead of being sandwiched in with all the other tirades from Hintonites upset about the smell of the pulp mill (wet garbage and horse manure) , I had my very own column? You know. Something with my picture on it, and all that.

I sent in some ideas to the local paper, and waited. Nothing. Months later, one of my columns actually ran, but with no name on  it.

I got on the phone.

It took a while to straighten things out. The column, called Between the Lines, mostly consisted of domestic comedy, with now and again something more weighty.

I had this gig for a year before somebody said to me, "Gee, I like your column. How much do they pay you for that?"

PAY??

I did a little digging and found out that all the other columnists were paid ten dollars a week. Not a princely sum, but still. So I sent them a friendly letter, and I got this (paraphrased) message.

"Since you signed on to do it for nothing, you will continue to do it for nothing. The other columnists signed on to do it for money, so they will continue to do it for money."

"Signed on"? No one signed anything in that place!

Alrighty then.

I guess I kind of went off the deep end, starting a campaign to make the bloody ten dollars like everybody else. Embarrasses me now, and the paper cut me off forever, but meanwhile somebody I knew in the actual news business said something like, Your stuff is good enough to be paid for, but not at the Hinton rag. Try a real newspaper.

I thought of the one we read every day. So I tried the Edmonton Journal.

How could I have known then that I would form a sort of marriage with the Edmonton Journal, that it would weave in and out of my writerly life like love's old sweet song? 

I think my first piece was an editorial about AIDS, which was then new and a very hot topic. Don Braid was the editor of a new section called the Eye Opener, which ran stuff that was on the edge of subversive. I was in! and extremely excited, but as with everything I have ever done in my life, momentum died and I had to start all over again. All my subsequent attempts at editorials bombed, but meantime I was writing to columnists and asking "how do you do this?"

This isn't supposed to happen - in fact, it has only happened once in 28 years or so - but somebody gave me a break. Somebody said, "Will you review my book?", and handed it to me.

Thus I reviewed Judy Schultz's toothsome collection of food stories, Nibbles and Feasts. An enjoyable book, and fairly easy to review, though I did nitpick about a few things, thinking, what have I got to lose?

I was astounded when the reviews kept coming. Kept coming, that is, until I left Hinton in 1988, and it all stopped. I had to start all over again, building a column in the Tri-City News which ran on and off for six or seven years (and this time they paid me, because I asked for it, though I still didn't sign anything). I trudged around, mentally speaking, and eventually placed book reviews in other papers: the Montreal Gazette (for whom I was briefly - don't laugh, now - science editor!), the Vancouver Sun (who initially told me, after one review, that they would never use me again), and even the much-vaunted Globe and Mail.

But eventually, perhaps with the advent of computers and the ability to send things by a method other than snail-mail, the Journal re-entered my life. Not sure when or how, but suddenly I was on again (with a different editor - this is another amazing thing, because inevitably a change of editor means you're toast). My cheques came on the button, there were never any problems, and for the most part (incredibly - this is really rare) my pieces ran unedited.

Fast-forward to my first novel coming out - oh Jesus, the lifelong dream fulfilment, and then the horrific letdown when it was in the stores for about six weeks! And the on-line magazine I was working for (for free - I must have been desperate) telling me, "We can't run a review of your novel because it would be nepotism." I accepted this, and it didn't hit me until years later that all the other publications I had ever written for didn't feel that way at all. The Montreal Gazette ran a slightly dotty but overall favorable piece, the Vancouver Sun likewise, and the
Journal. . .

I can't tell you how good this made me feel, especially in light of the record poor sales that sank my book (and I still don't know why it didn't generate that mysterious "buzz" that makes it all happen). When Better than Life came out in 2003, the Journal decided to go all-out for its longtime contributor. I got a full-page spread, a rapturous review, and was named one of the Top Ten books of the Year. This was a bandaid on the wound, or at least until I learned the reality of publishing in Canada.

The reality being: we are all part of a vast pyramid, with the huge majority at the bottom. There's not much room at the top (the "top" meaning that somebody reads your book). Books DO disappear, regularly. Authors disappear. I don't know, maybe they commit suicide or something (or no - that's poets). But you don't hear from them again. Publishers considering your next book glance at at the glowing reviews and rich promotion from your last book and say, "Nope, it didn't sell".

I can't fault them for that, because they are in the business of selling books. Hey, I want my book to sell too, even more badly than they do. But when the second one suffered a similar fate, well then. . .

My local column went belly-up when the editor left. After six or seven years, I was not allowed to write a farewell column. So, battlescarred, I took whatever work I could find. I couldn't write another novel, not yet anyway. It was like dating after a divorce. But still there was a thread, something holding the whole thing together. Though there would sometimes be gaps as long as two years, eventually I'd end up back with the Edmonton Journal. Incredibly, they actually seemed to want me.

Sounds a little sad, doesn't it - sounds Sally Fields-ish: "They like me, they really really like me!" But do you know how rare it is to receive that kind of treatment in this business? I sometimes think shabby treatment is the norm (either that, or being ignored). Writers are almost non-entities, except when they miss their deadlines, and then they get hell for it.

I had a low spot with "a" paper - I won't mention the name, even though I am sure they've forgotten me by now - in which my deadline was March 25 or something, so I emailed it in at 4 p.m. on March 25 and received a shrill call saying, "You missed your deadline."

"No, I didn't. It was March 25. Today is March 25."

"But I wanted it first thing in the morning so I could edit it and go home by noon."

She then went on to tell me everything that was wrong with the piece, which was why she was going to "kill" it (no kidding, that's the term - and way back then, though not now, you got something called a "kill fee"). I managed to place the review elsewhere and somehow, just, well, incidentally, let the author of the book know about it, and he wrote back and gratefully acknowledged it as one of the better pieces he had seen.

Then I , oh-oh. This is what I shouldn't do, like campaigning to the Hinton paper for $10. It just made me look bad, and the editor sounded like one of those squirrels flapping its tail and chattering up a tree. I sent a copy of his letter to her. It was a sort of nyah-nyah. I was so sick of being trampled on, and being expected to just take it all with a smile.

I don't know if any of this is interesting or not. I had a hiatus from reviewing, frankly sick of the whole enterprise (including hearing from one editor, a honcho from one of the Big Papers, after I pitched a book they'd already covered. He said, "Not paying much attention, are you?" Writers are not allowed to make even one mistake.)

But somehow, I guess I needed to come home. I contacted my alma mater, with a new (to me) books editor, Richard Helm. And the answer was yes. And now they offer books to me, so I don't have to jump, and jump, and jump. And I can even turn books away!

In my long long long long long career as a reviewer, approaching 30 years now, I have covered something like 400 titles, a total which I used to be proud of but now makes me groan. People don't take it well. They look at me as if I've said, I used to work in the Barnum and Bailey Circus as a fire-eater. It's weird. It's too much. Why do I want to do this so badly, anyway?

I want to tell them: OK, let's do the math. If I do 2 reviews a month, which for a long time was my normal output, that's 26 reviews a year. Times ten, it's. . . times twenty, it's. . . You see, it all adds up.

Columns, well, I wrote literally thousands. Some paid, many not. I kept them all and they molder, yellow and gross, in binders downstairs. I was afraid of disappearing, and still am.


What is wrong with me? I have a disease. I can't help it. I have big ambitions and they are never fulfilled. I get treated badly and just swallow it, and if I hit back at all, I am immediately yanked up short. Or so it seems. But one paper has been like the best bud who always shows up during the worst times (like when somebody dies), not with a casserole but with rolled-up sleeves to do the dishes and walk the dog.

It's like someone is saying, not "go away" (the usual response I get to everything), but "More, please."

More???

What with ever-shrinking books sections and more and more canned reviews, this gig will eventually end, but what a ride it's been, especially during the many rotten times I've lived through bashing my head on cinderblock walls.

To all the snarlers and grouches, I'd like to say this. It IS possible to treat writers well. It IS desirable to be respectful and even polite, and it doesn't cost you anything. See, there's one paper that's been doing it for years and years.The rest of you: come on, guys! Get with it.

Squirrel takes over baseball game

Swear with the Squirrels

Squirrels! Squirrels! Squirrels!

Why my husband is NOT my best friend

So, OK. . . what's on the top of my head today? I'm not halfway through my enormous Starbuck's mug yet, so who knows how coherent it will be, but several ideas have been forming like baby icebergs in my brain, waiting to calve.


I have been married for 38 years, to the same person I mean, and as with a lot of life's more arcane mysteries, I can't really talk about it. I've attempted to write about our relationship before, either in this blog or "that other one", the Open Salon experiment that backfired so badly.


So I won't write about it except to say a few things, maybe dispell a few cliches. If you read this at all, and let's hope somebody does, you'll realize I keep yammering away at certain themes: horses, Anthony Perkins, Harold Lloyd, frustration as an author, etc. But it's the cliches that really get down my neck, chief among them "everything happens for a reason" (with a side of "God never gives us more than we can handle").



These sayings are idiotic in my mind, because there are murders, disasters, jihads, planes flying into towers, world wars, child murders, and all manner of things that happen for no reason at all, except perhaps human stupidity and indifference. And as far as good o'l God seeing to it that we aren't overburdened, as a friend of mine likes to say, "our prisons and mental hospitals are full of people who had more than they could handle".

Amen.

So what do we attack today? So to speak. I hear this phrase all the time: "My husband is my best friend." I have never felt that way about my husband, and I will tell you why.

I have a best friend already. That's part of it. To her, I can tell all the woman-stuff that guys, sorry about that, just don't get and won't get in a million years because of their hormonal structure and brain physiology.

So if I already have one, how can my husband be my best friend? To me, the term implies a buddy-buddy-ness, being there to listen on the phone when you lose that promotion, walking along the beach skipping stones together or sitting in Starbuck's over a double caramelized Machiavelli, just gabbing away.


We don't do that.


It also implies, to me, sexlessness. I'm not saying we're Romeo and Juliet, but our marriage is not sexless and never has been.

Saying "my husband is my best friend" is supposed to be totally positive, but to me it's totally weird if you really look at it (and that's the thing: how many people LOOK at it?). It's like roommates who really get along and even do each other's laundry in a pinch. (He does his own laundry, by the way - always has - it's why we're still married.) So if we aren't best friends, what are we?

The other one is "soul-mate". I don't know about that one either: I dislike like it for reasons that are hard to articulate. It just doesn't hit the mark, and maybe nothing can. My husband is my husband, and occupies a unique place in my life and has occupied that place for the vast majority of my life (since I was ten when I got married - one of those cultural betrothal things). He is my life partner, the father of my children and grandfather to my precious grandkids. And guess what: a best friend doesn't do that.


"Friend" is great, it's wonderful, but it only goes so far. When you're in the trenches together for nearly 40 years, you find out about the deeper levels of commitment that most people seem to ignore.

There are three of them, actually. Everyone goes on and on about commitment, and it's fine. But you can be committed to a dog, a job, a fitness plan. Will that be enough to keep the bond strong as life's hurricanes blast you out of your chair?

No.

The next level, as I see it, is devotion. Great-sounding word, isn't it - and a leap beyond commitment in emotional content. But is it enough to stay married?

Double-no.

The third level is one that doesn't even occur to people, and I call it covenant. In case you think I'm going all religious on you, let me define it now:


cov·e·nant   /ˈkʌvənənt/ Show Spelled[kuhv-uh-nuhnt] Show IPA

noun

1.

an agreement, usually formal, between two or more persons to do or not do something specified.

2.

Law . an incidental clause in such an agreement.

3.

Ecclesiastical . a solemn agreement between the members of a church to act together in harmony with the precepts of the gospel.

4.

( initial capital letter ) History/Historical .

a.

National Covenant.

b.

Solemn League and Covenant.

5.

Bible .

a.

the conditional promises made to humanity by God, as revealed in Scripture.

b.

the agreement between God and the ancient Israelites, in which God promised to protect them if they kept His law and were faithful to Him.

OK, I see where this is going all Biblical, and that puts people off. But what I'm trying to say is: you don't sign a contract with your best friend, unless you happen to be business partners. You don't even sign a contract with your soul-mate, as a general rule.

Marriage is legal. It's something that holds up in a court of law. Most people seal this covenant in a public setting, often very elaborately and expensively, as if to show off the intensity and sincerity of the covenant (though more often, it's the elaborateness of the trappings, including the supposedly-virginal white wedding gown. This ubiquitous bridezilla-mania represents a return to a deeply sexist tradition that makes my hair stand on end).

But the truth is, as people sign that register and smile their faces off, they don't really think that they have signed on for the long haul.

Remember how it goes? Forsaking all others; for richer, for poorer; in sickness and in health. . . so long as you both shall live.

If you think it sounds cold to define marriage as a covenant/contractual agreement, then why do people still insist on it? A few decades ago, the prediction was that legal marriage would become completely obsolete by the year 2000 (always named as the watershed year when absolutely everything would change). People would just live together, or if they married at all the marriages would be loose agreements with lots of escape clauses built in, based on the concept of "serial monogamy" (which still exists: it's called a pre-nup).

Most of us don't have prenups unless we're George Clooney or something, and last time I checked, I wasn't. So OK, why has marriage become more popular than ever, with crazed brides stampeding each other to upstage their girl friends and nab the perfect virginal white gown? On one level at least, it has to do with the kids. Raising kids can be brutal, and it's long and it's very expensive. "Commitment" won't do it. This isn't a Dalmation. Even devotion might wobble and collapse in the storm.

So we're back to that old, creaky, Moses-esque concept of covenant, because it has been the glue in profound human attachments for millennia. Can I step out? OK, it's just my girl friend, she'll never notice. Oops, wait a minute. . . she's my wife. Not only that, she's the mother of my kids, who just happen to have my name on them.

We won't go into the ramifications of last names right now, except to say that the awkward double-barrelled name seems to have trickled away in popularity. (Think of it: the next generation would have four names, the one after that eight. . . It just doesn't work.) Suffice it to say that, in my opinion, that "little piece of paper" people used to scorn is about as unimportant as the Magna Carta and other little pieces of paper that have made a bit of difference over the years.The bits of paper that have changed the course of human history.

Why are we still together? I only have one husband, and he occupies a unique position in my life. To say he's some sort of patriarchal figure would be completely inaccurate, except for his innate need to be protective in his love.

We signed on the dotted line all those years ago, and during those inevitable stormy times when it looked like we might be over, one or the other of us would say: wait a minute. Let's wait it out, work at it for just a little bit longer.

We're not best friends. We're married. Still married. And somehow, as intimate and exclusive as we are with each other, the marriage is part of a much bigger picture, a network or matrix of kids and grandkids, uncles, cousins, in-laws, and other people we probably wouldn't be able to stand otherwise. And may I say this? Marriage is the basic social unit of society, a whole lot of interlocking puzzle pieces of people at least making an attempt at commitment to living in a manner based on love.  Or devotion.

Or that which lies beyond devotion, and always will.