Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Hemingway in the henhouse




Scent is tied to memory: just ask Proust (my neighbor who lives across the street), who triggered a flood of childhood images by eating a whatever-it-is with stuff on it. He dunked it into his cup of tea like a doughnut (note: NOT a “donut”), and thus released memories of eating that same whatcha-ma-callit when he was just a tot.



I am sure this goes back to some primitive structure in the brain, something we evolved on top of (i.e., layers and layers of evolutionary upholstery over that reptilian core). But we still have it. I have it. You have it. Matt Paust has it.



It? What is it, you say? Keep reading.




Matt is someone I e-mail with every day, sometimes many times a day. We “met” in that strange non-meeting way people do through the internet, in this case through a blog I wrote on Open Salon called The Glass Character.



I used to think I had about six readers, and maybe I did, although if I got six comments they all seemed to be from Matt. This was somehow encouraging, because I didn’t expect any at all.  My current blog keeps telling me I’ve had 22,000 views or something like that, which seems highly improbable, but there it is. Quite possibly, all of them are Matt too.



We have almost nothing in common except a lifelong devotion to the word (meaning the written word, not the gospel). He goes by many aliases, which makes me wonder sometimes, it really does. Norm Hawthorne, Chicken Maaaaaa(aaaa)n, Clark Kent, and many others: every time I visit his blog(s), it has all changed. He’s an award-winning former newspaperman, though in his bio at the back of his new book of stories he calls himself “a former award-winning newspaperman”, implying that somehow or other those awards no longer apply. But I think they do.




Right now he lives in Virginia with his family and his chickens, and a more tender shepherd of chickens you never saw. He grew up in Wisconsin, middle America, which is maybe why I was thrown off by his accent on his YouTube videos, which to my ears sounds more urban than rural.  But some people lose their accent along the way, or take on a new one. Sort of like a blog identity, you know? Like a snowman being rolled (or a snowball rolling down a hill), we build up layers, yet the old ones remain inside, pure and untouched.



When he told me his new book was about (or at least was related to) the ownership of guns, I think I involuntarily yipped. I am a Canadian, and though Michael Moore’s stereotypes of us can be ludicrous (happy little beavers who don’t lock their doors), they’re right on the money about some things. Most people I know would approach a gun like a poisonous snake, or at least a museum piece under glass, untouchable by all except Mounties, hunters in red plaid jackets, and aboriginals.




It’s just different here. We don’t have “the right to bear arms” (which a friend of mine insists is actually “the right to bare arms”, meaning Americans can wear t shirts all year), nor do we “pledge allegiance”, to a flag or to anything else. Pledging allegiance feels foreign, strange, though I do remember standing up and singing God Save the Queen every morning in grade school, which is in itself pretty bizarre.



That’s not to say we aren’t patriotic or faithful to the True North Strong and Free (“with glowing hearts we see thee rise”!).  It’s just different. We stand on guard. And stand on guard. And stand. . . It’s repeated so many times in our national anthem that it must mean something. No rocket’s red glare, no bombs bursting in air, just. . . we stand on guard. For thee.






This issue of Canadians and Americans exists: it’s like sleeping next to an elephant and praying it never rolls over. Some believe we’re treated like a poor cousin, but I have another theory: it all comes down to population base. We have approximately 1/10 the population of the U. S, spread out over an even larger geographical space, with a fraction of borders or divisions, provinces instead of states (and somehow those two terms have a markedly different flavour).



Some still perceive us as one more state that will soon surrender its identity and join the Union. I remember some time ago, maybe decades, when someone – surely it must have been an American tourist – made the comment, “oh well, Canadians and Americans are pretty much the same, aren't they?" That’s like saying Italy’s the same as Switzerland. All on the same continent, aren’t they?




This arouses in me not so much the spirit of the beaver as the porcupine. It gets my back up. We evolved differently, we’re historically different (one great writer, hell if I remember his name – maybe Robertson Davies – said, “A Canadian is an American who rejected the Revolution”: so in a sense, we seceded before there even was a Union).  The stereotypical Canadian is self-effacing and mild and doesn’t want to touch a gun or make any sort of trouble. 



According to humorist Will Ferguson (and the country produces more than its share of funny people: Mike Myers, Jim Carrey, Howie Mandel, and some really good dead ones like John Candy and Leslie Nielsen), a Canadian not only apologizes when someone bumps into him, he apologizes when he bumps into a chair. But guns, oh my. There are those guys in red plaid jackets, yes, and of course some Indians (as some people still call them) going after moose meat to make pemmican, and the RCMP, who have taken to using tasers in the last few years (sometimes with fatal results). But the rest of us? It’s like saying we have the right to bear light sabres or something.











So I have Matt’s new book in my hands, a handsome volume with a provocative cover: a young girl who looks like a Catholic schoolgirl, except that she’s packing heat. A Little Red Riding Hood who can definitely take care of herself. Thus the title of the book, If the Woodsman is Late: Tales of Growing Up in a Society that Respected Personal Ownership of Firearms.



Firearms! Whew, whoooo: let me blow the smoke off that one! But let us also take a deeper look.



Matt’s book is a mix of short fiction and memoir (and by the way, folks, I am NOT writing a formal review of this book because reviews take me bloody forever, literally weeks, and besides I charge for them).  Sometimes this works, other times it’s disconcerting. But disconcerting isn’t always a bad thing.















The more firearm-related stories can pack a wallop (i. e. there’s a piece of fiction where a man and his girl friend are ambushed by two murderous low-lifes, and in self-defense he fires: “The eyes opened very wide and very quickly as the copper-jacketed slug raced toward them at 860 feet per second about four feet away. It hit one of the eyes, creating a hydraulic effect that released a misty cloud of blood, brain fluid and bits of eye as my second bullet caught the robber just under his chin.”)



Is this neo-Spillane, or something out of a Scorsese movie like Raging Bull where the black-and-white blood explodes from Robert DeNiro’s face in slow-mo? I don’t see how one can remain detached from such a description: “the eyes”, indeed. Not his eyes. Objectifying the prey. The Canadian in me quails, but then I must ask myself: if I was standing next to a loved one and we were both about to die and I had a gun, what would I do?






I’ve thought about this already, for reasons that aren’t clear. Say, if I was babysitting my grandchildren and some menacing lowlife broke in, and he had a gun, and the kids were screaming, and he was stupid enough to drop it or I kicked it out of his hand. . . Yes, I know what I’d do if I absolutely had to, but only if I could get the goddamn thing to fire.



But here I was going to talk about smells. It’s strange, but some of the stuff he writes about, which seems about as far away from my own experience as it can be, triggers (pardon the expression) something deep in me. He talks almost lovingly about guns, it’s true, even names them sometimes (or someone else does). He confesses that his first boyhood gun inspired not so much love as lust. But then there’s the first time he experiences “the smell of a gun that had just been fired. A wild, acrid exotic smell, the likes of which I’d never tasted previously yet somehow knew to be authentic.”





For me, on some level, this was a Proustian/madeleine-dunked-in-chamomile-tea moment, because I do remember something like that smell. We didn’t have real guns around – oh wait, didn’t my older brother Walt have what we called a bb gun? Pellet gun. A Daisy? Air rifle, maybe. Not sure. I was very small, and a girl, who therefore wasn't supposed to understand. My brothers had fake Western guns that didn’t shoot anything, but that’s really not what I remember. I remember caps, rolls of paper that had bits of explosive in them that could be “let off” by being struck with a rock or hammer or something (never a gun). And there was that hot, sulphury, fire-and-brimstone smell.



They used to “let off” worse things. Back then, in about 1959, a boy of ten like my brother could walk into a corner store (in Canada!) and buy something called “four-inchers”: firecrackers that could do a lot of damage, particularly to anthills. Kids weren’t exactly frontiersmen then, but they could tinker with the symbols, Roy Rogers pistols in holsters, or they could “play war” with plastic hand grenades and tie me to the central pole of  the canvas tent we pitched in the summer, a “prisoner”.





There are lots of stories here that pertain, and some that don’t, to the topic of firearms, that uneasy subject which makes Canadians squirm. Reminiscences of an old-school newspaperman, of experiences in the army, even sports: and one very strange piece of fiction about a man who gets as disoriented and lost as Henry Fonda in On Golden Pond and has a kind of inexplicable religious experience. The football one I can’t relate to, as it’s a language I just don’t speak and probably never will. But then, I don’t speak gun either, yet some of these pieces (too short, many of them, I wanted more) got to me, shook me up.  (Note to author, you should’ve left out the one about trying not to pee, it’s a little over the top. Pee shows up in three or four of these. Once, I think, is enough.)



But I digress. I have a favourite:  Death in the Tall Grass, and it’s about Matt’s first experience as a hunter and the family’s insistence that they eat his kill for dinner. Unfortunately it’s a tough, stringy old rabbit imperfectly picked clean of lead shot, so that the boy bites down excruciatingly on a pellet: “The jolt shot across and up with a shriek from the right side of my face deep into the cerebral cortex, leaving me frightened and undone.” A clang that goes through the bones and into the floor. Does the gun shoot back?















I’m sure Hemingway never ventured into a henhouse, unless it was to pick off a few for lunch. Or maybe he liked his eggs fresh.  When I’m proofreading my work for glitches and it gets pretty close to finished, I always hear myself saying: OK, if I were Hemingway I could make this a lot better, but I’m not Hemingway, I’m Margaret Gunning, so this is the way it’s going to be. Maybe Matt does the same sort of thing. 



It’s strange to see this guy puttering around happily in his yard, a protective man to be sure, writing about guns. Some of the fiction, particularly a story where a blameless black man is shot by a fake white cop, is gory but does not strike me as “pro-gun”.  The subtitle of his collection strongly implies that society no longer respects personal ownership of firearms. The truth is, some societies are downright afraid of them.




As the saying goes, guns don’t kill people; people kill people. But the homicide rate is lower here: by how much, I’d have to look up. If guns are around, if they are to hand and you can easily grab them, aren’t they more likely to be fired? Statistics seem to bear this out. If someone burst through the door and I shot him in the head and it turned out to be a neighbour whose house was on fire, well then. . . See, I could’ve thrown a stapler at him and it might have had the same effect.



It’s just a different way of thinking, of living. We’re leery of guns, sometimes very negative about them; Americans seem more comfortable with them, and it is written into their Constitution that they have the right to own them: no, not to own them but to “bear arms”, a very different thing. We can’t, but I don’t remember ever seeing a campaign to change that. 





















And yet, and yet: implicit in that all-important “stand on guard” is having the means to protect that precious border from violent intrusion.



And let’s face it: you can’t do that with a stapler.






http://honest-food.net/2008/12/30/classic-civet-of-hare/

Margaret's links:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1896300693/qid%3D1064537730/sr%3D11-1/ref%3Dsr_11_1/103-6792065-9634225

http://www.amazon.com/Mallory-Margaret-Gunning/dp/0888013116/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1319992815&sr=1-1

Sunday, October 23, 2011

My gift of. . . ?

On our way out of the supermarket today, we saw a solid wall of pink pledges: forms proclaiming the inevitable breast cancer donations wangled by hook, crook or guilt from shoppers already spending far too much for their groceries.

I squinted at them a little and said, "Hey Bill."

"What."

"What do you see if you. . . you know. . ."

"Oh, yeah. I see."

I did manipulate the second one just a little, but it surprised me how easy it was to go from one word. . . to the other.




Caitlin today!

To bring you up to date after The Day you were Born, these are shots of Caitlin from recent holidays at Disneyland and Parksville, Vancouver Island.


                                      "M, I, C. . . (see you real soon!)"












   Giant fish ride at Disneyland!


"I'd like to thank the entire Academy.. . . "

(Hollywood, for the first, but NOT the last time).

                                                                                      

  Parksville cement sculptures!


S'mores on the beach. . . what could be better?



Having your best bud with you!

On the day you were born. . .


(I'm jumping the gun a bit here, but wanted to do it while I'm laid up with the flu and have the time.  Our first grandchild Caitlin was born on Halloween in 2003. Needless to say it was a peak experience in my life, as I was privileged to witness the birth. When Caitlin turned four, I put together a book for her with illustrations, including some personal photos. At that point, "cut and paste" meant just that: get out a pair of scissors and a glue stick. Therefore I didn't save any of the images. So this is a new set, but the text is the same.)


ON THE DAY YOU WERE BORN



For our granddaughter Caitlin on her fourth birthday

From Grandma and Grandpa Gunning

October 31, 2007



The day you were born was a special day,  a day we will never forget. 


















It was late in October, and autumn leaves whirled in the air.  Pumpkins were for sale in all the grocery stores.  The days grew shorter, the weather colder.  We all had to wear sweaters and jackets to go outside.



You had been growing inside your Mommy’s tummy for a very long time. The whole family was really excited about your birth! They had been looking forward to it for nine long months.



Your Mom was looking forward to it, too.  Her tummy was now quite big.  Sometimes she felt a little tired. “I want to see you, my little one!” she said to her tummy.  “Come on out so I can see your face.”



At last, the big day arrived. Your Mommy knew that you were about to be born, so your Daddy took her to the hospital. But you did not get born right away. Sometimes it takes quite a long time for babies to be born.  But your Mommy wasn’t worried, for she knew she was in a good place.


Grandpa and Grandma Gunning came to the hospital, but the nurses told them, “It will be quite a long time.” So they walked up and down the halls of the hospital. Grandpa looked around to find the bathroom.


Then they decided to have something to eat. They went to the hospital cafeteria, and there they saw –




Surprise!  All the nurses were dressed up in costumes!  Some were dressed as witches. Some like vampires.  There were ten of them sitting around a table dressed as Paper Bag Princesses. Two nurses were pretending to be Fred and Wilma Flintstone. Two more were dressed like Sonny and Cher.






Then Grandma Margaret turned to Grandpa and said, “Oh, I forgot. Today is Hallowe’en!” Grandpa said, “No, I don’t think you forgot. There’s a whole bag of candy missing.” Grandma looked quite embarrassed.

















Several hours passed. We were all getting more and more excited because you were about to be born.  Your Mom asked Grandma Margaret (her Mommy) to be with her when it happened.  She was so happy to be able to see it!



It’s hard work having a baby, but your Mom did a wonderful job. The whole family knew they were about to see something beautiful and special. Your Daddy was with her all the time, holding her hand and encouraging her.



When you came out to see us, we were all so happy we wanted to dance! You looked healthy and strong, and you were a nice pink colour. You didn’t cry very much, because you seemed to be too busy looking around the room at all those people.



The nurse wrapped you tightly in a green blanket.  Grandma and Grandpa Paterson could not wait to hold you, they were so delighted to see their new granddaughter. Everyone said, “Doesn’t she look like Grandma Donna!”



Then your Mommy made a very special announcement. She did not tell us your name before you were born, as she wanted to keep it a secret.  Then she told everyone, “I’d like to introduce you to Caitlin Nicole Paterson.” We all said, “Oooooohh!”, since we thought it was such a pretty name.



Your Daddy phoned a sportscaster at work to tell them the good news, so your birth was announced during a hockey game on the radio.  So you were already famous on the first day of your life.




Grandma Margaret told Grandpa, “Now you won’t forget her birthday, since it comes on Hallowe’en.” (Sometimes Grandpa forgets things.)  Having a Hallowe’en birthday is special and fun, since you get to dress up, go door to door and have treats.



It’s as if the whole world is celebrating your birthday.  And we celebrate too, Caitlin, because we love you!



Friday, October 21, 2011

"And your little dog, too": Teal Strikes Back!



The Wicked Witch of the West: In Teal!

On doing a little digging, I discovered that I am far from the only one who has become sick and tired of the pink juggernaut that passes for "breast cancer awareness". I've included a link to an article by Gayle Sulik (which has links to other excellent commentaries) that explores, in incredible depth, the deeper financial issues of this modern-day marketing phenomenon. All this has led me to wonder what percentage of our donations actually end up funding breast cancer research.


The pink crusade has become wildly popular, saucy and "sexy" (not to mention headspinningly ubiquitous). In the name of being provocative, the movement is starting to use terms like "boobs" to show how unstuffy they are, how cool, and how they champion banishing the stigma around the disease. 




(Ovaries in teal!)
The assumption is that everyone is OK with this. But wait just a second. Does anyone think older women, grandmothers maybe, or even great-grandmothers (as I some day hope to be) would like their breasts referred to as "boobies"? What about going in for your mammogram and having the technician say to you, "OK, just put your booby in here"? It's ludicrous, and unfunny, and downright disrespectful. But if we dare to say anything about it, we violate the Pink Ribbon Code: we're just no fun! Don't we believe in the Cause?


I am beginning to read stories about women having surgery for ovarian cancer who discover that none of the hospital staff knows anything about the anti-ovarian-cancer crusade. They have no idea what the teal toenails are all about, or that the campaign even has a colour, let alone what that colour is. If someone sees a ribbon in teal, they assume it's a breast cancer ribbon that somehow came out in "the wrong colour".





Cross-section of ovarian thingammy in teal!

At this point I am beginnning to wonder if I should dress up as a giant ovary for Halloween and scare the living shit out of everyone. Take that, you pinko capitalist hypocrites!  Get your big ol' pink boobies out of my face!

No, seriously. I'm going as a witch this year (typecasting, obviously) and have been looking for makeup. Maybe I can mix blue and green together. Somebody has got to DO something so that this less-sexy but deadlier woman's cancer can get the attention and the funds that it deserves.



Flip-flop feet. . . IN TEAL!
http://gaylesulik.com/2011/09/the-teal-before-the-pink-ovarian-cancer-awareness-month/

(Post-post script. I just thought of this. Clarissa Pinkola-Estes, whose rather sappy book Women who Run with the Wolves was on bestseller lists for about four years, came up with a fantastic female equivalent for the male term machismo: ovarios.

I wonder why it never caught on.)