Ooo, Eh

This morning, CBC's Sunday Morning news program re-ran a feature from last fall. In it, CBC asked nominees for the Governor General's Literary Awards for uniquely Canadian words.

See the piece here. It's well worth the watch. You get to learn a little Canadian history, too, with the Trudeau/fuddle-duddle discussion.

The title of this post is one of my husband's favo(u)rite expressions. He doesn't say it often; he doesn't "eh" at all that much. But on occasion, he says it. And "eh" is one of those expressions I think Americans don't understand.

However, let's stick to "ooo, eh" for now. "Ooo, eh" is not an "aww" response, as for deer or fawns. It's a form of "wow"--when the storm rolling across the landscape inspires awe, when the northern lights are bouncing away in the sky, when a tree falls and narrowly misses hitting the car.

"Ooo, eh" is also not a question, though sometimes a rising tone of voice makes it sound a little like one. In fact, "eh" generally isn't a question and doesn't call into question the accuracy of the previous statement. It's like saying "ain't that right" or "huh" at the end of a statement. They aren't questions, either.

But the general use, or not, of "eh" is a topic for another post. Go watch the Canadian Word segment.

iCaved

I made it all the way into summer--summer according to the calendar, that is. (You'd be mystified as to season if all you could see was the northeast wind and rain and thermometer at 60.)

In spite of my excellence again and again in resisting the purchase during the dirty season, today iDid it, iCaved, iBought an iPod.

It's aqua. And shiny. And loaded with just a few songs, just enough so that I know how it's done and can go through the house, picking up CDs and making lists of others I wish I had.

I guess the only thing this has to do with boundaries and borders is that I crossed the "I want it because I want it" boundary. I try hard to stay on the other side of that one. But sometimes it's possible to drown out all those parental messages if you just want a shiny aqua iPod hard enough.

Well, here's some Canadian Content: It's playing Leonard Cohen (So Long, Marianne) in my ears. Cowboy Junkies Trinity Session is on there, too. That should count for something.

Pollen-Nation

Spring was late this year, and wet. Consequently, it's been long. At least it has seemed so to me.

However, it has seemed far longer to those suffering from seasonal allergies. A normal allergy season starts in early May and ends in the first half of June--about six weeks. This year, it started in early May and has continued merrily for the entire month of June.

I'm learning a lot about seasonal allergies. My husband has them far worse than I do, so he knows things. Trees, for example, dump pollen at 4 a.m. When it's still chilly enough that our heater kicks on in the middle of the night (which it is), the heater sometimes stirs up the house's existing dust and pollen and distributes it along with that day's pollen dump. The consequences can be histamines a-plenty--gunky eyes and nose plus boggy lungs.

As my nephew would say, Not Much Fun.

(One of the things my husband doesn't seem to understand is that he's only human and an allergy specialist could get him on something like mast cell inhibitors that might prevent some of his allergic reactions. However, I understand that phoning his family doctor now would get him an appointment sometime in 2010. It's easier to wait till he gets bad and to go the Emergency Room, assuming he lets me take him someday. Not that it's been that bad. Yet.)

I'm lucky. It's my third spring in the area, so I'm due to develop allergies this year or next year, but so far, knock wood, all I get is itchy eyes when I work outside, and then only occasionally. A little Visine fixes me right up.

In the past few days, yellow plumes have appeared along the shoreline and yellow specks have popped up on the grass. As the puddles in the driveway dry--between downpours--they leave yellow rings on the brown mud. As the porch dries off--between downpours--a yellow film splotches the boards.

Slowly but surely, the pollen is washing from the sky and the trees. Spring and its allergies will soon be gone for the year. It missed the calendar's deadline for summer, but it might yet make a Canada Day deadline.

And you know what season comes after Spring Seasonal Allergy Season? That's right: Serious Mosquito Season. Stay tuned for more whining.

Irony, Goodnight (I Wish)

It's been bugging me for almost a week now, so it's time to blog. Tuesday of last week, one of our TV channels mysteriously disappeared for a few hours in the morning. I had to drink coffee and generally wake up (something that happens hours after I'm upright and mobile and otherwise feigning competence) to CBC radio.

The Current, a current affairs show, had a segment comparing Canada and the U.S. Naturally, I stayed tuned to hear it. Grr.

Unfortunately, the piece consisted of Sean Cole, an ironic thirtysomething American male, mostly interviewing his ironic thirtysomething Canadian friend Jonathan Goldstein who, a la NPR's Ira Glass, has his own ironic radio show on CBC. In fact, years ago both Cole and Goldstein applied for an internship with Ira Glass, and Goldstein won. In the interview, Goldstein says (among other things) that during the internship, his own personality quirks--such as his reticence in meetings or his lack of ability to share bold details of his personal life--were ascribed to his Canadian citizenship.

In the piece, Cole also highlights one sportscaster who used caution while calling the BoSox comeback during some recent World Series. He takes her caution as a telling sign of Canadian attitudes toward the Cinderella Story, the come-from-behind success. Okay.

Cole is described as someone who "wants to be Canadian," although he actually falls into the category of "an American knows where Canada is," admittedly a minority in the U.S. This man isn't interested in moving to Canada. If he were, he'd be here. It's not that hard. Trust me. He's actually just interested in getting pieces on CBC radio.

The best part of the piece was the interview with Anne Golden, head of the Conference Board of Canada. Its research indicates that in technological innovation, Canadians lag behind comparable countries. Golden could have expanded on several fascinating points raised in her interview--why are the Scandinavian countries so successful (per capita) at technological innovation, what exactly along the spectrum of basic research/applied research/commercialization/business growth and development is included in their measure, what kinds of barriers do successful examples of innovation (Research in Motion, makers of the Blackberry) face and overcome. Et cetera.

But the piece didn't ask real questions of interesting people who have information. It was simply a personal, ironic look at an entire country, generalized from a couple of personal experiences, on the part of a thirtysomething Boston male. Cole even showcased how he tried to charm Golden during their interview. Grr.

How irritating that CBC gives airtime to puff pieces like this on a current affairs show. Maybe I'm not familiar enough with the program to "get" the sensibility of this type of comparison. But it's of little value to me and I think to the bulk of their listeners.

And here's what I've been stewing about for the past week. Why do I think this perspective is of little value?

The answer I've come up with is that the perspective is extremely limited, which I know can't be helped in some ways, but still. The information itself is NOT limited--if Cole had looked at other Canadian sportscasters and how they called the games in this World Series, I would find his conclusions more interesting. Obviously, an in-depth interview with the Conference Board of Canada would be fascinating. More with Jonathan Goldstein--well, he's got his own show and I occasionally catch it when I'm in the car, and that's plennnnnty.

Cole also allows Golden to say interesting things about studying Canadian history vs. studying American history, but he never follows up on them. According to Golden, Canadian history is full of government, cooperation, and systems. American history is more the story of individuals fighting the system to achieve success. And here's a question that wasn't asked: is the difference in the actual history or in the way the history is written? Is the difference in actually what happened or in the stories the cultures tell themselves about their origins, their traditions, their values? Now THAT would have been an interesting interview.

So the limitations aren't in the information--they're in the presentation. And I know, ironic thirtysomething males are entitled to express their experiences of the differences between American and Canadian culture however they want. Just as I, an American fortysomething ALREADY LIVING IN CANADA INSTEAD OF JUST DRIVING THERE OCCASIONALLY female, have this forum, this one here, to express my own experiences of cultural differences.

But I don't pretend to be doing serious journalism. I don't even pretend that I'm doing any journalism at all. And neither should Sean Cole. What he's doing is ironic entertainment and I am not all that interested. (I also have no illusions that I'm particularly entertaining.)

Mostly, I find his perspective tiresome. I found it tiresome when Woody Allen movies were all the rage in the 1970s and 1980s. I found Jerry Seinfeld's shows about nothing kind of funny for a little while but irrelevant now. Specifically, I find irony adolescent, not in the sense of "vulgar humor" that "adolescent" is often used to mean, but in the "I'm too cool for school" stage that teenagers go through.

Most of us go through that--it's not cool to like much of anything, to try particularly hard, to be seen as different unless you're gonna be wildly different--but most of us, eventually, emerge on the other side. We find something that we're sincerely passionate about--a career, a calling we don't ever make money at but can't live without, a baby, a life partner--and distance from the world becomes impossible. We plunge again into engagement.

As an aside, I also find Sean Cole's voice and manner particularly tiresome. He talks in the back of his throat, says "exactly" a lot instead of engaging in conversation with Anna Maria Tremonti (the adult host of The Current), and he has this fake-sounding laugh that he produces by exhaling through his nose--no vocal cord involvement. Grr.

It's not just the ironic perspective that is tiresome, and no, it has nothing to do with how I feel about Jews and Judaism. All those who hold up teeny tiny slices of cultural phenomena are, in the end, producing bits of "them." Even ostensibly "us" characterizations, from Garrison Keillor's Norwegian bachelor farmers who miraculously have above-average children to Jeff Foxworthy's rednecks in the mobile homes, are about eliciting laughter. And it's laugher "at," not laughter "with." They are convenient shorthand ways of "gee, look at them," not "gee, look at us, and look at us, and look at how we are over here, and we are this way too."

Mostly, all this is okay for entertainment purposes. I guess it's just not particularly entertaining to me. It's more like showing off.

And most of all, I don't think it fits in a program between examinations of Russian "oilygarchs" and the United Nation's Responsibility to Protect doctrine. But remember, "serious," "too serious," and even "humorless" are badges I wear, often with pride.

Speaking of Imaginary Boundaries

Sometimest I think one of the most imaginary of all boundaries is one in our minds--the one that lets us think we have "tamed" nature, when really she's just toying with us.

I have complained a lot lately about the rain, but I do know that for me, the weather is just an inconvenience. It's not a life-or-death struggle. I'm not in danger of losing anything--property or my life. I don't have to sleep outside in it. It isn't ruining my livelihood.

That is not the case elsewhere. Here in northwestern Ontario, the June 6 storm and the ongoing rain in the following week flooded basements, stranded families, and washed out highways. Here's a photo archive link. People familiar with the area will note that photo flood_027 shows Kakabeka Falls with water pouring over the entire surface of the falls. Many years in recent memory, the water trickled over just one surface.

Locally, the authorities opened a dam early last week, even knowing it would keep the water level of the Kaministiquia River high, because they were concerned that the dam otherwise wouldn't hold.

Also, the waters keep rolling down the middle of the U.S. A Mississippi River levee has broken. Two dozen counties in Iowa have been declared disaster areas. This devastation is very real, and it continues.

A public forum in town last night discussed water levels in the Great Lakes. Lake Superior is indisputably low, although it's far higher than last year, which was an 80-year record low (basically, the lowest since they've been tracking). One serious question raised was not only how to alleviate the low water level, but whether trying is even a good idea.

Obviously, people who live here want all "good" weather, all the time. We're willing to accept a little rain if it means our docks extend into the lake again. We want to be sure our commercial lives aren't hurt, either--ships need to be able to dock in harbors.

But truthfully, those are lifestyle issues. What are the consequences of using artificial means to keep water levels high?

These are the serious questions, the serious considerations. My stuff is just whining. I know that.

Noah: Stand Down, but Show Me That Off Button Again

I heard on the radio this morning that this is the wettest June (maybe spring--I wasn't listening at first) in the past 27 years. If the statistic was for June, we have another couple of weeks. If the stat was for spring, we get to start over this weekend. Hooray.

However, it seems that people, by which I mean "people other than I," are learning to deal with it. At the gym yesterday, the ladies were comparing notes about gardens. (Yet again.) One woman said she'd put her annuals in over the weekend, dodging the rain showers to do so. The whole "planting a garden" thing is a future event for this household.

However, the same entity that gave the stats on the 27-year record (Environment Canada, I think) also said that July will be warm and dry. I think they're just trying to make us feel better.

Regardless, I have decided it's also time for me to learn (in the words of my nephew) to Just Deal With It. I'm not like one who doesn't have a rain jacket. There's plenty of work outside to be done, even if we never get around to putting in a garden. And I am definitely not so sweet I'd melt (southern joke). So, time to hop to.

Besides, I can't stand staying inside any more. It makes me do stupid things. Yes, I even watched The Maria Show (meet the Marias!).

My excuse is that I'm still new to reality TV, since I didn't keep up with the ur-Reality Show, MTV's The Real World, except in re-runs; I have completely eschewed all Survivor/Eat Bugs and Jump From Airplanes/Show Off Your Talent Shows. I was a fan of the home improvement/reality shows but in my own defense I hated the reality parts. I watched only for the decorating parts. I realize that it sounds like getting a porn magazine "for the articles," but I swear it was true.

Until last summer's Canadian Idol, that is. Midsummer, emotionally drained, needing mindless entertainment--well, Canadian Idol was the perfect outlet. What can I say. I didn't vote, though, and I wouldn't joke about a thing like that.

Since then, I've been indulging in reality shows, even when I should have been doing things like downward dogs, or organizing my bank records, or throwing away the odds and ends of plasticware that accumulate in the kitchen.

But I know that's an excuse, not a reason. Even I'm embarrassed about Maria, especially after going on and on about how stupid the concept is. Now that I've confessed (Hi, my name is Marion, and I watched the first two episodes of Maria and secretly dreamed of attending Maria School [just kidding], but I've been abstinent for more than 12 hours now), I am back on the wagon.

My theory is that physical exercise in nature will remind me of my own better nature. Also, there's no TV or internet out there. Also, if I do get wet, perhaps I will return to my normal ironic and oh-so-serious self. Like getting smacked in the face after you've fainted.

So I'm heading out for some face-smacking brush work, rain or no rain, forecast (mixed clouds and showers this afternoon) be damned. Wish me luck.

Sunbreak

In a previous life, my father and I regularly visited my sister in Seattle, where she was also living a previous life.

In what we like to call "the Pacific Southwest" of this country, as well as the northwestern U.S. states, the weather consists of cloudy skies with occasional precipitation and occasional peeks at the sun. People who live there try to tell me how beautiful the weather is, and I'm sure they're right if by "beautiful" they mean "hardly ever snows but hardly ever glows, either."

Weather forecasts there are interesting. My father enjoyed reading the "probs" (what my mother's father called the "probabilities," or weather forecast) in the paper and listing all the ways that the forecasters could say "cloudy with a chance of rain." "Variable cloudiness," "isolated showers," "mist," "fog," "occasional showers," "cloud mix," etc.

One of my father's favo(u)rites was "sunbreak." It means "The skies will be cloudy and rainy all day, but all you'll remember is the few moments during which the sun peeked out and that's why you say the weather here is beautiful."

For the past few weeks, our weather has been much like that of the Pacific Southwest. Sunshine is an event. We had some on Wednesday, and the photo shows our morning's entertainment.

We have two mama does, one with one fawn and one with two, hanging around in the area. We think the one-fawn mama gave birth in the back 40, but that might be wishful thinking.

We don't have a picture of our entertainment yesterday--in the middle of a gentle shower, the two-fawn mama and her wee ones played in the water, right in front of the house where we could see. It lightens the heart to see someone enjoying weather you're sick of.

I'm glad we have this picture, though. It's so nice to have documentation of sunny mornings and scenes straight from a Disney nature show, especially when it is--wait for it--misty, foggy, with chances of showers and thunderstorms in the probs.

How is this Fair?

As I have mentioned before, I live in the country. OK, for the logic sticklers out there, yes, everybody lives in a country, but I live in the country. And for you Americans, no, I don't mean that I live in the country, as in the one and only country worth living in, by which you would mean America. Sheesh.

I live in a rural area. How's that? That nest, which we think never made it to prime time, is right at the edge of the yard, where it becomes forest. The verge, I believe that would be called.

So, the country. My own nest, by which I mean my husband's house, depends on a septic system and a well to handle water and plumbing issues. Because I have lived my life to this point on public water systems, I am experiencing a new type of culture shock.

Fortunately for you, I can't bear thinking about the septic system yet. (You'll know when I start.) However, I am consciously learning the vicissitudes of living with a well. The ups and downs, as it were. The ins and outs. As in "out of water." As in, "How can we be out of water in a spring as wet as this one?"

The well pumps water from deep below the surface of the earth into a cistern (you can call it a tank but I like the word "cistern") inside our basement. We monitor the amount of water we have by looking at the cistern. (It holds X gallons, where X might be 350 but I can't remember and in any case, I don't have a frame of reference for how much water that is.)

The amount of water in the well itself remains mysterious. What we do know about the level in the well itself also comes from examining the cistern. When the level of water in the cistern falls to a specific point, it asks the well for water, and the well sends water. How much the well sends indicates, somewhat, how much it has.

If the cistern fills to the top after it asks the well for water, the well had a good supply of water. It may NOW be empty, but it at least had a lot when the cistern asked. However, if the level of water in the cistern rises only a little bit--especially if the level remains below the point at which the cistern asks for water from the well--the well is basically dry. It's sending what it has as it gets it, and it ain't getting much.

I know all this. It's logical. There are pumps. I've drawn diagrams. I've done scenarios and role-playing and if-then statements and flowcharts. I get it. However, some aspects of this process still test my ability to reason logically.

For example, it makes sense that in a dry summer, when the water table is low, our own water supply is also low. There just isn't that much water to go around. Yup. Got it.

So, in a spring and early summer like this one, when it rains nearly EVERY FREAKING DAY not that I'm complaining, our own water supply should be HIGH. Lord knows the roads are washing out and the very beach is weeping.

However, we don't have a lot of water, except what's POURING DOWN FROM THE SKY AND FLOWING THROUGH THE BASEMENT, and here's what I want to know: how is this fair?

As Dr. Phil would point out, that's actually not a question, much as "How could you do this to me?" is also not really a question. They're statements, made into questions by outrage and tears. And grammar. But really, they're just other ways of saying "Woe is me."

And of course, logically, I do understand the answer to the question. The well fills slowly. The water that fills the well filters through 40 feet of clay. (My husband repeats this fact when I am still in the "woe is me" stage. I have no frame of reference for this, either, but apparently that's a lot of clay.)

Even when the well is filling as quickly as it can, it fills slowly. And the most important concept, which I tend to forget: the well can NEVER fill MORE quickly than "as quickly as it can," which means "slowly." Sadly, the well CAN fill LESS quickly than "as quickly as it can," and it does that in dry summers, when the water table is low.

So: Woe is me, for wet is our basement and low is our cistern, and the logic doesn't lie.

Language: Miscellaneous Observations

They pronounce the "h" in "herb" up here. At least, many chef-like and regular people seem to. CBC Radio announcers don't always, so I wonder if it's a word in transition. I would pronounce the "H" in "Herb," as in "Herbie the Love Bug," but not in "herb."

Also, choirs here wear "gowns." Where I'm from, we wore "robes." "Gowns" were worn, with caps, at graduation and, without caps, at night, as in "nightgown." And yes, one type of robe was a "bathrobe." I suppose up here it would be a "dressing gown." It sounds so Peter Wimsey, though.

And while I'm here: when did "homage," pronounced either "HAHM-udge" or "AHM-udge" according to both my American and Canadian dictionaries, become the fauxly Frenchified "oh-MAJ"? That's probably something we can all blame on Hollywood. Obviously, people in Quebec can say it however they want.

My father, a historian, was a staunch rejector, if one can be that, of "an historian" as "too pretentious." I suspect he'd feel the same way about "oh-MAJ."

Do What? Deux

Periodically, I see something that's a head-scratcher. I like to mull them over. Here's my latest.

The local Sears (which people here call Simpson Sears, still) has this sign on their door:

"This premise monitored by video-surveillance cameras."

It's an interesting proposition, but I would never make that assumption.

Gobsmacked

I would be speechless, but then I wouldn't get to blog about this, would I?

During the Stanley Cup playoffs and finals (Game 5 tonight! It's almost over!), CBC has been running ads for upcoming programs. One of the ads features a comedian from "This Hour Has 22 Minutes," Canada's version of Saturday Night Live or Mad TV or one of those comedy things. This comedian is sitting in the locker room decked out in hockey stuff, doing a "promo" for "an upcoming CBC show." Wink, wink.

This "upcoming show" is called "How Do You Solve A Problem Like Maria?" It features women from all across the country (world?) competing to be cast as Maria in a production of The Sound of Music. The promo piece shows them pushing each around on a mountainside. The ad includes the line, "It's what you like best about hockey, if what you like is women singing."

Ha ha. Get it? It's Broadway, which is un-hip; it's The Sound of Music, which is much-beloved family entertainment without slapstick or bodily fluids, so doubly unhip.

The idea is mildly amusing. In the vacuum left by American Idol, I've just watched several episodes of "So You Think You Can Dance" and Canadian Idol is gearing up to fill the hockey void. Those shows are also mildly amusing, so this new fake show fits right in. It may not be the MOST amusing idea for a fake reality show, but it's not bad.

Guess what? Hard though it is to type this, the show is also NOT FAKE, though apparently the women don't push each other around physically. See for yourself, here. Andrew Lloyd Webber, the man whose own face was the inspiration for his hit show "Cats," is involved somehow.

Well, there really is little to say after that. Except this looks like a really really good summer to spend time outside, enjoying the summer evenings.