I am a Pedestrian
I am a Pedestrian.
I prefer the sidewalk under my feet, the wind in my face, the exquisite scents in the air, the sounds rushing past my ears, and the completeness of walking.
I walk everyone. I walk back and forth to work five days a week. This is a thirty minute walk when it’s cold and forty when it’s warmer. I walk the Meewasin Trail for fun. The river is intoxicating every day of the year. I walk to the Farmer’s Market, to nearby shops, to Eighth Street for groceries. Occasionally, I walk far. It is approximately an hour’s walk from my apartment to the big, Canadian bookstore that I frequent. I’ve walked there about three times in the last three years. It is somewhere I usually take the bus to.
This time of the year I start to dread walking. It is getting colder. There are days below minus degrees and talk of wind chill. There will be ice and cars will pay even less attention to little, old me as they rush to and fro.
Vehicles don’t pay enough attention to pedestrians now. In the last month, I’ve almost gotten hit twice. The last time I could smell burning rubber after he applied the brakes.
Almost getting run over is a GREAT way to end the day!
The other time the person turning left was not paying attention; good thing I was. I will admit, I don’t always pay attention.
I will admit that I forget the rules sometimes. My generation, a mostly car-less one was “taught to walk on the left, facing traffic, so that we could see cars coming and move onto the shoulder.” (p. 38) There were also less sidewalks then. However, cars went slower, injuries were less serious, and drivers took responsibility for everyone’s enjoyment of the road. Now, there are times when it feels like I’m the only one noticing pedestrians.
I will take responsibility for my own safety but I want the vehicles out there to be aware that they are not the only ones using and enjoying the roadways.
I enjoy relying on my body for my own locomotion. I enjoy walking. There are many benefits to my walking.
“…went out for a walk the following afternoon. I was out for an hour. I walked two hours the next day, an hour the day after that, then three hours a day later. Somewhere in the course of those first several days, I stopped being depressed.” (p. 16)
Since I was a child, I’ve enjoyed walking in the rain. Though, here in the Prairies, that usually means that I am walking in the rain and the wind.
This is not a gentle tropical breeze that I am talking about.
This is updrafts and messy hair and wind tunnels.
How many umbrellas do I go through in a year?
1? 2? 3? Just one umbrella died this summer, at least. It’s a good thing my mom sells Avon. She always has inexpensive umbrellas hanging around for me to commandere.
I suppose, one day, I should buy a high end model. I worry though that our winds would treat such an umbrella the same as the others. Maybe, I should just go for cute. 
Oh look, they even have a warranty. Though, I have a feeling that Mary Poppins had a Burberry.
I know some of you may be wondering why not bike to work? For me, it’s a matter of paying attention. My mind tends to wander here, there, and everywhere. I feel it is safer for everyone if I keep my time behind the wheel to a minimum.
I am a pedestrian.
“I think I can recall a desire to gain knowledge of the city I lived in …. by walking its streets.” (p. 32)
You can live in a city for centuries and never really know it until you walk its streets.
On a recent Sunday morning, I went meandering. I walked back from the university along Temperance, turned a corner, and suddenly had no idea where I was. It took about ten blocks before I could suddenly go, “ah ha, I am here and I know where I must go to get back on track.”
I love that. I love getting lost walking in a city that I supposedly know.
I am a pedestrian.
All quotes are from:
Step By Step: A Pedestrian Memoir
by Lawrence Block
New York: William Morrow, 2009
Lottery Update
I almost bought a lotto ticket on Friday. I almost bought one because I am feeling very poor. I’m cutting my budget too close; almost a third of my take home pay is going into Savings. And, as of last week, my grocery money is all spent for the month. My savings, however, is growing in leaps and bounds. And now I have to ask what is more important, the day to day expansion or the safety net and next year’s trip?
What stopped me from buying that lotto ticket is that the game that replaced my regular ticket is double the price; six dollars instead of three for a lotto with worse odds (I ran this by my math genius friend).
I don’t like feeling poor. If I never had to think about money again I would be ecstatic.
White Poppies
I wish there was somewhere in Saskatoon where I could buy a white poppy for Remembrance Day. The only poppy available here is, of course, the Red Poppy. For those of you not in the know, the white poppy symbolizes peace. The Red Poppy is for remembrance of the war dead. The White Poppy movement started in the United Kingdom, in 1926, as the No More War Movement. I have no problem supporting the troops and remembering those lives, both military and civilian, lost to war. I’m just not comfortable supporting war as a way to deal with conflict. There HAS to be a better way!
Let me start with a little background, for those of you who don’t know me. My dad joined the air force, I assume, just after he finished school. I do know that by the time he was twenty-five, he had a wife and four kids. I was the third daughter and was born when he was stationed on an army base in Germany. My older sisters were born on bases in Canada. My mom was an unhappy army wife, alone and ignored in a foreign country. Not soon after I was born my Dad was out of the service… I’ve heard rumours of a dishonourable discharge. Nobody’s ever discussed it with me. He left us soon after to start over with a new family. Alcoholism ran rampant in his life.
My mother’s father grew up somewhere in Poland, he told me tales of being conscripted into the Russian Army (WWI I do believe), of riding horses during this war, and of starving in Russia & eating tomatoes for the first time. He ate his tomatoes with sugar, which was the way he ate them to the day he died. He hadn’t eaten tomatoes before as he had been told they were poisonous. He didn’t make war sound adventurous or fun or noble.
Most of my siblings, at some point in their life joined the Cadets. The eldest and youngest were active for years. The youngest got her pilot’s license because of the Cadets. My stepmother has been, and still is, very active in this organization. I lasted a week. Didn’t like the marching, the guns, being told what to do and when to do it. It was never an organization where I felt validated or safe.
I can understand the lure of joining the military. It provides you with structure, shelter, and food. It can give you a community to belong to and believe in. A younger brother and niece both joined out of family obligation. Neither lasted. My brother did basic training and was back home shortly after; why it didn’t work out I was never told. My niece went overseas with the Cadets and was sent home early, again I don’t know why. Maybe this is why I have a problem with the military, it seems overridden with secrets.
I am also concerned about who makes up the majority of most armies. By that I mean who is on the frontlines shooting and getting shot at. “We are the dead” as it says in the poem; In Flanders Field. It is the poor and disenfranchised who make up the majority of the dying in both the military and civilian ranks.
This military culture, we (society) glorify scares me. I know this culture. It is a culture that results in a reckless lifestyle that leads to too much drinking and abuse. The ads should say see the world, kill those more disenfranchised than you and escape from your life and responsibilities. Can’t we hope to achieve peace without waging war?
I want a chance to show that I’m tired of this mindset. I want to stand for peace. I want a white poppy to wear.
Weird and Wonderful
Yesterday was Halloween (Samhain) and today and tomorrow I will be in the midst of El Día de los Muertos. This time of year I reflect and honour the goth within. You may have noticed this from last week’s post. I’m continuing the theme this week as I participate in two different memes today and answer them both in a roundabout way!
The memes are from Art on the Darkside and Weekly Geeks.
First off, w
e have a fall, harvest, halloweeny picture for you. He looks a bit bored, don’t you think. I don’t know how many Trick or Treaters he saw but I had none. This is one of the perils of living in a downtown apartment. Most people with children are in the suburbs! I didn’t put him up. I just took his picture and cropped it for my own pleasure.
It seems strange to have Halloween on a Saturday. I don’t remember weekend Halloweens as a child. I don’t even remember Trick or Treating in the light. In my memories Halloween is always dark. I remember rushing home from school, grabbing a pillowcase (that was our treat bag – it was a small town and we planned on hitting every house) and going out with my friends and my younger brother and his friends. The next day was spent in a sugar hangover from all the treats we didn’t normally have.
I have a bit of a sugar hangover today. I saw coloured popcorn at the Farmer’s Market yesterday and just had to have some. 
Grandma Katie (she wasn’t related to us, she lived next door until we moved when I was thirteen) always made coloured popcorn for special occasions. It’s what she gave out for Halloween. Her house was always our first stop. Every child in town got a small lunch bag full of popcorn; the bags were probably six inches tall. She must have made popcorn all October so that she would have enough. It’s a shame that Treats are no longer homemade! So, the popcorn I bought yesterday was way too sweet – Grandma Katie’s popcorn wasn’t sugar flavoured, just coloured.
El Día de los Muertos is a new tradition. I discovered it when I was in Montreal. I’ve always been a bit on the goth side. My best friend and I use to hang out in Graveyards and I still love a quiet afternoon in an old graveyard. I think it’s important that we remember who came before us and that some day we will be gone. Then all that our loved ones will have will be memories or stories or the odd picture (I hate having my picture taken – always have).
I love the fact that you can buy skeleton paraphernalia that depict your dead friends and relatives. I want to make a skeleton reading a book, hiding in the corner, surrounded by her cat and dog. This would be me; this is how I would want to be remembered even though the image is old. That was me over forty years ago though, on second thought, it’s me now too minus the cat and dog. Though I wish I could have a cat here in my apartment. Oh, how I ramble on!
So, Weekly Geeks asks are things getting a little more weird and creepy than usual. My answer would be no. My life has always been weird and creepy. I was a child in the sixties when trolls were a popular childhood toy, a teen in the seventies when Stephen King started writing horror but then again I’ve always been drawn to the Gothic. Never had the money for the wardrobe but horror is something I read widely in. And I covet the clothes.
Right now, I’m listening to Wicked and I must say my sympathies lie with Elphaba.
This weekend remember all of us are only here for a moment and can only hope that someone will remember us as we really were. Me, I’m weird and goth and like to hang out in graveyards.
Dead People’s Stuff
I am surrounded by dead people’s stuff. Sometimes I feel like I live in a graveyard. Sometimes I want to live in a graveyard; especially in the fall, when the cemetery grounds are calm and gray and dreary. I would so fit in with the Addams family. I covet their house.
Next week it is Halloween (Samhain) and El Día de los Muertos. This is the time of year to reflect and honour our ancestors. I don’t have to go far to do this as half of my apartment is furnished with dead people’s stuff.
I’ve been collecting furniture from dead people all my life. (The image that comes to my mind is of me knocking on doors of old houses, Victorian mansions, Gingerbread cottages, etc, and the doors being answered by a variety of ghosts, young, old, ancient, etc. Oh, if only I could draw!)
What I mean is that I prefer to buy second-hand rather than new. I like my possessions to come with stories; even if they are only stories I make up myself.
So, though I can say most of my stuff is second-hand, only about half of it was actually acquired from dead people.
In the living room, there is Ruby’s couch. Ruby was a friend of my moms. She died just after I moved to the city. I bought the couch because it folds out into a bed. It makes my mom think of Ruby but I only see the practicability of having an extra bed.
Also, in the living room is my grandmother’s (my mother’s mother) television. My mom and sister bought it for her when she moved into the home so that she could watch her soaps in the privacy of her own room. Like me, my mother’s mother was a quiet woman. She preferred her privacy.
Yes, the television is too small for the space it is in. I like it that way!
Just down from the television is a table my grandfather (my mother’s father) made. It use to have a linoleum top. About five years ago, I borrowed my sister’s garage one summer and redid the top of the table. It involved a lot of sanding and painting and varnishing. It is not finished on purpose. The incompleteness reminds me that my grandfather chose not to teach me those types of skills because I am a woman. The incompleteness also reminds me that nothing is permanent. Life is mutable, ever-changing and even though, for me, change is not always good, I try to remember that change is necessary.
Under the table is a foot stool that I bought when my small home town’s undertaker died. He lived just down the street from us and I wanted something to remember him by. His only daughter had died young and he always made a habit to say hi and ask after us when we were gone. He was one of the good ones.
In the kitchen is Aunt Jenny’s kitchen table and chairs. I also have some of her cooking pots. She was not my Aunt Jenny. She was my pseudo step-dad’s aunt. I never met her. I heard much about her. She lived alone, but for hired help, in her own house until she died. This is how I wish to die – in my own home.
In the bedroom is Ruby’s dresser. Notice how none of my stuff matches. I am not a matchy type of soul. I like the mish mash of this and that. I like the opportunity of making what was someone else’s mine. I replaced two of the drawer pulls, on this dresser, with dragonflies. They fit well, don’t you think?
Also, in the bedroom is the last comforter my grandmother ever slept under. It is part of my winter bedding because it is down filled and warm, even though it is over fifteen years old.
That is about half of what I own.
There is also:
- a green rocking chair that I bought at a garage sale,
- the kitchen table that was my mom’s old table that I use to add more cupboard space to my kitchen,
- my bed, which was a wedding gift – go here to see my summer bedding,
- the bookcases I bought second-hand (an amazing bargain),
- the hope chest my dad gave me for my 16th birthday,
- a small bedroom cabinet that I bought new (horrors),
- And two of my mom’s old kitchen chairs.
Oh, and my roll-top desk. I’ve wanted one since forever and finally was able to find one, for an obscene price, at a church sale just after I moved back to the city. I like to think some old lady use to sit here and write long rambling letters to her loved ones.
I like being surrounded by dead people’s stuff; continuing on their stories. I hope that when I am gone someone else will use and love my stuff with the same respect.
Sick Alone
I was home sick last week. Alone. I spent twenty hours in bed on Wednesday just sleeping and over two days had no more than a cup of oatmeal to eat. I left the house once. To go across the street to buy necessities: tissues, toilet paper, white bread, ginger ale.
Not sure what I had. The symptoms were all over the place: runny nose, fever, aches & pains. Mostly, I was tired and didn’t want anything to eat or drink.
And this concerned me; that I wasn’t eating or drinking much. I worried about getting dehydrated and confused. I know how quickly one can die. I remember Jim Henson – one day kind of sick, the next day too late to go to the hospital.
My Eldest Sister is a nurse. She’s been attending a lot of the pandemic preparation seminars. She has me worried. I’m not over concerned about the H1N1 flu, and I will be getting the vaccination once it is available, but I do worry about being sick and alone.
I was worried about getting confused and making bad judgments because I’m sick, tired, and feverish. There were times this last week when I wasn’t sure when the last time was that I took medications.
I usually can easily live alone. I can entertain myself for decades, even without television or the internet. Right now, I have a year’s worth of books stashed in my apartment – about two hundred or so. I have a high tolerance for combating boredom. I can, and do, entertain myself. I read, I write, I make up stories in my head; I watch television, own my favorites on DVD and have toys to play with (shh).
Loneliness is not usually the problem. Though, truth be told I never felt this alone in Montreal. Where I had no family and only a few friends, but we all were alone and that meant we felt obligated to check up on each other regularly.
What really concerned me this week was basic survival. How could I get food, water, money, when I couldn’t leave the house and I know no one in the city that I would feel comfortable asking to run these errands for me? If I were back home in the small town I grew up in, the grocery stores would deliver and let me buy what I needed on credit. I wouldn’t need to worry about having less than ten dollars in my apartment.
I’m starting to seriously consider having an emergency kit. I have a case of water now left over from the last time the city turned off the water without letting us know. I have the necessary medical supplies, thanks to my sister’s worries. I have a freezer full of meat and enough food for about two weeks but it all needs preparation and what if I can’t cook, for both medical or practical reasons.
What would I do then?
Honestly, I don’t know.
When I was a young woman, new to the city, I lived downtown in an apartment on the third floor. Every once in a while, an elderly neighbour (probably in her 70s or older) would show up needing help opening a tin can. I always helped. (I hope this helps my karma in the future). I learnt, over the course of my two years there, that she lived alone on the first floor. The lone elderly woman in a building usually filled up with university students or young workers new to the work force and city. My apartment building, where I live now, is also mostly university students and lone middle-aged workers too poor to afford a house. I know maybe six of my neighbours by sight, two by name. I don’t have the sort of courage that it takes to go door to door asking for help until someone smiles and helps.
That old woman died alone in that apartment building just before I moved out to Montreal. I think about her. Who was she? Why did she have no one? She died alone. They cleaned out her apartment and threw most every thing she owned into the dumpster behind the building. This is how Garbo entered my life. She belonged to that old woman and I felt something of hers should be rescued and passed on to someone who would try to remember an old woman she never really knew!
This is Garbo – she is named after Greta Garbo (because all of us prefer to live alone!).
This is why I think it’s time I had a preparedness plan and kit. I’ve looked over the list and it’s nice to know that I have at least half of it already. I also know that I need to keep what few social connections I already have, nurtured. I need to keep in contact with my family and learn how to make new friends. Alone is fine, but the older I get, the more I realize that I also need a community to help me nurture myself.
Yes, I am a healthy, independent woman. I can live in harmony with myself. The trick is learning to feel a little bit less solitary in the wide open spaces alone and to learn how to be a contributing community member and still be comfortably solitaire.
First Snow and Fall Suppers
We had our first snow on Thursday. It started falling in the late morning. By the time I went out for lunch, there were big fluffy, flakes floating in the air and settling on all the green that just days before had been basking in the warmth of the sun.
Hopefully, it will warm up again and all this snow will melt before Halloween. We barely got any Fall; Fall only officially started here at 1:18 pm CST on Tuesday, September 22. That was, what, less than three weeks ago?
I do not have pictures of this. I really should keep my camera with me. I envisioned many lovely compositions on Thursday and now we shall never see how they would have turned out.
Here are a few pictures I took Friday morning on my walk to work…when it was minus 14 degrees Celsius with a wind chill. Brrr. (For you Americans that means the temperature was 6 degrees Fahrenheit.)
Here is a picture of birds (wrens? swallows?) foraging that morning in the park.
Don’t they look cold? Okay, maybe I’m projecting here. I was feeling very cold when I took that picture. It was about half-way through my walk. And I was worried the birds wouldn’t show up in the picture. (It’s a new camera – I’m still getting used to it.)
The next picture is of our Hollyhock plants here at work. They don’t look as cold. Perhaps, because they have such a warm snowy quilt covering them. 
In the world I grew up in it seemed that fall suppers were ubiquitous. They were everywhere. I recall that we could go to one, every weekend, from the start of school till Halloween. I’m sure, now, that this memory if false. Firstly, because, of course, Fall Suppers could not start until after the harvest was done. A Fall Supper is a community affair, everyone contributes something. Secondly, of course, they probably stopped at Thanksgiving (which, here in Canada, is this weekend) because by then everyone was tired of turkey.
Their name is debatable. Is it Fall Supper, because they are held in the Fall? Is it Fowl Supper, because the main meat is turkey? As long as it is not Foul Supper (a colleague jokes – LOL).
Traditionally, the small town I grew up in would have five separate suppers. Each church, Catholic, Lutheran, United, Pentecostal, would sponsor one and the school would also sponsor one. Now, we are down to one – only the school can still muster up enough workers and food. Coming from a small town, having left as so many of us did, I do wonder who will carry on these traditions. The church women, who use to do the cooking, are getting older. The churches, in small towns, are consolidating so that there are fewer churches. The children mostly leave or work outside the community.
This time of the year, I yearn for Fall Suppers. Weekends filled with turkey, community and camaraderie.
Here is a true bounty. There are groaning platters of turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, jellied salads, vegetables and desserts. The tables glow with pies and cakes and home-made delicacies. I could go on forever praising this liturgy of food and love.
I want to be a small child again, running in and out of the hall. I want to be a young teen reading the names off the tombstones in the cemetery next to the hall. I want to be the one cooking and cleaning and gossiping in the kitchen. I was never the mother corralling the young-uns – this I did as an aunt. I will never be the crone sitting and reminiscing as I sip my tea; unless I move back.
I am glad it is Thanksgiving. I am happy to be going to my sister’s for turkey and gossip. I could do without the cold. I will end now, with a final picture from Friday. When I went to work in the morning this tree had all its leaves. When I came home it had shivered and shook all its leaves off. There they are blanketing the ground. Poor tree, it was not ready for the cold weather either.
Lottery Dreams
I bought my last lottery ticket a week ago.
No more tickets to dream on.
No more nights lying awake, thinking, “If I win, what would be the first thing I would do?”
- Pay off my student loan (yes, I’m too practical)
- Buy a new bed (damn, this one is too short. My toes go right to the edge. I feel like I’m channeling Goldilocks! This one is too hard. This one is too short.)
- Move to an apartment where I can have pets (I miss having a cat)
- Go on a trip around the world (honestly, I want to experience this as it was in the early 1900s – so, unless they invent time travel anytime soon )
- Support the family’s dreams (I mostly have what I need)
- Quit my job & try to write one of the novels floating around in my cerebrum…
And this list is partly why I’ve stopped buying lottery tickets. See – too practical, mostly have what I want and the last item; that last item I could do already if I wasn’t letting fear still my voice. I could write and work at some job that I would never have to bring home, just for the money.
I’ve been buying lottery tickets for a long time, since the early 1980’s. That’s almost thirty years! Winnings that are considered common now (ten million plus) were considered rare and spectacular then. I can remember the rush to buy the first time the lotto topped ten million, by the end of the week the winnings were calculated at over double that. The lottery I played paid out a percentage of sales to the winners.
I’ve bought one ticket almost every week, two to three dollars at a time – it started out at two and went up to three somewhere along the way.
It seemed a small price to pay for the chance at a dream.
Back when it seemed like my dreams were never-ending and impossible for me to fund on my own.
Dreams like…
- Seeing a play on Broadway
- Traveling to San Francisco
- Buying raspberries & Concord grapes whenever I wanted them
- Having a new wardrobe
- Buying a big, old Victorian house
Buying a house no longer appeals. Especially a big, old Victorian – because I now know just what kind of upkeep is required to maintain one! Plus, I don’t get a tight fearful knot in my stomach anymore when I think that I will never own a house. It’s not a house I wanted, it was a home and I’ve made that for myself. All on my own with my own resources.
Home is how I feel not where I live or what I own. This feels like home.
As stated before, I played the lottery for almost thirty years. I bet you’re wondering how much I won over that period of time. Nothing big, no big treasure chest to gloat over like Scrooge McDuck. I won $60.00 once the first year I bought tickets, I won $99.00 recently, a ten here, a ten there – a smattering of free tickets every year. Just enough to keep me playing.
Just enough to keep me dreaming and thinking that my dreams were too big for me alone to achieve.
William was the first to get me thinking otherwise. William, with his intense stare (I wrote a poem once about that stare). We went to library school together. We were classmates. I was kvetching that I didn’t have the money to go to the annual out-of-town conference. He said, “If you saved up those three dollars a week for one year, by this time next year, you’ll have enough.”
And I thought, “Yes, that’s possible. It’s possible for ME to fund my dreams.”
That was such a radical thought. I blocked it. It didn’t see possible, that I – welfare raised, poverty stricken – could choose to achieve my own dreams. Even though, here I was going back to school at thirty, living on student loans that would eventually get paid off. (They almost are paid off, after ten years of nickel and diming it).
William was the first to get me thinking that I could be financially independent but he wasn’t the last.
A recent work colleague, young, bright, good with money, inspires me to keep dreaming and planning.
And still, I didn’t stop buying lottery tickets to dream on. Even as I was dreaming less, for smaller items, for the doable.
So, why stop now? Why was the last ticket bought a week ago? September 18, 2009. Is this going to be the last lottery ticket I buy? The last lottery I never won. Am I going to stop dreaming?
That’s the plan.
I mean, “Yes, this is going to be the last lottery ticket I buy.”
And, “No, I’m not going to stop dreaming.” As I type this, I’m also planning a big trip for next April. I’m just not 100% sure of where I’m going yet.
Why did I stop buying lottery tickets?
Because, now I believe, that it is possible for me to achieve my dreams on my own. That I can earn the money I need to fund even the largest, most magnificent of dreams.
Talk Like A Pirate Day
Ahoy me hearties,
I see through me spyglass from me lofty perch upon the crow’s nest that Saturday, September 19th be Talk Like A Pirate Day!
Now, don’t be looking at me like I’m addled (and I ain’t been in the grog either); this is one of my favourite holidays. Right after that spook and goblin one. Shiver me timbers, y’all!
Here’s a picture of a pirate ship for ye and no, the Mizzen mast ain’t missing, ye landlubber. Don’t be flying the Jolly Roger, we ain’t surrendering yet.
Now, being a generous pirate wench, I got me some booty for ye, some bookish treasure. The Cap’n says books are as precious as doubloons ye know and don’t ye let anyone be telling ye tales otherwise.
Ye wouldn’t even know of that blaggard Bluebeard or pompous Cap’n Hook if it weren’t for books.
Those old sea dogs don’t hold a candle to the saucy wenches that really ruled the seas. You won’t find either of them down in Davy Jones’s Locker. Don’t be disrespecting em or they’ll make ye swab the deck or walk the plank.
So, without further formality I introduce to ye two of the most notorious pirates to ever sail the seas, Anne Bonney and Mary Reade.
Now this lady, Jane Yolen, she wrote a ballad, a sea shanty about the two and this fair gentleman, David Shannon drew some pretty pictures to go along with it. It’s a mighty fair tale if ever there was one.
Tis a historical tale, set centuries ago. Port Maria bay in 1720, news from afar traveled like birdsong on the air and governors and government chased the pirates down.
“And silver the coins and silver the moon,
Silver the waves on the top of the sea..”
Tis a pleasant ballad the fair Lady Jane has written and I won’t be spoiling the tale by telling it. Go out to ye local shoppe or free library and seek the treasure for ye self. For treasure chased is pleasanter than treasure given.
.
.
.
The Ballad of the Pirate Queens
By Jane Yolen & David Shannon
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; 2001
ISBN: 978-0152018856
.
And if ye still think I’m addled cause a Saskatchewan Spinster couldn’t have any knowledge of Pirates bein’ we’re so far from the sea. Well, I’ll just point ye here…or blimy, ta this cute one.
Need helping deciphering me pirate lingo; go here or here or here.
Remember, Dead men tell no tales. ;-0
Fair Winds to the crew of ye.
Green Angel
October 4, 2009 at 8:28 pm (Book Commentary) (Alice Hoffnan, book review, dystopia, environmental issues, family, Green Angel, sisters, tattoos)
At the beginning of August, I wrote a review of Alice Hoffman’s book The Story Sisters and mentioned how much I also loved her book Green Angel. So, I decided to give you that review today. It’s a bit long. I was very verbose when I wrote the review, just after I read the book.
There may be spoilers within.
If Green Angel is a Fairy Tale it is a feminist rending of one. The story focuses around Green, our heroine, who through her own fortitude, courage and resilience overcomes numerous obstacles to complete her quest. There is a smidgen of science, a hint of magic, too much hope to be a dystopia. However, does the story have enough magic in it so that we can feel comfortable calling it a Fairy Tale?
We could argue also that Green Angel is Magic Realist fiction. It is, after all, a story set within an everyday mundane world with the aura of the fantastic surrounding it. Because one cannot, after all, tattoo themselves so completely even if one were an ambidextrous contortionist. And can science explain how the body’s chemistry can turn black ink to green?
Then there are the dystopian elements that are so hard to ignore. Is the condition of Green’s life so extremely bad that there is no hope?
We bandy about these fictional terms like a talisman against the ancient gods who have forgotten us. If we can name something we can control it and thus have no reason to fear it.
If I told you only that I loved this book, that the language was perfect, that I wanted to rush right out and buy a copy for all my sisters (I have five), would you rush right out and buy a copy as well you should. If I told you only that I kept renewing the library copy so that I could still have it in my bag, on my person, until I can afford to buy my own copy of this exquisite little volume, would you understand.
Alice Hoffman wrote Green Angel. Matt Mahurin illustrates the Scholastic edition, designed by Elizabeth B. Parisi. Green pages run throughout the delicious illustrations and the book fits comfortably in the hand.
Green Angel is divided into five stories. They are Heart, Soul, Treasure, Rain and Sister. The themes are reminiscent of Cinder-Ella and Sleeping Beauty. Is this a Fairy Tale after all?
The tale told in Heart is the reality of what happened and how it happened. The tale told in Soul is what Green dreams. The tale told in Treasure tells us who and what Green loved. The tale told in Rain is what Green has lost. The tale told in Sister details the story that Green is finally able to tell.
A story involving a quest and love, with a smidgen of science, a hint of magic, and too much hope to be a dystopia.
Green and her younger sister Aurora live an ideal life above a village at the edge of a forest. Their father is honest and strong. Their mother prefers Blue Jay feathers to pearls. Aurora is wild and beautiful and can disappear like moonlight. Green is the least of them, a weed among the flowers. She is looking forward to turning sixteen. She keeps her distance from the village, is happy to be her family’s shadow. She is comfortable in the shadows, patient enough to sit for hours and watch the garden grow, see it turning green. Her family treasures her, Green says, because of her ability to grow substance from nothing … to create a garden that nourishes them all.
When catastrophe happens, Green is left alone to pick up the pieces of her life. The end of the world comes and Green survives to exist in the ashes. She must protect herself from the sooty days and parentless looters who come in the night not knowing she survived. The looters destroy the garden leaving nothing but ashes and stones. Stones that Green collects to build funeral cairns for her family. Half-blind, this task becomes her purpose, as she wishes to not feel anything. She becomes a half-dead thing in a half-dead world.
Green creates armor for herself out of her father’s old black boots and battered leather jacket. She carries stones and a slingshot everywhere. She tears the thorns from her garden’s bare rosebushes and sews them onto her clothes. She takes a needle and inks onto herself a raven, a bat, and a rose. She writes upon herself with black ink.
She loses herself in sleep and dreaming. She dreams her sister back into being, so Green herself can become, once again, patient, still waiting to be sixteen, still hopeful. Green sleepwalks through her days and each night inks tattoos upon her skin. This gives her courage to venture into the village. They thought her dead, they call her cursed. Green changes her name to Ash.
Slowly, Ash becomes friends with a neighbor, rescues a ghost white dog, feeds the birds, feeds and clothes an old nemesis, befriends a boy, dreams that her sister does not know her.
Slowly Ash changes. She trusts. She loves. Her tattoos start to change color from black to green. She replants her garden. She learns that to heal one must learn to let go.
Ash becomes Green once again. She dreams of a sister who knows her. Green cries and her tears wash the ash embers out of her eyes.
By the end of her quest Green is able to see clearly. She can see the world outside, aching and ruined, but beautiful all the same. She can miss her family, she can watch her revitalized garden grow, and she can discard her armor. Green can start to live happily ever after.
Green Angel by Alice Hoffman
New York: Scholastic, 2003
ISBN: 0439443849
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