On the Main Street Side of Gene

Bracken muralized Gene a couple years back. Was it part of the Mural Festival? I guess so. Regardless, I am not wild about colouring-in already diverse and vibrant neighbourhoods, but I respect and appreciate Bracken and his work -- and I like it that he honoured Yuxweluptun, who often sits where these ovoids stand.

Tess of the D'Urbervilles

Up until yesterday I had never read a sentence by Thomas Hardy. There were reasons for this. First, our English 11: The Novel course focused on Hardy's The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886), and because I found the cover creepy, I did not make it one of my three (out-of-five) picks for my high school English requirement.

Second, the 1979 trailer for Roman Polanski's screen version of Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles (1891) was even creepier. This is a film whose whispering yet insistent voice-over ended with the line: "Tess: a victim of her own provocative beauty."

Brrrrrrrrrrrr!

And so it was yesterday evening, while walking back from Save-On (three 750ml bottles of San Pellegrino for $5), that I stopped at the second-hand store on the 1300 block of Kingsway and saw a relaxed cover of Tess of the D'Urbervilles and thought, I need to spend more time looking into what ails me. A dollar-fifty and four blocks later I was sipping vodka sodas to lines like:

On this board thirsty strangers deposited their cups as they stood in the road and drank, and threw the dregs on the dusty ground in the shape of Polynesia. (63)

"And we'll all go and see her when Tess has gone to live with her; and we'll ride in her coach and wear black clothes!" (65)

Abraham talked on, rather for the pleasure of utterance than for audition, so that his sister's abstraction was of no account. (69)

Greg Younging

Greg Younging was the external examiner on my graduate committee. When I first read his name many years ago it was Young-Ing -- as in the poet Greg Young-ing. Then one day the hyphen disappeared; the upper-case "I" sat down, dotted itself and, as it grew closer to the first "g", pulled the "n" and the second "g" with it -- making it Younging, as in Greg Younging, or Dr. Greg Younging at the time of his passing last Friday.

RIP Greg!

Relational (Political) Economics

Huawei is a Mainland China-based multinational telecom manufacturer supported and promoted by the Chinese government. Last December, Canadian customs officials arrested the company's CFO, Meng Wanzhou, at the request of the U.S. government.

Meng is the daughter of Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei, a former People's Liberation Army officer who started the company in 1987. She is accused of defrauding a number of financial institutions in violation of U.S. government backed sanctions against Iran.

The Chinese government asked the Canadian government to release Meng, and the Canadian government refused. The Chinese threatened "severe repercussions," and a short time later detained two Canadians who have been living and working in China. Shortly after that, a Canadian meth dealer had his sentence "upgraded" from imprisonment to death.

In March, China announced that it will no longer purchase canola from Canadian farmers, based on "pest infestation."

Most Canadian canola is grown on the Canadian Prairies, which is also a producer of NHL hockey players and home to many more hockey fans, all of whom tune-in to the Canadian Broadcasting Company's Hockey Night in Canada, especially now that the playoffs are on.

A major advertiser for Hockey Night in Canada is Huawei, whose name is featured prominently during broadcasts (see above).

When I first noticed this I thought, Why hasn't Huawei pulled its sponsorship? Then I thought, Why would they when what it is paying is but a pittance when compared to the return it is getting for showing Canadians who's boss? The U.S. government showed Canada who's boss when, in an effort to destabilize it or as a condition of the free trade agreement renegotiations (or both), it asked Canada to detain Meng next time she passed through Vancouver.

Did She, or Didion't She?

"At no point have I ever been able successfully to keep a diary; my approach to daily life ranges from the grossly negligent to the merely absent, and on those few occasions where I have tried dutifully to record a day's events, boredom has so overcome me that the results are mysterious at best.
                                                      -- Joan Didion, "On Keeping a Notebook"

Yard Work

There is no better return for me than to spend the first morning back doing yard work, noting the passage of time in new growth, trimmed hedges and changing colours.

The Lily-of-the-Valley (Piers japonica) is among the most dramatic garden performers. When I left on my trip, the bush had bright red leaves at its extremities; now those leaves are yellow.

As for the Miss Kim (Syringa pubescens subsp. patula), it blooms later than most lilacs, and is at least a week away.

MOCA

All this talk of Toronto's new MOCA site and not once did I ever hear anyone say anything about having to walk through Nestlé to get there.