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1. REMEMBERING

We still don’t know what the final death toll will be for the devastating earthquake in Haiti. Some are estimating it could reach 200,000, which is so large a number as to be incomprehensible by the human brain.

That’s why, I think, in disasters like this we gravitate towards memorializing those to whom we have some kind of tie. For me, that means that I listen with interest to reports on the radio of the Canadians who perished on Tuesday (just six confirmed, though more than 1,400 are still unaccounted for).

The highest-profile Canadian death was that of Georges Anglade, a Haitian-born Quebecer who first to Canada in 1969. He was a scholar, writer and activist who, among other things, founded the Haitian chapter of PEN (a global movement that supports freedom of speech for writers). Over the last forty years, he went back and forth between Haiti and Canada — he and his wife, Mireille Neptune, were visiting Hait this time for a literary conference. Read more about Anglade in this CBC story; it should tell you something that the guy who the CBC has turned to for comment on Anglade’s life is none other than John Ralston Saul.

Of course, the vast majority of those who died on Tuesday had no such claims to fame and praise. We won’t know their names or see their pictures — not many of them. But their deaths are equal in weight to that of a luminary like Anglade, and it’s important to remember that.

2. TALKING TO STRANGERS

My friend Brett, a history scholar, extrovert, and all-around excellent guy, linked to this article on Facebook. I found it very encouraging, because recently, I’ve found the value of talking to people to be quite great in my own life. I know there are plenty of misanthropes out there. Those who don’t want to be bothered by others. Those who want to be hermetically sealed in their dwellings, free from the assualt of the mere presence of other humans. (They know who they are.) This is not, I feel, the best way to go through life.

From the National Post, by Dave Bidini:

If you don’t ask questions, you’ll never have any answers. Since you are not a newt or a harpie eagle or a mudfish, you have the ability to find out why that sad woman in the grey coat passes by your house the same time every afternoon or how come Chilean cherries are cheaper than Canadian ones or where East Gwillimbury is or why so much Michael Bublé all the time, every time? One by one, you’ll drop these answers like pennies or stones in your coat pocket, and the heavier the pocket gets, the more proud and self-assured and alive you’ll feel. You’ll feel as if you’re an important participant in the activity of living and a surviving character in the great, sad, beautiful comedy of life. And in the end, you will die filled up with as much knowledge and empathy as any wild creature who ever walked the earth.

There are exceptions to this rule, as there are to any, but I do believe this: people are interesting and worthwhile. I really do enjoy meeting a new person and getting to know a bit about their life. The other week, I struck up a conversation with a new arrival to Canada, a Tunisian-born woman who speaks Arabic, French and English and has worked as a translator in all three languages and, on top of that, has mothered nine children. We exchanged email addresses. Now I know where to go if I need an Arabic translator! You can’t put a value on a connection like that!

Sometimes I’m too tired or otherwise grouchy to engage with a stranger, but I try when I can. The world is pretty lonely if we don’t talk to each other.

3. LATE NIGHT WARS

I think the current debacle that is the National Broadcasting Corporation in the United States has provided a much-needed escape for we who follow the current events of the world. Do the ins and outs of the concerns of rich white guys on television matter? No, not really. Not when a poverty-stricken island nation is in literal shambles. But non-problems can be a welcome respite from real ones. And that’s the case with the Conan/Leno thing. My favourite place to get the latest on all the back-and-forth has been Gawker.TV. Visit the #jayleno tag there for all the clips and analysis you can handle. Evidence going back decades that Leno is, in fact, a dick, and more evidence that Conan is, in fact, awesome. Not to mention Jimmy Kimmel’s scathing entrees into the fray.

Obviously, I’m on Team Coco. But I’m not worried. Conan is good at what he does and he has a large, loyal, and, perhaps most importantly for his long-term survival, young fanbase. Leno’s viewers will pretty much all be dead soon. Then he’ll have no choice but to make his retreat to Vegas and never bother us over the airwaves again!

4. HEL-LOOKS CHASER

You know you want to look this awesome in the snow.

Olavi (26)

5. FURTHER TO WINTER FASHION

The Freelancer’s Fashionblog has a wonderful illustrated post on looking fabulous in cold weather. (Disclaimer: when she says “really really cold”, she clearly means “moderately-to-pretty cold,” because where I’m from, “really, really cold” requires Sorel boots, which will never be fashionable, but will insure you survive the winter frostbite free and therefore are quite necessary at times.)

“Pics or it didn’t happen!” is the joke refrain people of my generation make, given the ubiquity and ease of information and image transfer in the 21st century. When there’s any kind of delay in getting information about a news event — disputed elections, natural disasters — we know things are bad. And so was the case with the earthquake in Haiti on Tuesday. The delay was slight — measured in hours — but significant enough. When electricity is disrupted in a small island nation, that means the internet isn’t of much use, either.

Two days have passed, now, though, and the picture of the devastation might not be yet complete, but it’s broad enough to be heartbreaking.

The Boston Globe has an edition of their “The Big Picture” feature up, with 48 images from the last 48 hours. I hadn’t yet given money before I saw these pics; needless to say, I’ve made my donation now.

Residents sleep in the street after the earthquake in Port-au-Prince January 13, 2010. (REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz)

The photos are graphic. They show dead bodies, wide-eyed Hatians with faces caked with white concrete dust and blood, an elderly man sitting in the street with two broken legs, a three-storey presidential palace reduced to one dilapidated storey.

The photo of the presidential palace is one of the most jarring, to me — if that’s how the President fared in this earthquake, what hope do shanty-town residents have? In my part of the world, we have natural disasters, too. The most frequent and destructive are spring flooding events. But even in the worst-case scenarios of these floods — where people have lost their homes to the water — I don’t believe it compares to the loss of poverty-stricken individuals who lose their homes to mudslides, tsunamis or earthquakes. Losing everything you have when what you have is so very little puts your continued existence in jeopardy.

Knowing what the people of Haiti, and those working to help them in this crisis, are going through, makes giving money seem even easier than it already is.

PLACES TO GIVE

Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) (Secular)

Mennonite Central Committee (Faith-based)

I got this little snap-close plastic container with food-shaped erasers at the dollar store yesterday. Specifically, Dollarama. This is the kind of thing Dollarama is importing! I love it.

I had a conversation with the guy at Vintage in the Village (if you’ve ever been there, you know that once you start a conversation with the proprietors, well-meaning as they are, you’d better settle in for at least 15 minutes of discussion! And the only way to end the discussion is to physically walk away) about things that were inexpensive back in the day but are now sought-after by collectors because of their scarcity today. Things that are inexpensive are not preserved and cared for the same way objects that are pre-determined to be collectibles or heirlooms are, thus ensuring their place in the future vintage Hall of Desirability. He pointed in particular to these metallic drinking glasses from the mid-century — I don’t know if they’re made of tin or what, but they’re painted on the outside, and apparently they were the kind of thing you’d pick up at Woolworth’s and have on the patio in the summer. They were especially handy because you could freeze liquids in them (before plastics were ubiquitous). Now, they’re rare, because no one thought to hold on to them. They got dented, they got chipped, they got tossed out. Not like grandmother’s china.

I suggested that in our future, the sheer glut of material objects in our society will mean that fewer objects will hold vintage fascination. He disagreed. He thought that the stuff we get at the dollar store today could be prized by collectors decades from now (and not just because they’ll be scrounging for any and all implements that will allow them to survive in a post-apocalyptic wasteland).

I’ve found myself more and more surprised by the aesthetic appeal of things you can find at Dollarama, lately. For instance, the notebooks don’t just have garish holographic cartoon animals on the covers, but elegant bird motifs (a motif which is old meme to the design-savvy, of course, but it’s mainstream now, and still pleasing to look at, especially when compared with the alternative).

None of this has anything to do with the food-shaped erasers, which I got because they are just too adorable to pass up. Or use, for that matter. Likely not an heirloom — but one never knows.

I don’t always set New Year’s resolutions, but this year I’ve got a couple. The first is one I started before Christmas, already — to get seriously gluten-free with my diet. (I’ve been mostly gluten-free for the last number of years, but now it’s time to get serious and weed out the hidden sources of gluten and also, oh, stop cheating when presented with a delicious baked good at a party or some such)
The second is to go to bed on time. That is, before midnight. Ideally, before 11 p.m. So far I’ve accomplished this both days this week! The reason this is so hard for me is that my schedule is flexible, and I work from home a lot and I rarely have to be out of the house before noon. That makes it easy to set the alarm for 9 or 9:30 a.m. when I meander to bed at 1 a.m. or later.

The last is one I came up with this morning. I’m going to keep track of the books I read this year. I tend to think of myself as “not much of a reader,” but lately I realize that’s only because I tend to hang out with ridiculously voracious readers (my mother, for example, can easily polish off three or four a week). I’m keeping a list — we’ll see how I do. I’m on GoodReads; you can friend me there if you like. Here’s my little badge thing.

Currently Reading

Jenny’s favorite books »

Do you have any resolutions?

Last week went off the rails so bad. I had a few blog posts planned, and I hopefully will have a minute or two to do them this week. But let me just start the week with a short tribute post to two people: my mother and my brother.

This picture is from last Thanksgiving. It shows the moment of triumph when Mark returned from his quest to find whipping cream in Winnipeg after 6 p.m. on a Sunday. There are few culinary tragedies greater than the prospect of eating pumpkin pie without whipped cream, I tell you.

The convenience stores proved fruitless, and there was no 24-hour Shopper’s in the immediate vicinity. Our family are nothing if not problem-solvers, so Mark got the idea to ask the friendly baristas at Starbucks if they would sell him some whipping cream. And they did! They charged him $5 for this venti cup’s worth, and he tipped them an extra $5. And Thanksgiving was saved!

As for Mom’s role in the whole thing, well, she did cook the entire meal, in addition to countless ones for us over the years, so her heroism is a given.

Thanks, Mom and Mark, for being there for me and working so hard this past week. xo

Hudson’s Bay Co., Portage Ave. store, July 29, 1929

This Was Winnipeg points out cool history facts every day, and one today is this:

November 18, 1926 – The Portage and Memorial Bay store opens for business at 9:00 am. The ceremony includes George Galt, HBC Board Member, using a golden key to unlock the Portage Avenue doors.

This I have spent a lot of time in this the Bay* downtown over the years, largely because I’ve passed through it on my way home for, oh, eight years or so.

In a post earlier this month, Emma at Winnipeg O’ My Heart mentioned the Bay in a post about Downtown Issues. She writes:

To me, the epitome of this is The Bay. Have you been to The Bay downtown? Structurally, it’s amazing. Stately pillars. Mile-high ceilings. Hardwood floors. The ladies’ bathroom is a snapshot in time: there are banks of little vanities where you can actually sit down on a chair, place your purse on the counter, and fix your hair or lipstick. It’s the sort of thing you’d expect to see in a film set, not in modern day. It’s wonderful. And yet, the store is run down. There seems to be no sense of pride in the gem we have on our hands. (And I was really surprised to see it made the Sun’s list of 100 reasons to love Winnipeg.) This Bay doesn’t seem to be given as much attention as the ones in the malls.

I agree with her take. The Bay Downtown is simultaneously amazing and depressing, especially if you venture beyond the first floor (which is dominated by shiny cosmetics counters staffed by smiling, impeccably-coiffed women). I usually only visit the third floor (women’s wear) and the basement (where there’s a quaint, outdated, but quite serviceable and affordable grocery store, as well as a bizarre assortment of clearance goods).

Bay Basement Grocery photo by Jason Penner (check out his Flickr stream for more great shots from the Bay Basement)

As a shopper and a style-hound, the Bay’s women’s clothing department is an essential stop for me, especially because I don’t have a car and can’t get out to the suburbs’ big box stores very often. Great deals on designer and designer-quality garments can be found there, more often than not in chaotic clearance racks. The deals are easier to find than the staff people. Getting service in the Bay — anywhere in the Bay — is really difficult. I don’t know if it has to do with my age or what.

My friend Cynara is the one who showed me how to shop effectively at the Bay. She was the one who cracked the code for me on the strange layout of the women’s department, pointing out where the plus-size racks were and where extra plus-size garments were seeded elsewhere on the floor. (She taught me a lot about shopping, actually — things like, always try it on, make your decisions on a per-garment basis, not on a brand or store-of-origin basis.)

Cynara in one of her amazing outfits (skirt and shoes sourced at the Bay)

A fun thing about shopping at the Bay is that often the item price when they ring it up will be less than marked, due to a constantly rotating schedule of sales and, I think, the fact that they just don’t get around to updating the tags.

Anyway, when I’m at the Bay, I usually feel like I’m shopping there in spite of the store’s best efforts to turn me off from the whole thing. The thing is, as a car-free urban resident, I rely on the Bay for a lot of my needs, and the case is the same for a wide variety of downtown residents. It’s almost as though the store coasts on the patronage of existing downtown denizens and has given up entirely on drawing clientele from elsewhere in the city.

Back to Cynara — she moved to Vancouver for grad school this fall, and told me that she visited the Bay there, and found it lacking the “charm” of ours. Apparently the plus size and maternity sections were ghettoized in a separate land from the rest of women’s wear (hideous fatties and pregnant ladies must be kept away from the sensitive buying public, I guess), and the selection wasn’t as inspiring. (Then again, Cynara now lives in the same city as Jane Bon Bon, so I think she’ll get over this quickly.)

Photo by Bryan Scott of Winnipeg: Love & Hate

There are always rumours about the University of Winnipeg continuing its colonization of downtown by moving into this majestic building. And, of course, there’s always plenty of doom and gloom about downtown, matched only by boosterism of questionable efficacy.

*For non-Canadians, “the Bay” is short for “the Hudson’s Bay Company,” the oldest commercial corporation in North America (incorporated 1670). It began as a fur trader and now is a general retail conglomerate.

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