when i first heard about the snow plow deaths in montréal i thought it was a joke. it sounds like a joke about canada, doesn't it? but it's not. the first fatal collision occured as an elderly couple were crossing on a green light and a snow plow driver, not seeing them, turned right. six hours later, a 76 year-old woman was hit and killed as well. and all 3 people hit and killed by snow plows on february 3rd 2009 had the right of way.

i did a bit more reading. a familiar picture emerges: you guessed it, privatization is fucking evil.

the municipal government of montréal has partially privatized snow removal. city workers are paid an hourly wage while subcontractors are paid piecemeal (they only get paid when the snow falls, so they have to work as much as they can when they have the opportunity) and often must work for several companies in order to maintain their vehicles, which can cost up to $3000 per month. heavy vehicle drivers in quebec can legally drive 70 hours per week, which already seems like a lot to me, but this law is often broken to meet snow removal targets and to avoid fines (up to $10,000!) if the snow isn't removed "on schedule."

the first fatal collision on february 3 happened at 9:40 am. the truck driver had started his shift at 8:00 pm the night before. an independent snow plow driver told the Journal de montréal, under cover of anonymity, that he had slept only six hours over the course of the previous four days. an inspector for the provincial Ministry of Transport confirmed that it was not rare to find caffeine pills and other stimulants on the dashboard of private snow plows.

no wonder they drive so fast.

as soon as i opened my mouth in europe or the uk, folks knew i was from someplace else. the first question was generally to determine american or canadian, and once i’d confirmed the latter, most people responded with “oh, how beautiful!” (at this point i’ll invite you to check the tomato’s blog for some insight on that one. she’s already said it better than i could.) if the conversation continued on the topic of canada, i’d often end up bursting some pleasant bubbles about how nice it is there. a few times i felt like the Bad-News Canadian commenting on such topics as genocide (“um no, it wasn’t just a brief phase hundreds of years ago”) and the destruction of old growth forests for a quick buck. yes, i am incredibly privileged to carry a canadian passport, and while our foreign policies are not quite as insanely aggressive as our southern neighbours, canada is very much a part of the military industrial complex. i love my country, but i’m fucken ashamed of my government. i’ve had many a cynical thought about how effectively we must be marketing ourselves to the rest of the world as Tolerant, Multicultural, Environmentally Aware, Nice Canada.

but, um, i’m noticing something in downtown toronto this week. people are really friendly. yes, i’m walking through the world as a conventionally attractive white girl, but hey, strangers nod and say hi back, the tram drivers aren’t sitting behind bullet and/or spit proof plexiglass, and folks say thanks very much when they get off or on.

and, um, those polite little social noises that i’ve dismissed as empty in the past?

i musta kinda missed them. ‘cause they’re striking me as examples of kindness and courtesy and human engagement. and it is awfully nice.

be forewarned: this is disjointed. i'm jetlagged. but i've been itching to write about berlin.

wow, they leave the graffiti and street art on the walls. it's so different from anything i'm used to. even granada, where i saw the most beautiful street art ever, there wasn't as much of it as in berlin. even a large church towards the city centre is gloriously adorned. we stayed in the eastern neighbourhood of friedrichshain, which is crammed with independent shops and cafes and bars furnished with second hand couches and unmatching tables and chairs. my north american brain was quietly blown by business owners that don't bother to clean off their stickered and tagged-up doors. and yet, less garbage on the streets than i'm used to, coming from a year and a half in britain...more on that later.

hey cool, a highly functioning communal living situation.i have visited and lived in a few communes/ intentional communities, and i realise that i make a private assessment of the functionality of the community based on the kitchen and eating area. you can tell a lot by how clean and clear it is, whether someone keeps a good edge on the heaviest chopping blade (full confession: i'm rubbish at this)  how quality the meals are and, most significantly, if people are naturally drawn to cook and eat together. of course there are lots of factors beyond community bonds at play here, like whether there is the exuberant mess of young children and whether folks' working hours allow for sharing kitchen and eating time. but i was still quietly thrilled to stay with caro's mates on grunberger strasse, across from boxhagener platz in a massively collectively owned building. like most buildings in berlin it is a plain long box, probably built after 92% of the city was reduced to rubble during WWII...and like many of these plain (actually, let's be honest: they're ugly) buildings in friedrichshain it's painted in a riot of colours. there's a huge bright communal kitchen on the second floor, a cafe with noncommercial public space on the first floor, and 5 floors of bedrooms and suites. with no locks. (culture shock again.) caro's mate bogdan, aka dr. nojoke, made us very welcome. what a sweet, generous man. (with great facial hair. check out how cute he is at www.drnojoke.de.) thank you, gruny house.

people here are refreshingly blunt.caro explained to me that germans don't do the hi-who-are-you-what-do-you-do 20 questions. they're more likely to wait and see a) if they'll ever meet you again, and b) if they want t0 know you, before investing much energy asking questions. i was glad she explained this, or i'd have been a bit paranoid about the other members of the community being somewhat resentful of the english-speaking visitors. they're totally not. they're just german. once i got my head wrapped around this, i really enjoyed the comfortable silence. small talk takes a lot of energy. 

i feel safe on the streets at night here.the pb and i walked home from my friday gig at 2 am - something i never would have done in manchester. i didn't have a single flicker of apprehension, not even when passing a large group of young men drinking and carousing on a dark bridge spanning the River Spree. no vomit on the streets either. apparently, germans don't generally drink to get completely wankered and puke everywhere. again, how refreshing. maybe it's the different kind of drinking culture that explains the absence of the air of aggression i sensed so many times in britain (and in north america, to a lesser extent.)

i've given this a lot of thought. i was told repeatedly that berlin is a remarkable safe city for women at night, so i was expecting to feel confident, and i know that when i feel confident, i get less obnoxious/frightening attention from men at night. i'm not headed towards a "act like everything's ok, and it will be!" argument of the blame-the-victim-for-their-negative-thinking mentality. i just know that the times in my life when i've moved with a lot of fear, some men sense that and it works to my detriment. (this can lead to a real bummer of a vicious cycle.) conversely, when i walk as if i'm entitled to safe freedom of movement, i get less menacing attention. so it might have been all about me and the way i was moving. but i don't think that completely explains it. i think that berlin is different. i just don't understand why.

there is such a history of trauma and very recent suffering in berlin, before, during and after WWII. i have read about the time following germany's surrender, when soviet troops took the city. gang rapes of surviving berlin women by soviet soldiers were rampant for a time. i imagine the population, literally shell shocked after heavy bombing, with most of the buildings crumbled, dealing with this additional violence, and i shudder. and it wasn't that long ago. the pb suggested that perhaps generations of men since have some increased knowledge of the impacts of sexual violence on the women in their lives and maybe this has had a positive effect on the culture here.

i was surprised to discover some anti-german racism in myself. after walking through anne frank house and spending time at the museum at the memorial for the murdered jews of europe, after absorbing holocaust stories in a more immediate and heightened way than i ever did in history class or watching cbc dramas, i became aware of an instantaneous fear response when someone barked an order at me in german, or in english with a german accent. (i say "barked" only because i'm used to smiley-smiley please and thank you in north america and britain.) especially when i was standing in line in an airport. apparently, i have an automatic association with certain german inflections and violence and control. the crazy thought flickered through my brain: "are they going to seperate us??' when the pb and i were leaving berlin schoenefeld airport. well, queers died in the concentration camps also. i have some learning to do about what happened to homosexuals during the holocaust. my education is patchy at best.

there are many monuments in berlin, many physical reminders in the city of human pain and suffering. it is tempting to think that this willingness to face the past indicates a willingness to learn from it too. it's an inspiring thought. berlin is vivid and alive in spite of how much suffering has seeped into the ground there.

and it was a fucking great place to do my last two european gigs - for awhile. i want to go back. if there's feasible transport in the next few years, i will.

i don’t know what it is. their pleasing form? the splendid symmetry of two wheels, with radiating spokes like little suns spinning along the street, the sauciness of the inviting seat (“come, perch here, take off with me!”) you can feel each bump, you’re connected to the ground on a bicycle, moving fast or slow.

of course there are the health benefits, both individual and planetary. to me, bicycles have always been evidence that we can get something right. (i know that’s simplistic. i’m not bothered.) but i like bicycles not just for what they’re not, i.e. cars. i like bicycles for what they are. and i’m writing this in a very pink and red dutch cake café, a little bit buzzed on green tea and literally welling with emotion as i recall the jubilant jumble of hundreds of bicycles parked along the canal late last night under soft yellow streetlights.

almost 24 hours in amsterdam and i’ve seen easily as many cyclists as pedestrians outside. they ride in the rain, snow and hail, holding umbrellas aloft in one hand and steadying the handlebars and handbag with the other. they ride 1-2-3 to a bicycle, infant secured in a snuggli attached to mom’s front with toddler riding behind. they ride unicycles and tricycles, they ride with long-stemmed handlebars which let them sit straight upright and not a helmet in sight.

i’m a cyclephile. i admit it. i am always ready to appreciate a cute girl, but put her on a bicycle and as far as i’m concerned suddenly she’s a headturner.

there is nothing sophisticated about my enjoyment of bicycles. i am an unabashedly gawking tourist in holland today – i’ve not seen such a celebration of bicycles since the pink critical mass on pride weekend and frankly that actually did pale in comparison. i’ve seen and exclaimed over loudly-painted trailers, strapped-on and stickered milk crates, handcrafted panniers, fluttering ribbons and faux blossoms galore. yes, i’ve discovered one setting in which fake flowers don’t depress me: when they’re cloth and wire rose vines twined frivolously around handlebars and baskets.

bicycles are romantic. i don’t need to deconstruct romance. tomorrow i will surrender my passport at a rental agency, hand over a few euros, and join them.

two winters ago the pb and i worked as WWOOFers (Willing Workers On Organic Farms) in southern spain. it seemed a good way to spend the winter someplace warm, mostly outdoors, with folks we shared at least some values with, and probably learning something. (and eating well. food is always a factor.) that's how we ended up on a farm high above lanjarron run by a angry xenophobe with a very unattractive martyr complex. after two meals spent listening to her expound on the sickness of the outside world and her sacrifices to save the planet, likening herself to a modern day jesus, we packed our bags and rang A and J on the mobile: "we need to leave right now! can we come stay with you??"

so we pitched our tent under an olive tree to live with A and J and baby B in el morreon, a community of folks living in buses, yurts and tents outside orgiva, granada. A and J had ditched their middle class jobs in england about ten years before to busk around europe, living out of their bus. (it's a comment on their love of music and each other that they lived in a bus together while J began learning the fiddle.)

rush hour in el morreon consisted of a coupla hundred goats bing-bonging their way along the dry riverbed. sometimes they climbed into the compost heap. our tent flaps opened to a view of snow on the mountain peaks. the pb and i came for a few days and stayed for a month and a half, ostensibly WWOOFing but pretty much instant family. B melted our hearts. A and J and i fused fiddle, mandolin and banjo with spoken word poetry to incredible effect and the Ditch Daisies were born, playing one single gig before the pb and i  headed to england in the spring.

our el morreon family is living in devon now (in a house, of all things) a short walk from the beach in paignton. when the tide was out yesterday the pb and i went on an explore and found a proper smuggler's cave in gloriously vaginal red stone with purple seaweed stirring in pools. B is two and a half; the baby who spent afternoons on my hip is now walking and running and demonstrating a happy big personality with full sentences and the occasional example of self-referential humour!...i'm resisting the urge to blog on and on about how cute he is...A and J are playing celtic music as a duo, Re-Jig, and in a 4 piece band as Paddy's Whiskers, but somehow they found time to jam and rehearse with me. the Ditch Daisies played their second gig last night to a small but enthusiastic audience who were literally shouting for more.

it's a funny thing, celtic music. it always makes me want to laugh, shout, dance and cry softly in a corner all at once. for a few years in my childhood my mom played hammered dulcimer in a successful celtic band. the enduring joke was "that's the dulcimer that's hammered, not the player!" she was the kind of naturally gifted musician who could - and would - play anything she picked up. of course, this involvement in something so deeply nourishing to her while excluding my father didn't last; he bullied her into quitting.

i've been untangling my confusion and anger around my mother's cramped & airless life for a long time. but these days it's shifting into more of a simple sadness. i miss the parts of her that were alive. and i love celtic music. the fiddle makes me weep. the banjo makes me wriggle in my seat. creating and performing with two musicians as talented and open hearted as A and J, who make family and music the highest priorities in their resoundingly full lives - it's more than i have words to describe.

a line from a poem by anna swanson has been coming back to me in the last coupla days: "it was a moment i wanted even while i had it."

it's like that, here in devon.

intuition rarely uses full sentences

prefers single syllables

says yes/no/fast/slow/less/more

won't move or speak from within a leash

brushes long strong whiskers against the edge of a strange idea

knows where to go swimming

finds its way through fog in the northern quarter at night.

intuition can smell a lie

and will shout with incoherent fury at me

for 3 years until i finally grasp what it points at.

intuition's brave, blunt, unapologetic

accepts reality as it is

then enters a quiet room to meet imagination

expands to fill the stillness

picks up my pen

and writes a poem on its own.

a weepy small child really really needed to pee today ("no mom please i can't wait until we get home!") i invited her in with her mother to use the staff washroom. her mother emerged utterly scandalized by the squalid conditions in the staff loo and, instead of thanking me, said grimly "i feel sorry for you," as she marched her vastly relieved child out of the shop. 

i'm outta there for good at 6 pm on tuesday january 6th 2009.

the pb and i just finished watching the final episode of the final season of "The Wire". i was hooked from the first episode, and promptly developed a bad habit of watching an hour of drug-related crime drama set in baltimore before bed and having fuckey dreams. now that that's over, we've moved on to something a bit more wholesome: nature documentaries.

my favourite nature documentary growing up was Lorne Greene's New Wilderness. Lorne Greene was a well-known canadian actor, most famous for his role in Bonanza, although he was also popular as the spokesman for Alpo Beef Chunks dog food commercials throughout the 1970s. he had a deep sonorous voice and a way of making meaningful eye contact that let you know that although he could never interfere to save an animal's life, he genuinely cared about those elephants desperate to find the next watering hole.

i'm really annoying to watch tv with, even when there aren't any commercials evoking sarcastic asides and the occasional cry of indignation. there's plenty to snort at in a nature documentary; you learn as much about the people who made the documentary as you do about the topic of this supposedly objective scientific study. they generally avoid any exploration of how the habitat or critter they're investigating is being destroyed by human activity. and isn't it interesting how the cute otter briskly catching fish is deft and clever, while the croc feasting on an antelope is a savage brute? or how plant life "fights for light" on the jungle floor and the tallest tree is clearly the winner, even though that tree has it's fiercest "competitor," the vine, wrapped around it all the way up? don't even get me started on the ways in which they explain away homosexual activity in the animal world (i've already written that poem anyways.)

but i so enjoy them. the exquisite cinematography, the super-cheesy music – oh, the swelling emotion! the soaring strings! i'm there with them, jaw literally dropping as i take in some gorgeous jungle vista or watch a flock of birds on the african savannah. and i love learning about bizarre parasitic fungi attacking ants in the jungle, eventually erupting from the dead ant's brain to spread more deadly spores…or the mating display of the bird of paradise…or the thousands of kinds of grass on the russian steppes. for years i wanted to be a marine biologist. with my keen research skills and passion for environmental justice i was going to be a key figure in the battle to save the world's oceans. oh yes. nature documentaries evoke a sense of wonder in me.

the kelp forests are among my favourites. bbc does a great doc called  "planet earth." here's a pixilated version, complete with cheesy music, fun facts, and - spot it! - a blatant example of western thought projected onto the natural world.

p.s. long shot: does anyone have a copy of an episode of lorne greene's new wilderness? i can't find one anywhere.

someone is telling you repeatedly that the white middle class has nothing to feel ashamed or guilty about:

plan a: listen. listen with an open mind and an open heart. remind yourself that you just had 15 minutes on the microphone when almost everyone in the room was listening to you; you can listen to this person. remind yourself that labels like Defensive As Hell, In Denial, and Pompous are less than helpful. recall that defensiveness is a cloak for fear and distress. don't you have empathy for that? don't you believe that white middle class people should converse with each other about issues of privilege? so listen.

plan b: if it becomes apparent that this "conversation" is actually you listening to a monologue, it's fair to attempt to share your own response. (do not use a condescending tone. even if you're annoyed. see plan a.) explain that you write from your own experience, and that although your own life has been and continues to be impacted by class and racial privilege, and that yes you did suggest that everyone white and middle class is also affected by class and racial privilege, you do recognize that everyone has a different experience.

plan c: if it becomes painfully obvious that this person is demonstrating some urgent unmet need, try asking "do you feel heard?" (yes, of course "heard" is not a feeling, but "do you think i'm listening to you?" will probably not evoke a positive response, regardless of your sincerity.) this may evoke some (more) defensiveness, as it will possibly prompt the person to consider several things:

why they're repeating themselves (just who are they trying to convince?)

how they're feeling (desperately uncomfortable?)

what it is that they want from you (absolution?)

plan d: if you run out of generousity, if you lose all sense of curiousity about this person's process, then just give up, and offer "shall we agree to disagree?"

be aware that however kindly you make this suggestion, it will likely be met with further aggression, as the implication is that you don't give a shit what they think. it will also end the interaction, which is what you need at this point. they're never going to believe that you didn't want to make them feel bad; by refusing to caretake for them you've confirmed that you're a self-righteous judgmental bitch. do your best to block them out for the duration of the evening and enjoy the rest of this radical feminist celebration of women in the arts.