Libraries are not all vanilla 

“The man who does not read has no advantage over 
the man who cannot read.” 
 Mark Twain

In the kingdom of consumption the citizen is king. A democratic monarchy: equality before consumption, fraternity in consumption, and freedom through consumption.
Raoul Vaneigem

Libraries are exciting spaces, believe it or not. I sell books to collection librarians and they are some of the most engaged, interesting and articulate individuals I work with in the publishing business. They are ardent book lovers, adamant about the knowledge, power and fun of reading and the value of free access. Librarians are excellent resource people in our culture, oft under appreciated, they have the uncanny ability to link community needs to big ideas, and can immediately put iany books or ideas that they encounter into the perspective of culture and global history. No mean feat.

There is a lot that goes in libraries besides reading dusty books. Libraries provide an alternative to corporatized culture, by providing a non-corporatized civic space. Free programming and skill building offer the chance for people to empower themselves, in a welcoming environment. A central space to  include new Canadians of all income brackets, they promote literacy, both as a value in society as well in families, by offering access to link people to books in all areas of their lives. For example, looking for a way to cook kale? Use a cookbook. Want to learn about a language? Get language CDs. Interested in building a resume or starting a club? Get a book to learn how.

Libraries also give us a space to interact with people who may not be from our own communities, or our own milieu. They have the power to democratize social relations, unlike Starbucks.

Calgary Public Library is one of the most heavily used libraries, per capita, in Canada. The new plans for Castell Central Library are going ahead, and they are seeking input from Calgarians
Go to their survey at http://calgarynewcentrallibrary.ca/

You will be asked what your priorities are for the library and what the new library can do for you.

As I filled out the survey, I imagined a beautiful and open access space, the library as civic landmark. It would centralize books, civic life, and the sharing of ideas in Calgarian consciousness via a free and open cultural space. My top priorities for this library then, in accordance with their categories on the surgery, are Arts and Culture, Lifelong Learning, Local Heritage, Civic Landmark and a Vibrant Space. I am hoping the new library will look like one of these fantastic library spaces, but this is getting my hopes up

Librarians are the keepers of our cultural knowledge. The internet is not a permanent nor neutral space. There is no accountability and it is driven by the market. Libraries are not driven by the market but are driven by larger social history both including and excluding the market.  For example, they store books that don't necessarily hit bestseller lists. And this is important because how can we know what it means to look at ourselves if we cannot see what we produced in times past? How can we know what it means to be a civic person, rather than a consumer, if we don't have any physical spaces that are about free and open access?

To me, the act of checking out books from libraries represents what Mark Kingwell calls participatory citizenship, defined as:

"...a new model of citizenship based on the act of participation itself, not on some quality or thought or right enjoyed by its possessor. This participatory citizenship doesn't simply demand action from existing citizens; it makes action at once the condition and task of citizenship." (The World We Want, p. 12)

By using libraries we are acting, and this action is a recognition of the value of the shared commons, a non commercial space for resources, ideas. It is also an act of recognizing the value of sharing our costs of housing such collections. We are recognizing the value of individual non-ownership as a conceptual space. We are recognizing the value of our shared past and the value of appointing librarians as keepers so as to make such an archive accessible and navigable in an intelligent systematic way.
Ultimately libraries are the embodiment of the value of equality and equal access, for everyone regardless of income, to the world of ideas.

If, in a kingdom of consumption, the citizen is supposedly king, then we, as kings, would all need an education to know how to rule ourselves; books are our path to such an education.
Such an education can never be had in such a kingdom where only that which gets published is that which supports the kingdom. Thus libraries and their non commercial space, as well as government grants, provide such a refuge.

An unwitting consumer without access to knowledge outside the system is not a ruler but is merely a tool- a tool of a system designed to exploit those very tools at the bottom.

Thus the library card, and its free passage to knowledge, is a shining jewel in such a kingdom and librarians become the gate keepers of our freedom.

Full immersion: Aesthetics and ethics and The Chronology of Water

 An extraordinary thing happened to me this spring. I stumbled upon a book that really challenged me. The Chronology of Water, a seemingly benign book, exposed cracks in my psychological assuredness, and forced me to examine a habit of avoiding pain in my life. I was not ready for it, but, ready or not, there it came.

       I sell books for a living. As a publisher sales representative, a lot of books come across my desk, thousands every year. I can never read them all and I must sell them based on catalogue descriptions, author notes, and reviews. I only read selectively. And, after hearing Powell’s Bookstore had sold 1000 copies of this one, I read the opening chapter. I then raved about it to a local bookstore to motivate them to hand-sell it. A woman I know, I will call her M., a discerning bookseller who works at the store, phoned me a week later at my office.

  “Heather, thank you for this book. I have never read anything like this before. What did you think of it?”

Embarrassed, I had to backtrack and explain that I had only read one tiny chapter. Thank goodness I was honest. She pleaded with me to read it all, saying she needed me to finish it so she would have someone to talk to. She said, “I am 50 years old and it changed me. I don’t understand what happened but I can’t stop thinking about it!”

       Uneasily, even a little resentfully, I read more. It was slow going, and so emotionally powerful I was a bit traumatized every time I opened it. Then one day I put the book aside to read later, when “I had more time”. Truthfully, I was afraid of it, but I didn’t realize that at the time.

       Then I was asked to read a work of creative nonfiction for a class and write a book review. In a fit of bravery, curiosity and obligation (to M., to the course, and to myself), I went back to The Chronology of Water. This time I read its short chapters slowly, each little dose jolting me, stirring forgotten pain, opening memories to my own past. I put it down frequently, to process, to ponder, to write in my journal. But it kept leading me in to its dangers and pleasures. This was unprecedented for me. Uncharted.

       Now I sit on the other side of that experience, struggling to put it into words. M. was right; after it was over I was dumbfounded. I had to call her at home to make sense of it. I was intrigued by how this small book had broken us open. Why were we so affected? This memoir of a girl surviving a painful childhood, reaching beyond her world as Olympic hopeful, is of a sister and daughter who lived as a drug user; but she is also a mother, an artist, a writer, a wife. It is told in fragments, with slant and specificity. It is edgy, often experimental. Many of the experiences have no mirror experiences in my own life. Yet somehow it transcended all its specificity, weirdness and experimentalism and connected both M. and me to our own memories, and to that which is universal. How did Yuknavitch do this?

       First, this is an exemplary work of non-fiction. Yuknavitch’s life is unusual. She struggles to overcome abuse, violence, horror, and self-harm; but there is also love, joy, and ordinary pleasures here as well. However, the real gems are in Yuknavitch’s originality in the telling: her style, narrative structure, and character portrayal, and the braiding of these so beautifully with metaphor. She achieves Carole Bly’s “ancient balance” between sensory experience and contemplation, and the book serves as memoir and commentary on time, memory, consciousness and identity

      Vividness is conveyed in the continually shifting prose, varying from enlightened insights to carnal sensuality. The continual switch from prose to poetry, intentionally speeding up and slowing down the reader’s pace, is not unlike the experience of a time warp in a car accident: action unfolds in micro-seconds, while the experience of time is weirdly elasticized. This plunges the reader into full immersion by centralizing the body in memory, and doesn’t rely upon the usual Cartesian mind-body separation. Lidia^⁠ brilliantly uses language to recreate these somatic experiences:

The day my daughter was stillborn, after I held the future pink and rose-lipped in my shivering arms, lifeless tender, covering her face in tears and kisses, after they handed my dead girl to my sister who kissed her, then to my first husband who kissed her, then to my mother who could not bear to hold her, then out of the hospital door, tiny lifeless swaddled thing, the nurse gave me tranquilizers and a soap and a sponge. She guided me to a special shower. The shower had a chair and the spray came down lightly, warm. She said, That feels good, doesn’t it. The water. She said, you are still bleeding quite a bit. Just let it. Ripped from vagina to rectum, sewn closed. Falling water on a body.

I sat on the stool and closed the little plastic curtain. I could hear her humming. I bled, I cried, I peed I vomited. I became water.(25)

We are inside the scene via a ruptured narrator, details relayed in hindsight and slanted by her pain. Hindsight offers not neutrality but insight into the symbolism in metaphors, these shaft down into a readers mind, as Carol Bly eloquently says, alighting a million satisfying connections. Indeed, this passage refracts my own remnant grief, igniting pain in the ballooning cavity that is my chest.

       Structurally, scenes are recounted out of time and place, and are not chronological.  This narrative choice is more satisfying because the meanings inside Lidia’s mind, not clock-time, dictate the linkages. Lidia starts the book in the middle of her life, at the stillborn birth, a metaphorical beginning. It is significant because it is grief that leads her to a writing class and eventually to this book. This structure, like my bookseller M. said, makes it feel like Lidia has somehow gotten inside of our own heads, inside our own structuring of memory.  It exemplifies Yukavitch’s incredible insight into the way memories are tenuously connected to the narratives that form our very identities.

       The book’s crucial elements, style, structure and language, link consistently to a central organizing metaphor: water. Water is a prominent substance in the events in the story as well. Lidia was a competitive swimmer and water was her balm: she used swimming as a healing activity and escape from her abusive home life. She and her sister shared lovely baths after their father’s destruction. Her father suffered a disabling drowning accident. Years later his ashes are committed to water.

       Water’s properties are also integral to the philosophical underpinnings behind the book. Like language, Lidia shows that our memories and our lives are watery, mutable and fragmented. In this way, we ourselves are changelings.

I thought about starting this book with my childhood, the beginning of my life. But that’s not how I remember it. I remember things in retinal flashes. Without order. Your life doesn’t happen in any kind of order. Events don’t have cause and effect relationships the way you wish they did. It’s all a series of fragments and repetitions and pattern formations. Language and water have this in common.(28)

       Water is also a suitable metaphor for what must be done together, author and reader, in the communion that is this book: to enter the turbulence and allow one’s self to float; to trust that immersion will carry us to a safe landing. Reading this book with open heart and mind is an expedition into those fearful waters of our own existence, and could lead to something wonderful. “I may have been a big fat failure at making a home, but I made up how to make something else in its place. Out of the sad sack of shit that was my life, I made a wordhouse” (191). 
We float on your wordhouse, Lidia. That wordhouse is both an act of creation and a safe place to reflect on life, yours and our own.

       Yet the wordhouse is her hideaway. She never uses her art to retreat, but uses it only to reframe truth. Thus, this book, as beautifully crafted as it is, goes beyond “craft fascism”. Lidia is engaged, always, in the world, in the ethics of judgment of right and wrong. Her wordhouse is the place for examining and articulating the truth that resides inside us as living bodies. From giving voice to those aspects of ourselves that remain unexamined, and embracing fearlessly her internal darkness, we begin to see a new possibility for truth, as existing within us in opposition to the dominant discourse. Her process is just the opposite of what Bly calls “immunity” in art, sought by aesthetes; it is more like a leaning into the full disaster of living.

       By reading this book we learn to be brave creatures. But we also steal a little from Lidia Yuknavitch. We live vividly with her memories in her wordhouse for a while. We use her language to connect to ourselves, and hopefully, to that which we love. We follow her charted course, reframing our own pain into a new story.

       And she gives us this most willingly. For me, her courage was the resounding wake-up to reflect upon my own unexamined pain. Lidia’s lasting gift then is her resounding sturdiness, and it is this that cleaved a tiny oasis for me to examine my life as Lidia would, and reconstitute my own story. Such wisdom and craft shows that Lidia Yuknavitch is a remarkable contributor to the culture and literature of our time.

      

Notes

---

Powell’s Bookstore in Portland, Oregon is one of the leading independent bookstores in the US.  http://www.powells.com/

M's conversation is reproduced with permission. March, 2012.

Craft Fascism is Aldo Alverez’s term for the retro approach to writing literature: an act of shoving aside of feelings in order to develop the craft of writing.

Bibliography

Bly, Carol. 2001. Introduction. In Beyond the writers workshop., xvii-xxiv. New York: Anchor Books.

———. 2001. Taking on three demanding situations first. In Beyond the writers workshop., ed. Carol Bly, 3-32. New York: Anchor Books.

Miller, Brenda, and Suzanne Paola. 2005. Tell it slant: Writing and shaping creative nonfiction. New York: McGraw Hill.

Yuknavitch, Lidia. 2010. The chronology of water. Portland: Hawthorne Books.

going back to school

I hear it is a trend lately - masses of adults hitting the books because they are re-questioning the course of their lives in lieu of the recession.
As much as I would like to believe that I am not a follower of the masses, in fact, I am just like everyone else and I have signed on to do graduate studies. I am taking my first university class in 14 years.  I am apprehensive and curious, and, frankly, a little intimidated.
I am not sure where this will take me. My course, a study of social theory in interdisciplinary studies, is not particularly "useful" as far as most everyone I talk to can tell, but it is fascinating. Already I have engaged in online forum discussions with other adult students who, like me, bring as much life experience to the role of student as academic experience. We write wiki posts. We share ideas. All is done online, which at first I found a bit daunting and cold. But, trying something new is good because I have completely changed my position on this. The advantage is clear: we don't have to all be in the same place at the same time. And it follows that it is more respectful of the breadth of my life, especially as an adult learner, and that breadth impacts what I bring to the material.
In addition the depth of discussion is in a different realm, much more intense than discussions I engage in ordinary life. No longer is my opinion merely valid because it is one opinion of many people's valid opinions, now I must have good strong critical arguments that I can justify my position based on their author's own terms, based on what he/she set out to achieve. Disagreeing with an author's position simply because I don't like his conclusions or her style is not enough for this level of discussion. Now I must disagree based on grounds of logic, clarity and rhetoric.
It is a new (and simultaneously, old) way to relate to books and a reminder of how little really deep thinking I get to do in my everyday life,. So many of my day-to-day discussions and readings (and blogs) are really "samplings" of ideas.
I look forward to continuing on with this, even with the challenges of fitting it into my already crammed schedule. It is informing me in all areas my life and I like that. But my life is also informing it, and I like that too. Now my next challenge is to find a way to turn it off: stop thinking about it and talking about it to all my friends!

Julie & Julia: savouring the nuances of life

I went to see Julie & Julia. It is a wonderful movie! I found it refreshing and original and of course, about two of my favourite topics: food & France

Of course on a deeper level, this movie was not just about food & France. Honestly, it resonated with me, and I would guess many other women, on different levels.

First I think it aptly describes some of the essential dilemmas of women's lives:

-Where are we to put our energy?

-How are we to maintain balance, within our own selves and outwardly in our lives, our careers, our relationships?

-How are we to find and make meaning?

-Who are our models and where is our support?

J&J each struggled with the core question of where to put their energy, and they both stumbled upon it by the simplest method: they made a conscious decision to do what they loved to do, regardless of the outcome. On a subtler lever this meant trusting that this simple connection to the outside world meant something important. That it was worth honouring, and in doing so each woman honours her self.

About balance: this has to be the biggest issue that I see with my women friends and my own life. J&J reminds the viewer to savour the sensory experiences of her own life, literally through food, but also by enjoying her relationship to her self as much as the relationships with those whom she loves. It is about balancing the inner life with the outer life. To let go of "doing" long enough to "be". How to live a subjective life, rather than being a mere observer of one's own life. J&J becomes essential advice for maintaining grace in difficult situations (read: how NOT to have meltdowns-advice I could have used in my twenties!). It is also about not being stuck "in your head" and learning to rely on other more "feminine" senses-intuitive, emotive, sensory-to guide us in our choices.

I loved each woman's relationship to her husband in the movie. Their husbands were their centre beam in their "house", their main support. Not because they were weak women, but the opposite. These men kept them "real" by encouraging them to listen to and trust their own, inner voice.

Another source of strength for the J&J characters in the movie were other women as role-models. Today we are so fortunate to have so many great women to look up to: women like Julia Child, who were leaders even in the most domestic of ways. Amelia Earhart, in a more unconventional way, is another of those women. I look forward to the forthcoming movie starring Hilary Swank (though too bad about Richard Gere playing Putnam-that really sucks). Other personal heroines that I have mentally asked the question " what would she do in this situation?": Barbara Kingsolver. Beryl Markham (you must read her wonderful book: West with the Night). Grace Kelly. Meryl Streep. Coco Chanel. Murielle Guiliano. My Nana.

The one common denominator among these women: they knew themselves and were not afraid to be themselves.

It is particularly interesting to me that J&J found their liberation from convention in the most conventional of pursuits, the 50's housewife's domain: the kitchen. For many women the kitchen represents subservience, tedium, dependence and overwhelm.

I was a staunch feminist in University and I stayed away from the kitchen as much as possible in my newlywed days, and a lot of my women friends still don't cook anything (or at least anything from scratch). I can understand this position. It isn't political for most of them, it is personal and more often just practical.

For me however, I now love to cook. My biggest moment of growing from girl to woman came at the surrender to this fact. I love looking in a fridge that supposedly contains "nothing" and being able to use my creative flair for frugality and exposure to other cultures to create a nutritious and beautiful meal. Cooking to me is liberating, powerful and life-affirming

Another thing I personally loved about this movie was the ultimate aim of the two main woman: both J&J focussed around one goal: getting published. Getting published in a book, with a real publisher and all the symbolism and value in that from sharing knowledge and bettering the world, to being validated. The book represents la creme de la creme

Being published on the internet is not life affirming. It is a popularity frenzy and a trend, a "movie of the week". It is impermanent & disposable, more like a magazine.

Books are permanent. The publisher's responsibility as gatekeeper and protector of proper language are especially of value today, in light of the crap being "published" on the internet (including, some would argue, this very blog!)

I see this as another aspect how books are a tactile form of idea-sharing and they are one of the most beautiful achievements of human civilization. Julia Child's wonderful book Mastering the Art of French Cooking can probably be found if you google the recipes online (I don't want to try), but it is just not the same. An E-Book, even if the e-version is available on my IPhone with a full complement of do-dads, is not the same. Electronics will never be the same as as the beautiful smell, feel and weight (and cooking stains) of a properly bound, solid, printed book.

So although this movie appears to be about food I think it is really about about courage: allowing one's self to be really out there in the world, living with passion and making the most of one's life within the limits we are given. And sometimes that looks pretty domestic, and I applaud this movie for being completely unapologetic for that.

So now I have ordered a copy of Mastering the Art of French Cooking (sheep that I am) because I have to try that amazing Boeuf Bourguignon recipe, Julie and Julia's first, and soon, hopefully, to be my new specialty

More activism: Poisonous BPA still in Del Monte cans

August 13, 2009
Dear Heather,

Thank you for your e-mail sharing your concerns about Del Monte Products. We're glad you took the time to contact us.

Del Monte Foods' #1 priority is the quality and safety of our products. All Del Monte Foods products are prepared and packaged using safe, FDA-approved processes and materials.

Our products come in a variety of packaging, including plastic cups, paper-based packaging and metal cans. Our plastic and paper-based packaging do not use or contain Bisphenol A (BPA). Like most in the industry, the metal cans we use for our consumer products are produced by a third-party vendor, and they use protective coatings which contain trace amounts of BPA. These coatings are used to prevent spoilage and protect food and beverages from direct contact with the can.

BPA is approved by the FDA for use in food contact applications, and for more than 40 years has played an essential part in food preservation. The safety of BPA has been approved by the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA), the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) and the World Health Organization (WHO), after rigorous review of scientific data. That said, we are aware that the FDA is currently re-evaluating its most recent position on the safety of BPA, and we are monitoring this closely.

Del Monte Foods is committed to providing high quality, nutritious and great tasting products to consumers. The use of BPA is an industry-wide matter, and we will continue to work closely with leading trade associations such as the Grocery Manufacturers Association and the International Food Information Council, to follow any developments in this area closely.

For more information on Bisphenol A (BPA), visit these Websites:

FDA: www.fda.gov.
IFIC: http://www.ific.org/publications/qa/bisphenolaqa.cfm
American Plastics Council: www.bisphenol-a.org
Grocery Manufacturers Association: www.gmabrands.com/publications/SciPol_Bisphenol.pdf

I appreciate the opportunity to respond and hope this information is helpful.

Niki, Del Monte Foods Consumer Affairs

letter to Prime Minister sent August 12 2009

To: Right Honourable Stephen Harper
James Moore, Minister of Canadian Heritage and Official Languages
Re: Government funding cutbacks to magazines with circulation of less than
5000

Dear Sirs
I wish to convey my deep disagreement with this policy of cutting funding to
small magazines. Magazines are a consistent and flowing representation of
ideas & culture, and an effective way to share ideas in an affordable and
almost democratic format (because they are relatively inexpensive, mostly
widely available and made up of writings from established as well as new
voices).
I believe that a rich culture involves including
voices from all corners of the country. By your policy, effectively killing
off magazines that appeal to the 'minority',
you effectively silence the voice of that minority. It is precisely
those magazines that need funding, because
they don't appeal to advertisers with deep pockets (who would often censor
editorial content).

Do you realize that virtually every literary magazine in this country
will disappear as a result
of your policy? Once again the conservative government has shown that the
only voice that has any credibility is the voice of the mainstream and the
voice of the corporation, mass media conglomerates that fit in with your
cultural ideals. Almost all evolution of culture since Ancient Greece
started with writings from new fringe voices, and you are silencing these
voices. This is not progress.

A homogeneous culture is not the cultural aim for most Canadians, and
by pandering to the circulation numbers you effectively make it the
policy of our government to legitimize the majority and
de-legitimize minority viewpoints. This is bordering on cultural censorship
in my viewpoint

I want you to know for the record that I did NOT vote for this
Heather Parsons
Calgary AB T2T0G7

public meeting : save the Historic Brewery!

From the Calgary Heritage Initiative

Calgary’s heritage community and the Inglewood Community Association are
hosting a Town Hall Meeting dedicated to the Calgary Brewing and Malting
Company. In view of the recent demolition application for the historic
site, we are arranging a panel of presenters and providing the community
and public with an opportunity to discuss the situation.

July 16, 7 pm at the Inglewood Community Hall, 1740, 24th Avenue SE. An
RSVP by July 14 is appreciated. Reguster online at
http://www.calgarycommunities.com/events.php
or call 244-4111.

- Celebrate the history of the brewery, founded in 1892 by "Big Four"
rancher A.E. Cross, and its importance in the development of Calgary – a
major industry, western Canada’s first salt water aquarium, Horsemen’s
Hall of Fame Museum.

- Learn first hand about the brewery’s social importance to the working
class roots of the community once known as Brewery Flats - a good employer
for local families through good times and bad, the local gardens,
recreation at the fish hatchery and trout ponds.

- Ask questions about the next steps which are planned for the site. The
site is listed as Category A on Calgary’s Inventory of Evaluated Historic
Resources. The Ministry of Alberta Culture and Community Spirit issued a
Historic Resource Impact Assessment Order to evaluate the site to
determine its significance and integrity and to provide recommendations.

- Share and discuss ideas regarding the public value of this site, and
find out how to be part of the solution.

Free and open to the public, refreshments will be provided. Please pass
this information along and plan to attend!

Here is a link to a more information and posters:

http://www.calgaryheritage.org/phpbb/posting.php?mode=editpost&p=1707

Or go direct to www.calgaryheritage.org