The Scots & the Irish

My mother was highlands Scottish from Cape Breton.  Her mother spoke Gaelic before English and her father probably did too. (My father's part Scottish.) My mother's maiden name was Nicholson, and I've visited the Nicholson clan monument on Scotland's Isle of Skye.  I also have ancestors from the Outer Hebrides, which I've also visited.

I'm really interested in Scottish culture.  A few years ago, I read the book How the Scots Invented Canada.  I've found the website whole.co.uk which will translate regular English into dialects like Scots.  Lately I've started translating some English poems into Scots:  free-form blank verse like Walt Whitman and Carl Sandburg translates best into dialect because you don't have to worry about rhyme and rhythm.  Edgar Lee Masters' Spoon River Anthology is well-suited, both in format and theme. (I ought to buy Masters' book and translate all his poems.) I guess part of the reason I'm doing this is to get closer to my mother since her death.

As for the Irish, I definitely love Irish music.  I used to watch the Irish Rovers' TV show faithfully.  I also watched a show with Tommy Makem and the Canadian group Ryan's Fancy.  I like Makem's serene version of the song "Will Ye Go, Lassie?" The Irish people have had an often tragic history and it shows, paradoxically, in their humour. (My mother once said that the tragedy of the Scottish people is that too many of them are yes-men.) And I love Irish writers like William Butler Yeats and James Joyce.

Breakfast

What do I eat for breakfast?  On a typical day I'll have an orange, a banana, an apple and a carrot in that order. (I try to avoid eating the carrot just after the banana, but I'm not even sure why!) Cereal I prefer to eat at lunchtime, and fried foods are too much trouble in the morning.  I prefer not to eat bacon because I spend half the time just trimming off the fat--back bacon is better in that respect.  

My sister sometimes eats bagels, but they don't appeal to me.  Neither does granola, which I recall my brother used to eat.  I don't eat toast but I like the smell.

In New York City they have restaurants with really lavish breakfast spreads.  My sister says her only reason for visiting New York would be to have a big New York breakfast, but you can get it in Toronto too.  They also have places here where you can get a British breakfast, including beans and sausages and pastries.

Remember those TV commercials for sugar-coated cereals?  At the end they'd show a bowl of the cereal beside other breakfast fare and call it "part of this nutritious breakfast." It helps that everything else is nutritious, of course.

I once saw this video of classroom films which included Why Won't  Cathy Eat Breakfast? produced by the National Dairy Council.  They never do answer the question, but my theory is that when she grows up she wants to become a supermodel!

Failure

I guess our failures define us more than our successes.  Winning the Civil War didn't shape the North the way defeat has shaped the South.  We always remember "the one that got away."

I haven't failed often, but that's partly because there've been many times when I didn't even try.  I look back to writing my Ph.D. thesis over fifteen years ago.  Though I got my degree in the end, I still felt that somehow it hadn't been as good as I hoped it would be.  It's like the scene in Easy Rider where Dennis Hopper says "We did it!" but Peter Fonda says "We blew it." Maybe that's a common feeling among Ph.Ds.  I might have become a teacher, but I truly felt finished with academia.

Since finishing my Ph.D., I'll admit I haven't done much with my life.  In that Langston Hughes poem "Mother to Son" (where she says "Life for me ain't been no crystal stair,") there's a line that goes: "Don't sit down on the steps because you think it's kinda hard." I suppose I've been sitting on the steps.  I'm unemployed, but I haven't made a serious effort to get a job.  And I haven't really tried to get a girlfriend either.  But I have stayed active.  My mother once said that I'm too busy to work!

Making desserts

Once in my foolish youth my brother dared me to eat a whole can of cherry pie filling.  And I did!

When I was little I learned to make Jello. (For a variation, you can put it into the freezer instead of the fridge, so it comes out icy!) Then IU learned to bake cakes from Duncan Hines mixes:  they had flavours like burnt sugar!  I haven't done that in recent years.  I read that when they first came out with these instant cake mixes back in the '50s, the recipe originally didn't require adding an egg.  But the marketers figured out that they should include the egg so housewives wouldn't feel like they were "cheating" on dessert, because this way it seemed more like a true "recipe."

Today I make superb gingerbread.  I use a recipe from Craig Claiborne's New York Times Cookbook.  The first thing you do is add vinegar to the milk and put it aside to make it curdle.  The hardest part is "creaming," where you add the sugar to the shortening little by little, mixing it in so the result will be smooth.  I figured out that before measuring out the molasses, the smart thing is to put a little oil in the measuring cup and spread it around so that it covers the whole inner surface.  That way, little of the molasses will stick to the measuring cup afterward!

With a whisk, I can take on the world!

War

It isn't that I'm anti-war so much, but I'm more anti-prowar. (There's a difference.) I suppose a "good" war is at least theoretically possible, but the depressing thing is that for one side to be fighting a good war, that requires the other side to be fighting a bad one.  If only both sides could be in the right! (On the other hand, looking at the 1982 Falklands War, I wish both sides could have lost.  Jorge Luis Borges compared it to "two bald men fighting over a comb.")

But I'll say this much for war:  sometimes a guy will become a hero who'd otherwise be a loser all his life.  It's an ill wind that blows nobody any good, and even the most terrible wars produce winners.  I have a theory that war functions as an outlet for all the craziness that accumulates in a society.  It's appropriate that London's Imperial War Museum is in a building that used to be a mental institution.

Consider the case of Canada entering World War II.  In taking Britain's side so quickly, we took a more honourable course than the Americans, who waited two long years till Hitler declared war on them. (And some of them have the nerve to call the French cowards!) If I'd been an M.P. in 1939, how would I have voted?  If I thought that the vote was going to be close, I'd probably have voted yes.

But it was never going to be close, so I would have voted no just to show the government that they weren't getting a blank cheque.  As it is, I'm glad J.S. Wordsworth prevented the vote from being unanimous.  He warned that entering the war would put Canada on a slippery slope, and I see that happening today with Canada's campaign against Islamists in Syria.

Soldiers have my respect.  I couldn't do what they do every day, even in peacetime.  Our troops are serving us even when our government sends them on the wrong missions.  But I despise governments that hide behind the soldiers they're endangering, playing the "Support Our Troops" card to pre-empt criticism of their military policies.

As long as there's fear, there'll be war.

July

July is the hottest time of the year, what with the "dog days." Back when we lived in New Brunswick and had a big garden, the crops would be growing but not quite ready for eating, except for radish sometimes.  All we could do was water and weed it.

July is also the time of Canada Day, which was called Dominion Day when I was little.  If you ask me, it should be called Confederation Day.  Our town would put on a parade then.

In recent years, July has been the time of the Salsa on St. Clair Festival, which happens on the street just next to where I live.  As you can imagine, it gets very noisy.  So I always try to find somewhere else to go then. (I have sensitive ears!) That's even though I can actually salsa a little.