Bicycles

I haven't ridden a bicycle for decades.  I was about ten when I learned, and it wasn't so easy for me.  Today some people have recumbent three-wheelers where you don't have to keep balanced.  I wish I'd had one of those!  Back then I didn't notice anyone wearing bicycle helmets like today. (They still don't wear them in places like Holland.)

Does it bother me when a cyclist brushes past me on the sidewalk? On the scale of annoyances, to me it's pretty minor.  I can understand them wanting to stay off the dangerous city streets.  North American cities aren't as bike-friendly as in Europe, though Toronto has improved a bit. (In Holland, bike paths have their own traffic lights!) I guess that in North American culture there's a popular view that bikes are for kids and cars are for grownups.

There are lots of bicycles in places like China.  Some third-world planners associate them with underdevelopment (like rickshaws), which is a shame.  India has a lot taxis powered by pedals.  In some places they're banning bikes to make more room for cars, and it's sad to see other countries repeating our mistakes.

Someday they ought to design a recumbent three-wheel bicycle with a mast and sail!

Italian food and culture

I love good Italian food!  When I was young we ate spaghetti often, but we didn't start eating lasagna till I was a teenager. (When I was little I saw a movie from the '30s with Shirley Temple learning to eat spaghetti:  back then it was still an "ethnic" food.) In more recent years, I've learned to make fettuccine alfredo, from a recipe on a calendar promoting milk.  I'm told I make it well.

I love Italian culture too.  I know a bit of the language:  when you know enough French and Latin, the other romance languages get easier to learn. (It's the same with Spanish and Portuguese.) I played the piano when I was young, and learned at lot of Italian musical directions that way.  I'm a fan of Italian opera, of course.  And there are a lot of Italian movies I love.  Directors like Vittorio di Sica know how to make honestly sad movies (not manipulative tearjerkers like Love Story and Titanic). The Bicycle Thief was so sad that I don't think I could ever see it again.

I've never actually visited Italy. (I guess I should add it to my bucket list.) One place I'd like to visit there is Bomarzo Gardens, a place near Rome full of grotesque Renaissance statues.  If I ever make a billion dollars, I'll build a Canadian version.

The weatherman

My father follows the weather forecast on TV and online, but I don't.  My only exposure to it happens when I'm in subway stations and see the monitors that show the time, and also the temperatures expected over night and in the coming days.

Bad weather really doesn't bother me.  The key thing is that I know I can't do anything about it, so there's no shame in not caring. (I feel the same way about getting older.) What gets to me is all the problems that I feel I should be doing something about, but I'm not sure what.

The comedian George Carlin used to play Al Sleet the Hippy-Dippy Weatherman.  He's say things like "The forecast for tonight is:  Dark," or "The weather today is 70 degrees at the airport, which is pretty stupid, because I don't know anyone who lives at the airport!" My mother loved that routine, though she didn't think as much of his later stuff like "The seven words you can't say on TV."

USA! USA!

When I was a kid, my brother was often complaining about American propaganda on the TV. (I didn't care much one way or the other.) I recall the cheesy '50s series The Adventures of Superman, where the opening credits would end with the line "He stands for Truth, Justice, and the American Way!" showing the Man of Steel with the Stars & Stripes flapping behind him.  That always gave me a laugh.  Americans as a group can be so full of themselves!

I remember the spur of American patriotism that followed 9/11.  The response of many Americans to the disaster embodied an odd combination of self-pity and self-congratulation.  Some of them asked, "Why are we hated?" but in most cases this was just a rhetorical question, from people who didn't want to hear any answer that didn't have a pro-American spin.  Which only left a self-serving answer: "They hate us for our freedoms!" That isn't completely wrong, but it definitely misses the point:  there are nations just as free as the U.S. that don't get nearly as much hate.

It's fashionable among some Americans to say, "The French were cowards in World War II and us brave Americans had to save them!" Of course, back in September, 1939, the French actually went to war against Germany, while the Americans hid behind arrogant neutrality for two long years until Hitler finally declared war on them.  Who was braver at that time?  I don't really care who fought Germany when, but I'm disgusted by hypocrisy.  People just forgetting history isn't as big a problem as remembering selectively, according to which parts make your country look good.

Sailboats

When I was young we had a Mirror dinghy that we'd built at home from a kit.  It had a mainsail and a jib, and a rudder with a tiller, but no spinnaker sail like some small boats have.  You could remove the mast and spars and just use it as a rowboat.  We took it to our cottage to sail it.  We also took it to Cape Breton on a vacation.

Sailing is all a bit too complicated for me.  I remember the teacher in school showing us different kinds of sailing ships on the blackboard.  I understood that a catboat had just one sail, but more complicated stuff like sloops and schooners went over my head.  I still find it a mystery how they shift sails and tack and catch the wind currents and cross whole oceans.

Arts & music festivals

In my hometown of Sackville, N.B., they'd have a musical festival every March.  My mother told me that at one festival event  she heard someone playing a piano and said to a stranger, "That piano's really out of tune!" It turned out that she was talking to the piano tuner! (That's what the English call "dropping a brick.")

I remember that in Grade 2 my class was going to sing a song in some competition at the festival. (I don't remember what the song was.) But on the day when we were going to sing, there was a bomb scare!  They spent the whole day searching the place for a bomb, and we didn't get to sing our song.  Some teenager went to Juvenile Court for causing the scare.  That's when I learned that life isn't fair.

One year I sang in a competition, with a song about an aspiring sailor, with the line, "I'll bring you a parrot in a cage when I sail my ship back home!"  The winner had a way better song than mine.  It went, "We are the King's men, hale and hearty, marching to meet our Bonapartey!"

I also played piano in a few competitions.  But I didn't really care for that:  the adjudicator's criticisms would get to me.  But my sister Moira was a good pianist and competed in festivals in Saint John and Halifax as well as Sackville.

Embarrassing moments

My sisters used to read Young Miss magazine. (It's now called YM.) One of its running features was called "Was My Face Red!" in which girls wrote in and described their most embarrassing experiences.  One girl mentioned the time that people were visiting her house but she was dressed shabbily, so she hid in the closet to avoid them.  Of course they opened up the closet and saw her inside!  Stories like that.

I try not to think about my own embarrassing moments.  I suppose I've gone through a few that are so embarrassing I don't want to write about them here.  So sue me.

One kind of person that really annoyed me in school (and still does today!) was the sort who'd notice when you brought embarrassment on yourself, then remind you of it later just to be mean.  It's the old "Hit him where it hurts" instinct.