Disability

Last year I got onto Ontario Disability Support Payments because I have Asperger's Syndrome.  Do I deserve it? Maybe, maybe not.  The important thing is that I'm getting it.  If I'd know the system better I might have got onto it a decade earlier, but I don't care.  I have bigger concerns than money.

As someone with Asperger's Syndrome, some people would say I'm on the autistic spectrum.  I don't care for that terminology so much, because compared to low-functioning autistics, my problems look pretty small.

I'm sure glad I don't have a real disability like being blind or needing a wheelchair.  I'd hate to depend on other people, even for just little things.

I have a friend Ann, who suffers from dyslexia.  Once I took a big risk by telling her this joke: "What does DNA stand for?  National Dyslexics Association!" Fortunately, she loved the joke, but she might have been offended.  I mustn't make a habit of such gambling.

In my mother's last years, when we went somewhere and were walking to the car, she'd hold onto my arm for dear life!  I now remember that when I was little I must have held her arm in much the same way.  What comes around goes around.

Prejudice

NYC cabbie: "There are two things I hate--prejudice and Puerto Ricans!"

As a man, maybe I'm not in a position to talk about sexism.  But I remember when I was little reading a children's book about Annie Sullivan, who taught language to Helen Keller.  She had a very difficult childhood:  trachoma damaged her eyesight, her father took to drink, her mother died of TB, and she ended up in an appalling poorhouse with her little brother, who died there. (The poorhouse flour had weevils in it!) But she got a break and ended up in a Boston school for the vision-impaired.

A few years later she read that the state was conducting public hearings into their poorhouses, so she went to one. (Nothing changed.) But the school's directors were furious with her and threatened to expel her.  Back in the 1880s it wasn't considered "ladylike" to attend a public hearing. (And she hadn't even spoken, just listened!) Fortunately, she was allowed to stay.

Why do I mention this? Because reading this story was really the first time that I got a sense of how unfair society could be to women and girls.

We all have some prejudices. Courage is being afraid but overcoming your fear; wisdom is being prejudiced but overcoming that!

My favourite place

If I could be in one place right now, I'd choose the National Gallery in London (preferably during opening hours). And the section that I'd be in is the eastern one with the 18th-century paintings.  There's so much to talk about there!  Like this really cute French paintings of parents and their children sipping chocolate.  I especially like the Gainsboroughs, like this portrait of a couple out for a stroll, with an expression as if they own the place! (They probably do...)

I also like Elizabeth Vigee-La Brun's self portrait, and Goya's portrait of the Duke of Wellington.  Goya managed to strip away the vainglory and show a haunted man. (I can well believe that he once said, "A battle lost is the only thing worse than a battle won.")

One I particularly remember is by Joseph Wright, showing a scientific demonstration where they put a bird in a chamber and pump the air out to show that he can no longer fly (or live). Some little girls are watching with an expression of sheer horror--one of them has turned away.  They haven't developed the sang-froid of English grownups.  Or maybe they see what's happening too clearly!

Beautiful sunrise

Sometimes I think about all the sunrises I've missed from not waking up early like farmers do.  But that's life.  If I always went to bed before sunset I'd think about all the sunsets I missed.

I've seen a really clever movie titled Tequila Sunrise after the cocktail.  It's about restaurant hostess Michelle Pfeiffer getting involved with both retired drug dealer Mel Gibson and drug cop Kurt Russell.

There's stuff that's so complicated you can only figure it out through repeated viewings.  Like the scene where Mel mentions that he manufactures irrigation hoses that you bury so the water will slowly seep into the soil. Later, near the climax, there's a scene where he and the drug kingpin are in Mel's boat and it's forced to stop because the fuel line is leaking.  I eventually realized that Mel must have replaced his fuel line with one of those hoses so the boat would be forced to stop and it would look like an accident!

There's some great dialogue too.

Kingpin: "Don't worry, Buddy.  We won't kill the girl unless you agree." Mel: "And if I don't agree?" "Then we keep talking until you do!"

Kingpin: "I could see this coming all along--cocaine is no damned good for anyone!  Grass is the future, Buddy--grass!"

And there's a scene where the drug cops are observing Mel's beach party disguised as pet control officers, but they don't fool him: "Wrong-size handcuffs!"

Home

I haven't changed my residence much.  When I was young my father was a university professor and every seven or nine years he'd go on sabbatical and we'd live in Brighton, England, or Glasgow, Scotland or Mississauga.  But most of my first 28 years I spent at 8 West Ave. in Sackville, New Brunswick.  And with one exception I've spent the last 25 years at 92 Greensides Avenue here in Toronto.

That exception came in 1995 when I spent eight months in London, England, researching my Ph.D. thesis.  It was the best eight months of my life!  In hindsight, I suppose it was like in aboriginal cultures where a young man goes off without warning on a vision quest, wandering nowhere in particular for an indefinite period of time, to figure out what he himself is all about.  But I'm still not completely sure what I'm all about...

Someone said that great writers tend to live in one place, which I can believe is conducive to settling down and articulating your thoughts.  (I may become a great writer yet...) Eudora Welty spent her whole long life in her original home!  Then again people often lived like that in olden times.

Cell phones

I only got a cell phone last spring.  Getting it registered was a frustrating business.  I had to bring in some government ID, but I don't have a driver's license and they don't accept health cards, so I had to go home and get my passport for them.

I got it just before visiting London, England. (I've gone there seven times in the last couple of decades.) One useful thing is the camera feature: I got to take quite a few pictures of the city.  I eventually used it to phone home, though that was hard to figure out.  I still haven't got into the habit of carrying it around.

Some people use their cells to go online or play computer games on the road.  I don't dare do that because for me going out is a time to get away from all that.  There lies the path to madness!

Whenever I hear someone talking on his cell, for a moment I wonder if he's talking to me!

Coyotes

I've never seen a coyote.  I have seen the cartoons with Wile E. Coyote chasing the Roadrunner and always coming to grief. (He got his gadgets from the Acme company!) He never talked.

But he did talk in the really funny cartoon Operation:  Rabbit, in which he chased Bugs Bunny.  At the start he goes up to Bugs and says: 

I'm a coyote and you're a rabbit and I'm going to eat you....  I'm bigger and faster than you, and I am a genius, while you could hardly pass the entrance examinations to kindergarten!

(Bugs says, "Sorry, mac, the missus ain't home, and besides, we sent you people a cheque last week!")

Of course, he gets outsmarted by Bugs at every turn, and at the end he comes up to Bugs punch-drunk and says "My name is mud!" before collapsing.  Bug gets the closing line: "And remember, mud spelled backward is dumb!" Those cartoons had some great dialogue!

Ever see The Last Waltz, Martin Scorsese's movie about the last concert by The Band?  Joni Mitchell steals the show with a song about a coyote!

Racism

NYC cabbie: "There are two things I hate--prejudice and Puerto Ricans!"

I guess that being white and all, I'm not in much of a position to talk about racism.  I remember that in Grade 2 one of my classmates was a brown-skinned Indonesian boy that a local minister had adopted as a missionary.  At that stage of my development, I didn't yet think of him as non-white.  I guess that racial identity emerges at a later age, at least for people like me.

I'm lucky to be living in Canada instead of the United States, where racism is very tangible.  And some politicians there exploit racist feelings in subtle ways.  I remember when President Clinton introduced a crime bill and Republicans attacked the provision funding midnight basketball games to prevent crime. (They were clearly playing the race card.)

If the USA's dirty secret is class identity, France's dirty secret is racism.  Government policy there is officially colour-blind:  official statistics never include ethnic categories.  But as often happens in France, there's a big gap between theory and practice.  What it effectively means is that unofficial racial discrimination is widespread but the problem doesn't get acknowledged because they can't get the statistics to prove it!

People I've admired

When I was a teenager, I didn’t have a lot of heroes. But I did admire Johnny Rotten of the Sex Pistols.  I didn’t even listen to punk rock that much! But its “Dare to be negative” philosophy really appealed to me.

One historical figure I admire is Mohandas K. Gandhi, the Mahatma.  He was an example of what Max Weber called “charismatic authority.” Granted, he was a kook even by India’s liberal standards.  He was the sort of guy who slept with young women just to test his chastity! (He occasionally failed.) But it took a kook to force the British to leave India.  In some ways his ideas were ahead of his time, as in his disapproval of conspicuous consumption.

I’m not religious myself, but I sometimes admire religious figures like the Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu.

What politicians do I admire?  Back in the 1980s I admired New York Governor Mario Cuomo.  Today I admire Bernie Sanders.  He’s a genius who’s managed to stay half inside and half outside the system. (If he’d won the Democratic nomination, he’d probably have trounced Donald Trump!) And Jeremy Corbyn and Jagmeet Singh also seem to be men of principles.  I also admire Ralph Nader. (So sue me!)

British TV shows

There are some excellent British TV series.  Just now I'm watching the royal biography The Crown.  Back in the '60s, when American TV was producing series like Gilligan's Island, the British were making shows like The Avengers and Doctor Who and The Prisoner.

I've liked a lot of the British shows on Masterpiece Theatre, like Upstairs, Downstairs, though it's only in the third season that it really hits its stride. (I read somewher that servants in those rich households actually didn't see much of each other!) Other Masterpiece Theatre series I've liked include I, Claudius, The Jewel in the Crown and Fortunes of War.

Even TV criticism can be at a somewhat higher standard than in America.  I remember this critic who wrote a weekly column and once mentioned the mediocre detective show Bergerac.  At the end of his column, he wrote, "If I had more space I'd write about Bergerac.  I've been meaning to do that one of these weeks."

Of course, British TV isn't all excellent.  I recall this sitcom from the '70s titled Mind Your Language. (On those Britcoms they'd play applause over the closing credits, emphasizing the stage element.) It was about an Englishman teaching English as a second language to a bunch of foreign stereotypes:  the sexy Frenchwoman, the Chinese radical, the East Indian Moslem and Hindu always quarrelling.  Paradoxically, it's unfunny in such a dated way that it's hilarious!