Supervised Journey

...taken by Martina Brandstetter (from news.bbc.co.uk)

Eating Plasticine and Getting Paid for It

There was an incident in my classroom last week in which a student held up a ball of plasticine and announced to his table group, “Who will pay me to eat this?”

Upon hearing this, I rolled my eyes and said, “G, no one’s eating plasticine and no one’s paying you.” I turned away, thinking the issue was done.

Not so. G. found a buyer who slipped him a twoonie to eat the non-toxic glob of moulding clay (thankfully it was non-toxic – I had to rummage for the package to check this). This from a kid who refuses to eat oranges at the bottom of the snack bin because too many kids’ hands have come in contact with them.

Now, when I was at school, I remember there was a boy who ate glue. And I seem to remember stories about the slightly socially-off kids eating chalk and the dried macaroni from art projects. But to eat gross things for money? Isn’t that going a bit far?

A colleague pointed out that this could be a result of those shows like Fear Factor where people perform unsavoury feats in order to win large amounts of money at the end. Fear Factor came at the beginning of the reality show craze and sparked several editorials about the “dumbing down” of television. What happened to showing off your knowledge during Jeopardy? What about figuring out a phrase with only a few letters, a la Wheel of Fortune? Has the current generation of children been dumbed down so much that earning money by doing disgusting things is now perfectly normal?

Then I remembered a guy I knew in high school, who happened to be in the Gifted programme, who drank a concoction of gravy, ketchup, vinegar and pop for two dollars in grade ten. So maybe it’s just the joy of being gross that some people possess. Maybe kids have always found it fun to partake of repellent pursuits (it would certainly explain many university hazing activities). Maybe eating plasticine is an easy way to make a couple of bucks.

Two Birds...

A hospital porter completes two jobs in one, moving a patient, and bags of equipment, from an old wing to a new one at the Huaxi hospital in Chengdu, China. (from news.bbc.co.uk)

Earlsfield, March 14th

Lyla looks up at the clock which hangs over the large stone fireplace, thick wooden beams creating a mantelpiece across the front, and catches herself. The clock says quarter to nine, as it has for the past 3 years she has been coming to this pub. She pulls back her sleeve to check her watch: twenty minutes past five, he is late.

She turns her eyes to the television screen which broadcasts the highlights of a cricket match. Lyla has always like cricket, but never been able to watch it for the extended periods of time that Sam does. She takes a sip of her pint and sits back on the bench.

The door opens and Sam enters, coat over his head – it must have started to rain again. He lets it fall back around his shoulders as he scans the room. Lyla watches his face until his eyes stop on hers and his mouth settles into a smile. She loves that smile – it means he’s left the day behind.

“Sorry I’m late,” says Sam as he stoops to kiss Lyla. It has become his standard greeting.

“Don’t worry,” she replies, closing her eyes briefly, smelling his skin.

Sam takes off his coat and hangs it over the back of the wooden chair. “You alright for a drink?” he asks.

“Fine,” smiles Lyla.

She watches him find his way to the bar, loose fleece covering his broad shoulders, his hair never properly combed. When she sees the barmaid fix her eyes on Sam, Lyla takes another sip of her beer and turns back to the cricket.

Bite the Wax Tadpole

From the brochure of a car rental firm in Tokyo:

"When passenger of foot heave in sight, tootle the horn. Trumpet him melodiously at first, but if he still obstacles your passage, then tootle him with vigour."

More Money vs. More Holidays

I come from a family of teachers and have myself entered the profession, so I am no stranger to frequent and lengthy vacations. And I consistently get snide comments about my schedule being 9 until 3 with summers off, to which I smile and answer, "yeah, it's a sweet gig". But I truly feel holiday time is an essential part of human existence. And not just a teacher's existence.

This post is not meant to be defensive, detailing my need for these holidays because "I work so hard and I'm so stressed out." I can think of many other people who work harder and longer than me and have fewer holidays. But I think those people have got it all wrong. Humans need downtime - those hours after work, days on the weekend, and weeks in a holiday - to recharge their emotional batteries, to restore their health (both mental and physical) and to take time for themselves.

A sociological study was done (can't remember where I read about it) in which workers in France and the United States were offered either a substantial increase in their wages, or a substantial increase in their vacation time. The vast majority of the French workers chose more vacation time, while the Americans mostly chose the increase in wages. And I believe that just like with their bread, wine and cheese, the French have got it right. They truly see the value of downtime (and anyone who's spent several hours at a table outside a southern French cafe, would agree).

Last time I checked, the French started at four weeks vacation in the first year of any job. The same applies to Australians, who, after 15 years in the same job, are entitled to "Long Service Leave" during which they get 13 weeks of PAID vacation. So why do Canadians (as I believe we are more like our American neighbours in this aspect) and Americans place a higher value on money than on vacation?

I don't actually know the answer to this question. I don't know why people are compelled/forced/guilted into working way more than they should. Perhaps I am just lazy, or don't love what I do enough, but I believe that work is only a part of one's life and should never fully define who you are. So take some time for yourself. Don't put in that extra hour at work. Book yourself a nice holiday in the sun. Find yourself a sweet gig where holidays are a valued part of the work experience.

Can't believe March Break was so short. Not sure why we don't get two weeks at Easter. When does summer vacation start?

Thanks to:

http://longermusings.blogspot.com
whose musings for today inspired this post.

Random Photo Silliness

The name of a mountain biking trail at Kelso Conservation Area.

Caption Contest Winner

And the winner is..... Sarah!




Look, I'm sorry alright, it's just the guys at the club always called you people Pakis. I didn't know it was a big deal, ok? Can someone take the cricket bat out of my shirt now? Guys?

More Political Funnies

...from Rick Mercer's blog

Rick Mercer

Grave Digger

"It must be a very quiet workday."
"Someone in your position must have a lot of people under you."
"At least the customers don’t complain!"


These are just some of the comments I used to hear from people when I would mention that I worked at a cemetery. Others weren’t so good-humored. I sometimes would get looks of consternation and repugnance upon my admission, followed by the question, “You don’t bury people, do you?”

Well, yes I did.

I first became employed at a cemetery in the east end of Toronto doing landscape work in the summers during university. Myself and a small army of my peers spent eight hours a day, from May to August, cutting grass, planting flowers, trimming hedges and weeding beds. It was monotonous, tiring work that was made bearable by the intense camaraderie between the student workers as well as the staff’s outlandish sense of humour.

But when September came and my bank account was not as full as it should have been, I asked the cemetery manager if there was any work on the weekends during the rest of the year.

“Well, there’s cleaning to be done,” he said.

Perfect, I thought. Easy.

“And you can help out with any weekend funerals.”

Oh.

And so just like that, I became Toronto’s first female gravedigger. (That the guys I worked with had ever heard of.)

Being the only female in a work environment is hard enough, never mind when the work is physical and some of the employees are closed-minded. There were several rolled eyes when the boys found out that I had been hired to help them dig graves. Granted, I needed to pump a bit more iron before I could effectively manoeuvre the jackhammer (needed to drill into frozen Canadian soil in February), but I learned to drive the tractor and backhoe, operate the waterpump, and move 200-pound gravestones using a metal lever as good as any man.

My first few funerals went smoothly – we dug the graves, stood in the background during the burial, and filled in the grave once the mourners had dispersed. I ran into my first spot of trouble one mild January day when we had to hand dig a grave in a rather crowded section of the cemetery. The ground had thawed and was therefore very wet, so when we started to dig, the grave filled with water almost immediately and soon the sides began caving in. The bottom of the grave was a pit of thick, muddy water. Thanking our lucky stars we had started early, we set the water pump in motion, scooped out as much mud as we could and covered the soggy bottom of the hole with leaves to disguise the muck.

When the mourners arrived, they began filing through the headstones, when all of a sudden the widow yelled out, “They’ve got the wrong plot! It’s in the wrong place!” My boss and I exchanged worried looks, not even wanting to consider what would happen next if we’d made a mistake. A kind relative came to the rescue and reassured the widow that the plot was the correct one, and the service proceeded.

The icing on the cake was when the widow passed out onto the wet grass as the mourners began to shovel earth into the grave. I leaned over to my boss and whispered, “Now there is officially nothing else that can go wrong today.”

Then there was the time we were digging a grave in front of a double monument. The left side was engraved with the details of the husband who had died and been buried several years before. Naturally, we began to dig in front of the right side of the headstone, which was blank. About four feet down, we hit a wooden box and soon realized that the engraver had engraved the wrong side of the gravestone. We quickly filled in the grave and dug in front of the left side, leaving the problem up to the monument maker.

People often ask me if I found it sad watching all those people bury their loved ones. You do acquire a professional distance that comes with dealing with something so emotional on such a regular basis – I’m sure social workers and palliative care nurses must step outside themselves to do their jobs. But there was one funeral that did affect me more than the others. It was a funeral for a baby of only a few months.

The grave was tiny, a small hollow dug easily by hand, and the modest casket was lowered in by two canvas straps in place of the metal device that was usually used. Instead of the large numbers of mourners that usually attended funerals at the cemetery, this funeral only had two – the mother and father. The rabbi recited the Hebrew verse that I became so familiar with and handed the shovel to the mother for her to throw on the first bit of earth. She weakly dug the shovel into the pile of soil beside the grave, balancing a small amount on the head. She slowly swung the shovel over top of the grave and then stopped, her shoulders shaking. She squeezed her eyes tight, attempting to stifle her tears. Her husband put his arms around her and helped her release the earth into the grave. It is the only funeral where I have ever cried.

After a few years, I left my position of gravedigger in pursuit of less-taxing, salaried endeavours. I’ve been everything from a bank teller to a medical secretary to a teacher. I certainly don’t miss the early mornings and the monotony of pushing a lawnmover for hours on end, but the one thing I can say for the profession of gravedigging, is that the customers never complain.

Caption Contest! Caption Contest!

Oooo! There's gotta be a good one here! Leave your caption in the comment area. Best caption wins tickets to the South African vs. Bangladesh cricket match in Cape Town!

Self Portrait

...taken by Dane

(all photos by Dane are available for sale - leave a comment if you're interested)

Tortured Artists?

I regularly read Lynn Crosbie’s column in Saturday’s Globe and Mail, often accompanied by a dictionary to decipher the assorted words she uses that do not reside within my personal lexicon. Several weeks ago, she published an excerpt from her poem “Liar,”* the full-length version spanning 150 pages, about a break-up with a boyfriend.

Now Crosbie tends to be caustic at the best of times, sharing her acidulous views on cultural trends in North America and deconstructing the insidious celebrity tabloids that now seem to stretch beyond the sphere of cheap newsprint, stapled and displayed at grocery store checkout aisles, to the glaring magazine aisles at reputable booksellers. However, the excerpts that I read from “Liar” show an even more rancorous individual, deeply hurt and seething from the humiliation she experienced at her partner’s betrayal. (It is a fallacy to assume that all writing is based on personal experience, however Crosbie has revealed in interviews that “Liar” is based on her own experience of an infidelity and subsequent break-up.) From Crosbie’s choler comes prolific and magnificent lines of poetry. Her images are striking and her words are carefully chosen.

And all this begs the question, would she be capable of such quality if she hadn’t plumbed the depths of her sadness?

Although I consider myself a writer, I haven’t written a poem of any merit since my early 20s, a time when my emotions existed a little closer to the surface. And most of my poetry was about boys and how they had hurt me.

So is Ms. Crosbie an artist because she is tortured? Was Virginia Woolf a cutting-edge novelist and Sylvia Plath a celebrated poet, because they felt their depression to their very core? Do you have to be hurt to write good poetry?

Many artists say that they write/paint/create because they “have to.” Honoré de Balzac said: “I am a galley slave to pen and ink,” meaning that he was compelled to write. Forms of art can be seen as coping mechanisms - just as the non-artists among us go to therapists, drink vast amounts of alcohol or take long runs to deal with the torment in their lives, artists create in order to deal with their feelings.

And it seems that many artists seem to have more intense feelings, especially of depression, than the average person. Lots of poets and musicians have suffered from various mental illnesses and addictions that have fuelled their creativity.**

Regardless of what motivates writers to write or musicians to compose, or artists to paint, one thing remains uniform: when shared with others, artists' creations provide a connection of feelings across human experience. There are parts of Crosbie’s poem that resonate with my experience, just as there were parts of “Mrs. Dalloway” that resonated with millions of readers or, according to the song “Semi-Charmed Kind of Life” by Third Eye Blind: “The four right chords could make me cry.”

A piece of art provides a link of experience which, despite feelings of loneliness and desperation during its creation, says to its beholder, “you are not alone.”

*

Liar by Lynn Crosbie

**

http://www.bbc.co.uk/ouch/features/torturedartist.shtml

Single Berry

...taken by Dane

Chris Martin Interview

Ricky Gervais interviews Chris Martin, asking indepth and probing questions.

http://www.rickygervais.com/video10.php