Lazy days of turning pages into new worlds

Summer days can be an excuse to be lazy (though I'll admit, I can probably find an excuse to be lazy during any season). 

One of my happiest ways to be lazy is to hide myself away in the pages of a book. And this summer has brought me some fine hiding spots. 

I suppose the string of great reads started some weeks back, with Marion Toews' powerful novel, Women Talking. It's not a happy book, but the facts behind it were important to reveal. From there, quite by accident, another library book came my way and, oddly enough, it seemed to link up to the Toews' book, even echoing small details. That one, The Grace Year, though classified as YA didn't really seem to be very YA -- just a terrific and memorable book. 

Without really meaning to, I moved into books about trees. The atmosphere for reading was probably enhanced by the fact that our house is surrounded by a miniature forest. I keep meaning to post something on Goodreads about these (more of that laziness keeps winning out), but they are The Overstory and Greenwood. 

The Overstory by Richard Powers won the Pulitzer Prize, so I'm not the only person who wants to sing its praises. It's broken into two main parts -- the first introduces readers to the cast of characters, the rest unfolds all that happens to (and with) all of them. It's very much related to The Hidden Life of Trees, but the humans and their complicated interactions make the science so much more real. 

Likewise, Michael Christie expresses a similar deep understanding of the nature of trees in his novel, Greenwood. It's a sprawling book, spanning the breadth of our continent, time-travelling to the past and into the future. There were times I wasn't quite sure who was who, but it gradually unfolded, like leaves on the page. 

And now, I'm doing another kind of time-travel, as I've just started David Mitchell's Utopia Avenue, a trip into the Sixties and its music. No comments on that one yet, as I've only just started it, though I suspect I'll enjoy it, as I've read and liked all of his other ones. 

I've got a nifty outdoor living space, with a comfy old couch, a great place to curl up with a book. 

I hope your summer reading has been as pleasurable as mine. And remember, I love hearing recommendations. 

A psychedelic anniversary

This week saw the 50th anniversary of the lava lamp. I had no idea anyone was keeping track. Most of the people who stared into them didn't seem very into making note of things like time.

But it must be part of a trend going on, as Boston's Museum of Fine Arts is currently featuring an exhibit called 'Hippie Chic' an exploration of fashion, and some of the changes that occurred in fashion, during the decade we call The Sixties (even though some of that decade apparently spilled over into the early '70s).

One oversight in the Boston exhibit -- or at least in the part accessible through the museum's link -- is the exclusion of dresses or fabrics by Peter Max. To me at least, his work epitomized the look that became known as psychedelia -- vibrant colours in surprising combinations -- patterns that often appeared to be moving.

It's hard to imagine I ever fit into the little dress in the pic, but lord knows, I did.

Oh, and if you want a view of a modern lava lamp in action, click on the video below. Maybe it's my sense of time that's awry, but I'm pretty sure the original lamps released their waxy globules much more slowly. One of the most hypnotic ways of watching it was to the accompaniment of Jeff Beck's instrumental, Beck's Bolero. For maximum viewing pleasure, we played our 45-rpm version of the Bolero on the stretched-out 33 1/3 speed. Long, drawn-out notes for extended pleasure. Probably some consciousness-raising inhalations as well.

Peace.

Bobby Kennedy was shot 40 years ago

Actually, 40 years ago yesterday. Here, if you're up for it, is a long rant that partially documents how that event had a profound impact on my life.

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People used to ask, ‘Where were you when Kennedy was shot?’ Always a good conversation starter, it was assumed you’d have some kind of story about where you were and what you were doing on November 22, 1963.

That particular Friday became a kind of touchstone for change, one that marked a country’s loss of innocence. It was the end of an era that had been portrayed by the Cleaver family on Leave it to Beaver, and later, by the Cunninghams on the series with the overly rosy name, Happy Days.

I think of that Friday in 1963 as only the beginning of the change. Because the date I see as being more profound is June 5, 1968. That’s the date another Kennedy, Robert – or Bobby as he was known – met the same fate as his brother John.

The first months of 1968 had seen the beginnings of a shift in the general public’s attitude toward the ongoing war in Vietnam. Early in January, the much-respected baby-and-child-care expert, Dr. Benjamin Spock, was indicted for promoting draft evasion. Month’s end saw the sweeping Tet offensive, a series of attacks that reached as far as the US Embassy in Saigon. People were finally starting to realize just how pointless America’s war efforts were. When, at the end of February, CBS newsman Walter Cronkite made comments on the apparent futility of the exercise, then-president Johnson supposedly remarked on the significance of the newsman’s words: “If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost middle America.”

I’d been on the fringes of an organization in Milwaukee that offered advice and other assistance to draft resisters. Being part of such a milieu, I couldn’t help being around people who were working on the campaign to put anti-war candidate Eugene McCarthy on the presidential ballot. They were a dedicated and interesting mix – speechwriters, organizers and a slew of pamphleteers.

The spring of ’68 had also been one where more than the weather was heating up. In part, due to the previous summer’s inner-city riots, and especially after the murder of Martin Luther King, Jr. in April, there was an ever-increasing sense of living in a police state. Many of us found we couldn’t go out without spotting unmarked police cars trailing us; police photographers seemed to be at every war protest and be-in; men with long hair were routinely stopped as they walked down the street, with the demand that they show their draft card (men who couldn’t produce one were arrested on the spot, as this was a serious offense). Yet despite all that, and despite the ever-increasing death count in Vietnam, there was an optimistic atmosphere of promise in the air. Promise that things were going to take a turn – and for the better.

Only then, on the cusp of summer, Bobby Kennedy was shot and killed. And for many of us, that event made it clear: no dreams were safe.

About a month later, my son Jeremy was born. Giving birth, especially to a son, did a lot to shift my perspective. Suddenly, I understood that I wasn’t going to be going to Chicago with my friends to be part of the protests outside the Democratic Convention. All of us understood that Chicago wasn’t going to be just another protest; this one would have Mayor Richard Daley’s specially trained riot forces on patrol. I understood that as a single mother, I now had responsibilities that meant I couldn’t risk getting myself arrested and thrown into jail. I also realized that my little boy was no different, only younger, than all those other boys being drafted for Vietnam.

It wasn’t very many months later that Jeremy and I were sitting in a very bright room in the bowels of the airport in Toronto. As I remember it, even though it was late in the evening, the immigration officers were super nice as they asked me questions and filled in the blanks on what seemed to be a very long form. They were coochie-cooing Jeremy and nodding with approval at the fact that I’d taken a few French courses. Of course it helped that Jeremy and I had a sponsor, no matter that the sponsorship eventually didn’t work out. So, bingo presto lucko – we were in, and told to expect our landed immigrant papers in the mail in just a few weeks.

But lately, things are different. The news keeps reporting changes to Canada’s immigration policies. And I see that 25-year-old war resister, Corey Glass, has had his application to stay in Canada refused. He’s the ex-soldier who signed up to be part of the US National Guard, thinking he’d be helping out in humanitarian causes like flood relief. But instead of being sent to New Orleans, he was sent to Iraq. When his conscience wouldn’t let him stay, he made his way to Canada. Younger than that son I brought to Canada all those years ago, Glass is an American deserter, not so unlike those soldiers who despaired over their experiences fighting in Vietnam. Yet unlike members of that earlier wave of sanctuary-seekers, he is one who Canada seems unwillingly to accept as one of its own – Canada, a country once known worldwide as place of safe haven for those who love the idea of peace.

So, I wonder: What is happening to this country that I chose? And I think, if those of us who came to Canada during the Vietnam War era were applying to come here today, just how many of us would be allowed in?
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