test blog #10

A customer approaches the information desk, hopping mad. "You must kick this man out of the library! You must make him leave!" I immediately get up and come around the desk, immediately on high alert, thinking, call security, call 911. "What's going on?" She leads me to the offending man: "He is sleeping! In the library!" I relax. Me: "That's all right. That's not against our code of conduct." We reach the man. He is asleep. That is all. Mean customer: "You allow this? You allow a homeless person to sleep in the library? That's disgusting!" Me: "As long as he's not bothering anyone or breaking any rules..." MC: "Libraries are for studying! Or relaxing with a book! Not for sleeping!" Me: "Libraries are for many things. Different people use the library for different reasons." MC: "No! No! That's disgusting! In Canada! A man sleeping in the library! I never thought I would see such...

After burning through several excellent nonfiction books in rapid succession, I have a small pile of novels waiting for me. Here's the first of, I hope, several fiction reviews. News of the World  by Paulette Jiles takes place in the American West, a few years after the end of the Civil War. The US South is an angry, wild, and dangerous place. Former slaves may be free according to the 15th Amendment, but white settlers may have other ideas. And the war on the indigenous peoples of the west rages on. Against this backdrop, Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd, a widower, a veteran of several wars, and a printer by trade, travels from town to town delivering news. He reads stories from newspapers to assembled frontier audiences, who pay a dime each for the enlightenment and entertainment. Ten-year-old Johanna Leonberger has been orphaned twice -- once when Kiowas killed her frontier family and took her captive, then again when the US Army "rescued" her. Although blue-eyed and fair,...

Watching Barney Miller as my comedy-before-bed sleep aid, I was stunned and amazed by an episode called "Rape" -- Season 4, Episode 15. A woman comes to the station house, agitated and distressed. Captain Miller, with his usual calm and professional demeanour, leads her to sit down. When he hears "rape," Barney says, "Oh boy" -- as in, oh my, this is serious. He says, "Do you think you can give us a description of the man?" She pulls from her bag a photograph. There's a brief sight-gag, as the photograph is in a small frame. She says about the photo, "That man is an animal. A degenerate. That man is... my husband." The laugh track booms. Barney rolls his eyes and says, "Oh boy" -- as in "we have a fruitcake." Barney: "Mrs. Lindsay, are you sure?" Woman: "What do you mean, am I sure?" Barney: "I mean, I know you're sure this is your husband. But-- Nick, would you get Mrs. Lindsay a cup...

Today's Revolutionary Thought of the Day is very unusual, in that it belongs to a member of government. This thought should not be revolutionary. It should not even need to be uttered. Nevertheless, it is and it does. It has come to my attention that there are young girls here in Canada and other parts of the world who are removed from school or shamed because of their hairstyle. Mr. Speaker, body-shaming of any woman in any form from the top of her head to the soles of her feet is wrong. Irrespective of her hairstyle, the size of her thighs, the size of her hips, the size of her baby bump, the size of her breasts, or the size of lips, what makes us different makes us unique and beautiful. So Mr. Speaker I will continue to rock these braids. For three reasons. No. 1, because I’m sure you’ll agree, they look pretty dope. No. 2, in solidarity with women who have been shamed based on their appearance. And No. 3, and most importantly, in solidarity with young girls and women who look ...

I recently realized that I enjoy a lot of TV shows that are themed around a workplace. There are the comedies, like The Office and Brooklyn 9-9, and my favourite sitcoms of past generations, such as Barney Miller and Mary Tyler Moore, and a whole bunch of sitcoms I don't watch, such as Cheers. But there are also dramas like Bones, and Suits, and older shows like ER and several others from that era. You can see why the workplace is ripe for use as a setting. It allows writers to bring a very diverse group of characters, with widely disparate backgrounds, strengths, and expectations, into a situation where they must work together, for better or worse. The diversity and the need to work together is believable, if often not truly realistic. But inevitably, as the show continues, the workplace becomes a surrogate family. In both Bones and Suits, many characters have no other family, or have only a small scrap of family left, or are estranged from whatever family they have. Each backstor...

In response to my help me find a new series to binge-watch post, I got tons of answers both here and on Facebook. I'm keeping the list for future reference. In the category of watching by myself during R&R downtime, I am starting with Hinterland, which has long been in my Netflix list. I've watched the first two episodes, and it's very much like Wallander, a good sign. After Hinterland, the to-try list: Peaky Blinders, Shetland, Fringe, Bloodline, Wentworth, River. Also will try The Defenders, Jessica Jones, and Luke Cage. Intelligence sounds good, but two seasons and no conclusion is a dealbreaker.  Possibles: Lost, Criminal Minds, Friday Night Lights. I was pretty adamant about not watching FNL years back, but now I might give it a chance.  Will try both Man Seeking Woman and Letterkenny, but have to wait until either there's more episodes or the show ends.  In the category of Allan and I watching together over the winter, which generally means the best shows and...

Watching my comedy-before-bed daily dose of Barney Miller last night, I was surprised and pleased to see an episode about a gay cop. This reminded me of this post  -- turns out it was 10 years ago! -- about a gay character on Dallas. Both episodes aired in 1979. Officer Zatelli, played by Dino Natali At the time I blogged about the Dallas episode , I thought this might have been pretty cutting-edge. Now that I see a similar theme on a show from the same year, I wonder if it might have been more mainstream than I realize? In the Barney Miller ep, Lieutenant Scanlon -- a sleazeball from Internal Affairs* -- receives an anonymous letter from an officer saying he is gay, and no one on the force knows, demonstrating that being gay is not incompatible with being a good cop. The letter writer identifies himself as being assigned to the 12th Precinct. The detectives are all surprised, but shrug it off as not their business. Wojo, who earlier in the series was the most homophobic of the gro...

Readers of a certain age might remember clocks and watches with glowing green dials . The dials were painted with radium, the radioactive element discovered by Marie Curie. We had clocks like this when I was growing up. I have a distinct memory of my mother saying, "The women who worked in the factories where these were made got very sick. They had to put the paintbrushes in their mouths, in order to paint the tiny numbers and dots, and they all got sick, and some died." I never forgot that -- yet I never heard it mentioned anywhere else. Who were those women? Why were they putting a radioactive substance in their mouths? When I saw a review of The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women , I knew that someone finally had answered those questions. The story of those women was finally told. And what a story it is. The young, working-class women in Orange, New Jersey, and Ottawa, Illinois, who painted radium dials thought they had it made. Not only was the pa...

I need a new series to binge-watch. Requirements: 1. Must have a ton of episodes 2. Must have good characters and relationships 3. Nothing too scary 4. Nothing sweet or heartwarming 5. No zombies 6. Best if the series has already ended 7. Best if in English (when I'm exhausted, reading subtitles is not relaxing) Have tried (more than once) but did not enjoy or gave up on: - Star Trek: Voyager (I really  wanted to like this!) - Star Trek: Deep Space Nine - Breaking Bad - The Borgias - Battlestar Galactica Not interested: - Game of Thrones - Orange is the New Black Have watched and loved: - The Wire - Justified - The Good Wife - Suits - Boardwalk Empire (stopped after S4) - The Fall - Longmire - Broadchurch (S1 only) - Bones (just finished... so sad that it's over) - Star Trek: The Next Generation - Star Trek: The Original Series - Xena: Warrior Princess (more than once!) - Buffy the Vampire Slayer - Angel - Farscape - Veronica Mars - Inspector Lewis / Lewis - Inspector Morse - E...

I've been taking a break from social media, and I am feeling the positive effects. But I do miss people. But I feel better...but I miss people...but I feel better. And so on. This is your brain on fibromyalgia I struggle with low concentration and intermittent brain fog. I believe it's from fibromyalgia, but whatever the cause, it's a minor disability or a weakness for which I must compensate. I have devised various coping mechanisms, and for the most part, they are integrated into my life, as are all my many coping mechanisms for all the bullshit life throws at me. (Not complaining, merely stating.) I recently went through a rough patch where my mental state was particularly frustrating. I had a really hard time chairing a small meeting. (When I apologized, people told me they didn't notice anything different. But were they just being kind?) I had to write an email with a lot of names and dates -- numbers are the biggest challenge when I'm mentally impaired -- and ...

CUPE Ontario's striking new graphic urges us to be brave, to be bold, and to demand more. Those two words -- demand more -- deserve our attention. Every single law or regulation that protects us at work is a product of the labour movement. The right to days off. The right to a meal break. The rights of children to attend school. Paid holidays. A minimum wage. Maternity leave. All of it. Many broader rights that have benefited our society were championed by the labour movement ahead of the mainstream, such as protection from discrimination for the LGBTQ community. All this, and so much more, was the result of working people, standing together, and demanding more . We all know that union density -- how many people in any community are members of a union -- has declined greatly in the past decades. As corporations moved their operations to other countries to take advantage of cheap labour and the absence of environmental and health and safety laws, manufacturing jobs all but disappea...

Everywhere we look, every available space is filled with advertising. The Toronto skyline is a sea corporate logos. The due-date receipt from my library book features an ad on the back. I once tracked all the ads shown during a major league baseball game -- during play , not between innings -- and the results were startling, even to me. And, of course, our entire experience on the internet -- especially on our personal mobile devices -- is tracked and used by corporations with only our dimmest awareness and nominal consent. It wasn't always like this. How did we arrive at this current state? The Attention Merchants: The Epic Scramble to Get Inside Our Heads  by Tim Wu answers this question. The answer is fascinating and entertaining, and -- if you dislike the constant and ever-increasing commodification of our lives, as I do -- more than a little frustrating. In the first part of the book, Wu presents a capsule history of the "attention capture industry" -- what this rev...

My "comedy before bed" TV watching -- the habit of a lifetime, and the surest way for me to fall asleep -- has gone retro again.* I watched "Get Smart" end-to-end and am now making my way through "Barney Miller". Harry Hoo, Dr. Yes, and "Craw, not Craw!" Get Smart was a TV comedy conceived by funny men Mel Brooks and Buck Henry, and piloted by the amazing Leonard Stern. It's part James Bond spoof and part Inspector Clouseau . Don Adams stars as Maxwell Smart. It was to be the one and only part Adams ever played well, but boy was he good. Barbara Feldon as "99" and Ed Platt as The Chief were both brilliant, but their characters were purely straight men for Adams. Get Smart ran from 1965 to 1970. I watched at least the last few seasons as a kid, and have seen a few re-runs over the years. Watching it straight through, I laughed out loud through the entire series. It was completely ridiculous and completely hilarious. Except for one gi...