Reversing Falls, NB

Geist Maps

Another in Geist's series of One-Minute Movies, part of the One-Minute Movie Map of Canada. You can contribute to the Geist One-​Minute Movie Mapping Project here.

Che Guevara and the other guy

Patty Osborne

Until last night I didn't know that Che Guevara grew up in an upper middle-class family in Buenos Aires and he was training to be a doctor when his friend Alberto Granado talked him into taking a motorcycle trip around South America. The motorcycle is old, the pair have little money, and the movie, The Motorcycle Diaries, has little plot (although, as my friend Helen commented, it has several "plotlets") but it's still worth watching: it's funny, touching, and even though we know it's romanticising things, it doesn't go overboard. Apart from being about Che Guevara, this movie is all about guys—the two friends are ill-prepared for just about everything (and they don't seem to care) and when things go wrong they run around swearing and blaming each other (but neither one seems to care about that either).

The movie (and the book that preceded it) is based on Guevara's journals, so we know that this was a life-changing trip for him—he meets the poor, sick and downtrodden in four different countries—but since the movie is mercifully short on revelatory conversations (thank god these are guys), we see that this is just one part of whatever it was that made Guevara into a revolutionary.

The DVD also features an interview with Alberto Granado who followed Che to Cuba and founded a medical school there while Che moved on to other revolutions and was killed in Bolivia by CIA-directed soldiers.

Geist is good for you

Dan Post

Have the Paralympics made YVR a better airport?

Patty Osborne

When a friend of mine flew back from Montreal on Monday he was pleasantly surprised to encounter a couple of strong and well-trained airport employees (in red fleece jackets with "Canada" printed on them) who were ready, willing and able to lift him from his airline seat into a special, airline-friendly wheelchair that fits between the aisles, and then into his own wheelchair once it had been unloaded from the cargo hold. My friend was surprised because he usually gets a couple of guys from the ground crew or the baggage handlers who may or may not have any training. He can always spot a rookie because they move in for a big bear hug which is a great way to break someone's rib, but not a great way to lift them up and over. My friend says that if one guy is doing the talking—telling the other guy how things are going to go—that's a good sign (one of them knows what to do and the other one is listening) but if neither of them are talking, that's a bad sign because it means that neither of them know what to do. Then my friend has to do the talking and hope that he makes it out of and into each chair without getting hurt. Adds a whole new level of stress to air travel, doesn't it?

I guess we have the Paralympics to thank for YVR getting its act together—let's hope this service doesn't go away when the last disabled athlete takes off on March 22.

Evandale ferry, NB

Geist Maps

Another in Geist's series of One-Minute Movies, part of the One-Minute Movie Map of Canada. You can contribute to the Geist One-​Minute Movie Mapping Project here.

So you wanna be a freelancer?

Dan Post

• Withdraw savings
• Cash in a certificate of deposit
• Borrow money from relatives
• Get a personal bank loan
• Charge equipment or computers to your credit card
• Get a home-equity loan

• “The freelancers self-confidence can erode into a neurosis”
• “The next fear is not having enough business to keep the cash-flowing, and a common reaction to that fear is to take on too much work. Then you either miss deadlines, work so hard that you burn out, or both”

• “Am I overcommitted financially right now to the point that I can’t forgo a steady cash flow?”

• “Am I sufficiently committed to my chosen occupation that I’ll want to do it even though it doesn’t bring in any cash for a period of time?

Conclusions

“People with full-time jobs generally know what they are going to make in salary over the next year. In freelancing…you sometimes don’t know what you’re going to make next month”

Choose your own (theatre) adventure

C.E. Coughlan

On Friday night I went to see Hive 3: a show in a warehouse space on the BCIT campus with twelve theatre companies performing simultaneously.  If you go, you better be ready to interact, because like it or not, you’re going to be part of the ‘shows.’

Someone hands you an info guide at the door that lists the twelve performances with a brief description and a bunch of symbols beside each.  At the bottom is a legend that explains what the symbols mean: confined spaces, darkness, difficult exit, flashing lights, loud noise, mild group participation, physical interaction, social interaction, wheelchair assistance necessary.

Gulp.

I don’t recommend the bar area if you’re looking to hide, that’s where you’ll most likely get approached, like my friend Lisa did, by a bearded man wearing a set of wireless headphones.  Throughout their stilted conversation it became obvious that someone somewhere was telling him what to say.  He told a joke that went like this:

“Knock, Knock.”
“Who’s there?”
“Panther.”
“Panther who?”
“Panther on or off, I’m going swimming.”

While the joke wasn’t very funny, his reaction to having to tell it was.  Eventually, he linked arms with her and lead her away.  I have no idea what happened to her next, but I wasn’t on my own for long.  A woman dressed as a doctor who had been lurking nearby came over and said, “I’m afraid you’ve been exposed to a virus and need to come with me to the infirmary”.  This interactive 'show' took place outside in a tented area with space heaters, elevator music was playing on a small stereo by the door and the receptionist, a man in a white coat wearing a face mask, told me to use the hand sanitizer and to take a seat where six other people sat waiting.  Someone giggled.  A notice board in front of us read: Polite Reminder: Quarantine Zone.  Please refrain from: Smoking, Eating, Drinking, Loud talking, Spitting on the floor, Suggestive dancing, Annoying the receptionist.  

Inside, we lay down on cots and were wrapped in blankets.  The nurses put lavender-scented eye masks over our eyes and headphones on our ears and a story began, a story in which we all died a slow, sad and beautiful death.  At times, I smelled evergreen and lilac – they must have been using aromatherapy – and at one point, the mask was removed and the nurses held mirrors to our faces and gradually pulled them away to simulate what you might see as you leave your body.  

Back in the building, I watched a burlesque strip tease, reverse bidding in which an audience member got his head shaved; I got interviewed, saw a man on a treadmill running through Iraq, listened in on a phone conversation about a woman passing out in front of the Dalai Lama and ‘accidentally’ smelling his armpit, went to a birthday party, and rode a bike during a puppet show.

Not bad for one evening – and apparently I only saw half the shows.

Cold Remedy: Frozen River & The Kingston Trio

Patty Osborne

My cold came on with a vengeance yesterday so I went home early and cuddled up on the couch to watch the indie movie Frozen River, which takes place in late December in a cold and barren landscape that straddles the Canadian-American border between New York and Montreal and includes part of a Mohawk reservation where "there are no borders."

This movie has it all: a couple of women, one white (Ray) and one Native (Lila), who've been done wrong; a bingo hall; a store called Yankee Dollar; a car with a trunk that's big enough to hold two people; a frozen track across the St. Lawrence River; a couple of guns; a French-Canadian gangster; illegal immigrants who need to get from Canada to the US; a politely racist border patrolman;  several trailers, two worn out, one new;  a great story and great acting.

No one trusts anyone here: Lila doesn't trust whites, the highway patrolmen don't trust Natives, Ray doesn't trust South Asians, Chinese men don't trust women drivers, the Mohawks don't trust non-Mohawks, even if they're Natives—kind of like that song the Kingston Trio sang in the 60s:

The whole world is festering
With unhappy souls
The French hate the Germans,
The Germans hate the Poles
Italians hate Yugoslavs
South Africans hate the Dutch
And I don't like anybody very much

Powerlessness and desperation push Ray and Lila together but it's their strength and determination that, in the end, push them to trust each other and take control of their lives. The story unfolds slowly as we learn more about the women and their communities but there's plenty of suspense (helped along by a subdued but powerful soundtrack) and just the right amount of humour. When it was over I said to myself "that was a great movie" and then I turned the commentary to ON and watched it all over again.

That's Not a Sonnet, This Is a Sonnet. Uh, That's a Spoon.

Daniel Zomparelli

So, maybe the sonnet is not your favourite poetic form. Maybe you love free verse. Maybe you love free verse so hard that you cannot fathom any constrain on your words. Sure, sonnets are scary. You have to put time and effort into them. You want to say something but you don't think it will fit into the line. And what happens when you have a line and it isn't finished. A line break? Weird.

There has been some confusion over the jackpine sonnet. The explanation has some people saying that's not a sonnet, this is a sonnet. To make it more confusing I respond back with, "that's not a sonnet, this is a sonnet" as I hold a spoon in my hand. Click here to understand this pop-culture reference.

Pop-culture references aside, let's say that you wanted to write a jackpine sonnet and didn't know where to start. Well thankfully poet extraordinaire Sina Queyras, otherwise known as Lemon Hound, has helped us discuss and understand the form of sonnet. Her recent blog post at Harriet discusses the multiple variations of sonnet. From erasure sonnets, to compression sonnets, to—yes—jackpine sonnets. The blog post is a short summary of sonnets, but it gives a quick glance at all of the forms that come from it. (It also proves that the comment section of any blog is a death match of egos.)

 Now there is something looming within the jackpine sonnets that has poets running in the opposite direction. Is it a young ghost hoping to steal your soul in the middle of the night? Nope, just somewhat opposing ideas. The jackpine sonnet asks the poet for a sonnet, but says, don't constrain yourself to the form.

As Ms. Lemon Hound, the bad-ass poet of the internet, can tell you:

"So yes, the Jackpine Sonnet. “The fiddle’s incomplete without the dance,” Acorn writes, “Let’s hook fingers to complete.” Without some kind of constraint, verse Acorn suggests lacks luster, and in general, I would agree. There is little sign of a struggle, perhaps. Form or constraint puts pressure on the idea behind the poem, on the original gesture. The sonnet form, Acorn argues, is “realisant.” It’s an organic, not fixed form. “It grows to any shape that suits the light, suits the winds, suits itself.” The Jackpine is a tree that grows in all sorts of conditions. It is resilient and as Acorn appreciates, each tree grows and looks very differently." – Sina Queyras, Harriet Blog


So here is one final image for your to consider in writing a jackpine sonnet. Imagine a pot, not the Canadian pot but a flower pot. Each plant is put into the same pot, over and over again. Each flower that grows is beautiful in its own way. Now imagine one flowers' roots grow through the pot and break it. The image is different, beautiful in its own way. This, is the the jackpine sonnet. Where not only are the poems different, the form is as well. Slight alterations to the point that each poet is creating their own form each time they write a jackpine sonnet. Scary. A world where apposing ideas collide to make art. 

 Now, my friend, become the sonneteer and imagineer it. And Lemon Hound, if you are reading this, respond to my fan mail.

Days 8 & 9: Nicaraguan Journal

Patty Osborne

DAYS 8 & 9
Spent most of days 8 and 9 at Santa Rosa, one of the few remaining collectives in Nicaragua. The land belonging to the collective was originally a privately-owned hacienda. When the owners fled during the revolution, the people who had been working for them moved onto the land and set up the collective and then persisted, despite several changes in government and political ideologies, in gaining title to the land. Each family in the collective is allotted land to live and work on and if they do not maintain their home or their land they are evicted.

The pottery there is run by one family and a portion of their profits, and those of other money-making enterprises, goes back to the community. The potters of Santa Rosa include Consuelo, who came along on last year's brigade, her mother and her aunt, as well as her husband, although he spends some of his time raising vegetables with his own father. Consuelo's father is chairman of the board of directors of the cooperative.

After introductions we were invited to help unload the new kiln which had been built by Potters for Peace thanks to a generous donation of $600 from one of our brigade members who shyly accepted their thanks. We were glad to help, although later, when we knew each other better, Consuelo confessed that, although they had planned the firing so that we would be there for the unloading, a buyer had turned up early so they had to unload it without us and then, so that we wouldn't be disappointed, they put most of the pots back. I could see by the huge change and expansion in the work being produced at Santa Rosa that Consuelo had taken full advantage of the opportunity to learn from the other potters that she met on the brigade last year.

During the two days we took turns throwing and handbuilding and Daisy, George (from Iowa) and I got a chance to demonstrate some techniques and Consuelo showed us how she applies slip trailing decoration (for the non-potters, that means squeezing spaghetti-like lines of liquid clay onto a semi-dry pot) to her pots using a plastic bag, a technique that seemed to me to be a lot easier than trying to squeeze a hard plastic slip trailer.

At noon, as we meandered through the village in the direction of Consuelo's house, her daughter Cindy, looking very much like a city girl, came running up the road to meet us and show us the way.  Lunch was a delicious homegrown chicken stew which we ate while sitting in the shade in the backyard.

On the second afternoon we walked through the village, along a road, past a deposit of yellowish clay, down a big hill, across a swampy area, and up another small hill in the woods to the pottery's deposit of black clay, which is on land that has been designated to Consuelo's mother.  The walk was beautiful but it was also hot and the trail was rough in places—no wonder I felt sheepish when, in reply to Consuelo's question of where I got my clay from, I answered "from the store, in a box."

On the way to Santa Rosa on our second day, we stopped in at a filter and brick factory that is run by a fellow named Tito, who is part of a family that, before the revolution, were wealthy landowners. Tito's family now lives in Mexico but he has returned to Nicaragua to try to regain title to some of their lands (land title in Nicaragua is incredibly complex due to the revolution and other changes in government). At the filter and brick factory Tito employs many young men, most of whom are university students. Tile-making is monotonous and sometimes back-breaking work but the workers take turns at each job so they don't wear themselves out. Some of the men have become competent throwers and the factory also produces a line of flower pots.

Unfortunately, after our first day in Santa Rosa, George (from Florida) decided he would have to leave the brigade: he had a case of "stomach troubles" that he just couldn't shake and he was finding that he just didn't have the energy needed to get the most out of the brigade. Robert's wife, Bev, who had driven up to Santa Rosa to meet us, took George with her on the 4-hour drive back to Managua.