tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12860377827570112172024-03-13T15:41:11.785-07:00Forever October by Michael RoweThe official blog of novelist and essayist Michael RoweMichael Rowehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15181004056021590350noreply@blogger.comBlogger151125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1286037782757011217.post-2779086885194415302024-03-12T11:21:00.000-07:002024-03-12T19:26:54.139-07:00Some thoughts on Jonathan Glazer's THE ZONE OF INTEREST (2023)<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqEe11uUmHXSakA9WRef_POzqmK6Ww4oHYFozFTgKqWtZtIZb8Tb_bD5YdyZ2ykrTU6YZnsFAFQReI_oTEhkEFhdJaYrbZASQf8ncMj7HGmnTHxJ186n5euqien1eqyFJr10-_vLPyfSU1nT7Y5j7Kk5kd61c_sktcF-CUrXaTB3LAJAx2mnIPRMd3r7iJ/s1500/The-Zone-of-Interest-08312393-e021a0aaf9c34faf9fe7a1253adeb8c3.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="1500" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqEe11uUmHXSakA9WRef_POzqmK6Ww4oHYFozFTgKqWtZtIZb8Tb_bD5YdyZ2ykrTU6YZnsFAFQReI_oTEhkEFhdJaYrbZASQf8ncMj7HGmnTHxJ186n5euqien1eqyFJr10-_vLPyfSU1nT7Y5j7Kk5kd61c_sktcF-CUrXaTB3LAJAx2mnIPRMd3r7iJ/w640-h426/The-Zone-of-Interest-08312393-e021a0aaf9c34faf9fe7a1253adeb8c3.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><p></p><div class="xdj266r x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs x126k92a" style="margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto"><div class="xdj266r x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs x126k92a" style="margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><div class="xdj266r x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs x126k92a" style="margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5);">OK, so—</span><i><span style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5);">The </span><span style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5);">Zone</span> of Interest. </i><span style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5);">The coldness I felt after watching this film last night dissipated on my walk with Beckett this morning, and I'm ready to consider why it feels more like an unusually disturbing nightmare I woke up from this morning instead of brilliant, deliberate mini-masterpiece I watched on television before falling asleep. </span></span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;">First off, what it's not: it's not gory, it's not overtly violent, it's not "shocking" in the way we've traditionally come to think of <a style="cursor: pointer;" tabindex="-1"></a>Holocaust films. It's not <i>Schindler's List</i> (1993), and it did not set out to be. It's an eerily voyeuristic look at the family of Rudolf Höss, living on the other side of a human abattoir where 1.1 million people were murdered over the relatively short 5 years of the camp's existence. </span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5);">Writing negatively about the film in </span><i><span style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5);">The </span><span style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5);">New</span> Yorker </i><span style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5);">last October, Richard Brody said the film "turns the horrors of the Holocaust into scenes from a marriage," and calls it, a bit grotesquely, "Holokitsch." </span></span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;">With all due respect to the eminent Mr. Brody, who doesn't need lessons in film reviewing from the likes of me, he may have missed the fact that director Jonathan Glazer's clear intention in shooting the film that way was to quite precisely contrast the utter banality of the day-to-day existence of high-ranking Nazis families with the monstrosities occurring on the other other side of the wall where, in the case of <i>Zone</i>, Daddy works. </span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5);">It's a technique that was employed with much more overt drama in Mark Herman's </span><i style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); white-space: pre-wrap;">The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas</i><span style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5);">(2008), and to a slightly different degree in Frank Pierson's </span><span style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5);"><i>Conspiracy </i></span><span style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5);"> (2001) which depicted the 1942 Wannsee Conference, where a boardroom full of high-ranking Nazis calmly planned the logistics of the eradication of Europe's Jews, as dispassionately, even cordially, as a stockholder's meeting—with lunch and cigars included. </span></span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;">Last night I was trying to put my finger on where this film's genius heart lies, and it occurred to me how much it structurally resembles the first 3/4 of <i>Jaws</i>, where the great white shark is kept more of less off camera. The audience knows it's there, and the fact that it's not being shown simply ups the terror. </span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;">In <i>Zone</i>, the great white shark is Auschwitz itself, rarely glimpsed, and most often represented by the wall. </span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;">The difference is, in <i>Jaws</i>, even at its most carnivorous, we all knew the shark was killing to eat and survive. In <i>Zone</i>, we know that Auschwitz exists exclusively for the purpose of wholesale human slaughter, for the convenience of people like the family in the well-appointed villa on the other side of the wall, where the grandmother lovingly closes the children's bedroom windows at night so they're not woken by the agonized, terrified screams of the people just beyond the garden. </span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;"><i>Zone</i>, like <i>Chernobyl</i> (2019) draws heavily on the imagery and traditions of horror films, and at the end of the day, it's a bloodless, gore-less, melodrama-less horror film about disconnection from humanity. </span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;">As I mentioned, the audience already knows what's happening on the other side of the wall. It haunts the film like a malevolent ghost, accentuated by the ambient noise of gunshots, screams, ugly male shouting, dogs barking, and train whistles. </span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;">The genius of director Glazer is that the audience gets used to those sounds over the 1h 46m of the film, as we are most likely intended to. He forces us to squarely identify with the Höss family, who are likewise used to those terrible sounds which have become merely part of the fabric of their lives. My abrupt awareness of my complicity in that, as a viewer, was one of the more devastating moments of the film for me, along with the lurid red light of the crematorium flickering on bedroom walls, or the whistle of the death-trains in silhouette. </span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;">The other monster in the film, besides Auschwitz, is the character of Hedwig Höss, the commandant's wife, brilliantly essayed by Sandra Hüller, who portrays "the Queen of Auschwitz," thus named by her husband, as a frumpy, slatternly German housewife with a graceless, ungainly waddle, risen from a less than modest background to become the ogress wife of the ruler of a death factory. </span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;">When Rudolf is about to be transferred, she insists he make sure that she and her children can stay at Auschwitz. "We've built a good life here," she tells him querulously. "We've finally got everything we've wanted since we were 17."</span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;">We see Hedwig trying on the fur coat of a Jewish woman from whom it was taken upon her induction. The coat is too small, and Hedwig scowls at it in the mirror, turning this way and that to find a flattering angle. She scuttles over to her dressing table and dabs her lips with the dead woman's lipstick, which she found in the coat pocket. </span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;">Hedwig presides over a houseful of female servants whom she verbally abuses at will, and with all the cruelty that can accrue to someone intimately familiar with powerlessness, but who always dreamed of having power over the powerless, making them feel as vulnerable as she once felt. "I could have my husband spread your ashes across the fields of Babice," Hedwig casually informs a housemaid she suspects of insolence. Her visiting mother asks her about the servant girls. "Jews? In the house?" she demands, taken aback. Hedwig casually replies, "They're local girls. The Jews are on the other side of the wall."</span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;">While the film is indeed about the banality of evil—a phrase so overused today that it's become almost beside the point—what it's really about is dehumanization, and how easily and insidiously that occurs. </span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;">It's about how ordinary people, albeit with a likely natural inclination towards sociopathic disassociation borne of deep-seated prejudice, can abruptly become casual terrorizers of people they no longer consider human, and co-exist with murder as though it was a neighbour who rarely leaves the house. </span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;">It's about how the audience can be romanced by the beauty of the Polish countryside in summer, all the while knowing that they're only seeing it because they're watching a film about the most famous and devastating genocide of the 20th century. </span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;">Its power comes from Glazer's seduction of the viewer in forcing them to see the world from the Höss family's perspective, and to see for themselves how easily it could all happen again, particularly in 2024 where the locks on the cellar doors where the monsters live have been all but chipped away. </span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;">It may not be the "best" Holocaust movie, if such a bizarre ranking exists, but it's absolutely one of the most needed, especially right now, and it's one we haven't seen before.</span></div></div></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div></div></div></div>Michael Rowehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15181004056021590350noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1286037782757011217.post-90037306077116877182024-03-10T20:44:00.000-07:002024-03-13T15:40:40.579-07:00When life is Kenough<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjO7GmMCrb1bQLIy-HgWYtatIAe_KjpAj0qTUdbkY-aqj0yBi1iYFn6dBYhP4nuFFh1fPd57DdvkAxhrTmDz-NtCSMfRYSRObkF_Pn7A7AeOOhsQ6rMYqo1HDssc-HuQRuw6BK37xpkGZ7-7Pk1GZqqZvrC1dzl_8Z_2dSQZWQ9wyPpa4M7ojycBwB0WKdO/s1846/Screenshot%202024-03-11%20at%202.17.49%E2%80%AFAM.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1846" data-original-width="1350" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjO7GmMCrb1bQLIy-HgWYtatIAe_KjpAj0qTUdbkY-aqj0yBi1iYFn6dBYhP4nuFFh1fPd57DdvkAxhrTmDz-NtCSMfRYSRObkF_Pn7A7AeOOhsQ6rMYqo1HDssc-HuQRuw6BK37xpkGZ7-7Pk1GZqqZvrC1dzl_8Z_2dSQZWQ9wyPpa4M7ojycBwB0WKdO/w468-h640/Screenshot%202024-03-11%20at%202.17.49%E2%80%AFAM.png" width="468" /></a></div><br /><p></p><div class="xdj266r x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><div class="xdj266r x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs x126k92a" style="margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><div class="xdj266r x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs x126k92a" style="margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;">This is the Ryan Gosling I met almost 30 years ago in Montréal, on the set of my friend <a class="x1i10hfl xjbqb8w x1ejq31n xd10rxx x1sy0etr x17r0tee x972fbf xcfux6l x1qhh985 xm0m39n x9f619 x1ypdohk xt0psk2 xe8uvvx xdj266r x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r xexx8yu x4uap5 x18d9i69 xkhd6sd x16tdsg8 x1hl2dhg xggy1nq x1a2a7pz xt0b8zv x1fey0fg xo1l8bm" href="https://www.facebook.com/oliverron1?__cft__[0]=AZUmwI31mRgqJ4onUFJpSRLTuHClHDO2_mamkQpB5HxZbAUxmDMoMmchqhHmgZ_OtsemkL5oZTszmMrKVCZ11gWf0JZRju8RIbwrd2flmgsoONy76IJV52kdQWpQBvgEnGc8uCCFklicYlUFCCWoe9dX_Z-uGp7JDezz2Z-QSq3O5w&__tn__=-]K-R" role="link" style="border-style: none; border-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; cursor: pointer; display: inline; list-style: none; margin: 0px; outline: currentcolor; padding: 0px; text-align: inherit; text-decoration: none; touch-action: manipulation;" tabindex="0"><span class="xt0psk2" style="display: inline;">Ron Oliver</span></a>'s "The Tale of Station 109.1" episode of <i>Are You Afraid of the Dark</i>: a humble, precocious, polite, dignified, lovely 14-year old boy, who was a delight to be around, and a joy to interview. Ron was effectively the first director to put Ryan in front of viewer's eyes as an actor, in <i>Dark,</i> and, later, <i>Goosebmps</i>, and would then go on to nurture him in the <a style="cursor: pointer;" tabindex="-1"></a>following years—hardly the first example of Ron nurturing and mentoring young talent, but perhaps the most objectively striking example of it, as history will record.</span></span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;">I hope Ron writes his own memoir someday, because an important part of a 38-year best-friendship is knowing when to let the other one tell his own stories, and when to keep quiet. But I celebrate Ron's life and career, and what he's accomplished, much of it in private, with a dignified modesty that seems out of date in 2024. I love him for that, as for so many other things. And I can draw a clear, memory-laden temporal line in my mind between their first meeting, at the casting session for <i>Dark </i>in 1995, and what the world saw onstage tonight at the Oscars in 2024. </span></span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;">Speaking for my own memories, what I'll say of Mr. Gosling, who owned the Oscars with his "I'm Just Ken" routine tonight, is this: one minute they're snoozing on your sofa at your house in Toronto, or you're faxing them their homework on location, or ferrying them to photoshoots—and the next minute they're the biggest star in Hollywood. It might make someone else feel old, but it makes me feel marvellously fortunate to have lived the life I've lived.</span></span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;">Ryan and I last saw each other in 2012 when both he and Ron were both shooting films in Toronto. The four of us went out for dinner (the Hero MD,™ who hadn't seen him since the 90s, went with us) and I was delighted, but again, not remotely surprised, to be reminded that he grew up to be the perfect adult incarnation of the kind, humble, precocious, polite, dignified, lovely kid I met on that rainy night in Montréal in 1995. Like many others, I can attest that he is everything he seems to be onscreen, except to the decent, unpretentious nth degree. What a euphoric experience to watch him own that stage tonight. </span></span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;">Sometimes life is more than wonderful—It's Kenough.</span></span></div></div></div></div></div></div>Michael Rowehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15181004056021590350noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1286037782757011217.post-53850937291243692462024-03-03T11:00:00.000-08:002024-03-03T11:00:15.801-08:00A year on <p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaJxGYjlEEVilw8t-V6kk9FBmihthyphenhyphenbncBBq3JVpLxYnvrKAEjeKeVhB0S_2h910aGRFggYx6hG22T4JPysCelCQqqdGdu1p1_IZHvrxYZ_cmo0aQG7X3QmOaKHtmSaBUIT_0KLz__484K9fw5ZJenxbGNjSce7TMycIs0vuNMBsJJaQdO3EtvYdxhe6tF/s4032/4F63611E-8540-4176-86AF-366B3C3E88FC.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaJxGYjlEEVilw8t-V6kk9FBmihthyphenhyphenbncBBq3JVpLxYnvrKAEjeKeVhB0S_2h910aGRFggYx6hG22T4JPysCelCQqqdGdu1p1_IZHvrxYZ_cmo0aQG7X3QmOaKHtmSaBUIT_0KLz__484K9fw5ZJenxbGNjSce7TMycIs0vuNMBsJJaQdO3EtvYdxhe6tF/w640-h480/4F63611E-8540-4176-86AF-366B3C3E88FC.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><span style="background-color: black; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white; font-size: large;">A year ago today, a month post-final cancer surgery, hobbling a bit, but feeling...something. Probably not "joy," because I was too tentative about the future and its possibilities. "Optimistic" is the wrong word too, because "optimism" didn't enter into my lexicon again until this past December. Probably feeling very "at one" with the word on that snowy morning, feeling gratitude. And feeling a sense of smallness, and a oneness with life that I hope I never forget. Truly, looking back at this picture feels like one of those dreams where you're falling into vast space. It's not fear, it's just an utter disconnection from anything I can feel right now. </span></span><p></p>Michael Rowehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15181004056021590350noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1286037782757011217.post-79398539922414601712024-03-01T10:57:00.000-08:002024-03-01T10:57:23.594-08:00Second cup <p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaJvp2eDnHA7ThH6-n-J_CLRUfNQLfULYZRNEHlAgp_swXN6J-hxIlrjp5UgalLVSa6utowPlG2vcj9GWUV_128zmkpeg9KhNIne6o5TkAzjzNz0ocFR7-yTW4BEmcBC46l9GHmL0r0-B76Pz71GfmN8ZdgT3bZQdqp-PMgDzmuqA0T1rc7kRcHARCFfL7/s612/istockphoto-1476812862-612x612.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="408" data-original-width="612" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaJvp2eDnHA7ThH6-n-J_CLRUfNQLfULYZRNEHlAgp_swXN6J-hxIlrjp5UgalLVSa6utowPlG2vcj9GWUV_128zmkpeg9KhNIne6o5TkAzjzNz0ocFR7-yTW4BEmcBC46l9GHmL0r0-B76Pz71GfmN8ZdgT3bZQdqp-PMgDzmuqA0T1rc7kRcHARCFfL7/w640-h426/istockphoto-1476812862-612x612.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p><span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;">Yesterday afternoon, I stopped into the Cherie Bistro for a quick lunch before heading home. At the next table were two young people—one visibly trans, the other gender variant. They were having lunch and speaking to each other in rapid-fire Spanish. </span></span></p><p><span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;">Something about they way they leaned towards each other, obviously sharing gossip, laughing, and ordering cocktails reminded me of my friends and I in the early 80s, either out with friends or having lunch with co-workers at whatever restaurant was closest to our places of employment. </span></span></p><p><span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;">The one striking difference was the long-ish periods during which they stared at their phones, tapping away. For obvious reasons, this would not have occurred during those early-80s lunches. But the joy the took in each other's company, and in he possibilities of their own youth, was instantly recognizable and familiar.</span></span></p><p><span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;">After lunch, I went next door to the Second Cup on Church Street to pick up some coffee beans. There has always been a Second Cup on Church Street, from the famous "steps" of the 80s, so immortalized in THE KIDS IN THE HALL and elsewhere. </span></span></p><p><span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;">The current incarnation, due to yesterday's cutting cold, meant that the patio was obviously close, and the guests were inside, pressed close to each other at the tables, laughing, and the air was redolent with the strong smell of delicious coffee.</span></span></p><p><span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;">As I waited, I looked at the crowd, which was easily 90% older gay men. I don't even mean "older," I mean "old," in every glorious sense of the word—white hair, wrinkles, "old man" clothes and shoes. And again, much like in with the two in next door at Cherie Bistro, their joy in each other's company was palpable. </span></span></p><p><span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;">It occurred to me how many years queers spend listening to people teach them to dread growing old, telling them that they'll become "invisible," and "undesirable," and yet there was almost more joy here than there was next door. I loved the idea of youth and age being bracketed by two restaurants, side by side, on what is still he Main Street of Toronto's gay village.</span></span></p><p><span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;">My friends of my own age and I seem to have been largely immune to those teachings. We are obviously part of the "60 is the new 50" generation, so there's that. In addition, we are the generation that survived AIDS, even as we lost some of the people we loved the most in the world. Perhaps living under that shadow has given us more of an appreciation for the gift that life is. Or maybe those lessons didn't damage as many of us as they might have. </span></span></p><p><span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;">Clearly, and to my delight, both the young friends at Cherie and the older gay gentlemen at the Second Cup were completely in their moment, and in their joys, in their own circles. </span></span></p><p><span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;">The images moved me enough to jot down some notes about it in my Moleskine as soon as I got home. Everyone has their time, and their times, and life is a series of concentric, overlapping circles of those times, and the luckiest of us know all of them. ☕</span></span></p>Michael Rowehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15181004056021590350noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1286037782757011217.post-42115819130440957692024-02-28T20:34:00.000-08:002024-02-28T20:38:58.319-08:00Throwback Thursday: MIDNIGHT MASS, 2021<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggZqV4RwK8Cf5TsWYVxxx-4WNv_YNqMfdP2LO4YEHhbQ7vw9_4t2RDjkd0LOos15y1-xkoMspD7FQYqALlcCo9oHa6uZPcsoZ9REVPZQ_qbIhnuz-FnywRkvpt8x6Bdp1BEbxY4AF7TfALyPf4dBiqDwMeWZDiD1s2qp2-PxrciIqT9zcrUyQjKvCYxbqg/s1152/Screenshot%202024-02-28%20at%2011.02.16%E2%80%AFPM.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1152" data-original-width="1150" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggZqV4RwK8Cf5TsWYVxxx-4WNv_YNqMfdP2LO4YEHhbQ7vw9_4t2RDjkd0LOos15y1-xkoMspD7FQYqALlcCo9oHa6uZPcsoZ9REVPZQ_qbIhnuz-FnywRkvpt8x6Bdp1BEbxY4AF7TfALyPf4dBiqDwMeWZDiD1s2qp2-PxrciIqT9zcrUyQjKvCYxbqg/w638-h640/Screenshot%202024-02-28%20at%2011.02.16%E2%80%AFPM.png" width="638" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p><span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); white-space-collapse: preserve;">Throwback Thursday: The sequence in </span><i style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); white-space: pre-wrap;">Midnight Mass</i><span style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); white-space-collapse: preserve;"> where Henry Thomas plucks </span><i style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); white-space: pre-wrap;">Wild Fell</i><span style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5);"> out of Kristen Lehman's hands in order to dance with her, to Neil Diamond's "Holly Holy," is one of my proudest moments as a grownup horror nerd, let alone as a novelist. It's nothing I could have imagined in 1982, at age twenty, when I watched him play Elliot in <i>ET The Extra-Terrestrial. </i>The entire scene is sunlight in a bottle, and even more so in light of the horror that follows. It looks gorgeous on the new TV, but I've always watched it when I needed a lift. I'm so grateful to Mike Flanagan for reaching out in 2020, </span><span style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); white-space: pre-wrap;"><a style="cursor: pointer;" tabindex="-1"></a></span><span style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); white-space: pre-wrap;">and for inviting the book to play a small part in that glorious miniseries, one of my great filmed narrative loves.</span></span></span></p>Michael Rowehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15181004056021590350noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1286037782757011217.post-14372245563082353242024-02-28T10:16:00.000-08:002024-02-28T10:17:55.439-08:00PRIDE, coming spring 2024 <p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5Ne1Phj8rlzssFpIugiL6C8MhJU48xM9EPEt-uT5eimXBMeKlb4hX_aURUBbCTMxmfox9ORjHXYi2hCyH7BMgZR7i8BahiYLRyKXQrcFX7PP2TLWAvHK_fDmAWAqBhUZ1KkHJvXJM37_AjyFir3TW8exap28ik5gNF3f3jCqLI2H8xqltDLWsDyyg1XbQ/s1545/Pride_COVER)%20REVISED.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1545" data-original-width="1100" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5Ne1Phj8rlzssFpIugiL6C8MhJU48xM9EPEt-uT5eimXBMeKlb4hX_aURUBbCTMxmfox9ORjHXYi2hCyH7BMgZR7i8BahiYLRyKXQrcFX7PP2TLWAvHK_fDmAWAqBhUZ1KkHJvXJM37_AjyFir3TW8exap28ik5gNF3f3jCqLI2H8xqltDLWsDyyg1XbQ/w456-h640/Pride_COVER)%20REVISED.jpg" width="456" /></a></div><p></p><p><span style="background-color: black; caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white; font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">The new book, <i>PRIDE,</i> will be published by <a href="https://douglas-mcintyre.com/products/9781771623971" target="_blank">Douglas & McIntyre</a> two months from today, just in time for full spring. I'm delighted to be able to share the beautiful cover for the first time. Please follow along for updates as we get closer to publication day. </span></span></p>Michael Rowehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15181004056021590350noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1286037782757011217.post-9395450091466088122024-02-26T19:00:00.000-08:002024-02-26T20:35:09.381-08:00The brave, cruel death of Aaron Bushnell <p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJn5Vki-2QenLc8tHMOG_itxek-ltD1AQU2Hhhu4bY_IiVBKKm3hfM_16Np2owcZm7Enwe9_HUhSXCUWe4MdPSbmT3xD6CunInKMFwbMUd8oImrYiAuSuznU2-F1a1trjsEy8t17nQDbedq6cFSsJ00-zAoSGNL2bxQeN_8Nzaupt9KE8LP47EN-d_O3nr/s1200/Aaron-Bushnell.jpg.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="1200" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJn5Vki-2QenLc8tHMOG_itxek-ltD1AQU2Hhhu4bY_IiVBKKm3hfM_16Np2owcZm7Enwe9_HUhSXCUWe4MdPSbmT3xD6CunInKMFwbMUd8oImrYiAuSuznU2-F1a1trjsEy8t17nQDbedq6cFSsJ00-zAoSGNL2bxQeN_8Nzaupt9KE8LP47EN-d_O3nr/w640-h426/Aaron-Bushnell.jpg.webp" width="640" /></a></div><br /><p></p><div class="xdj266r x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><div class="xdj266r x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs x126k92a" style="margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;">I am haunted tonight by the story of Airman Aaron Bushnell, who set himself on fire yesterday in front of the Israeli embassy in Washington, D.C., and died screaming "Free Palestine." </span></span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;">Quite apart from the fact that self-immolation is one of the oldest, most violent, and ultimately most self-sacrificing forms of political protest, the fact that his death should be a source of mockery and amusement in the gutters of social media should give everyone pause, no matter where they <a style="cursor: pointer;" tabindex="-1"></a>fall on what has been sterilely described as "the Israel-Gaza conflict." </span></span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;">In the absence of evidence that Mr. Bushnell had mental health issues (and no such evidence has been forthcoming) the only available conclusion is that he made himself the ultimate statement of the gravity of his beliefs. Where I land, that makes him a pure martyr, whatever anyone believes about his cause. </span></span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;">Furthermore, unlike other self-styled "martyrs," he took his own life without taking anyone else's. Perhaps unsurprisingly in a culture where so many so-called "believers in democracy" can't be bothered to even vote, the depth of commitment to an ideal that a sacrifice like his represents is most likely incomprehensible to most. </span></span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;">But the people circulating picture of his burning body on Twitter—in many cases, self-identified "pro-God" American Christians—make me wonder, yet again, if the real political divide in our society is between left and right, or if it's actually between the humane and the utterly inhumane—human beings so divorced from their own humanity, and the humanity of their fellow man, that they see humour, and find a source of sadistic disdain, in the tragic, horrifying heroism of a man burning himself alive to protest what he saw as an atrocity inflicted upon people he never even knew.</span></span></div></div></div></div>Michael Rowehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15181004056021590350noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1286037782757011217.post-53590101070332920812024-02-25T15:33:00.000-08:002024-02-26T20:32:31.388-08:00Airport thoughts, Sunday night <p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibQrEG56nTyM_NCyLNotIESAp6P05tVbKkX6MPvkVng98JAXhOK6J2lO7QEzrNuoOsjq6j_3wJg0uzXzLPulXz3tCTgs1OObRGBwQR6EoTTqgfnNIC3x9qUMb1b9oWW56GyplwTmHjTlcZOtRryBdbyumtqqEFLK2giLZlXzJCt3RMrLEL30z7MB-mVBiq/s3088/me.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3088" data-original-width="2316" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibQrEG56nTyM_NCyLNotIESAp6P05tVbKkX6MPvkVng98JAXhOK6J2lO7QEzrNuoOsjq6j_3wJg0uzXzLPulXz3tCTgs1OObRGBwQR6EoTTqgfnNIC3x9qUMb1b9oWW56GyplwTmHjTlcZOtRryBdbyumtqqEFLK2giLZlXzJCt3RMrLEL30z7MB-mVBiq/w480-h640/me.JPG" width="480" /></a></div><br /><p></p><div class="xdj266r x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="xdj266r x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs x126k92a" style="margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;">Tucked away at the airport with a Bloody Mary, doing some work for the publicist assigned to the new book, and thinking about this spectacular weekend with John Foster and <a class="x1i10hfl xjbqb8w x1ejq31n xd10rxx x1sy0etr x17r0tee x972fbf xcfux6l x1qhh985 xm0m39n x9f619 x1ypdohk xt0psk2 xe8uvvx xdj266r x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r xexx8yu x4uap5 x18d9i69 xkhd6sd x16tdsg8 x1hl2dhg xggy1nq x1a2a7pz xt0b8zv x1fey0fg xo1l8bm" href="https://www.facebook.com/LindaJonesNYC?__cft__[0]=AZV4fbofDL4PAoXxaL46VH1eDya-JkNNQy2Z63d744nDtkOCI0aJBLfua6_NWtOMkhGIHdZCWmz8Gk4xhwAL8QXknjyJel1X_H0bEVLXFrSmcjlj8A1JhO8SSOIVwDl4CIfVfTlAR2tbS_gSLnNNvF0nYOifA6emjicJM_NFr0ljgQ&__tn__=-]K-R" role="link" style="border-style: none; border-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; cursor: pointer; display: inline; list-style: none; margin: 0px; outline: currentcolor; padding: 0px; text-align: inherit; text-decoration: none; touch-action: manipulation;" tabindex="0"><span class="xt0psk2" style="display: inline;">Linda Jones</span></a>, and the indomitable Coraline. Quite apart from having seen a part of New York I'd never seen before—John and Linda's Brooklyn—the trip was a joy in deeper ways. </span></span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;">After recent events, including my battle with cancer, this series of travels, most lately the visit with John and Linda, finished off <a style="cursor: pointer;" tabindex="-1"></a>a particular series of journeys. Last spring, I visited my deer Ron Oliver in Palm Springs for the first time since the pandemic; then, this past fall, it was Boston and Chicago to visit loved ones there, and attend to important, precious fires that may have burned a bit low during the past few years, and build them up bright again. </span></span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;">Personal adversity and illness focuses life in a way that almost nothing else does. I am cognizant of every single one of the precious people who were there for me during those dark times. I am also cognizant of the ones who, for whatever reason, were unable to extend, however close I may have once thought we were. I genuinely wish them well and send them on their own journeys will authentic love in my heart. </span></span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;">For me, for now, and for the foreseeable future, I will immerse myself in the relationships that sustained, and sustain me, and now that I am well and strong again, I will do my best to pay it forward. </span></span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;">Glorying in John and Linda's warmth, kindness, solidity, and hospitality this weekend—dinners at some of their favourite neighbourhood places, long walks, zipping across the city on the train system I've never really explored before, long, deep talks in their cozy, light-filled, book-lined living room— I was reminded yet again of my favourite Yeats quote: "See where man's glory most begins and ends, and say my glory was I had such friends." </span></span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;">Outside the window of the lounge the sky is New York blue dappled with slender bands of yellow and orange. It's going to be a perfect night for flying. <span class="x3nfvp2 x1j61x8r x1fcty0u xdj266r xhhsvwb xat24cr xgzva0m xxymvpz xlup9mm x1kky2od" style="display: inline-flex; height: 16px; margin: 0px 1px; vertical-align: middle; width: 16px;"><img alt="🍁" class="xz74otr" height="16" referrerpolicy="origin-when-cross-origin" src="https://static.xx.fbcdn.net/images/emoji.php/v9/ta7/2/16/1f341.png" style="border: 0px; object-fit: fill;" width="16" /></span></span></span></div></div><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;"> </span></span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><span class="x3nfvp2 x1j61x8r x1fcty0u xdj266r xhhsvwb xat24cr xgzva0m xxymvpz xlup9mm x1kky2od" style="color: #050505; display: inline-flex; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; height: 16px; margin: 0px 1px; vertical-align: middle; width: 16px;"><br /></span></div></div>Michael Rowehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15181004056021590350noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1286037782757011217.post-25048355250966478662024-02-02T09:07:00.000-08:002024-02-02T15:58:35.556-08:00Sleep deeply, dream sweetly, Brianna <p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjV1C8NakLkKcYtcv75a7eRrKM8AREKnlhZd5ezfTF4GaWf5LNT3KW4YNdB6iIxMVYrd4UlGAByiXEIh9K35zVGbdeFeNYC-W5Ai_VS4M0hyphenhyphenCo-30YGanGdznvhBYbhPA_EN91JD9PPMQxR1AyxY_FoKdMZIo0kl87uBrIgPFh5tscwFNVdGri3-Nl9Nbca/s1800/GFVM6bNXkAAnDMU.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1800" data-original-width="1800" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjV1C8NakLkKcYtcv75a7eRrKM8AREKnlhZd5ezfTF4GaWf5LNT3KW4YNdB6iIxMVYrd4UlGAByiXEIh9K35zVGbdeFeNYC-W5Ai_VS4M0hyphenhyphenCo-30YGanGdznvhBYbhPA_EN91JD9PPMQxR1AyxY_FoKdMZIo0kl87uBrIgPFh5tscwFNVdGri3-Nl9Nbca/w640-h640/GFVM6bNXkAAnDMU.jpeg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><p></p><div class="xdj266r x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;">In Manchester, UK today, two teenagers, a male and a female, were sentenced to 20+ year terms in prison for the sadistic murder of a 16-year old trans girl named Brianna Ghey last year. In a text, one of the two murderers said, "I want to see if it will scream like a man or a girl." In court, another of the murderers said "I wanted to see what size of dick it had." Brianna Ghey was stabbed with a hunting knife 28 times in her head, neck, chest and back </span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;">My friends on my FB <a style="cursor: pointer;" tabindex="-1"></a>friend list are good people—I rarely accept random friend requests, and I'm generally able to place any name on my list in some sort of context when I see it. That said, my friends have friends, and they have friends, and some of them are not very good people. </span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;">To my friends I beg this—the next time you encounter transphobia on this site, either casual or vindictive, please call it out. It's dangerous. It's not just "a personal opinion." Reporting hate seems minimally effective on Facebook in 2024, because the official policy is not to care very much. It's also a growing social policy in countries like Canada, the U.S. and Great Britain. </span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;">If Brianna had been a member of some other minority group, including gays and lesbians, and not a trans teenager, this ghastly story would have been on the cover of <i>TIME</i>, accompanied by a prizewinning think-piece about how it was time for a "reckoning," and that a "national dialogue" was needed. </span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;">But she wasn't. She was a member of an ultra-vulnerable minority group comprising 1%-2% of the population of Great Britain, and therefore, in the minds of many, utterly disposable, and, in their minds, probably brought it on herself by being herself. </span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;">While conservatives in Alberta, Canada spend this weekend gloating about how they've just implemented the most vicious. most un-Canadian anti-transgender legislation in our history, and while pick-me gays and lesbians throw trans people under the bus hoping that it will take some of the heat off themselves, and while self-righteous TERF campaigner in England loudly bray about how Pride flags in a national railway station "are a threat to women's rights," somewhere tonight Brianna Ghey's grieving mother and father will find cold comfort in the fact that their daughter's murderers will spend the next two decades in prison. Their arms will always be empty, and the ache and loss they feel will be with them until the day they die, like every parent of every child lost to monstrous bigotry turned violent that someone, somewhere, thought was their right to indulge. </span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;">Monsters don't all wield knives. Some of them wield words and lies, spoken aloud or gleefully share on social media. </span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;">We've all heard at least some of the words: "troon," "t*anny," "he-she," "groomer," "pedo," and worse, whether they come from dirtbags on Twitter, right-wing politicians, carefully camouflaged by bestselling children's authors, or brazenly trumpeted by billionaire comedians who validate the exact hate that led to this murder, and call it "comedy," and make it seem somehow righteous. The blood-drenched end result is all too tragically often the same.</span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;">She was a teenage girl, full of dreams about the possibilities of her own life. She could have been any of our daughters or granddaughters.</span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;">Rest in peace, Brianna. And love and comfort to all parents of murdered children who will be mourning them tonight.</span></div></div>Michael Rowehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15181004056021590350noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1286037782757011217.post-59094255634505808222024-01-24T07:51:00.000-08:002024-01-24T07:51:26.265-08:00Queen's U, here I come<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFRvbzlj8GT3HTakBHw9EDy06aGPsFZcmc3DL6NZs459aRgnfsKqCWV1KyeIc6nCmrhnh1_ERzm2ALCrGh4NOuK1lraoPjvTbjQiRZdZsyBI4sTs3VAhyphenhyphenlMk8QdshvtYN1r6bTxTMQ3OUl3PTl18F7_U5TLx3QJfLNuahoigbJce9hwAwN8PMg_w7YWNkX/s1808/Screenshot%202024-01-23%20at%203.32.37%E2%80%AFPM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1710" data-original-width="1808" height="606" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFRvbzlj8GT3HTakBHw9EDy06aGPsFZcmc3DL6NZs459aRgnfsKqCWV1KyeIc6nCmrhnh1_ERzm2ALCrGh4NOuK1lraoPjvTbjQiRZdZsyBI4sTs3VAhyphenhyphenlMk8QdshvtYN1r6bTxTMQ3OUl3PTl18F7_U5TLx3QJfLNuahoigbJce9hwAwN8PMg_w7YWNkX/w640-h606/Screenshot%202024-01-23%20at%203.32.37%E2%80%AFPM.png" width="640" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p>I'm delighted and honoured to share that I'll be speaking a Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario at the Jack.Org annual summit, on February 10th, 20204 at 1:00 p.m. </p>Michael Rowehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15181004056021590350noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1286037782757011217.post-59293509259108213082024-01-22T16:24:00.000-08:002024-01-22T18:54:06.706-08:00ThinkPad glory days <p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPvDGIGX0ILE1xPgCJoeroO5EPWc-UE2bqauvxe8WK1n55yiS_7akeHxZ8r9G9mm5BqpBLB8rE94U_cfqq2tn_8n2Gw_tSjaKOX_q3EBf10uHpU7G9E4Ocoot_w6RCIOOD5N9-094LYoTq8nmNOZ1BBmqCP_yEZ_svG44Wp_cC0rt6jbcyyO6lXEj5flec/s1920/i_04_The-ThinkPad-s-keyboard-is-a-dream-to-type-on-and-features-a-hate-or-love-it-TrackPoint-I-m-in-the-l_1920px.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1440" data-original-width="1920" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPvDGIGX0ILE1xPgCJoeroO5EPWc-UE2bqauvxe8WK1n55yiS_7akeHxZ8r9G9mm5BqpBLB8rE94U_cfqq2tn_8n2Gw_tSjaKOX_q3EBf10uHpU7G9E4Ocoot_w6RCIOOD5N9-094LYoTq8nmNOZ1BBmqCP_yEZ_svG44Wp_cC0rt6jbcyyO6lXEj5flec/w640-h480/i_04_The-ThinkPad-s-keyboard-is-a-dream-to-type-on-and-features-a-hate-or-love-it-TrackPoint-I-m-in-the-l_1920px.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; font-family: times; font-size: 15px; text-align: left; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-size: large;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); font-family: times; text-align: left; white-space: pre-wrap;">Re-reading Dan Simmons' </span><i style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); font-family: times; text-align: left; white-space: pre-wrap;">A Winter Haunting </i><span style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); font-family: times; text-align: left; white-space: pre-wrap;">this evening, I came across a mention of an IBM ThinkPad, and it sent me down an unusually deep rabbit hole of memories. </span></span></div><p></p><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;">I loved my IBM ThinkPad. I wrote a significant number of my articles on one when I was still a working journalist. It travelled well, it was small, and I could work on it for four hours or so during cross-continental flights between Toronto and L.A. or Toronto and Vancouver. </span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;">Of course, a lot of that had to do <a style="cursor: pointer;" tabindex="-1"></a>with the fact that pre-9/11 airline seating was much more humane, and you weren't in perpetual danger of having the person in front of you slam his seat back and wreck your laptop. </span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;">At some point I acquired a Vaio, which I loved. I wrote the first version of OCTOBER on that Vaio, as well as the bulk of <i>Other Men's Sons</i>. </span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;">My friend Ron Oliver <span class="x3nfvp2 x1j61x8r x1fcty0u xdj266r xhhsvwb xat24cr xgzva0m xxymvpz xlup9mm x1kky2od" style="display: inline-flex; height: 16px; margin: 0px 1px; vertical-align: middle; width: 16px;"><img alt="🦌" class="xz74otr" height="16" referrerpolicy="origin-when-cross-origin" src="https://static.xx.fbcdn.net/images/emoji.php/v9/tdb/2/16/1f98c.png" style="border: 0px; object-fit: fill;" width="16" /></span><span class="x3nfvp2 x1j61x8r x1fcty0u xdj266r xhhsvwb xat24cr xgzva0m xxymvpz xlup9mm x1kky2od" style="display: inline-flex; height: 16px; margin: 0px 1px; vertical-align: middle; width: 16px;"><img alt="🎄" class="xz74otr" height="16" referrerpolicy="origin-when-cross-origin" src="https://static.xx.fbcdn.net/images/emoji.php/v9/ta6/2/16/1f384.png" style="border: 0px; object-fit: fill;" width="16" /></span> once kindly said that the Vaio was the laptop for non-Mac users who should be on a Mac (which was his unusual attempt at sensitivity, when what he meant was "Join the 21st century and get a fucking Mac.") </span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;">And he was right, of course. I probably should have paid attention to that fact years before, after the two of us collaborated on a piece of short fiction and learned, the hard way, how difficult it was to get an IMB and a Mac to cooperate. </span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;">Eventually I did get a Mac. I wrote both <i>Enter, Night </i> and <i>October</i> on a MacBookPro, and my Mac laptops are now basically extensions of my hands. I'm even keenly eyeing the "space black" 16-inch model, which is gorgeous, and which I categorically do not need...yet. </span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;">But weirdly tonight I miss my old ThinkPad, with the screen I tinted dark pink. It went everywhere with me on assignment from New York, to L.A., to Grand Manan New Brunswick, and even to Transylvania. </span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;">I suspect what I'm missing is less the Think Pad, which is a totem, or a relic-talisman (much like my beloved Filofax and my tiny red Motorola Razr phone, or my No. 801 Reporter's notebooks, or my tape recorder ) but rather the thirtysomething edition of me—the resilient magazine journalist who could write all night, sleep till 11:00 a.m. then get back at it no worse for wear, and who dreamed of being a fiction writer. The fearless, relatively unscarred, limitlessly optimistic guy who looked sexy when unshaven, not merely sweetly untended. </span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;">Those things, much like old model laptops, are replaced, as we age, by newer-model strengths and virtues—resignation, deeper understanding of fragility and a concomitant desire to appreciate it and protect it in others, forbearance, tolerance. </span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;">And the fearlessness is replaced by a kind of resignation that simultaneously understands fear and is able to put it in it's proper mental file—a much more secure and helpful place than he emotional floppy discs of past decades.</span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;">But man, it was fun remembering my tough little ThinkPad, both the literal and the metaphorical one, tonight. Thanks Dan Simmons, and for the fun ghost story too. </span></div></div><p><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;"> </span></p>Michael Rowehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15181004056021590350noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1286037782757011217.post-48773034350464184432023-10-15T11:22:00.009-07:002023-10-16T11:29:51.389-07:00Someone else is cradling a dead child <p><span style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZE7i8sLgj5J58kj2SAqcbPq2cesG-S94r905QO3dI4LDIQ3c0Oep6w-tk3UhPwWJmGIHJh0V5Ax1AWdNiF9h5CJTvBZ5q7z_7dfiSkRLZ2LlXm3ssDQnj06wj4PJ4vxhQq7yd29ltJHEDEkVCiztXOD_RFkQVkZ9mCbaNa-vQ7lsmbR1KA6Sto-1fYHn3/s1280/231011154114-05-israel-gaza-conflict-101123.jpg.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="1280" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZE7i8sLgj5J58kj2SAqcbPq2cesG-S94r905QO3dI4LDIQ3c0Oep6w-tk3UhPwWJmGIHJh0V5Ax1AWdNiF9h5CJTvBZ5q7z_7dfiSkRLZ2LlXm3ssDQnj06wj4PJ4vxhQq7yd29ltJHEDEkVCiztXOD_RFkQVkZ9mCbaNa-vQ7lsmbR1KA6Sto-1fYHn3/w640-h360/231011154114-05-israel-gaza-conflict-101123.jpg.webp" width="640" /></a></div><span style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); white-space: pre-wrap;"><p style="color: #050505; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;">My only goal today is to turn down ugly voices—whether they're political commentators on television, or social media chatterboxes blithely dismissing unspeakable agony being endured on the other side of the world. Or casually discussing it like it as a video game, or a reality show. Or cheering it on as though it were a football game for which they, as fans, paint their faces in team colours and call for the "death" of the players on the opposite team, all the while knowing </span></span><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); white-space: pre-wrap;"><a style="cursor: pointer;" tabindex="-1"></a></span><span style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); white-space: pre-wrap;">that they're doing it in safety and comfort, from a barcalounger in front of their television, or in a chair in front of a laptop, utterly immune from concomitant injury. </span></span><p></p><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;">The fact that millions of them self-identify as "people of faith," whatever that faith, merely makes their casualness all the more ghastly. They're inured from the cruelty and the inhumanity of their own words, partly because they're written or spoken in a self-validating echo chamber; but mostly because their words ultimately have no effect on the people's lives being blown apart, literally and metaphorically. </span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;">All of that is happening to someone else, somewhere a long, long, way away. Someone else is cradling a dead child. Someone else is trying to shield their family from a hailstorm of rockets and bombs. As Yeats wrote, "the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.</span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;"><span class="x3nfvp2 x1j61x8r x1fcty0u xdj266r xhhsvwb xat24cr xgzva0m xxymvpz xlup9mm x1kky2od" style="display: inline-flex; height: 16px; margin: 0px 1px; vertical-align: middle; width: 16px;"><img alt="🕊" height="16" referrerpolicy="origin-when-cross-origin" src="https://static.xx.fbcdn.net/images/emoji.php/v9/t59/2/16/1f54a.png" style="border: 0px;" width="16" /></span></span></div></div>Michael Rowehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15181004056021590350noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1286037782757011217.post-68132512254899219812023-10-15T11:02:00.002-07:002023-10-15T11:06:04.090-07:00How to help, via NPR <p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDk73xs6HAyHvirUXtic7pCwvuJY_qtxyM2hWUuyhcdHw7Z3WnkGzlz3FdkmbgUPIWqk1fRbjOvK1i49FAU8psLU6EtND9r4Wms_sx-fJD3dBNea8K8zkHxs7I5rCNneOAzfpUTQ9zvof15FqYh9GBBNeJSI2FXPAbNiOyZa7OLJ-g7wMP_lVkrD7I1q20/s1654/Screenshot%202023-10-15%20at%202.05.25%E2%80%AFPM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1654" data-original-width="1360" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDk73xs6HAyHvirUXtic7pCwvuJY_qtxyM2hWUuyhcdHw7Z3WnkGzlz3FdkmbgUPIWqk1fRbjOvK1i49FAU8psLU6EtND9r4Wms_sx-fJD3dBNea8K8zkHxs7I5rCNneOAzfpUTQ9zvof15FqYh9GBBNeJSI2FXPAbNiOyZa7OLJ-g7wMP_lVkrD7I1q20/w526-h640/Screenshot%202023-10-15%20at%202.05.25%E2%80%AFPM.png" width="526" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><a href="https://www.npr.org/2023/10/13/1205235922/help-israel-gaza-humanitarian-organizations">https://www.npr.org/2023/10/13/1205235922/help-israel-gaza-humanitarian-organizations</a></p>Michael Rowehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15181004056021590350noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1286037782757011217.post-48499188301194449292023-09-20T10:42:00.004-07:002024-01-24T13:33:06.495-08:00Hate has no home here <p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWXwlDaGa5Vqdk4ueZ-89Kg49cgH4OBbetC07ohwdksuj2PVejY1JT551NHSHuiNXRORoAlx0jyyBCzVUE_1zlKmsY9ecfAQKWB23YXZbkJoyVNSC8IOU5rWTbPXUlsO3TmJHZ6XD2T-uywNX1Zshc1K2gDS_ONb2Yo4nUBQ24lqDWwSbez4T4QchKlvoW/s2560/cecilie-johnsen-G8CxFhKuPDU-unsplash-scaled.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1920" data-original-width="2560" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWXwlDaGa5Vqdk4ueZ-89Kg49cgH4OBbetC07ohwdksuj2PVejY1JT551NHSHuiNXRORoAlx0jyyBCzVUE_1zlKmsY9ecfAQKWB23YXZbkJoyVNSC8IOU5rWTbPXUlsO3TmJHZ6XD2T-uywNX1Zshc1K2gDS_ONb2Yo4nUBQ24lqDWwSbez4T4QchKlvoW/w640-h480/cecilie-johnsen-G8CxFhKuPDU-unsplash-scaled.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><span style="background-color: black; caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;">I got up early this morning to join the "No Space For Hate" protest at Queen's Park, the counter-protest response to the one-day anti-trans gatherings that are occurring all over the country today. I have a lot of feelings that I'll probably need to sit with for awhile, but a few do come readily to mind. </span></span><p></p><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;">First off, it feels surreal, as a 61-year old gay man, to still be protesting against these shitty people who hate us so much. This is a sentiment I've heard time and time <a style="cursor: pointer;" tabindex="-1"></a>again from women and POC my age, who likewise wish that folks had learned a bit more over the past half-decade or so. </span></span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;">We're still here, but they've raised a new generation of hate mongers who are as cruel as their parents, in their sentiments. </span></span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;">Likewise, it's amazing to see how well so any of our old protest slogans have been repurposed, and that silence still equals death, just a different kind of death at this point</span></span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;">I was also struck by the naked cynicism of the conservatives who organized this hate jamboree, exploiting every fissure and crack in Canadian society, uniting them in hate and ignorance. </span></span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;">Perched high on a statue in the middle of the park, a very young woman in an abaya and a hijab waved a sign that read "I BELONG TO MY PARENTS." Next to her, a twenty something white man brandished his own sign, "VACCINES ARE POISON." On the ground below them, others screamed obscenities and wielded "FUCK TRUDEAU!" placards, and signs with Bible verses, and even the tedious "GOD MADE ADAM AND EVE, NOT ADAM AND STEVE." </span></span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;">It was cold comfort that the messages on our side were messages of support for trans kids and trans youth, messages about freedom to me ourselves, and the right to dignity and self-determination of our lives and bodies.</span></span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;">I asked the permission of every single person whose photograph I too, and towards the end of the march, I asked a very young person if I might take a picture of their sign. They hesitated to a moment, then said, in a trembling voice, "Only the sign, OK?" </span></span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;">As a recent queer elder, it broke my heart to see that our youth can still, even in a modern city like Toronto, even in 2023, be that frightened by the possibility of being photographed carrying a very benign, very loving protest sign. </span></span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;">And the most prevalent, lingering feeling was this one: not since our AIDS marches and protests in the 80s and 90s have I felt I was in the presence of people who would be just as happy to send queer people, especially trans people, to camps. </span></span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;">Or to simply have us...disappear. </span></span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;">For gay men and lesbians of my generation, who'd like to wash their hands of the virulent anti-trans movement, I urge them to pay attention: the language being used against trans people is exactly the same language used against us in the 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s, and we have only ever been as strong as our most fragile link. </span></span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;">They are determined to keep their hate alive at any cost, and they know they can't do it without telling lies. </span></span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;">All these words—"groomer," "pedo," "after our kids," "recruiters"—were used against gay men and lesbians in the last half of the 20th century. They know we are no threat to "the family," so they need a scare-narrative to sell their bigotry to the ignorant, degenerate, fearful masses who desperately need an "other" against which to wish violence and direct their hate.</span></span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;">And if they ever did away with "the trans problem," as they call it, you already know exactly who they'd come after next. It is truly well past time for us to all come together. </span></span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;">Even if some of us don't think we belong in the same community, the people who hate us absolutely believe that we do. </span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></div><div dir="auto" style="color: #050505; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px;"><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgT_13ZNwpMtWX2WsWTscnh8LMryTsMWQRGL_pO0v5tsd6fQZwK-lXFyCll70RO3HpquoaHH0himZ1BKa0AxpUPwfR2ZWAEqGvsk5vTre9twt_RelkERO5KUwU7iiwp0u2RnjZdlRYoLFpCQGBMrtLSoSC6uButOxbfNWevBiVPhsYYR9Fd-uzcleXwUbOz/s3251/A5F1D839-D390-4C90-9C98-F86AD48AB951.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="3251" height="596" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgT_13ZNwpMtWX2WsWTscnh8LMryTsMWQRGL_pO0v5tsd6fQZwK-lXFyCll70RO3HpquoaHH0himZ1BKa0AxpUPwfR2ZWAEqGvsk5vTre9twt_RelkERO5KUwU7iiwp0u2RnjZdlRYoLFpCQGBMrtLSoSC6uButOxbfNWevBiVPhsYYR9Fd-uzcleXwUbOz/w640-h596/A5F1D839-D390-4C90-9C98-F86AD48AB951.JPG" width="640" /></a></div><br /><span class="x3nfvp2 x1j61x8r x1fcty0u xdj266r xhhsvwb xat24cr xgzva0m xxymvpz xlup9mm x1kky2od" style="display: inline-flex; font-family: inherit; height: 16px; margin: 0px 1px; vertical-align: middle; width: 16px;"> </span></div><div dir="auto" style="color: #050505; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px;"><span class="x3nfvp2 x1j61x8r x1fcty0u xdj266r xhhsvwb xat24cr xgzva0m xxymvpz xlup9mm x1kky2od" style="display: inline-flex; font-family: inherit; height: 16px; margin: 0px 1px; vertical-align: middle; width: 16px;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto" style="color: #050505; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><span class="x3nfvp2 x1j61x8r x1fcty0u xdj266r xhhsvwb xat24cr xgzva0m xxymvpz xlup9mm x1kky2od" style="display: inline-flex; font-family: inherit; height: 16px; margin: 0px 1px; vertical-align: middle; width: 16px;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto" style="color: #050505; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px;"><span class="x3nfvp2 x1j61x8r x1fcty0u xdj266r xhhsvwb xat24cr xgzva0m xxymvpz xlup9mm x1kky2od" style="display: inline-flex; font-family: inherit; height: 16px; margin: 0px 1px; vertical-align: middle; width: 16px;"><br /></span></div></div>Michael Rowehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15181004056021590350noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1286037782757011217.post-44855173070581955552023-09-18T13:53:00.007-07:002023-09-18T14:37:05.753-07:00"Faith and the Cancer Journey" speech, Rosedale United Church, Sunday September 17th, 2023 <p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8pMnYonuulsAMTS87orO3PkBWinEhNEl7V_XZcHOEV67gT77yRIApjaoV8h__U7VAmX5LqkH4L8H--lBW3XbK6CT9royjCRMMvb7-GLzd6jXROErRTKCedLVP_rtjzvNsFNkeK_LBzTkLkAsuu0lJh8jWUzCeGRPfPagDuNnFjAlh-xAy6pRJQX7ONYN4/s940/Michael%20Rowe_Promo_230911.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="788" data-original-width="940" height="536" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8pMnYonuulsAMTS87orO3PkBWinEhNEl7V_XZcHOEV67gT77yRIApjaoV8h__U7VAmX5LqkH4L8H--lBW3XbK6CT9royjCRMMvb7-GLzd6jXROErRTKCedLVP_rtjzvNsFNkeK_LBzTkLkAsuu0lJh8jWUzCeGRPfPagDuNnFjAlh-xAy6pRJQX7ONYN4/w640-h536/Michael%20Rowe_Promo_230911.png" width="640" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p><br /></p><p>I gave this speech at Rosedale United Church yesterday. I had no idea that the church was recording it, but I was delighted to learn they had. This is the link to the Rosedale podcast website. </p><p>My speech begins at the 38:55 mark </p><p><a href="https://www.rosedaleunited.org/podcasts/rosedale-united-services/2023-09-17-september-17-2023">https://www.rosedaleunited.org/podcasts/rosedale-united-services/2023-09-17-september-17-2023</a></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>Michael Rowehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15181004056021590350noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1286037782757011217.post-61177070361577052382023-08-22T09:19:00.016-07:002023-08-22T10:40:14.786-07:00This is what "sincerely held religious beliefs" cost Laura Ann Carleton <p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjE06i5d5Kk9p9tDlH8lz__ovk5g7Jj5qIihCIo1FxBMvG4Kyi4gbcf2nlDYvL_gXOgjyq-mWmE6OJnKdNg5Ha5_6Cbq2kq5fjW3zRSjYCl8SKbIcntCVHuBiedx6e-UaJUNbWWV36-pnaYIkcE6SkNceY6Ylv7ekq8XlIRDeXovJVlL6YApI9H1Ve4udYK/s886/pride%20row%201.JPG.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="392" data-original-width="886" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjE06i5d5Kk9p9tDlH8lz__ovk5g7Jj5qIihCIo1FxBMvG4Kyi4gbcf2nlDYvL_gXOgjyq-mWmE6OJnKdNg5Ha5_6Cbq2kq5fjW3zRSjYCl8SKbIcntCVHuBiedx6e-UaJUNbWWV36-pnaYIkcE6SkNceY6Ylv7ekq8XlIRDeXovJVlL6YApI9H1Ve4udYK/s16000/pride%20row%201.JPG.webp" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p>Some months back, I was taken to task for my satirical "Happy Sunday" posts on my Facebook page by someone who felt that I was mocking people's "sincerely held beliefs." I tried to explain that, as a gay man and a queer person, people's "sincerely held beliefs" did not hold the neutrality for me that they held for, say, a cisgender white straight woman like herself, who fit neatly into their prescribed paradigm. </p><p>Those "beliefs" have never fit neatly for LGBTQ people.<br /><br />On August 18th, a 27-year old man named Travis Ikeguchi murdered Laura Ann Carleton, a mother of nine for daring to fly a Pride flag outside her own store. She wasn't herself LGBTQ, but she was a vocal, loving, and public ally—the kind of friend of our community that so many queer people know and love personally. <br /><br />I have been saying this for years now, but this is the natural end-result of the sewage overflow of words like "groomer" and "pedo" and "transing" into the groundwater of public discourse, particularly when liberally disseminate and shared on sites like Facebook and Twitter.<br /><br />This is what happens when reasonable people stroke their chins sagely and say, "Well, maybe they have a point" when vicious transphobia is lipsticked up as "feminism," or as concern about "women's bathroom safety" or the "danger" of gender affirming care for trans children and teenagers—which in reality always begins with love, and with listening to them, then providing them with a rigorously monitored, psychological/medical framework that will allow them to be themselves, and not to join the long line of dead teenagers who've decided that no life was better than living theirs. <br /><br />This is what happens when gay men and lesbians who find transgender people personally unpalatable for their own reasons join in, and affirm the people who hate trans people, apparently completely unaware that the people who hate trans people hate them, too, and appear oblivious to the fact that those people will come for them in time as well.<br /><br />This is what happens when people vote for politicians who censor reading material, or tell teachers that they can't identify themselves as queer exactly the way straight teachers identify themselves as husbands and wives, or mothers and fathers, in the presence of this classes, and who tacitly push the "LGBTQ = pedophile" narrative, knowing that it will likely go unchecked for the most part. This is what happens when those same politicians and preachers are allowed to demonize drag queens as "adult entertainers," or "predators," when they read children's books to kids in libraries. <br /><br />This is what happens when white liberals who can't get their "BLACK TRANS LIVES MATTER!" banners and Pride "covers" up on Facebook fast enough in June go deadly quiet the rest of the year when a world-famous multimillionaire comedian makes horrific jokes about trans women's genitalia, or makes AIDS jokes, or, worse still, they talk about "free speech," or how "funny" the comedian is, or that "we all have to learn to laugh at ourselves" as a way to provide cover for themselves when they're asked why they, as supposed "allies" didn't speak up, and why queer people are always the very last minority in the queue to warrant their actual, tangible support when it counts.<br /><br />Laura Ann Carleton, by all accounts a beloved member of her community, and an ally's ally, knew all of this, and she flew the Pride flag anyway, to show us that she loved us. And this man, whose Twitter timeline is full of Bible verses and right-wing Christian talking points, shot her in the head for it. <br /><br />So the next time a queer person flinches at these things, do one of two things—either listen to them, and support them, or at least try to truly understand them, or stop calling yourself an "ally." Because queer people can't afford the luxury of any more performative social media "allies" who never seem to have our backs in an actual brawl. <br /><br />To the lady who found my "Happy Sunday" posts objectionable—this is what I was talking about with regard to people's "sincerely held religious beliefs." I have no trouble at all believing that Travis Ikeguchi was sincere in his beliefs. <br /><br />And to the religious people out there who have suddenly become horribly excited by their newfound platform in the discussion of "protecting children"—we see you. You're just the latest incarnation of the same vile homophobic libel we've seen since the 1950s, and before. We defeated you then, and we'll defeat you now. We see you. <br /><br />And, more to your specific point, your God sees you, too. If you truly believe in the afterlife, and the eternity of souls, worry about yours.</p><p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZIU0T4UvSHWIikhM6iQUx2eBQ35JlpQuz3smeqOJyWvV42gHBXhiZXHINacJBuicFX84yOgFTERIK8dhYINqrxuuA22ZUSEpI9Csh1DX8x8zHNXDL9TaZM52K-UJ-E7MWN4Yxa7TiEu9s4vPKVof_cWrUMxwYVhnnLqy4vXQ-ZbaHzGBvkq5Fb7wc1i37/s1726/Screen%20Shot%202023-08-22%20at%2011.22.02%20AM.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1726" data-original-width="1018" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZIU0T4UvSHWIikhM6iQUx2eBQ35JlpQuz3smeqOJyWvV42gHBXhiZXHINacJBuicFX84yOgFTERIK8dhYINqrxuuA22ZUSEpI9Csh1DX8x8zHNXDL9TaZM52K-UJ-E7MWN4Yxa7TiEu9s4vPKVof_cWrUMxwYVhnnLqy4vXQ-ZbaHzGBvkq5Fb7wc1i37/w378-h640/Screen%20Shot%202023-08-22%20at%2011.22.02%20AM.png" width="378" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p>Michael Rowehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15181004056021590350noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1286037782757011217.post-9382051904227178032023-04-26T21:56:00.007-07:002023-04-26T21:56:46.540-07:00Friday night light <p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhw-flzqNswCLQLoisRLWX0Fi5Pn3HwyxiktLaltp8zgCqg1Biqj4EMMW0n6epELFlWpBwTJrOMpRrSQhF9BLxM2ayYtOves8rH9pAxnXcarZyUf8F1dDBrdEEBzHSFByC9p1yqxVDnV3QizFwRK5CseP00adXJ8KbSZ7w3ijhZc_VRWB8pV6dimTe5nQ/s2000/342521955_162984636398349_4618897316357277543_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1288" data-original-width="2000" height="413" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhw-flzqNswCLQLoisRLWX0Fi5Pn3HwyxiktLaltp8zgCqg1Biqj4EMMW0n6epELFlWpBwTJrOMpRrSQhF9BLxM2ayYtOves8rH9pAxnXcarZyUf8F1dDBrdEEBzHSFByC9p1yqxVDnV3QizFwRK5CseP00adXJ8KbSZ7w3ijhZc_VRWB8pV6dimTe5nQ/w640-h413/342521955_162984636398349_4618897316357277543_n.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); white-space: pre-wrap;">I was doing some late-night grocery shopping at the Metro on Gould Street, and I noticed a significant number of Muslim families in the store doing shopping that felt, somehow, festive and joyful. Then I remembered that tonight is the end of the holy month of Ramadan. As I waited for my Uber outside the store, the first few raindrops started to fall, and the air was full of that sweetness that sometimes comes before a spring night's rain. Hurrying past me on the sidewalk was </span><span style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); white-space: pre-wrap;"><a style="cursor: pointer;" tabindex="-1"></a></span><span style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); white-space: pre-wrap;">a male couple, arm in arm, both wearing beautiful, woven ivory thobes. One looked straight ahead with look of apprehension on his face. His partner pulled him closer and caught my eye, smiling nervously as he walked by. When I returned the smile—a smile of recognition and fraternity, because these two were obviously more than friends—his own smile exploded into something bright and exultant. He raised his free arm slightly in a gesture of something like a wave, or half-salute. They continued on their way, walking more quickly now as the rain began to fall in earnest. All queer people have journeys to make, some easier than others, at different points in our lives, depending upon where that journey started, and what obstacles are placed in our way, often, even with the best of intentions, by families. I feel genuinely blessed to have witnessed a minuscule leg of their journey on this rainy night of the last day of Ramadan, and their joy is still imprinted on me as I type this with the rain pattering insistently on my roof.</span></span></p>Michael Rowehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15181004056021590350noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1286037782757011217.post-50179352545126172542023-04-10T21:59:00.002-07:002023-04-26T22:02:40.667-07:00"Putin—very smart"<p> </p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuaroOtsh2xuoJ4Pw8PTpvJ6SrNwQTaxwe6EoLnk-1y0mS0nfTlVMg3I6-Pi6MF2HuS8EyIjf8zE8yh5rXhO-QnSi87-9t-dPAr-SM5gotnh3k6qywpmv92ZWX9eVlqLyYP0thyzzn1gN7Gq_h4SdQtjW53pjJkH4gPg00pmYZghY1ag1MgoFJmxXLrA/s1396/340575086_928380441817420_8346002914278645837_n.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="930" data-original-width="1396" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuaroOtsh2xuoJ4Pw8PTpvJ6SrNwQTaxwe6EoLnk-1y0mS0nfTlVMg3I6-Pi6MF2HuS8EyIjf8zE8yh5rXhO-QnSi87-9t-dPAr-SM5gotnh3k6qywpmv92ZWX9eVlqLyYP0thyzzn1gN7Gq_h4SdQtjW53pjJkH4gPg00pmYZghY1ag1MgoFJmxXLrA/w640-h426/340575086_928380441817420_8346002914278645837_n.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><span style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); white-space: pre-wrap;"><p style="color: #050505; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;">"Putin—very smart. Now, he's had probably a bad year. Don't forget, that whole this is not...if he took over all of Ukraine."</span></p></span><p></p><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;"> —Donald Trump praises Vladimir Putin to Tucker Carlson on Fox. </span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;">[Photo: Nina Nikiforovа, 80, cries outside a church after attending the funeral of her son Oleg Kunynets, a Ukrainian military serviceman who was killed in the east of the country, in Kyiv, Ukraine, Saturday, Feb. 11, 2023. Credit: AP/Emilio Morenatti] <span class="x3nfvp2 x1j61x8r x1fcty0u xdj266r xhhsvwb xat24cr xgzva0m xxymvpz xlup9mm x1kky2od" style="display: inline-flex; height: 16px; margin: 0px 1px; vertical-align: middle; width: 16px;"><img alt="🇺🇦" height="16" referrerpolicy="origin-when-cross-origin" src="https://static.xx.fbcdn.net/images/emoji.php/v9/t51/2/16/1f1fa_1f1e6.png" style="border: 0px;" width="16" /></span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="x3nfvp2 x1j61x8r x1fcty0u xdj266r xhhsvwb xat24cr xgzva0m xxymvpz xlup9mm x1kky2od" style="display: inline-flex; font-family: inherit; height: 16px; margin: 0px 1px; vertical-align: middle; width: 16px;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto" style="color: #050505; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px;"><span class="x3nfvp2 x1j61x8r x1fcty0u xdj266r xhhsvwb xat24cr xgzva0m xxymvpz xlup9mm x1kky2od" style="display: inline-flex; font-family: inherit; height: 16px; margin: 0px 1px; vertical-align: middle; width: 16px;"><br /></span></div></div>Michael Rowehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15181004056021590350noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1286037782757011217.post-56567023666262427782023-03-17T18:19:00.006-07:002023-03-17T19:19:51.330-07:00The last lunch <p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrpdYt-qSODeSZUO1SI3H_eFnOTBd3YwlHJ9bJFVYuLv76IQu5cnkPvHTI3GM8iFaquLUOcVDRhfe3FhcWnWf_UFEr9D9rLKdvg0YzpqrdGl_LhzPLrlTj91jXy79xTWUf3JL1pv3eE8JDFKYN-90utlTjzIAWWwQyd6wI8P-3USZDqXnt0a1iGGc_UA/s2048/336737583_877515406878925_2262205105790211648_n.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrpdYt-qSODeSZUO1SI3H_eFnOTBd3YwlHJ9bJFVYuLv76IQu5cnkPvHTI3GM8iFaquLUOcVDRhfe3FhcWnWf_UFEr9D9rLKdvg0YzpqrdGl_LhzPLrlTj91jXy79xTWUf3JL1pv3eE8JDFKYN-90utlTjzIAWWwQyd6wI8P-3USZDqXnt0a1iGGc_UA/w640-h480/336737583_877515406878925_2262205105790211648_n.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><p></p><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xdj266r x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;">This photograph is of me at "my" booth, with my young friend Gabriela (she/her/hers), who was the last employee hired by Bar Verde at the Eaton Centre before Nordstrom's corporate overlords in the Pacific Northwestern United States decided to blow up the work lives of 2500 young people north of the 49th parallel.</span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;">I stopped by for lunch this afternoon for the last time, and to say goodbye to some staff members who had become friends. My friend Richard, who was the manager there four years ago, came into town to join <a style="cursor: pointer;" tabindex="-1"></a>me for a beer, a reconnection, and a reminiscence. </span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;">Over the course of the afternoon, may ex-staff members dropped by to say goodbye to "their" restaurant, and share a drink for their friends and former colleagues—itself a commentary on what kind of a place Bar Verde was, and what sort of people it attracted, both as customers and as staff. </span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;">Folks said some very, very lovely things to me, personal things that wouldn't make sense to anyone who wasn't familiar with the situation and circumstances, but which, at sixty, I treasure vastly. </span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;">One pithy observation, however was too good not to share: my friend Clint noted that I was like the late Queen, in that I'd had almost as many Bar Verde managers as she'd had Prime Ministers. </span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;">A very bittersweet afternoon, all told. I was glad to walk home through the extended, pre-spring sunlight after saying my goodbyes. This would not have been the ideal moment for pitch-black skies and wet snow.</span></div></div>Michael Rowehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15181004056021590350noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1286037782757011217.post-43928169868853131862023-03-16T11:11:00.001-07:002023-03-16T11:11:04.085-07:00Harbingers<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcW72cXe0i6nZ7lVcP_OaZnKZQ0l40r7VToy5u9oDmpb8GLiPxl4f2UVLbUrNlQqqR3-oO9jkOnIwua_bGUsD8Q_MpQzOtZpHxYOXR9VfuXzvZ4_zoGib2CGlOyTVsEHyR_gjijGwZOYhLci-z8oqlKgwzbZJZMjFSu4pK_g1x3UFRcJK10682Jsy0vA/s900/2-red-winged-blackbird-gary-bruton.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="648" data-original-width="900" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcW72cXe0i6nZ7lVcP_OaZnKZQ0l40r7VToy5u9oDmpb8GLiPxl4f2UVLbUrNlQqqR3-oO9jkOnIwua_bGUsD8Q_MpQzOtZpHxYOXR9VfuXzvZ4_zoGib2CGlOyTVsEHyR_gjijGwZOYhLci-z8oqlKgwzbZJZMjFSu4pK_g1x3UFRcJK10682Jsy0vA/s16000/2-red-winged-blackbird-gary-bruton.jpg" /></a></div><br /><span style="background-color: black; caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;">There are red-winged Blackbirds in the cemetery. I realize that sounds like the first line of a ghost story, but it actually means spring is right around the corner.</span></span><p></p>Michael Rowehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15181004056021590350noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1286037782757011217.post-15065682219216272102023-03-14T14:48:00.006-07:002023-03-14T23:22:55.998-07:00The Bible says I cannot support the gays<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkIOXQxkvKoY7uLJa3IbUa8kPN3g86SYjgfHHk-E-PZYEvL0RPBfjSgNxJ6BjwO2jnfMwUsfUmBC71L4-NlMN4YzlowwW_0VLN30qJdFDwLotNRHT-Ac2UN7C8VNFfJfBJI1_tIo3ZH_qswDKhPGUL7I902BHtQoiq6gB8pwh3griXtMc0aVFNSWFFGA/s500/336173110_1563296390847171_6817817008746994032_n.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="500" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkIOXQxkvKoY7uLJa3IbUa8kPN3g86SYjgfHHk-E-PZYEvL0RPBfjSgNxJ6BjwO2jnfMwUsfUmBC71L4-NlMN4YzlowwW_0VLN30qJdFDwLotNRHT-Ac2UN7C8VNFfJfBJI1_tIo3ZH_qswDKhPGUL7I902BHtQoiq6gB8pwh3griXtMc0aVFNSWFFGA/w640-h640/336173110_1563296390847171_6817817008746994032_n.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /> <span> </span><div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xdj266r x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;">My driver this afternoon was a former refugee who's been in Canada for some years. He had a warm, generous face, even when I could only see half of it in the rear-view mirror, from which hung a plain cross that proclaimed that he was one of the 3% of Christians who formed the population of his homeland.</span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;">His sister had named her daughter "Michael," which he said was unusual where he was from. It was a nice opener, and our conversation flowed easily and pleasantly from there.</span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;">We <a style="cursor: pointer;" tabindex="-1"></a>touched on the peripatetic and often solitary lives of refugees, be they persons displaced by war, or natural disasters. We talked about the kind of courage it takes to lose everything and start again, alone, in a foreign country. Friends of his had encountered anti-immigrant and neo-nazi violence in Germany, and the terrible sense of dislocation that comes from being so clearly unwanted and resented. </span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;">He mentioned that early on in his refugee journey, he had tried to kill himself by slashing his wrists when the loneliness of the desolate interim town in which he found himself became too unbearable. </span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;">I suggested that Canada had always been a country of immigrants and refugees, and our history is one of people from somewhere else—wherever else—joining a human tributary that became a country, which became a nation, and that it made us stronger, and how happy he was to be here. Every non-Native is from a family that has come here from somewhere else. </span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;">I can't remember exactly how the conversation turned to religion, though it might have had something to do with our discussion of the imperative implicit in Christianity to welcome the homeless and the displaced, and how often that was a dismal failure, for very human reasons.</span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;">"I hope I am not offending you by saying this," he said tentatively, "but I cannot support the gays. The Bible tells me it is wrong. I respect them, and would help them, but I cannot support them. It is not in my heart." </span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;">It took me a moment to realize that he thought he was unburdening himself to another straight man—a straight man he assumed would share his views, or at least be sympathetic to them.</span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;">It felt like very familiar territory to me. I've had forty years of situations like this one in one way or another, and I've reacted in a variety of ways over those four decades. I'm proud of some of those ways less proud of others. </span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;">I let him continue for a few moments more, and then I interrupted and gently said, "Well, you know, I AM gay, but I'm grateful that you trusted me enough to share your feelings." </span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;">It might seem an odd response, but it had two aims. </span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;">First, first, to let him know the he'd just expressed his prejudices to an actual gay man without knowing it—which might not have been the most useful thing he'd ever done, especially in this particular climate—and to let him know it in a way that didn't shame him. </span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;">Secondly, to reassure him that he was safe, and that there wouldn't be any retaliation. </span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;">The first aim honoured my dignity as a queer person. The second aim honoured his vulnerability as a man who had very likely endured indignities and horrors of which I can barely conceive, and who still occasionally felt very far from home.</span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;">His stunned, mortified silence was like a electric shock inside the car. </span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;">Every time he apologized I came back with warmth and reassurance. I touched his arm and told him that, from everything he told me, he was a very good, sincere man, and that he probably hadn't met the right gay man yet. </span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;">He laughed a bit at that, and the conversation shifted to more neutral things as the ride came to an end. But In the rear-view mirror, I could still see a trace of concern in his eyes—grave concern that he'd inadvertently truly offended.</span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;">At the end of the ride, we shook hands. I told him how much I'd appreciated our conversation, and how much richer I felt for having known him, however briefly, and heard his story. </span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;">He told me that he was likewise grateful for our talk, and that no one ever talked to him on these rides. To most people, he was a back-of-a-head, getting them from one point to another. </span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;">No one is obligated to take another person under their wing for fifteen minutes, or to listen, or to care. In fact, doing so flies in the face of the urban ethos we think of as common sense. We're generally taught to avoid it, and no one would judge us for avoiding it.</span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;">But I had space this morning. His vulnerability was as visible as a spray of stars in a summer night sky. His need to connect was guileless and without any agenda other than connection. And he was a good man, his momentary misfire notwithstanding. I could see that as clearly as I could see the sun on the sidewalk outside the car window. </span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;">I didn't live with cancer for ten months without learning a thing or two about human frailty, or the miraculous healing power of kindness, compassion, and openness. There's always time to be a comforter and a conciliator, and to make space for the possibility of someone else's pain.</span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;">Maybe the next time he thinks about "the gays" he'll remember our warm conversation instead of whatever he's been taught. Maybe he'll recall our fifteen-minute friendship and realize he doesn't know enough yet about queer people to buttress his negative image of us. </span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;">Or, maybe not. In either case, it cost me nothing but good faith. </span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;">As for his clumsiness with the gay thing—people are sometimes clumsy. There are different types of activism. After forty years of roaming this earth I'm more convinced than ever that love and compassion are the most radical forms of activism of all.</span></div></div></div>Michael Rowehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15181004056021590350noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1286037782757011217.post-3804473806351822902023-03-05T18:30:00.001-08:002023-03-14T18:33:34.937-07:00Calling for genocide, but "not really" <p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibBAR27Suk94On9zf4y6fPCVXBHM5pJ9IgAXUd5dlQf02RB2eov_xenxpo0Zbub_9qql-OP7X_nm7lQF3WQXgthOwPzWpjAufwiOfVBqeitYUE0w24YxhmCOVBcQui3x8YKhehM647aIld_ub8P5GkHgH_-2yuNeaJ7VYSiheQFwkh0s56VHYMFV2Yyw/s1581/GettyImages-1392466387.jpg.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1054" data-original-width="1581" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibBAR27Suk94On9zf4y6fPCVXBHM5pJ9IgAXUd5dlQf02RB2eov_xenxpo0Zbub_9qql-OP7X_nm7lQF3WQXgthOwPzWpjAufwiOfVBqeitYUE0w24YxhmCOVBcQui3x8YKhehM647aIld_ub8P5GkHgH_-2yuNeaJ7VYSiheQFwkh0s56VHYMFV2Yyw/w640-h426/GettyImages-1392466387.jpg.webp" width="640" /></a></div><br /><br /><p></p><p><span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;">In an odd way, I applaud Michael Knowles for placing his genocidal fantasies front and centre, in a way that even the Nazis didn't quite dare to do in the beginning.</span></span></p><span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;"><br />Knowles' position is a lot more honest than that of the folks hiding behind specious, purposefully-vague "threats to women's spaces," or sports, or bathrooms, or classrooms, or scary stories about "experimental surgeries," or "radical hormone treatments," or "radical gender agendas," or "dangers to children." <br /><br />Or, in the case of Ted Cruz, warnings about transgender witches piloting jetliners and not knowing how to keep them from crashing. <br /><br />Last year, 6000 children in America died by gun-related violence. You can guess how many gun laws have been introduced to protect children from guns. On the other hand, two months into this year, 340 anti-LGBTQ+ bills have been introduced in statehouses across America. <br /><br />Anti-trans idealogues have never cared about "protecting women," and they have used children as human shields in their crusades. This has ever been about anything other than the eradication of a vulnerable 2% of the population that they find aesthetically distasteful. <br /><br />I'll say one thing for CPAC—even if it's the place where decency fears to tread, if you want an up-close, unvarnished, unapologetic, stripped-of-artifice look at what 21st century Republicans are really about, that's the place to see it. </span></span>Michael Rowehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15181004056021590350noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1286037782757011217.post-30796117863209861632023-03-04T23:39:00.017-08:002023-03-05T00:28:38.787-08:00Answering the Knock at the Cabin <p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPxswUHgWyO_mrYax0aPhRbjMkj_ixlWwPY7jaWokjHahimjmHQVVqUydfNywisgvu_IjIG9AslLiMfFmFhefZ-kTkZ4eRewVG7A_3wTbe8_wcTa4vAqeM4NVklYwz3P3O8qN2TgHDYAI2j3eHxGq4xVTBFBY7oAnTsQj5RU33pY01DH5WWop7dWiYcw/s681/knock-at-the-cabin-1.jpg.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="383" data-original-width="681" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPxswUHgWyO_mrYax0aPhRbjMkj_ixlWwPY7jaWokjHahimjmHQVVqUydfNywisgvu_IjIG9AslLiMfFmFhefZ-kTkZ4eRewVG7A_3wTbe8_wcTa4vAqeM4NVklYwz3P3O8qN2TgHDYAI2j3eHxGq4xVTBFBY7oAnTsQj5RU33pY01DH5WWop7dWiYcw/s16000/knock-at-the-cabin-1.jpg.webp" /></a></div><br /><span style="background-color: black; caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;">I wanted to sit with my feelings about M. Night Shyamalan's <i>Knock at the Cabin </i>(2023) for a bit before rendering some thoughts </span></span><p></p><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); white-space: pre-wrap;">First off, I loved the film in the way that you can afford to love a film when your memories of the superb novel upon which it as based, in this case, Paul Tremblay's <i>The </i></span><i style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); white-space: pre-wrap;">Cabin at the End </i><span style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>of the World, </i></span><span style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); white-space: pre-wrap;">are locked away in your mind. </span></span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); white-space: pre-wrap;">Mr. Shyamalan did, in fact, take several liberties with the story, which has understandably disappointed some folks, though they bothered me less than I expected they would. </span></span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: times;"><br /></span></span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: times;">I found the essence of the story—the devastation of a very 21st century family under </span><a style="background-color: black; color: white; cursor: pointer; font-family: times;" tabindex="-1"></a><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: times;">unimaginable emotional assault—to be intact. That was the most important thing to me, along with sterling performances by Jonathan Groff as Eric, and Ben Aldridge as Andrew. There was a surprisingly solid one from Dave Bautista, and Kristen Cui was wonderful as Andrew and Eric's daughter, Wen. </span></span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;">Would I have preferred that the film hew to Tremblay's novel more closely? Of course I would. The novel is, frankly, perfect, and, in the film, I missed the nearly-intolerable tension and mounting dread that undergirded it. </span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;">But to be completely fair, Shyamalan still made an excellent film that packs an emotional wallop nonetheless, one that stands on its own merits and didn't dishonour the source material. </span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: times; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: times;">I think people should abso</span><span><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: times;">lutely see </span><i style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: times;">Knock at the Cabin</i><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: times;">, but I feel strongly that they should also read </span><i style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: times;">The Cabin at the End of the World</i><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: times;"> as well—preferably first. </span></span></span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;">As for me, my copy of that glorious novel is right where its supposed to be—on my bookshelf and in my heart. No film, however skilfully rendered, can touch the experience of having read it.</span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGjT9wyJFoYf_rdXhRaGGwQ9bVz1_hwsmlJipkYH4Dfxk5iIW46nHutPvoubty2SPTvmOSAgXgccBL8AC9Qs1Md-KXFClgSZcYYwrKZZDwg4c-SqRgFLYoX_CwEfNBsMdLZVYH1g3-PxeM3gkFhC2bRyI7_0OT_kW9H4ThG9oVbsWZbV5BksbZJujkiw/s388/Cabin_end_world.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="388" data-original-width="257" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGjT9wyJFoYf_rdXhRaGGwQ9bVz1_hwsmlJipkYH4Dfxk5iIW46nHutPvoubty2SPTvmOSAgXgccBL8AC9Qs1Md-KXFClgSZcYYwrKZZDwg4c-SqRgFLYoX_CwEfNBsMdLZVYH1g3-PxeM3gkFhC2bRyI7_0OT_kW9H4ThG9oVbsWZbV5BksbZJujkiw/w424-h640/Cabin_end_world.jpg" width="424" /></a></div><br /><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: times; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div></div>Michael Rowehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15181004056021590350noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1286037782757011217.post-63928799192018966972023-03-04T16:03:00.003-08:002023-03-04T16:05:16.246-08:00After the March blizzard <p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEikvH6n6RvFXuie9VH5DDHzpjLCyTw94KwJ-b7PX9YxMzXek3rCKtGQ27IwyZ9p-p6S8_0NUsaD1iZ_vLWuHjCYUCHpLSpRJCBEgKxAqf1rnUG6pPin79TP2RflVmH_aChLSG7Uwa5Ao3ixePeJUPXnpNg5hkbtpYMjK8yvn_5U9KPy6eCNQxMnPci5ow" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEikvH6n6RvFXuie9VH5DDHzpjLCyTw94KwJ-b7PX9YxMzXek3rCKtGQ27IwyZ9p-p6S8_0NUsaD1iZ_vLWuHjCYUCHpLSpRJCBEgKxAqf1rnUG6pPin79TP2RflVmH_aChLSG7Uwa5Ao3ixePeJUPXnpNg5hkbtpYMjK8yvn_5U9KPy6eCNQxMnPci5ow=w640-h480" width="640" /></a></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div style="border: 0px; font-family: adobe-garamond-pro, Garamond, Baskerville, "Baskerville Old Face", "Hoefler Text", "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 20px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;">"Ere frost-flower and snow-blossom faded and fell, and the splendour of winter had passed out of sight,<br /></div><div style="border: 0px; font-family: adobe-garamond-pro, Garamond, Baskerville, "Baskerville Old Face", "Hoefler Text", "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 20px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;">The ways of the woodlands were fairer and stranger than dreams that fulfil us in sleep with delight;<br /></div><div style="border: 0px; font-family: adobe-garamond-pro, Garamond, Baskerville, "Baskerville Old Face", "Hoefler Text", "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 20px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;">The breath of the mouths of the winds had hardened on tree-tops and branches that glittered and swayed<br /></div><div style="border: 0px; font-family: adobe-garamond-pro, Garamond, Baskerville, "Baskerville Old Face", "Hoefler Text", "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 20px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;">Such wonders and glories of blossomlike snow or of frost that outlightens all flowers till it fade<br /></div><div style="border: 0px; font-family: adobe-garamond-pro, Garamond, Baskerville, "Baskerville Old Face", "Hoefler Text", "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 20px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;">That the sea was not lovelier than here was the land, nor the night than the day, nor the day than the night,<br /></div><div style="border: 0px; font-family: adobe-garamond-pro, Garamond, Baskerville, "Baskerville Old Face", "Hoefler Text", "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 20px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;">Nor the winter sublimer with storm than the spring: such mirth had the madness and might in thee made,<br /></div><div style="border: 0px; font-family: adobe-garamond-pro, Garamond, Baskerville, "Baskerville Old Face", "Hoefler Text", "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 20px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;">March, master of winds, bright minstrel and marshal of storms that enkindle the season they smite."</div><div style="border: 0px; font-family: adobe-garamond-pro, Garamond, Baskerville, "Baskerville Old Face", "Hoefler Text", "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 20px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></div><div style="border: 0px; font-family: adobe-garamond-pro, Garamond, Baskerville, "Baskerville Old Face", "Hoefler Text", "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 20px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align: baseline;">—from "March: An Ode" by Algernon Charles Swinburne </div> <p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGB_B6MnRAyO4oAQSgIst5z4cllc9IrxcuYnIX4ZAUPZ3BLUvjvLHAEt0v_klo4ZIFi3yEIGMKL_r2SysUjVS2sqSXwXzZkyiRnT-vP6Yve56RqFic5CfUnurpLA6Dmx7pUSKcGLBXWpHJE1ryFX9k7JA7gUS0UPDjtkk7woSeMawLJX3kCl_SUrtU9g/s4032/IMG_3238.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGB_B6MnRAyO4oAQSgIst5z4cllc9IrxcuYnIX4ZAUPZ3BLUvjvLHAEt0v_klo4ZIFi3yEIGMKL_r2SysUjVS2sqSXwXzZkyiRnT-vP6Yve56RqFic5CfUnurpLA6Dmx7pUSKcGLBXWpHJE1ryFX9k7JA7gUS0UPDjtkk7woSeMawLJX3kCl_SUrtU9g/w480-h640/IMG_3238.jpeg" width="480" /></a></div><br /><div><br /></div>Michael Rowehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15181004056021590350noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1286037782757011217.post-92202355465297475492023-03-02T19:19:00.013-08:002023-03-03T11:54:45.659-08:00The good place <p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAwLu8VR3z3K3yroQLFxqU0Rhla4aOZde9uPFuMr9Lh7yeF2x0m5TnhxjF0dJbbIgIiC8hipMvU_A35a6txO1hcV308uE0gn_1LQcjcg8V6EOca53TwKwlgZksosyD_ZYGKi18o6clGaOuRfiA9lkQlolVgypB4dYiUZZpRcGw555EXAKdJyRR0aRbWQ/s2016/242088462_10159178429541210_7371494496125255382_n.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1512" data-original-width="2016" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAwLu8VR3z3K3yroQLFxqU0Rhla4aOZde9uPFuMr9Lh7yeF2x0m5TnhxjF0dJbbIgIiC8hipMvU_A35a6txO1hcV308uE0gn_1LQcjcg8V6EOca53TwKwlgZksosyD_ZYGKi18o6clGaOuRfiA9lkQlolVgypB4dYiUZZpRcGw555EXAKdJyRR0aRbWQ/w640-h480/242088462_10159178429541210_7371494496125255382_n.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /> <p></p><p><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-size: large;">I'm saddened tonight by the news that Nordstrom is shuttering all its Canadian stores. </span></p><p><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-size: large;">I didn't shop there—I was not their target market—but the restaurant at the top, Bar Verde, was one of my favourite spots in Toronto for seven years. </span></p><p><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-size: large;">Centuries ago, there was a wonderfully unpretentious restaurant on Church St. called Café California. The owners were friends of mine, and it was where I could usually be found, either dining alone, working on my journal, or entertaining friends. <br /><br />The staff likewise became friends over time, and the owners' daughter, Angie, became like a beloved niece. I watched her grow from a precocious little girl into a lovely, intelligent young woman. I wrote about her in <i>Other Men's Sons</i> in an essay called "Eloise on Church Street."<br /><br />When the restaurant closed, I was bereft. The last place I ever expected to find its replacement was on the top floor of a American department store anchoring the Eaton Centre.<br /><br />I must have been visiting Bar Verde since at least 2017, if not earlier. I can count the tenure of at least four managers, off the top of my head, and many more wait staff, all of whom I was on a mutual first-name basis with. A handful, I count today as actual friends. <br /><br />Every December, I loved to watch the Christmas lights in the mall from the restaurant's vast floor-to-ceiling windows towering above it, and it was always my first sense of the Christmas season. <br /><br />I have a particular memory of stopping by the restaurant for a later dinner on the evening of the launch of <i>Best Canadian Essays </i> 2016, which contained one of mine, and being brought a glass of champagne from the manager, to celebrate. <br /><br />Every January and February, when the restaurant was quietest, I re-read Peter Straub's <i>Ghost Story</i> while the snow fell outside in sheets. In the summer, it was a cool refuge from the heat and humidity. <br /><br />But Christmas always came again, and the coloured lights of the mall shimmering below my table had a bit of an Irving Berlin quality in the weeks before we left for Palm Springs, and our Christmas with the California family.<br /><br />The staff always made space for me to read and edit manuscripts over carafes of Diet Coke and coffee. During COVID-19, I always felt safe dining there because of how luxuriously spaced the tables were. A dear friend of mine and I had dinner once a week, for years, and helped each other through some challenging times. <br /><br />Sunday has been a throwaway day for me since my boarding school years, and the perfect rainy Sunday late-afternoon was spent at the farthest booth in the back, adjacent to the bar, with only my own company and a great book <br /><br />When I got my cancer diagnosis last spring, my first get-well card was a massive one, signed by every member of the restaurant staff—with personal messages of love and support, not just generic signatures, and it was accompanied by two massive jars of their signature tomato basil soup, which they knew I loved. <br /><br />That summer and fall, I stopped by after each doctor's appointment and procedure (the hospital was ten minutes away) and did so after every "chemo Monday," when Flo 2 was unhooked, and I most needed to lose myself in a crowd of people, and just feel normal. Even thinking of it now, I'm in awe of each small but resonant acts of kindness along that route. A middle booth eventually became colloquially know as "Michael's booth," and it always seemed to be free for me, no mater what the weather, internal or external. <br /><br />I was dining there tonight with Jenny when the staff got an impersonal bulk email from head office, announcing the closure. Moments later, it hit the national news. <br /><br />The emotional disconnect between the cold, antiseptic language of the press coverage and the shell-shocked faces of the about-to-be-unemployed staff was heartbreaking. <br /><br />The CBC reported tonight that roughly 2,330 people will lose their jobs. <br /><br />I guess that sounds like a small, anonymous number—unless of course, you can put names and faces you love to that number; and especially unless you vividly remember some of them embracing you and shedding tears upon hearing the news that you were cancer-free, and all the genuine tenderness, softness, and affection during the dark months that you weren't.<br /><br />We all make the places of our hearts that are not our homes—restaurants, bars, bookshops, galleries, and more—which are occupied by people who are not family, or even, necessarily, "friends" in the accepted sense of the word, but who are both receptacles and sources of kindness and goodness—places that we leave happier than when we arrived, and where we always feel welcome: the archetypical "good place."<br /><br />To people who don't know me well, the only thing more bewildering than the fact that this latest iteration of my "good place" is a restaurant at the top of a department store is how genuinely sad I am that it's coming to an end. And I'm bad at endings.<br /><br />When you're open-hearted, and open to people, and open to their lives and stories, they trust you with those stories. And, as any writer can attest, the sharing of a life story, or of life stories, is one of the most bonding of human experiences, and the listener and the teller become part of each other in some small way forever. </span></p><p><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-size: large;">That's colder consolation than I'd like tonight, but I'll still take it.</span></p>Michael Rowehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15181004056021590350noreply@blogger.com3