Kathryn Writes Here
Wednesday, November 6, 2024
Two Cents
Sunday, September 29, 2024
Looking for Normal
"The peace comes when it doesn't depend on the other person."
That's advice Gabor Mate gave to a mother of an estranged adult child. I've blogged it before but wanted to put it out there again, this time as a sort of general "to thine own self be true" bit of advice.
I've been told all my life I shouldn't care what other people think, but it's really just another way of telling me I'm living my life all wrong. So I'm going with "to thine own self be true".
Is inner peace even possible in a world at war with itself?
Last night we watched famous people grappling with what other people think of them on Netflix. First up was Ellen "the meanest person in show business" DeGeneres in "For Your Approval". She's hilarious, of course, but it's her openness about what was an awful time in her life that makes her latest standup so brilliant. Because, of course, caring what other people think is part of the human condition. Certainly it's part of the female human condition. And being Ellen, she knows how to bring the funny to everybody thinking she was the worst.
Next up was "Will and Harper", a documentary of Will Ferrell and his friend, Harper Steele, a former SNL writer transitioning at 61 to womanhood, taking a road trip across America to visit Harper's old haunts. It's such a moving film, and it's their vulnerability, Will's as much as Harper's, that makes it so. Watching them both try to be who they want to be, and are, is inspiring but also really sad because it's so unnecessarily hard. Will sees it as his job to protect Harper from the America she loves, the dive bars and lonely places, and at one point he cries, worried he's let her down, let himself down.
As for Harper, there's a scene where she confesses how difficult make-up is. She wants to be pretty but as she says, it's so hard with her masculine face. I wanted to tell her it's age, make-up and being pretty gets tricky with age, but I've had a lifetime of living as a woman and making myself pretty with make-up to get to this age where I don't wear make-up at all anymore. She's playing catch-up in her 60s.
And, of course, there's social media, where basic human decency goes to die.
I finally read "The Myth of Normal", referenced in so many of the interviews I've watched of Gabor Mate on YouTube. It's basically a 500 page indictment of how we've been made to live, particularly in the US and Canada, and what our priorities have become, thanks to social constructs like patriarchy, capitalism, gender, and so on and so forth and more of the same etc etc, still going strong.
For instance, Dr. Mate argues normal is communal and cooperative, how we lived for thousands and thousands of years, not individualistic and competitive. And I particularly like his take on addiction, although addiction isn't the right word for our various behavioural disorders, I don't think. Distractions? His method is one of compassionate inquiry. Why do we behave the way we do? What problem is our behaviour solving for us? What childhood wounds are we soothing with happy hour?
I have to admit, I really had to park my biases to fairly consider his take on our world. And although he claims none of this is about blame or judgement, as a parent who used the sleep program to put her toddlers to bed, it does feel a little personal. But maybe he isn't referring to the sleep program of the 90s, intentional, reassuring and re-settling of toddlers with minimal interaction, but rather of the 50s and 60s, when we were left to cry ourselves to sleep.
I just read an article on CBC's website about the sleep deficit too many strung out parents are experiencing, too, along with their toddlers keeping them up all night. For my own part, I doubt our third child would've been conceived if I hadn't done the sleep program with the first two.
Also, I couldn't help but notice he doesn't extend his no blame or judgement, because we're all experiencing generational trauma, to Liberal politicians, and his singling out of Justin Trudeau and Hilary Clinton, alongside Stephen Harper and Donald Trump, struck me as both unfair and problematic. He name drops, too, and some off-putting ones like Russell Brand and Marianne Williamson, which, in my opinion, he needn't and shouldn't do. It only takes away from the rest of his teachings, backed up by study after study after study, and makes him appear infatuated with celebrities who flatter his political leanings.
There are way too many studies cited, because Dr. Mate is nothing if not thorough in his research, and I diligently skipped over every single one.
But I still came away from "The Myth of Normal" more enlightened than when I went in, and realizing how wrong it is our round bodies are being made to fit into the square holes of an economy that not only doesn't work in our best interests, and never really did, but is actively hurting our health and well-being while destroying our collective habitat.
I forget if he mentions WWIII, I don't think so, but I have friends now at odds on social media over which is worse, Russia committing genocide in Ukraine or Israel committing genocide in Gaza, with some even pitting Ukrainian refugees to Canada against Palestinians trapped in Gaza, so now a real life get together with people who used to be up for one is no longer in the cards. For my part though I want to expand my social circle, do more connecting in real life, more breaking of bread, starting with Facebook friends in Ottawa.
My plan is to eventually hit the road to meet and greet beyond our capital city.
Anyway, that's where I'm at right now. I hope you find yourself in a good place, too. We really are all in this together.
Saturday, September 14, 2024
Just the Scraps, Ma'am
Sunday, September 8, 2024
Bob the Steelworker and other tales
I'm from the Sault, home of Algoma Steel and a lot of railway tracks, none of which are for transporting people from one place to another. There used to be Greyhound but it's gone now too. Other than drive yourself or take a flight I don't think there's any other way to come and go from the Sault.
My mother has gone to her great reward, as she used to say, so although my first friends are still there... well... maybe next year I'll make the trip. It's a long haul and I've done it a thousand times from Toronto and a thousands times more from Ottawa.
The Sault has seen better days.
Back when I was growing up, pogey was the name of the game. Get enough shifts in at the plant, get laid off, collect pogey. Rinse. Repeat. Not girls, though. Girls were only allowed to do office work. That is until Sandy challenged Algoma Steel's discriminatory practices and got hired to work in the plant.
I think, like Devonshire House at the University of Toronto, it used no girls washrooms as the excuse as to why no girls allowed.
My cousin was the first female employee, I believe, to work on the "cat walk" guiding molten steel through the plant. My brother worked in Coke Oven #7 one summer. His skin had turned grey by the end of August.
My mother used to say to the other high school teachers who complained about how much more money they could make working at the plant, "So go work at the plant."
We lived across the street from the president of Algoma Steel, although there was a field between our middle-class 'hood and his gated enclave. He kept guard dogs and I once ended up caught between a screen door and the inside door, the dogs ready to rip me apart. If his wife hadn't been home I'd likely be dead. Later I heard my mother tear a strip off him for having guard dogs at all.
She was fearless, my mother.
He was a miserable man who left his unhappy wife in later years.
I believe in the 80s there were accusations of Algoma having been making bad steel and so losing contracts as a result but I have no idea if it's true. It has certainly downsized over the years, as has the Sault, now dealing with the same crisis of poverty and addiction as every other city in Canada, the US, and around the world.
Something I noticed in the 90s when I was visiting every year with my kids was a lot of "Jesus Saves" stuff, not a thing when I was living there in the 60s and 70s, not that there's necessarily a connection between evangelicalism and the crisis of poverty and addiction, but social conservatism doesn't seem to do much for our collective standard of living.
Too much voting for the afterlife, not enough voting for the life right here and now.
By the way, if not for government bailouts of one kind or another for Algoma Steel, the Sault would be a ghost town.
So I watched with some annoyance the video of Bob the Steelworker, by way of a bunch of made-up self-serving neighbour-slandering bullshit, flip off Justin the Prime Minister, in the Sault to promote the latest government investment in Algoma Steel, replacing coal with electric power to reduce emissions.
I mean, not only was Bob the Steelworker, well paid and with excellent benefits, thanks to years of government largesse to both Algoma Steel AND Sault Ste. Marie (ffs, Lotto HQ is there), flipping off Justin the Prime Minister, he was flipping off everybody who has not only invested in his very privileged existence in Sault Ste. Marie, but flipping off every generation to follow in his workboots.
But there it is, right? The difference between Bob the Steelworker, well paid, excellent benefits, a young middle-aged beneficiary in 2024 of decades of taxpayer funded bailouts, er, investments in Algoma Steel AND the Sault, but for whom the government must do even more while he pays less, and those of us who aren't Conservative and understand the only true measure of a society is how well it treats its most vulnerable members.
Anyway, of course Justin the earnest Prime Minister stuck to the script with Bob the full-of-shit Steelworker, but wouldn't it have been fun if he'd called him out instead?
Maybe even put him in a headlock first and administered a few noogies?
A Sault girl can dream.
Friday, September 6, 2024
Nitty Gritty Conspiraditty
Friday, August 2, 2024
Not Fair
In my unqualified opinion the old lady of women's gymnastics, Ellie Black at 28, had the most artistic floor routine, but I'm very suggestible and the commentators referred to it as a powerful comeback story so there you have it. Sold. Ellie Black for MY gold. Also she's Canadian and I get very nationalistic during the Olympics.
Otherwise, I'm a citizen of the world as tasked to us by Justin Trudeau's old man, Pierre.
Gymnastics in my day used to be dominated by the Russians, and I remember Seventeen magazine featuring beauty makeovers of Olga Korbut and the rest of the team. It was so exciting. I poured over that issue, could hardly wait for it to come out.
Seventeen also featured a column by Susan Ford. I remember one in which she wrote about Jack? dodging the Secret Service to go out on the town. I wonder. Did she really write it, do you think? It seemed real.
Just mentioning Olga Korbut I wonder if that's when the Iron Curtain started to part. Americans loved her. Everybody did. We all wanted her to win gold at the Olympics. I remember Jim McKay of NBC? crying when she fell during her unevens? routine. She was actually 17 but looked younger, especially alongside her teammates, who were credited with more grace and artistic expression.
Olga Korbut's acrobatic ability changed gymnastics, and while some would say not for the better, I think it was inevitable, all the way to Simone Biles, who is simply spectacular.
The Soviet Union used to handpick little girls to train as gymnasts based on their body types. I remember too the controversy of their athletes being supported entirely by the state, while ours weren't, and how unfair it was. It really was and yet our athletes still managed to compete against the Russians, often enough winning, too.
Years after Olga Korbut starred at the 1972 Olympics she was living and working in the US, coaching gymnastics, and got picked up for shoplifting. I remember reading about it and feeling bad for her. Also old. This was years ago.
A former Facebook friend was part of the pile on of Simone Biles during the Pandemic Olympics in Tokyo (when she decided against competing due to how she was feeling). I told him it was racist and he should stay out of it but he argued it wasn't and doubled down instead.He's not here to see it but no one is questioning she's the best gymnast in the world now, maybe ever, and at 27. Also 4'8", all muscle, no torso, so kind of an unfair head start, physically, although I suppose those early years in foster care even out any natural advantages she may have.
Intersex people occur in the world population at about the same rate as redheads.