GalaxyBrain.ca - 8th Edition

Chapter 8 of "That Looks Good on You - You Should Buy It!" by me, Kathryn McLeod, is now being featured (along with chapters 1-7) at GalaxyBrain.ca

"TLGoY-YSBI!" is 13 chapters, by the way, so stay tuned!

Sick Daze

It's the start of a new fiscal year so I thought I'd put it out here on my handy blog that the federal government, here in Ottawa at least, is run on temps and casuals, none of whom get paid sick days. Nor do we/they get paid holidays. Case in point: One Sunday towards the end of 2019 I had to go to emergency due to a sudden severe pain that turned out to be a kidney stone, itself the result of a minor injustice done to me, a stand-in for all the major injustices happening to others everywhere all the time, which my brain fixated on in an unhealthy way, dragging my body along with it. I really needed time off the difficult clerical job I was doing, but taking time off would have meant not being paid. So on Monday morning I was back at it, working alongside others like me, but also alongside others not like me, because, not only were they better paid, they had paid sick days and paid vacation.

Public Transit Blues

I've ridden on double-decker buses in Ottawa. To me they feel tippy and out-of-control at any speed and in any season.

I've ridden articulated buses in Ottawa, too. Every time they manage to pull away from a stop or get around a corner in winter feels like a miracle.

I stopped a bus by standing in front of it on one of Ottawa's rare snowy days in winter. It was the first to show up heading my way home (or even not my way home) after three hours of praying for a miracle re the articulated bus stuck around a corner several blocks away. The driver didn't want to let me on, never mind the steady stream of (mostly) public servants behind me, including a man with a cane and a woman with a baby. Why? Because the stop I'd just forced him to make wasn't on his route.

My ex once waited with a bunch of (mostly) public servants for a couple of hours in the middle of nowhere on one of Ottawa's rare bone-chillingly cold days in winter. When their bus finally showed up the driver barely stopped before opening the door and yelling, "You can't get on! The heat's not working!" Then he sped off. I mean, it wasn't just cold, it was cold for Ottawa in January cold.

A man in a suit got off the elevator at a place I was working not too long ago and with tears in his eyes shouted, "I HATE OC TRANSPO!!!" Nobody even blinked. Just nodded in sympathy.

Lightrail.

I could go on. I've lived in Ottawa for a while now and I take OC Transpo.

Also, speaking of corners (three paragraphs up), and lightrail - I've ridden it, too. A couple of times I got on at Rideau (famous for the Great Sinkhole of 2016) after descending (at least?) four very steep flights of stairs, so steep I experienced some vertigo. Going east there's a corner past Hurdman that feels like an engineering fail of almost epic proportions. But what do I know? Certainly I've been on circus rides that felt that way, too, and they were perfectly safe.

I think public transit is a swing and a miss in Ottawa because it's thought to be a favour to people who either don't have cars, don't drive, or don't want to drive their car to work downtown.

By the way, there are bus drivers here who regularly make the sunshine list. I mean, far be it from me to deny working class people the sunshine list, but for people who make three or four times as much money as most of their fare-paying passengers, they could stand to be nicer about it.

And it's impolitic, but I don't want to not speak up just because I have the luxury of working from home during this pandemic, so out with it - since COVID-19 riding the bus is unpleasant at best. Mask-less men exhibiting anti-social behaviour pretty much have the run of it now. I've been on the bus with a six foot Viking at my side and felt unsafe. My friend who had to go to an appointment one morning had to endure one man shouting at her about music and another man ranting about missing his stop and trying to pry open the doors on the transitway. Neither wore masks. They either got on via the side doors or got on with a mask they ditch as soon as they're past the driver.

Anyway, maybe it's the pandemic finally has me feeling the Debbie Downers, but I wish public transit was more about the people who depend on it and less about the people who don't.

Name That Vaccine

Our media's daily reporting of this vaccine brand-off is fueling vaccine hesitancy. Somebody needs to read an ethics in journalism guide. None of it informs the public and a lot of it is counter to the public interest.

The Disappearing Royals

I wonder if what's really going on, and has been for a long time with the royals and royals-affiliated, is that the girlfriends and wives inevitably eclipse the royal and royals-affiliated men they date, marry, and divorce, because they're just more interesting to both the rabble and the media.

(By the way, we know Meghan Markle experienced and continues to experience anti-Black racism, particularly in the media coverage of her, and the public commentary around that coverage, because we witnessed and are witnessing it. Class has nothing to do with it. Talk of her financial situation is a distraction to anti-Black racism just as talk of a woman's financial situation is a distraction to sexism.)

Speaking of sexism, the problem with these women being more interesting than their men is that it conflicts with their role, which is to be seen and not heard and produce heirs. They're supposed to be models of fashion, decorum, and motherhood. Diana could have had a career on the runway ffs. And remember Shy Di? Every young woman and her aunt learned to do that look up from under to the camera. I still think of it when on Zoom peering up everybody's nostrils as they peer up mine.

How soon we forget.

And although neither Kate nor Meghan had to be accepted by the public as virgins, and both are actually older than their princes, not to mention on the long end of motherhood, the fact is that Diana did have to be accepted by the public as a virgin. And so it was that we watched with squeamish bemusement while Charles, who came of age in the '60s, and who was in love with his best friend, Camilla, cast about the land in search of - tada! - Diana, who would come of age in the '80s - AFTER marriage to Charles.

But as to the Queen, the linchpin to it all, is there a more boring person on the planet? Well, no, there isn't. Being boring is her role, and as we can all agree, she embodies her role like nobody ever. It's why The Crown is such a hit. Finally a look behind the role to what it might have been like for the young woman who stepped into it. Seasons 1 and 2 and we're done here - and thrown for a loop by Season 3 - because it's the young woman we're interested in knowing about.

Anyway, the royals, including the girlfriends and wives, always fell outside my timeline, interest-wise. Also, the media here, particularly CBC, pretends our connection to England is more than it actually is for most of us. England may as well be India for me. Or Wales. Sure, I grew up singing God Save the Queen, but it was dropped at some point back there and my memories are all of Canada Day now, whether it was actually Dominion Day or not.

 

I guess that's why the forever enmity towards Trudeau, who made it official. Canada is Canada. And Canadians are global citizens, not British ones.

None of this is to upset Anglophiles, of course, because it's all good and I mean it when I say I don't care about or have an interest in England and the royals and so I don't care if you do. Fill your Wellies.

However, I don't include Meghan Markle in that whole scene anymore because she made what I think is a good decision to quit the role and go public as to why. Anti-Black racism is The Problem, it really is. And our media is complicit in perpetuating it. We need to stop making excuses for it, distracting from it, attacking the messengers, and instead hear what they're saying about their lived experiences of it.

Issue #7 of Galaxy Brain - Live!

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Issue #6

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