What's Going On

O! Canada!

I am as uninterested in sports as any human could possibly be, and try to be a good immigrant, polite and all, but still, I feel a ridiculous amount of satisfaction that the San Jose Sharks went down to the Edmonton Oilers.

Most Canadians originally didn't mind sharing hockey with the northern cities like Boston or Detroit, cities where there are gritty working class families with tough kids who play hockey on frozen lawn rinks all winter and then on the street all summer stopping only for cars. But the expansion of the sadly named National Hockey League to cities like San Jose, Tampa, and Phoenix (Phoenix!), and the marketing of this fast, skillful game as an icy cross between rollerball and world wide wrestling has sat with many of us from the North as yet another arrogant American affront. The land of the almighty dollar sucking up more of Canada, along with our trees, minerals, and water.

I admit here that this reminds me of a line from "Train Spotting," when one character bitterly refers to the English as wankers and his mate points out that it is the Scots who are wankers for getting conquered by the English. So, yes, Canada does not have to sell itself out at every greedy opportunity and we really are the wankers.

And even as we gnash about being swamped and outnumbered by undeserving American hockey franchises, while our own frozen cities like Winnipeg or Ottawa can't get any ice time, at the same time we are oddly proud of the brain drain that flows south. We take inordinate and illogical pride that so many popular American comedians and musicians are actually ours.

But still, hockey. An American friend of mine once likened the affect of hockey on Canadians to the appeal of football in the US. But it's so much more. It's baseball, football, and basketball all rolled up into one sport. It's being a radical anarchist feminist yet still knowing who Bobby Orr is and skipping school to watch the Canadians trounce the Russians in the early melting days of detente. It's weeping over "The Hockey Sweater" and thinking for years that the NHL had an office here in Redwood City and finally realizing that not everything thing that starts with an N and ends with an L has an H in the middle.

It's about embracing California, and still being happy that the Ukranian and French names of a Canadian city triumphed over the Ukrainian and French names of America.

Undone

While wandering around Whole Foods last night, I found myself becoming unbuttoned over the muzak -- the life-weary moaning whine of Gregg Allman twining around the liquid ribbon lament of Dickey Bett's guitar, reaching out to grab my brain out of my head and plunging it into some pungent state of pure feeling.

I occasionally try to explain about the Allman Brothers to my Scottish-born husband and have only recently been able to remember that my Eat a Peach album never made it to California with me so I can't show it to him. Like dozens of other records, it was peeled away on a move, cross town, cross continent, or cross border. I have a box of lps in the garage, a bad place for them I know, but they are just the ones that managed to stick to me like lint through the transformations. They are not my favourites, or the best. But I can't bring myself to get rid of them either.

The Allman Brothers and Lynyrd Skynyrd were both huge in my northwestern Ontario town. All the high school guitar players worshiped Dwayne. A lot of partying went down to the soundtrack of these southern counterparts to our own northern redneck hippiness. For me, a song like Melissa is a 3-minute, 56-second punch in the head, the whooshing distillation of 5 years of teenage passion instantly unpacked, inconveniently in a genteel shop of California yuppiness, a kick in the gut that punts me to the cashier, rubbing my eyes furiously, ready with a cheap excuse about pollen.

Moments of grim

But enough with all the grimness, it becomes tedious after a while.

I read the text of the letter Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad sent to George Bush. Apart from the frequent references to Jesus Christ, PBUH (Peace Be Upon Him), and the long quotings of relevant verses from the Koran, much of it could have been printed in the SF Chronicle without really looking out of place. I have occasionally made many of the same points myself. OK, not the stuff about the Palestinians. And I don't really agree that liberal secular democracy is crumbling, although I worry about it. But the bits about "how can you call yourself a Christian, when..." I have also asked about aloud.

What I have not done either, while I'm clarifying things here, is make the connection between the three big monotheistic religions and suggest that all monotheists of the Abrahamic tradition have a cousin-like bond and deserve to rule the world in some sort of global pre-Last Day triad. I don't think monotheists have a monopoly on the truth or are in anyway superior to polytheists, animists, or atheists. It was thoughtful though, now that I think about it, for Mr. Ahmadinejad to include Jews in the club, even if he does want to eliminate the state of Israel from under them.

I am left wondering however, if his writing the letter itself is an act of monomaniacal craziness? Should we be worried about the fact that the leader of a large $72-a-barrel oil nation writes long, scolding sermons addressed to the Leader of the Free World? Do his stated concerns for justice and charity for the world's oppressed mean that he is basically a good, if misunderstood guy?

Speaking of which, if Iran is getting disgustingly rich on oil money, and feels so much compassion for the Palestinians, why isn't Iran funneling more of that money over to them? They could finance a lot of hospitals and schools, financing the Palestinians desperately need now they are being essentially embargoed by the West after the election of Hamas. And wouldn't that be grand, when the Palestinians having lost all connection with the West turn to Iran for help. Iran, whose president wants to "wipe Israel off the map."

OK should we be getting back to the grim thing now?

Wolverines at my doorstep

Sometimes when talking to the various professionals involved in my child's life, especially those connected to the world of education, I feel like I am explaining to them about the wild child I found at the foot of my garden. This would require a much bigger yard than I have now, and a brambly tumble of branches in front of a wall at the far end of it, where one day, quite unexpectedly, I found a feral child, huddling and snarling. Because I am a good and responsible person, I am housing and feeding this child and arranging for an education for him. Otherwise, I have no idea where he came from or how he managed to have been, apparently, raised up to this point by a combination of wolverines and banshees.

Other days, I feel like I am Helen Keller's parents and if Annie Sullivan ever showed up, she would backhand me across the house.

Pounding out a life

One of the things about having an official, sanctioned label for your child is that you are suddenly relieved of the need to make them be normal. Yes, of course, you still want them to be functional, and self-reliant, a good person, happy, and have a life, basically. But you can finally fling away the charts and graphs by which you constantly measure your child against his peers. So all the other kids can get themselves dried off and changed at the pool without help. So what? And all the other kids can be dropped off at school and picked up from the curb, while yours needs to be escorted both ways. Who cares? And they can all peel around on their bikes without training wheels, while yours insists on keeping them in spite of the fact they force him to lean over precariously at more peril to his safety than riding with just two wheels would be? What's the big deal?

Your child has a uniquely wired brain, and a different way of experiencing his world. Your child is an anarchist at the most fundamental, neurological level. Perhaps you were too when you were young and you learned over time to play act and even internalize the ways of the normal. You hope your child will as well, but you wistfully hope too that he can keep some of his rounded curves as he fits himself into the square peg of statistical norms. Just like the people you now surround yourself with as an adult. Just like you.

To Russia with a Snarl

Part of the reason for the apocalyptic thoughts of the weekend were news reports of Dick Cheney in Eastern Europe, snarling at the Russians. This seems to me like such a bad idea right now. The Iranians are terrifying everybody with their "ya, just watch me" quest to join the league of nuclear nations. So far Russia and China have been pissing around uselessly on the lawns of this house of crisis while Europe and the US are out on the street yelling and shaking their fists at the man on the front steps yelling back.

But I figure who has the most to worry about a nuclear Iran than Russia? Mostly because who is the closest neighbour out of the big powers to this hot spot? Russia, of course.

The US could realize that while Russia has an extreme interest in Iranian oil, it also has an extreme interest in not having nuclear war on its back doorstep. So the US could have a discrete confab with the Russians and work something out where Russia stops bringing Iran housewarming gifts, but does it without visibly moving in with the West and thus losing all kinds of face and credibility.

Is this what the US is doing? No, of course not. Instead, the Bush administration sends Dick Cheney to stomp around castigating the Russians for their human rights record and berating them for playing nasty geopolitical games with gas and oil. All the while sucking up to the Kazakhstanis and encouraging them to build pipelines that will bypass Russia and bring the fruits of their huge oil fields directly to the West. According to the NY Times, the Kazakh president, Nursultan A. Nazarbayev, won a third six-year term in December 2005, with 91 percent of the vote, and two opposition politicians have been murdered in six months. Now there's the shining beacon of democracy and civil rights the US really wants to team up with!

Of us all, the Israelis have the most to lose. They must be very nervous right now. Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, spends large amounts of his time declaring his burning desire to wipe them off the map, and their bestest ally, the US, is bungling the response to this latest scary fanatic. Sabre rattling, diplomacy of alienation. Does this feel like deja vu all over again?

Thoughts and Dinner Plates

Last week I spent a lot of time thinking dark and bitter thoughts, some self-pitying, some terrified, some somewhat apocalyptic. None of these stopped me from noticing the enormous roses blooming all over town. The long weeks of intense rainfall followed by a week of summer heat wave has sent every flowering plant around into overdrive. Even the scraggly standard roses my neighbour planted along their side of our shared driveway strip are covered with bright rose blooms the size of dinner plates. Well, bread plates maybe. Anyway, they are very robust. One of them is also sprouting a long branch which is clearly coming up from the roots and should not be there. It takes large amounts of will power to not sneak over to their side of the driveway and cut it off. As part of their gardening spree last summer they also planted some insanely fast growing bushes that I go out regularly and trim. Just on our side of the property line. I planted two retaliatory shrubs - spirea - so by next year I can sit back and let them duke it out undisturbed. I should ask my neighbour if I can prune her rose? I imagine myself deliberately hanging out in the front yard at key times of the day, pretending to prune so I could be there, naturally, when she shows up, and I could say admiring things about her roses and then casually offer to take care of the unwanted shoot. Is this too wierd?

Sharing

I have decided not having links from your blog is somewhat churlish. So I will add a few. Slowly.

I was thinking today about the relationship between children and adults. It seems like we adults are instinctively hardwired to display disapproval and even anger when confronted by children behaving inappropriately. The range of negative display depends on the degree of inappropriateness of the behaviour.

With most children, the response to this adult display is fear, or at least the understanding that they should stop or something unpleasant will happen. Or they experience the desire to please the adult by stopping what they are doing.

Some children though, respond by becoming defiant or hysterical. Some completely shut down. Is it a flight or fight response? Is it anger at being thwarted as they cut their monomaniacal swath through life? Is it total confusion about what to do next?

Whatever the reason, not all children can read the message adults send with the threatening tone, the disapproving voice, the softly or loudly spoken reprimand. Or the message goes in all right, but the processing is not what is normally expected.

If you are an adult in the life of a child like this, a child with a processing glitch, you spend a lot of time and energy suppressing your primal need to scream and trying to focus on the content of what is happening. The medium is not the message. It is like trying to learn a new language while teaching a different one while on a boat on fire in the middle of the ocean.

It is interesting and excruciating and sometimes satisfying.

A marvel

Sometimes I marvel at my housely competence. Clothes are laundered, folded, and put away. The cat box is cleaned. Dishes loaded into the dishwasher and unloaded into cupboards. Food fills the cupboards and fridge. Garbage bags are dragged out to the curb in a timely manner and replenished for the next load. When did I learn to be such a housekeeping machine?

Which brings me, naturally, to hummingbirds. I'll live forever in California and I will never cease to marvel at hummingbirds. They do exist in British Columbia, but we always seemed to live in a part of Vancouver they didn’t.

Here in California we have our very own hummingbird. It is very industrious and cheeky. Yesterday I was watching it and it buzzed up quite close and inspected me for a while. It seemed to think I was OK. No doubt misguided neighbours think they share in this bird, but it is ours. It loves our back yard the best and feasts on the invisible flowers of the the redwood tree and the lipstick red bush island snap dragon flowers. It also likes the giant pineapple sage that has conquered a large part of the back garden, but does prefer home cooking -- native plants -- over the exotics.

This leads smoothly to the whole immigrant issue raging right now. I feel like sort of a fake immigrant. I speak the language already, I grew watching American TV, I look like the sort of person who was born here, and my immigration experience was pretty bureaucratic in nature. Filling out forms mostly; the occasional fingerprint and photograph to spice things up.

I understand many of the protesters are specifically reacting to the idiot House bill that would turn people in the country without correct documentation into felons. And also those who help them. There is also the issue of turfing out 12 million people, many of whom have families here, including children who are US citizens. Do they have a civil right to parents? I am sure many of the protesters too, are reacting to the exploitation and racism they face. Imagine spending your life working your ass off in someone's garden, or looking after their precious children, only to be rewarded with contempt and the call to criminalize your very existence.

On the other hand, if there is no such thing as an illegal immigrant, then there is no such thing as borders. Should the US eliminate its borders? Should all of the Americas, from North to South, be one big country? What about letting in Asians and Africans? Many of the people protesting yesterday decry globalization and its ill effects, but isn't wiping out national borders around the world just another form of globalization? It sounds like a reasonable idea, but we are dealing with the human species here. We are limited in our ability to tolerate others and share.