Predictably

Predictably, I haven’t got very far with The Forgotten Pollinators and it’s due back tomorrow!!!!

I was enjoying it because it’s a natural history/environmental text that recognizes the weaknesses of its designated genre and tries to address those weaknesses (except in the title – a big oversight, in my opinion). Nabhan and Buchmann are clear about their activist stance – they study plant pollination and see that the destruction of habitat, introduction of “alien species,” new parasites etc. are having a negative impact on species survival. They know how to “prove” this, describe this and write about this within their own academic and scientific communities but they want to have a greater impact on general readers. They reach out formally by structuring the book as a series of “rememberings”. So the facts are told through stories told by Gary & Steve who talk about their work experientially. This is much more palatable for a general reader who can "learn the science" through the stories of Gary & Steve’s individual and collective field work over the years. We also hear stories of the bees, bats, ants etc. who are the “heroes” of the tales. Nabhan and Buchman include drawings by Paul Mirocha (drawings are often a part of natural history texts) but probably my favourite part of the book is the glossary just because it has some great new terms in it. I have a hard time remembering terminology. But here are some of the new terms I’m learning:

Adaptive radiation
Anemophily
Bombiculture
Cascading extinctions
Defaunation
Facultative mutualism
Floral reward
lek
Linked extinctions
Melittophily
Nectar corridor
Outcrossing
Reciprocal coevolution
Seed shadow
Traplining
Tripped flower
Yellow rain

I hope they'll be useful...or I could just drop them randomly into conversations along the way...

Wandering /NO RENEWALS

I ordered a book from interlibrary loan recently. I wanted to check a reference that I'd found on the internet for this academic paper I'm finishing (today, I hope). I thought I'd use my typical research reading method which is to read the index, find the specific topic I’m interested in (bees), locate the quotation, check it, reference it properly and send the book back… but lo and behold, in true errant fashion, DQesque, (you might say), I looked up the first reference to bees in the index and the book drew me in (it’s interesting) and I am wandering in it and now wondering if I can possibly read the whole thing by the time that I have to return it to the library – NO RENEWALS is stamped on the hot pink order paper taped to the front cover.

Wandering and NO RENEWALS represent such cross purposes. And it really does take me quite some time to read a book…

DQ Update

I’ve had a bit of a reading spurt and miraculously have read about 40 pages of DQ recently. It is in part because the adventures are coming fast and furious and the reading is compelling. Of this 40 pages my favourite part is Chapter XVII which includes Sancho filling DQ’s helmet with curds and then allowing DQ to don the helmet and have the curds run down his face and beard. DQ believes that his skull is softening or his brain is melting or that he is inexplicably sweating and then gets really mad when he realizes that he has curds in his helmet. Sancho, of course, claims that the Devil did it. Next, a cart decorated with the King’s colours appears. DQ and company are told that the cart contains a gift of lions which the carters are delivering to the king. DQ demands that the lions be released so that he can challenge them. Unable to dissuade him, everyone runs away and the lion-keeper-carter opens the first cage. The lion stretches, yawns, turns around and basically ignores DQ who then demands that the lion-keeper agitate the lion and “force” him to come out and fight. The lion-keeper then says:

Be content, Sir Knight, with the day’s work, which is all that could be desired so far as valour goes. Do not seek to tempt Fortune a second time.

Is this a lesson in learning to “let things lie”? It also brings to mind the beautiful indifference of animals to human desires and reminds me that my favourite part in Life of Pi (not a book that I loved by any means) is when the tiger runs away (I won’t recount the whole episode because I don’t want to ruin it for anyone’s who almost there in the book or planning to read the book or even see the film they’re making of it).

Reading the Up Do

As a young girl, to my eyes, the beehive hairdo was the epitome of feminine beauty. I always wanted one but never had one...I began 2006 with the updo and french manicure (no pic of hands available at this time). Adjectives used to describe the updo by various wondering friends and family: loopy, medusa, fabulous, artistic, not bad now that I've gotten used to it (not really an adjective but descriptive in its own way). There was a happy occasion attached to the updo. I successfully danced all night in heels. My only regret (and I've had a few) is that the ballroom was strangely empty and there was no one there to dance with me when Frank Sinatra sang "My Way" and I wasn't drunk like the guy who wore his girlfriend's fake fur wrap half the night so I couldn't get up and dance by myself with an invisible partner.

Reading with your Ears

My mom doesn’t see very well anymore. She’s always enjoyed reading and has tried some of the large print books from the library and the talking books to see if that helps. But she seems to also have trouble concentrating, putting together the story as she reads/listens. She says that she forgets what she’s read/heard and has to start over again. I can totally understand how this happens because I often take long breaks in my reading of particular books. When I return to them, I have to bang myself on the head to remember what exactly was going on the last time I read that book. The process is accelerated with my mom. Over Christmas, we all (including my mom) found the process kind of comical. She was listening to a book on tape called Scarlet Feather by Maeve Binchy, an author I know she really likes. But she would often lose her concentration and even fall asleep while she was listening. Because our house is small, when she listens to her tapes we usually end up listening too as regardless of what we’re doing, we can hear the audio. That means that we also get invested in or involved in the story. With the Maeve Binchy book though, we had to keep starting the tape over again because my mom couldn’t remember what she’d already listened to. With this particular book we ended up listening to the beginning of it three times. We’d get a little more into it but that was only because we let the tape run longer even if my mom had fallen asleep. So each time we listened to the beginning of the book, we’d get a little bit further along in the story but not much. It’s a really interesting, incremental way to read. I found by the third time, I just tuned out of the beginning of the story (which I’d already listened to twice) and perked up my ears only when the new part of the story began. Ultimately, we didn’t get very far with the story because after the third try, my mom suddenly said that she didn’t like the tape and that it wasn’t as good as the book had been. I was surprised because I hadn’t realized that she had already read the book. The tape is unabridged and literally just someone reading the book so it isn’t actually any different than the book so it must be something in the experience of reading to herself that brought her more pleasure. Or just the fact that she used to be able to concentrate and be independent in her reading. Recently, we tried another book on CD called The Horse Whisperer by Nicolas Evans. This is a book I know my mom hasn’t read. I’d seen the movie (not a great movie) but had never read the book (it’s a good story). As the story was much more engaging than the Maeve Binchy, we ended up listening to a lot more of it and I found that we kind of pushed my mom to continue on with it rather than repeat and replay parts she didn’t remember. But at one point, I had to do a basic plot summary for her and realized that she was getting almost nothing from listening to the story. We were the ones who were reading. I've recently wondered if this is the end of my mom’s reading life and I wonder more generally how a habitual reader learns to makes sense of things without reading.

Reading the Signs

In grief I think we look for signs and assign meaning to things which may or may not be meaningful. It seems harmless and it helps. At Don’s memorial yesterday, the CD the family had chosen to play would not play at first. Don’s cousin Paul just had to continue with his service until someone from the funeral home let us know that they had got the CD to work. Later, many people commented that Don had intervened and prevented the CD from playing. “He didn’t want us to listen to that song,” several people asserted. Someone even said that he didn’t want us to listen to that song at first but then relented. This would have to be the case because the chosen song was so funereal, appropriate and by James Taylor an artist we all know Don liked:

Just shower the people you love with love
Show them the way that you feel
Things are gonna work out fine if you only will

Later, as we were driving back to Hamilton, we all noticed how beautiful the weather was – mild, pastel sky and sun…and we read it as a sign and as a lovely gift that Don had sent us…it doesn’t matter whether this is true or not.

This is something I’m learning from DQ currently - as the knight errant – The Knight of the Mirrors - has turned out to be a fraud/a friend wounded by DQ and now failed in his quest to trick DQ into returning home. And DQ has continued to wander convinced that the face of his friend revealed when DQ lifted his visor at the end of their “battle” was put there by an enchantment and that he has really successfully vanquished an enemy. And I guess there's some truth in that...

Reluctant to post this one…Reading death/Is death reading me?

But I’m reading the obituaries again (despite Sean’s comment - see Tuesday December 20, 2005, “Obituary”, The Guelph Mercury calls their death section “Obituaries”). It’s so different this time…only a month after my dad’s death. I received the phone call on Monday. My old, dear friend Don died suddenly of a heart attack last Friday. I was in shock for at least an hour – flitting around my office, picking up pieces of paper randomly, reading a little, putting them down, checking my email incessantly as if some words, something I could read, some news would come to make it all make sense. I also had to be practical and write a couple of people who would want to know, would be, like me, like me, shocked and reading…

One of the practical things that I did was look for Don’s death notice on line. I’d already been given the “what to do next” info. on the phone but, as with my dad, I needed to see the announcement of his death in black and white and read it. What did I learn? Nothing about the cause of death or the events leading up to it, just the word “suddenly” and Don’s age (which I already knew – though “in his 58th year” is not the way I would have said it…as if he were stretching towards May 14th – his next birthday, not quite reaching it). I read the names of his family members some who I know, some who I don’t know…reading that they will plant a tree in Don’s memory made me feel much better and much worse as he and I spent a lot of time walking in the woods and cross country skiing so long ago now...I was worried about the funeral home so it did reassure me to see in black and white that it’s not the same one we used for my dad.

I didn’t want to have to go back there again so soon.

Part II is even better than Part I

...what ever that means… but my eyes grow wider and my laugh louder as I eagerly (now) flip the pages. I am not often this kind of reader anymore.

First, Sancho asserts his intelligence, understands that he is not merely a hapless sidekick but an actor with the power to propel the story. He meets DQ’s needs (as a squire should) by creating a Dulcinea from a random, passing peasant girl knowing that once DQ makes his love declaration, they can literally and literarily move on. And I can read on…

And then they meet the cartful of actors – Death, the Angel etc. and resist the impulse to read them as anything but what they are and again the adventure continues…(how is this or is it at all like Pokemon or a video game?).

And now, DQ has met another knight errant and Sancho another squire and knights & squires have just separated for their respective conversations…and it's wonderous to imagine that there are other errantes out there...

Abridged and edited (but true) excerpts from various emails received & read in the last 2 days

Hi I am in your class on Mondays at 2:30 but i was just wondering if it
was possible for me to switch into your class on tuesdays at 11:30 if
possible. I have a class conflict and it has been really hard for me
to compromise my schedule. Just let me know as soon as possible. Thanks so
much for you time.

I am registered in your class but have not been assigned a section. I was told to contact the instructor of the course to find out how to get sectioned. I was wondering how I would go about getting sectioned into the Tuesday class? Thank you for you help.

Take Care and have a good week !

Is the Monday section ok? I have to switch a lab section for another class first but I don't think it should be a problem to get done by next Monday.

I'm very sorry I missed class yesterday, but my plane didn't arrive until 4:00.

I really want to register in your class, but the system indicates
the seat was full. I am just wondering is it possible for me to register for
this course in another way or is there anyways for me to get in this class.

I have successfully added the class. However, I am not sectioned. I have a 4th year seminar on fridays during the friday timeslot, and the monday time from 230-530 would be the optimal time slot, as i have another class during the tuesday period as well. Should i come and see you in your office to arrange get sectioned? Or should i just come to the first class on monday and see you then?

I just registered for your class today and I was wondering if you
could tell me my section.

Reading Garry Winogrand

For the last year or maybe two, I’ve kept a couple of Garry Winogrand books beside my bed and I often “read” them. He’s one of my fav. photographers so I thought in a time when I’m not getting much textual reading done, perhaps a look at some of the musings I’ve made about Winogrand in another journal I started last year might get me (and y’alls) thinking about other kinds of reading.

In part it has to do with the light and the observation of light and the rendering and translation of light into black and white photography. I'm trying to make some notes about a photographer I like & learn, I hope, something about why & how I like these photographs. I sense that they are influential (I am also a photographer) & I know that this photographer (the American photographer, Garry Winogrand who died in 1986ish) is lauded by others but in reading about his work, no one has really satisfied me in their explanations of why & how I like his work.



One thing I know about Winogrand that I like and I think is medium-specific (to photography) & culturally specific (to the increasing affluence of the 1960s, the indulgence, the consumerism) is that Winogrand took a lot of photos (and I'm not kidding). Even his friends joked about it so much that he apparently started to describe events in terms of how many rolls of film he had shot. So that when someone asked him about a social event he attended (where he might be working or not), he'd succinctly say, "32 rolls" to describe the event. I think many people who photograph more casually would use "affordability" as one of the reasons why they don't take as many photos as Winogrand. So is Winogrand indulgent or excessive as a character and is this something that I like about him?

[A question that occus to me at this point is: how has digital photography changed this mindset that taking a lot of photos is weird or indulgent or too expensive? I 'm also thinking of people I know who videotaped their kids incessantly and must have hundreds of hours of basketball game, swimming & ballet lesson footage stored away somewhere...what opportunities does that offer them? or are they just documenters and not artists...]

But I think that Winogrand took a lot of photographs because he was looking for something in the event and he knew that unless he photographed a lot he had no chance of finding it or getting close to it because it only existed in the moment, in the essence of the event. It's very difficult to understand what's happening to you when you're doing something but the camera can help (in some ways though it takes you out of the event in other ways). If you look at Winogrand's contact sheets and then at the one shot that got published, that he or someone else picked out as the essential photo of that event, maybe then you can get a better sense of what his working methodology was. I've heard some comments about just how bad some of his photos are when you look at the contact sheets but this not a smart observation as far as I'm concerned because it doesn't take into account the process & the 'being in the eventness' of the process and the learning through mistakes etc. Not every photo has to be good in order for it to be "good" (for the process).

But I haven't got back to talking about the light.

(Don't let me forget to talk about superstition...because Winogrand was highly superstitious and this fits with the magical power of photography - photography as perservative, creator of talismans etc.)

I like some of the things John Szarkowski has to say about Winogrand -- particularly about his inability to focus.

In his earlier work, Szarkowski seems to think that it (the issue of focus) has to do with an essential indecisiveness at points where the formal issues (light & line for example) seem to interfere with the subject. W's photos are "sharp" but unfocussed simultaneously. That really shakes things up!

In analyzing W's later work, Szarkowski can't explain the lack of focus because it's "real". Despite his skill as a photographer, Winogrand produced a lot of unsharp negs (and, no, he was only in his fifties when he died so it's not an old age issue) in the last years of his life.

As you know (or may know), I am interested in 'focus' as a problem/challenge and that I think the issue lies way beyond the boundaries of photography. Lately, I've been photographing movement & purposely out of focus. I primarily use a manual camera & I shoot in available light a lot. I'm also thinking about focus in terms of being predominately right brained and how much it's okay to be myself as a right brained thinker...and not focus???




Beyond the photographic, there's also the in-the-moment humour in his work. Photography, generally, is good for this. I really can't get into my "theories" of humour in photography right now but, briefly, because photography captures a moment, there a decontextualizing that can generate humour. You sometimes really don't know what's going on because only part of the "story" is present. So I've got a couple of photos here by Garry Winogrand. The Bronx Zoo one is one of my absolute favorites. You can make up a story about what's going on here but, ultimately, I find that regardless of any logical explanation for the picture, the humour of the photo overpowers it. For me, it's just a great photo! The other photo has something to say about spectacle and photography itself and there's a long history of photographs of photographers taking photographs -- so the Apollo 11 one is funny too but is fundamentally about photography & looking...as is the Zoo photo really if you take follow a particular storyline and interpret the box as a way of creating a "hide", a neutral viewing place where the observed isn't thrown off by the observer because he/she can see them. So the observer has advantage and power over the observed (theory of the gaze). In Winogrand's photo though, there is the observer of the photograph whose gaze disarms the observer in the photo and exposes their "ruse" & renders it absurd. But what about the other couple in the photo with their identical jackets? Are they "hiding" too?

Poor Attention Span

Happy New Year!!

The skies have been morosely overcast all week – even and consistent grey blocks -- hardly pathetic fallacy as I am behaving quite unevenly and inconsistently…

I find it incredibly difficult to concentrate on any one thing when I’m at home which may be why I often prefer to go out to do my reading (See for example Monday November 21, 2005 "Saturday Reading", Friday December 2, 2005 "Rereading/Revisiting Happier Saturday Reading", Thursday December 8, 2005 "Claustrophobia 2"). At home there are constant interruptions, distractions and an enormous number of unfinished tasks staring me in the face – especially if there’s a whole week to contemplate them…plus it always snows at least once at this time of year…

My reading has been distracted, interrupted and mostly unfinished. I seem to flit around, picking up papers, books and magazines and reading them sometimes with purpose and sometimes without. For example, two days ago, I was looking for something on a shelf and ended up crouched on the floor reading the McMaster Centre for Dance Performance Newsletter “profiles” page. Then, I needed to sort out my plans for next week so I had to go and find Ami and Aldo’s embossed purple, silver & white wedding invitation. I had read it quickly when we got it a couple of months ago but I hadn’t paid attention to the times and address. I had noted the strange insertion of a middle name for Ami (she is now Ami Elizabeth – perhaps after Elizabeth Bennet – as Ami is a big P&P fan). I’ve known her for over twenty years now and one of her ongoing laments was that her parents didn’t give her a middle name…so, I guess, at a time when she is changing her surname anyway, it made sense to totally “get the name right” (although the choice of Elizabeth surprises me a little). A part of the invitation I hadn’t read before was the “poem” to the left of the hardcore times & addresses information. It seems pretty standard and appears uncredited. Here it is:

For hearing my thoughts
Understanding my dreams
And being my best friend…
For loving me without end…
I do.

Beyond reading newsletters and wedding invitations, I’ve also been trying to read an article all week connected to the academic paper I’m revising (See Tuesday December 6, 2005 “In order to serve you better..."). It’s a very clearly written and mostly interesting article partly about bees, partly about Amazons but mostly about shifts in perceptions about women and gender roles in eighteenth-century Britain (“On Queen Bees and Being Queens” by Dror Wahrman). It’s a good comprehensive contextual article for me. It reassures me in some ways by confirming and solidifying what I’ve already found out about bees but it’s different enough from what I’m doing that I feel that what I’m writing is actually worth writing (a common affliction of writers, I think).

Another bit of reading I’ve done this week is connected to the “Summons to Juror” I received in the mail on Friday. This is the fourth time I’ve been summoned in the last fifteen years (please tell me if this seems like a lot of times for a process that is random selection!!). I read the enclosed flyer called “Some Commonly Asked Questions about Jury Duty” several times mostly out of disbelief…

P.S. Just so you know…DQ and Sancho are just entering El Toboso as DQ prepares himself to address Dulcinea. D& G have stopped talking about vampires for now and are looking at the brighter side (in my opinion) of the outsider, the anomalous…