writing the revolution-michele landsberg

“hey sister-am i good enough for your heaven?”

“you’d make a great cybrarian”

i finally got to this one after making a note of it last fall at the toronto book awards hosted by matt galloway (i mean, who loves toronto and/or books more than that man?) what a legacy michele landsberg is creating, all because she’s not trying to leave a legacy, she’s just doing the work. these are our heroes. i’m glad to read the columns curated in this collection, and proud to announce that i am the winner of the top volunteer prize in the leading to reading program this year. the most special part was the excited phone call i got from my branch head who received the inter-office memo and couldn’t contain herself, calling me before i got to the program today. i tried to act surprised, but spilled the beans that i already knew to my also excited site monitor. i’m feeling the blessings all around lately-from the library, from all my mamas and their babies, and the new love that is all my very own.

“Gradually, that stalled snowball melted into little rivulets, streams, and brooks, trickling into and infiltrating every aspect of society. Feminist achievements became so much part of the mainstream that the movement seemed to dissipate.” (35)

“The pity is that women feel they have to square off and attack each other’s choices instead of wryly admitting to each other that there are at least 15 sides to this home-or-job dilemma.” (50)

“The most successful children in school are those whose teachers respect them, listen to them, involve them in planning and rulemaking, and treat them as worthy human beings.
The whiners, the obnoxious kids, the sullen little despoilers…maybe they’re the ones with self-absorbed parents who didn’t try hard enough, who veered sloppily between emotional neglect and angry attempts at control.” (189)

all of this is support for my position as community parent, but i’m seriously considering breeding with the unicorn, since he asked me “in three years”. i guess somebody’s gotta make a girl for this family-and she’s gonna be flossy as all hell and make sure her boy cousins grow up to be standup guys.

“Start now. What bedtime story are you going to read to your little girl tonight? Will it end with marriage as a ‘happily ever after’? And what will you teach your son about how to be a man?” (161)

“categorize me, i defy every label”

i haven’t been this obsessed with a video since this. can’t shake the lauryn shiver.

the value of nothing-raj patel

“The beneficial effects are greater among lower-income communities than higher-income ones, because giving money to people who already have a lot of it won’t make them spend more, whereas giving money to those who have none means that the cash will be spent immediately. This is why a tax cut for the rich is an absurd idea (according to one economist making the Bush tax cuts permanent has a multiplier effect of 0.23), while one of the most effective ways for the US government to stimulate the economy is through food stamps (with a multiplier effect of 1.73) (73)

once again, it’s down to a competition for resources. shoutout to everyone who had a hand in pulling together and executing the edition of concordia’s slang rap democracy that went down this evening. i believe that was the most affirming thing that i’ve had the honour of participating in thus far in this life. shouts to our ringleader and inspiration-tali tal and mad love the the ladies that help represent not only in form but in content-thank y’all and it’s not over. mtl legend nik brovkin has been pig pinned, and lynn and i bookended the evening by kicking our rhymes to each other up st-lo (thanks to tali for the coat) and dropping in on sim spinning puffy and nas-yep, we were getting nice to every single word.

“Artificially low prices are the consumers’ dividend from this system of profit taking, which has given us clothes that are cheaper to buy than clean and phones that are cheaper to replace than repair. It is through these ‘bargains’ that we are conscripted into modern consumer capitalism.” (50)

i appreciate this one from the national treasure that is raj patel. i love the attention paid to the zapatistas and the commitment that that movement has been and just how long it has taken to reap any rewards, but just how worth it those rewards have been. we’re talking systemic change in governments, peoples-that takes conflict, effort, and time. we need to get over this right right now shit. i love the point about how population control has nothing to do with food distribution or hunger, just like monogamous relationships are not (always) the answer to love’s questions and the nonsense that is the expectation of impeccable customer service that nobody wants to pay for or even participate in-we all know by now that “the customer is not always right”, right? it’s the systems that are broken, not the people, and the sooner we acknowledge that and figure out ways around it, we’ll all be better off.

and one of the most insight-full statements of the night was “there’s no unity because we don’t need each other any more” and although it might seem that way-we really need each other more than ever. the irony is that we seem to have less and less outlets at a time that our art is getting better and better and our access to technology and each other’s lives seems to be at an all-time high, but the positive is that we’ve always created best out of a lack so there’s a lot of potential to be realized yet….

“all i want is more bread”

“i break bread with heads that be holding me down”

montrill, i see ya-thanks for showing yourself.

blackface-nelson george

“Spike lived across Myrtle on Adelphi in a cluttered two-room hotel dominated by an editing board, a bed, a stereo, and an early Michael Jordan poster. In piles along the floor and in shelves were tapes, records, papers, photographs, you name it. Now when folks complain that Spike’s films seem scattered and stuffed with too many themes, I often reflect on that apartment. Just as with his best work, there was ambition manifest in that room that held the seeming chaos together.” (79)

i really liked this one. i guess i put it on hold some time back, and decided to call it in. i still hear the love in nelson‘s voice in this one, which is not to say that i don’t in his more recent work, it just seems more present here. the true, vulnerable, honest love. i appreciated the context and the history, and the love of cinema.

“With time the scarlet carpet turned crimson with ground-in dirt. Broken seats proliferated. Ticket prices rose. But most vivid to me is that smell, that smell that said management didn’t care, the smell that said we weren’t as important as the customers who’d come before.” (10)

but this is the real gem:

“I wasn’t self-aware enough to realize how much I wanted Pryor to acknowledge me.” (40)

now that’s a black boy fly moment if i ever heard one.

rats-robert sullivan

“Rats live in man’s parallel universe, surviving the effluvia of human society; they eat our garbage. I think of rats as our mirror species, reversed but similar, thriving or suffering in the very cities where we do the same. If the presence of a grizzly bear is the indicator of wilderness of an area, the range of unsettled habitat, then a rat is an indicator of the presence of man. And yet, despite their situation, rats are ignored or destroyed but rarely studied, disparaged but never described.” (2)

i remember when patrick, one of my favourite librarians, first introduced me to this gem. i read it and recited it day and night at the granville island soup spot that we worked at. it truly changed my life. this and the other seminal work about the undergrounds of new york-dark days shaped my whole attitude towards survival and resourcefullness. it was naturally my choice for literary speed dating a few months ago. it was an event that was success-full to me not because i met anyone that i wanted to date, or any books that i wanted to read, but it was cool that so many folks came from so far on a tuesday night. it’s also timely because of our current environmental challenges and garbage debacle that we realize that we can’t just vilify the rat for doing what rats do in the plum conditions that we’ve created for him. they also bite children in the face because their sight is bad and their smell is amazing, thus it’s our fault for not wiping our dirty ass baby’s faces.

“deep in their rat tendons, rats know history.” (12)

“so tired of left-over curry”

homelessness by jack layton

“The simple fact is that criminalizing homelessness is expensive (and it doesn’t end homelessness). A Montreal study of a municipal bylaw that bans homeless people from sleeping in parks found the number of tickets issued by police grew fourfold from 1994 to 2004 for a total of 22,685. In 72 percent of the cases, the person convicted was sent to jail because he or she couldn’t pay the fine. I happen to know the exact costs in Toronto: the average cost to taxpayers for a month in jail is $4333. The average cost for a month of social housing is $199.92.” (110)

these are 2006 numbers, but i’m sure the figures have exacerbated to scale. i had the conversation again over easter dinner over the fact that resources (or lack thereof) are not the real problem, but the distribution of wealth, food, and other resources are the true issue. this was one recommended by a customer, and it’s something to read jack’s voice speaking of someone’s influence in the way that we now speak of his. it’s a pretty basic observation to point out that criminalizing the basic human need to sleep, just because people must do it outside, is perverse. but it’s always the simple things that are so brilliant.

“Like a bright light drawing moth, Toronto glows. It attracts impoverished immigrants from around the world, tantalizing them with glittering images of riches and freedom. And it pulls the dispossessed from the North with its warmth, colour and the sense that somehow life will be sweeter and kinder. For too many, it’s not. At least 47 percent of hostel users in the city over the past 10 years have come from outside Toronto.” (161)

oh, the big smoke, the screwface, t.dot-oh.

you really can’t go home again.

hotel at the corner of bitter and sweet-jamie ford

“like so many things Henry had wanted in life-like his father, his marriage, his life-it had arrived a little damaged. Imperfect. But he didn’t care, this was all he’d wanted. Something to hope for, and he’d found it. It didn’t matter what condition it was in.” (142)

well. i’m all for being open to life as it happens, but sometimes you gotta be specific, or the random will take over. i’m loving the fact that i’m attracting souls that seem to have come out of nowhere that i must have known in a past life. perhaps the best representation of this is coming through my earphones right now, both courtesy of a podcast that i’ve mostly deleted for the past three years. this one confuses me-i mean, i thought you were all about inspiring young girls, bey? “bow down, bitches?” are you feeling feelings because your little sister is blowing up? meanwhile, your husband is good but still getting beat by the best-the kid can’t be stopped.

“That was the true key to success in life, Henry thought-consistency.” (38)

unless you’re black thought-who has somehow diminished himself with his own consistent greatness. all those great albums and knowing everyone else’s lyrics on tour overshadow the standouts. that’s the point, right? if they’re all standouts, what stands out? i mean, for every great nas track, there’s one like this (which is great in its own right, but…)

uh huh.

half broke horses-jeanette walls

“I wished I could take every course in the curriculum and read every book in the library. Sometimes after I finished a particularly good book, I had the urge to get the library card, find out who else had read the book, and track them down to talk about it.” (90)

ah, yes. the days of card catalogues and date stamps. when you had to write your name in the books. the book i’m currently reading features the genius move in cover design that is a portrait of the author in colourful date due stamps (swoon). i suppose that i act out the above desire by asking everyone and their mama what they’re reading, and this one came to me by way of someone at the grocery store that recommended it. who knew it would be so fitting in so many ways?

this is another side of the same sentiment.

“The inconsistent spelling of words in the English language also vexed Dad to no end. Digigraphs such as ‘sh’ and ‘ph’ infuriated him, and silent letters made him grieve. If words were simply spelled the way they were pronounced, he argued, pretty much anyone who learned the alphabet could read, and that would virtually wipe out illiteracy.” (16)

mandy patinkin recently said that one of the greatest gifts that his father gave him was dying before he could do all the things he was waiting to do because it taught him that there is no tomorrow to wait for. my mother showed me the reality of shirking every gender role that was ever presented to her as a woman-daughter, wife, and mother. i’m great-full (and kind of fucked up) for this, but i suppose that’s what life is.