Labeling

I have labeled 135 of my 168 posts, an interesting exercise. When I finish, I will go back and combine some of the categories. The exercise gives me a better idea of the structure of my blog, how I have kept to the theme, tracing, how I have deviated. Can I figure out which categories readers are interested in, because of course the idea is to communicate. Otherwise, I would write in a private journal, although most people who write in a journal have the idea that some day someone will read it. A friend was telling me the sad story of her mother’s journals, that her mother had obviously wanted them kept and read, but her brother and his wife had burned them, saying that they didn’t want people to know the family business. My friend harbors the hope that they didn’t burn the journals, just hid them. I treasure my grandmother’s two diaries and letters. They let me into a life I knew nothing about before.

Sharp Sand decided to start all over with his blog, giving it a new form, a new voice. I can see the temptation of that. Wipe the blackboard clean.

Tales from a Reading Room takes stock of her blogging year. She gives us a piece of etiquette that I didn’t know before, that it is customary to respond to the comments on your blog. That makes sense, to keep a dialogue going.

A New Year means something to students and teachers, starting a new semester. When I went to college, the old semester continued after New Years Day so I have never had that feeling. A New Year means something for my finances, my taxes. I begin a new calendar. I have never made New Year’s resolutions, so that aspect of the New Year is lost. Somehow the change seems arbitrary, unreal, even unimportant.

Fiddling with the Blog

Yesterday I sat down to the computer to continue revising the old novel. I had been up since 5:15 AM, so that after a while my brain became too weary even for revising. I began to fiddle with this blog, decided it would be fun to put on labels, learned how to do it (not hard, as I thought it would be), and did some of the 167. What use are labels, I wondered.

I found a blogspot page I didn’t know existed, telling how comments are to be received. It said that the only registered bloggers can comment. That must be the default. I didn’t know that. This must be why my friend Ted can’t comment. What function does this default serve – to prevent bad people from commenting? Do people surf the net looking for unprotected sites upon which they may type the f word? Or worse, I suppose. What would happen if I checked the box that allowed anyone to comment?

I found that I could have a comment window pop up, which I checked, that I could moderate comments, which I didn’t check, that I could have “type the funny letters you see here” section (I can’t remember if I checked that or not.)

I probably should have been following Another Country’s lead and re-organized my kitchen drawers instead of fiddling with the blog. The trouble with such re-organization is that for the next two years I would be looking in the wrong drawer for the peeler.

The Idea of the Holy

Ten years ago I wrote an article about the arts every week for the New Brunswick Reader. One week I wrote about the art in Wilmot Church, citing the William Morris/Burne-Jones window, the Alex Colville decoration, the carved hand on the steeple, the magnificent vaulted ceiling, some other art treasures. I used my research for that article to write a tour guide of the church and that found its way into the church website. I wrote to SpiritConnection, the United Church TV program, suggesting the art of Wilmot as a program, and they came to film it. (I have been on the church communication committee for as long as it’s been in business.) SpiritConnection gave me my first (and only) TV credit as associate producer.

In the article I used a much loved passage from one of my favorite books, The Idea of the Holy. I have put it up above, in the blog description. For the past ten years, I have particularly savoured the ambience of the church every Sunday. I never tire of looking at the window (I always sit near it) and the vaulted ceiling. Occasionally, on the late Christmas Eve service, for example, the church lights are dimmed, the candles shine; the “mysterious play of half-lights” does indeed induce the numinous. On the Christmas Eve of 1988 that numinous worked its enchantment on my whole family.

Perfection

Attending Wilmot Church allowed me to understand Fredericton better. We gradually came to know the people in the university and those in our neighborhood, but they weren’t usually from Fredericton. The Wilmot men were silent but pleasant and perfect gentlemen. The women were old-fashioned, unblemished by the woman’s movement. Most of them didn’t drive, so I would give them a ride home from the women’s group, Miss Chappelle’s unit of the UCW. Their presentation of food was perfect. When they made “small cakes”, the pieces were flawlessly square, with no ragged edges. I have never mastered that, and now I resign myself that I probably never will. The women wore hats to church.

They quilted. I had never known anyone who quilted although my grandmother embroidered, and one of my six aunts crocheted. Quilting requires a steady hand and absolute patience. The mother of a Japanese professor came to Fredericton, discovered quilting, and went back to Tokyo to begin the craft. She did the designs, but she hired women to do the actual quilting. She didn’t use the traditional designs of log cabin and the like, nor did she do Oriental designs, but she was influenced by Escher. The quilts were so wonderful that the Beaverbrook Art Gallery had an exhibition of them. I heard two women discussing them. The stitching was very poor, they agreed. I felt superior. The stitching might be poor, but the designs were so original and creative, I thought.

But all these long years later, I understand that wasn’t the point. The point was to do something flawlessly from beginning to end, with tiny perfect stitches, and using the traditional designs in a creative, original way. I can imagine Marilynne Robinson writing Gilead (which took many years – twenty?), every sentence perfect, using the traditional structure of the novel.

More Tracing

Wilmot United Church is at the crossroad of King and Carleton, right in the centre of the city. There is no lawn, very little parking, and no room to expand. A while ago, there was talk of selling the church and moving to the suburbs. Our membership was dwindling and there were very few young people, but a series of excellent ministers, the decision to make them into a team ministry, one radical minister, and two women attracted young ardent people. It helped too that the competing United Church hired a fundamental, right-wing minister who drove many of his congregation into our arms.

One Sunday a few weeks ago, there was no room for me downstairs, and I had to go into the balcony. I sat in the second row on the side, and a mother with two active boys, perhaps 6 and 4, sat in front of me. The mother let her 6 year old climb under the railing and into the middle section, and then back, risking a fall of perhaps 30 feet. The 4 year old jumped up and down as if to vault over the railing. A terrifying worship service. I had a momentary desire for the good old days when there was plenty of room downstairs and no children.

When I started attending Wilmot, the minister at that time had a nasal voice, as if he needed to blow his nose. His sermons were uninspired. The music was insipid. After a year I decided I didn’t believe in the trinity and left to attend the Unitarians. A year ago someone told me that often the minister was weeping in the pulpit because his wife was having an affair. This accounted for the need to blow his nose. I felt very bad that I had not been understanding. I am too judgmental, a terrible trait and a bad habit. Resolutions to be better are not enough to conquer this addiction.

I yearn to be perfect. I know I could kiss a leper, like the saints of old did, but I can’t curb my grumpiness. However, I don’t attend church because it will help me become perfect, for I know it won’t, anymore than it will cure my arthritis. I don’t even know why I attend. Attending does punctuate the week and give it order. And there is always the tempting possibility that God will indeed honour us with his presence one day.

Back to Tracing

A month or so after we arrived in Fredericton, Bill was scanning the horizon with his binoculars. He came rushing into the apartment. “You’ve got to see this.” Our apartment was perhaps two miles from downtown, partway up the hill. What appeared in the binoculars was a steeple topped by a carved wood hand, the index finger pointing skywards.

We learned that the head of Bill’s department attended this church, and he suggested it was the church for me because it had been Methodist before the Methodists, Congregational, and Presbyterians had joined forces to become the United Church of Canada. Churches famously split apart rather than join together; uniting seemed to me to be a good thing for them to have done.

I did join that church, Wilmot United, and except for a few years when I flirted with the Unitarians, I have been a member ever since. Strange to say, although I still feel a little like an outsider, I am now one of the longest-attending members.

I had never been a part of such an impressive church, large enough to hold 1200 people, with a balcony, and handsome wood interior. The blue and maroon decoration had been suggested by Alex Colville before he became a famous artist. It was discovered just a few years ago that a particularly beautiful stained glass window came from the William Morris/Burne-Jones studio.

The congregations of the Methodist churches I attended always sang lustily, joyfully. For the first 30 years I was a member of Wilmot, the singing was insipid, and I missed the familiar hymns of the Methodists. I have a lousy nasal voice, sing in a male register always off-key, and so I am not a candidate for the choir. But I do love to sing. When I was a child in our little church there was a man who had a loud voice, sang slightly off-key but with great gusto. He was eccentric in other ways as well. Sometimes when I am singing, I remind myself of this man, George “Bozo” Reid.

Ideas for the New Year

I have started to read Orhan Pamuk’s Istanbul, a combination memoir and ode to the city. Structuring a memoir around a city is such a good idea, that I am tempted to use it to get back to the “tracing my life from birth” theme of this blog. Moving to Fredericton, where I have lived for 41 years, is a central fact of my life.

All the different branches of the Pamuk family live in the Pamuk apartment building. My imagination has been stimulated by such a concept several times – my novel The Opening Eye is about a group of friends who decide to get individual apartments in a new building. The massive, unpublishable novel I just finished (except that I am still working on it) is about an apartment building where the inhabitants become friends.

Swinging

We’ve been having a lot of fun the last few days because our daughter is in a terrific commercial which just began airing. Advertising a Canadian lottery, it has her swinging on a chandelier. Her brother said he demonstrated his brotherly affection because he had to watch a lot of lousy television in order to see it. He has managed to videotape it. There seems to be two versions – a longer one and a shorter. It is a strange sensation to merely be tolerating the main show in order to catch a glimpse of the commercial and then to wish the ad would go on longer.

Discovery

I remember the moment I learned there was no Santa Claus. I was nine and a half. We had just moved into a new house where my brother and I found many treasures left by the previous owners in closets, built-in drawers, and in the barn. The kitchen had the high ceilings of the Victorian house, with cabinets that went up to the top. I thought there might be treasures up there, so I climbed on the sideboard to look. I saw toys. I knew enough not to mention this to my parents, and Christmas morning when those toys came from Santa, I knew for sure. I wasn’t disappointed; instead I had the feeling of discovery, of having figured something out on my own. Quite satisfying.

Geeky

I sent a letter to the Globe and Mail. It didn’t appear in our edition, so of course I thought it hadn’t been accepted. In a Christmas card, a friend wrote, “Liked your letter to Globe, Nancy. Last thing we need is charismatic leaders – Charlie Van Horne, Bill Van der Zam, PET etc. Leaves a bad taste in the mouth!”

I searched the Globe and Mail on the internet and came up with the following. In my letter I mentioned Doyle and not LeBlanc, so apparently there were three people who used the term geeky on Dec. 4.

The Dion verdict
NANCY BAUER
Print Edition 05/12/06 Page A22
Jeffrey Simpson (Will Dion Or Critics Have The Last Laugh? -- Dec. 4) and Daniel Leblanc (The Master Of Proving People Wrong -- Dec. 4) describe Stephane Dion as ''geeky.'' I learned 50 years ago that, when choosing a man, geeky is better and a funny-looking haircut beats a good one every time.

Coming and Going

It is hard to believe that soon the day will start to get longer, although as my friend explained to me, because of the proportions, it will not seem to be any longer until well into January. I should get him to explain the situation to me again. The sun is out now, yet so low on the horizon that it seems to be rising rather than having risen two hours ago. I am once again bombarded by people – clerks and radio announcers -- bemoaning the lack of snow. “We won’t have a white Christmas.” Was this ridiculous yearning started by Bing Crosby: “I’m dreaming of a white Christmas”? At a time of year when everyone is on the road, making an heroic attempt to get home for Christmas, who wants snow? Who wants a loved one to be driving on the awful stretch of road between Riviere-du-Loup and the New Brunswick border in a blizzard? Someone waiting to collect the insurance money? Someone I love is going to be in a bus on that stretch of road today. Tomorrow two people I love are going to be in a car on that road going the other way. I’m dreaming of a brown Christmas.

Co-ed or Not

The Saturday Globe and Mail had an article about the controversy at Randolph-Macon Women’s College in Virginia. The board of directors has voted to change it into a co-ed college. The students and alumnae are up in arms, but the board argues that they won’t be able to attract students unless they become co-ed. When the same question came up at my college, Mount Holyoke in Massachusetts, I wrote defending the status quo, and I was happy that the board decided to remain all-women. For me, it was wonderful to have four years to work unstintingly, in deep concentration, without the distraction of men. I know I would have been quite susceptible to that distraction and to their opinion of me. I could go to class in pajamas, hair uncombed. The G&M article says that the Women’s College Coalition once had 300 affiliated institutions but now has only 57. Only four all-male colleges remain in the USA.

Now I am not so sure that I would object to MHC becoming co-ed. Times have changed (maybe you hadn’t realized that.) Where once we could have the weekend excitement of a blind date at a men’s college, now those colleges are co-ed and the men would not be motivated to go far a field. Where would I have met a future partner? It used to be said that women were reluctant to speak up in a class with men, that men would dominate the discussion. Once a group of Amherst students came to an MHC play and during the discussion afterward, it was true – the men did dominate the discussion. But would that be true now? Probably not.

As I have been tracing my way from birth, I realized (or rather, realized once again), how important my MHC education was to me, how rigorous it was, how liberating, how grateful I am for it. Later I came to realize that other people at my college and at my husband attended in large part for the social cache. I didn’t choose it – it chose me, but today, when a larger percentage of teens go to college, would it choose me again? I doubt it. Or would I even choose it? It now costs $180,000 to go to MHC for four years. It is hard for me to comprehend that figure, but it seems too much and I think that now public universities and colleges have an equal quality of education. Still, the Red Sox just paid a hundred million dollars for a pitcher for 6 years, so yes, the times they are a-changing.

Contented

This morning, after I had finished my writing stint, it came to me how magical it is to create a whole new character. The character I was creating had been mentioned earlier in the novel, but this was the first time she had appeared. The character I set down (or that any writer sets down, for that matter) doesn’t have the complexity of a real person. That would take an unimaginable number of words. I had delight creating her, picturing her sitting on the living room floor, a little jump of my heart. The contentment of writing; nothing like it. I thought back over the characters I had created in the last ten years, not one of whom will be known by anyone but me.

Someone said, I can’t remember who, that a novel is only half-done when the writer finishes it; it needs a reader to complete it. Is that true? Reading it aloud to my two writing groups is probably not as good as it would be to have someone with manuscript in hand, seated in a comfortable chair, with a good reading lamp, deeply immersed in it: the union of teller and told, as the quotation in my blog description has it. I should make more of an effort to publish, I know that, but it is such an awful process, whereas the process of creating a world and the people in it is so satisfying that it makes me serene the rest of the day.

Christmas is Coming

Our granddaughter is coming for Christmas, a delightful surprise. One of my neighbours was almost as excited as I was. I wouldn’t have put up a tree or made much of Christmas at all, if she hadn’t decided to come, but yesterday we bought a small tree, and today I will put it up and get out the crèche. She is a vegetarian, so I will also get out my recipe notebook. Vegetarian cooking is labour intensive, I have discovered. You must dice things small and make sauces. I suppose that is in keeping with the celebration of someone who lived in the middle east two centuries ago.

I do send about 60 cards. I have talked to people who don’t send cards, telling me that it is a waste of time and money, but I couldn’t bear not to send them and lose complete touch with people who in the past meant so much to me.

Maybe my granddaughter will like to go to the midnight Christmas Eve service, and Santa Claus will come in the night, even though the roofers boarded over the chimney last summer. I will be thinking of my aunt and uncle, whose 58 year old son died December 22 two years ago while he was home for Christmas. She went in to the guest room to wake him up and he was gone. Christmas will never again be a joyful time of year for them. A young friend of ours is giving his girlfriend a diamond this year. Emotions of any kind are heightened at Christmas. I don’t know why. Something to contemplate.

This and That

My first arts column will be a discussion of whether it is better to have many centres of art, art-making going on in every little corner, or whether it is better to have one dominant centre, such as New York City or Toronto. New Brunswick has at least three centres and no one dominant centre. Nova Scotia and Newfoundland each have one dominant centre, Halifax and St. John’s. Maine has several centres, no dominant one. In fact Maine is more fractured than we are, and yet it is a hotbed of artistic endeavor.

Microsoft Word seems to feel that centre is a correct spelling, but not centres. In The Opening Eye, one of the group activities is “centring.” I spelled it “centering”, the American way, but the publisher wanted it “centring.” Microsoft Word doesn’t like “centring” either. The man who edits our church newsletter wants us to use British punctuation, but the publisher of The Opening Eye used American punctuation. In Canada, things are all mixed up.

Going Public

Shameless Words comments that he doesn’t write about the people in his life, that he prefers to write more anonymously. I don’t write about certain members of my family because they have requested that I not. There is a great fear of the internet, and I can see why. I have heard several stories about marriages breaking up because one of the partners has met someone on the internet. These are not urban legends but about actual people I know. Parents in particular are nervous that their children will encounter an evil person on the internet.

I have had to get over the fear of going public because I have published so much. When my first novel was coming out, I was afraid that two of my relatives in particular would be offended, and so I told my father not to tell anyone. He was like me, big-mouthed, and had a hard time holding in this news. When the two relatives did eventually find out, they were pleased! Wondered why I hadn’t told them before! Said that because at the time they were going through a bad patch, this news would have been a bright spot! Only these two people provided models for the novel, and they were heroes. My stepmother read the novel first and told my father that he was in it because there was a character who had been the youngest child and the only son of a large family. This character was the opposite of my father. How my stepmother could think the character was like my father, I don’t know. When my father read the novel, he was obviously disappointed that he wasn’t in it. Very few of the characters in my novels have a model; in fact I can’t think of any others. I employ the smile of one person I know, or an incident, or a detail of a room. Yet, my son said reading my novels was “like putting my finger in my belly button and twirling it.”

I still tremble when something of mine gets published, but I keep doing it. I am not being guilty of false modesty when I say that I am not a great writer, that the world has plenty of novels and blogs and reviews and columns. Why then publish? I am not sure. Perhaps the words in my blog description provide some of the explanation.

Whither?

I am in the process of writing for my new arts column. At first I hesitated to take on the job, thinking that I could never come up with something every week. When the editor suggested every other week, I agreed, yet still with fear and trepidation. But now, to paraphrase the old punch line, “Everything reminds me of an arts column.” The magazine won’t be launched until January and already I have written five columns with many more ideas for others. My new schedule of getting up at 5:30 is working great – I am writing more than I have for several years. To think that I wept when I contemplated giving up my office -- strange. In the past I sometimes had the feeling that I was being led, but I honestly didn’t know how, or why, or to where, or by whom. I have had that feeling for the last month.

Writing a Christmas Newsletter

I’ve just finished writing my annual Christmas newsletter. I’ve read brutal satires of these newsletters, but what are the alternatives? Write a personal note to all 60 people on my list as I used to do and wind up sending out cards in February; write nothing but our name as some people do, leaving us wondering what is happening to them; or give up sending cards all together and lose touch with people who meant a lot to us in the past? I myself like family newsletters, but then I always have had an intense curiosity about other people’s lives: why I like to read blogs; why I love local gossip; why I was utterly absorbed in my grandmother’s diary even though nothing exciting happened and there was no soul-searching.

Pensées

Several of the people on my blogroll have changed templates: “Sharp Sand”, “pages turned”, and “my space” most recently. This creates a curious feeling, as if an acquaintance of mine should show up having had cosmetic surgery and dyed her hair.

For quite a long time I thought that Shameless Words was a woman, but then he wrote something that told me otherwise. He travels alone quite a bit, and I thought that was unusual, until he revealed himself to be a man and then it didn’t seem unusual at all. I began to think, Men do travel alone more than women do. The friends of mine who are my age travel a lot, all over the world in fact. That seems to be the thing to do with one’s retirement, but the widows travel in groups, never alone, and even the couples travel in tours or with another couple.

Bill and I are like the geese being fattened for foie gras: we are tied to a rope that allows us to travel in a certain small circumference of the northeast section of the continent.

A long while ago, the writer John Metcalf wrote an essay about how to punctuate a thought. Do you put it in italics? In quotation marks? After much discussion, he determined that it was best to use a comma and then a capital letter. He convinced me, and I have done that ever since. I did it in paragraph two.

Change Made Palpable

The new people in back of us have bedecked their deck with Christmas lights which they left on all night so that they were twinkling when I came up to the study at 5:30 AM. The people next door to them have lights in back too but they put theirs out when they go to bed. Except for a wreath, we don’t even decorate the front of our house. Decorating with Christmas lights seems to be the creation of the men in the family. I wonder if they do it for the creative pleasure of it or just because the neighbours do. We live right at the curve of our short street, and not one of the five houses on the curve has lights, so that our section does seem to be lacking in Christmas spirit. At Halloween, three of these houses were in darkness, signifying “Don’t come here for treats.” We used to have over a hundred kids come but for the last few years, we have had only 20. In the beginning, forty years ago, our short street had 53 children. Now we are down to eight.