The long postponed repainting of the porch ceiling suffered another setback Saturday as housepainter Douglas declared both his arm and his patience for the job worn out.
"Obviously my upper arm is not used to this much overhead motion," said Douglas, 47.
Turpentine fumes were also a factor.
"My lungs are full of them. And are you supposed to put it on your skin?" asked the tired and disoriented homeowner. "I should have used [water-soluble] latex."
Rainy conditions Sunday caused porch painting to be called off for the remainder of the weekend, though critics point out that the porch ceiling is sheltered from the rain.
"Sounds like a sorry excuse to me," said Heather.
The porch ceiling project has been subject to repeated delays and procrastination. Records show that the can of paint was purchased in 2005. Eyewitnesses say that it had to be stirred thoroughly when opened this August.
The Nova Scotia Archives has a decent online presence and has a variety on online displays of photographs in it’s holdings. I find some of the photographs in its most recent display–The Royal Engineers in Halifax: Photographing the Garrison City, 1870-1885–oddly compelling.
Photos like this one are, no doubt, valuable for the historical information they provide. The architectural details are interesting enough and make sense given the occupations of the picture-takers. What strikes me first in it is the ladder and the jerry-rigged fence at the side of the road. People work in the urban spaces captured on these glass plates but the workers themselves are invisible. (Photo original here.)
In contrast this photograph of the quarry in Point Pleasant is occupied but it takes close looking to see the two figures. The pond itself is an artifact of the city-building. (Original photo here.)
The notes identifying the photographs are historical artifacts as well, written by one of the early provincial archivists. In most cases the notes are as practical as the photographs themselves. But every once in a while, the notes hint at something more than physical location.
Point Pleasant Park: Quarry Pond (near present Sir W. Young Gates), with Military Cottage of ironstone (just west of present Park Keeper’s Lodge) in which Garrety, an old Engineer soldier, lived; in or about 1875. Looking North-northwest. Judge Bliss’s large house, near Fort Massey Church, can just be detected in extreme distance to right of tree. A good many years ago, perhaps in the 60′s, a boy named Maitland, whose father had the farm just southward of the Old Penitentiary, Northwest Arm, was drowned in this pond. About 1894 the wife of George Harvey, artist, drowned herself in the pond.
Heather
The leaves in a handful of trees in the neighbourhood have started to turn orange.
Halloween decorations are in the store. Already.
I’ve been turning Zed over in my mind for the last couple of days. It’s one of the books I picked up during our jaunt to Toronto–I chose it almost at random but not entirely. I picked it up because it was a first novel, because it was printed by a smaller press, and because it wasn’t going to be twee.
And twee it ain’t.
Reviews in the mainstream press in Canada have been mixed. The Globe and Mail liked it; Quill and Quire, not so much. I can’t put my hand on my copy of Q&Q at the moment but what struck me on reading it was that the reviewer was, in part, applying the wrong lens in summing it up. He noted the dystopian aspects of Zed but expressed reservations about the novel’s “failure” to end on an upbeat note. Kinda missed the point of dystopian.
Reading Zed for a happy ending is a mistake. It operates more in the realm of stories like Tank Girl or Cruddy. Bad things happen. People get hurt. The plot drives to a conclusion in which more bad things happen. I quite liked how McClung doesn’t spend much time trying to explain the story’s setting in reference to either realistic or science fiction conventions. The Towers simply are and this avoidance of exposition or back-story helps create the sense of dislocation that makes it possible to believe in the characterization of Zed and her hard-boiled, almost affectless reactions.
I’ve come to think of Zed as the anti-Pippi, harder, unhappier, more perverse, more self-sufficient, and damaged.
Heather
Oh dear.
What we thought was pesky condensation seems to have transmogrified into a slow, small leak in fresh water intake pipe for that most useful of household devices, the toilet.
Sorting this out means the skinny person in the house has had to wiggle up through the kitchen ceiling, clear out a lot of old crud, and figure out what all the random pipes were. (Alas there’s one that makes no sense.)
And after a suitable amount of gawking at some hideous wallpaper remains, the leak was found.
At the least, this will be a visit from a plumber. At the worst it will mean a new subfloor.
Heather
1. Geese overhead in the early morning
2. Noticing the geese because one blanket doesn’t do the job anymore.
I have to try to make some of these marble mice–I know I have a couple of bags of marbles in the basement because I am a good auntie.
The pattern comes from toymaker.com which I saw at Escaping the Cubicle Nation. Yes it’s been that kind of day. Perhaps not haiku-whine worthy but still a day better forgotten.
Heather
Monday
So do you want to go to London?
Sure
These airline tickets are more expensive than they were last time.
Tuesday
So do you want to go the New York instead?
Sure
Look at these hotel rates.
Wednesday
What about Winnipeg?
Sure
Look at the mosquito warnings.
Well Kingston then?
Been there.
Where do you want to go?
Dunno
Thursday
How about staying home and painting the living room?
Nah
What then?
How about London?
Repeat until someone screams.
Time in garden: 10 mins
Amount of mint ripped out: About a packed milk crate’s worth
Number of insect bites: 5
Unanswered questions
- Why is calamine lotion puke pink?
- Why do bugs favour my left leg?
Heather
It’s time to take Judith Levine’s Not Buying It back to the library. It’s a quick, amusing read and it’s written for a general audience. (The lack of endnotes or bibliography gives that away). Levine combines musings about consumer society, US politics, and the effects of giving up shopping for a year as she moves between her New York City and Hardwick, Vermont, residences.
Her movement between urban New York and the rural Vermont makes for an interesting contrast between the frisson her urban friends seem to feel when contemplating the horror of not buying and her own horror at the impending arrival of cell phones in Hardwick. Much of the energy of the book goes into exploring the difference between what it means to be a consumer instead of a citizen. Opting out of the social norms of her economic class opens a space for her to think about the ways in which shopping distracts people from engagement in the public sphere.
The oddest thing about the book is how little discussion of class there is and how little discussion there is of poverty. The closest Levine comes to talking about poverty is in her encounters with her Voluntary Simplicity circle whose economic choices are constrained more by job loss than by conscious choice. Instead of exploring the implications of class in US society or the nature of poverty, Levine’s focus remains very much on the personal or individual impact of shopping and consumerism.
In the end Levine has documented a shift from a life with many luxuries to a modest but still very privileged life. Living frugally is a different thing and living in poverty is yet another thing again.
Heather
