Hey! Want to watch a bunch of cool feminist folks rock out and play some original material from the first feminists’ rock camp in Victoria? Want to watch them jam with some cool musicians?
Then come to the Fort Cafe, Sunday August 22nd. Doors open at 6. Also, look for the fabulous Galen Hartley, Athena Holmes from Montreal and Victoria, Tina Pearson, Anne Schaefer, and some Reverend Owl goodness!
Look forward to seeing you there! Download the flier if you’d like to put one up on your fridge, or your work fridge, or anywhere you fancy.
Tickets at door and in advance; contact Feminists.Rock.Camp(at)gmail(dot)comma
A 48-year-old Victoria man was hit in the leg while walking on Vancouver Street near Fort Street around 12:45 p.m., said Sgt. Grant Hamilton, police spokesman
I have been meaning to read Serious Men by Manu Joseph for a while now, and I really wanted to like it as well. I did get my hands on a copy finally, and, what a disappointment. Serious Men is billed as a story of class struggles and politics in a government run university, very similar to the one I attended. And on those aspects, it mostly delivers, albeit with a heavy dose of unrealistic narrative moving incidents strewn predictably at all the right points in the plot. The class divisions in the book are real, and ones I was privileged not to really notice when I attended those institutions. The professors were mostly upper class, the lower/mid level administrators mostly other castes. The author brings these divisions out, and uses them to make what could have been an interesting and enjoyable story. But, don’t read it unless you like your women characters one-dimensional and devious.
Spoiler alert
Why all the should haves and could haves? The book is unfortunately steeped in a misogyny so deep that I wonder what Manu Joseph was thinking. One of the narrative movers is the accusation of research fraud levelled by a woman scientist Oparna against her fellow upper caste supervisor and institute head Dr Acharya. See, Oparna gets very attracted to Acharya, makes her intentions clear to him in a fairly unrealistic way. Their interactions culminate in a two week affair when Acharya’s wife Lavanya is out of town. Lavanya hears very quickly of the affair and confronts Acharya, who immediately ends the affair, while still continuing to work with Oparna on his dream project. Oparna’s character throughout this period is reduced to her looks and her demeanour around Acharya and at work. The juxtaposition of her sexual awareness and honesty during the affair, and her complete turnabout into a “scorned woman” after is unbelievable.
Yes, the book is a satire and as such, the author has additional license to exaggerate differences and character flaws, and little need for plot realism. However, an author has a conscious choice in whom they choose to satirize, privileged male authors violate my (soon to be trademarked) “poke fun upwards” guideline on safer humour by writing one-dimensional female characters and making them the objects of satire.
While the author makes both Oparna and Acharya question Oparna’s attraction for Acharya (it’s all about the projection of his charisma and power, never mind his age or his supervisory position), the unlikeliness is not explored further. Fine, young women do have affairs with older men in positions of power. But it’s a terrible stretch for Oparna to deliberately contaminate a sample in the glow of the affair “so he can feel happy about a positive result”, then once the affair ends, claim in public that he forced her to falsify the results. The use of a scorned woman trope in a book that is supposed to be about class distinctions in academia mostly ruined the book for me. India’s gender disparity means it is a minefield of sexual harassment and terrible power differentials in academia. This book fails completely at understanding the links between gender- and caste-based discrimination. There are three women characters in this book. Two are dutiful “wives”, no other role required, the third, Oparna we already talked about! Oparna is reduced to just her womanly essence, in the end, becoming an unprofessional “liar” for the sake of advancing the plot, which incidentally involves the lower-caste protagonist Ayyan helping the “good brahmin” Acharya against the other “bad brahmins”
Yes, this is a work of fiction and Manu Joseph is free to populate his book with very poorly written female characters and win prizes. But. as this reviewer points out, do you want to read books with passages like these?
“Free love, Ayyan knew in his heart, is an enchanting place haunted by demented women. Here, every day men merely got away. And then, without warning, they were finished. The girl would come and say, like a martyr, that she was pregnant, or would remember that all the time she was being raped, or her husband would arrive with a butcher’s knife. Such things always happened in the country of free love. Ayyan Mani had fled in time from there into the open arms of a virgin. But Acharya had fled the other way.”
More
“She wondered how women would have handled this situation. What if the jury had been comprised of menopausal women? That was a disturbing thought. They would have butchered her in a minute. But this jury of ageing men was going to be easy.”
Even more
“She would wander through life beseeching men to love her, frighten them with the intensity of her affection, marry one whose smell she could tolerate, and then resume the search for love. And she would suffer the loneliness of affairs…”
Donald Shoup, the author of the high cost of free parking and a god-like figure in the urban circles that look at parking in cities/towns and say “too much, too cheap!” (we’re very popular at parties) died recently. His death reminded me that for a while now, I have wanted to talk about Victoria’s strange and ridiculous neighbourhood resident parking system that rewards already wealthy people with free public land to store their personal belongings.
I’ve always lived close enough to downtown that the parking spots in front of my home had been restricted, either no parking or two hour parking. So I hadn’t really paid much attention to the resident parking rules except to know when I could get away with parking in a residential zone for a few minutes. That changed when I moved to North Park and discovered that around the corner from our new place, I could leave my car parked with zero restrictions, all the time! So, I was curious and started ducking (is that what you say when you use Duckduckgo?!) to see how I could get a permit? Turns out, there are no permits! And it’s FREE! You park your car on your block till someone complains about you, then parking enforcement gives you a ticket. You appeal this ticket with documentary proof of your address, and voila, ticket is rescinded and your license plate is entered into the system. WHAT?!
First off, FREE? Parking especially in Victoria is a scarce commodity, and the people who live in these blocks are already either relatively well-off (relative, don’t compare yourself to the Westons!) or renting from the wealthy. Resident blocks are typically found only in what we call “residential” neighbourhoods, and by residential we mean single family home-heavy, not rental building with hundreds of residents. This is a massive subsidy. In my neighourhood, I see commercial parking advertised for 250-300$ a month. Perhaps there’s less demand in Rocklands, but at a minimum, that’s approximately 160 sq feet (or 15 m^2) of public land that’s paved, maintained and given over to store your stuff (if your stuff is a car, good luck if it’s a tent and you want shelter) for free!
Secondly, a SNITCH DRIVEN SYSTEM? Someone’s neighbour with little better to do has to complain and then we waste city resources on writing a ticket, sending one, an appeals process, all of which is time spent by a city official that generates cost and no revenue? Where does this money come from? I presume from property taxes?
At a time when we’re struggling to pay for the mandatory police-dominated municipal budget and everything else that needs building and maintaining, why are we giving away storage on public space for free? We need to start the discussion around what’s appropriate payment for a resident to store their car in a well-maintained public space. Given it’s not guaranteed parking I guess it can’t be $300 a month which is full retail value, but some reasonable fraction right? Remember that in most of these neighbourhoods, your home already has a garage that’s meant for car storage but has been repurposed as extra house because you can store your car for free. Even if we start at a $200 per year, that gives a permit to hang in the car/sticker so we can stop this snitch-based enforcement mechanism.
Anyway, nothing’s likely to happen given how loud the people who own homes and thus assume ownership of the free parking in front of their homes get, and how afraid councillors are of loud home owners. But I’m still going to advocate for a better system when I talk to someone on council next. Donald Shoup would insist!
Anyway, the always excellent SIdewalking blog has a very informative post on the same issue, check that one out too!
I was lucky enough to win two fantastic tickets to a show by Suzanne Vega at the McPherson Playhouse on Sunday, the 30th of January. Thanks CFUV for holding the draw and picking my number 🙂 It was not a show I would have gone to otherwise Also on the billet were finalists from the Victoria Idol competition (music as a competitive sport, my favourite kind) and Jon Baglo.
I have not listened to much of Suzanne Vega’s music before, except of course, Luka and Tom’s Diner, which I guess everyone has heard (yes, she did play those songs, thanks for asking). I also have 99.9F somewhere in my digital music collection, it’s good! Her current incarnation as an artist involves her recording and touring behind stripped down and reinvented versions of her back catalogue. Why?
“I don’t own those other recordings,” she told the (Wall Street) Journal. “I don’t own the masters. Those are owned by A&M Records and Blue Note, and I’m not with them anymore. I wanted to own a physical copy of my own back catalogue. In this economy, it’s important to own what you make. If I tour for the next 20 years, I have recordings I can sell at concerts and people can buy them directly.
She has released Parts 1 and 2 of Close-Up, a four part set of recordings. Victoria was her only gig in Canada, and am I glad I was there, twitterific enough to enter CFUV’s draw for free tickets, and lucky enough to actually win, thanks @CFUV! Vega has a down to earth style of singing that brings out the essential emotions of whatever she is singing about. Her lyrics are smart, witty, self referential and always engaging. Her voice sounded natural, her singing seemingly effortless, yet soulful, funny when she needed to be, sad when she needed to be, it was a very good performance. I have not listened to her music much, so I don’t know how different these productions are from the way she’s done them in the past. It worked very well in a live setting and now, I would love to listen to the new studio versions! As an assured performer, her storytelling between songs was quite funny, she rambled for quite a bit about a song she wrote when she was 16 about a brief fling at summer camp, a story that involved the secret society of Leonard Cohen listeners, the differences between Canadians, Americans and Brits, and lots of other asides! She poked a bit of fun at herself for only writing sad songs about depressing places (Liverpool, Newark, NJ) and not about beautiful places like Victoria, she very easily laughed off a glitch on her second song.
Vega was on stage with an acoustic guitar, and Gerry Leonard (aka Spookyghost) on electric guitar. Though to just call it electric guitar is a bit limiting. He had a whole set of floor pedals, and a stack of rack mounted effects to his right as well. He was playing a beautiful pearly white double cutaway semi-hollowbody with stereo output (Paul Reed Smith?). The production was sophisticated, restrained, thoughtful, and really fleshed out Suzanne Vega’s voice and skilled finger pick acoustic style guitar. It was great accompaniment, always complementary, never overwhelming, but capable of quickly breaking out of the restraint for an excellent solo or three. He was able to produce a wall of sound at times with the effective use of looping and tonal layering. He’s also geeky enough to detail his gear setup, check it out! Anyway, a lot of music was produced by two people and you did not miss the lack of percussion one bit
She came back for an encore and did a very funny song about writers from her upcoming off-Broadway musical Carson McKellars sings about love, makes me want to see it.
If she is ever in your neighbourhood, do go and catch her show, you’ll definitely enjoy it a lot. I was not a big fan before the show, I will listen to more of her music for sure after the show, which I guess is the best compliment for a live performance!
The Side
Jon Baglo rounded out the opening set with a virtuoso guitar performance. He, held me (and I suspect the rest of the audience) with an indescribable technique, a mixture of percussion and touch play/tapping on acoustic guitar. The right hand keeps moving, sometimes playing a beat, sometimes strumming very close to the left hand, sometimes just tapping the strings, it was quite a show, a pity he only played one song. He’s a skilled musician.
The appetizer
It takes a combination of courage, skill, presence and experience to open successfully for a famous performer at the McPherson Playhouse with just an acoustic guitar in your hand, let alone a capella. The Victoria Idol performers all showed courage in spades, vocal skills, some presence, and some even hinted at emerging individuality in instrument playing. They also mostly featured original compositions. But, they are currently not capable of holding an audience with such a minimalist production. This is not an open mic, or an  intimate coffee shop, it’s a big hall that needs to be filled. In fact, some of the better performances featured more accompaniment, like an upright bass and violin, and some very nicely done harmonies on backing vocals. Overall, the production was too stripped down and they could not quite pull it off.
What I would have done is brought together a few experienced musicians to back them and bulk their sound up, so their yet growing skills on instruments and vocals could melt into the music and enable us to pay more attention to the songs they had written. It would also have given them some experience with building songs, production, etc. Their performances lacked punch (hard to sound punchy without percussion!), and their singing sounded a bit strained and derivative, their natural singing voices did not come through. I don’t fault them, it’s the enormity of the task they were faced with, having to open for Suzanne Vega with just a guitar in your hand. One performer actually sang a song a capella, which I found a bit ambitious. Yes, you have a decent singing voice, but no, it is not yet good enough to carry a room bigger than a coffee shop, sorry! There’s no reason it needs to be, music is about collaboration, music is about making the whole more than the sum of the parts.
UN figures show close to 10 million people die a year in India, where 85 percent of the billion-plus population are Hindus who practice cremation. That leads to the felling of an estimated 50 million trees, leaves behind half a million tonnes of ash and produces eight million tonnes of carbon dioxide each year, according to research by Agarwals Mokshda environmental group.
The solution is to design a much more efficient wood burning stove hence satisfying religious sentiments (have to use wood to burn your body) and save lots of wood.
Agarwal built his first pyre, a raised human-sized brazier under a roof with slats that could be lowered to maintain heat. The elevation allowed air to circulate and feed the fire.
It gets even better…
Mokshda hopes its projects will eventually be registered under the Kyoto Protocol’s clean development mechanism, which encourages green projects in developing countries.
It allows industrialised countries that have committed to reducing emissions of greenhouse gases to count reductions achieved through investments in projects in developing countries towards their undertakings.
Really, we can get carbon credits by improving cremation practices?? That’s creative! Going all electric on the crematorium would obviously be the best thing, but Hindu religious sentiment being what it is, this is an improvement.
The interior of the Tower of Silence is built in three concentric circles, one each for men, women, and children. The corpses are exposed there naked. The vultures do not take long—an hour or two at the most—to strip the flesh off the bones, and these, dried by the sun, are later swept into the central well
One man is dead and two others are in hospital after a shooting near a popular downtown Victoria nightclub early yesterday.Officers were called to the scene around 2:50 a.m. after a report of shots fired outside 751 View St., between Douglas and Blanshard streets.Yesterday morning, forensic investigators inspected the body as it lay covered by a white tarp on the edge of the sidewalk in front of the exit to the View Street city parkade, about two buildings down from the Red Jacket nightclub.
