You can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar

Perhaps it is because I started off my comments in a positive manner,  that The Ottawa Citizen printed my letter to the editor today....another chance to vent about the infill housing issue in Ottawa. I must remember to use this strategy more often.

Dear Editor

A big thank you to Anita Murray for her article in Saturday's Homes Section, (Aug. 24) titled Uncovering a Jewel. This piece describes how interior designer Ulya Jensen and renovator Noel McGinnity revamped a heritage house in Sandy Hill. "We talked about what we should preserve, what is popular now and what's going to show some of the history and the age of the actual building." One photo shows a contemporary kitchen with the home's original oak pocket doors.

It was a pleasure to read that people have recognized the value in one of Ottawa's older homes. Years from now, this city will wake up and realize that we have thrown away so many of these gems..houses with unique features, with character and charm. In many neighbourhoods, these older homes are being replaced with boring, box-like structures. These doubles  are cheap to erect and bring the city twice the taxes so, in the name of intensification, the older gems are being dumped into landfill.  If Ms. Jensen and Mr. McGinnity are looking for projects, please run right over to my Kitchissippi neighbourhood.

On the day of Ms. Murray's piece, I attended an estate sale in a lovely home that will be demolished this week. For a home that was built in the twenties, it has many outstanding features. Besides the loss of these houses I am concerned with the environmental sin of dumping perfectly good materials into landfill. Why should we bother to sort our plastic, paper, and compost if developers are allowed to deposit priceless wood trim and doors, glass, brick etc. into the dump?

I Have a Dream

Today is the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.'s I Have a Dream speech in Washington. All the media coverage has got me thinking about my visit to the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis. I have been working on a book...a family travel memoir. Today I will post parts of the chapter titled Motherhood and Mayhem in Memphis, along with a few photos.

Who knows where parenthood will lead us? At one point in the spring of 2007, I found myself sitting alone on a plane heading for Memphis, Tennessee. I was on my way to visit my twenty-five year old daughter, who was living in Memphis for three months while she trained as a social work intern at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.

From the safety of our home in Ottawa she had arranged to rent an apartment in a secure building, close to the hospital. However, upon arrival in Memphis, she discovered that the “secure” building wasn’t always locked, she was the only occupant of the top floor, and locals advised her that the short walk from her building to the hospital was very dangerous.  During her first weekend, there were seven murders in the downtown core. The four years she had spent living in the Queen’s University “student ghetto” had not prepared her for the perils of living in downtown Memphis. In Kingston, she and the five women she had shared a house with, had never bothered to lock their door! After her first three weeks in Memphis, she still sounded downright scared, so I arranged a visit.

..........

It was worry that brought me to Memphis. For the first time in my life, I arrived alone in a strange city, rented a car, and drove in the dark, without a phone, towards an unfamiliar downtown. Like a riled mother bear, I was ready to do anything to protect my daughter.  With my arrival safely accomplished, we both relaxed and put the reason for the visit on the back burner.  I did the usual things that we all do when visiting our university-age children – I took her out for dinners and we went grocery shopping.

This weekend was the first time that we had been together, just the two of us, as tourists. Memphis offered many attractions that we both enjoyed, among them Graceland and the National Civil Rights Museum. Although Elvis Presley and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. were icons of my youth and not hers, she too was both entertained and moved by the displays in both places.

Memphis is a city of contrasts, with its reputation of being both the Mecca of American music and yet one of its most dangerous cities. A walk along Main St. on that sunny Saturday, gave us another example of the duality that is Memphis. While trolley cars and horse drawn carriages ferried tourists along this thoroughfare, we were otherwise alone, with no other pedestrians. It seemed as if we were walking through a ghost town, with its abundance of boarded up storefronts.

At one point, we turned a corner and it seemed as if I was walking into a history book. There, at the bottom of a grassy hill, was the Lorraine Motel; the scene of that famous balcony photo; the site of Dr. King’s assassination. 

The National Civil Rights Museum’s architects have kept the motel as the facade of the museum, complete with a couple of old, white Cadillacs parked in front. 

The displays and exhibits chronicle the significant milestones of the civil rights struggle. The climax of the tour comes when you find yourself in a hallway, with a vantage point into both Dr. King’s hotel room and the famous balcony. 

From there, you proceed across the street to the former rooming house, where the shots originated. 

This too is now part of this powerful museum, a continuation of Dr. King’s legacy. We left there, profoundly moved by what we had experienced.

Pride Week in Ottawa

I don't usually pay too much attention to Pride Week activities. This year however, it was brought to our attention at our church's Sunday mass. The homily, the songs and the intentions all emphasized the theme of inclusion.

What I have not written about yet is the fact that I am a Roman Catholic. There are days when it is difficult to feel  much pride about that because of the many scandals in the media. However I think it is safe to say that many of us remain Catholic, not because of Vatican dictates but because we have found a local parish that really does follow and encourage the central teachings of Christ...the lessons of compassion, inclusion, love, mercy and generosity. For us, St Joseph Catholic Church in downtown Ottawa is such a parish. St. Joes, with its Women's Centre and Supper Table is a special place.

Anyhow this Sunday the homily, or reflection on the readings, was given by a young woman who reflected on her experiences as a lesbian and how she had overcome her feelings of guilt and shame. In her moving message she spoke about our diversity and unity. It's not often that you hear clapping in mass, after a homily, but that's what happened. It was the visiting priest who started the clapping.

Perhaps she was encouraged by our new pope's recent message, who am I to judge? More about him in a future post.

As we walked to the car, I wondered what my elderly mother-in-law thought about it all. After all she is no spring chicken. When asked about her age, she likes to say that she's "a pair of eights." As we left the parking lot she piped up, "Well, I never thought I would hear that in a Catholic Church." There was a pause and then she added, "and it's about time." Amen.

Never Judge a Camper by His/Her Vehicle

Sandbanks..what a beach! I was lucky enough to spend 3 days at Sandbanks Provincial Park last week.

The truth is that although I love being there, I was dreading the prep work that goes into camping. Whether you go for a night or a week, you still have to bring the same basic equipment for sleeping and cooking. (While we were away, our son found my typed camping supply list  on our kitchen counter. He sent out a text and pronounced it "nerd alert". For me such a list is my sanity.) At any rate, once all the equipment  was stuffed into the car and we were on our way, I was looking forward to our stay, and the opportunity to sleep outside and swim in that glorious water.

Now our old tent, well I could have set that up by myself in five minutes. Unfortunately a few years ago, a strong wind rolled it down a hill and into a lake. This is our third year with this new one but putting up a complicated tent once a year is not often enough to make any serious imprint on my aging brain cells. It feels like the first time very year. It must have taken the two of us a half hour to erect the tent. Pat kept saying,"You've got to laugh" but I didn't find it funny.

After all that exertion of mind and body we decided to swim. What a luxury...to be able to walk for a mere five minutes and be at that magnificent beach...all that sand, the sun shining on the water and the wind creating wild crazy waves.To jump in the water and swim at 6 pm....it made up for the packing and setting up the tent.

What I enjoy, and don't enjoy, about camping is the shared experience, the sense of our common humanity. We are all here for the same reasons: the beach, the waves and the chance to spend time outdoors with family and friends. That's about where the common characteristics finish though. All kinds of people have all kinds of ways to experience camping.

I made my way over to the "flushies", the "comfort station", the bathroom we would be sharing with hundreds of others. I noted the new sinks and taps with appreciation. I was also pleased to see a new toilet seat in one of the stalls (why not both?) but was perplexed by the sign posted over the toilet. "Please do not flush toilet with your feet." I was thinking about that as I walked back to the campsite, wondering how and why a person would flush with their feet.

We've had better campsites other years. This time we were on a road where the sites were close together, offering very little privacy or shade. Our next door neighbours had a huge trailer plus a gigantic tent. There were about 8 people milling about.

Lately I'm not very good about guessing peoples ages. I mean, if I go to an emergency department in a hospital, all the doctors look about fifteen. So, in my cursory assessment,  our bikini clad neighbours looked to be in their late teens or early twenties. "Great", I thought. "It's going to be noisy."

 Over the years we've had a variety of camping neighbours. Often it's been a quiet, peaceful time..nothing but the sounds of the waves and wind, the cracking of campfires, crickets and.... the sound of our own kids fighting. Occasionally we've had the misfortune to be near yahoos... the guys who are there just to drink and party....the kind who don't care how drunk they get and how many people they disturb. Provincial parks have rules of course, but it isn't always easy to reach a park ranger in the wee hours. Camping is like being part of a gigantic sleepover, only you don't know any of the other guests. You just hope you end up beside some considerate folks.

Anyhow we started prepping dinner, a very simple affair. It was getting cooler so we went into the tent to change into pants. Now the only flat area on our site was right beside the road so there we were. The flaps were up on the windows so we couldn't  see what had arrived but all of a sudden it sounded like a truck was about to drive into our tent. If we were at home in the city I might have thought it was a garbage truck or a furniture delivery. Whatever it was, it was incredibly loud and revving its motor right outside our tent.

When we looked out we saw this.

Now there were 3 vehicles at our neighbours. To me that was the clincher: all those teens and now a huge noisy truck with young guys piling out of it. We were in for a long noisy night.

But you know what? I was wrong. There was actually a set of responsible parents on that site. Although there were 16 people there for dinner and a bonfire after that, they were not noisy...just a friendly group of family and friends having a good time. Some of them drifted off to their own sites and those who remained were totally reasonable. I wonder if I would have been convinced we'd have a noisy night if that truck had been a Ford Focus? Of course it was wrong of me to pre-judge them.

And, as I scribbled this out the next day, I was interrupted by our neighbour on the other side,  who came over to talk to us. Stupid me! It turns out that I had accidentally left our parking lights on in the car. Glen, a mechanic from Toronto, had noticed the lights on and was concerned that we were going to run the battery down. He offered to give us a boost if needed. He returned a few hours later, to make sure the car was alright.

That's camping for you, yet another confirmation of ...We're all in this together.

Painting spindles

Okay, so I wasn't really fishing. Sorry for misleading you....and for my absence. I have not been fishing for many years. As a kid I enjoyed it. We used to fish with my cousins when we rented cottages at Constance Bay. It was a fun way to spend time: yacking in the rowboat, being away from our parents, catching endless perch and sometimes for excitement, a huge catfish. We also fished when we visited our grandmother in Saskatchewan. She and her husband Joe would take us to fish off a bridge not far from their place in Weyburn. Then we'd go down into their basement where Joe taught us how to clean our catch.

While I have not been fishing this summer, we have enjoyed some time at a cottage with our daughter, her husband and adorable baby. It was a welcome change of scene from the porch building. Actually a neighbour has informed us that if the structure goes right across the front of your house, it is not called a porch, but a verandah so...it's a verandah.

 For a long time people were calling it a deck. With it's sides completely open and a roof overhead it looked like a covered deck. While sitting on it, we felt like we were on a stage. Now, with the railings and spindles in place, it finally resembles what we had envisioned...an old fashioned verandah. This particular verandah has a lot of spindles...128, in case you're wondering. We had originally thought that we would paint the verandah once the structure was complete but the young man who is building the verandah had a different idea. Alex strongly suggested that we paint as he built. That is, we have been painting like crazy to keep up with him. In the end we know he was right. Painting all the pieces separately, on tables, is a lot easier than painting while either stretched up high on a ladder or scrunched down on our knees on the floor.

The climax of the painting frenzy occured right in the middle of the heat wave. We had to paint all the spindles and the top and bottom railings before Alex assembled them and attached them to the verandah. It wasn't just a matter of painting. For each piece we gave it a quick sanding, then spot primed the knots with a shellac based primer, then primed the entire piece. After that we added two coats of paint.

Why we painted the first 100 spindles with a brush I do not know. That was a serious mistake. In case you ever have to paint 128 spindles...go buy yourself a very small roller. It is well worth the $5.00 ! A brush does an okay job but it does streak and it often dribbles on the edge that you are not working on. Then you've got to go back and catch the dribble before it hardens.With a roller there are no streaks, no dribbles and it is 10 times faster. It kills me to think that we put in many extra hours in that exreme heat because of that mistake. Oh well, I'll put that in the chapter...."lessons learned while building the verandah."