A Year In (ctd)

You’d think that after three major life moves (Chambana, Pittsburgh, here — okay, that’s probably not all that much), I’d have figured out how to “get in” to a city as fast as possible. Then again, as Emily (one of my grad students) told me, it takes three years to really live in a place. To that end, this summer is quickly becoming my “remedial consumerism” summer. Let’s face it. For many middle class people such as myself, a good many of the pleasures of living in a large city are consumerist in nature. It’s about being able to get Really Nice Stuff or just Stuff That Is Particularly To My Liking. So I’ve been learning:

–where to go for good ice cream (not soft serve!)
–where to buy clothes (I shop at the Big and Tall store)
–where to buy shoes (same problem)
–where to buy CDs
–which kitchen store has the really disturbingly nice gadgets
–which stores have the best (or best deals on) special ingredients and foods, like porcini mushrooms, tsaziki sauce, and mock duck.

I mean, shoes, CDs, ice cream and clothing are available all over the city, but that’s the point: it’s a matter of knowing WHERE to go, at least to suit my own tastes.

Carrie and I are also taking some time to explore neighborhoods that we wouldn’t normally go to. Last weekend was Ahunsic, this weekend was Verdun. Ahuntsic was, I’m told, “the next big thing” before NDG became the “next big thing” in real estate. It is very subruban-feeling in that the streets are wider, the housing newer, and there are little strip malls here and there, but it still feels very Montreal. Most structures are multifamily dwellings (no cottages, just duplexes or more), and when we drove by a park, we saw people playing cricket, not baseball. Verdun, meanwhile, seems like a bit of an extension of St. Henry. It’s working class like our neighborhood is working class, though the business district seems a little more happening. It’s also surprisingly close to downtown. Here I thought it was way far out.

Hit It 16, False Consciousness 3

There was much analysis after the game but I think it comes down to this:

Monday’s practice helped.

We still lost.

Our fielding was good. Hell, our ERA dropped below 21! It was our performance at the plate which was upsetting. We kept hitting balls to them. Their fielding was good, but not heroic or anything. Apart from Mike’s 2 run homer and Coach Greg’s triple, it was a lot of singles (self included, even though I worked out the whole “elbow up” thing in Monday’s practice). And that just won’t do.

My thought: Sometimes your team just has a bad game. It was still fun.

In lieu of further reporting on the game, I direct your attention to this.

One Year and Counting

We arrived in Canada to live on the 19th of July 2004. I didn’t mark the date yesterday, so I’m doing it today. A year into my Canadian experience, I can note the following (this is a preliminary list; more may be added):

–I now sometimes get annoyed at the Globe and Mail‘s conservative streak, especially with respect to Canadian politics. It’s still far left of the New York Times on civil liberties and international coverage — usually.

–I have a basic (though still somewhat rudimentary) understanding of Canadian politics. Which is probably what enables me to see the Globe and Mail’s conservative streak.

–I’ve had tons of outstanding food all over the city and now have opinions about

–which Montreal bagel is best
–which cheap Indian restaurants are best
–which Vietnamese place actually serves decent vegetarian food
–why my relatively smaller Mache Maissonneuve is better than the larger Atwater and John Talon Markets

–I am gaining a footing in language politics. I know considerably more French than I did at this time last year, though I feel slightly guilty I’m not already fluent. But I’m taking lessons (I should practice more!). This also means:

–I can get through a cab ride or shopping trip in sentence fragments
–I get mad an Anglo anti-Quebec and anti-French sentiment
–I can call bullshit when someone who’s never been east of Papineau says of the Quebecois “you don’t really need to know French in this city. Everyone knows English, though some people pretend they don’t.” WRONG-O! It’s a class thing: there are plenty of people who don’t know English well enough to communicate in it, and they live on my side of Papineau
–living outside the US, I also now make more of an effort with my Spanish, which often comes back to me when I’m trying to say something in French.
–I can hear different Quebec French accents, even if I can’t imitate them or understand much of what they are saying.

–I am getting used to living in a big city. Intellectually, I know I have it really good, but of course emotionally, I can already feel myself starting to take certain things for granted:

–I am not impressed with the sheer number of festivals this summer, and most of them I will miss in favor of getting on with my life
–I am also jaded about the number of conferences and guest speakers during the academic year, since to see them all would leave me no time for my own work
–I am used to people taking chances with fashion that they would shy away from in other cities (though I still really like it)

–I am more aware of the parochialism of my own knowledge as a U.S. raised- and- trained- scholar. There’s a whole world out there.

–I am starting to get some idea of what it might mean to be an immigrant

–I am starting to understand that the amount of vacation I take each year is less than the normal amount that my Canadian colleagues take, and I need to take steps to rectify this.

–Personally and professionally, I am enjoying my civil liberties more than ever before

More Blog Wars

Well, if the Chronicle of Higher Ed isn’t enough to get academics in a tizzy, there’s always the New York Times, which ran a story yesterday about a woman who fired her nanny for blogging. There’s tons of commentary: here (Steven’s blog first hipped me to it), here, and here.

For me, this is less a story about blogging than about soclal class (okay, granted that it was probably a bad idea to give your employer a link to your blog). The blog’s just a vehicle for something more disturbing.

A great deal of the work that goes into nannying or any other domestic job is emotional labor. People who leave their children to nannies probably want to believe that the nanny’s work is “more than just a job” to the nanny (it is their kids we’re talking about here), even though it is obvious that money drives the whole thing: the parent has the money and needs to buy the time, the nanny has the time and skills and needs the money. In this case, we’re talking about a woman, Tessa, who aspires to go to graduate school and (I imagine) herself attain a level of success and income like that of Olin, the woman for whom she works. The real motivation for firing came when Olin read a poem that she imagined to be about herself. She imagined that she saw herself through the eyes of her nanny, and it was too much to take. At that moment, all the fantasies about being a “cool” mom who just needs a little help around the house came crashing down into Barbara Ehrenrich Nickel and Dimed territory. In the end, Olin was paying for emotional labor that was given as exactly that — not a true expression of Tessa’s inner feelings (though remember, the conceit of the story is that the blog is a confessional space where Tessa reveals herself, when in fact this need not be the case at all) but as a performance for money. Olin wanted to pretend away her privilege, which the existence of the blog disallowed. And forcing Olin to confront her own privilege is, apparently, such a transgression that she feels entitled not only to fire Tessa but also defame her in the pages of the Times.

NB: I don’t mean to moralize about hiring childcare. I have no problem with people who can afford it hiring nannies or daycare (well, EVERYBODY ought to be entitled to daycare) or people to clean their house or whatever so long as the employees are fairly compensated (this is obviously a whole other conversation about unpaid domestic labor that usually falls to women, at least in heterosexual couples). The horrific thing is the way in which Olin wields her privilege, the conceit that she is entitled to a piece, essentially, of her employee’s soul and the vengeful behavior that sits atop the self-reflective stance. Oh, and a pox on the Times for printing the piece.

Now I “Get” Sleater-Kinney

For the longest time, I understood that Sleater-Kinney was a band I was supposed to like. My friends did. The critics did. And yet, I just couldn’t get into them. The songs didn’t do much for me, and the singing grated on me. But I heard a couple tracks off the Woods and there was something that grabbed me this time. Maybe it’s the sheer amount of guitar distortion, or maybe the way the whole thing is produced like some 60s record. Either way, it works for me. So there.

I should mention, however, that I tend to “get” bands later than most of my hipper friends. A lot of 90s indierock was uninteresting to my until later in the decade, and I finally broke a string of getting into bands after the break up when I managed to catch Archers of Loaf on their farewell tour just a couple months after I decided to like them. When all the ex-punks went country, I joked that I’d discover alt.country sometime around 2005.

Let me tell you, the alt.country thing? Not going to happen. I’m just not into authenticity as a musical stance.

And now, just for Z0R, Tet writhing. Notice how soft the belly looks:

/></p> </div><!-- .entry-content --> <footer class= Posted byJonathan SternePosted inUncategorized5 Comments on Now I “Get” Sleater-Kinney