Siobhan Curious's Open Salon Blog

Who's to Blame for the Mess in Montreal?

Wed, 23 May 2012 09:05:06 -0400

Does anyone know where this image originated? If so, please inform me.

Until now, I haven't commented on the madness happening in Montreal streets concerning tuition hikes. I haven't commented because my feelings about the tuition hikes, and the resulting student strikes and protests, are, as a friend recently described his own, "nuanced."

I am not in principle opposed to tuition hikes in Quebec. I AM opposed to wasteful government and university spending, and I am most certainly opposed to the ludicrous Loi 78, a "special law" passed a few days ago which severely restricts the public's right to protest. This law, an attempt to quell increasingly fevered protests around the city, has made things much, much worse, and it's hard to believe that the provincial government actually thought the effect would be otherwise. (Everyone else in the province seemed to understand, as soon as the law was proposed, that it was a really bad idea.)

I mostly haven't commented because I haven't felt clear enough about the issue to put my feelings into words, especially my feelings that I wasn't entirely on the side of the people protesting. So I was relieved, today, to come across this elucidation by (formernly local) curmudgeon and wonderful writer Mike Spry. He'll break it down for you:

100 Days of Blame

In particular, at the end of his post he explains the problems with the student argument and the perspective that the students needed to take from the beginning in order to win public sympathy. It is helpful to anyone who feels conflicted. I'm still not entirely clear about my position (except my position that Loi 78 is a stupid, stupid law - who does that?) Spry's article, however, has articulated a few things I wasn't able to straighten out for myself.

How to Be a Teenage Girl

Thu, 12 Apr 2012 10:04:24 -0400

If you haven't yet discovered Tavi Gevinson and her webzine Rookie, it's time you did. If you know any teenage girls, you need to send them a link to Rookie, because every teenage girl needs to think about the stuff Tavi Gevison and her writers think about.

In her original editor's letter, Tavi explains that she did NOT conceive of Rookie as

your guide to Being a Teen. It is not a pamphlet on How to Be a Young Woman...Rookie is a place to make the best of the beautiful pain and cringe-worthy awkwardness of being an adolescent girl. When it becomes harder to appreciate these things, we also have good plain fun and visual pleasure. When you’re sick of having to be happy all the time, we have lots of eye-rolling rants, too.

Despite this disavowal, I wish every teenage girl I knew would take Rookie as a guide. Exhibit A: this article entitled "An Actually Useful Article About Dressing for a Party" and subtitled "...without any mention of your body shape or your style personality."

Gevinson has been clear that Sassy magazine - a fond memory to women in my age bracket - is a major influence. I loved Sassy, but what she's doing is so much better. Sassy was fun, and smart, and acknowledged that some teenage girls have sex. It was revolutionary, but it was of its time (and it spawned, indirectly, the horror that was Jane magazine.) Rookie takes what Sassy did and makes it fresh, immediate and interactive, which is exactly what an Internet mag should do.

(The fact that Rookie makes regular references to River Phoenix and [see video above] Stevie Nicks doesn't hurt, though. Do teenage girls know who these people are? Is Gevinson really a 43-year-old woman in 16-year-old eye makeup?)

The mag posts three times a day and has monthly themes like "Transformation" and "Power". Sound all second-wave feminist to you? Well, yes, but so much more. For example, March's theme was "Exploration" and included articles like "Literally the Best Thing Ever: National Geographic" and "How to Look Like You Weren't Just Crying in Less than Five Minutes."

The ONLY reason I wish I were fifteen again is so that this magazine could rock my world as hard as it should.

I know a lot of teenage girls. Wait - I shouldn't say that. I don't know them. I spend a few hours a week with them for fifteen weeks, and maybe fifteen weeks more if they like me enough to look me up again. They mystify me and enthrall me and make me crazy. Why are they walking around wearing things that resemble pants but ARE NOT PANTS? Why do they all, down to the very last one, insist on straightening their lovely frizzy hair? Why are they all reading those awful Twilight books or, even worse, watching those awful Twilight movies because reading the books is too hard? Why are they dating that boy? Yes, that one, missy - he's just going to drag you down! And while you're at it, do up your sweater!

And then I read Rookie. I know some of the girls I know are reading it too. It reminds me that teenage girls are just amazing. Even the ones who aren't reading it...even the ones who wouldn't like it if they did read it...even the ones who are wearing those things that ARE NOT PANTS...they're amazing. There's so much going ON when you're a teenage girl. Life is so full of STUFF.

No way I'd go back there again. But Rookie is a delightful, painful, funny travelogue. Spread the word.

Too Many Books

Mon, 9 Apr 2012 09:04:06 -0400

The Husband and I are moving soon. The other night, we invited a mover over to give us a quote. He looked around and said, "It's going to cost you a fortune. You have too many books."

I know what some of you are thinking. Never! Sacrilege! No such thing! These were not my responses. I nodded, resignedly, and said, "I know. I know."

We do indeed have too many books. How do I know this? Because for days - nay, weeks - now, I have been ruthlessly culling books. I've been pulling books off shelves and staring at them and saying things like, "Where did this come from?" and "Why did I buy this?" and "When will I ever, conceivably, read this again?" The Husband has been doing the same, and we now have a pile of what looks like hundreds of books in the middle of the living room floor, waiting for the second-hand bookstore man to come and sort them and judge them and, we hope, pay us for some of them.

Purging books is a painful business. Why? Why is it so much harder to let go of a book, even a book we don't particularly like or a book whose purpose has been served, than it is to dispose of most other things, even more expensive things - an article of clothing, a tchotchke, an electronic gadget?

A friend recently told me that she regularly tries to winnow down her book collection and can't do it, because even the books she doesn't like or has never read symbolize something: her independent intellectual life, which is so different from the life lived by everyone else in her working-class immigrant family. She described pulling a collection of Joyce Carol Oates stories from a shelf - a collection she's never read - putting it on the "discard" pile, and then pulling it back out and returning it to the shelf. "I bought it when I began university," she said. "It was a book that signified the person I was becoming, a person who read contemporary American literary authors. I can't stand Joyce Carol Oates! But I still have that damn book."

I find myself feeling exactly the same thing as I stand before my shelves staring once again at that copy of Swann's Way that I have tried to read four times. On my last attempt, I trudged 300 pages into it before giving up. Every time I do a book purge, I consider getting rid of it. This time I was successful! Why? Because I have bought myself the newish Lydia Davis translation of Swann's Way, and so I can still be the sort of person who has Proust on my bookshelf, and who can firmly believe that I will one day be the sort of person who has actually read Proust.

(Repeat for: Ulysses, The Voyage Out, about twenty back issues of Granta, Barack Obama's memoir, and so forth.)

Other reasons I struggle when giving up a book?

It has a personal inscription in it, even if a) I've never read the book, or b) I didn't like the book, or c) I no longer like the person who gave it to me.
It was given to me by The Husband, mostly because I know he will be peeved when he finds it in the "discard" pile.
It might, possibly, contain an article, short story or chapter that I might, possibly, use in a course that I might, possibly, design one day.
I loved it once, even though I will certainly never read it again.

One of the biggest problems is my collection of children's and young adult books. I keep some of them because I still love them and can imagine re-reading them from time to time. Others have sentimental resonance. But I have far too many, including some I've never read all the way through. I sometimes consider paring the collection down, but I have a fantasy that I will one day propose, and have approved, a project for a reading zone at my college. This reading zone would be a quiet room full of books appealing to teenagers, and I would re-design my Preparation for College English course around it. I would bring my struggling second-language readers to the reading zone and present them with shelves and shelves full of books that would instantly grab their attention because they are made to do so, unlike the dusty dun-coloured hardbacks in the library. How can I get rid of these books when it's possible that I can someday bring this project to fruition? Never mind that it will never be approved, for a thousand reasons. I need to cling to these books just in case.

I know: some of you will say, "Why on earth would you want to get rid of any of your books? Who cares what the movers say or how much it will cost to move them? Books are sacred! Hold on to your books!" (This is more or less what my father said to me on the phone this afternoon.)

But here's the thing: I love books, and I find them beautiful, and I become very attached to some of them. But they aren't sacred. They're things.

This seems to be a great point of contention for some people. For example, I've been reading a lot of home decor magazines and blogs lately, and a lot of attention is paid to books as decorative objects. This upsets some readers. A lot. Check out this post on my favourite design blog, Apartment Therapy, in which the writer argues for the practice of organizing books by colour, and some commenters respond with rage verging on apoplexy.

I'm not sure I could bring myself to treat books with quite that degree of objectification. (Besides, I don't think it looks all that nice.) But there have been moments of my purge in which I have given myself pause because I have wondered if my house will look sad and empty because it will be less bursting with books. If, god forbid, my house will look like less of a READER'S house.

And these moments have confirmed for me what I have suspected all along: books are stuff. They take up space. And the more space I devote to the ones I don't really care about, the less respect I am showing for the ones I really love. So I have to be ruthless to be kind. Kind to myself, kind to our budget, kind to my house, kind to my movers, and kind to my favourite books.

Are you able to treat your books with both the love and the firmness they deserve? When a book has had its day, are you able to let it go? Or do you love your piles and piles of books as much as you love each book itself? Do you wish you could liberate yourself from your mountains of books, or do those mountains make you happy? I always feel lighter, if a little saddened, when a pile of books makes its way out the door. I rarely miss a book once it's gone, and in the age of Amazon, I can be pretty sure that if I do, I'll be able to find it again. If your home is full of books you don't love, maybe it's time to start saying goodbye.

But according to my movers, I'm no one to talk.

Image by Marja Flick-Buijs

What's In a Name?

Thu, 5 Apr 2012 10:04:10 -0400

What do your students call you? Would you rather they called you something else?

A couple of years ago, a reader named "Viceroy" left this baffling comment on a post that had nothing to do with his observation.

I notice that your students, who appear to be 17 & 18 years old, are required to addess [sic] you as “Miss”. Is this a symptom of the Anglo-Saxon education system where the student is required to humiliate himself/herself every time the teacher is spoken to? I’ve been teaching now for 25 years, and no student has ever called me by anything other than my first name. Makes I think for a much more relaxed and mutually respectful atmosphere.

After trying to puzzle out what he was talking about, I replied thusly:

What an odd comment. My students are in no way required to call me “miss” – in fact, I and many of my colleagues have struggled for years to get our students to call us by our names, even going so far as refusing to answer when we’re addressed as simply “sir” or “miss.” Most of us have given up the fight, as they persist in calling us by these titles, with no name attached, no matter what we do. I now tell my students that I prefer that they call me by my first name or by “Ms. Curious,” whichever they’re comfortable with, but most instinctively call me by the catch-all “miss,” and I suspect some would be hard-pressed to tell you my name if you asked them.

(The commenter's choice of username - "Viceroy" - probably deserves some parsing, but let's not bother.)

This exchange came to mind this afternoon, as my friend Susan and I were playing hooky from our grading and having afternoon tea (scones! cucumber sandwiches!) at the lovely Montreal salon Le Maitre Chocolatier. Susan, also a CEGEP teacher, mentioned that she refuses to answer her students if they call her just "Miss," and that after a few weeks of being ignored, they cave and learn her name. She especially loves it when they call her "Miss Susan."

I've never been able to stick to my guns that long. And the truth is, although I did try for years to get them to call me "Siobhan" - out of some sort of anti-authoritarian principle, I suppose - I have always felt a twinge of discomfort when they do. I still hate "Miss" as a generic teacher name, but I'm resigned to it. "Ma'am," on the other hand, charms me - I know some colleagues detest it, as it makes them feel old, but as far as I'm concerned, being old is an asset to a teacher. And I do love "Miss Siobhan," but when a student calls me "Ms. Curious," that sits just right with me. I sometimes wonder if I should instruct them to do so, and refuse to answer to anything else.

(At least one of my colleagues insists on being addressed as "Dr. _________." This as always struck me as insufferable, but if we were teaching university, I doubt I'd think twice about it. Maybe I'm just a self-hating lowly CEGEP instructor.)

I believe we should all get to decide what others call us, but when it comes to choosing battles, this one seems less than pressing. On the other hand, Susan says that when her students concede to call her by her name, it changes the tone in the classroom - the relationship becomes more reciprocal, and they seem to feel more of a responsibility to treat that relationship properly.

Do you have rules about how your students address you? Do they follow them?

Image by Jakub Krechowicz

Things They Should Teach In School

Mon, 2 Apr 2012 10:04:06 -0400

The Husband and I have just finalized a deal to purchase a house. (To read about one of the more dramatic adventures of our search, go here.) In the process, we've had to do all sorts of things that we've never had to do before. We didn't have the faintest clue how to tackle some of these things: how to best negotiate the terms of a mortgage, or what to look for in a real estate agent, or how to read a co-ownership agreement.

Along the way, someone said to The Husband, "Buying a house is one of those situations where you have to become an expert in something that you might do once, maybe twice, in your life." And this is true. But there are some simple and not-so-simple things that most of us are going to have to do in life that we don't learn about in school.

For example, the house that we finally found - a house that we totally love - is old. It has some problems that will need to be fixed. We will need to call an electrician, and a mason, and a contractor. The electrician and the mason - well, fine. But why is it that we feel the need to pay someone to install gyproc over the exposed insulation? Surely that's a fairly straightforward task? For heaven's sake, I was even talking about paying someone to paint. I'll have plenty of time to paint - I'll be on summer vacation - but I wasn't confident I could do a proper job. I've come around on that one, but not because I'm sure I can do it right. I've come around because I should know how to paint walls, and woodwork, and bannisters, and so I should practice.

Why don't we learn things like home repair in school? I know, there's woodshop or industrial arts or whatever it's called these days, but it's not the same. Beyond that, why don't we learn the principles of designing a kitchen or tending a garden? Most people will own homes at some point. Most people would be better off if they could install a faucet or properly deal with a musty dryer (a task we found ourselves faced with this weekend, as though the universe is prepping us for the days ahead, when we won't be able to call the landlord about ANYTHING.)

What else should be taught in school, but isn't, at least in the schools you've attended? Things that immediately come to my mind: meditation, cell phone etiquette (etiquette in general, for that matter) and how to counsel a troubled friend. What do you wish you knew that no one ever taught you?

Image by Sanja Gjenero