Happy Good Hair Year!

I was going to do a Bad Hair Months and Years post and wish everyone a good hair year in 2009, but it was taking forever to upload the images. You will just have to take my word for it that I have had many bad haircuts (mm can confirm this, for she kindly scanned all the photos for me). And even though that post is not to be, I wish all of you 365 good hair days in 2009. (It's not a leap year, is it? If so, I'm sure you can cope with one bad hair day.)

Instead of spending time uploading awful pictures of me (which, I admit, I wasn't that motivated to do), I watched March of the Penguins. I usually avoid nature films: they contain too much death and violence. My dear friend Heather assured me that this was not the case with this movie. Unlike mm, she is not a credible eyewitness. A penguin was taken out by a seal, some comical looking bird taste-tested baby penguins until it finally found one it liked, another baby penguin froze to death, and one lone male penguin had started the march too late and was no longer marching but stumbling wearily, while Morgan Freeman informed us that it would probably die. Why didn't the people making the film bundle the penguin on the back of one of their snowmobiles and take him to the rest of the penguin posse? One of the main characters in Joseph Boyden's Through Black Spruce is a Cree hunter and trapper who starts feeding an old blind bear. As he says, fuck National Geographic and Animal Planet. What do they know of elders scraping by each day and starving? To which I would like to add, fuck Mother Nature. She doesn't always know best.

Leaving aside the issue of whether the befuddled penguin would even have wanted to go for a joy ride and then be dumped among hundreds of other squawking birds who haven't had a bath for weeks, the scene got me wondering. How do photographers remain observers – dispassionate or passionate – instead of intervening when some horrific event (not necessarily involving endearing birds) is unfolding? For all you literati, is there a work of fiction in which this forms the subtext or the overarching theme, or assumes some other literary position?

My Father

Our family trips during the summer holidays began at 4:30 am. It wasn't because my parents wanted to avoid rush hour traffic. The early departure was so that we could get to such-and-such train station by such-and-such a time so that my father could take a picture of the train as it pulled into the station. We often spent two weeks driving around Eastern Canada from one obscure train station to another. My brother and I would play cows and graveyards to pass the time. The rules were simple. You kept a running count of all the cows you passed on your side of the road. If you passed a graveyard on your side, your cow count was reset to zero. If my parents thought that this would be a way to keep my brother and I quiet they were dead wrong. You can imagine how hard it is to get an accurate cow count when the car is speeding down the road, the driver determined to make it to the next obscure train station before the train's arrival. There were numerous disputes and loud calls to turn back to conduct a cow re-count. The calls, no matter how loud, were ignored, which frequently resulted in surreptitious physical violence between the passengers in the back seat.

My father worked for the railroad his whole life. He loved trains, to the point of obsession. He didn't only collect model trains, he collected a set of real train cars. They were sold for almost nothing after he died because the cost of keeping them in the trainyard in Montreal was prohibitive, particularly for a family that dines on bologna sandwiches (and Campbell's soup). When I was young I couldn't understand how anyone could love inanimate objects with so much passion. But now I realize that trains, though inanimate, have soul. Steve Goodman understood that. Tom Waits understood that. Gladys Knight and the Pips understood that.

But the various levels of government in Canada do not understand that. To be fair, red velvet, murder, white starched tablecloths, Some Like it Hot, candelabras, James Bond, suggestive tunnel imagery, and the Chateau Frontenac are expensive to maintain. Trains still exist along Canada’s most populated stretches, and where the scenery is particularly fetching and tickets fetch high dollars from tourists. But much of the track that used to take people to those obscure stations my father so loved to photograph has been ripped up. The only way to get to many of those places now is by car, or bus. Quel horreur. For while trains are red velvet, murder, white starched tablecloths, Some Like it Hot, candelabras, James Bond, suggestive tunnel imagery, and the Chateau Frontenac, buses are bologna sandwiches (which, if they have mustard on them, definitely ain't dijon).

It seemed so pointless. Rising at 4 am, driving to a speck on the map, waiting… waiting… photographing the train pulling into the station... then driving to another speck on the map, waiting… waiting... But now I think that perhaps my father was an inadvertent anthropologist, documenting a way of life that was doomed to extinction.

The Spikeman Returneth

This post was going to be a lament for Spikeman. (When someone once asked me if I have pet names for my pets, I looked at her like she was weird and pathetic. No way was I going to admit that I call Festus Festasaurus, Bo Bo-Bo, Charlotte Charlottini, and Spike Spikeman. It would make me seem weird and pathetic.) Spike has been gone for almost a week. I discarded the more unlikely scenarios: bludgeoned by the fanatical gardeners next door; consumed by a fisher; attending a family reunion. I assumed he had been hit by a car, poisoned, or trapped and released somewhere far from the neighbourhood. I was sad about this. Even though I never included Spike in my official cat count, he would appear most mornings and evenings clamouring for food, after which he would engage in a round of psychological warfare with Festus, then stretch out in front of the fireplace. So he was missed. (By me at least. I can’t speak for Festus.)

But this morning when I got out of the shower, there was Spike, clamouring for food. Maybe he disappeared to assert his manhood, knowing that it’s on the chopping block if I ever manage to get him in the cat carrier again and he doesn’t manage to escape before we get to the vet (in which case, he’ll be quite justified in calling me a castrating bitch). Or maybe he’s got a bit of a paw de trois going. Maybe he’s clamouring at someone else’s feet some mornings and evenings, engaging in psychological warfare with their cat, and stretching out in front of their fireplace. Maybe he has another name. Eugene perhaps. Maybe he even has another pet name. Something weird and pathetic, like Eugenieweenie. And the only way I'll ever confirm this is if Spike commits a faux paw and purrs his other significant other's name (or worse yet, his other significant other's pet name)...