ottawa

Of course, I'm not really going to stop reading Zoom's blog. Because that's crazy bananas. That's where I was reminded of this.

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Ottawa's a town with a lot of fires. It's the third city I've lived in, and after 10 years, I'm still shocked by how many damn fires there are. Two of the most recent have been at a women's shelter and a women's rooming house. The latter is being treated as suspicious.

That, my friends, fucking sucks, all of it. For the women who have been displaced, the friends and family of the woman who died in the first fire, for the shelter system that had no wiggle room.

Anything you can do will help.

Bob LeDrew will be driving around picking stuff up on Friday.

Or, like me, you can email the list of what Cornerstone needs to your work colleagues and get a bunch of well-paid people to anty up some stuff and some money to help out people who are sorely lacking either. And then drop it off wherever it needs to be dropped off.

But it's not just Cornerstone that will be feeling the pinch - for a more complete list of organizations helping women in need, Ian Capstick's got a good one running.

It's a little closer to NIMBY-ism than I'm comfortable with.

Here's my quandary.

In some ways, my street is very quiet. Because of traffic calming we, well, we only have a very few calm bits of traffic. Because the traffic calming is big planters full of leafy trees and bushy bushes, the street feels like a very private place.

What this has meant up to a few months ago is that a lot of kids play on the street most nights. That you feel screened in safe once you walk into the green. That a lot of neighbours and other people wander up our street.

The House Across the Street has never been great. The landlord, particularly, is an asshole. Most times he shows up, he yells at or hits his tenants. Gossip tells me he's currently trying to shunt someone out in a way that contravenes the Residential Tenancies Act. The rent is super cheap, so many of the people who have lived there for the past 4 years I've been here are hard on their luck. There's generally been a lot of drinking, which occasionally would lead to an argument or some leering. Kind of unpleasant, but generally pain in the ass material.

Though if someone had come off the front porch and followed me up the road, I might re-phrase that.

Something happened a few months ago to poison the pretty stable dynamic that was happening over there. I'm not quite sure what it was. The drunkenness seems to have increased both in duration and quantity; seems like there's a pretty heavy duty crack dealer in there now, whereas before the dealing was on the QT. Lots of people coming and going. Enough people regularly hanging out there that it's taken me weeks to even partially figure out who actually lives in the house. The occasional groups of white guys in their early 20s who are either in a gang or, worse, wish they were, hanging out on the planters in front of my house, smoking various smokable things. Lots of people hanging out in the backyard of the place.

Which would be fine except that they're often loud enough that I can hear them. In my bedroom. Across the street. I can also hear the people who come to buy crack at 3 am walking down the street talking loudly. Sometimes through closed windows and earplugs. And the cops who come in the middle of the night because someone inside the house has called something in. They wake me up too.

I think what's putting me, what's putting anyone within eye- or earshot of the HAS, over the edge is that the loudness regularly shifts into aggression. Seems like there's one or two main instigators. Heavy heavy drinkers. This past weekend, the tall skinny man on the first floor punched a woman in the face, and then, when I was inside getting my phone to call the cops, he kicked her hard in the stomach.

I have become the sort of person who calls the cops on people. There is no way to tell you how much I resent that man and the people who drink there and get high there and beat each other up on the street for turning me into that person.

Now, any good therapist would tell me that they can't make me that sort of person, but what the fuck do I do? What is my neighbour supposed to do when he looks down the street and sees three guys pushing yet another woman around? Do I wait until the stupidly drunk guy who is in a gang, or worse, looks like he wants to be in one, and is yelling motherfucker, that's my beer and pushing someone off the front porch, do I wait until he pulls out a weapon and really hurts someone? Do I make a bet that the guy wielding the metal post won't actually bash in the head of the man with the long stick?

Honestly, if you have better suggestions of how to deal with this as it's happening, I'm all ears.

Because maybe we're overreacting, us neighbours. In both cases where women were getting pushed around, they didn't want to press charges. Of course they didn't. We're bringing the police into a situation with people who probably list "cops" as the last category of people that they want to see. Or would trust.

And with fucking good reason.

But I can't do it. I can't not call.

The drug dealing only bothers me because it brings a lot of people onto a really quiet street who don't care that it's a really quiet street. Crack houses belong on busy streets. I lived across from a couple on Preston, but I only knew that through street gossip and then careful watching. But they never disturbed me,* so what did I care? The drinking I don't like at all because it's being done in big groups of mostly men who seem to have someone with an unstable and vicious temper as their ringleader. Drinking makes people really fucking emotionally unpredictable in a way that it seems crack doesn't.

Besides the constant fighting that has me jumping every time there's a loud noise, what is stressing me out in all of this is that I am reminded of just how incredibly privileged I am. For 15 years I have have chosen run with people who critique, and are critical of, the reigning power structure. I have wanted badly to disown, or at least ignore, the parts of me that fall on the powered side of any continuum.

And yet, and yet. I have the privilege not only of current money but of class behind me. It is my expectation - no, it is a ingrained belief that I have the right to live on a street whose quiet is not broken by other people's despair and addiction.** And that class-driven belief - along with my colour, along with my education, along with the genes that have blessed me with a non-addictive personality - gives me weight with the cops to probably push these people out. The way they've probably been pushed out of other places before.

I am owning my privilege. It is currently making me a little sick with myself.

The fact that this is the first time I've really had to come face-to-face with how fucking privileged I am and that I find myself now actively participating in a system that I think is corrupt at its heart, that makes me more than a little sick too.

*Washington's customers, on the other hand, regularly forgot his address and pounded on our window at all hours. Nothing like being woken up out of a deep sleep by someone banging on the window above your head at 5 am.

**I know lots of people who are addicted to stuff (mostly alcohol) and are able to function quite well on a day to day basis. The people in the HAS are not those people, for a variety of social, economic and probably genetic reasons.

In a month, my bare legs won't be such a shock.

For one, bare legs will be normal by mid-July whereas this chilly year, they are not so in mid-June. For two, mine won't still be pasty white, and thereby glowing in the gloaming.

But it is not mid-July, it is mid-June, and my bare legs garnered a fair bit of attention on my walk to the Imperial last night.* Some random looks, a "Hey;" whatever, none of it was anything to get your knickers in a twist about, so I just thought my thoughts and it wasn't hard to do the regular ol' subconscious Rapist Threat Assessment.

And then I crossed the street, Somerset Street at Bay, to cut through Dundonald over to Lyon. The two guys who'd been heading towards me were still ambling along, I clocked that they'd noted me, dismissed them as any kind of threat.

I got to the northwest corner of the park.

"How you doon?"

I heard this over my shoulder, from the white blob just passing out of my peripheral vision. Generally, when men call things out at me I pretend that they must be talking to someone else, even if there isn't anyone else around. Sometimes I want to crack wise back, but mostly I'd rather not engage with the kind of people who turn the word "doing" into one syllable.

Some reason, this time I couldn't do it. There was a slight hitch in my step and I felt all my back muscles twitch simultaneously. I kept going, but I knew they now knew I was ignoring them. Shit fuck. There was gonna be more.

There was.

"Legs that long, you could walk to Europe!"

This time I had my proper ignoring walk on so I just kept going. But the more blocks I walked, the weirder it seemed to me. Anyone could walk to Europe. Or not, you know, since it's across the ocean.

When I got to the Imperial, I nearly collapsed when I hoisted myself up onto the chair across the table from Jennifer.

"What?" she said. "Europe? Europe?!"

"I know," I responded. "Halfway through the park I wanted to turn around and be like, 'Dude, c'mon, they're not webbed. But thanks.'"

We really did collapse then.

*They also garnered a fair bit of attention from the person for whom they'd been prepared. A good story and lots of invited attention! A banner night.

Peaceful & Pro-Choice Vigil for Dr. George Tiller

8:00pm
Tuesday, June 2nd
Human Rights Monument (Elgin & Lisgar)

On Sunday May 31st at around 10:00am Dr. George Tiller was murdered. He was shot to death in the vestibule of the church he belonged to in Wichita, Kansas.

Dr. Tiller was an abortion provider. He was one of the only doctors providing late-term abortions, and since 1973 he provided these services to women despite many threats against his life.

His murder was an act of violence that not only takes his life, hurting his family and loved ones, but one that threatens the entire pro-choice community and beyond.

This vigil will be a chance to gather to honour Dr. Tiller. Many of us are deeply shaken by what happened, and this event will allow us be together in solidarity, showing support for his family, his staff, for the women and families he has served, and for the abortion community.

Please join us in a peaceful gathering.
Bring candles, flowers, whatever you like.

This is an accessible event for people of all faiths and genders, open to
anyone that would like to join us in solidarity.

Zoom is right, I did write an article about local blogging culture for the Xpress. A long long time ago now. It never got published. It didn't get published and didn't get published and then we talked about re-working it and then Matthew H. got summarily canned and I stopped writing for them.

The title of the article is, of course, lifted from Matthew P's delightful music blog. Somehow, though, I don't have an interview with him (did I not ask? did he not answer? I have no idea). Too bad, too, since Calum Marsh stopped blogging not long after and answered my questions like he thought I was an idiot.

Never answer a blogger's questions like you think that blogger is an idiot unless you want them to say so on their blog two years later. We hold grudges.

Safe to say that it's not going to get published. It's old now, and out of season, but I hope you enjoy it anyway.

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I (heart) Ottawa: A Celebration of Local Blog Culture

Most winters, Ottawa is a city of hibernators. Even if you do leave your house, people are damn near unrecognizable, what with tuques pulled low and scarves pulled high. Luckily, the internet is here to save you from getting cut off, even from your local culture. Your community can now come to you: in blog-sized bites.

While blogging is a fairly new phenomenon [did I ever really think that?], it’s taken swift root in our fair city. A random look through OttawaStart’s blogroll shows that you can stay on top of everything from your desk. Sports or politics? You got it. Right wing or left? You got it. Pretty pictures? Scads. Slices of life? More than you could ever have time to read.

This changes the notion of community rather drastically. One side of the argument is that it's for the worse - after all, if everyone stays home and just reads about stuff happening, nothing will ever happen, right?

But this hasn’t been the case, at least for many of the readers, commenter and writers who participate in blogging culture. Zoom now “walk[s] down the street looking for the stories… that could become my next blog entry. In a sense, I feel more connected to my community because I take the time to experience it a little more.” Like many of the bloggers I’ve spoken to, writing about what’s going on around you means paying attention to and telling the stories of those who share your space.

Rather than keeping me from going out, the blogs I read keep me busy. New bands and music from I (heart) Music, Mocking Music or dial613, art shows from David Scrimshaw, readings from Amanda Earl – the list goes on.

But the change can be bigger than that. Vicky Smallman started blogging about Hintonburg almost two years ago, and found it cemented her place in her neighbourhood: “I'm always running into people who read the blog - folks I didn't know before." She also considers her run for the Kitchissippi ward council seat in 2006 a direct result of her blogging efforts.

Individual connections can be fostered through blogs as well. Lurking on someone’s blog can lead to commenting on someone’s blog can lead to virtual conversation can lead to real world communication. Old relationships can change too. “Where I've known people before, blogging has added to the connections between us,” David Scrimshaw told me.

So don’t give up on your city this winter. All the bloggers I spoke with agreed there wasn’t “an Ottawa blogging community” but a series of overlapping communities that self-organize around common interests or geography. That means that someone in Ottawa is writing something, right now, that you’d find interesting.

Not to mention, as Amanda Earl points out, “anything that makes people turn off the idiot box or stop listening to the propaganda of the brainwashed American media is a good thing.”

See you next spring.

I have a new love and it is fish.

Buying fish has always kind of scared me. It's complicated, what you should and shouldn't buy, ethically and for health reasons. And yes I know, I could print off one of those cards and carry it around but things seem to change an awful lot which is really just an excuse for I haven't and I know myself enough to know I won't.*

And now I don't have to.

Because here is the Sustainable Oyster & Fish Supply Store. It's the supply house for the Whalesbone Oyster House on Bank Street. I've never eaten there, though Michael and I did have a gossipy glass of wine there once.

I was walking home up Kent, a way I normally don't walk and I don't know why I was. But there was this Whalesbone sign. It didn't look like a restaurant. Did they...? Was it...?

There was a flyer in the door.

They did open a wholesale place, and it was occasionally open to the public. What did they have? They have fish and oysters, select fish and oysters, caught in sustainable ways.

Last week, Shelley and I walked in. There's a small open space, with counters to your left and right. No fish anywhere. We looked to one counter, looked to each other. Looked back. I had the thought to flee in the face of not knowing what to do.

"You're here to shop?" the man behind the counter on the left asked.
"Yes?" we both said.
"Well! You shop in the fridge!" He gestured grandly behind him at the claw handle in the white door on the white wall between the shelving units.

And you do. You go into the fridge, you say "I would like that kind, please" and they grab a big piece of it, plap it on the cutting board on the left hand counter, and you say "I would like that much please." And they cut it with their very sharp knives and they take maybe some extra bones out and they talk to you lovingly about how you should cook it to bring out the flavour.

They love working there.

Today I bought my second piece. Last week was a nice piece of Lake Erie pickerel. I pan fried it, added a little pepper, not much else. It didn't really taste like much, strangely, but the texture. Man. I'm not much of a texture person - it has to be something for me to notice, either way, and this was something. It had heft and bite, a bit of squeak. My mouth was entirely happy.

Thank you, fish.

I decided to do something fancier tonight. Since I was staying in all night, I knew I could take my time. I blanched some rapini, made some quinoa, sliced some red onions, chopped some garlic. I poached the troll-caught wild alaskan salmon in some of the broth I made last night, I sauted the rapini in olive oil, garlic and red chili peppers.

It was fucking amazing. The bitter greens stood up to the very dense salmon, the chilis gave everything a bit of a bite, a different zip from the liberal sprinkling of pepper on the fish. The stock gave every bite a faint fennel scent. The quinoa gave some spring to everything.

Thank you, Whalesbone.

I am never buying fish anywhere else again. Most definitely not from the Hartman's with their oft-unanswered fish phone and their fish-stinking stinky fish and their employees who look bored to damn death of fish. It may be slightly more expensive at WB, but not by much, and it is a couple of dollars well spent.

You know what they're also doing at Whalesbone Supply? They've ripped up a third of the parking lot and they're putting in a garden to supply the restaurant. You should walk by before they put the fence up, not long after they plant on Sunday. The rows of black earth are beautiful.

*Also I know I could be a vegetarian. I think it's a great choice to make, and I have been one and I enjoyed it. I still eat mostly vegetarian food. But I am not one anymore, by conscious decision, so I try to eat meat consciously too.

It's been an exhausting few days. Only 5 hours sleep a couple of nights in a row, with a cat who seems bound and determined to make the last two hours of sleep intermittent. Last night I just crashed out at about 10, and tonight I think I'll do the same. And tomorrow night. And maybe the night after too.

Between the lack of sleep and writing, I'm finding myself without a whole lot in the tank. That means more lists for you.

1) Meditation Is Stressing Me Out

I'm halfway through the mindfulness clinic. I'm finding it interesting, and I think I'd probably get a lot more out of it if I actually engaged with the homework. Some of the homework is a half hour of breathing or body scan meditation. I'm cool with that, obviously, I think it's a good thing to do. But I don't have an extra half hour. That half hour comes out of food prep, or physical activity, or hanging out with friends (email included), or writing and blogging. I don't want to give up a half hour of those things.

Also, it's in Vanier. You know what I hate? It's not Vanier, which I'm sure would be a nice place to live if you never had to leave it. Because getting there and back nearly drives me to distraction. The 12 is the bus from hell, as far as I'm concerned. It's either late or runs a different route and always has at least one person on it who is entirely and loudly obnoxious.

Though today I left the clinic feeling worn the fuck out anyway. So maybe, when I eventually got on the bus, wasn't actually so loud that I had to close my eyes and plug my ears and concentrate on my breath going in and out of my nose. Just another crazy lady on the bus. But at least my crazy was quiet.

2) I'm Hoping It's Short

Part of the reason I left feeling worn out is because I'm having one of my intermittent periods of Severe Body Hatred, and it cropped up fiercely in the first round of meditation when we were sitting cross-legged for 20 minutes during which it felt like someone was slowly inserting a white hot rod alongside my right scapula.

The SBH, however, started with the fact that I've gained about 15 pounds over the winter. I can tell myself all I want that it's fine, that I'm a healthier weight now, that I like round curvy bodies, but what I can tell you is that I am frustrated by my new body. My clothes don't fit it properly. I was used to my old body. I liked my old body.

It's not just the weight though, because I also remember quite clearly weighing more than this and being happy with it. I've been through this before, this shift from skinny to thin, and I've always had this reaction when I'm getting used to the new state. What it tells me is that if I have to talk myself down from the "I'm fat!" reaction, then our world is some fucked.

So if it's not just the next size up, what is it? My damn shins. I can't run any more and I am FURIOUS with how unfair that is. It makes me feel like throwing a tantrum, in fact. It's not like I was a marathon runner, or was graceful or fast or anything like that. I shuffle along like an old lady. But god, it kept me sane, it kept me in my body and my brain working reasonably happily along with it.

Until it broke my body, at any rate.

I can shift to biking, I know. But it's not the same. The seagull apocalypse is a blur when you're going by it at bike speed. Same with smells, the sound of the water. If I do it enough times, it will eventually becomes a part of me the way my shuffling was. But it's hard to make that kind of transition. It's always hard to make new habits. But I'm feeling crazy, and I know this kind of crazy will be fixed by two runs in the outside and a couple yoga classes.

Which I haven't started back on since the tattoo. Sunday though. I'm almost healed.

3) Triple Purpose

Composting at the organic gardens was a revelation to me, revealed by one Black M. I ran into her one day, a bag full of garbage, and asked her where she was going.

"To the compost," she said.
"Man, I wish I could compost," I replied. "But there's no place to put one at our house."
"No, us either. I'm taking it to the garden over on Rochester."
"What?"
"Yeah, they have huge bins there. I take my bag over, dump it, and then they have a garbage bin right there for the bag."

It was like a light from heaven shone down on me. I've been doing it ever since, though I have a tupperware container in my fridge, since there is a hell of a lot more room in my fridge than on my counters. Depending on the day of the week, there's sometimes more compost in our fridge than edible food.

Although, as I discovered not long ago and long long long after I should have, you can make vegetable stock from your compost.

Vegetable stock is like iced tea. As Jennifer has quoted, it's three ingredients! Why would you buy a weird smelling chemical that you stir water and ice into when you can pour water on a tea bag and add ice?

And really, when consider that ice and water are pretty much the same thing, it's only two ingredients.

Like veggie stock. You can agonize over low sodium or high sodium or what all chemicals are in what stock, or you can pay a zillion dollars for a wee organic cube that you have to add two measly cups of water to, or.

Or, you can put one part of your garbage in a pot and boil it in two parts water.

Don't throw out those squinchy mushrooms you forget what you were going to do with! Put them in a pot! Dig out the fennel trimmings and the onion bits out of the tupperware! Wash off those coffee grounds! Why not this apple core too! And sure, why not one of those perfectly good green onions that you know will be in the compost in a week because you hate them. And that carrot is edible, possibly, but very hairy. In you go, carrot.

I cannot tell you how thrilled I am about this. My only problem is that there's only so much vegetable stock one person needs.

Present Megan is thrilled that Past Megan somehow knew that Future Megan would be deliriously happy to come home to clean sheets on the bed.

Though the delirium may just be jet lag. Both my body and brain have been feeling woozy for the last two hours, but I've been making myself stay up.

My laundry is done, my photos are sorted. I've unpacked, though a third of it is strewn about on various flat surfaces.

Tonight, I'm just leaving it all where it landed, figuring I'll have more energy for that at 6 am tomorrow.

I've been hearing murmurs of this most of the afternoon, but seems it's official now.

No parole office on Somerset Street, government says
Proposed parole office location not 'appropriate': minister

Well, there we go. Now some other community has to worry about the boogeyman.

Though for the record, CBC News is being a little more circumspect about whether that's an official no. Also sounds like CBC Ottawa Morning will be talking more about the issue tomorrow.

I've got more to say on the actual process, so stay posted.

On the way home from my monthly chocha waxing, I saw a lot of crazy pedestrian activity.

Usually I'm one of those pedestrians. I get antsy, start walking before it quite turns green. I jaywalk a fair amount, especially when I'm going to get coffee at the bakery directly across the street from my work.

At 3 pm today, a 60-year old pedestrian was killed.

My co-workers and I didn't know that at first, just saw the fire trucks and cop cars. Went to the front window, overlooking Bank, saw the ambulance, the paramedic closing the back door firmly, staring at the ground and walking slowly around to the driver's seat.

The people downstairs told us that someone had been run over - not just hit.

The truck he was found under was still on the street, looking completely unharmed. It was directly between the front door of my office and the front door of the bakery.

This comes a month after a 16-year old girl was hit at the corner of Bronson and Primrose, sent to hospital in serious but stable condition. I walked by that one a few minutes after it happened, the girl a lump under a cop's foil sheet, the paramedics just showing up.

The driver looked stricken. As she should have.

All this to say that when I got to the corner of Somerset and Bronson tonight, I thought it might be better to wait an extra three minutes in the cold than to catch the light. And it took every ounce of my willpower not to pluck at the sleeve of the man beside me, who, 2 minutes and 50 seconds later, started walking into the intersection when the light was still yellow.

This is not to say I blame pedestrians. I am a pedestrian far more often than I am a driver. I see drivers running yellows, hell, reds, on a regular basis, and you all need to slow the fuck down and wait your turn too.