Jeff Francom, Masters of Education student at Nipissing University, ON, writes…
As a college teacher, I have often advertised the value of extra education to my students. About 3 years ago, I decided to ‘eat my own cooking’, taking my own advice and returning to school, albeit part-time. 6 MEd courses and a couple of years later, I am completing my thesis and presenting my findings at the Graduate Student panel on Monday.
So here I am, an ‘old guy’ amongst youngsters, a man whose kids are nearly the same age as some of my peers in class, attending the Congress at my children’s university… kind of surreal. Being asked to present my findings should not make me nervous as I have been teaching college for 11 years now, yet the ‘newness’ of the experience is causing some butterflies. Not knowing how to take the last 6+ months of research and compress it into 10 minutes, being certain of what I have found but uncertain of the best way to present it, even considering if I take the O Train or drive to campus from my kids’ house… so many new variables to handle. (more…)
Caucasian male, mid 50s, with scruffy white hair, wearing glasses, tan pants, burgundy sweater, and brown leather boots.
The small bright blue nylon bag sits at his feet without shape, weighted in place like an opaque Ziploc® stuffed with a melange of personal items he’d sooner not carry in his pockets. House keys. Apple. Comb. It’s not something you buy, but take home from a cottage show, conference, or as a token gift for spending too much money at the fairground. He goes back every summer, determined this will be the season he walks out with The Big Five. The trick to winning is to shoot around the star, use the banks, and throw the dart higher and harder. He knows there’s no space in her dorm for a plush Tweetie, but every time his kid looks over he’s chasing a palm-sized basketball toward the soft pretzels, a green and yellow snake squirming out of his back pocket.
Julie Wilson is a literary voyeur, the Gossip Girl of the Book World. She tracks readers in the wild at SeenReading.com. Follow Julie on Twitter @seenreading, and @bookmadam where she runs a monthly contest with McNally Robinson.
Academic life has its rhythms: back-to-school in September, grant application deadlines, semester’s end buried under marking exams and assignments, the fatigue of the winter months, the scramble at the end of the school year… and the Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences.
No matter what else the year has brought, Congress always returns with its opportunities for reflection and discovery, for meetings, receptions and visits in a new city. I remember my first time attending Congress: it was at Carleton, more than 20 years ago.
I was presenting first thing in the morning, in a time slot when most delegates weren’t even out of bed and only your friends and the other panellists showed up. I ended up giving my presentation with the door opening every two seconds, as another colleague slipped into the room until finally, by the question period, there were enough people to make me quiver. Two older colleagues who I didn’t know asked for copies of my paper and I left feeling pretty good about everything. Over the years, all three of us have worked together, read each other’s work, critiqued, helped and supported each other. That’s Congress. (more…)
Reif Larsen’s The Selected Works of T.S. Spivetis a novel that’s easy to talk about but difficult to write about. It’s a natural distinction for a book that’s so beautifully designed and obsessively layed out—what can one say with mere words, after all, when the subject of one’s words is a text that incorporates as marginalia scientific diagrams, heartbreaking sketches, sweeping illustration, and nuanced cartography. I’ll just say that Larsen’s debut is everything one could hope for from such an expansively composed volume: it is by turns beautiful, moving, witty, informative, mysterious, and devastating. I spoke with Reif Larsen a few weeks ago, just before he launched the book in Toronto.
When T.S. lists the clubs he’s joined, he includes the Official Dolly Party Fan Club. It occurred to me that though we know a whole lot about what T.S. reads, sees, thinks, and feels, we don’t really get any information on what he’d listen to. What would be on T.S. Spivet’s playlist?
It’s funny that you ask this, because there’s this blog called Largehearted Boy, and they asked me to do a playlist, though it wasn’t necessarily what T.S. would listen to. Because I thought about this and realized that the Coppertop Ranch is kind a music-less place, aside from kind of the crackle of the Westerns on television. (more…)
The awards, presented by the Utne Reader, were given out last night at the Independent Magazine Conference in Boulder, Colorado. ”The goal is to honor independently minded publications that don’t shy away from tough stories and innovative ideas,” the magazine explained.
The editors said:
“It is, once again, the year of TheWalrus. Since launching in 2003, the Canadian general-interest magazine “with an international outlook” has nabbed three Utne Independent Press Award nominations, taking the prize in 2004 for best new publication. Five years later and counting, it’s been consistently delightful to read—and last year the magazine outdid itself, its sparkling articles and fluid essays orbiting high above the rest of us earthbound publications.
As civil war ravages Sri Lanka and militants approach the capital of Pakistan, do you ever stop to wonder: in the throes of war, who’s making the chapatis?
If it seems as though I’m making light of serious situations, the film Cooking History asks you to consider the gravity of the question. The documentary by Slovak director Peter Kerekes, which picked up a special jury prize at the Hot Docs documentary film festival in Toronto last week, looks at major European conflicts of the 20th century from the perspective of some often-ignored but crucial figures in warfare: military chefs. (more…)
A couple books, so far, have really stood out among my purchases from last weekend’s Toronto Comic Arts Festival, and they couldn’t be more different from each other. The first is a lurid looseleaf folder of oversized story pages from (I’m guessing) the former singer of the Load Records band Coughs, providing a free-associative tour through education reform featuring sci-fi Buddhist monks, or something. The second collects webcomics by a Toronto-via-Nova-Scotia cartoonist, who pulls off high-concept lo-brow hi-jinx with brassy aplomb. With both, though, I’m having a disconcerting amount of trouble trying to figure out what exactly it is that I like so much about them. So let me have a think on this… (more…)
Black woman, mid 30s, with long dark hair, wearing floral silk jacket, and grey dress pants.
The man beside her wears a long buckskin jacket with fringes lining the bottom, the back of his arms, and in the shape of a V across his chest and back. He’s in his late 50s, face worn, a shock of spiky bleached-blonde hair growing out at the roots. He hunches over his cupped hand, pinching marijuana sticks and twigs into as fine a powder as possible. He looks up at each stop, squinting at each passerby, then going back to the task at hand. Another man boards and stands over him. His skin is baby smooth, tanned. He wears a pressed shirt under a high collar, half-zipped, Jacquard pullover, a tweed cap cocked to the side. He considers his reflection, bumping the elbow of the seated man who yells, “Hey, Buddy! I don’t got all the room in the world!” The dapper man kneels down to eye level and speaks in a low voice. “Hey, brother. I didn’t mean to get in your space. I’m sorry. We good, friend?” The seated man reverts to a child, pressing his knees together, and turning his weight toward the woman reading beside him. He mumbles back over his shoulder, “Yah, man. We’re good. I just don’t got all the room in the world.”
Julie Wilson is a literary voyeur, the Gossip Girl of the Book World. She tracks readers in the wild at SeenReading.com. Follow Julie on Twitter @seenreading, and @bookmadam where she runs a monthly contest with McNally Robinson.
PARIS—Handsome footballers, huh? Well, two can play at this game.
When France’s sporting daily, l’Équipe, recently published an online slideshow of the 25 sexiest football players, my first reaction was, “Yes! Awesome! Perfect!” Because what better excuse to outline a project that’s been long-simmering in the Trotter household than to post a rebuttal to all the … now what did they call them again?
Ils sont beaux, ils sont pro, ils sont musclés sous leur maillot…Notre sélection des footballeurs les plus sexy en activité
Oh, yeah. Those handsome devils. (In case your French is a little rusty, I am contractually obliged to inform you that the first part even rhymes. Ugh.) (more…)
[The Walrus will be reviewing films at this week's Hot Docs festival in Toronto. More reviews to follow.]
Emma Franz’s first documentary, Intangible Asset Number 82, records the life and work of a very rare commodity—Kim Seok-Chul, a reclusive Korean shaman and musical grandmaster. Seok-Chul is introduced to us through Simon Baker, an Australian jazz drummer widely regarded as his country’s best. Baker’s obsession with rhythm and musical force finds an idol in eighty-year-old Seok-Chul—the music he produces is nothing like anything Baker (or the viewer) has heard before. He embarks on a quest to track down Seok-Chul and learn from him. It proves to be a nearly impossible task, considering the shaman’s age and illness and his stature in Korean religious life. But Baker perseveres, and Franz follows him.
What follows is an account of Korean musical traditions that continue to resist the force of modernization. On his way to Seok-Chul, never sure that he will meet him, Baker encounters some people and practices so extreme that they are hard to reconcile with any notion of normalcy: one shaman, a bubbly, round-faced, boyish singer, spent seven years living on wet rocks by the side of a waterfall, singing (or shouting) seventeen hours a day, learning his craft from the flow of the water. Incredibly, he and Baker become fast friends.
The film can feel, at times, like an anthropological account—something you’d be shown for university study—but when Franz focuses on character the results are quite moving. She is clearly a dedicated documentarian, with the ability to suss out narrative in a complex story and the sense to exclude herself (she is also a musician, and so likely has her own opinions on Baker’s take on music) from the piece. It will be interesting to see how her work develops.
Caucasian woman, mid 20s, with blonde hair, clipped up, wearing red pea coat, white leather purse, and grey UGGs.
A man and woman board at Broadview and stand in front of the reader. He stares at the ads, squinting, flexing his jaw in concentration. The woman looks at him closely, studying the subtle changes in expression. Their faces are deeply tanned, their cheeks and noses a bright red. He can feel her looking and nods a little, puffing up his lips to signal what, he’s not sure; something to suggest it’s only him. Knowing better, he turns to face her, tight-lipped, rolling his eyes. He’s tired. That’s all. He smirks and goes back to looking at the ads, his gaze turning to the cover of the book before him. He grips the woman’s hand, their fingers folding loosely into one another’s. She rests her head on his shoulder. He places his cheek against her hair and closes his eyes. Something had been decided before boarding, perhaps confirmed during their day of ease and sunshine. When friendship turned into something more.
Julie Wilson is a literary voyeur, the Gossip Girl of the Book World. She tracks readers in the wild at SeenReading.com. Follow Julie on Twitter @seenreading, and @bookmadam where she runs a monthly contest with McNally Robinson.
Jeff Francom, Masters of Education student at Nipissing University, ON, writes…
