OPEN LETTER TO THE “SMALL TREE MAINTENANCE PROGRAM”

We are extremely unhappy with the damage inflicted on our beautiful Turkish hazelnut tree in the name of the City’s new program, and wish to address the justification given for this program as follows:

1. THE PROGRAM IS REQUIRED BECAUSE THE CITY HAS INSUFFICIENT MANPOWER TO DEAL WITH HOMEOWNERS’ REQUESTS FOR PRUNING.

This is illogical. The number of trees the City has planted and the rate at which they grow remains the same whether you prune all the trees on a schedule or on an as-needed basis. Currently you are pruning all trees planted between 1997-2005. If you waited to see which of those trees actually needed pruning, the likelihood is that you would not, in fact, have to prune as many as you are doing in according to your “proactive” policy.

2. PRUNING THE TREES WHILE THEY ARE YOUNG MAKES IT EASIER FOR THEM TO RECOVER FROM THEIR WOUNDS.

But do you have any evidence that recovering from one or two large wounds, which is all I see on mature trees around Toronto, is any worse than recovering from 20 smaller ones, which is what you inflicted on our tree by adhering to your policy of 8 feet of clearance? If you waited until the tree was taller to see which branches actually cause problems you might not have to prune any at all!

Following your logic, OHIP’s policy would be to take out your child’s appendix, gallbladder, wisdom teeth, adenoids, and tonsils, in one big operation while he’s small, with the justification that kids recover better from their wounds when they’re young than when they are older, and they don’t have the manpower to do surgery on an as-needed basis.

3. THE CITY IS REQUIRED TO KEEP SIDEWALKS AND WALKWAYS CLEAR.

Of course. But in the case of our tree, its lowest branches already cleared all sidewalks and walkways!!! And most of the branches that were removed were over our porch, providing us with privacy, shade, and greenery. They weren’t even over public space.

4. WE HAVE TO MAINTAIN THE TREE’S FORM.

But that’s exactly why we’re upset—you didn’t! A Turkish Hazelnut is meant to be rounded and taper to the top; it has many lateral branches. The arborist went to work with a chain saw and a mandate to clear 8 feet, and no concern whatsoever for the characteristic silhouette of the tree. You say you can’t rely on homeowners, but ANY homeowner would have done a better job than this professional. “The tree’s form” is ruined forever.


5. IT ALWAYS LOOKS BAD AFTER A HAIRCUT.

But haircuts are done for cosmetic reasons, and this was not.
And hair grows back, but these boughs can never grow back.

Tree

I was working at home all day yesterday and around midday, heard the sounds of a chain saw outside. Thought nothing of it, as both houses across the street from me are being renovated; just closed the window, and kept on struggling with research for my novel, mainly legal stuff about the youth justice system and the differences between open and closed custody. In the middle of this research, I got a phone call from the vice principal of my son's high school asking for permission for him to be interviewed by the police about being mugged on the way to the school dance last Thursday--an event he never told me about, because he didn't want me to worry.

I spoke to my son, the Vice Principal, the police, and my husband, who came home as soon as he could to discuss further strategy. Naturally, I was surprised when he burst in the door calling "Have you seen the tree? What happened to the tree?"

We have (had) a beautiful spreading hazelnut tree in front of our house; in fact, to most people in the area, we were 'the house with the tree.' It provided a wonderful leafy haven; we loved nothing better to sit on our porch in the green shade, screened from the whole world. Hallowe'en being this week, we were just about to engage in our annual ritual of hanging little witch and ghost and skeleton dolls from its branches, to sway in the breeze and spookify things a little. Almost did it on Sunday; now I keep thinking "if only I had, if only I had..."

This is how the tree looks now:



The City of Toronto Department of Urban Forestry denies doing it. Toronto Hydro denies doing it. But who else goes around the city with a chain saw, and a truck to carry away the branches, blatantly trimming trees, without permission, without sending a notice to homeowners, in the middle of the day? And a neighbour saw a City truck parked on the street. And two other trees on my block were attacked as well, though neither as savagely.

This cannot have been for the health of the tree, for it was thriving. It was not in the way of wires, not a threat to pedestrians, and certainly not a threat to us. No one had complained.

And we have no recourse.

And the branches will not, will not, will not ever grow back.

I love A.L. Kennedy

And if I keep posting these wonderful essays by people other than myself I might get a reputation for a wisdom I don't possess, just by association!


Interview with Scottish writer AL Kennedy in the online journal the Huffington Post, Posted October 23, 2005


SO, WHAT’S HAPPENING WITH THE WONDERFUL WORLD OF PUBLISHING?
Fewer publishing houses concentrated in conglomerate hands trying to produce more books of less quality. No full time readers, no full time copy editors and therefore missed newcomers and pisspoor final presentation of texts on the shelves, silly covers, greedy and simple-minded bookshop chains, lunatic bidding wars designed to crush the spirit of unknown newcomers, celebrity “tighten your buns and nurture your inner pot plant” hard backs and much related insanity. Go somewhere else if you can, there is nothing like watching people who care about books being destroyed by publishing to put a blight on your afternoon.

HOW DO I GET PUBLISHED?
Write as well as you possibly can. Markets won’t help you, networking might (Although it will probably also involve the removal of your soul and will only help a little if you can’t write). Sleeping with writers makes them very happy, but as the ability to type with any kind of skill is not contagious, it won’t actually help you. And then we get into sleeping with/ selling drugs to/ blackmailing editors, agents and so on – and if you have the knack of doing that, you don’t need my help.

NO REALLY, HOW DO I GET PUBLISHED?
Find someone you can trust to look at your work, get it into the best possible shape, ruthlessly. Take advice from The Writer’s and Artist’s Yearbook on agents and editors that might suit and then contact them, one at a time. You will probably need an agent to help you catch any editor’s eye, these days—no one really has the time to read any more. And you could try praying, or voodoo. The market is now probably beyond saving and access is ever-decreasing. If I were starting now, I'd be nowhere. Sorry.

WILL I MAKE MONEY OUT OF LITERARY FICTION?
No. Or not quickly, unless you are incredibly lucky. Fiction is not exactly fashionable right now and never really has been a big earner. Then again, if you are writing literary fiction, you probably do it fairly helplessly, because you love it. The fact that we do it for love is, sadly, well-known amongst publishers, editors and so forth and this means we will receive the bare minimum and still be quite happy in an odd kind of, blood-soaked way. Welcome to wonderful world of literary fiction.

WHO WILL MAKE THE MONEY?
Your agent will make a little. Your publisher will mess up making what they could.
And if they mess up too badly you’ll end up out of print. But who needs money?—be happy if you’re in print at all—you can sell your organs to foreign businessmen, you have possibilities, get on with it… And you could be a poet – they don’t make anything…

WHAT ABOUT THE GLAMOUROUS JET-SETTING LIFE OF THE NOVELIST, THEN?
Endless community halls and libraries, immensely tiring tours of places that might be interesting if you ever got to see them, food you can’t eat, or never get, not enough sleep, crushing isolation, little or no chance of a cup of tea on the road, endless working to subsidise the writing… oh yes, it’s all a breeze. Sometimes, you may get to meet the former Bishop of Edinburgh, that’s one of the few high points.

Sometimes it is nice. Sometimes it is immensely grisly. I would recommend tours of Germany, the Leukerbad Festival, The Edinburgh Book Festival, the Victoria Festival, the Vancouver Festival and a few others, but it’s not a roller coaster of unlimited fun out there. Then again, it's nowhere near as lousy as waking up in Fallujah, or being a coal miner—so the whining should be limited.

ISN’T ALL LANGUAGE ESSENTIALLY MEANINGLESS?
I’ve told you before—keep away from those academics.

Of course, when I say “table”, I don’t mean quite the “table” you do—but that’s a good thing. It means you help me to make my “table” mean more.

Language used carefully unites more than it divides, communicates more than it obscures, but it’s also like a gun—it can do as much damage as the person in control of it has the power to inflict. So it’s our duty to learn how to use and understand the words around us. Hint—rush into a room full of Wittgenstein fans and yell "Fire !"—check if they interrogate your meaning for a fortnight, or run for the exits.

WHAT IS THE KEY TO WRITING GOOD FICTION?
Years of practice and observation.

Which isn’t the answer you wanted. I could say “capturing point of view”—but that comes back to years of practice and observation. Or learning a lot about your soul—same problem, if not worse. Just try to be aware of how you work and how that could help you tell other human beings about human beings who don’t exist, but could. Help us to dream together—that’s something we like to do. Tell me a story, I like stories. Tell me as if I were someone you care for, someone you trust and respect, someone as bright as you are, who deserves the best.

BUT FICTION IS ALL JUST RECYCLED FACT AND SCRAPS YOU OVERHEARD ON BUSES, SURELY ?
You can rip off your life and other people’s stories if you like, but that’s more theft than fiction and it will leave you with precious few friends and very little life remaining. Practically speaking, things you make up (it’s called fiction, remember) will fit your story better and be more fun for all concerned. This is, at one level, a meditative flight from self –that’s surely rather better than rummaging round in other people’s leftovers

I WANT TO BE A WRITER, WHAT SHOULD I DO?
Give yourself a severe talking-to. But if you can’t persuade yourself otherwise (and probably you can’t) then what you have to do now, and ever after, is write to the best of your ability and then a little bit better than that.

Then better than that.

And read everything you can, always.

Arts gala!!

Read about my desk, Friday October 3rd

In Evie Christie's very entertaining blog:

http://desk-space.blogspot.com

It's scary how much this image evokes me as a child! Clearly Evie is psychic...

The Sorted Books Project

wherein you make sentences out of titles, is too much of a time-waster even for me, but I appreciate what others have done. Especially this one!

from: http://www.ninakatchadourian.com/languagetranslation/sortedbooks.php

Three interviews about my poems on the Canadian Literature Website

http://www.canlit.ca/poetry-canlitpoets.php?poemid=69
http://www.canlit.ca/poetry-canlitpoets.php?poemid=70
http://www.canlit.ca/poetry-canlitpoets.php?poemid=71

Bernadette full colour cover

You have to admit it's pretty damn cute!

Before teaching my first class on Writing the Novel at Ryerson, I re-read these words...

from “Behind the curtain”
an essay by Milan Kundera
published in The Guardian Saturday March 3, 2007

The Novel as Utopia of a World That Has No Forgetting in It

The perpetual activity of forgetting gives our every act a ghostly, unreal, hazy quality. What did we have for lunch the day before yesterday? What did my friend tell me yesterday? And even: What was I thinking about, three seconds ago? All of that is forgotten and (what's a thousand times worse!) it deserves no better. Against our real world, which, by its very nature, is fleeting and worthy of forgetting, works of art stand as a different world, a world that is ideal, solid, where every detail has its importance, its meaning, where everything in it - every word, every phrase - deserves to be unforgettable and was conceived to be such.

Still, the perception of art does not escape the force of forgetting either. Though it should be said that each art has a different relation to forgetting. From that standpoint, poetry is privileged. A person reading a Baudelaire sonnet cannot skip a single word. If he loves it he will read it several times and perhaps aloud. If he adores it, he will learn it by heart. Lyric poetry is a fortress of memory.

The novel, on the other hand, is a very poorly fortified castle. If I take an hour to read 20 pages, a novel of 400 pages will take me 20 hours, thus about a week. Rarely do we have a whole week free. It is more likely that, between sessions of reading, intervals of several days will occur, during which forgetting will immediately set up its worksite. But it is not only in the intervals that forgetting does its work; it participates in the reading continuously, with never a moment's lapse; turning the page, I already forget what I just read; I retain only a kind of summary indispensable for understanding what is to follow, but all the details, the small observations, the admirable phrasings are already gone. Erased. Someday, years later, I will start to talk about this novel to a friend, and we will find that our memories have retained only a few shreds of the text and have reconstructed very different books for each of us.

And yet the novelist writes his novel as if he were writing a sonnet. Look at him! He is amazed at the composition he sees taking shape before him: the least detail is important to him, he makes it into a motif and will bring it back in dozens of repetitions, variations, allusions, like a fugue. And so he is sure that the second half of his novel will be even finer, stronger, than the first; for the farther one progresses through the castle's halls, the more the echoes of phrases already pronounced, themes already set out, will multiply and, brought together into chords, they will resonate from all sides.

What should the novelist do in the face of that destructive forgetting? Snap his fingers at it and build his novel as an indestructible castle of the unforgettable, even though he knows that his reader will only ramble through it distractedly, rapidly, forgetfully, and never inhabit it.

new cartoon

wonderful comic strip: "The Bookseller". Enjoy!

http://community.livejournal.com/scans_daily/5408800.html

cartoon 14

Red-Headed Bernadette

The sketch you see below is not the completed cover; for some reason I was unable to copy and save the cover pdf in a way that I could transfer to this blog. But it gives you a good idea of artist Melanie Allard's delightful vision of Bernadette (in front) and her friends Annie, Keisha and Megan. Now, the latter three differ only slightly from the images I had of them in my head while writing. I had always imagined Megan MacDonald as a blond. But what this whole exercise of being illustrated has revealed to me is how important it is to guide the reader's perception of your characters! Something I had done much more consciously in The Violin Lover, since that was conceived from the start as a novel, than in Bernadette, which started off as a little picture book, which I thought I would work on in tandem with an illustrator.

But Bernadette's Experiment, the original story written seven years ago, grew, and grew, and grew, and now is an early novel for readers from the ages of 7-10. (I will blog another time about the long tortured road from picture book to novel.) And rather than having full colour illustrations on every page, it has just a handful of line drawings. Moreover these drawings were executed by Melanie without my input.

When I saw Melanie's first image of Bernadette as a girl with long tangled red curls I was shocked, since in my mind she had short dark hair. But of course NOWHERE in the book had I described her, since I had been writing from her point of view and the only thing about her appearance she commented on was how short she was! Nonetheless, it took all of a minute for me to totally accept Melanie's vision of Bernadette and fall in love with it. And now I've written those red curls right into the text, and can't see her as anything but a redhead.

Bernadette and the Lunch Bunch

coming to a bookstore near you!

Cartoon number 13

number 12

Can it really be cartoon number 11?

cartoon number 10

new cartoon

Incomprehensible Shi(r)t