Isla Vista and murder in paradise

As a graphic display of data, this table is missing a couple of essential elements, for instance, what time period? (I'm guessing this year to date, but it ought to say.) Also, it would be nice to have a row listing the populations of each country.

Still.

Today is US Memorial Day and three days after the rampage by Elliot Rodger in Isla Vista. It is awful to find out about any murder, horrid for murder to happen, and yet this one, these ones, strike me as more awful and horrid than -- terrible to say-- usual.

For me, it has to do with the fact that the perpetrator was born in the UK, in Sussex, and then moved to Los Angeles. He grew up only a couple of miles away from where I did, in Woodland Hills. His high school is very close to the home of my sister's family. He spent much of his childhood in therapy; both of my parents are child psychologists with offices a stone's throw away.

Isla Vista-- the Santa Barbara area in general-- is lovely. Beach, hills, greenery, flowers. Bougainvillea everywhere (I yearn to live where bougainvillea grows). I've been to Isla Vista several times, including most recently on a family trip with the kids during which we bought sandwiches at the Isla Vista Deli, where one of the recent victims was killed. He came from Los Osos, where, on that same trip, we camped for the night. My nieces and nephews who are college age might easily have chosen to attend UCSB; some of their friends did. Fortunately for us, none was hurt.

These points of contact are chilling. It's nothing spooky or spiritual; it is an extra-forceful reminder of the fragility of happiness, of the luxury of taking life for granted. For the sake of sanity, we tend to regard it as a necessity. A right, even.

I keep thinking of the novel by Lionel Shriver, We Need to Talk about Kevin. As a new-ish parent, I read the book with some trepidation, but found I was able to enjoy it because it seemed so caricatured; no mother, I felt, could get into such a situation with her child. I read it as allegory, as fable, and as such, found it powerful and memorable, but not believable. In real life, though, reports say that the parents of Elliot Rodger were immensely upset, but not shocked, to be told that their son was the perpetrator. Not so allegorical, perhaps.

I've been following Twitter on the topic of the shootings and gun availability, and found a thread retweeted by Michael Moore (Bowling for Columbine) lauding Canada for its relatively few gun deaths and trying to explain why. One Canadian tweets that Canada 'as a culture' is not paranoid about foreigners or about 'being invaded'. An American then applauds Canada's 'diversity without fear/tension', as well as its beauty, and asks if there is space for one more. Another Canadian tweets a caution, however: Canada is 'less decent' and more 'rightwing crazy' since Harper became prime minister. (Yep, figured that one out. A real shame.) The general consensus at the point when I stopped following (as I do), seemed to be that the US problems all stem from the Second Amendment and its insistence on citizens' rights to raise a standing militia at any given moment. For that, apparently, you need to have guns at the ready.

The problem is those militias of one with an agenda and an unbalanced mind. Where do one person's rights end and another's begin? Which constitutional amendment addresses that question?

Celebrating Victoria Day

Chilling on the front porch with a cup of Trader Joe's mango black tea. This is the life.

Bonus relaxation time owed to the fact that younger son's 14-year-old birthday party was cancelled -- well, postponed, anyway-- due to lack of guests. He wanted to arrange it all himself. Life lesson learned: give your friends, even the really good ones, more than 24 hours notice.

Putting down roots

We have begun gardening. For the three years we lived in the faculty rental house, there seemed no point, bar placing the odd pot of herbs. Now we have Land. Not much, certainly, but our own: our outdoor domain extends to an L-shaped plot about 15 feet by 8 feet in the back, and a scruffy patch of lawn, slightly bigger, with two borders for flowers, in the front.

For Mother's Day(second Sunday in May, in North America) I asked husband and children to accompany me to the Evergreen Brickworks Garden Market, in the Don River valley, a community-based enterprise that specializes in native and low-maintenance plants. The 'low-maintenance' part especially appealed to me. We acquired a trillium-- the state flower of Ontario-- along with a dwarf cherry tree, some grasses, a raspberry, meadowsweet, thyme, and a number of other plants whose names escape me. Everyone got to choose something. After a hot drink and a wander in the grounds of the Brickworks, we came home and worked together, in amicable cooperation, whistling happy tunes, for five hours. I lie, of course. But the point is we did work hard, digging, weeding, preventing attempts at escape by children and pets, planting, hauling the dog back from next-door. Five hours times five of us. That's 25 human-hours, right? Well, here is the 'before' picture of the back yard:

And here is the 'after':

Five hours. Times five. Disappointing, to say the least. We have much to learn, Kimo Sabe, about gardening in Toronto.


Locals have been helpful, though. I met a neighbour from the street behind ours, a 'lane-mate' (their house backs onto the same alleyway as ours). She offered advice about starting plants indoors, because the gardening season is so short, especially in years like this one with a never-ending winter, and about where to get plants, for instance at nearby Christie Pits Park, next weekend:

http://torontobotanicalgarden.ca/event/north-american-native-plant-societys-native-plant-sale-in-christie-pits/

This particular neighbour, Jessica, popped round Sunday morning to tell my daughter and her friends that the mouse had died. This pronouncement luckily did not have the same import as saying that the rabbit had died (children, long ago, that's how a pregnancy was determined) but was nonetheless news of some moment. Jessica, along with her small son and my daughter and her friends, had on Saturday tended to an injured rodent in the park across the street. They fed it Doritos, and in fact named it Dorito (alternatively 'Daphne' if it proved to be female). They made a nest (more of a hospice) from a discarded blanket before being called home to dinner. The kids were prepared for the mouse's demise, and philosophical about it. Perhaps morbidly, they were actually fairly excited about the prospect of a funeral. Before even eating breakfast the next morning, they were all out of the house and following Jessica across the street. I brought up the rear, and a shovel. The memorial was lovely, the headstone (which they had prepared the day before) ever so tasteful.

Requiem for a mouse:

Once we had a chance to chat, I asked Jessica about herself and what she did. She provided one of the more surprising answers I've heard: 'I write books on genocide.' And so she does:

https://www.kirkusreviews.com/author/jessica-dee-humphreys/

The book is written in concert with a Canadian general called Romeo Dallaire, who is apparently well-known in Canada, though not (yet) to me, about the atrocities in Rwanda.

We live in such a wonderful and interesting neighbourhood. Not, I hasten to add, that genocide is wonderful and interesting, but to have neighbours who care enough to write about it certainly is. I am growing to appreciate Harbord Village more and more, especially now that the streets and paths have thawed and I can actually chat with its denizens, who seem to have blossomed with the appearance of sunshine, much as I hope our garden will do.

Our trillium:

Chuffed

'Chuffed' is such a great BrE word. It makes the list of vocabulary I try to promulgate on this side of the Atlantic (along with 'loo' and 'queue').

And it describes exactly how I felt when I had a short story published in the Toronto Star last week!

http://www.thestar.com/news/insight/2014/05/02/star_short_story_contest_2nd_place_laughing_tiger.html

Whimsy

Dorothy Sayers chose the perfect name for her ultra-English aristocrat detective, Lord Peter Wimsey. There is a particular British talent for inserting the whimsical into the mundane, or even the serious. It's hard to pinpoint its absence, but completely recognizable when it appears, as at St. Pancras station last week, where pianos were tethered at intervals and music spontaneously erupted.

Almost a passport

I visited England last week after my longest absence since moving there 20 years ago. My last trip was during the summer of 2012, for the Olympics.

Nearly two years. I was homesick.

A combination of work and pleasure got me across the Atlantic, at last, the timing arranged so I could attend a particular meeting in Cambridge. To get there on time, I had to arrive a day early, giving me from mid-morning til evening on Thursday all on my lonely own in London. That never happened when I actually lived in the U.K. I went sightseeing! First stop after landing was the Dulwich Picture Gallery to see an exhibit of David Hockney's amazing prints. Some of them I had viewed at Saltaire many years ago, but most were completely new to me, and the curation, which included stories surrounding the prints, could fairly be described as gripping. The gallery itself, which somehow I had not visited before, is a gem. I arrived with my little wheeled suitcase in tow, hoping it would be allowed in the cloakroom. Instead the cheerful fellow at the entrance said, 'Just leave it with us. We'll stick it behind the desk. No worries.' How is it possible that I had never been to this gallery? Dulwich itself was a posh surprise, a short ride from Victoria and so utterly different. A friend tells me that someone he knows asks people whether they prefer their coffee 'Brixton', 'Herne Hill', or 'Dulwich', the names of the three stops on Southeast Rail, to gauge the quantity of milk to add. The main colouring I noticed in Dulwich was green. It is the exemplar of 'leafy suburb'.

After Dulwich I made my way to the British Library, another institution I'd neglected to make time for when I lived in the country. What a shame. I'm now the proud possessor of a Reader's Pass, having acquitted myself well enough at the interview and having remembered to bring a proof of address. It is almost as good as the British passport I neglected to acquire during my 17 years in the country (to my husband's ire). The pass admitted me to the Reading Room, where I had reserved a book I wanted that is not held in Toronto's library, but even someone without a pass is welcome to visit the building, to sit in one of the cafes, or to gaze upon Jane Austen's tiny writing desk and her itsy-bitsy spectacles, or to look at one of the the original Magna Cartas.

An evening with the in-laws, followed by a day in Cambridge with colleagues, and then I took the train north. I had made use of my no-longer-resident status to purchase a BritRail pass, a most marvelous invention for those of us who are merely touring Britain. For a set amount of money, depending on length of stay and travel habits, one is allowed on any train, any time. Remembering the days of having to go to the station days in advance to purchase an affordable, unalterable ticket, in order not to pay unholy amounts of money, I felt like royalty simply stepping on to any old train, even during rush hour. True, I had to stand for the occasional stretch, but never more than one station stop. Joy.

The trip from Cambridge to York (via Peterborough, of course) was so hauntingly familiar that it made my throat ache. Not beautiful, not at all, but so particularly English: sheep grazing in grassy fields tucked up against a cement factory on one side and a housing estate on another, like a jigsaw puzzle perfectly cut and reassembled. During the decade I lived in Durham I found the journey frustrating, so near to to loveliness and yet escaping it by an ill-placed power station or a industrial park, but now I drink it in, the accommodation of the British sensibility to necessity. Why should people in houses want only to see other houses? Why not a factory, or cows chewing cud?

Maybe, like Dorothy in Oz, you have to leave a place in order fully to appreciate it. Or I do, anyway.