Back in the Annex

We have been back in the city for the past ten day. It feels very like a prolonged stop-over, however, as in a couple of weeks we will be off again -- to Puerto Vallarta for the duration of the winter. Last week was particularly intense: people to see, stuff to sort, and, it was the yearly Holocaust Memorial Week, or, Holocaust Education Week. I was able to attend four of the presentations as well as the class that I am auditing at U of T about the holocaust taught by Doris Bergen. It was an amazing experience to be, as it were, embedded daily in the experiences and questioning of this sector with not just some of Toronto’s Jewish people, but of scholars from places around the world. The over-arching theme of this year’s presentations was the question of collaboration, trying to elucidate more subtle distinctions between people who co-operated in some fashion with the Nazi regime in order to save their lives, and, people who collaborated actively out of hatreds of their own and/or for gain of some nature. Needless to say this is a vast but important topic, one that I made a few attempts earlier this week to write about. At the moment, however, my mind seems to be scattered into so many fragments that any organized thought eludes me. Perhaps once we are settled in Puerto Vallarta I will be able to write about the Holocaust Week presentations and things I learned from them.

In the next couple of weeks I must follow up all of the details that need to be addressed to put our place in order before we leave, to see those with whom we wish to visit, and, to ready the varieties of stuff that we will cart along with us to the south and sunny clime. One of the big decisions I have to make relates to what books I will take along. I’d like to be able to import my entire library but Air Canada has definite limits on the weight one’s baggage can total! We will be away for four months so I have to be certain that the things I select are the ones focussed on issues I especially want to think about. Well, I know that certainty isn’t possible. Who knows what directions one’s mind might take under different circumstances? Oh the problems that life presents one! Believe me, I am aware of what a fortunate person I am to even have such a conundrum.

In the meantime life goes on here in Toronto. Mark is very busy with a lot of new projects that have been coming in. He works with two other architects in an associate fashion. He takes care of certain aspects of projects and they do the rest. Even when we are away he is able to carry on in this capacity as so much of his work is done on the internet and by phone. This week I have been freer than last and am getting to some little nitty gritty details like sorting out the payment of utility bills for this place. The people who live downstairs will pay them while we are away and we’ll have a reckoning when we return. I have to meet with our wild and wonderful landlady to sort out some of the expenses that we have incurred since we moved here in March that are actually her responsibilities.

I should mention that it seems we are in the process of selling our long-on-the-market condo in Orillia. Our fine real estate agent, Bill Shaw and his wife have made us an offer we couldn’t refuse – in fact, we would not have refused just about any offer. I am so happy that this will soon be history. We had a tenant in the condo for the past year but she has moved on. Trailing the various expenses for this place behind us was not a feature I relished. The conditions to move the sale forward should be finalized in a week or so and the sale itself should go through in late December or early January. We purchased our cottage in Orillia 16 years ago right after Theo was born. We had a great time there on weekends especially when the kids were young and were with us a lot. When we sold the cottage and bought the condo five years ago, we had different kinds of experiences of the city and with the kids. Over a year ago we gave up the routine of being half of the week in Toronto and half in Orillia – mainly, I would say, at my instigation. Mark is more attached than I am to the place. Well, now we seem to have another routine: winter in PV and spring, summer, and fall in the wonderful Annex.

I’d like to write about one other experience from last week: on Saturday Mark and I attended, together with a host of other people, the funeral of Eudora (Docie) Pendergrast at the Church of the Redeemer on Bloor at Avenue Rd. We met John and Docie soon after we moved to Walmer Rd in 1993. They were founding members of what we came to call the Walmer Rd Book Club, established a couple of years later, and remained a part of it until the past few months when Docie’s health kept her from joining us. Docie’s cancer was a particularly aggressive kind: she entered the hospital to undergo surgery but in fact succumbed within what seemed like just a few weeks to her illness. The service at the Church of the Redeemer was beautifully planned by John and their sons, Edward and Jacob. It was a rarely seen mixture of liturgy, gorgeous music, and loving remembrance, truly the loveliest, most moving funeral I have ever attended.

In the afternoon the family threw a party to celebrate Docie’s life. It was held at the Gardiner Museum, a tribute to Docie’s work in pottery. The room was filled with people from varied corners of Docie’s life – meeting and greeting one another, looking at the photos from her history that were arranged about the room as well as on slides on a screen at the front. A period was set aside for those who wished, to come forward and speak of their connections with Docie and the things she had meant to them. It is amazing the things one learns or only begins to appreciate about a person at their funeral. It was a privilege to be a part of this group of people and to experience their varied testimonies. Docie and I spared more than once over the years about directions our book club was taking. Her propensity to take issues and people on was reflected by more than one of the speakers. Docie was a strong, multi-faceted, interesting, and committed woman whom we will miss.

Life at Sea

This is day five of our six days at sea. On Monday AM we will disembark at Fort Lauderdale, go through the dreaded US customs, sit around at the airport, hop up to New York, catch another flight, and, touchdown in TO around 8 PM. A regular travel day. The days at sea have been quite wonderful, not in any way boring. We have settled into a fairly regular routine of breakfast, exercise (Mark at the gym and me on the promenade deck), lunch usually on the 9^th floor at the Lido, either in the dining room there or out by the large pool area at tables set about the perimeter. The choices of lunch are varied and very good, including one spot that serves excellent hamburgers in all of the variations found in a gourmet joint – including tasty fries. In the afternoon there is time to be lulled into a lovely nap as the ocean continues its gentle rocking motion. We usually have dinner in the main dining room, sitting with a variety of people: quite a few Americans, some Canadians, some Aussies, and a few people from Germany or elsewhere. 

Throughout the day and the evening there are lots of things to do on board. Mark has attended classes related to Windows8 and to learn about the navigational systems on board. We have been to some lectures on The Punic Wars, the rise and fall of Julius Caesar, and this morning there is one about the history of Spain. There have also been lecture series on astronomy and about the ocean. There is a large library on board from which one can check out books and magazines, or, simply sit about in comfortable chairs and read, play checkers, and surf the internet. There are daily digests of news available from the International New York Times, and the Canadian, German, and Australian press. A movie theatre presents films every day – even giving out popcorn! Our in-room TV set gives us BBC World news as well as several other news channels, several films each day, and, at the front desk one can requisition a DVD from a library of over 1000 titles. It would take awhile to enumerate all of the other possible activities on board – suffice it to say that it would take a lot of doing to be bored here. Mark and I also read a great deal and get about the ship as we desire.

Dining with a variety of people certainly beats the arrangement on many cruise ships whereby, if you wish to dine in the formal location, you are assigned to a table, and thus its other occupants for the duration. This, I have found, is not a great plan. Conversation, unless you are incomparably lucky enough to draw really interesting people, tends to pale after one or two nights of chat. On other cruises I would usually vary my eating arrangements by ordering in to our cabin or by eating in the more casual Lido. You are probably rolling your eyes about now just contemplating the incredible sense of entitlement that one must have to make complaints about the company while on a fairly luxurious cruise. I can’t help it. Conversation is way up there on the scale of importance for me if I have to spend time with people. Chat is fine but it’s like an appetizer: if nothing substantial follows, it is inherently unsatisfying. I’d rather be reading a book – something worth thinking about can at least be found there.

Our dinner companions here have varied considerably, of course. Usually there is chat about where everyone is from and perhaps some general talk about the politics in that location, or other aspects of interest. We had fun one night with some folks (I seemed to have adopted that Americanism) from Florida. The two ladies were hilarious and one of the guys told some very funny stories about being in Germany on a business junket and having to down quantities of liquor clearly expected by his hosts. He and I went briefly head to head over the issue of the legalization of marijuana. In Florida the populous has roundly voted against the idea of legalizing it for medical purposes. I said a few things about the peculiarity of criminalizing a substance which is no more harmful than alcohol or tobacco, maintaining an aura of criminality in exactly the same manner that prohibition did in the early 20^th century. The gentleman strongly objected: marijuana is far worse – one joint is equal to a package of cigarettes because people hold it in their lungs, and, the big killer – it always leads to harder drugs. This has been proven, he declaimed. No, I said, this is simply not true. We eyed each other for a pregnant moment and then moved on. Interesting.

Last night I sat beside a fellow whom I believed, based on his accent, was from Australia. No, he is English, from the Midlands. It was a fairly agonizing hour and a half as the lad really enjoyed talking but his accent was almost impossible to understand. After several passes at, “Pardon,” or, “What was that?” I simply gave in to nodding and smiling and saying, “Umm.” I have no idea whatsoever what he was talking about. His wife who had a more easily discernible English accent was a breeze to talk with. Nice people but not easy company.

The night before we sat with other Americans – from close to Boston and some other place I can’t remember. A big topic on board is about the unfortunate migrants from various places in Africa who are desperately trying to reach Europe. A German lady had earlier bemoaned the manner in which Germany with the only truly vibrant economy in the Union seems always saddled with groups like that. The fellow who doesn’t want marijuana legalized had also said something about the Turks who moved to Germany and just wanted to be there without making any move to learn the language or integrate into the society. (This was another area of incipient dispute at our table.) At any rate, this topic came up again two nights ago with the American contingent. I said that the conditions that are leading to this massive migration are not going to abate. We live in a world now in which people all over the globe are aware of where conditions for human prosperity are terrible and where they are excellent or at least promising. Those of us living in good conditions show through our governments that we don’t want our lives interrupted by an enormous influx of desperate people. So we strive by various means to keep them out, even though we may recognize their suffering and deplore it.

I made the comment that there are simply too many people now on the planet. I’ve thought this for some time – not that I see any solution. It’s just part of my own view that we are going to hell in a hand basket. One of the women took strong umbrage to my statement. I never think that there are too many people, she said. There are many places on earth that are scarcely populated where people could be settled. Yes, I said, but are these places habitable and do they have the resources to allow people to prosper? No answer. The conversation moved on to lighter things.

So here’s what I think about all of this – stop reading now if you don’t want to hear it. If humans were essentially rational rather than just fairly superficially rational beings, solutions could be found. But reality shows us that rationality gives way at every turn to knee-jerk reactions, to fear, and to immediate gratification. A truly rational species would look at the world in which we now live and say: Guys, we are doing this all wrong. Let’s entirely stop all this showboating, competition, and war. Let’s put all of our very good intellects and all of the trillions of dollars that we currently spend on weaponry, etc, and focus instead on the development of infrastructure, agriculture, and the use of the current places on the globe that cannot sustain life. We could live in peace and develop long term planning to deal with generations to come. This unfortunately is not going to happen, though there are people who advocate such a future. We evolved from more primitive creatures and despite our more developed upper brains, we have not really gone far beyond our basic instincts.

OK, that’s it for today’s possibly depressing thoughts. I hope you all are well and enjoying the great lives that we fortunate creatures share. I’m not saying that sardonically. I just think that we have been given the lucky cards in the draw of where and when one could be born in this world. All the best!