Comrade Doctor Firebird

hobbitbabe — Mon, 16 Jan 2017 06:20:52 GMT

www.cbc.ca/player/play/851189315962/

I'm an urban Albertan without rural roots in this province/region. I heard this song on The Irrelevant Show tonight and started laughing so hard I had to pull over on Sask Drive (riverfront boulevard of condo apartments with great views). ,

This entry was crossposted from my journal on Dreamwidth, at http://hobbitbabe.dreamwidth.org/1316282.html, where there are currently comments. Please feel free to comment either place!

The tragedy of Fanny Gabor, and theatrical asides.

hobbitbabe — Sun, 16 Sep 2012 17:07:43 GMT

I saw the musical Spring Awakening at the Fringe, and I liked it but found it depressing. Parts were compelling and parts sort of dragged. I also really liked some of the music. Since then I've been listening to the Broadway-version soundtrack and the music's really grown on me, and I've been hearing a lot about the show from my actor friend Jake who is very fond of it. So I guess I've changed my mind about not wanting to see it again.

Grant McEwan is going to be performing Spring Awakening at the end of October and first weekend of November. I'm going to go see it on the first Saturday in November, and it's general admission so if any of you locals wanted to join me, that would be fun.

Also, I'm going to see Next To Normal the weekend after that - that's the musical about the effects of mental illness on a family, which patgreene recommended last year.

----

In Spring Awakening, in the song "And Then There Were None", the despairing teenage character Moritz has written to his best friend's mother, asking her for help, specifically money to flee to America which he thinks is the only solution to his problems. The friend's mother, Fanny Gabor, responds to him in a spoken-word monologue, and he sings his anger and frustration about her answer, now seeing no way out except suicide.

The play is about the teenagers and their troubles. It's not about Fanny Gabor. But I keep thinking about her. She's only in a few scenes of the play, but you can see that she's a kind person who pays attention to her son and his friend, who respects them and wants the best for them. She won't give Moritz the money to escape, partly because she doesn't have it and partly because she doesn't think it's a good idea. She reassures him that she likes and respects him, she offers to intervene with his angry parents, she points out that lots of successful men had trouble in school, and she directly addresses his veiled hints of suicidal plans. She does exactly what I'd hope to do in that situation.

As far as I'm concerned, Fanny Gabor does everything right.

It's not enough.

And because the play isn't about her, we don't see any more about that, except that she's one of the people putting a flower on Moritz' grave in the next song. She goes on to worry about her own son, who's got himself in a different kind of mess, and nobody in the play has an unequivocally happy ending because it's not that kind of play.

The more I listen to the recording, the more Fanny Gabor reminds me of me, though. I like supporting and appreciating young people and like Fanny Gabor I'm flattered when they consider me a friend. And when they're in trouble, I worry about them and I do what I can to help them, and I try to make choices for that help that are balanced and appropriate.

Some of my friendships are more balanced and reciprocal than others. Some of the help I've provided has been rewarding for me. And sometimes I've been sad and angry to discover that the person is unwilling or unable to take my advice, or that the help provided isn't sufficient to enable the person to rescue himself or herself in the way I'd envisioned.

Fanny Gabor's story reminds me that those are the costs of being a compassionate person and an amateur helper. And her story also reminds me that maybe I've been lucky so far. I haven't yet encountered a situation where my help wasn't enough to deter someone from suicide. But I might. No matter how good I am at saying and doing the right things, that's not going to be within my control. And that would really suck.

All I can do is to be thoughtful about who I reach out to and what I do and say, to have realistic expectations of how I might make a difference for my friends, to let them know how I want them to treat me, and to take care of myself.

This entry was crossposted from my journal on Dreamwidth, at
http://hobbitbabe.dreamwidth.org/1154940.html, where there are currently comments.

Darmok and Jalad at Tumblanagra

hobbitbabe — Thu, 30 Aug 2012 23:00:43 GMT

There could be a web community where you couldn't write any original text. You could just communicate by posting a picture. It might be a picture of a celebrity or a cat or something else, but it can't be a picture you took yourself. And if the picture has some text written on it that's okay, but you can't write the text yourself.

And people would respond to it by posting other pictures as a sort of commentary.

I think it would be a hit.

This entry was crossposted from my journal on Dreamwidth, at
http://hobbitbabe.dreamwidth.org/1150794.html, where there are currently comments.

A hundred layers of memories

hobbitbabe — Sat, 16 Jun 2012 04:21:10 GMT

pegkerr just mentioned 100 Things: A blogging challenge. </lj>

This catches my imagination. So I will attempt to write 100 journal entries about things I remember. They won't be in order, but I'll try to cover all the eras and prevailing themes of my life so far. After this they'll probably all be friendslocked and some of them might be filtered. And they won't appear at regular intervals.

This entry was crossposted from my journal on Dreamwidth, at
http://hobbitbabe.dreamwidth.org/1128373.html, where there are currently comments.

Another disappointment of our electoral system and its current players

hobbitbabe — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 20:22:36 GMT

We currently have an appointed upper house. (Some people think that it would make sense to either abolish it or have elected senators.) The senators do useful work looking at bills in committee and having hearings and stuff, but they generally don't vote down legislation passed in the House of Commons and I think they aren't allowed to introduce bills.

The prime minister (the head of the leading party in the House of Commons) recommends senate appointments and the governor-general (the Queen's non-partisan delegate) signs them.

In the past, some prime ministers have recommended members of other parties for senate seats. But things are so adversarial these days, and votes in the House of Commons are so close, that I think there's no way either a Conservative or Liberal prime minister would risk a Senate appointment on an independent or opposition politician.

Which is a real pity. Because Peter Milliken, the longtime Liberal MP from Kingston and the Islands who is just retiring after many years as the Speaker of the House of Commons, would make a wonderful Senator. He's both funny and fussy, and he cares passionately about doing things right.

This entry was crossposted from my journal on Dreamwidth, at
http://hobbitbabe.dreamwidth.org/991176.html, where there are currently comments.

Impressions of north

hobbitbabe — Wed, 05 Jan 2011 23:50:48 GMT

I made this one a public entry on Dreamwidth because it was too much trouble to re-type everything into a poll format here.

View poll: northern resonances

This entry was crossposted from my journal on Dreamwidth, at
http://hobbitbabe.dreamwidth.org/967361.html, where there are currently comments.

Writer's Block: Torn between two lovers

hobbitbabe — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 00:25:48 GMT

Very well for years and years, although not for ever. It helped that they both fell in love with me, of course, and that they were already in love with each other.

hobbitbabe — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 03:23:18 GMT

It seems that I can post from my little green machine (couldn't log in to myTelus wireless router but fortuntely i m still running the old one.

Anyone still using an XO (from one laptop per child)?

hobbitbabe — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 01:31:57 GMT

I'm trying to use mine while my laptop is having problems. I managed to get on the Internet with my new wireless. I can browse webpages. But every site that requires login is telling me that the security certificate is too new!!

My ideas are, maybe this means I need to update the OS, or maybe chck a date setting. Unfortunately I can't figure out how to do either.

Another gadget

hobbitbabe — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 21:50:12 GMT

I am posting this from user's ipad! In toronto.

Writer's Block: I'll meet you down at the big yellow joint

hobbitbabe — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 21:43:02 GMT

Possibly it has something to do with a history of racism and classism in Canada and the USA?

Weird infuriating laptop problem

hobbitbabe — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 16:32:58 GMT

When I'm typing on this laptop (it is an Asus about six months old), unexpected things happen. Like suddenly a chunk of text will get highlighted and deleted, or the cursor will jump to earlier in the text.

It feels like this might be happening when I am typing on keys on the far right of the keyboard, and that it happens less often when I am concentrating on typing slowly. So I wonder if I am inadvertently hitting some power/command key or combination of keys, or whether I have something activated to make the regular keys do different things. But I can't even think what to look for.

I don't know if it is getting worse, or if it is just bothering me more than before.

Help!

This entry was crossposted from my journal on Dreamwidth, at
http://hobbitbabe.dreamwidth.org/907327.html, where there are currently comments.

hobbitbabe — Mon, 31 May 2010 12:27:45 GMT

Where is the thing on LJ for changing my friends' page back to displaying more than 10 entries at a time?

hobbitbabe — Fri, 28 May 2010 19:51:46 GMT

Can you sell gold teeth?

Does anyone have any idea if you can sell old fillings? We found some.

This entry was crossposted from my journal on Dreamwidth, at
http://hobbitbabe.dreamwidth.org/889679.html, where there are currently comments.

Writer's Block: Old enough!?!

hobbitbabe — Mon, 10 May 2010 04:18:03 GMT

I don't think there should be one fixed limit for all social networks and multi-player games. I think that parents should help young children who are interested enjoy age-appropriate spaces on line, and I think that social-networking forums should make available different types of accounts with different privileges, say one kind suitable for people under 12, and another kind suitable for 12-14 or so. It could still be Facebook, but with enhanced privacy defaults in both directions, no ads, and a block on using payments in games. Or it could still be Livejournal, just without profile information and with blocks on not-safe-for-kids content.

Writer's Block: Tolerance 101?

hobbitbabe — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 16:41:44 GMT

Dissent. How to and why to and historical examples and hands-on practice. (Although I think Heinlein already mentioned this one.)

Consensus and community-building. Along with the above, it would of course require much of the current tradition of school governance to be overturned. But I'm okay with that.

I also think that everyone should have the chance to study the following, but that very little should be mandatory.

One or more skilled trades.
How to cook.
Latin.
Languages spoken in the region.
Mathematics that isn't arithmetic.

hobbitbabe — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 04:51:14 GMT

This and other links provided by james_nicoll tell enough of what former MP Rahim Jaffer has been up to recently that one imagines that the full story would look like some Canadian version of The Wire and The Sopranos.

i think it is the weekend!!

hobbitbabe — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 21:16:24 GMT

As soon as I abandon this help session, where they have really run out of questions but are being conscientious/anxious second year students, I have *no student contact* for 4.5 days.

WHEEE.

Grocery shopping here I come!

Writer's Block: News development

hobbitbabe — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 03:39:35 GMT

And thanks to lindylousmith for pointing this one out.

First happy major news: Apollo space missions. Apollo 1 happened too early for me to be aware, but I remember Dad getting us out of bed and negotiating with mum to have meals in front of the tv, so we could watch spacewalks, lunar module docking, and moonwalks. Although I knew that women and Canadians could not be astronautse, I picked up my father's love of technology, future, and adventure, and that has shaped my worldview ever since.

First scary major news: The October Crisis in 1970, when the Front de libération du Québec kidnapped two officials and killed one of them. I remember some solemn talking-head speech on television, but I don't know if it was the FLQ manifesto or some response. But my clearer memory is of coming home from church with my mother, to Dad in his gold plaid Viyella dressing gown in front of the television saying that they had killed Pierre Laporte. I was old enough to have read some mystery-adventure stories with kidnappings in them, but I was completely shocked that kidnappers would kill someone. I could tell how important it was from my Dad's devastated face and slumped posture. It affected my worldview by showing me that sometimes things were too scary and sad for Dad, and that my picture of a happily bilingual modern Canada with Montreal the magic place of Expo 67 was incomplete and wrong.

[Looking it up today, I can see that Laporte's death was actually known on the Saturday - but not at our house. My parents didn't watch or listen to news during the day except sometimes in the car, and they must not have watched that night either.]

Writer's Block: Welcome to the mobile decade

hobbitbabe — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 18:49:30 GMT

The years of fears.

An internet quiz about Canada

hobbitbabe — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 01:19:37 GMT

From Test the Nation the CBC,

http://www.cbc.ca/testthenation/episodes/canada/

I got 36/50. (But my finger slipped on one, so I might have had 37.)

Writer's Block: Cold turkey tremors

hobbitbabe — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 18:53:45 GMT

Thanks to embryomystic who answered first - I never think of looking at these prompts by myself

Last year I was offline while on a prearranged ("all-inclusive resort") vacation in Cuba for seven days. I knew ahead of time that I wouldn't have access. I did look for internet access a couple of times, but didn't feel urgent about it and gave up after I'd extinguished my first two leads. I quite enjoyed the break, but of course fired up my email and browser on my telephone as soon as my plane landed. If I had wanted to make arrangements for later travels, I would have been more restless. I believe that was the longest I'd gone without net access since about 1992, and that includes sail cruising vacations.

I wonder how/whether it would be different if I had had travelling companions to amuse me.

Ice dancing rant

hobbitbabe — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 03:03:55 GMT

So while I'm knitting and procrastinating, I've got the Ice Dancing original dance segment running in the background. It seems that each pair is supposed to do a routine to "folk or country" rhythms.

The British pair did an "American country" dance, with parody-yokel Daisy/Bo Duke costumes, her in short cut-off denim shorts and a tied off plaid shirt, him in a cowboy hat, jeans, and plaid shirt. This struck me as a bit disrespectful from non-American skaters - like it might have been okay if it was arguably from their own culture, but not appropriate for people from another culture. The dance was sort of hoe-down-y, the kind of thing I'd find boring in a musical, with a cute ending.

The Italian pair did an Italian folk dance. I didn't know anything to object to.

Then a Russian pair did an "Aboriginal dance". Their costumes seemed to be leaves and war paint. I have no idea which kind of aboriginal they were supposed to be, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't Russian. And I can't really comment on the dance, I was so annoyed by the bizarre cultural misappropriation.

None of the commenters have said anything at all about this issue. Have you been watching? Do you think it's weird?

hobbitbabe — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 04:52:20 GMT

Is your LJ comment notification behaving the same as usual?

Mine used to show the person who made the comment in the part of the From line of the email that I could see. Like, for example,

From: "locketportrait - LJ Comment" <lj_notify@livejournal.com>

This made it easy to see if it was just a copy of my comment, or a new comment from someone else. But suddenly in the last couple of days it's just saying

From: lj_notify@livejournal.com

I don't like this.

Book preview

hobbitbabe — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 01:28:29 GMT

Jon Evans, The Night of Knives. Not published in North America, available from Amazon but not Chapters. Paperback, $23.00 as ordered through my local independent bookstore (Greenwoods).

Picked up book. Got back on bus. Missed fucking bus stop.