Return to the Ridge

Being back at my grandparents house was an experience. It was as if I had been there yesterday. Their property sits on the Canadian Shield, which consists of cascading mossy rocks and sparse forests of birch, poplar, and conifers overlooking flatter lands of more traditional woods.

Because of a fire that ocurred about 100 years ago, the area is full of pioneering tree species, slowly being replaced by more long-lived variants. So it's not technically "old growth" but I would argue it counts as "undisturbed". Wildfires are a part of Ontario's climate, pioneering tree species are the natural recovery response, and the soils that had been worked over by old-growth conifers remained primed for their successors. The natural link to old growth remains intact.

It's almost impossible to capture the depth of the rolling ridge using a phone camera.

I could still remember the grooves in the rock that I used to walk. I found the old ceremonial site where my aunt practiced Wiccan rituals. Even after all these years it was fairly undisturbed. I think one of the stones in one of the piles was nudged over, but that was about the extent of it.

I found my old clubhouse

As kids, me and my brother wanted a tree house. None of the trees in the area were able to support one, so my grandpa created a little space in the back of the garage. I opened th door and found this old toy truck. I was too nervous to go in, partly because I didn't trust something that was built to support my weight as a child, and also because I thought it probable that something else had taken up residence in my absence.

This was my first time visiting in the Fall. As children, we would often come for Christmas and in the summer during blueberry season.

The Autumnal colours were somewhat muted, with more yellow than red appearing among the green. On the trip up, we went through really vibrant pockets, making me think that the climate getting colder as we travelled further North was causing an earlier change in season. But then it started getting greener again.

In the four days we were up, it did feel like Fall swept in properly

The house was pretty much the same as I remembered too. It was so close to how I remembered it that I could identify the small things that had changed.

I easily found my way to my favourite childhood books.

These had pictures of different North American species. Each colour was a different category, e.g. mammals, trees, birds. Part of the book was a list of names with pictures next to them and a code which you could use to find their specifics in the other part of the book. My favourite at the time was mammals, I guess because they were relateable. Nowadays I'm more of a tree guy. I would also watch out the living room window at the bird feeders and try to identify the species using these books.

There were also these,

This is a bad photo. For some reason, my phone camera wouldn't let me flip the image. I was trying for a horizontal shot but had to settle for this one with my shadow in the way.

Anyway, this is not an exhaustive list, but these were some of my favourite childhood books. The one at the top, No Fighting, No Biting is about an older cousin babysitting her two younger. When they won't stop quibbling, she opts to read them a story illustrating the trouble they might get into for their behaviour.

It teaches a lesson that at the time I found quite bleak, which I reflect on even as an adult. The story that the older cousin tells is about two young alligators that find themselves unable to reach their fishing spot due to a large log being in the way. An older, hungry alligator offers to carry them over it in his mouth. After some deliberation, the two children get wise to the predator's intentions and escape unharmed.

This alone was not too disturbing. I'd heard stories with villains before, and I knew about Stranger Danger. What really bothered me was later in the story, when the siblings encounter another obstacle and the same alligator shows up. The children take the initiative in saying they won't get in his mouth, but he isn't interested in that this time, and simply moves the obstacle from their way.

The children report to their mother this change in behaviour, who is quite unsurprised. Apparently the behaviour of this stranger, which oscillated between homicidal to helpful citizen, was not based on his virtue or lack thereof, but on his level of need. The alligator wasn't good or bad, he was hungry or not hungry.

If I were to be an obnoxious critic as an adult, I think the story didn't really require the book-within-a-book framing. I only remembered the story about the alligators, not the one about the human cousins.

On the bottom left of that book pile, you have Moomintroll. This one is a comic version, but they're also a series of novels that I read up North as well. They're about a group of not-humans and their various antics and interactions. My favourite character was Snuffkin, who was a nomadic fellow that believed all the Earth was his home. He played a harmonica, which is part of the reason why I tried to learn it in middle school. He's a quiet, reserved type that is still anti-establishment and has trouble following rules.

This series is actually pretty mainstream, and shows up in various incarnations over time. There is at least one television series based on it. I think Snuffkin is a fan favourite too. I wasn't special to hold that opinion.

It's hard to see, but on the top there is a fuzzy book called the Little Fur Family. It's basically about a boy roaming around, exploring the world around him and being fascinated by it. I think the tactile element of the book itself being furry really enamoured me as a child.

Finally, on the right is Eloise. It's about a girl that lives in a hotel, who's taken care of by a nanny, who doesn't go to school or have any peers. Instead, she's left to her own devices and crafts a routine using her vivid imagination. This mostly involves being a brat.

I don't know why I liked this book so much as a kid. Obviously it wasn't relateable at all. I think I was just fascinated by looking into the life of someone who was so different from me. I'd ask where her parents were, and  why staff would scold her one moment then be fond of her the next. Returning to it as an adult, it's obvious that Eloise is pretty emotionally neglected despite simultaneously being pampered.

I was reading this book later in the evening, thinking about the gulf of time that had passed, pondering a life unlived. This brought me to tears. Lee-Anne found me like this, and I offered to read her the book. She accepted, and through gentle sobs I read Eloise to her. 

She was polite enough not to remark on her distaste for the character, mistaking my emotional state to imply I had some resonance with the spoiled little rich girl. The most absurd book to cry while reading.

Traveling North

Me and Lee Anne took September 18th to the 24th off from work to visit my grandparents who live in Northern Ontario. Slightly awkward timing, because it ran from a Wednesday to a Tuesday. Not a clean week, but we had to do it that way because I was teaching Safe Managment on the Monday and Tuesday, and Lee-Anne couldn't get time past the 24th.

When I was a kid, we spent most of our Christmases and summers during blueberry season at my grandparents'. In adult life, visits became much more irregular. The last time I'd been up was so I could practice for my G2 driver's license with my grandfather. Well, I never got around to that, so I got to practice some more this time as well.

There used to be a train that went up there, but it was put on suspension, leaving a bus as the only option. For some reason, this proved to be a psychological deterrant and it was only after my mother and aunt visited a few months prior that it felt like a viable method.

I don't know why I let the bus scare me so much. I take public transit regularly, frequently using it to travel between cities. In one instance, I bused through Guelph, Toronto, Buffalo, Syracuse, New York and Washington DC. I got to watch the sun set and rise and move through countries. The Northland Bus should not have been so intimidating.

It did cross my mind that when my mom visited, her house burned down while she was away. So I hoped there wasn't some kind of curse that would make it happen again. The silver lining was that because she's living with us now due to the fallout of that event, we had someone to watch the cats. Even directly after learning about the fire, I grimly mentioned that.

I associate these smaller, Northern communities as being less modern, like a step back in time. Due in part to size, as well as the fact it had been long enough that my memories were an actual step back in time. So it was kind of eerie to see that the go-to way of presenting bus fare was by showing tickets presented on smartphones. Last time I was up, I didn't even have a cell phone. They existed back then, but it wasn't as weird not to have one. It doesn't feel that long ago that I was taking the Greyhound bus between Kitchener and Guelph, and I always used a paper ticket bought in-person. I had the option of buying and printing at home, but I was never that organized.

Also, it's a weird sensation seeing that all these little settlements have been pretty thoroughly mapped out by Pokemon Go. I got my platinum badge for unique Pokestops it was so extensive. I couldn't even win a Pokemon Showcase it was so active. I like that an effort has been made to make sure people in these more remote locations can play, but the game feels at odds with my experience of this region. The North Bay bus terminal was a Pokemon gym, and the community is still so enduringly disappointed with the suspension of their train service that its description complains about it.

We had a layover there and stopped in the mall next door. I was wondering if it would be a cultural experience, but pretty well every store was something I could find at home. Food court had A&W, Orange Julious, Dairy Queen, and Tim Horton's. There was a Roots clothing outlet. The jewellery was Michael Hill. There was a Carter's Babies and Kids. They had a Best Buy and a Wal Mart. I may as well have been in Kitchener.

Overall the trip was about 9 hours over 2 buses. Not too much worse than going by car as I remembered it. We cut time off though, by staying at Lee-Anne's parents place the night before.

First Anniversary

September 16th was mine and Lee-Anne’s first anniversary. We rented a hotel room in St Jacob’s for a weekend, which is a small settlement basically attached to Waterloo. Not very far from home, but still kind of nice to have a change of scenery.

Our room had two framed pictures of birches.

It seems to me that artists love these trees specifically. I can think of a handful of pieces hanging in the homes of various people I know. We even have one in our house.

It's the sole survivor of my "buy nice looking things from the thrift store and throw them on the wall" era. Lee-Anne did away with everything else from that time. You might notice it's not hung up right now. Almost all our decorations at this point have some form of sentimental value, but the birches keep hanging in. Even though we don't have a use for them, they're just a little too nice to get rid of.

We recently came back from my grandparents and they definitely had at least one example of birch art. I'll be writing more about that experience in consecutive updates.

These trees also seem to pop up frequently in events hosting local artists. Maybe it’s because the black and white scarring on the bark is high contrast and can pair with a variety of background colours. 

Looking it up, their prevalence in art appears to not be a common observation. I think it might be a region-specific thing, with birch trees making more frequent appearances in Canadian works because they’re more common in Northern climates. Apparently Russians like them too, which tracks with this theory.

Saturday morning we went to the St Jacob’s farmer’s market. Being closer to the country makes it convenient for local agriculturalists. We got  sweet potatoes and zucchinis from someone yelling that the latter was “good for your weenie”. That’s not why we got them. I’ve since wondered what she meant by that. I have a few guesses.

We got Brussels sprouts, green beans, and some oddly coloured bell peppers. I’m used to seeing green, red, yellow, and orange. This was the first time I’d seen purple. We later learned that they may have been that colour because they were so close to turning bad. Even the very next day they seemed over-ripe.

We later cut them up to bring as snacks for our trip up North but wound up leaving them at Lee-Anne's parents' place, which we used as an intermediary step. I will never know what a purple bell pepper tastes like.

At the market, we also found oddly coloured carrots. These would hold their integrity better and were exciting for Lee-Anne because she’d been wanting to find red ones ever since they were served at my cousin’s birthday party. She believes they have a different taste, but I can’t tell the difference.

We stopped by an African artist and bought a couple of spoons with handles fashioned after giraffes.

It just seemed like a good idea to get something non-consumable to commemorate our first anniversary, and Lee-Anne likes giraffes.

The Shea Butter Man was there. He used to own a shop in Guelph but mostly does markets now. We were already stocked up and couldn’t justify a top-up, though.

For lunch, we had empanadas, churros, and strawberry lemonade.

I always forget how good fresh lemonade is.

I knew one of the buskers and we got to catch up. It was someone that has used our services before, who inspired one of our key phrases, who’s been in the newspaper multiple times for his music, and has toured cross-country with his band. After we left, Lee-Anne said that I always get star-struck when I meet people that I used to work with. I countered that this person is a legitimate star.

Apparently there's a tradition of celebrating with a different material each year of marriage, and for the first its paper. We didn't plan anything for it, but Lee-Anne got a paper bill in change which we're counting as fulfilling the ritual. For those that don't know, Canada stopped producing paper bills in favour of plastic some years ago. The paper ones are still in circulation but are increasingly rare, making it exciting whenever you come acrosss one.

We followed the tradition of preserving part of our wedding's key dessert to eat on the first anniversary. For most people it's a cake, but for us it was a tart tray. When we got back home, we pulled them out.

I took this pic after Lee-Anne had already eaten one of the blueberries. They were freezer burnt something mean. There was no fruit flavour coming through at all, and somehow the crust tasted raw. There may have been a better way to preserve them. We both managed to eat one of each, purely for ceremonial purposes.

Neurology Update

 In my last update, I forgot to mention why I felt inspired to try and make the purple tie-dye shirt. 

Lee-Anne had an appointment with her neurologist. It was going to be the one where we talked about treatment options for her epilepsy. However, before it happened my family in Guelph's house burned down.

So we were at Wal Mart buying an air mattress for my brother when we came across a single purple shirt in my size. Being the colour for Epilepsy Awareness Day, this felt notable. I'd searched high and low for one, eventually being reduced to dying my own.

Even though the meeting wouldn't be on the day, I took it as a sign to wear the shirt for the appointment. This sense of fate was reinforced when three of my coworkers and a bunch of members were wearing purple. It was unusual enough that people were remarking on it even though they didn't have context. When I told them, everyone was very enthusiastic and we took a picture.

It was my second time wearing my shirt, and for one of my coworkers, it the first time she'd worn hers. Despite this eery coincidence, the appointment would not be as eventful as hoped. 

Originally it was supposed to happen four to six weeks after her examination. They did meet with us on that timeline and I'd gone as far as to take the day off work to go to Toronto with her. But the neurosugeon had nothing to say because they hadn't received the report of her brain activity yet.

When they got the data, they still needed a panel of specialists to have a discussion on treatment options. We received a copy of the report and I've blogged about it. The main takeaway was that her seizures were coming from a spot a little deeper in the brain than we thought.

So they had their panel, and then we needed to have a meeting with her neurologist to discuss the report. This brings us to the appointment relevent to this post, the one I'd bought the purple shirt for.

He mostly told us what we already knew, that the data showed her seizures were in the insula, not the left temporal lobe like they originally thought. As we suspected, this invalidated her from traditional surgery. However, he did offer a more modern option, in which the procedure is done by laser. Instead of opening the skull, the part of the brain where the seizures are formed is targeted and burned off. It's between that and installing a magnet in the back of the neck, which was the only alternate solution we'd known about beforehand.

But the neurologist wasn't able to move things forward, and said the next step would be to talk to a neurosurgeon. This is frustrating because we already talked to one four weeks after her observation. We're at 19 weeks as of the neurologist's appointment. We'd thought this would be the one where we'd learn definitively what our choices are. It will likely take another three to four months before we can see the neurosurgeon again. If all goes well, I think we'd need time to consider options after having them proposed, and then there would be a wait to have whatever treatment option we chose implemented. I can't see this going faster than another nine months.

So despite the timely discovery of a purple shirt in my size and the positive omen of people at work coincidentally wearing the same colour, the meeting didn't amount to much.

All this to say, it reminded me that I got a ti-dye kit for Epilepsy Awareness Day. I never used it because I wound up making a solid purple shirt instead. Which lead to the theme of my last post.

Sorry for the shaggy dog story. I didn't know how to include all this in a way that flowed with my previous topic, so I just shared tie-dye pics.

As an aside, tomorrow is mine and Lee-Anne's first year anniversary.

Tie Dye

I've been talking so much about fire lately. This time, let's talk about water.

Back when I was trying and failing to find a purple shirt for Epilepsy Awareness Day, I remembered that tie dye was an option. It was the other side of summer though, and not quite in season. I found it difficult to find a kit sold anywhere, but finally found what I needed at an arts and crafts store. I didn't remember how tie dye works and thought the kit was suspiciously light, so I grabbed a bottle of standard dye as a backup plan.

I needn't have worried, the product was fine. I still wound up going for a solid purple shirt. This left me with the tie dye to use at my leisure, and I just got around to trying it recently.

This was my first attempt. I made a swirl in the centre of the shirt and then separated the colours into quadrants. I used blue, orange, purple, and yellow-green. The idea was to have contrasting colours touching and swirling out. It kind of worked, but the yellow-green is almost solely on the back. I wanted the purple to have some prominence to allude to my original intentions, but from the front it only really shows on my shoulder. It wouldn't work as an Epilepsy Awareness Day shirt.

I went for horizontal bands with a colour gradient on this one. Purple in the centre with two shades of blue, starting dark and turning light. Last one was supposed to contrast while this was all cool colours.

This was just a scattershot mish-mash of the remaining colours, since I didn't want to waste the unused dye.  I hadn't bothered to dampen the cloth unlike the other two, so the dye slid around instead of simply absorbing. Frustratingly, I think this one looks better than the other two.

Since I didn't think any of the shirts I made showcased purple enough to wear on Epilepsy Awareness Day, I came back and dedicated a whole shirt to it. I made two swirls on opposite sides, and used two shades moving from darker at the centre and turning lighter. I fell into the trap of not wanting to waste the leftover dye and dumped a bunch of it into the empty spaces, making one of the shoulder maybe a little too dark. Otherwise pretty happy with it, and I think I've got something to wear next year.

Tabby, Cow, Tuxedo, and Cast Iron

My brother has chosen to stay with his partner for some time to collect himself after the fire on Grange. This means that no one has to sleep in the living room, and I can drink my coffee on the couch with the lights on instead of going back to bed and drinking it in the dark so as not to wake Lee-Anne.

This might not decrease the amount of living beings in the apartment as much as you'd think though. This is because outside of the humans, we've also brought in these guys. 

Castor (colour of cast iron) and Pollux (rhymes with tux)!

The added complication being that we already had these guys.

Kieran the tabby and Finn the cowcat!

Before I go on, I'd like to point out that we are still within the legal parameters of Kitchener, which states a limit of any combination of five cats, dogs, ferrets, and rabbits. I kind of get rabbits, but I don't know why ferrets are listed as equivalent to dogs and cats. Also, could we have ten iguanas if we felt like it?

When we first got  Kieran and Finn, introductions went as smoothely as possible. I'd been through seeing one of our first cats, Penny, try to maul a kitten Blackavar on sight. When we got Thor and Luna, things were tense between them even though they were coming from the same household. In each case, things smoothed out over a period of time, separating them in different sections of the apartment, rotating them so they got used to the other's scent.

When we brought Finn home as a kitten, we let Kieran sniff him through the carrier and neither seemed upset. We tried presenting them to each other while holding them and they were chill. We supervised them freely interacting and they just enjoyed playing with each other. We separated them at night in an abundance of caution, but the next day they were fine with each other and we didn't have to do it again.

It's not as simple as them being okay with other cats though. Every once in a while we'll hear Kieran growling at the kitchen window and Finn will run away. This is usually because an outdoor cat has come into the backyard. So I wondered if they would react the way they did with each other, or if it would be more like the strangers in the window.

Finn is actually the genetic brothers of Castor and Pollux, albeit from different litters. They're the descendants of a barn cat owned by Lee-Anne's sister-in-law. So I wondered if there would be some kind of instinctual familiarity that would create a calming effect.

Castor and Pollux came in carriers, so we let Kieran and Finn sniff them through the bars. The same first step we gave last time. Kieran was cautious while Finn didn't act as dramatically as he does around outdoor cats, but he hunched down and low growled. So we decided to separate him and let the other three try interacting on their own.

 

Kieran didn't verbalize discomfort but he sort of shrank away. I felt bad because he didn't have his pal to support him, while the other two had each other. Pollux kind of postured like a tough guy while Castor was pretty chill.

On continued attempts at introductions, a bit of a dynamic formed. Pollux would shy away from Finn's growling, but Castor would run up and stop just short, then stalk away, try to sneak up and do the same thing again. I kind of wondered if it was bullying behaviour.

They joined forces to pop the air mattress at their first opportunity though. We had to replace it with a foam one. Four cats can be quite destructive.

We salvaged the Grange Street cat tree. It wasn't in the hallway long but the two that were familiar with it were eager to have it back, and the ones unfamiliar recognized its quality right away.

It was only a few days before Finn could be with the new cats without crouching and low growing. He continued to be a bit tense and Castor kept trying to interact with him, sometimes teasingly.

Eventually he relaxed and their dynamic became more equitable.

Pollux is the most athletic of the four. He can get into every windowsill except the one in the office, so I've had to move my succulent there. Finn's always been the resident climber, and ever since he's seen Pollux at work, he's been motivated to try more challenging jumps. Castor tries, but often finds himself barely catching ledges with his front paws and scrabbling to get up. Sometimes he succeeds, sometimes he doesn't. Kieran joins sometimes, but he's the least motivated.

Throughout my life, I've usually lived with two cats. The most was three, between Blackavar, Thor, and Luna. Four seems pretty crazy, but life circumstances require flexibility and for what it's worth, it's working out.

Recovered Items

Last Sunday we finished moving my family out of the remains of their old home. The house had been padlocked shut and there was a guard stationed there to hand over a key for it on request. Boring job I imagine.

One of my coworkers helped ferry a load over on Friday, we had some help from neighbours on Sunday, and a friend of the family helped us on all three days. They were able to move everything that they'd listed as important, most of it going into a storage unit. 

My coworkers made us some meals to relieve the stress of making dinner when more pressing issues are at hand. As of now we've been gifted a chicken, broccoli and rice casserole, a tray of homemade mac and cheese, fusilli bolognese with garlic bread, and shepherd's pie. 

My brother also received a significant amount in donations to help replace what couldn't be moved. Lots of people we knew gave, as well as a lot of people whose names none of us recognized. My brother's friends reached out to their broader network and someone I know forwarded our story, so maybe we micro-trended.

Apparently the storage place they used has a pet cat named Cherry.

We didn't see her but we did see a cat house with a litter box. Looks like a situation where they took in a stray figuring that the unorthodox housing is still preferable to living on the street. After the reception I got when I published skepticism about Brandy, the Dementia Floor Cat, I'll refrain from complaining too much.  I just wonder how they ensure Cherry doesn't get trapped in a storage unit... 

I took a pic of their 14 years of accumulation compacted but I don't think I'll put it here, just in case there's something sensitive visible that I failed to notice. Instead, I'll just show my own belongings that I recovered from the house.

I wasn't the first to spot this. My mom showed me two figures like this and asked if I wanted to keep them. I don't think I ever would have missed them or thought of them again. At the same time, I instantly recognized them and knew that one was mine and one my brother's. My mom asked if that meant I didn't want them, and I impulsively said I wanted the one that belonged to me. My brother individually took his figure from the house as well, so they were both recovered.

I don't remember the name of the series they came from. I remember early Internet Flash videos featuring them. I think my character was supposed to be stoic. The orb in his chest spins.

Here is a DVD of Mr. T's short-lived reality TV show, I Pity The Fool. I took a youth self-development program where a lot of love was shown for Mr. T and we watched a few episodes of this, leading me to get my own copy. If I recall, Mr. T basically shows up on request to mend damaged relationships, be they between parents and children, coworkers or anyone. He mostly does this by making them do team-building exercises.

I also have Attack of the Gryphon. I got this with my dad at a DVD store in my early twenties. Of course, the reason we got it was because my name is Gryphon. If I recall, it's a low budget film about a villain who acquires a magical pike with the power to summon a gryphon that can level armies. I remember being disappointed that the gryphon itself didn't get much screentime.

One loss that we've seen in the age of streaming services is that these companies need to pay third parties continually for access to their content. If views dip beneath a certain point, it stops making sense to platform it. No one's going to pay for Attack of the Gryphon, and there's plenty of other niche, weird, hyper-specific content that has similarly fallen by the wayside. A DVD is a one-off fee and you can keep it until you break it.

I got the portrait paintings I made of the three of us. Guests to the house would often hone in on my self-portrait with its awkward expression. Weird to display something like that so proudly. Hey, at least it accurately portrays my character.

Here are a couple of early still life's that I did and gave to them. Later, I made another rendition of four peppers to keep at my own place. Bell pepper and bananas are two of my favourite foods to paint. I like their clean lines and grooves.

Here are a couple paintings I did in Guelph and just left behind. I'm not particularly proud of either of them. I failed to get the effect I was going for with the one on the left but my mom still liked it. The one on the right is of the batch of sunflowers I managed to grow the year I started dating Lee-Anne. It was the first time I'd managed to grow sunflowers at that location and took it as a symbol of good tidings for the relationship. Not knowing how to do bushes, I went for an impressionistic look that didn't really work. The paneling on the ground doesn't really give a sense of distance either.

These are paintings that my aunt made for my mom. I think Mom would have taken them, but I found them first. The one on the left is of their three previous cats, all now passed. The black cat is Thor, the brown one is Blackavar, and I'm not sure if the grey one is Cassidy or Luna. The painting on the right is pretty clearly a phoenix, but I can't speak to the inspiration behind it.

I got some of my Malian stuff. At the top is a hat that I bargained for from a merchant in Bamako near the end of my trip after my counterpart, Ousmane had returned to his home city of Segu. I got it with an elephant-print shirt and scarf. I've got that shirt framed in our bedroom alongside some others. It occurs to me that I must have lost the scarf, as it isn't here and I didn't recover it

The one on the bottom is a sand print. It depicts a worker tilling a field using a daba. He's wearing a conical hat like the one I was just talking about, and he's backed by cattle. I think the species name might be watuzi?

Last time I was in Guelph, I brought home a sand print of some elephants because their cats had knocked down the image of the worker and we couldn't find it. After I learned of the fire, I thought it was pretty remarkable that the elephant print managed to survive by such a slim margine. When we went back to the house I found the worker print wedged into the back of a couch. Because it uses sand and there was so much water damage, I thought the image would peal right off its frame. But it's relatively undamaged. I'm grateful, but I guess the symbolism behind the elephant print surviving is lost.

I also got the sand prints near the end of my journey. The merchant was taller than me, which wasn't common, and I remember him being very observational, soft-spoken and informative about his various works. He was the only person selling art in this format, so I don't know if it was his invention.

I got a bunch of books. We got to stack the local Little Library with the stuff we couldn't bring with us. I got a shot at the collection after Mom had taken her fill. I'll go through them here:

Shogun: As a teenager, I had a blog called Lair of the Rat Sage on Livejournal. At the time I was hyperfixated on books and most of my updates were reviews. I referred to my top picks as the Sage Awards. I can't decide how much I should be cringing at this recollection, but I think I should be at least a little bit. At any rate, Shogun was either a Sage Award or an honourable mention. Would be interesting to reread and see if it holds up.

It's a story about a fleet from England crashing into the coast of Japan. The pilot of the ship gets absorbed into the culture, learning their politics and working his way into the system. I think Clavell wrote six books in what is known as his Asian Saga. I've read Shogun and Tai-Pan which seem to be regarded as his best work, so I'm not really tempted to read the rest. The only one I'm a little interested in is King Rat because it's semi-autobiographical and the tone looks different than the others. The dude fell in love with Asia because he himself had been a prisoner of war. Would be interesting to learn how that happens.

The Little Prince: A Quebec classic about a little prince who loves a flower that he lives with on a tiny planet. One day, he gets lost in the galaxy and he needs to quest back to his home. The story teaches about how relationships and love are formed. This one isn't too personal to me, but it's a solid read.

Things Fall Apart: This might be the most globally recognized book about Africa written by an African novelist. It takes place in a location before Europeans drew national borders, but which would be seen as within modern-day Nigeria. I'd heard it compared to Heart of Darkness for it's take on colonization, so I remember being surprised that about two thirds of the book are not about that at all. Most of it is about the life of a man dealing with various trials working within traditional African systems, and then near-ish the end it addresses the process of colonization.

Segu: I've already mentioned the name of my counterpart from Canada World Youth's home city, and yes this book is named for it. I remember seeing it in a Value Village and being shocked. The story is about the adventures of various members of the Traore family. This held significance to me, as my host family in Mali were Traores.

There is a sequel called Children of Segu which I owned but couldn't find and so failed to recover. Over the two books, there are two characters named Ali Traore, which was my Malian name. The whole saga seemed weirdly applicable to me.

It's less well known but between it and Things Fall Apart, I think Segu is the superior piece of literature. It feels like you really get inside the heads of the various characters. You barely feel the presence of the author and instead it's like you're just living alongside the people in the book.

My Side of the Mountain: This was a childhood favourite of mine. It's about a kid that runs away from home and learns to live in the wilderness on his own. Maybe a slightly dangerous thing to teach children in retrospect. He carves out the log of a giant tree and lives in it, and he tames a hawk. At the time, it really made me feel like I could do anything if I put my mind to it. 

If elementary school me were handing out Sage Awards, this book would definitely have got one. I think it's a little light for reading as an adult but its probably still good. 

I remember it had at least one really disappointing sequel where I think his sister comes and lives with him. They get rid of the log and start living in a treehouse. It felt a little too built up, lost some of the appeal of the wilderness.

Black Like Me: This is a non-fiction account of a White man who undergoes a medical procedure to change his appearance to appear Black in segregationist America. It was a social experiment to see if one could succeed based on merit regardless of their race. His first goal was to see if he could land a job in his field with his own credentials, but it becomes more of an experiment to see if he can survive at all.

I've seen people in Black communities criticize White people for doing similar social experiments in the modern day, but the book still feels impactful.

Frankenstein: I've been on record saying that I think contemporary authors are generally better than classics. I stand by this, the reason being that there are just more people now, and more people with the resources to produce. Newer literature is also more relevant to current worldviews.

Frankenstein is an exception to the rule though. I really think it has stood the test of time. Apparently one of the inspirations for it was that electric technology was just beginning to get mainstream. There was a lot of existential dread about what it might eventually be able to do, similar to the effects that Generative AI is having on people right now. So Dr. Frankenstein learning to create some living aberration with the power of electricity was playing into a fear that people had of the future.

 I also think a lot of Russian classics hold their own in today's literary climate, by the way.

Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe: This one is kind of chick lit, but I really liked it. The story is divided between a modern-day woman with mental health struggles and the stories of an elderly woman that she visits. The Whistle Stop Cafe is the location that the elderly woman's stories revolve around.

I thought the writing had a similar quality to what I described in Segu. It feels like you're living alongside the characters, and you don't sense the author trying to guide circumstance toward any conclusions. Reading this, I first conceptualized the idea that there are characters that can have qualities that are likeable but not necessarily virtuaous, and that sometimes a bad person can do something good when an otherwise good person wouldn't. Basically, I learned character complexity.

I should mention that while I thought the story was in general quite good, there were things about the end that I found a little rough.

Most exciting though, is that this book has a list of recipes at the back for menu items sold at The Whistle Stop Cafe. I haven't been able to find them anywhere online so I'm happy to have found this copy.

One Hundred Years of Solitude: A book about a family in South America that spans 100 years. The story seems to break every literary rule. The names of all the characters are remixes of each other which is very confusing, the writing style is incredibly dry and it feels like there's no consistency about the rules of the world they live in. It's mostly realist, but wades into fantasy at strange and unpredictable intervals. It's incredibly difficult to read.

...But for some reason, I like it. After slogging through it, you reach the end and realize you're sad that it's over. You get invested in the story but you don't know why or how. I wrote a review of this book that I'm particularly fond of.

Hyperbole and a Half, and Solutions and Other Problems: Ali Brosch is a former blogger who wrote stories of her life interspersed with crude but expressive drawings. When I was doing graphic facilitation training, the person whose life I was illustrating said that my style reminded him of this woman's. If you're familiar with her material, you'd know that while at first glance that might seem like an insult, no one who knows her well enough to name would mean it as such. Despite being crude, her drawings capture emotion in a way that is unique and incredibly effective.

She dropped out of the public eye suddenly and without explanation. Then, just as out of the blue she published her first book, named after her blog. It's done in the same style and mostly covers her experience with depression. 

My mother holds this work in high regard and has recommended it to people. I think she would have rescued it if she'd seen it. I haven't read the sequel yet, which is the only piece that I went out of my way to grab that I can say that for.

I'm on record saying that it's more fun to do negative reviews than positive, but it's been cool to talk on here about some works that I appreciate. If I were going by my old system, all of these would at least be Honourable Mentions, with Segu being a Sage Award. Well, I'm not sure that My Side of the Mountain or Hyperbole and a Half would qualify as belonging to the same medium. Also, maybe The Little Prince might not make it, or Things Fall Apart. Maybe Black Like Me wouldn't age well.

Bah. I'm too negative, but for old time's sake I'm granting Segu a Sage Award, I'm letting Shogun retain one, and I'm giving Fried Green Tomatoes, Frankenstein, and One Hundred Years of Solitude Honourable Mentions. I didn't allow My Side of the Mountain or Hyperbole and a Half  to compete for being too different, but they deserve some kind of equivalent accolades. Screw it, give them Honourable Mentions too.