2022 Internal Monologue Roundup

This time of year wrap-up, best-of and top-ten lists are everywhere, tallying matters of importance from the past year. 

This is not one of those.

I keep a daily journal, comprised almost entirely of lists of things to do and random observations. 

Here's an incidental sampling of the latter: 

2 February

I’ve discovered a kind of Goodreads review where the writer writes a long, hostile treatise on a beloved work by an admired author. For example, I recently read a sarcastic treatment of Turtles all the Way Down, John Green’s popular young adult novel, ten years in print and soon to be a major motion picture. 

At an earlier point in my life I think I was this person – building myself up by pointing out the flaws in popular literature. If you can say something bad about someone famous, you are, in a way, more famous than them. At least in your own mind. 

20 March

I don’t learn from my own mistakes. How can you possibly expect me to learn from yours?

12 April 

I’m 65. If I'd felt at 25 the way I do now, I’d have called an ambulance. But, you adjust. 

14 April

I know the pandemic is over because I am showering every day, and no longer feel like it’s a good use of my time to spend the whole day looking at my iPad. 

17 April 

Room is the weirdest thing ever. It's a musical about the imprisonment and rape of a woman, who births a child in her rape chamber and uses the child as a way to manage her confinement. She teaches him that Room is his whole world. She makes sure he’s exercised and educated and entertained, while she is raped every other night for seven years. Just after the boy’s fifth birthday, she gets her son to pretend he's dead so he has to be taken away. Once escaped, the boy alerts the police who find and free the woman. Then the woman doesn’t know how to deal with how the world treats her story and her son longs to return to the simpler days of Room. She attempts suicide. He insists they go back to room so he can say goodbye.

And that’s the end. 

Room is a novel. And a movie. And now a stage play. Next, I guess, a ride at Disneyworld. 

11 May 

Got my 4th covid shot yesterday. I am so vaccinated it’s breathtaking. 

1 August

It seems the only reason people read the news anymore is so they can choose what to be outraged about.  

8 August 

Will venture out into the inferno in a couple of hours to donate blood. Haven’t done that in years (Donate blood I mean. I ventured out into the inferno as recently as yesterday.). Hope I don’t pass out in the street. 

29 September 

Bruce came home with a stranger’s wallet. He’d found it on the sidewalk at Prince Arthur and Avenue Road. Inside were a driver’s license, credit cards, health card, birth certificate. All the things you'd hate to lose. The owner lives in Moore Park, half an hour from here on foot. I walked up to her neck of the woods to return her wallet: my good deed for the day. There is no moral ambiguity in returning lost property. 

12 October 

One thing I’ll say about bureaucrats. They sure know how to fill out a form. 

Thanks for reading!

Happy New Year!

Karen

The Deadweight Loss of Christmas

Not very Christmas-y, I know, but the colours are merry.
Allan Gardens greenhouse, December 2018.

I first encountered economists in undergrad history courses; they explained everything from the perspective of the economy. So, the Industrial Revolution? The economy. The fall of Rome? The economy. 

I caught the gist early on and stopped paying attention.

Economists showed up again at law school with a twisted view of the world, which is to say, they professed that humans were rational decision makers, apparently not noting the irony of all the laws in place to keep these rational beings in line.

Later on in my career, any stab I took at making public policy always had economists lurking in the background, or, worse, standing in the foreground, telling me what to do.

All of these economists professed that they could predict human behaviour. And when humans didn't act as predicted, well, it was the humans who were in error, not the economists.

For example, Christmas. 

Joel Waldfogel is an economist who argues in his book Scroogenomics that purchasing gifts for other people is a "terrible way to allocate resources." He estimates worldwide that approximately $25 billion a year is misallocated in holiday spending. 

Everyone reading this knows what he's talking about. The candle you got last year that you put in the office Secret Santa this year, the bottle of port (ick) you got from your boss seven years ago that you haven't touched, the gift you spent ten hours shopping for, so your friend could look genuinely disappointed when they opened it. 

We don't need economists to tell us we're throwing good money out the window. Every year we do it anyway. 

Because, it wouldn't be Christmas, apparently, without a deadweight loss, or without economists telling us we're acting all wrong.

With all this in mind, here is my holiday wish for you: 

May you have an economically optimal Christmas so that all your gifts, both the ones you give and the ones you get, achieve maximum utility.

Thanks for reading!

Happy Holidays!!

Karen

Winter's just started,
squirrel's already done.

Get Back to Canada and Rob a Bank

Each year from 1998 to 2011, I made Christmas cards that featured our Jack Russell terrier Molly. After Molly went on to her next reward, I mailed mass-produced greetings, but I always wished for something more personal. I tried poetry and a fanciful list of twelve days of Christmas gifts. But, nothing felt quite as festive to me as photos of the dog. So, this year the tradition has been revived. Just about everyone who reads this blog is on my mailing list. If you're not, and you'd like to get one, send me an email with your mailing address.  

Our friends from Hamilton are visiting us this week and we want to take them to the Leonard Cohen show at the AGO. We needed to check it out just to make sure it was worth the trip. It is. There's lots for everyone to enjoy and I'm looking forward to going again. Among my favourites were his letters, especially the one above from March 1962. I know it's hard to read. These are the parts I like best: 

I miss everything that I love. I long for you and blind love ... I long for health in the sun, woods I know ... I long for ... the chaotic quarters of modern cities where the village persists ... I want to get back to Canada and rob a bank.

Speaking of banks, the week before last I complained to you all about my bad experience with my travel insurance company. Last week I recounted how I built a slow-moving animal to beguile the tedium of the slow-moving process of making my claim. This week, I got the cheque.

Victory.

Thanks for reading!

Have a wonderful Winter Solstice!

Karen

My Life on Hold

Today I read in the Toronto Star that "thousands of airline passengers may be entitled to a refund but the claims process is so onerous and time consuming, they eventually give up." So I know I'm not alone.

Still, after the response to last week's blog, I decided I was not going to let an onerous and time consuming process keep me from trying one more time to get paid $83.00 because Air Canada lost my bag.

But I wanted to make better use of the time I knew it would take.

So, this past week, as the "on hold" music played and a woman told me every 120 seconds that my call was important to her, I assembled my Low Poly Craft sloth, and waited for someone to answer. 

I wanted to be very certain that I understood which documents, exactly, I needed to send. I had the sloth's face and front legs assembled by the time an agent answered my call. She confirmed what I'd been told last week, that I needed to get a note from Air Canada saying that they hadn't paid me for my lost bag. "OK." I said. "How do I do that?" The agent couldn't say.

I had the sloth's torso completed by the time Air Canada customer service answered and told me how to request the desired document.

By the time I had the sloth all put together, I had everything I needed to complete my claim.

I have no idea if my claim will be honoured, but I did manage to get one thing done.

Thanks for reading!

Have a great week!

Karen

Six pieces of paper make a face.

How it looks inside.

Twenty First Century Customer Service -- Part III

Red Squirrel, Georgian Bay, September 2022

Readers may recall a highlight of our recent trip to Pittsburgh was Air Canada losing our luggage. 

We received it the next day, but we were out of pocket about $85.00 CAD for toiletries and other items. Our travel insurance policy included coverage up to $200 in the case of delayed luggage.

Once home, I filed the claim online, including receipts and other documents. That was the third week of October.

This past week, I received notice in the mail that the claim would not be paid, because of "missing documents." The notice did not say what documents were missing. The only way I could find that out was to call their hilariously named "customer service" line.

After an hour on hold, a person I could barely understand explained that along with the documents I had sent, there were several others I needed to provide that were not mentioned on the online claim form. For example, along with the receipts for the items purchased, I had to provide my credit card statement showing they had been charged to my account. The insurance company also wanted me to provide proof from Air Canada that they had not compensated me for my expenses. 

The last straw was the document from Air Canada. To get that, I would need to spend another hour or more on hold in the faint hope that Air Canada even knew what I was talking about.

By the time the "customer service" agent was done with me, I'd almost lost my will to live, let alone my resolve to waste more of my finite and fleeting lifetime chasing $85.

So that's where I am and I'm undecided about my next steps.

Do I

a) continue to pursue my claim because I paid them good money for the insurance, dammit, and they shouldn't be able to get away with not honouring it? 

Or

b) do I just let it go? Life is short. I'm fortunate enough that I can absorb an $85 loss, and smart enough to figure out that they have consumed more than twice that value in the time I've spent on the claim so far.

If you've got an opinion, let me know in the comments.

Thanks for reading!

Have a great week!

Karen

Oh, right. The company is Allianz Global Assistance. Just in case you're wondering which insurer to avoid.

Long, Cold Winter

In April, 2018, I spent about twenty-four hours in total assembling these three paper sculptures. They came in kits made by a company called Low Poly Crafts. I found them at the One of a Kind Spring show that year. The kits were doable (as you can see) but sufficiently demanding (the dachshund was a real stinker) that it took me almost five years before I felt like I wanted to do another. 

Low Poly Crafts was at this winter's One of a Kind, so I bought a squirrel... 

and a sloth.  

These are product photos, not my finished efforts.

According to the package descriptions, these are of even higher level difficulty than the other three.

Just the thing for a long, cold winter.

Thanks for reading!

Have a great week!

Karen

Unexpected Outcomes

An Unknown Soldier

I was in Whole Foods last weekend, looking for egg replacer. I showed a picture of the product I wanted to a young man who appeared to be an employee of the store.

He sprang into action, scanning the shelves. He soon presented me with an egg-carton-like package and asked if it was what I wanted. It looked like a replacement for scrambled eggs (I wanted a replacement for baking) but it was hard to tell, which is what I said.

So he ripped off the label and opened the carton. I could see then that I definitely did not want the product. Nor, in its current condition, would anyone else.

I left the store empty-handed, but with a better understanding of why Whole Foods is so expensive. 

In another grocery-related incident, Bruce and I were walking though Allan Gardens, heavily laden with recent food purchases. The Gardens are a mess these days. There are people living in tents everywhere, and the main path has been obstructed by a hoarding erected around the greenhouse. 

Several inches of freshly fallen slush made it treacherous underfoot. Two women had illegally parked their car on the one path cleared for pedestrians.

As I squeezed past the vehicle I said to one of the women "You have a lot of nerve parking here."

Nothing in my words conveyed that I required an explanation, but she offered one anyway. She said, "We're bringing charity to the people in the tents!"

"Of course you are," I said, in a tone Bruce has described as venomous (I'd say unimpressed).

That was all it took for the woman to lose it. She shouted at me to FUCK OFF, plus other instructions.

I ignored her. But found it interesting that someone so full of charity could also be so angry. As Bruce and I continued on our way, I heard her telling her companion what a terrible person I was. 

Both episodes just go to show that, no matter what you intend when you start a conversation with a stranger, you never really know where you might end up.

Thanks for reading!

Have a great week!

Karen

Wrong Shoe, Wrong Foot

Not made for walking: "shoes" at the Bata Museum

I was in negotiations for a job this past week. A job, the more I think about it, and the more I hear from the person I'm negotiating with, that I don't want.

I find myself in this situation because I still wonder, even after three years of happy retirement, if there isn't a paid job out there that would be fun, interesting and remunerative enough to make me want to put up with all the other nonsense having a job entails.

But, even as the offer was made this week, I was thinking, "Wait, if I do this then I won't be able to go on that trip, or take this course, or do that other fun thing."

Also, the pay wasn't just low; it was ridiculous.

This all came about because someone asked me if I'd be interested in working with them, and I said "yes, but on a part-time, temporary basis." Evidently, all they heard was "yes."

Maybe I've learned my lesson this time. Next time I hear that question, I'll just say no.

Thanks for reading!

Have a great week!

Karen

 

Mightier Than ... The Virus

The photo above shows the Bluma Appel Salon at the Reference Library around 11:30 in the morning last Sunday.

The crowd was at least 500 people when we were there. I'd also say there were as many women as men, as many young as old (though no strollers, which was a mercy), and lots of racial diversity among them.

What on Earth, in this day and age, and at this stage of the pandemic, would draw such huge numbers? Was it a comics convention? Was it stamps? 

Take another look at the photo below.

Any idea what would attract this kind of mob?

It was pens. These are photos from the Scriptus show, an annual event showcasing pens, fine paper and ink. There were some ball points and gel pens in among the wares, but mostly, there were fountain pens. Used fountain pens. New fountain pens. Five hundred dollar fountain pens. Fountain pens so coveted by those in attendance that they arranged themselves three deep around the tables and examined the nibs with jeweller's loupes. 

I bought a cool pen as a gift for a friend, and Bruce had to wait outside because there were just too damned many people.

Thanks for reading!

Have a great week!

Karen

Filmore chips in for public health.

Squeaker

From a gallery at the Carnegie Museum. There should be one for women politicians.

I rarely leave the house after dinner, but, when I got an invitation (before the results were in) to Dianne Saxe's "victory party," I thought I'd better go.

The polls in Ward 11 closed at 8:00 p.m. By then I was seated at a table full of strangers in the Victory Cafe on Bloor West. The one thing we had in common was we'd all volunteered for Dianne's campaign. Well, that, and the fact that we wanted her to win.

By 8:30, the local news station had declared Dianne's chief rival, Norm Di Pasquale, the victor by a narrow margin.

So I went home. Bruce had caught a cold in Pittsburgh and wasn't feeling well. And there didn't seem to be much of a reason to hang around.

By the time I got home shortly after 9:00 p.m., the narrow margin of victory had changed. Dianne was in the lead by about 130 votes. So I decided to stay up and watch the numbers ... which did not move, at all, for the next two hours. 70 out of 77 polls had reported in, but I couldn't keep my eyes open. I went to bed.

Back at the Victory Cafe, before the results were made official, Dianne thanked her supporters for her apparent victory and went home. Her campaign team called her after midnight to tell her she'd officially won.

She finished with 8,614 votes, Di Pasquale with 8,491.

Phew.

Thanks for reading!

Karen

That's a hard climb: looking up from the lower
station of the Duquesne Incline.

 

Pittsburgh in Retrospect

Red's Bar summed it up for us. Once upon a time in Pittsburgh, neighbourhoods had bars and stores and places where people congregated. Then thoroughfares cut through the neighbourhoods, industries declined, people left, and no one has came back (at least not yet). There's a 3 kilometre stretch along Fifth Avenue, between the University of Pittsburgh campus and the PG Paints Arena, that is almost entirely dead. 

We went to Pittsburgh on a friend's recommendation. We stayed downtown, where most of the hotels are, but there wasn't a lot going on there.  

The liveliest parts of the city that we saw were the blocks around the University of Pittsburgh, with busy sidewalks and prosperous street level retail.

The rest, especially that 3 km stretch along Fifth Avenue, was deserted-feeling, run down or completely derelict. I'm sure the pandemic hasn't helped.

We were delighted by the Carnegie Art Museum, though. I'd somehow gotten the impression that Carnegie's museum was the poor sister to Frick's. But, no, the CAM's got a great collection. We saw just the tiniest bit of it on Thursday.

It's interesting that they picked this Rothko
for a temporary exhibit.

Part two of this blog's two-part series: the Nixon Agnew Collection.

The Puritan. Still an important part of the American political landscape.

While Frick (whom everyone assured us was not a nice man) collected the works of the past masters, Carnegie patronized, and his museum still patronizes, contemporary Pittsburg artists. So the collection is vibrant, and feels highly locally relevant.  

Overall, we had a fun vacation. We enjoyed ourselves, ate better than we usually do (I recommend The Steel Mill Saloon, Meat and Potatoes, Nicky's Thai Kitchen, and Max's Allegheny Tavern) and everyone we met was friendly and helpful. Plus, I got my camera fixed.

Thanks for reading!

Karen

Facts and Figures

Pittsburgh area in square km: 151.1

Pittsburgh population: 301,000 (est. growth about -.5%/year)

Toronto area in square km: 630.2

Toronto population: 2.93M (est. growth about +1%/year)

So, Pittsburgh has one quarter the land area and one tenth the population of Toronto and its population is shrinking. No wonder it seemed deserted. 

Andy Warhol and Me

I can't decide if Andy Warhol was a great artist or just a guy with a gift for flattering rich people who ran a long con.

We spent two hours yesterday at the Andy Warhol Museum, the storehouse for all things Andy, with a chronologically curated selection of his many, many works.

Usually, after that much time in a museum, I feel "full", like I can't absorb any more information. Yesterday, I felt like I'd spent my time shopping, but hadn't seen anything I liked. 

Correction. I liked these:

Nixon and Agnew hand puppets from one of the hundreds of "Time Capsule" boxes Warhol obsessively collected for more than a decade before he died. 

After the museum, we crossed the Allegheny and Monongehela rivers and rode up the Duquesne Incline.

You can see what kind of a day it was: cold, rainy, windy.

And I took pictures of Bruce interacting with his environment:

By the fountain where the rivers meet.

With Roberto Clemente Walker.

With the big wheels that pull the incline cables.

Today the weather will be warmer and dryer. We're going to the Carnegie Art Museum. And I'm going to get my camera out of the repair shop.

Thanks for reading!

Karen

 

Pittsburgh Indoors

Roman-style ceiling mosaic, the Renaissance Pittsburgh Hotel

While we had not expected to gamble with our luggage (which we have now, btw), we did expect that the weather in Pittsburgh in the third week of October would be iffy.

We've not been disappointed in that. It's cold, windy and sometimes it rains. But yesterday was fine enough for us to walk two hours on the way back from the Frick Pittsburgh.

There we saw a show of American folk art, American Perspectives. The whole show was a marvel, but the last room, and especially the last four pieces, almost had me in tears.

In memory of the Bath School massacre: on May 8, 1927, a man named Andrew Kehoe killed 38 children and 6 adults (including himself and his wife) first and foremost because he was sick in the head, but also because he was upset about his financial situation and the taxes he had to pay. He had rigged the schoolhouse, and his car, with explosives, all of which were wired to explode at the same time. Half of the dynamite he'd set under the school failed to go off.
His intention had been to blow up the whole school and kill all the people in it. This is a small hand carved wood replica of the bronze statue erected to remember the tragedy.

A "wood quilt" made from detritus in the aftermath of
hurricane Katrina, by Jean-Marcel St. Jacques.

Quilt by Jessie B. Telfair, who, in 1963, lost her job as a cook
because she attempted to register to vote.

Sculpture in wood and twine over unknown armature by Judith Scott, who, for 35 years was institutionalized (she had Down Syndrome) after being taken from her home and her twin sister at the age of seven. Once her twin obtained legal guardianship of her, she was enrolled in the Oakland Creative Growth Arts Centre. From then until her death in 2005, she lived happily and created sculptures from fabric and twine.

We saw the insides of some other fine old buildings from Pittsburgh's hey day, including The Frick Building

A very slidable-looking marble bannister.

And the Union Trust Building

Atrium over the rotunda.

On the way back from the Frick, I tripped on some uneven pavement, fell (I'm fine) and smashed my camera lens to smithereens. So, today, I'll be getting a new lens, then we're going to the Andy Warhol Museum, and, if the weather allows, we're going to walk the Three River Heritage trail over to the Duquesne Incline and ride it to the top and then to the bottom again.

Thanks for reading!

Karen

Fortune And Her Wheel
Frick Building

Travelling Light

Where the Ohio, Allegheny and Monongehela Rivers meet.

The second most annoying thing Air Canada did to us was, even though we'd arrived three hours early to board a forty minute flight to Pittsburgh, they made us wait more than an hour before they let us into the security line up. Fifteen minutes after our flight's boarding time, we were still waiting for clearance into the US.

The most annoying thing was, of course, that they lost our luggage.

The Air Canada employee at the Pittsburgh airport, who has been telling people for months now that it's her second day on the job, really had no idea what to say or do. I ultimately spoke to a helpful person working for Air Canada in a call centre in Mumbai, who entered our claim into the system and gave me a tracking code. Now I can now go online at regular intervals to see that, as of twenty-four hours after the last time we saw our bag, they have no idea where it is.

Fine. This is a life, lemons, lemonade situation. Every time I pack to go on a trip I wonder how much I really need to bring with me, and how much could just as easily be obtained at my destination, or just left behind.

This is an opportunity to end the wondering.

Thanks for reading!

Karen

The "recently refurbished" Monongehela Incline
being re-refurbished.