Trust Me

The first time I got conned (that I'm aware of) was about thirty years ago. I was in La Guardia airport, heading home after a four day visit in New York with my friend Claire Fowler.

A young man approached me with a story about a lost plane ticket to Montreal. I forget his many machinations now, except for the one where he took pains to explain why the lost ticket form he showed me seemed so worn.

In all my life's experience to that point I'd never been given cause to believe that a person asking for help was being anything but completely sincere. I gave him ten dollars. 

As I watched him fairly skip down the long spare hallway, doubt grew.

That young man, of course, made it a lot harder for everyone who followed. I'm not going to say I've never been scammed since. But, the guy outside the Rodin Museum in Philadelphia ten years later with the tremendously detailed improbable story about having his car towed, well, I just walked away. 

These guys work hard for their money and they know their marks. They target tourists because tourists are already a little vulnerable, more ready to identify with someone in trouble and they carry cash. 

If anyone had asked me, I imagine I would have said that this kind of in-person scamming had disappeared beneath the waves of on-line fraud and more lucrative lines of exploiting human emotions like Russian bride scams.

So it took a minute or two before I knew what was going on last Saturday. I was walking along Gerrard Street, on my way to take some pictures of the new children's playground in the Allan Gardens. I was approached by a man, carrying a set of car keys in one hand, a cell phone and a five dollar bill in the other. He may have been in his mid-to-late 30's. Nothing about him was particularly eye-catching or odd.

I'm used to getting panhandled in this neighbourhood by any and all manner of people, so when he asked me if he could talk with me, I slowed and prepared to say "no, sorry" - I don't carry cash anymore. Then I got the smoothly pitched, improbable story with details popping up just when my face signalled to the man that I might need some help believing him:

"Can you help me. I'm not from around here. I'm from Buffalo. My name's Steven. My wife's water has broken and she's been taken to the hospital ... Scarborough General hospital ... there were complications ... a cab driver I talked to said he'd take me there for twenty dollars ... I spoke with a police man on Carlton Street ... I'm legally blind and I can't drive there myself..."

He lost me long before he finished, but I admired the many ways the story was engineered to both evoke trust and trigger an emotional response. The props he carried backed up his story and suggested I'd get five back from my twenty. He told me his name. His wife is having a baby! He's far from home! He knows the local street names! He's blind! He hopes I've never heard of Women's College Hospital three blocks away!

True story or false, I still couldn't help him with the one thing he wanted and pointedly did not ask for: cash. 

As soon as I made that clear to him, he was off like a shot.

Thanks for reading!

Have a great week!

Karen

Reading List

Lindsey Sterling

CREDIT ROB LOUD

This week's picture is a shot of Bruce and I at the Pemberton Music Festival in July last year. Sure, there's a lot of other stuff in the way: the fine violinist Lindsey Sterling, and a whole bunch of other people, but we are very clearly visible, just above the sun totem - Bruce has his hands folded over his chest and I'm standing on his left (your right) in a white shirt and orange pants. I think it's a good likeness.

We have booked our return visit to Pemberton for this year's festival. We'll be there after we partake of a family reunion in Qualicum Beach on the 11th of July and after three days of hiking and hanging around in Whistler.

Should be fun.

Just so I have lots of fodder for small talk at the reunion, I'm catching up on some of the reading I didn't do in high school. Subscribers may recall that I started that project a while ago with The Great Gatsby (TGG). Now, I'm reading In Cold Blood (ICB).

My experience reading TGG was that what they teach about the book in high school classes isn't what I think the book is about.

The same seems to be the case with ICB. Better written than TGG, ICB - so far; I'm about halfway through - seems to me to be about Truman Capote's powerful identification with Perry Smith, the half-Irish, half-Cherokee, artistically and musically gifted natural born killer. Smith's parents were rodeo performers but when that work dried up, the family broke up and what followed was a long unhappy story of group homes and social isolation until Perry joined the merchant marine where he was wooed and maybe raped by sailors.

The weirdest thing about ICB: Richard Avedon's photos.

Thanks for reading!

Have a great week!

Karen

As For Where I Am Right Now ...

While staying at the cozy and accommodating Ste Anne Spa (exterior shot of which featured above) a few things struck me as odd. The first was the zillions of gallons per flush toilet in our cottage. The second was the fridge in the cottage's common kitchen: a 1990's vintage bar fridge with a frost-furred freezer compartment consuming massive amounts of kilowatt hours all for the sake of keeping some cream pucks cold. Third and finally, I saw on the breakfast buffet a nice selection of high-carbon-footprint tropical fruit from Chile, South Africa and Mexico - pineapples, melons, blueberries, strawberries, raspberries - incomprehensibly labelled as "seasonal fruit."

While I was supposed to be at Set Anne's to decompress after my whirlwind tour as a spokes-target for the current government's ambitions about climate change, I still had the script in my head and all of these things stuck me as off-message.

So, when the owner of the spa sent me a personal e-mail after I returned home, I wrote him back, saying that if he wanted to get his 80's-style assertions of environmental consciousness up to date, he needed to do something about that toilet, that fridge and the fruit.

This is his exact response:

Thank you for taking time to write to me. I'm glad that you and your sister enjoyed your time at the spa. 

The Finch Room bathroom is slated for renovation in April and the toilet will be upgraded as part of that p‎roject. I will talk a look at the refrigerator as well.

It's a testament to the relaxing influence of my many lovely treatments at the spa that, right now, I feel under no compulsion to write him back and say, "thanks for the updates on the toilet and the fridge. Now what are you going to do about that goddam fruit?"

Thanks for reading!

Have a great week!

Karen 

From the M O N

This week's picture does not show exactly where I am today, but conveys the situation well enough.

I took the above shot while I was killing time in Kingston before the stakeholders arrived for their climate change roundtable. It's a view of the Wolfe Island wind turbines from the Tett Centre for Learning and Creativity.

I like the bristly desolation offset by the cheerful gathering of human foot prints on the snow-covered ice.

Where I actually am is the Ste Anne Spa in Grafton, with my sister, awaiting a treatment-filled day of rest and relaxation.

We have already found out the food is very good, the rooms comfortable, the snow deep ....

While we drove around last night looking in vain for this place -- we had to ask for directions -- the snow pelted down around us obsuring the view.

The snow's still out there, but at least no more is falling from the sky.

The place seems heavenly and comes with its own bristle. After our lovely dinner and our tour of the premises, we were warned - seriously warned - about the "working dogs" in the vicinity who protect the local sheep herds from coyotes but who, sadly, cannot tell the difference between spa customers walking to and fro from their cottages and said coyotes.

Thanks for reading!

Have a great week!

I'll Be Here All Week

The climate change consultation marathon has been run. 

The names of the places I've been build a short song: 

Toronto twice
And Thunder Bay was nice
More snow than Sudbury
But lots less ice.

In Ottawa  
There're some folks who say "pshaw"
Kingston too had a few
Who found a flaw.

Sunny in Guelph
I felt more like myself
Jam-packed K-W
Takes the top shelf.

Said one of the many game and able staff helping with the consultation, "you must feel like a stand up act doing a show on the road."

That's exactly how I felt. 

Now that I have retired from doing climate change stand up, I will share one trick of the trade.

In several of the meetings, people opposed to government action on climate change sought to overwhelm the discussion. They would pop up early in the question session and set a hostile and argumentative tone.

We were forewarned that there would be a large batch in Guelph. I'd also been told by the regional office that there would likely be organized groups of advocates for other issues. I wasn't looking forward to any of this because I was still a bit punchy from Ottawa and Kingston.  

An idea occurred to me.

After 150 people filed into the Guelph Arboretum, I stood at the mike and introduced myself. 

Then I said, "now that you know who I am, I'd like to find out a little bit about who is in the room with me. Are there any students in the room?"

Several young people put up their hands.

"Are there any people associated with Wellington Water Watchers?"

Ten people put up their hands.

"Anyone from the Citizen's Climate Lobby?"

About a dozen raised their hands.

"Is there anyone in the room," I said, looking straight in the eye of a man I recognized from Ottawa sitting four rows from the front, "who is skeptical about the science of climate change or skeptical of the idea that people may be causing climate change?"

No hands. And no one disrupted the conversation with hostile opinions about flawed climate science. The Ottawa guy four rows from the front stayed in his seat.

In the capacity crowd at Kitchener-Waterloo on Thursday, staff pointed out a man in the audience who had been a real irritant at the session on Monday night in Hamilton.

So, I asked the same questions. When I got to the one about being skeptical about man-made climate change, a few people did put up their hands, including the man from Hamilton. Later on, one or two of them came to the mike, but they were not aggressive. 

So my trick appears to have helped in moderating the crowds. 

But the crowds were also pretty good at controlling themselves.

I did not witness this exchange in Hamilton, but have already heard about it several times.

A woman in her late seventies, maybe even her eighties, was at the mike and speaking about her ideas to fight climate change. A man behind her heckled her and called her names. She stopped and turned to look at him. She said, "You're a very rude person." He shut up. She went on. "Are you disrespecting me because I'm a woman?" He stayed shut up. "Or is it because I'm younger than you?"

Thanks for reading!

Have a great week!

Karen

Not Quite Done Yet

The consultations have one more week to go. To conserve the energy I need to travel, present, manage hecklers and otherwise keep my wits about me, I have, for today's post, rummaged around in the most ancient files on my hard drive. 

I hope you enjoy today's post, a work from February 1993, written for something called the Law Follies during my last year at law school. It's a skit called "Carol Gilligan's Island."

The beautiful and talented Sylvia Davis as Madonna

Opening scene: Stage is bare except for four people lying down in various positions of sleep, with pillows scrunched under their heads, two stage front right, two stage left middle. The four should be dressed in very colourful summer clothes.  

Three men, dressed in business suits, stand at a microphone off to far stage left. Music comes up with the lights, the theme song from "Gilligan's Island".

Singers: 

Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale 
A tale of a fateful trip  
That started in this tropic port  
Aboard this tiny ship 
The mate was a famous essentialist 
The skipper brave and sure 
Four feminists set sail that day  
For a three hour tour, a three hour tour ...  

Singers stop and music fades.

Just as the last word is sung, one of the singers holds up a large placard and walks to centre stage. The placard reads: "TONIGHT'S EPISODE: CAMILLE PAGLIA VISITS THE ISLAND"

Person flips placard; written on the back are the words "ASSUME HUTS".  

Most of the rest of the cast.
Left to right: JoAnne (Camille), Andrea (Sontag), Sylvia (Madonna), me (Wolf) and Bettina (Faludi)

Singer returns to stage left just as a fortyish, full-figured woman in a shirtless suit with a plunging neckline (she should be wearing a push-up bra), a very short skirt, high-heeled pumps and fabulously sheer stockings strides onto the stage from the rear. She continues to stage front centre and addresses the audience. Her delivery should be loud and shrill. 

Camille Paglia (Hereafter CAM): My name is Camille Paglia and I am the most fascinating woman in the world. I am also the only feminist on the planet who matters. 

She takes a bow.

CAM: Six months ago the well-known behavioural scientist and accused essentialist Carol Gilligan disappeared from the face of the earth. She was last seen boarding a small pleasure craft. There were searches, but the boat and its passengers were never found. That's because the searchers were soft. I have spent the last five months searching for Carol Gilligan. I have finally found her. I know she is on this island. I have come here to tell her she's wrong.

(CAM turns her attention to the people asleep on the stage. She shrieks.)

CAM: WAKE UP! HEY! WAAAAKE UUUUUUUUUP!

Voicing adlibbed expressions of surprise, the four sleepers get to their feet. They are Carol Gilligan (hereafter CAR), Susan Faludi (hereafter SUE), Naomi Wolf (hereafter NAO), and Susan Sontag (hereafter SON).

They peek out from their "huts", and seeing who it is, adlib more expressions of surprise. CAM looks around, recognizes them all, and, frankly, can't believe her eyes.

CAM: Sweet Jesus, it looks like the lost feminists' graveyard. I come looking for Gilligan, and I get a whole crop of losers. Naomi (CAM shakes her hand or something) Wolf, who says beauty is a myth, and on you, dear, it shows. Susan Sontag (CAM claps her on the back), who brings new meaning to the phrase 'waste of skin'. And Susan Two! Ms. Faludi (CAM could put her arm around SUE's shoulders and given them a patronising squeeze), little miss backlash, happy at last, I presume. CAM singles out CAR, takes her by the arm and pulls her toward her.

CAM: And you, Gilligan. Still hearing different voices are we?  

CAR wrenches her arm free from CAM.

CAR: Who are you? What do you want?  

CAM recoils as if slapped. 

CAM: Who AM I? Who AM I? I'm Camille Paglia! I'm the freest woman in the world! I am the only woman this century – in the whole history of the world -- to achieve the total synthesis of art and sex and pornography and sadomasochism and cultural politics ...  

SUE: (stepping forward, interrupts) We get the picture. (Turning to CAR) Carol, this is Camille Paglia, she's written some books and likes to appear on talk shows.  

CAR: Of course. (She shakes CAM's hand) I've heard so much about you. It's a pleasure to finally meet you. What are you doing here?  

CAM: Well, I've already shot down all these losers. You're the next one on my list. I'm here to make you a deal, since I guess you all want off of this island. There's a helicopter booked to arrive back here in two hours. All you have to do is agree with everything I say, and I'll take you back to civilization with me. Is it a deal?  

CAR, SUE, SON and NAO all exchange looks.

CAR: It's true that we would like to get off the island, but you drive a hard bargain. Can we discuss this for a moment?  

CAM: Talk all you like, but, remember, you've got two hours and then I'm out of here.  

They all nod at CAM, and move to stage rear, conferring. 

Music, MC Hammer's Too Legit to Quit, plays and then fades for ten seconds and then SUE, SON, NAO and CAR advance from the back of the stage.

NAO: We've talked about your proposal, and we consider it only fair, as you have us at an advantage, that we be given one more opportunity to have our arguments heard.   

CAM: You got two hours. You can waste your time any way you like. Just before you get off this island, you have to tell me I'm right and you're wrong.  

CAR: We'll see. Why don't you take a seat (The other women grab a chair from stage right and force CAM ungently to sit down).  

CAR, SUE, SON and NAO arrange themselves so they face CAM and the audience. They sing, a capella, to the tune of “Matchmaker” from Fiddler on the Roof.


Paglia, Paglia,  
Give us a break  
You're on the news  
You're still a fake  
You wandered for decades in obscurity,  
You'll be there again you'll see.  
O Camille, you're hot for the moment  
But Camille, you'll be cold again soon  
O, Camille, you'll wish you were nicer  
It's time that you changed your tune.


Paglia, Paglia,  
Your book's been panned  
Hated, reviled  
So starts the end  
You're learning the shelf life of intensity  
Delete bins is where you'll be.  
Remember, fame it is fleeting  
Consider what will happen to you  
It's time that you finally admitted  
You need us more than we need you  

Paglia, Paglia  
Admit defeat  
You're lost and alone  
Quite incomplete  
Welcome the virtues of sorority
Or no more publicity.  
O Camille you're over forty  
O Camille you'll be powerless soon  
Accept that gravity hates you  
Your tits will go saggy too  

Paglia, Paglia  
Please, think it out  
We tell the truth  
There is no doubt  
You think you can hate us with impunity  
You can't be more wrong, you'll see.  

CAM: (standing up) What is this? What is this? You call this an argument? These threats? You stupid bitches! I don't need you! I've never needed you. I'm great on my own. And my tits will NEVER sag! (She looks at her watch) You've got half an hour left.  

SUE: (To the others) I told you it wouldn't work.   

CAR: This is absurd. Hey, Paglia. (CAM, who has turned her back on the group, whirls back around) How about if I say you're right, can everyone else come back with us if I do?  

CAM: Oh, that's touching. A selfless act. NO. Either you ALL say I'm right or you stay here till your scrawny flesh rots from your bones.  

SON: (In a stage whisper to SUE) When are we going to tell her about the hovercraft?  

SUE: Shhhh. Don't let on.  

CAM: What was that? A hovercraft? What is this? What is this?   

CAR: Right. Cat's out of the bag. The laugh's on you, Camille. We aren't stranded here. The hovercraft SS Martha Minow is moored on the other side of this island. And, just after you were dropped off, we used our radio to contact your pilot and tell him he didn't need to come back to pick you up. You're the one who has to answer to terms, Paglia, not us.  

CAM: You bitches! I don't believe this!    

As this exchange is going on, Madonna (hereafter MAD) enters from the rear, dragging a parachute behind her.

MAD: Hey! What's going on? Who are you guys? Where are we? 

CAM: Ohmigod! It's Madonna! Madonna! It's me! Camille Paglia! I'm so glad you're here! These weird, twisted feminists were going to strand me here! You've come to rescue me.  

MAD: Rescue, schmescue. My Lear Jet blew both engines. I had to fight the pilot for the last parachute and bail out. You guys gotta boat? I gotta get outta here. I'm on Arsinio tonight.  

CAM: Ya, sure, there's a hovercraft. We can all leave together and we can talk on the way ...  

CAR: Hold it. We can leave, but you have to stay here, Paglia, until you admit you're a walking ball of human scar tissue with Diet Pepsi for brains and battery acid for blood.  

CAM: (Facing the deepest crisis of her adult life) Augh! NO! (Considers what this answer means) I mean ... Augh! I can't do it! I'll die here! You bitches!  

MAD: Hey, Camille, don't sweat it. You may be the world's most fascinating woman, but I'm the one with two jets, one for me and one for my entourage. The second jet was following, and they saw us go down. They'll send a search party soon.  

CAM: You mean I can stay here with you? We can talk?  

MAD: Sure. What the fuck.  

CAM: (To SUE, SON, CAR and NAO) Get out!  Go away!  Leave you evil bitches!  

She pushes at them and they go. As they leave music rises, "There's a Place For Us". CAM and MAD stay on stage, and the lights go down as CAM begins to talk and talk and talk and talk and the music fades. Just before it goes completely dark, the three singers start again. CAM should keep talking.

Singers from left to right: Mike, Sean, Joel.

Singers:

So join us here each week my friends  
You're sure to get a smile  
From stranded neo-feminists  
On Carol Gilligan's Isle!    

The End

History is Exhausting

At the end of the stakeholder climate change discussions in Sudbury on March 5 2015, one of the participants said, "I feel like we've just done something historic. We need a picture."

I'm the tired-looking one in the front row, third from the right.

*****

The consultations have worn me out and cracked at least one rib (I slipped and fell in an icy alleyway in Sudbury). 

Please enjoy this golden oldie from January 29, 2012.

Every once in a while I throw discretion to the wind and check out the UFO nonsense on You Tube.

I did this last night because, not long ago, I read an op-ed piece by someone bewailing the lack of spaceships from distant galaxies in our skies (he really ought to check out You Tube).

The oped author recalled the back-of-the-envelope math of some astronomer and said that even the remotest chance of life (like one to the negative one-billionth) elsewhere should bring nice-looking and English-speaking aliens to our door practically every day. Oddly the oped author used the absence of credible proof of extraterrestrial life as overwhelming proof of something else: that advanced societies destroy themselves before figuring out how to travel light years. 

Well, I can think of a few other reasons there are no spaceships. 

One: traveling light years is not possible, no matter what Carl Sagan or Stephen Hawking have to say. 

Two: even if travelling light years were possible, there are so many places in the universe for those travellers to go that they haven't gotten here yet - and won't for another half billion years - by which time we will have checked out. 

Three: those beings who figured out how to travel in space did so, found it not to their liking (think giant space spiders) and decided to stay home after that.

Photo credit: BBC - Dr. Who

Four: (and you saw this one coming) they came to Earth, they saw, they said "what the hell?" and beat it for Betelgeuse, leaving for any others who might pass by a "do not engage" mark on the dark side of the moon. 

As silly as is the UFO "evidence" on You Tube, even more far fetched are the parallel assertions that these crazy flying triangles, whirling vortexes and odd cloud formations are somehow understood by "the government." 

Ha ha ha ha.

Thanks for reading!

Have a great week!

Karen