That experience is probably something that happens a lot more when you’re younger than when you’re creeping up on 40–because hopefully after a few decades of theoretical adulthood you’ve experienced more things, and done more thinking about your experiences, meaning that any new experience makes up a smaller part of your total experience, and thus carries less freight. Not, of course, that there is no such thing as an epiphany, or the work of art that can still change your life, but the bar is a lot higher; it has to reach you on a much more intimate level, or show you things you haven’t seen before about the world, or yourself.

When the right book comes along at just the right time for you, though, it not only brings you a new experience, or exposes you to a new way of seeing, but it creates a frame inside of you that governs how you see certain things from that point forward. A metaphor that works for me is that of a struggle that creates something new out of what is yet unformed; part of yourself being forged from the chaos that exists before you are done becoming who you are.¹

So I’ve talked about how Brust’s book was one of those for me. Another was Pat Cadigan‘s book Mindplayers. The universe has put Pat Cadigan in front of me several times, in several different contexts, this week, so I figured it was probably time to talk about it here.

(I don’t have that cover in my collection anymore but it’s the one I started with–I wore out that paperback ages ago, and moved up to a hardcover.)

The books is fix-up novel, wiring a series of stories together into a cohesive narrative arc about the development of our heroine Alexandra Victoria Haas, or “Deadpan Allie”, from a self-destructive mind criminal and self-defined outsider to, for lack of a better term, a healer who has a place in a larger community (and arguably who functions as part of a social control system).

When I first read the book, there were a lot of things that I found new and exciting, and just damn cool. Madness as a form of entertainment, both licit and illicit, with licensed “neurosis peddlers” and street-level “madcaps”. Mind-to-mind communication within virtual worlds, and the kind of psychology that could develop from that² Eyes being sucked out of skulls in machines that “eat your head” in order to plug into your optic nerves. Personalities you could rent–be someone else as an entertainment experience. Belljarring. Dream-feeding. Losing yourself in a mass of personae. Mind criminals, super-psycho-science cops and shrinks, “reality affixers”. And the whole concept of a “pathos finder”.

All those new and heady ideas. This was 1987, and it took some of the compelling, and still novel, notions from 1984′s Neuromancer and turned them 90 degrees to the right. The virtual space wasn’t just a machine construct, it was a representation of human mental states. Mind-to-mind contact in virtual worlds controlled by the minds of the communicants… and in the stories at least one of them is often insane³. All that cyberpunk “the street finds it’s own uses” feel, with back alley shops full of sketchy versions of high tech body-and-mind modification equipment, but built on top of the more human psychology rather than colder technical disciplines. Forensic mind-reading. Cosmetic body modification balanced against cosmetic mind alteration.

The ideas and world-building are still impressive, if less novel, 23 years later–I’ve seen some of the things Cadigan did done again, or differently, many times in the intervening years, although rarely done as well.

But the ideas and the world aren’t what stuck with me from the book, what changed my essential way of seeing the world. It was some of the thematic content that did that for me.

Perhaps more than anything else, the book changed (and to a large extent set the frames I still use for thinking about) the way I think about questions of identity. What constitutes “me”? Where do I end and others being? What distinction is there between whatever “me” is, and a set of memories. How am I changed by what I do, what I see, who I know, and how I know them? A case could be made that these questions form the core of the book, and that Allie’s progress along her own arc requires her to struggle with them, taking the reader along for a ride.

Some of this is quite explicit: Cadigan’s references to “franchised personalities”⁴ and street trade in recorded memories tackles memory versus identity very explicitly, and individual stories tackle things like continuation of identity without memory, or dissolution of identity into someone else, but it’s more subtle things⁵ that really stick with me. I’d talk in detail about all of that, but frankly if you’re reading this I kind of hope you’re going to be convinced to read the book, so I don’t want to spoil it.

Let me just say that there are visuals and concepts in the book that I still carry around with me as part of who-i-am/how-i-think even after all these years: ideas that are captured so perfectly that nothing I’ve seen since has made me replace them–indeed, it’s rather the opposite with my experience reinforcing their value. Cadigan’s “eye trick” is perhaps the single most affecting of those–I’ve never seen anything as perfectly crystallizing the way people can have profound and lasting effects on each other, and how knowing people can change who you are (including how you see the world). There are others–Allie’s Pearl Necklace revelation, for instance, or the museum of memories. All metaphors for experiences that to some extent have to be lived; words and pictures that capture a “kick from the knee” experience.

The identity questions are touched in other ways–particularly interesting are the ways that questions of boundaries of identity in creative collaboration, and in relationships more generally, are handled. The stories on the whole are often classics case of SF used to make the metaphorical literal, but this is particularly striking in the collaboration case. Questions of how technology affects or alters identity are also addressed, both implicitly throughout the entire book’s engagement with different kinds of “mindplay” and explicitly in a particular story that involves a kind of “no tech” reserve.

On top of that, of course, are the characters. Our protagonist has always felt incredibly real to me, perhaps originally because I’ve known a lot of people who weren’t so different from who Allie is at the start of the book. I like smart, perceptive, creative, passionate people, but I don’t really care for earnest most of the time, which means I’ve known a lot of people who, for one reason or another but usually something to do with how our society “rewards” those traits, protected themselves with a shell of conspicuous numbness, or worse had all those positive traits spiral inward in a kind of emotional sabotage. And in the intervening 23 years since I first read the book, I’ve seen many of those people find ways out of that kind of pattern, “affixing their reality” in a way that works for them–some of them even adopting a very locked down and deadpan face for a while as part of it. Nothing about Allie seems off or unreal to me in light of my experience–Cadigan has put a real person on the page.

I’ve also seen some of those smart, perceptive, creative. passionate people slowly fall apart, losing all that was essential to who they were in a very slow death of a thousand cuts, and that arc is also present in the book, although thankfully not for our protagonist. No, we see that happen through her eyes, and again it grounds the work to us–everyone has had that experience, of watching someone change, even if it isn’t in as explicitly self-destructive of a way as the case in the novel, until they are no longer the person you thought they were, or even anyone that person would recognize. And, of course, you don’t get that without also looking at questions about the difference between who we think people are and who they really are, and between what we think our relationship is to them and how they see it. All of this touches a universally familiar pain, well-evoked, and used to good effect comment on both how decisions affect identity, especially in the cumulative sense, and how others can change us.

The other characters, including almost all of Allie’s friends and clients/patients, are almost as well-drawn as she is, including some very strange individuals. One of them is explicitly a cipher, and we still get to feel like we know him. Even the people who are on stage for a relatively short amount of time, but who have a serious affect on Allie, seem three-dimensional enough to touch.

Cadigan’s craft–her technical skills as a writer–are obviously solid, given that she can take all these questions and ideas and have them form a skeleton for her story that doesn’t force the characters, their experience, their decisions, or their world into a grotesque form. It’s very organic, and very impressive for a first novel. Of course, craft is kind of less important anyway in the context of this post–things that are well-written are a joy, but that axis is somewhat independent from the one where you measure the mark a work makes on your life.

Look, I could go on for days. Here’s the punch-line: it’s a great book, well written, that has something important and valuable to say about questions that matter to everyone, and that rewards rereading every time over decades. Maybe it’s not the right time or the right book to have the kind of effect on you that it had on me, but even so I’d bet some tall dollars that you’ll still find it worth the read. It’s not hard to find a relatively cheap used copy–I see them on abe starting at a dollar–so give it a read. What’ve you got to lose?

Hell, if I know you personally (and I probably do if you’re reading this) and you get a copy and don’t like it, I’ll cover your costs and buy you a beer on top, which you can drink while you explain to me why you didn’t like it.

I shall now take a moment to be sad that I can’t easily point to the writers now who are continuing the discussion Cadigan started here in, say, the same way Snow Crash continues what Neuromancer started. Just a moment, though, or else I’ll start to get ranty about the disproportion between fantasy and science fiction.

Oh, and check out this post, which has a quick summary of the book, and then goes on to look at some tech that makes Mindplayers closer to real than you might think.

1. Of course, me being who I am, and having read what I read when I did, when I think of things like that I always see Earl Aubec marching off the end of the world into chaos to create new spaces at the edge of the map, or Brust’s angels making the world(s).
2. Hell, it occurs to me now that it was an interesting extrapolation of the entire psychological/psychiatric industry that made sense before we all decided somehow that pills could make it better. Remember, this was published in 1987, years before cosmetic pharmacology was a real thing.
3. 13 years before The Cell–a movie didn’t think had a particularly powerful story, but which I thought had quite lush visuals–as I watched I was mapping some of the experience onto my mental ideas of some of Allie’s experiences.
4. Which also function as a classic satire/dissection of both North American celebrity culture, and the notions of creativity versus passive mass entertainment.
5. Well, OK, the bit with the Pearl Necklace and the all-caps epiphany probably can’t be referred to as ‘subtle’, but it’s handled at a different level than the world-building stuff.

I noticed today that I seem to have missed International Pipe Smoking Day a couple of weeks back. I had meant to observe it this year, as an excuse to use the pipe I acquired a few years back, that’s been sitting unused ever since… but I guess I’m just not a pipe type guy (or possibly just not a “remember what I’m meant to do” type guy).

I was really amused by this bit, at the end of that post though:

As for fraternity – dude, you’re smoking a pipe. Unless your fraternity involves steampunk and sly witticisms involving Satre, you’re pretty much on your own.

I’m pretty much prepared to admit that smoking a pipe (at least, as the article contends, in people under 40) is pretty much always an affectation. I mean, that’s why I got a pipe–purely as an affectation. Sadly, I’ve never really had the chance to use it–I kept meaning to bring it out at a poker tournament, where affectations are welcomed and graded, but I never managed to organize it.

Still it is a pretty cool pipe, and I can use this as an excuse to show it to you, especially since that’s probably all the use I’ll ever get out of it.

At the time I decided that I should have the option of affecting a pipe, it seemed clear to me that what I wanted was a meerschaum pipe. I’m not sure what the source or sources of this bit of received wisdom was–I have a sense that I’ve read a number of things over the years that subtly created in me the impression that the pipe connoisseur would want one of them.

Of course I then had to do some research to determine what meerschaum actually is, and where one could get a pipe made of it.

What it is, was relatively easy to resolve: Wikipedia to the rescue.

Meerschaum is a soft white mineral sometimes found floating on the Black Sea, and rather suggestive of sea-foam, whence also the French name for the same substance, écume de mer.

Here you can see a pipe being carved from meerschaum:

That’s happening in Turkey, which apparently has a very-near monopoly on meerschaum; generally the pipes are made near the city of Eskisehir in the plains west of the capital city of Ankara.

My research also lead me to sites that sell the pipes, and which provide sales information about why meerschaum makes a good pipe–all stuff I didn’t find out until I was looking for one already, so my internal notion wasn’t developed from this kind of info. It must have been stuff I picked up from reading fiction.

• Meerschaum is a light-weight stone; this gives you a very light pipe to hold in your mouth or in your hand. The weight difference is noticable when compared to similar sized briar pipes.
• Meerschaum is a porous material; this feature will give you a much cleaner smoke since tars and other undesireable by-products of burning tobacco leaves are absorbed by the stone.
• Meerschaum colors as it is used; as the tars and other byproducts are absorbed by the stone, they are drawn to the surface by the beeswax coating which colors the stone over time.
• Meerschaum imparts no flavor on your tobacco; if you are testing a new tobacco or want to really know what a particular blend tastes like, there is nothing like a Meerschaum pipe to “speak the truth” rather than adding it’s own taste and aroma to the mix like briar or other woods will
• Meerschaum won’t burn; since there is no chance of burning your pipe you don’t need to create a cake of carbon on the inside of the bowl to protect it. This allows you to smoke many types of tobaccos in your pipe without worry about “polluting the cake” and muddling the taste/aroma of your fine tobaccos.

Those reasons all come from the pitch at MeerschaumPipes.com, who also have a pretty good resources page.

I didn’t actually get mine from online–I arranged a private sale when I saw the one I knew was just right for my sense of amusement¹. If you’re interested, some photos after the jump.

That’s the custom case that holds the pipe. Since meerschaum is relatively soft, having a way to protect it when not in use (and in my case that means “all the time”) is pretty important. A custom fitted, protective case is pretty much a must.

Here you can see the pipe in the case. You can see some of the design work on the stem, and how the stone is beginning to colour.

Here you can see the bowl, and start to get a hint of how the bowl end of the pipe is carved.

Here you see the maker’s signature and dating on the bottom. If I hadn’t already told you these were mostly made in Turkey these days, you’d be able to tell from this.

And here you see the front of the bowl, and you know why I had to have this pipe when I saw it. Bacchus seems to me like a very appropriate god for a pipe, and this is a very fun Bacchus.

1. And actually, thinking about it now, I might have to get it out to play along with the “at my club” vibe I’m building with the chairs and birthday globe.

And what was that “big present” you may be asking–well, it’s the result of a collaboration between Dr. Wife and my best pal.

See, in the new house I’ve been working on a plan to fill various areas. Part of this plan has involved the acquisition of some very nice chairs. Not chairs that necessarily match each other, but chairs that eclectically coordinate, and that suit the particular feeling I want for this area–at least as far as my skewed tastes go.

The first of these I had actually acquired in Halifax. It’s a massive leather armchair. It looks like this:

On reflection I decided that while this is a wonderful chair it isn’t quite what I wanted for the particular area in question. The chair does function quite well in the armchair role in the “rec room” part of the basement, so we’ll use it for that. It will coordinate with the other chairs, but it’s just a bit too bulky for what I was thinking of.

After moving here we also acquired a second chair that will work. This one is also ridiculously big, but doesn’t have the same bulk–it has some… um… throne-like qualities:

The book is there for scale.

The new one is definitely destined for the “a couple of people sit and drink brandy or port near the fire” area. I will probably have to acquire another interesting chair for that area.

Anyway, this is all buildup–you see, in discussing just what kind of happily cheesy feel I wanted for this area with my wife, I uttered something like this: “you know, an overstuffed wingback with a very high back, a table with a decanter between the two chairs, maybe another table to hold the pipe–no wait, even better, one of those huge freestanding globes that you open and there’s a bar inside! Yeah, something like that.”

I honestly don’t think it ever occurred to me that those things were still being made somewhere. I certainly wasn’t expecting to get one for my birthday. But…

There you see my present, closed up, alongside the new throne.

And here you can see Pyjama Girl displaying the inside, where the old school loveliness on the inner surface can be seen:

And finally, here’s a shot into the thing, after I stuck in a decanter with some Woodford Reserve Masters Collection bourbon, and a couple of glasses. (Yes, at some point in the near future I’m going to have to get a heavy crystal decanter with that chunky cut crystal style–something like this, as well as a couple of slimmer ones.)

Trish set a pretty high bar for presents early on with Miles, but in my opinion she’s hit that mark again this time, if not surpassed it. (Although this time she does have to share the credit.)

(photo credit: www.iliaphotography.com)

In the weeks (well, at this point I guess I could say “months” although it doesn’t feel like it) that I’ve been back in Ontario, I’ve had a number of encounters with things that were once regular parts of my life before my near-decade out East, and some have been shocking and jarring, others kind of like the sensation of something slipping back into the place where it belongs.

Nothing has hit that feel as hard as this past Saturday, though, when Trish and I went to see Danny Michel do the first of three sold-out nights at the Jane Bond.

I’ve mentioned Danny here a lot before, so I won’t go into it at length, but let me just say that listening to the show, in the room (which frankly doesn’t appear to have changed substantially in the last ten years from a patron’s perspective), both seemed just right, and like all the years hadn’t passed.

Trish actually used the fact that I would be able to see Danny play a lot more often in Ontario than the once-a-year or so he came out to Halifax as part of her psychological campaign to help me adjust to the move. It was probably one of the strongest weapons in her arsenal. This weekend’s show was certainly the beginning of me going back to seeing Danny play every reasonable chance I get.

Lest you get the impression that Danny isn’t improving in his craft, by the way, let me put that aside–it definitely isn’t the same show I used to see, Danny only gets better. I’ve seen a lot of live music, but I’ve never seen a solo performer who could touch Danny live–I’ve seen a few who could hold a room like Danny can, but none whose overall performance is as compelling, or as fun.

Danny was debuting eight completely new tracks at the show, which was great–I love to hear new stuff mixed in with the things I know, and I like to track the development of songs by artists I like, when I can, and the changes and development are often most pronounced in the “early life” of a song. (In Danny’s case, since I’ve been seeing him live since before any albums he admits to were recorded, I’ve had the chance to watch a lot of songs evolve over time.)

Three of the new songs hit me right away–one about the question of who would really miss you if you left, one about a guy who runs a joint in the islands, and one about a letter written by the younger self to the older–but history suggests that it’s the ones that are less accessible that will end up being favourites longer term.

Almost all of the new stuff had a pretty clear Paul Simon influence, which Trish and I were commenting on, before Danny made a joke about it from the stage.

You can, by the way, see a fraction¹ of what I mean, since Danny just released a new live CD. You can see the cover and hear a bit at Danny’s site. The physical ones can be had from Danny for $15 via mail order, but for you children of the digital age, the album (and all his others) can be had for less money on iTunes and Zunior (particularly notable for having loseless FLAC versions of the albums for DL). Buy the music–support independent artists!

1. I say that you can use that album to see “a fraction” of what I mean though, because while the music sounds great, without the ability to see it’s just not the same thing as a live show. If you get the chance, see him live–it’s a whole different thing.

• they’re the smallest bit of the collection, so they present a relatively undaunting place to start
• The place where I wanted to put them was ready–unlike the room that will be the “main” library, which needs painting before I start putting stuff in there, or my office, which needs some reorganizing before I start to put shelves in it.
• I never unpacked the MMPBs that I moved to Halifax during the entire time we lived there, so starting with these was appealing since it would mean a chance to review some books I had that I hadn’t seen for nearly a decade. Also, in some cases where I had bought MMPBs during our time in Halifax that “go with” ones I previously had, I could have the OCD life satisfaction of finally putting them together.

Also, as I mentioned previously, I’m using the unpacking, sorting, and shelving process as an opportunity to build an electronic catalogue of my holdings. The amount of geek pleasure I’m getting out of this fundamentally tedious process is nigh comedic.

Having built a catalogue of the MMPBs as I put them on the shelves though, I can state with some exactitude that so far I have shelved 1297 books. This represents all the MMPBs that moved with us to Halifax, and the majority of the ones I bought while we were there¹.

They look like this:

Being OCD man, the books are shelved alphabetically by author, and chronologically within each author (except for cases where books are in a series–then each series is arranged together in chronological order). As you can see, I’ve left myself lots of spaces to fit more books in later without reshelving everything.

I actually planned to put another wide bookcase here–you can see that there’s space for another wide on one the right-hand side–but apparently I overestimated the amount of space I would need immediately. This is a very good thing, since part of the goal of the setup in the new house is to have lots of room for future expansion. Having room to add another 8-shelf case, and the ability to add height extensions to four of the bookcases in this section (the ceiling is lower over the other ones), mean I should be good for quite a long time².

Those 1297 books represent 16 boxes. I have literally hundreds of boxes to go. But at least I get to feel like I’m getting there.

1. Some of the ones bought during our Halifax life got packed as “space-fillers” in the boxes with trade & HC fiction, so it will be a while before I have all the MMPBs in place.
2. My rate of acquisition of MMPBs is pretty low compared to trade & HC fiction–I think I have around the same number now as I had when we left Halifax. I had 5 of the wide tightly packed cases full of MMPBs then, and now I have 5 wide and 1 narrow with lots of leftover room.

I kind of fell off the Internet there for a couple of weeks. Not blogging, barely making use of any other communications tech. Still reading a lot of stuff, but all input, no output.

This was not a planned thing, I just found that my real life was taking up too much time for me to support a vibrant virtual life at the same time: getting up to speed on the new job¹, still trying to get a household established², trying to be a good husband³ and dad⁴, seeing family that are now within “drop in” distance, trying to do some cultural stuff⁵, socializing⁶, finishing some mind-bendingly-tedious cleanup of virtual things⁷, and starting some tedious-but-weirdly fun cleanup of physical things⁸

I think I’m starting to get my stride here⁹, and so I believe you can expect a return to our normal service now¹⁰.

1. For the last two days in particular, I have been absolutely loving the new job–both on its own merits, and because it is illustrating to me how dysfunctional my concept of “normal” and “expected” in the workplace had creepingly become at the previous one.
2. Several rooms still unfurnished–some furniture coming this week, some hopefully next week, stacks of framed art waiting to be hung, and, of course, the book issue. On top of that, I really need to get a plumber to sort out the guest bathroom, and we should get a painter in to do the soon-to-be-library before I start putting up shelves in there.
3. Dr. Wife’s birthday was in there–among other things, got her tickets to see the Little House On The Prairie musical, which she saw with Sarah on the weekend, while I savaged Toronto’s specialty book shops.
4. I think the best thing Sarah and I did during my Internet break was go the Our Body exhibit at the Children’s Museum. That’s probably a post of its own.
5. The best of these was going to see Karl Schroeder talk in his Writer-In-Residence role at the Toronto Public Library. Got to hear some of the not-even-done-yet fifth Virga book, and then got to hear some really bleak–but interesting and insightful–forecasting about the future for novelists, as well slightly less bleak, but no less insightful, meditations on the notion of identity.
6. I had a real blast this past Saturday at an old school drink-up Chris Butcher organized in Toronto. Nothing like going out to drink and talk with people you’ve never met (but some of whom have been peripherally in your virtual social sphere for nearly a decade), and having it work.
7. I have finished the project of cleaning the tags of all the CDs I finished ripping before the move. I now have all the mp3s representing rips of my physical CDs fully tagged and sorted. 2939 “albums”, 37683 tracks, representing 2610 hours, 1 minute, and 23 seconds of music–that’s about 109 solid days to get through. I am still enjoying the “oh I forgot about this” game. The prospect of trying to apply the same degree of order to my “downloads” folder daunts me.
8. This, of course, refers primarily to the process of unpacking, sorting, and shelving my books. I have decided while doing this to actually also make a catalogue of the books–ostensibly for insurance reasons, but in reality because I am an OCD collector type, and the idea appeals to me. Trish bought me the software to manage the collection a while back, and I set myself up with a barcode scanner that really speeds entering ISBNs. So far I’ve only built a few shelves, enough for my mass-market paperback fiction. Just tonight I finished unpacking, sorting, cataloguing, and shelving those books. I started with the MMPBs because they’re the smallest part of the collection, so it was a less daunting task, but also because I never did unpack the paperbacks I moved to Halifax, so I’m seeing some of these books again for the first time in a decade. That added a lot of the fun of the whole thing. I have just over 1300 of them–pictures later.
9. This may be a case of “famous last words”.
10. Unless I actually give in to the urge to go tinker with the footnotes plugin so that it will support footnotes in footnotes…because that would make this kind of thing funnier.

This past Friday, however, I was just doing a speed trip, since I had to get in and out in a relatively short time. I went directly to the store, parking as I usually do in a lot about a half-block away, behind a Korean BBQ joint. I think it was shortly after 8 when I got out of the car.

I’m always in a state of slightly heightened awareness when I’m in particularly urban parts of Toronto–not that I think it’s justified or required, just the leftover neuroses of growing up in a smallish city and hearing all the things one hears about The Big City–and especially so when I’m in dark or secluded spots. This particular parking lot is actually quite secluded for being within throwing distance of one of the major streets of Toronto, and it’s not terribly well lit, so my small town paranoia was in full effect.

Consequently I was fully aware of the gentleman, whom I had noticed while parking, sitting leaning against the back wall of the BBQ joint, and resting up against something that’s either a dumpster or a commercial grease trap. He could have been a kitchen worker taking a break for a smoke, or a just a homeless dude–either was plausible, although it was pretty cold for someone in either of those situations to just be sitting on the ground outside.

From my car, I would have to walk past the guy to get to the side street. I started walking, probably unconsciously having decided to walk past without ‘officially’ noticing the guy, but while maintaining a constant awareness of where he was–small town paranoia, you know. As I got close to him I could hear him making some kind of sounds. When I got closer, it was obvious that he was singing. And that he was pissed drunk–there’s no mistaking a certain kind of slurring of the lyrics.

Why someone would be drunk already at 8PM, and why they’d be hanging out in a parking lot behind a Korean BBQ if they were… who knows. But the kind of person who might be “I can’t actually maintain my Z-axis” drunk at 8PM might well think it a fine idea to have a seat behind a restaurant and belt out a few tunes. Fair enough.

What really threw me as I passed the guy, though, was what he was singing.

As I passed him, and my mind processed the slurred words coming out of his mouth, and the tune he was kind of carrying, it hit me…

“…Fare ye weel ye valley an’ shaw.
There’s nae Jock will mourn the kyles o’ ye
Puir bliddy bastards are weary.”

Braid Scots and all.

The shock of recognition made me turn and look him straight in the eye–a violation of all our social conventions for this kind of situation. I couldn’t make out a lot in the relative darkness, but he was a white guy, in clothes that were shabby but not in any way tattered. He might have been around 60, or maybe early 50s with a hard life. His hair was a mess, but he had lots of it, and he had a noticeable stubble–enough that I could see it even in those conditions, but not a beard. He did not meet my gaze, or look up when I stopped walking. He just kept singing.

I got moving again, and when I came back to my car he was gone from the parking lot.

Ever since, I’ve been singing the song to myself in odd moments, and wondering about who that guy was, and what his story was.

The song, in case you didn’t recognize it, is THE 51st HIGHLAND DIVISION’S FAREWELL TO SICILY, sometimes just called “The Banks Of Sicily”. It’s something I first heard in my childhood, in a situation that made it stick in my mind. I probably didn’t hear it again for 20 years after that. When it eventually did come back into my head, we were in the days of Napster, and so I managed to find a copy of it. Sadly the copy is one that has no artist attribution, so I have no idea who’s doing the performance. I’ve listened to it once every couple of months since finding it, without thinking particularly deeply about it.

Here’s the mystery-artist version I have:

Don’t worry if you can’t make out the lyrics. Unless you’re from a particular part of Scotland, you’re not supposed to be able to understand them all. Since running into my mysterious drunken singer, I’ve done a little digging into the history of the song–it was written in a carefully selected combination of Scots and English by a fellow named Hamish Henderson, about his regiment (the 51st Highland Regiment, some of the supposed Ladies From Hell) taking their leave of Sicily.

The World War II ballad “The 51st Highland Regiment’s Farewell to Sicily”, also known as “Banks of Sicily”, lyrics by Hamish Henderson, is based on and sung sung to the melody of the march “Farewell to the Creeks”. Composed while he was Intelligence Officer for the Highland Division in World War II. G. W. Lockhart (in Fiddles and Folk, 1998) relates that Henderson had been viewing the smoke curling from Mt. Etna’s crater in the distance behind the Pipes and Drums of the division’s 153 Brigade, when the band launched into “Farewell to the Creeks.” “Without hindrance,” said Henderson, “the words came flowing to me.”

There is some debate about the “proper” wording of the song. Apparently Henderson himself published a couple of slightly different versions, with small changes to how the sky over Messina is described (sometimes as “unco an’ grey” and sometimes “antrin an’ grey”). Further, while the printed lyrics refer to the “Puir bliddy swaddies” being weary, apparently Henderson always sang it as “Puir bliddy bastards
(as in the embedded version above) unless he was in swank company. Given those caveats here’s what the lyrics nominally are:

THE 51st HIGHLAND DIVISION’S FAREWELL TO SICILY

The pipie is dozie, the pipie is fey,
He wullnae come roon for his vino the day.
The sky ower Messina is antrin an’ grey
And a’ the bricht chaulmers are eerie.

Then fare weel ye banks o’ Sicily
Fare ye weel ye valley an’ shaw.
There’s nae Jock will mourn the kyles o’ ye
Puir bliddy bastards are weary.

And fare weel ye banks o’ Sicily
Fare ye weel ye valley an’ shaw.
There’s nae hame can smoor the wiles o’ ye
Puir bliddy bastards are weary.

Then doon the stair and line the waterside
Wait your turn, the ferry’s awa.
Then doon the stair and line the waterside
A’ the bricht chaulmers are eerie,

The drummie is polisht, the drummie is braw
He cannae he seen for his webhin ava.
He’s beezed himsel up for a photo an’ a
Tae leave wi his Lola, his dearie.

Then fare weel ye dives o’ Sicily
(Fare ye weel ye shieling an’ ha’)
And fare weel ye byres and bothies
Whaur kind signorinas were cheerie.

And fare well ye dives o’ Sicily
(Fare ye weel ye shieling an’ ha’)
We’ll a’ mind shebeens and bothies
Whaur Jock made a date wi’ his dearie.

Then tune the pipes and drub the tenor drum
(Leave your kit this side o’ the wa’)
Then tune the pipes and drub the tenor drum—
A’ the bricht chaulmers are eerie.

As you can see, unless you’re up on your Scots dialect, you’re only going to working with the very general meaning of the song. (And, of course, there’s rather a lot of potential for mondegreens–I thought that the lyrics “fare ye weel ye valley and shaw” were “fare ye weel ye valiant shore” for around 20 years. Then I thought “valley and shaw” was dialect for “valley and shore”. Only lately I have found out that ‘shaw’ here is a Scots word for a wood or thicket descending from the Old English scaga.)

In any case, the proper lyrics for the tune aren’t ones that would stick in the head of anyone who hadn’t spent at least a fair amount of time around Scots dialects or made a particular effort to learn the song. Which suggests that my mystery singer either had a Scots background, or had made a proper study of this particular tune, committing it to memory. The what-was-this-guy’s-story question just gets bigger.

As part of digging into the history of the tune this week, I’ve been doing a lot of interesting reading, and finding a lot of other artists who’ve recorded the tune. For instance, I found that Dick Gaughan (remember, we like him around here) includes the song in his repertoire… and even found a snippet from an interesting essay about the song at his site. The Guide To The Scots Language and accompanying dictionary at his site is also quite helpful. They give enough information to answer the question in the post title–a “bricht chaulmer” is a “bright room”, and suddenly the lyrics about the bright rooms, presumably now empty of their former noise and populace, being eerie makes a lot of sense.

Other useful references included a couple of discussions specifically about parsing the lyrics at The Mudcat Cafe: this one, and this one. Reading through those reveals a lot of additional information on the phrasing choices. Between what I already had, and Gaughan’s dictionary, and those threads, I think I could make a fair go of translating the thing–but I don’t think I will; it seems a lot more poetic in the original form, perhaps the moreso for the work I had to do to fully understand it.

I also had to do some reading on the traditional relationships within regiments, after reading this: “Henderson’s complexities make his work hard to study: for example, Dick Gaughan’s commentary on the song-poem The 51st Highland Division’s Farewell to Sicily, while insightful, does not take into account the traditional divide between pipers and drummers in the Scots regiments, the essential key to one reading of the text.” at Henderson’s wikipedia entry. I admit, whatever key is there to a supposed particular reading of the text, it escapes me. Unless that’s just referring to the stereotypical way the “pipie” and ‘drummie’ are each presented in the lyrics, of course, the one as a fey, dozie, drunkard and the other ass a kind of dandified lady’s man.

Speaking of Henderson, I found a recording of Gordon Scott performing the song, and this recording is introduced by Hamish Henderson himself, explaining the origin of the tune:

In addition to that, Youtube searching yields lots of different versions: a fairly faithful one from The McCalmans in the 70s, a particularly caffeine-free one from the aforementioned Mr. Gaughan, an Irished-up and pretty heavily altered version from The Ryans, a faithful solo performance by Kev Thompson, and another acoustic version with sing-along lyrics (again slightly different from the ones above).

So, after a few days of picking at it, I know rather a lot more about the song, and about the proper meaning of its lyrics… but I’m still left with a lot of questions about who the mysterious singer was, why he was drunk in the January-freezing parking lot of a Korean BBQ at 8PM on a Friday, why he knew the words to the song, and why he was singing it.

I think I’ll make up a good story to explain it.

I found that interesting enough that I spent some time looking at other vlogs from the same dude, which lead me to this one, East Coast Cats and Christopher Street Boys, which I particularly liked:

I’m pretty New York ignorant–I think I’ve spent a total of about 5 days in Manhattan, and none in the other boroughs, so most of my sense of what’s what in NYC comes from literature and pop culture. I had a vague sense that Christopher Street had a relation to gay culture–I think mostly because I’ve loved Lou Reed‘s New York since I was about 16 years old¹, and the song Halloween Parade makes the association–but I didn’t know any of the history mentioned here.

The clip is interesting enough on it’s own–I always like to see a bigot get given a verbal smackdown, and I always like to see a History Smackdown in particular, and I’m down with people who want to kick back at Authority Figures Who Are Also Bigots, especially in defence of their inherent rights–but what was even more interesting was following up on the Stonewall Riot reference.

I’m not going to summarize all the reading threads this lead to, let me just point you to the Wikipedia entry on the Stonewall riots as a starting place. (Oh, and the page for Christopher Street, which had me imagining a story where the ghost of e. e. cummings haunted Harlan Ellison with the riots as a backdrop–there’s almost a Tim Powers story there.)

I’m interested in everything human, so this kind of social history fascinates me–the moreso because it’s something I’ve never really been exposed to. A basic Canadian education doesn’t include anythng on the history of the gay rights movement, and neither my autodidactism nor cultural osmosis seem to have brought me the details in the same way as they have for say, the equivalent history of the Black struggle for civil rights. Maybe this is a particular blind spot of mine, but if it’s also an area where you lack some knowledge, starting at those links above and working out could be a profitable use of some of your time.

I’m always pleased to erase some of my ignorance–there’s so much of it, that I never regret getting rid of some–especially when it happens as a result of an off-hand comment, or an unlikely chain of associations.

1. I have a distinct memory of other nerdy teens, who should have known better, playing the “I’m cooler than you” card because I was listening to a song called “Last Great American Whale”, and that was obviously not something a person concerned about “cool” should be doing. From the perspective of history, I’m comfortable with who was actually a cooler cat: someone listening to Lou, or someone mocking him for it.

So I was already primed to appreciate the new map at Lapham’s Quaterly (for the religion issue, which I hope will arrive here sometime soon since getting my subscription copies more than a week after I’ve seen the issue on the newsstands annoys me).

The maps shows some sacred sites around the world–just a taste to get you interested in some things you can Google up, of course.

I note though that it misses my favourite site here in Canada: The Place Where The Thunder Beings Rest. (A.k.a. “The place where thunderbirds nest”, a.k.a. Animikii-wajiw, Anemki-waucheu, Thunder Mountain, and most colonially as Mount Mckay.)

To make a long story short, the northern Ontario city of “Thunder Bay” takes it’s name from the body of water, which is in turn named because of the storms/weather that happen there. This weather is attributable, apparently, to the actions of the thunder birds, who nest on Thunder Mountain–later renamed Mount Mckay–at the end of the bay. Cool story.

And a really cool looking place. Check out this great series of photo posts by northshorewoman: part 1, part 2, part 3.

Of course there’s lots of other cool lore in the area, that ties in, such a the Sleeping Giant legend, and the story of the chapel atop the mountain.

(When Trish and I were touring the area a number of years ago, one of the things I made sure we did, in addition to going to the mountain, was to tour the Silver Islet mine stuff–not so much because of the story of the Sleeping Giant and the secret of the silver, but rather because of the true story of the missing coal shipment in 1883 and the subsequent mine flooding. And that story I only knew because of the Tanglefoot song.)

1. …with more pagan trappings than Christian ones among the commonly observed rituals, etc.

Actually, that’s not strictly speaking true–last Thursday I gave my two weeks notice, and while I am technically employed (and getting paid) through the end of that period, today I was “released”. In corporate-speak this means: don’t come in any more–now that you’re not on the team, we don’t want you to be exposed to anything we’re deciding for the future. In Chris-speak this means: extra paid vacation.

Let’s do this like a FAQ, just for fun:

1. Are you just quitting, or do you have something else lined up?

I gave my notice because I’m accepting another position with a different company. I don’t know if you’ve noticed the economy or not, but let me assure you that in order to straight up quit with no plan, there would have had to be some wicked problems, or else I’d have to be a moron.

2. Why is this other position better than the one you have.?

Well, this is the rub. There are a lot of answers for this.

One is purely lifestyle–the nature of my previous job required me to have copious day-to-day interactions with people in Boston, Israel, and Australia, as well as less regular interactions with people in all North American time zones and the UK. This meant a lot of early morning meetings and late night meetings. It meant that the most important meetings–the ones where we needed to get people from all time zones together–were always scheduled at times that I wanted to spend with my daughter.

Another is personal relationships–while I worked with many excellent people at my old position, the new offer came from someone who has been my boss at five previous companies, whom I like, trust, and respect. And several of my new co-workers are also people I’ve worked closely with for more than a decade, who I also like, trust, and respect, and with whom I know I can work well.

Another is the nature of the organization. Today I ended my association with one of the largest software companies in North America. When I start working again it will be with a very small (relatively) company that’s still venture funded and privately held. There are some good things about very large companies: benefits, stability, and some process things. But there are also a lot of big downsides of any large organization, particularly including bureaucratic hassles, Mordoc the Preventer, internal politics, etc. In a smaller, more focused organization a lot of these things just don’t come up. In practice this means that you can accomplish more with the same amount of work–internal inefficiencies result in less friction during the process. (And, now that Trish is employed stably, and with good benefits, I can afford to deal with some of the small company stuff.)

Maybe the biggest reason though is just that it’s time for a change. I’ve been working on the project I left today for nearly nine years, and you know, the only difference between a rut and a grave is depth. I’ve been wanting a change for a while, and this is the first time I’ve seen a chance to have one that isn’t ridiculously irresponsible.

2(b) Does this mean you didn’t like the boss you had this morning?

Quite the opposite actually–the woman I reported to is one of the best managers I’ve had. The decision has nothing to do with her–indeed, she made the decision a lot more difficult to make.

3. Umm, what exactly did you do, and are you doing something different now?

I don’t normally talk about work details online–not because of prudence, but because it’s boring. I was the “Senior Architect” for a product line of enterprise software this morning, essentially the person with final technical responsibility for a 130 person development organization spread across three continents (while cleverly avoiding actual management responsibility). The nature of the particular position meant that in addition to the specific product line that I explicitly owned, I was also heavily involved in a number of other products’ activities, primarily with in the security area of the company.

When I next start working I’ll be one of a small team of people working on development of a single product in North America–I think there are six others. Obviously I’ll be a lot more involved directly with the product, but at the end of the day it’s still about designing and building enterprise software. So it’ll be different, in that I’ll be much more directly involved, but also the same, in that the work still relates to building enterprise-quality software to solve problems that only large organizations have.

4. So is this a good career move?

Well, you can certainly make the case that going from being the technical lead for a 130 person team, responsible for a product line, to being one of a handful of people working on a single product is huge step backwards careerwise.

Similarly, you could argue that in terms of forward career potential I’m downgrading. At my old, large, employer I hadn’t reached the end of the technical track–there were overall architects for whole business units, and then ranks of highly paid “thinkers” and “distinguished engineers” who had reached a kind of technical apotheosis. At this new firm, I’m walking into the top rank of technical positions, and there is no apparent way to move upwards without moving away from the technical track. Essentially I’m looking at “growing with the company” rather than “growing inside the company”.

I am firmly aware of both of these things.

I’m reasonably certain that I will be a happier person in the new position, and that it’s worth the trade off. I am consciously trading in some of this career path stuff for more quality time with my family, and for spending less of my time generally either angry or frustrated.

5. Does this have anything to do with your recent move back to Ontario?

Ironically, and despite the timing, no.

To be completely honest, one of the the things I had been telling myself about the move was that I would be in a market where I could potentially get a new position that was “at my level” and that would pay something like what I got paid at my previous position–this wasn’t really a possibility in Halifax.

However, before I even got a chance to start looking around here, I got this excellent offer from my old boss, and I had to take it.

6. So, wait, does that mean you’re working in an office now, after all those years remote?

Nope. Just like the last decade plus, I’ll be working remotely for an office in Boston. I’ve just switched which office in Boston.

I will still be working from my home office, and still taking regular (although perhaps less frequent) trips to the Boston office.

And I can put off the whole “can I actually go back to working in an office” question for a little longer.

7. So, when do you start?

In the new year–January 4th–. Between now and then I’m unemployed.

8. So what are you going to do tomorrow, on your first unemployed day? Just sit around?

Actually, quite the opposite. I have a very busy day planned tomorrow. A while back, partly as a reward for being unbelievably good during our house-hunting weekend, and partly as a way to suggest that Ontario would be fun because it had lots of things that aren’t available in Nova Scotia, and partly because I like to spoil, I bought tickets for Sarah and I to attend the National Ballet‘s Nutcracker tomorrow night. Actually, since I was being silly I got us box seats–if you’re gonna be a bear, be a grizzly, as my grandfather used to say.

And since I’m suddenly, and unexpectedly (remember I thought I would be working through the 24th) unemployed, we’re going to make a day of it. Travel to Toronto in the morning, lunch and the afternoon at the Royal Ontario Museum, then dinner, and then the Nutcracker (both the kids’ story thing before, and then the actual performance.) Actually the only worry I have is how I’m going to make it through the (nearly 2 hour) performance–I suspect it won’t hold my attention like it will hold Sarah’s, but I could be wrong.

Friday would be the day I’d spend just sitting around, but I actually have to trek back to Toronto that day to do my exit interview at my former employer’s “Toronto office”¹. I may spend the rest of that day hitting specialty bookshops in Toronto, if the weather’s nice. It’s been a while since I’ve been to The Sleuth or Bakka-Phoenix.

9. So, how are you feeling about all of this?

Oh, you know, surfing on the combination of relief, excitement, and pants-wetting terror. You’d have to know me well to tell–my poker face is better for this kind of thing than it is for actual, you know, poker–but if I weren’t so good at rolling with it, I’d be a little freaked out.

Actually, the biggest thing I’m feeling right now is relief that the last couple of days are over–the time between giving your notice and actually leaving can be very awkward, especially in a situation like mine.

1. If your office is north of the 407 and nearly in Markham, can you really call it a Toronto office? Bah.

Since everything is now on the truck and on its way, and I’ll be spending the next three days doing a very gentle road-trip to my new home, I should have time to start catching up with the blog again. Assuming I can even move tomorrow, of course–Herculesing that GIANT storage bin (full of all the red wine and port, none of which can go on the truck, and all of which must therefore go in the car with me) up the stairs was probably not the smartest move, despite how manly and powerful it must have looked, and how efficient of a move it was. Still, surely a bottle of Ontario’s finest hard cider, followed by a bottle of Quebec’s finest stout, will solve all my internal muscular issues while I sleep.

Anyway, since today is also Thanksgiving for the Yanks, I’ll send out wishes for a good holiday to my American friends, and I’ll leave you with this picture:

That’s the centerpiece from our Thanksgiving dinner last month. It was assembled by Dr. Wife and my lovely daughter from things they found in the yard–so it’s also a little bittersweet, since I suspect the new house won’t have quite the same wilderness resources, being much more “in the city”. However, since I haven’t seen the new place yet… who knows?

The lads made quite a night of it, with a series of surprises and parting gifts that would have brought a tear to the eye of a weaker man.

Things started out as normal, albeit with perhaps a slightly larger than usual attendance, and several rounds of cards were played. Things started to go crazy at the first break of the evening, when our host suddenly appeared with a veritable smörgÃ¥sbord of fine cheeses and high-end deli meats, on which we apparently to gorge ourselves, in honour of, well, me. I recall at least St. Agur blue, a double cream brie, a jarlsberg, Applewood smoked cheddar, Guinness/porter cheddars, limburger, the bellavita raspberry, and something utterly wonderful that I wasn’t familiar with that was referred to as “the Carleton”. I may be forgetting one–I’ll know when I see the photos of the groaning boards later. I spent less time with the meat tray, but it was covered with thinly sliced European deli meats, prosciutto and the like, and accompanied by a couple of different kinds of pepperoni.

I was surprised and pleased by this presentation, and everyone probably ate more meat & cheese than was strictly speaking healthy.

If that had been all, it would have been a generous and unexpected send-off… but that was just the beginning.

Later in the night was the presentation of a special “Lifetime Membership” certificate, accompanied by a bottle of my favourite Speyside Scotch. Check it out:

That crest, by the way, is one I made up when we first started ironically referring to our sketchy weekly games as meetings of the HGPA, and which I integrated into my fictitious history of the association. The slogan (which you can also see up at the top of this blog page under the title) is a variant on a lyrics from Me & My Uncle, by the way. We’ve used it for a number of things over the years, with my previous favourite being the custom stein I had made a couple of years ago.

The boys weren’t done yet though, as they went my stein one farther, presenting me with a set of eight engraved tumblers. Here’s one:

I think we can agree that the boys really went all out here, giving me an epic send-off. This, of course, doesn’t make it easier for me to leave Halifax, but I guess I can take some solace in the immortal words of Dr. Seuss. Which isn’t to say that a few weeks from now you might find me spending Tuesday night sitting alone in my new basement, drinking fine scotch out of lovely tumblers and missing the hell out my guys.

But I’ve got to tell you, right at the moment, some of those things are just a little too on target for me to laugh, you know.

Examples:

• Alignment — “I’ve yet to convince people that I am correct.”
• Executive Summary — A brief assessment given to executives. If this summary were shown to those who actually do the work, they would giggle.
• Future Proofing — Architecting a product so that it accounts for things that don’t yet exist and can’t be predicted.
• Heads-up — “You’re screwed.”
• Milestones — Magically created dates that mean nothing, but give executives the impression that progress is being made.
• Socialization — The process by which an idea that no one wants to do is forced on others.
• Solution — “I don’t know what your product does.”

Read the rest at the original article.

I felt a little better about the Management Glossary at the same site when I started browsing it, seeing definitions that I quite liked such as;

Architect: An engineer who knows what he/she is doing. If an architect says something which appears insane, it’s worth firing off a couple follow-up questions as they are often smarter than you.

and:

NIH (“Not Invented Here”): Term to describe behavior where an engineering team will not consider working with anyone’s code except their own. It’s not that the external code is good or bad, it’s just foreign which means it must be reviewed, reformatted… oh, what the hell. LET’S REWRITE THE WHOLE DAMNED THING. Billions of dollars have been lost to NIH. I mean it. Billions.

But then my eye settled on the punch-line to the whole affair…

Computer Associates: A sixteen billion dollar company based in New York that you don’t know. Seriously, name a single product by these guys. I dare you.

Ouch.

In celebration of that seemingly endless effort being completed allow me to present five tracks that I haven’t heard in a while, since they didn’t, for one reason or another, make the ripping cut previously. I’ve chosen five tracks from the thousands that are all performed by men², that tie specifically to particular places or memories for me. These take me at least a decade back, and almost two decades in some cases–it’s pretty amazing the power of music to connect to memory.

Junkhouse – Jet Trash: This one takes me directly back to 1997–I was one year out of university, with an excellently paying job with a flexible schedule, and no responsibilities. That meant I could take in a lot of evening shows, and I can see exactly in my mind what Mrs. Robinson’s looked like on the night Junkhouse came to play there on the Fuzz tour. It was the first time I’d seen Tom Wilson live (although certainly not the last, as I’ve followed him for years since–witness that last post), and one of the first times I’d been to a show in my comfortable little university town where most of the audience looked like they could kick my ass, and wouldn’t think twice about it. It was awesome.

Odds - Oh Sorrow, Oh Shame: This one takes me to a couple of years later, when I’m living with Chef Paul and Mike Ditty. Paul was a huge Odds fan and turned me on to this particular album. I distinctly recall sitting on the deck behind the house, drinking Coronas with Paul–must have been his day off–while he talked about his fascination with the lyric about every town having it’s three-legged cat. After that, that visual was what always came to mind whenever his occasional nickname (“Chia The Cat”) was used around me.

Randy Newman – You Can Leave Your Hat On: I saw 9 1/2 Weeks (with French subtitles) during it’s first release at a midnight showing in a theatre in Lausanne. I was there with a Swiss girl I was totally in (unrequited) lust with. I know that the version in the movie has Joe Cocker singing Randy’s song, but it doesn’t matter–I hear it, and I’m instantly there, and the memory of being a randy (heh) teenager come rushing in. (Amusingly, this did not happen when the Tom Jones version of the song showed up in The Full Monty.)

Roger Waters – Amused To Death: I bought this album the week it came out, in the fall of 1992. I listened to it for the first time on headphones while working in nuclear research facility–about 200 meters from a reactor, which might be kind of amusing, given some of the album’s content–and when I got to this track, the closing track, it utterly hooked me. At first it was this sequence in the lyrics that caught me:

And the children on Melrose
strut their stuff.
Is absolute zero cold enough?
And out in the Valley, warm and clean,
the little ones sit by their TV screens.
No thoughts to think.
No tears to cry.
All sucked dry.
Down to the very last breath.

I thought it was a very piercing condemnation. Over time, though I’ve come to think that bit’s much too easy, and what’s really impressive comes later, in the masterful lyrical “long take” that runs from a cutting sketch of the media/consumer lifestyle, though to a satirical outsider look at how that has to end, from :

We watched the tragedy unfold.
We did as we were told.
We bought and sold.
It was the greatest show on earth.
But then it was over.

through to

But on eliminating every other reason
For our sad demise
They logged the only explanation left
This species has amused itself to death

Sure, Waters is bombastic, but tell me that the way he hits “Our last hurrah” in there isn’t perfect. I dare you.

Lou Reed – Cremation (Ashes To Ashes): The album this track is from, Magic and Loss, dates from that same “working at the nuclear lab” period of my life. Like Amused to Death, it was one of about 30 discs I had with me over four months of a situation where my lifestyle was forced to include long periods of being alone in my room in a shared accommodation. I listened to all of those discs a lot. This song doesn’t take me there, though. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it takes me to a funeral; one where the Lou’s perfectly affectless line “Nothing else contained you ever” kept running through my head. I think I probably would have liked what Lou’s done here more in the days when I couldn’t connect to it except abstractly, but I suspect I appreciate it more now.

And on that happy note, let’s call it a post.

1. I in no way claim to have done this alone–Dr. Wife did a lot of the ripping on her machine, while I kept one of my work machines more or less in continuous ripping mode in my office.
2. No special reason.

I note that the photo was taken by a member of the police force, on a camera normally used for crime scene photography. I am not making that up.

Later on, when I need to cheer you all up after writing about some political atrocity or something, I shall post a couple of the pictures of Sarah and the ring-bearer from the wedding tearing up the dance floor at the wedding with their wild moves.

We got up a little early this morning and had a pancake breakfast, and then we all went down to where Sarah would meet her school bus.

She got her self ready to go, zipping on her sweater, and slinging her backpack over her shoulders:

Then we waited for the bus, and Sarah got on and headed out. She had no trepidation or nervousness, and was just excited and interested.

After we put Sarah on the bus, Trish and I went over to the school, in order to make sure Sarah got into her class with no problems. So I was able to see her get off the bus, and capture this one moment of lip-biting, possibly some minor trepidation, as she stepped off. She basically ignored Trish and I and made her way into the school at speed–she didn’t need parental attention, she wanted to get this school thing rolling.

As soon as she got to her classroom, she made a beeline to the table where the books were, and started to read them. Again, completely uninterested in her parents, and ready to get on with the whole school thing.

So we contentedly left her there and went on with our day.

We both also went to meet her when the bus dropped her off this afternoon (after today I’m sure only one of us will go). When we asked her about her day, she gave us a big smile and said “There’s one thing I have to tell you: it was a lot of fun!”.

I wonder how old you are before that impression changes? And when it changes back? (I think I enjoyed school until around Grade 7, liked it again in the last year of high school and all through university, but I wonder how it works for other people).

First, I am pleased and delighted to announce that Dr. Patricia Genoe McLaren, a.k.a. Dr. Wife, has secured a tenure-track position as an assistant professor at Wilfrid Laurier University. Technically at Laurier’s new¹campus in Brantford, I should mention. She’ll be teaching primarily in their Department of Leadership, but the structure of the Laurier Brantford programs means she’ll also be involved with the Department of Contemporary Studies. Yes, this is the third impressive thing I was holding back on mentioning: that even in this ridiculously difficult academic job market, Trish has secured exactly the kind of job she wanted, and one she’s quite excited about for a number of reasons.

While she’s technically now an assistant professor², since the job is retroactive to the start of July³, she doesn’t need to be on campus and teaching until January.

That’s a very good thing, since–as should be obvious–we’re going to have to move to Ontario before then.

So that’s the second thing: we’re moving back to Ontario.

I can’t answer any when questions yet. We’re about to list the house, and basically as soon as it sells (and who knows what that means in this market, although our agent is very positive about it) we’ll pop down to Ontario and buy a new place.

Yes, for the record, my feelings on this are, to put it mildly, not unmixed. I really like Halifax and our life here, but you gotta do what you gotta do, right? As a result of this I’ve been focused lately on the upsides of being back in Ontario, and trying not to think about the things I’ll be giving up from Halifax.

While matters are not fully settled yet, the odds are good that we’ll be looking for a place in Cambridge, since that essentially splits the difference between Brantford and Waterloo (which is one of the places where I could reasonably expect to find the kind of work that I am qualified for, and get the salary I am used to, if I ever decide I’ve had it with my current employers), and provides relatively easy access to Toronto (another such place), as well as to various cities where our families live.

On our recent vacation (one of the weeks there was radio silence here in August) we did take a day to walk around the Brantford campus, and then to investigate neighbourhoods in the Cambridge area, and found several places we think we could live. (It won’t be the kind of woodland retreat we have now, but the girls were already overruling me on that–even if we were staying in Halifax, they were going to force me to move into the city.)

As a consequence of the plan to list the house this week, we’ve been doing some serious work on making the house more saleable for the last several days. Most of this work has essentially been “doing things Trish wanted to do anyway that I was resisting”.

For example, we removed all the pine wainscoting from the hallways and breakfast nook, and repainted all the walls in those areas. This should have been pretty simple, but of course without wainscoting we had to put in baseboard, and the baseboard needed to be stained to match the flooring we recently put in. We replaced all the kitchen counters and the kitchen faucet. We did a bunch of other smaller things.

Most of all though, we apparently need to get a bunch of my stuff out of the house–it’s apparently harder to sell the house when it’s cluttered with tons of stuff. So, all the DVDs are packed. Most of the CDs are packed (and I’m on a mission to rip them all before they get packed, which might mean I never actually unpack them) with rest on track for packing very soon. The five bookcases in the middle of my office that form “stacks” between the shelf-covered walls have had their contents packed. The three short bookcases in the rec room, the bookcase at the end of the hallway, the bookcase across from the bar, etc, have all had their contents packed. Lots of other stuff is packed. Tomorrow some dudes will come and take all this stuff away to a warehouse where it will be stored until we get around to moving.

(As an aside, these 20 to 25 boxes of books is only a tiny bit of what we will need to pack and move. I think it’s somewhere between 1/6 and 1/7th of the hardcover and trade fiction. So there’s the rest of that, plus all the other kinds of books. The moving guy estimated around 10 tons of books, and “more than 200″ boxes of books. More than anything else about this I will/do loathe the logistics of moving.)

So, to summarize: we don’t know exactly when (but before January–if it takes longer than that to sell the house we’ll just move anyway, either into a rental for a while or with bridge financing), and we don’t know where to (but probably somewhere in or near Cambridge), but we’re leaving Halifax and moving back to Ontario.

1. I think it’s about 10 years old, but that’s still “new” for a university.
2. Although I note she’s not on the faculty list online yet–probably more paperwork needs signing before she’ll appear there.
3. Don’t ask–I don’t understand academia, but the offer didn’t come until the end of July, and even then it was for a job starting a month earlier. The contracts are just done now.