"The Weasel Under the Cocktail Cabinet”: or Why I took a Break from Studying English

When I started my undergraduate program I entered into a Linguistics major, and Spanish and English minors. Last year (my third year) I went through a period of oscillation and wild indecision about what degree I actually wanted to graduate with, the result being that I didn't take any English courses all year; I'm very glad about this.

I'm not glad because I don't think English classes are worth while, some of my best classes have been through the English department and I think I've learned a lot, but I was just about reaching the end of my tether so it was most definitely a good thing that I took a break.

My problem lies with the method of analysis employed by every English prof I've had so far. To me, some of the methods of discussing a text are a tad on the hypocritical side. Half of the time analysis is focused on the the secret subtext of the author, the “theme” and the deep, important message that's buried between the lines, as if every novelist and playwright writes simply as a means to embed their profound ideas in layers of meaningless text so that only the brilliant and enlightened English professor can read through and share a little, private laugh with themselves knowing that they “got it” when the lower beings, the unwashed masses, won't see the all important “point” of the piece.

The other half of the time it seems as if the work itself is treated as an output that the author couldn't help. As if their position in society, income, life experience, family and education leave only one possible option for production. In these cases the author is analyzed as well as the piece. Nothing is taken for granted, nothing is inconsequential and the author as well as everyone else is part of the group that “doesn't get it”.

I find both of these methods frustrating. I believe that authors – and I will focus mainly on novels though much of this applies to other topics of study in English classes as well – are aware of the message of their piece, if any, but that this isn't the be all and end all of what they write. I also, perhaps naively, tend towards believing what the author says to be true. In a world that a writer created we have to have faith that every word is a true account of what “happened”, because it is only those words that make it have happened. To question a fact claimed by an omniscient narrator or though a character that we are never led to believe would have reason to lie, is looking for depth where there isn't any.

Now I'm sure I'm biased as a lifelong, hobby writer, but I think that bias actually better gives me the right to speak up about it. I've written many short stories and just finished my first novel manuscript and while there are obvious themes and questions of morality raised, I would be embarrassed and frustrated if I ever heard anyone analyze my work the way I'm asked to in my courses.

It's not always a big deal, every word is not always so carefully chosen and the book is not always a hidden message of societal reform. It's too easy for two people with the same work to write essays with exactly opposite theses, each with piles evidence to back it up. Too often quotes can be analyzed in any number of ways and to me that says that there is no clear cut message.

It's all a sea of opinion and conjecture, and while this may be interesting and valuable I'm worried that over-exposure leads some people to believe that what they're saying is the one and only truth and they expect those around them to conform to that belief.

We see the dangers of this attitude with the constant battle over the interpretation of the bible. Different factions argue over the exact meaning and application of a certain passage in a modern context. Whether it is actually the word of God or not, it's still in the form of a book and this leads to disputes of opinion. We should all be aware and be careful of the limits of written language and I don't like the road that lit studies seems to be ambling down.

To me I believe that the last word on a piece should always be that of the author and no one else. They created the characters, the situation and chose every word, whether carefully or not. When class discussions get too far away from the actual words written on the page it feels like a disrespect to the author and to their work and most of the people we're studying are long dead and unable to stand up for themselves.

My thoughts are, possibly obviously, varied and scattered on the subject and, of course, since I am again taking English classes I do write essays of the type I am particularly against and this is what's been driving me crazy. I don't know where to draw the line, I don't know when it moves from worthwhile discussion to over-analysis and I don't know if I'll ever be able to define that point.

All I know is that too many times I'm cringing listening to a professor or other student expanding on an idea to the point that I think they're going beyond what was actually created by the author.

Pinter himself said "what I write is what I write" and time and time again claimed that his work had no deeper meaning, though his plays are extensively studied and considered absolutely filled to the gills with subtext. Really, I suppose, my question is: why do we keep looking for the “weasel under the cocktail cabinet”? Why can't we just let great literature be great literature, enjoy the feelings it excites, the smiles and tears it brings to us and whatever message we choose to take away from it? So tonight I'm going to re-read one of my favorite books and I'm going to open up and believe wholeheartedly in everything the author says and nothing more.

Fly My Pretties...

Attaching bands, rings, or radio transmitters to wild birds is one of the few ways we have of tracking their migration, breeding habits and life-span and one of the (few) people in Ontario who is licensed to do just that happens to be my boyfriend's father. He is a retired high school science teacher and he spends most of his mornings catching, banding, recording and releasing various types of wild birds. Now as an animal lover and generally curious person I was interested, and as an avid photographer I was delighted to have the opportunity to shoot some wild birds up close. So after hanging out with a bird bander (and going on as many of his expeditions as I could) for over four years, I now have an excellent chance to pimp some of my photos and to tell you, my millions of dedicated readers (ha ha), a little bit about banding birds.

The best time to catch backyard song birds is in the early morning. The bander puts up long, nearly invisible nets called “mist nets”. These nets have pockets in them so when the birds fly in, they bounce down into the pocket where they can't get out. This brown headed cowbird is chillin' out in the net waiting to be taken out. You can see he already has a metal band on his right leg, so he's old hat at this net stuff.

The birds are all collected and put in separate cloth bags. They are then taken out one at a time, their wing length is measured, species, sex and age identified if possible, and a small metal band with a unique number is attached to their leg. All this information is recorded and if a bird with a band is found it's activities can be tracked by following the other places it has been captured or spotted.

After this the birds are released, but sometimes I like to hang out with them a little bit before they fly off. In this picture you can see the sleeping trick. I promise he's not dead, he's only sleeping! In fact, he's not even sleeping, at the time he was looking all around, at me, at my camera and at the world

If a bird feels that he is trapped he will stay still until the situation changes and then he will again try to escape. This means that if you lay a bird on his back and slowly open your hand he will stay there, often, indefinitely. I've also recently been practicing the finger trick where you let the bird grip your finger and then slowly let go. Some will stay there for quite a while, but I must admit it is hard to photograph when one is standing on your finger because unlike the sleeping trick the smallest movement is liable to make them fly away.

As well as banding small song birds I've also been lucky enough to go along to band some other birds for more specific projects. These included osprey babies banded in their nests from a boat,

owls caught in mist nets in the middle of the night,

and once, though they weren't banded because they are too small to really do it safely, we caught a couple of hummingbirds in the mist nets.

All in all bird banding has been one of the most fascinating and delightful things I've gotten to do over the past few years and it's also one of the best photography opportunities I get. I've also learned how to safely handle wild birds and learned a lot of interesting things. For example you've probably all been told that you should never touch baby birds because then their parents would abandon them.

This just isn't true. I understand the point of this myth; you don't want your six year old collecting a handful of baby birds out of their nest and bringing them home, so telling them that they then won't have their mommy anymore works just fine. Unfortunately most people never learn that this isn't the case and my boyfriend's father has told me of more than one occasion where people got very, very upset seeing him take osprey babies from their nest in order to band them.

This doesn't mean I advocate handling wild animals just for fun, and occasionally you can see the stressful impact that capture has on the birds. It's a matter of weighing the pros and cons and paying careful attention to their condition and you should never handle any creature that you haven't been trained to by a professional. If it ever seems like it's too much for them they'll just be released, their safety is more important than the results of the banding. For the most part though I've found that birds have a very relaxed attitude towards life; they don't expend more energy than necessary and if they don't sense any immediate danger they're happy to wait and see what happens. This seems like a good attitude to have, overall, so I think, next time I'm panicking about something, I'll remind myself to think like a bird, and chill.

Married to My School Work...

My desktop computer recently experienced power-supply-explody-itis and the cure is still in the mail so instead of posting the article I had been working on for this week, I'm forced to write about something else.

Perhaps the only interesting news, other than me being forced to do everything on my laptop, is that yesterday was, once again, the first day of classes.

I remember when I was little the first day of classes meant putting on new clothes – and the difficulty in deciding which of those new clothes would be worn on the first day – posing on the porch for “first day” pictures, then marching off to school with the one friend who lived on my street. It was always scary and exciting, lunchtime was a cacophony of “oh my god! I haven't seen you in forever”s, recess a recap of every thing done over the summer and, when I was little, new cubbies or shelves, and older, new lockers (clean for the last time for the rest of the year).

In high school there was the comparing of schedules to see who you knew in each of your classes and who you would sit with. There was always one class in which it appeared there was no one you knew, but inevitably right before the bell someone you could sit with would show up, so you were never alone.

And now all that has changed. Granted the first day of university does have some excitement – perhaps the greatest being the moment when you first check your syllabus and see that a particular class has no final exam – but all in all the thrill is mostly gone. After three years at university and after just finishing my seventh “first day of classes” here I'm sure it's lost all of the charm it once had.

I still happened to have some new clothes to wear, but I didn't fawn over them the day before, putting things together and deciding which was my favorite and which to wear on the first day, no one took pictures of me unless a security camera happened to grab a shot on my lengthy public transit hike down to campus, and while I did see some old friends I hadn't seen all summer, I knew ahead of time which classes I had with people I knew and which I didn't. I think that's the real problem: all the surprise is gone.

Every first class involves the same thing no matter what kind of class it is. You get the syllabus, the outline, they warn you about academic offenses (which they always claim at least one person commits each semester so I'm not sure the warnings are having the effect they're supposed to), tell you the textbook, their office hours and their e-mail policy, then, depending on the length of the class, they either let you go early or move into a first lecture which is almost inevitably review from the years before (“to get the whole class on the same page”).

I miss the uncertainty, which is weird for me. I'm normally one of those people who like to know everything in advance and perhaps I'm forgetting all the things I hated about the first day of classes back in elementary and high school, like the nervousness and the stressing out for weeks before, but I'm always smiling in my first day pictures and I remember them fondly.

Perhaps the other problem is that in university you get a first week instead of a first day as you never have all your classes on the same day. Everything seems so repetitive and dull. I no longer wake up early and carefully pack all my new supplies into my pencil case; I don't even have a pencil case anymore.

Maybe it's all for the best in the end though. They say classes don't really get started until the second week and that's the part I should be looking forward to. In public school the first day was exciting because it was a big change, it was something new, but by the second day it was boring and dreary and any excuse for a day off was already being planned. But here, in university, I get to pick my own classes and I'm truly interested in what I'm going to learn. It's the course that will make me excited, not the chance for a change.

People say “it's not the wedding, it's the marriage” and I think for school it's got to be the same way. “It's not the first day, it's the rest of the course”, and I'm hoping that mine are going to be great.

Watch Out for My Scissors of Extreme Justice...

I can't take it anymore. This has been bothering me for too long and now, finally, I have to speak out. Please, please, please, please cut the stitch on your kick pleats.

You're probably thinking, huh? (if you're nodding sagely, you're my new best friend), and I know, it's weird, but this problem has become so prevalent that I have to say something before I snap and start running around with tiny scissors, holding people down and forcibly snipping any sewn pleat that I see.

Sometimes, after a piece of clothing is finished, the manufacturer puts a few holding stitches in a few choice places to make sure things don't get crumpled, bent, torn or lost. These stitches stay in place until the item is bought and then the purchaser is expected to remove them. Now it's possible that the occasional clothing store removes the stitches before selling, but I worked in one and we never did, and most of the clothes I buy are still stitched.

There are three places (that spring to mind) where you might find stitches of this nature: pocket flaps (which some people leave sewn to improve the line of their outfit, but if there is a full pocket there than you don't have to shove your change through the side of the flap, between the stitches), extra buttons (sometimes they're sewn into the underside of a shirt or jacket, but if you think you might lose them, than this is probably a good place to keep them) and kick pleats (absolutely no excuse not to snip these).

On a skirt or jacket there is often a pleat or slit (apparently called a 'back slit', not as snappy as 'kick pleat' is it?) that is designed to add ease for walking or bending. Unlike pockets and buttons, if you leave a kick pleat or slit sewn it's really obvious. It gaps with every step and it fails to give the ease that is its purpose, so the item is often too tight to walk comfortably in.

Every where I go in the city I see women (and men) committing this fashion faux-pas. It's not just the young and uncaring, I see grown women in business suits and heels shuffling awkwardly from the knees down with their skirt riding up their thighs because it never occurred to them that maybe something isn't quite right. It just astounds me that someone who puts such care into their appearance wouldn't know that a skirt like that almost inevitably has a sewn kick pleat. It's even worse in the winter when, on campus especially, I'm surrounded by pea coats and fitted wool jackets with ridiculous looking gaps at the back.

So if you're one of the many people who never knew that not all the stitches on your clothing are necessarily supposed to stay there, go check all your coats and skirts and dresses and make sure you don't have any gappy kick pleats (and while you're at it you might want to have a look at those pockets too).

If you're one of the few who knew about this and is always sure to check and snip, than good for you, you've probably never noticed how prevalent a problem this is, so go tell a friend and tell her to tell her friends too.

And, finally, if you're one of the other people like me who've become – perhaps slightly unhealthily – obsessed with this, I hear ya, and I feel your pain.

I Need One of Those DC License Plates...

So, this year I was excited. This year was different. I was 20 years old and there was an election that not only was I old enough to vote in, I was also interested in who won. I was pretty proud of myself. I stayed up to date on campaigns, even the primaries, watched the news, read articles online and after the DNC I was ready and raring to vote.

A few months before the election I went online to order my very first absentee ballot, I clicked on “Register to Vote” and the very first question I was faced with was one I couldn't answer: “Select State: Pick the state in which you last lived before moving outside the U.S. from the map below”. There was no “None” or “N/A” option, unsurprisingly Canada was not on said map, and you could not move on without selecting a state.

Well, I thought, I must have chosen the wrong option earlier on. So I went back and tried it again, sure enough I came up against the “Select State” road block. Sure that it must be a mistake on my part I perused the website hoping for answers, but the only one I was able to come up with was wholly unsatisfactory.

I am a US citizen. I have a passport. I have a social security number. I have an entire extended family living throughout the states. I am expected to pay taxes when my income is high enough. But I've never lived in the United States. My parents were both born in Pennsylvania and moved up to Canada after they were married, where they had two (delightful) children, my brother and me. Thus, without being asked and with no say in the matter I was automatically a dual Canadian-American citizen.

Now I can't say the whole thing hasn't been without its perks. I can travel into the US without hassle, I can pretend to be offended when people make dumb American jokes thinking they're in an all Canadian environment, and when traveling to other countries I can chose which flag I pin to my bag (yeah, it's always Canadian, but at least I have the choice honestly). And, I thought, I can vote for the leaders of both countries which take my hard-earned tax dollars.

Turns out that's not so.

While trolling through the FAQ on the Federal Voting Assistance Program I found this little gem: “Some states allow children of U.S. citizens residing overseas who are U.S. citizens but who have never resided in the U.S., to claim one of their parent's legal state of residence as their own“ (emphasis my own).

Huh. Looks like now, instead of being considered just a U.S. citizen I am now considered one of the “children of U.S. citizens residing overseas who are U.S. citizens but who have never resided in the U.S”, quite a mouthful.

And for some reason, some states think this means I shouldn't have the same rights as other U.S. citizens, for example, the right to vote. Guess which state isn't on the list. That's right, my parents home state, good old Penn. So if your parents happened to have lived in one of the 16 states that allow all their passport wielding, tax-paying citizens the right to vote, then good for you. Otherwise you get to sit on the sidelines, like me, and be expected to help pay for the decisions made by a representative you didn't help elect.

Now you may say it doesn't really matter, absentee ballots rarely come it to play anyway, but that's not the point. The point is, I'm a U.S. citizen and the federal government says I have the right to vote, but then gives each state the right to tell me I can't register to vote. This qualifies my citizenship, it says that since I belong to no state I can't belong to the country. That I'm good enough to take money from, but not to chose who I'm giving it to and that is just plain wrong, taxation without representation, and I'd write to my congressman to complain, only I haven't got one.