Political Tidbits

Fentie on the radio this morning: “There are two ways to lead: passive and aggressive. Guess which one I was.” I guess he’s never heard of assertive?

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As before, the Green Party made last night’s debate more intelligent and interesting, just like Elizabeth May did in the last federal election. I went in with an undecided vote between NDP and Liberal; I came out thinking I just might vote Green.

To go, or not to go, should not be a question.

To witness such brilliance, complexity, and movement in the Hamlet (solo) performance by Raoul Bhaneja is a must. I had the privilege of attending with a group of students this afternoon and am tempted to see the performance again. The whole of it is a piece of dramatic art to the fullest.

The actor uses nothing but his body to perform about 25 characters. Oh! The characters! He flows from one to the next without a blunder; his mastery of movement and voice make it easy for the audience to know who is speaking. No props, no costumes, no special effects. He uses every square inch of the stage and more, he uses every muscle in his face, and he uses every position humanly possible. From whispers to shouts that would wake the dead, the whole beauty of the play comes alive in the first instant and keeps you mesmerized until the end.

So, are you questioning whether to go, or not to go? Please, do yourself a favour, and get your tush in one of the cushy seats. That kind of performance deserves a full house.

Thursday and Friday, January 13 and 14, Yukon Arts Centre, 8pm.

January 15, Haines Junction

Coyote at her best

Not long ago I attended a mish-mash of storytelling and music at the Yukon Arts Centre, and what drew me there was my favourite storyteller, Ivan E. Coyote, about whom I’ve written before.

At the show, I got my hands on her latest collection of short stories, Missed Her, and as is the usual habit when reading her books, I couldn’t put it down.

Try saying the title out loud, and you’ll soon discover that it sounds like “mister”, which continues with her theme dealing with “fluidity in gender and sexuality, much like Coyote’s previous work.”*

The thread of her stories have a serious message with cringe moments scattered here and there, and they either leave you chuckling or pondering. Or both. Beautiful. Powerful.

And to give you just a little taste of her writing, here are some bits and pieces of language that left imprints for me:

“Ever heard of a place called Pink Mountain? [...] You can get a tire fixed and buy an Alaska Highway hunting knife with a fake bone handle made right there in China…”

“…a narrow hallway humbly covered in decades-old carpet hammered down by thousands of work boots and dress shoes, a worn-out roadmap that directed me to a doorway.”

“The midnight sun stretched the light so far and long that dusk was bent over backward enough to bump into the next day.”

“He was wearing brand new sneakers, so white they caught the sunlight and bounced it right back, bleaching the backs of my eyelids when I closed them.”

“She blurted out her words like machine gun bullets, like she had been rehearsing them for a while, her mouth pursed in a determined little raisin.”

“…trying not to let the tears spill over my bottom lids…”

“I needed a barber. A good, old-fashioned, wait-your-turn-twelve-bucks-take-a-little-off-the-top kind of guy…”

“Their chubby knees scrubbed and squishing out of the tops of sparkling white knee socks.”

And one powerful quote reminded me of a young fella in a school where I subbed a few years ago. He had been teased mercilessly about his gender. And I happened to notice he was in the audience that night:

“I hoped that the new pride he held in his shoulders wasn’t going to be pounded out of him in gym class, or while he tried to learn trigonomometry. I felt sad, but mostly I felt rage. Rage that we are beginning the second decade of the twenty-first century in what is supposed to be one of the most liberal and progressive countries in the world and still we haven’t made our schools safe for kids like him. That something as vital to his future as his education happens in a culture of fear and under the threat of violence.”

*www.straight.com

Odd traffic lanes

Situation #1

To turn left onto Hamilton Blvd. from Falcon Dr. (near the French school), there is a lane for traffic to turn into before merging into the regular lane. Although there isn’t one of these if you’re turning left onto Hamilton from McIntyre Dr. (where the Race Trac gas station is), there is a Left-Turning Lane to Nowhere if you happen to be driving on Hamilton coming from Two Mile Hill as you approach the Race Trac gas station (see below). Simply moving the median over one lane would solve both problems at once.


View Larger Map

Situation#2

When I worked at a school in the north end of town, my morning drive consisted of signalling and merging at most intersections on the Alaska HWY even though I was the one in the through-way lane. Shouldn’t the drivers who are turning onto or off the highway be the ones having to change lanes and signal? In one spot, before approaching the intersection I had to signal and move to the outer lane, which was the throughway, but as soon as I’d hit the other side of the intersection, I’d end up in the turning lane. So I had to quickly signal and move back the to next lane. Confusing you say? Try driving here!

My rant for the day.

Fireweed Market Gets Hosed Down

An unintended shower assaulted vendors and visitors at the Fireweed Community Market yesterday. While waiting for my fantastic falafel at Faladi Foods, a combination of water sprays, screeches, and chaos erupted. The sprinklers in Shipyard Park suddenly turned on and sprayed almost everything in sight: tents, people, and wares. There was even a sprinkler INSIDE one of the tents. What’s worse, these aren’t the little backyard sprinklers you buy at Canadian Tire; ever try standing two-feet away from the spout of one of these jets of water? What a mess!

All things considered, I was impressed by how those affected took it in good stride, and a clever person even put an upside-down plastic cooler over one of the sprinklers to mitigate the damage.  These vendors have obviously been toughened by the regular Thursday tent-raising winds and showers of the past few years.

Qu’est-ce qui nourrit ton âme?

Sans entrer dans les détails, ces temps-ci je me trouve dans un bas. Et quand je me sens comme ça, je dois trouver un moyen de me nourrir, c’est-à-dire, de nourrir mon âme.

Ce soir j’ai assisté à un spectacle donné par Sylvie Painchaud, et oui, mon âme n’a pas manqué de bonnes choses. Sylvie a chanté plusieurs chansons tout en jouant du piano. Mais ce n’était pas juste des chansons, c’était un narratif – une histoire – dont on peut tous faire le lien: l’amour, la mort, les enfants, les parents, la musique, et les amis. Bref, la vie.

La passion dans sa voix ainsi que l’énergie qui émanait de son corps m’a fait pleurer, rire, penser, chanter. Je trouve difficile exprimer cette expérience avec de simples mots. (En plus, je me rend compte que ça fait quand même longtemps que je n’ai pas écrit en français, ce qui rend la tâche doublement difficile).

La chanson qui m’a le plus touché était inspirée, comme toutes les autres, d’une expérience dont Sylvie a témoigné. Un jour, en allant chercher ses enfants à la garderie qui se situait près d’une rivière, elle aperçu des policiers dans la rue devant celle-ci. Évidemment, elle a perdu le souffle, mais heureusement, ses enfants étaient en train de s’amuser au sous-sol. Ils étaient sains et saufs.

Le voisin, par contre, après avoir perdu trop d’argent dans une machine casino-vidéo chez un bar pas loin, a décidé de mettre fin à ses jours dans son garage. Sylvie connaissait ce cher monsieur, qui, apparemment, avait une femme et des enfants.

Les paroles de la chanson étaient de la perspective de l’épouse, un an après cette tragédie.

Pour la première fois de ma vie, j’ai pu voir ma chère grand-mère sous un angle très différent. On a tendance à oublier que nos grands-parents ont été jeunes, comme nous, et ont aimé, versé des larmes, et vécu, comme nous. Mais tout en écoutant cette chanson triste, je ne pouvais m’empêcher de penser à ma grand-mère qui a vécu la mort de mon grand-père dans des circonstances semblables. Non, il n’avait pas perdu d’argent; il souffrait énormément d’une mauvaise santé: l’emphysème résultant du travail dans les mines, ainsi que des problèmes de cœur. Il reste que pour la première fois, je la voyait là, une jeune femme, qui perdit son amant pour la deuxième fois dans sa courte vie, le premier étant décédé avec deux enfants la couche aux fesses. Elle avait plus de vécu à l’âge de trente ans que j’en ai présentement à quarante.

Ses chansons n’étaient pas toutes tristes, mais elles touchaient toutes le plus profond de l’âme.

Donc merci, Sylvie, d’avoir nourrit mon âme en cette période difficile pour moi.

J’ai bien hâte à ton prochain spectacle.

(Désolée pour mes fautes d’orthographes.)

Another day…more Bailey’s, Coffee, and Chocolate

When Urban Cake opened shop on Second Ave., there was a wee contest on the website where you could win a cake if you sent feedback. Can you guess who won?

On a day like today, which is much better described by What He Said, this mouth-watering cake soothes and comforts me. You’d never know it was gluten-free (I said gluten-free, not guilt-free).

Yukono: Fast, Simple, Humble

Over the last little while, I’ve started posting reviews to Yukono.com which is a site where Yukoners can post reviews of local businesses and services. Registering an account is quick and the site is easy to use. Even when suggesting a review for a business not yet on the site, turn-around time is well within 24 hours.

I especially appreciated the humour and humility displayed when something didn’t quite go as planned:

5 stars out of 5 from me!

The Capital Hotel: Anything New?

My mom is a funny one. She’s visiting from Timmins, Ontario, where there’s twice the population of Whitehorse and all the regular box stores one can imagine, and then some. When we decided to go downtown for a little shopping, she wanted to go to Walmart.

Okay, Walmart is my least favourite place, but being the the host, I went along with her. My mom is all about bargain shopping, so I guess that explains it; you don’t have much of a choice when you raise three kids on your own. Plus, I did end up buying two pairs of jeans for $12 a piece in a store my husband refuses to set foot in. After a while, I finally managed to guide her toward the exit because my take is, why visit stores and restaurants you have back home when you’re away on holidays? Try something new!

With that in mind, and after an afternoon of shopping and browsing with my mom, I thought I’d bring her to the Capital Hotel. The renovations give the feel of an old saloon with wooden tables, floors, bar, and walls. Because of that, it doesn’t need many people to make it noisy in there. However, they do have an interesting menu with mini-bourbon-bison burgers, fresh pretzels, and bison shepherd’s pie. Although the food was very good, the service was pitiful. The bartender/waitress was a young woman with zero common sense. Examples:

  1. For my second glass of wine, I thought I’d try a different one. So after she brought me the new individual decanter,

    Individual Decanter

    I asked for a fresh glass. No problem. However, since I had already finished my first drink, I sat there waiting for her to return while she proceeded to clean off a table and do other little things behind the bar. I finally got up and went to the bar to ask for the glass.
  2. I saw the kitchen cook bring our food out to the bar, so we thought “yummy…can’t wait!” Of course I didn’t mind her finishing up with her current customer who was paying her tab at the bar. Because, for some reason, this took a while, I figured she’d bring our food as soon as she was done. Instead, she went to the phone to make a phone call. WTH? While she was still on her call, eventually the cook came out of the kitchen again, and when he saw that the food was still sitting there, he looked up to see her on the phone, and brought the food to our table himself. I thanked him profusely.
  3. Two guys were sitting two tables down from us and one spilt his pint of beer. It literally sounded like a waterfall as the beer went from the table, to his lap, to the foot rest, and finally to the floor. He got up and after ringing the excess liquid from his jacket, he went to the bar to advise/apologise to the bartender, then made his way to the bathroom to clean himself up a bit. He came out with a wad of paper towels to wipe the table and disappeared to the washrooms again. Meanwhile, the bartender is chatting with a guy at the bar, fiddling with tabs and other little things, when my mom, being a mom, couldn’t take it anymore. She went to the bar to ask for a cloth and went to these guys’ table and started wiping it. Finally the bartender ran over and said, “Oh, I could’ve done that!”

“But you didn’t!” was my mom’s reply. “Poor guy, he’s soaking wet!” The young woman looked a little embarrassed, but she should be! During the whole time, there were only three tables (two customers at each), and one person sitting at the bar. Not once did she think of bringing the mop out to wipe the major puddle at the foot of the table with the spilt drink. Yes, she was a pretty little thing, but she either needs more training, more common sense, or get the hell out of there!

Yes, the Capital is new with all its renos and new feel, but as far as service goes, nothing much changes in this town.

Finding cake is as easy as pie…wait, what?

A new little cake store has opened with a bang this week. After hearing that the owner would be serving free samples and beverages at her grand opening, I tried to contain my drool as I walked into Urban Cake on Second Ave. (where the old Thredz shop used to be). Her decorations on cakes and cupcakes are unbelievable, and the combination of flavours is unusual and would put anyone in a sugar-induced trance.

Molasses and Caramel Cupcake

The owner had a table set up at the Fireweed Market during the summer to sell her sweets, and what an impression these left on me. It was “layered flavouring”: I bit into some pear/chocolate/lime cake and after getting over one flavour, my taste buds were coated with another, then another. I have honestly never experienced anything like this before.

In addition to her sweets, she makes iced-tea (from scratch) and slightly carbonated fruity beverages. She sews flowery summer dresses for little girls, has re-usable cup warmers (you know those little cardboard thingies you put around your coffee cup to prevent you from burning your hands?).

Check it out! She also does custom cakes for any occasion.

Oh, and a little-advertised fact is that her cakes (I don’t know if all of them) are gluten-free.

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