surviving the holidays

I am not a big fan of Christmas. It's not just that I'm not a Christian, it's all the baggage that comes with it.

For as long as I can remember, the whole family get-together thing has been fraught with stress, and featured tears before bedtime for someone, usually me. As the only child, and even only grandchild for many years, I was both the focus of attention and the rope in the annual tug of war between in-laws that had little in common and no incentive to find any such thing. Apart from me.

Spoiled? Yes, at least showered with gifts, some of them actually quite nice. No complaints there, provided there were plenty of books. Overfed, too. My female parent would on the one hand offer endless goodies and on the other accuse me of gluttony and ask when I was going to lose weight. Something wrong with this picture? D'oh. Then there were the grandmothers. They agreed that I didn't attend church enough, although they differed as to which one. Both Protestant. Music was ok but discourse was so laced with hypocrisy I gave up church even before I had read the Bible and realized what a dreadful tome it is. People who take it literally simply cannot have read it. But, I digress.

Nobody in our family would dream of inflicting physical abuse, apart from the occasional well-deserved swat on the seat of the pants. They just went in for sarcastic comments and galloping perfectionism, focused inevitably on me. It was required to "view" the presents given by & to each family member, whether to foster envy or disgust was never clear to me. Failure to effuse sufficiently was punishable by solicitous enquiries as to the state of ones health. Throwing up wasn't an option, even if overfed. In a nutshell, everyone disliked each other and competed over the child, since Christmas is for children, right? Spare me.

So, although I learned to cook all the festive dishes, and now do so for my entire ageing family (thank goodness I produced no offspring myself), and although I learned a huge repertoire of carols so I could be the pianist for the obligatory sing-along, I really don't care for the season.

Next year, I'm doing something entirely different. They can have their Christmas at a restaurant.

what price honour?

A few weeks ago, there was a bizarre news item telling of the drowning deaths of 4 women, three sisters and their aunt, who were found in their car at the bottom of the Rideau Canal, near Kingston Ontario. It seemed especially odd since there were no signs of how they could have gotten there, past various barriers, without leaving so much as a skid mark.

Today, the papers are full of the arrest of the girls' parents & brother, supposedly while attempting to leave the country:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/family-members-charged-with-murder-in-submerged-car-case/article1228868/

http://www.ottawacitizen.com/Family+members+charged+with+first+degree+murder+Kingston+canal+deaths/1820277/story.html

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2009/07/23/canal-arrests023.html

While the reports vary a little, it appears that the "aunt" was in fact the father's first wife, unable to have children & so supplanted by the second wife.

This is the kind of incident that makes many average Canadian citizens scratch their heads over immigration policies that foster a very broad interpretation of multiculturalism, in that this enables extremist views that would have been well left in the country of origin when emigrating to a country with clearly different mores & standards. Some of our own more extreme elements would have immigrants attest that they will abide by Canadian laws & social customs when living here, & given the above I'm sure there will be more calls for such. Tolerance can, after all, only go so far.

We don't tolerate polygamy, purdah, so-called honour killing or suttee. What makes some people think that they can bring such traditions here, or worse yet, start cults that do such things? This is not exclusive to Islamic extremists, although this particular case is illustrative of the reasons why sharia law will never be adopted here and there is so much resentment about the attempts to do so.

Canadians would, on the whole, are pleased to embrace most multicultural novelties. Food, literature, art, music, philosophy, & certain aspects of dress come to mind as crossing cultural borders. However, when it comes to systematic marginalization of women by extremist groups, whatever their origin, we draw the line. We tolerate headscarves, but not burqas. One may be a fashion statement, the other is clearly not. Adult women have a right to self-determination & independence. Children have a right not to be molested or otherwise abused by their families or others in the community. These are the compromises that OUR culture demands of immigrants. These are the things that should be left at the border of the country of origin.

Sadly, these 3 girls and their aunt/step-mother will never have the opportunity to benefit from Canadian culture, because the culture of their parents' homeland was applied to abrogate their rights.

As for the supposed honour, does the classification of one of the girls as "willful & rebellious" in any way justify her death? Not here. We have no room for such distorted conceptions of honour.

good intentions meet gardening season

All my good intentions about blogging more often collided with my equally good intentions to do more gardening now that I'm retired. While good intentions are most often found paving the road to hell, this time the garden path won out & blogging came a distant second.

There have been plenty of ridiculous news items for me to rant about lately, not least of which are various local & national politicians in court for -- wait for it -- lying to the public about *gasp* misuse of public funds & power...but, I digress. This post is not a rant, but a rave. About spring, of all things.

Our climate, such as it is, flipped the winter-to-summer switch a couple of weeks ago, and there are at least 20 different shades of green on bushes & trees outside my window alone. It's a whole rainbow driving around town, with all the tulip beds in full bloom and everything from magnolias to crabapples blossoming in a mad dash. I'm not kidding when I call it flipping a switch, either. Spring in Ottawa is so short that you might miss it if you blinked. The early bulbs & flowering trees don't last long at all.

We've planted a lot of the Victory garden, too. That's V for vegetable, mainly, with a few herbs and some flowers to add a bit of colour. It's a very nice thing to be able to get some of your veggies out of your own yard. So far this year we've put in sugar snap peas, onion sets, salad greens, coriander, basil and parsley. All things that can be grown from seed starting fairly early in the season. I've got some plants inside that won't go out until early June, though, because we can count on the odd hard frost overnight until at least the end of May. Starting seedlings indoors is a good way to get a jump on spring, and makes late winter a lot less depressing.

Our property is on clay soil, and our front yard used to turn to hard-pan every year, until we xeriscaped it in local shrubs & trees. Now, the only maintenance it needs is pruning & mulching. Just our little bit for the environment.

Blogging is just going to have to wait for a rainy day.