Apartment 1203

Growing up in the Married Student Apartments, one of our neighbours was wrapping up a Masters in Museology, while the other was working on his Doctorate in Medieval Studies.

     1205 took me to see ROM’s storage facilities, grabbed a random cardboard box off the shelf, and pulled out a mummified head.

     1201 showed me—by scratching it out in the playground’s sand, no less—that cursive writing, and the seemingly arbitrary forms I’d been taught in school, had in fact evolved to lessen the need for a scribe to lift his pen from the paper.

     And blew my twelve-year-old mind.

Inspired by Fountain Pen Mojo. Image by ChatGPT.

Thoughts on this Day

We are fortunate to live in this place and time. I’m thankful for friends and the history we share. I’m thankful for the spirit we muster in the face of malignant evil and ignorance at home and abroad. I’m thankful for the peace we have enjoyed, as fraught and fragile as it is. I’m thankful for the food on our tables, yet I am acutely aware of how lucky we are to have it. That luck can never be taken for granted: the best “luck” is the product of the goodwill we engineer collectively. To the world, happy Canadian Thanksgiving.

Inspired by the calendar. Image by Georgi Kisyov.

Doodling

At McGill, I would diligently take class notes (with pen and paper, of course), as the professors pontificated. But then I’d get distracted and start inventing typefaces in the margins. Then I’d sketch the professors, or other students, or what was outside the window. Then I’d blink and stop myself and get back to work. But why was I doodling? Why was I so distractible? I finally got my answer last week when I read a letter Dad wrote to Mom when they were both 17. Taking up half of the second page was a doodle. So, apparently, it’s genetic.

Inspired by Artless. The image is of my Dad’s doodle, the caption reads: “You would love my daughter even if she didn’t have any money? That’s all, son. You can go now. I don’t want any idiots in my family.”

Artless

I was terrible at everything to do with crafts. I dreaded art class and was embarrassed by my pitiful uncreative renditions. In hindsight though, what an avant-garde concept to have a class dedicated to art.

     I was however obsessed with cursive writing. I loved those booklets with the lines and would sit for hours trying to perfect the B’s, F’s, and the S’s.

     Ironically, one might consider it art these days, given no one sub-30 can read it. I’ve watched many stare at cards blankly, politely smiling with thanks when for all they know I wrote screw you, and your birthday. 

Inspired by I fold. Image by ilbusca.

I fold.

The girls in Grade 4 showed me how to make noisemakers out of paper, then fortune-tellers and water bombs, flapping birds and pagodas. Our library had a book by Shari Lewis (of Lamb Chop fame) that taught me how to turn that water bomb into an Easter bunny you could stuff full of jellybeans. Robert Harbin’s books took things more seriously and introduced me to the Jackstone, still the most complicated thing I have ever folded from a single piece of paper. 

     Today, I own a half shelf of origami books and a pack of 500 sheets I’ve never opened.

Inspired by Paper, Scissors, Cloth. Image based on a photo from Folding Paper Puppets.

Paper, Scissors, Cloth

When I was a kid, I had several pen pals. Those letters were fun to receive, but I was particularly drawn to the æsthetics: the cancelled stamp; the air-mail envelope with its barbershop edging and blue stationary; the thin crispness of it all. There are still some things in life that hold that allure: sachets of tea, a wrapped Band-aid, cakes of unopened Ivory soap, a box of amaretti, brand-new skeins of wool, Kleenex, seed packets. Maybe I am drawn to their old-timey paper? Their vulnerability? Unprotected by plastic preparedness, they reveal themselves thoughtfully, one unfolded corner at a time.

Inspired by Notice. Photo by Laurie.

Forgotten Lessons

I recently trod the battlefields of World War One, where hundreds of thousands died horrible deaths. Thousands more bore wounds, visible and invisible, for the rest of their shortened lives. War is hell. Today those battlefields are peaceful, the land is productive, and the fallen, the thousands of fallen, are remembered. Yet the lessons from their deaths are not. 

      Clausewitz called war the continuation of politics by other means. We learned after 1945 to extend politics and avoid war with diplomacy, multilateralism, and rules-based institutions. That consensus is now crumbling. War is hell, and we are drifting inexorably towards it.

Inspired by Already Committed. Photo by the author of the Belgian grave of an unknown soldier, nationality unknown.