American Thanksgiving …
… will always be my favourite holiday, even in Canada. There has always been an emotional weight, almost religious in nature, to the day, and even when I spend it mostly in solitary reflection just walking around, it is also festive.
“The B+ Squad”
Lux Alptraum‘s Substack blog by that name is my *other* favourite place in the Substack universe right now. Since September 2022 Lux has written approximately one stand-alone post *a day* – without ever really repeating herself. This is of course not possible, but there you go – she does it. Her topic is “the modern bisexual.” Her themes reach into an ever-unfurling array of cultural topics without once stretching. She’s brilliant and hilarious. She’s taken my breath away, many times.
Her Twitter feed is also always edifying, these days taking a less buoyant but nonetheless to-me wise tone while discussing ways of regarding the Israel-Hamas war.
“Consistent Joy”
Talia Lavin’s Substack blog, The Sword and the Sandwich, is a marvel of multiple focus: the arts (mostly movies and literature), the American “far right,” and … “notable sandwiches.” In my dreams I cannot write as whimsically as she can (and, even when wide awake, rarely as intelligently). This is from her 75th installment on sandwiches, The Grilled Cheese:
In writing about the grilled cheese sandwich, I find myself with little to offer but praise. It is difficult to encounter such a thing and not overrun the page with the fervency of my gladness.
This is not a column where I will carp and complain—about air-fryer grilled cheeses, or fancy gourmet grilled cheeses, or Kraft-single grilled cheeses, or the proper application of butter, or the appropriate pan, or the degree and nature of the condiments. To me, each grilled cheese is enough, and more than enough. In this world so full of slaughter and fire, where doubt and monstrosity abound, this much is clear to me: the grilled cheese is a small and perfect thing. And how many of those are there?
So my position on the grilled cheese is unabashedly boosterish, and moreover, it is agnostic towards ingredients and provenance. To your grilled cheese you may add caramelized onions or avocado; bacon, turkey or ham; chutney or cornichons. Make it with Wonderbread or a freshly-baked eighteen-grain country loaf sourced from fields you cultivated yourself in a cantilevered sky-farm with the finest hydroponics. Add goat cheese or smoked gouda or aged cheddar or unidentified plasticine processed cheese product; heat it in a pan or over a flame, under a broiler, in a dutch oven, or with an acetylene torch. I do not care. You have composed something perfect with your own hands. You have made something that will warm and satisfy you. You have, for a small moment, partaken of the act of creation that grants the human animal its sliver of divinity. You have done so by means of the grilled cheese sandwich.
From two perfect things—bread and cheese—arises a more perfect union. …
I am hungry for joy lately. Perhaps you are too. The grilled cheese sandwich for me is an object of consistent joy, which is different in kind than the transcendent ray-through-the-clouds joy that graces any life too rarely. Perhaps that makes it more valuable; reliable pleasure, ordinary pleasure, is as common as light and as necessary. It is only in the consideration of it that I come to appreciate how this mundane thing can be an object of desire and delight. With effort and after much contemplation I think myself toward joy, and welcome its arrival. Life must be leavened by joy to rise; stand and let it in; it approaches with soft footfalls and is easy to miss, or to begrudge in petulance or fervor. …
Blue Blocker
My friend @bfwriter told me I could clean up my Twitter feed with this Chrome extension.
I’ve been spending more and more time over on the Threads platform, though, to see reporting from the war in the Middle East.
The right tone and focus, I think
From my university’s president just now:
Colleagues,
The events this past weekend in Israel and Palestinian-territories have been profoundly disturbing. While we respect the right of Palestinian people to address legitimate grievances as well as Israel’s right to defend itself, indiscriminate violence against innocent civilians is unconscionable.
Undoubtedly, some of you will have been deeply affected by these events. The following supports are available to the KPU community.
For students:
- TELUS Health Student Support app provides KPU students with unlimited, free, 24-hour access to trained counsellors available in several different languages in addition to other wellness resources and information.
- KPU Counselling Services are available online or by phone for students. Please visit us online to book an appointment or for more information.
- KPU Student Resources ‘Quick Guide’ – a quick guide to online information and resources for all KPU students.
For employees:
- Homewood Health, KPU’s Employee and Family Assistance Program (EFAP) provider, is available to help with counselling and other services.
During these periods of global upheaval, please take time to think about those around you: your colleagues, your students, your friends and your family. Please support those in need and encourage them to seek assistance.
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Canadian Thanksgiving
Thanksgiving is my favourite holiday, one whose name I obey, happily, twice each year.
“Orange Shirt Day” in Canada
My colleague Seema Ahluwalia of Kwantlen‘s Sociology department has given me permission to share this:
The Kwantlen Faculty Association (KFA) acknowledges the underlying title and inherent rights of self-determination of Indigenous peoples, and our presence as uninvited guests in the traditional and unceded territories of the xwmƏθkwəyə̓ m (Musqueam), qi̓ cə̓ y̓ (Katzie), SEYMONE (Semiahmoo), scə̓ waθən (Tsawwassen), qiqéyt (Qayqayt), and kwikwəƛə̓ m (Kwikwetlem); and qw̓ ɑ:nƛ̓ ə̓ n̓ (Kwantlen) Peoples.
The truth is we must learn from and alongside Indigenous Peoples in order to make things right.
September 30 was chosen as “Orange Shirt Day” by Indigenous people in 2013 to commemorate and honor the survivors of The Indian Residential School System (IRSS) and those who never returned home. At this time of year, over the course of more than 100 years, Indigenous children were forced to return to IRSS institutions where they were targeted for indoctrination and torture organized by the Canadian state to weaken and destroy Indigenous nations. In 2015, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC) recommended that the Canadian government establish a statutory holiday so that Canadians may never forget the history and ongoing legacy of the IRSS. September 30 is now also Canada’s National Day of Truth and Reconciliation.
In solidarity with Indigenous Peoples, we mourn the loss of the children who did not make it home and honor the courageous survivors and their allies who worked for decades to break the walls of silence and denial surrounding the IRSS. On this day of solemn reflection, we acknowledge that racism and religious persecution were used to dispossess Indigenous peoples of their territories, and that we must educate ourselves about the ongoing and current impacts of colonization and genocide on Indigenous peoples. We must do the urgent work of ending systemic racism by engaging in a meaningful process of reconciliation with Indigenous peoples that leads to decolonization.
Many Indigenous leaders have warned that “reconciliation” has stalled and advised that Indigenous perspectives must be employed to understand the critical issues impacting Indigenous peoples. Canadians must ask ourselves how we are holding our governments, associations, and ourselves accountable for the work that must be done and transform our talk into action.
On September 30, we encourage Canadians to learn, reflect, and act.
Here are some resources that you may find useful:
Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada: 94 Calls to Action
Calls to Action Accountability: A 2022 Status Update on Reconciliation
Semiahmoo First Nation 3rd Annual Walk for Truth & Reconciliation: Sept 30, 2023
National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation: Lunch and Learn Webinars, Sept 25 – 29
Sign CLC’s petition “Justice for First Nations’, Inuit, and Metis is Long Overdue”
BCFED Reconciliation Plan Framework
TRUTH AND RECONCILIATION: CUPE TAKING ACTION THROUGH COLLECTIVE BARGAINING
UFCW: Indigenous Rights and the Workplace Bargaining Guide
Support Services and Resources:
Indian Residential School Survivors’ Society: Toll-Free Line 1 800 721 0066
Indian Residential School Crisis Line: (604) 985-4464
Hope For Wellness: Toll-Free Line 1 (855) 242-3310
Metis Crisis Line: 1 (833) 638-4722
KUU-US Crisis Line: 1 800 588 8717
Tsow-Tun-Le Lum: 1 866 925 4419
“Farewell to a Poor Bastard”
This 1995 photograph is from the book Drawn & Quarterly: Twenty-Five Years of Contemporary Cartooning, Comics, and Graphic Novels. It depicts five comics artists who founded a new era and style of autobiographical narrative: Adrian Tomine, Julie Doucet, Chester Brown, Seth, and Joe Matt. After I purchased this wonderful book and first saw this photograph, I could have fainted. I have just about everything each of them has ever published. Each of these artists has altered how I regard literature, art, and life.
Joe Matt is the fellow on the right. He seemed to disappear a few years ago, to the point that his books were no longer available from Drawn & Quarterly. I asked one of the owners of Olympia, Washington’s Danger Room Comics (you must go there!) what was going on with Joe Matt, and he told me that Seth (second from right, above) stays in touch with him; this seemed to me a courteous and circumspect way to indicate that Matt was not doing well.
It was impossible to love Joe Matt without also being intensely exasperated by him. The love and exasperation weren’t in tension but fed off each other: Caring for him was inextricable from irritation at the myriad ways he exercised his gift for self-sabotage. …
The cartoon Joe Matt was a cheapskate, lazy, shallow, and, worst of all, a swinish boyfriend who neglected his flesh-and-blood partners in preference to chronic masturbation to pornography and fantasizing about other women.
This self-portrait of the artist as a young jerkoff earned Joe an intense cult following who marveled at his gift for self-revelation as well as his impeccable comic timing. The real Joe shared many traits with his cartoon alter ego—but also a warmth that won him many friends. …
I got to know Joe Matt while I was working as a journalist in Toronto in the 1990s. I would occasionally write about Joe’s work and also that of his two cartoonist friends Chester Brown and Seth (who sometimes showed up as comic foils in Joe’s work). I had shown my wife, Robin Ganev, Joe’s just published graphic novel, The Poor Bastard. Robin delighted in the book as an accurate portrayal of the dating scene among young Toronto bohemians in the 1990s. Joe’s portrait of himself as a heel impressed her as an essentially accurate rendering of an all-too-common male type. As my friend the journalist Nathalie Atkinson notes, “Many women love Joe Matt’s comics—in part because he confirms everything we suspected.” Despite enjoying the work, Robin wasn’t quite sure she wanted to meet Joe in the flesh. Like Jacqueline Susann after reading Philip Roth’s masturbatory masterpiece Portnoy’s Complaint (1969), Robin admired the work but was reluctant to shake the hand.
As it happened, when she met him, Robin took to Joe immediately. He was witty, self-deprecating, a responsive listener, and disarmingly willing to share personal information.
—
September 27: The Comics Journal has published a series of reminiscences by Joe Matt’s cartoonist colleagues. They are all really good, but the piece by Seth had me in tears by the time I got to the end of it, so rich is it with memory and conflicting emotions, admiration and love side by side with disdain and disapproval. It’s art.
—
Kristi Coulter
My friend Kristi Coulter and I go back a ways – to the old Usenet newsgroup days of the early 90s, particularly the newsgroup alt.music.alternative.female, where her insights enlightened me and her prose style thrilled me. In 1997 I asked her to write for a project I was starting called Ellavon: An ezine of basic culture. My editor’s input into her work consisted of never having a single thing to change in her submissions – nothing, literally nothing, not even a comma (something that had never happened before or since in my career as a professional editor) – and then asking her for another piece.
Kristi’s career as a published writer went quiet for awhile after Ellavon was put on hiatus, but she was very busy professionally otherwise, editing AllMusic.com and then working in a variety of roles at Amazon, which is the topic of her second book, Exit Interview: The Life and Death of My Ambitious Career.
The book received a very laudatory prepublication review in the New York Times:
And here’s a very fun interview in The Stranger, Seattle’s famous alternative weekly:
Anniversary
My sister-in-law kept calling until I finally answered. She said, “Turn on CNN.” I did, just as the second tower came crashing down. I thought there must have been sleep in my eyes, so I went and washed my face.
Fall term …
… starts today at Kwantlen Polytechnic University. I have 85 new students, and life is very good.
The Nashville Basils
For my birthday my grandson Colby sent me his first Polaroid photos. I am feeling very lucky and grateful today.
The artist himself:
God bless this mighty spirit
The first time I saw Sinéad O’Connor I was with my friend Joseph at his Buffalo apartment, watching the Grammy Awards on television. After she was done, we just kind of looked at each other, stunned. I wondered, “Is that even allowed?” – my way of acknowledging that I had just experienced something brand new to me, and something truly important.
Even the memory of her singing this song … still stops me in my tracks.
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