we movie to canada: best of "what i'm watching" 2023

These are the best movies and series I watched in 2023, in no particular order.

Five stars: the best of the best

Kimi
This overlooked thriller is as taut and suspenseful as it gets. Zoë Kravitz is brilliant as the agoraphobic tech worker who must face her fear in order to bring a crime to light. But the real star is a screenplay (David Koepp) and direction (Steven Soderbergh) that doesn't waste a word or a single frame.  

Women Talking
A powerful story about women collectively liberating themselves from an oppressive, authoritarian religious community. Sarah Polley wrote and directed this film based on the Miriam Toews novel of the same name, which itself was a fictional account of documented events. Based on a true story, and true stories that are all around us. See it.

I Lost My Body (2019)
This intense, inventive animated film will haunt me for years to come. It is suffused with existential heartache: the pain of mortality, loneliness, and regret. I haven't seen anything like it since BoJack Horseman -- but this one comes without comic relief. (Interesting that these two works that I found so meaningful are both animated.) I Lost My Body is one of the very best things we saw in 2023, and/but it was almost too painful to watch.

I'm a Virgo S1
What would happen to a 13-foot-tall Black man in 21st Century America? Boots Riley, the genius behind Sorry to Bother You (2018), again finds a way to reflect and skewer our world through fantasy comedy. This series is absolutely astonishing, with layers upon layers of meaning. I can't wait to see where it goes.

I Lost My Body: the loneliness of the human condition

Descendant
In 2019, the wreckage of the ship Clotilda was found in Alabama's Mobile River: it was the last known ship to bring kidnapped, enslaved African people to America, legally. Filmmaker Margaret Brown spent four years with the community of Africatown -- where many residents are descendants from the people held captive on that ship -- exploring how the discovery impacted their lives.

Everything Everywhere All At Once
Add my voice to the chorus proclaiming the wonders of this movie. 

Shining Girls re-watch (S1, full series)
Last year, I wrote this about Shining Girls:

This genre-blending thriller/mystery/sci-fi series is mind-blowing, and features yet another insanely good performance by Elisabeth Moss. I'm planning on re-watching: now that I know the outcome, I can concentrate on clues and how it all fits together. 

I did that, and I loved the series again, possibly even more than I did the first time. 

Bicycle Thieves (1948)
Kanopy streaming service -- available free through your library -- is great for exploring classics that you haven't seen, or perhaps saw long ago. This story of a working-class man trying to eke out a living in the bleak, starving world of post-war Italy, his young son in tow, is gripping, heartbreaking, and masterful.

Hunters S1-2 (S1 re-watch + full series)
I don't know why Hunters is so under-recognized and under-rated. A conspiracy thriller with a good dose of comedy, it benefits from great acting by Al Pacino (finally doing television!), Lena Olin, and Dylan Baker, among others. Think Buffy the Vampire Slayer meets Operation Paperclip. I gave S1 a 4 out of 5, but after seeing both seasons in succession, I moved it to the top category. Not for the violence-averse.

Chinatown (1974)
Chinatown is what all noir movies aspire to. It's one of the best movies from an era of great moviemaking. Yes, it was directed by a rapist and pedophile, but it's a great movie. If you see it, you are not condoning the director's crimes. I promise.

The Sting (1973)
The Sting is one of the all-time great con movies. Pure joy. Plus Paul Newman! This movie is so good, it almost made me like Robert Redford. (Not really, but that's how good it is.)

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)
See above. When I was a kid, this was one of my favourite movies, and watching it now brought me that same kind of uncritical joy. The movie inspired a (probably bad) TV show called Alias Smith and Jones, which I also watched avidly, back in the day. 

Fitzcarraldo (1982)
Would we have thought this movie was great if we didn't know the crazy backstory, if we weren't already fascinated by Werner Herzog, if we didn't know Mick Jagger was originally cast in it, if there hadn't been a blood feud between Herzog and Klaus Kinski? That's a question with no answer, but we did thoroughly enjoy the film. We also watched My Best Fiend, Werner Herzog's ode to his relationship with Klaus Kinski, and Burden of Dreams, Les Blank's 1982 documentary about the making of Fitzcarraldo. 

Unpregnant: teenage abortion without apology

Unpregnant
Now that people are finally making honest movies about abortion, I plan to see them all. This one did everything right -- humour, honesty, authentic teen relationships, and just the right amount of political context. Thanks to the horrific US anti-abortion laws, a new subgenre is developing: the abortion road trip.

Reservation Dogs S3
Season 3 of this stellar show included more of what we might call magical realism, but what an Indigenous worldview would embrace as simply part of the web of life, some of which is unseen, and occasionally revealed. The episode dealing with the death of an elder must be the best piece of Indigenous culture ever seen by a mainstream audience. I also found the boarding school / residential school episode pretty much perfect. Through the whole series, the young actors are so good. 

Never Have I Ever S4
I didn't think they could do it, but Devi Vishwakumar's coming-of-age stayed brilliant through four seasons. Funny, sad, sweet, and authentic. Nearly perfect.

Triangle: Remembering the Fire
This HBO documentary is a great, concise overview of an important piece of women's/labour/New York City/American history. Even if you know all about the Triangle fire, you'll be glad you saw this. For the full story, see if you can get your hands on a copy of Triangle: The Fire That Changed America by David Von Drehle. 

All the Beauty and the Bloodshed
This documentary about the artist and activist Nan Goldin is notable for the brutal honesty with which Goldin bares her life -- a stark and welcome contrast to the typical sanitized biopic. Although Goldin's activism exposing the Sackler family's culpability in the opioid crisis is one of the film's central themes, the film is not about the Sacklers or the drug crisis. It's about Nan Goldin. It's fascinating, gripping, and at times a bit grueling.  

"Forget it, Jake. It's Chinatown."

ER S1-5 (1994 - 1999)
Re-watching ER for the first time since it originally aired reminded me of what a great show it is -- at least for the first five seasons. I'm currently slogging through the rest of the series, as original cast members fall away and the show becomes a soap opera set in a hospital. Which is not to say it's not entertaining. 

Four stars: highly recommended

Rita S1-S5, full series
I'm so glad I went back to this. Rita is such a refreshing protagonist -- smart, sexy, iconoclastic, utterly independent, often wrong, always fierce. If her free spirit is partly a mask over the pain of early trauma, that doesn't make her any less free. A joyous and sometimes sad show that deepened with every season.

Outside In (2017)
A man gets out of prison, having served 20 years for a crime he didn't commit. The emotional fallout impacts many lives in a small Pacific Northwest town. Really well done.

Wojnarowicz: F**k You F*ggot F**ker
Art, AIDS, and activism in 1980s New York. A moving portrait of a pioneer. Coincidentally, the subject matter intersects with All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, above. 

The Old Man S1
Jeff Bridges plays a Vietnam veteran and former spy, and John Lithgow plays his former handler. Also, there are dogs. The first season was a credible and exciting thriller. We've been waiting for S2.

Shrinking S1
I really enjoyed this smart, funny, and sad show, a comedy about grief, loss, therapy, honesty, and reclaiming joy. Add another title to the list of smart adult drama-sitcoms, which for me includes Episodes, Silicon Valley, Hacks, and a few others.

Severance S1
A strange and exciting sci-fi thriller about -- at bottom -- labour and capitalism. Related to Sorry to Bother You, but without the humour. Definitely waiting for S2.

Perry Mason S1-2 (full series so far)
We were happy to see the return of this smart, stylish, retro noir, an origin story and prequel to the old Perry Mason TV show. I hope it continues.

American Experience: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
A short, factual look at the daring and charismatic outlaws who inspired the 1969 movie. American Experience documentaries are consistently excellent. I'm glad several of them have made it onto Kanopy, Prime, and occasionally Netflix.

Succession S1-4 (full series)
Although this series sometimes felt repetitive, it was utterly addictive. I've heard people question the value of a show about rich assholes. To me, interesting characters, complex relationships, good writing, and great acting are the elements of a great series. The backdrop hardly matters. Plus, any really good series will peel back the assholic behaviour to reveal the pain and trauma that drives it. 

Unknown: Cave of Bones
When Allan and I can't agree on what to watch, we can always reach for some nature, anthropology, or archeology doc. This is a fascinating look at new research on early hominids, and the likelihood that they were more advanced than previously thought.

The Killing (1956)
This early Stanley Kubrick film, which Kubrick co-wrote with the seminal hardboiled crime writer Jim Thompson, is classic noir. You know the heist is doomed to fail, but how many lives will be lost or wrecked in the process, and whether or not anyone will get away clean, are always open questions.  

C'est comme ça que je t'aime (Happily Married) S1-2 (full series)
A crime comedy by the makers of Series Noire? Say no more! This series belongs to the "what lurks beneath the quiet suburbs" tradition -- taken to an extreme. Of course, like most crime films, it requires a certain suspension of disbelief. But it's funny, insightful, and super twisty. 

Our Flag Means Death S1-2, full series so far
Love, loss, discovery, and revenge on the high seas. A fun -- and sometimes sad -- dark comedy, full of LGBTQ love. Thoroughly enjoyable.

Vjeran Tomic: The Spider-Man of Paris
A documentary, told in the first person, by the man who pulled off the greatest art heist in the history of Paris.

Lupin S1-2 rewatch + S3 (full series)
More Parisian art heists! Despite some twists that were simply not credible, even in the world of criminal fantasy, Lupin S3 was still great. The anti-racist, anti-capitalist, and literary angles add depth, and Paris adds sparkle.

The Banshees of Inisherin
This story's descent into tragic darkness somehow feels both shocking and inevitable. It's very, very sad, and more than a little strange, with an all-star Irish pedigree. 

The Sound of Metal
A drummer in a metal-punk duo is losing his hearing, and with it, his identity. What kind of future he will choose, what new self will emerge, is what he and the audience must discover. A moving exploration of disability, identity, and recovery.

Slap Shot (1977)
Paul Newman always said that Slap Shot was his favourite of his own films, and that it was the most fun to make. With George Roy Hill's light touch, and a hilarious screenplay by Nancy Dowd, this sweet comedy has a loose-jointed feel that draws you in, warm and welcoming. The following year, Dowd won the Oscar for Best Screenplay for Coming Home. With The Sting and Butch Cassidy, Slap Shot makes three George Roy Hill movies this year, and each a gem. 

Honourable mentions: worth seeing

Jospeh Campbell and the Power of Myth, with Bill Moyers
We watched this when it first aired on PBS in 1988. I bought the book and became a huge fan. All these years later -- and knowing the standard criticisms of Campbell's ideas -- I am still interested and impressed. 

Helvetica
A documentary about a font? Sure, why not? It missed a few obvious opportunities that would have greatly improved it, but solid and worth seeing.

Bill Russell: Legend
An incredible athlete, an outspoken civil rights activist, and a prickly, cantankerous man. This two-part bio-doc is not perfect, but it is excellent.

I'm Thinking of Ending Things
Charlie Kaufman's movies are always challenging to parse and invariably provoke good post-watch discussions. Which is not the same thing as saying I like them. But I do continue to see them. Sad note: in the role played by Jesse Plemons, I kept imagining Philip Seymour Hoffman. 

Previous "we movie to canada" awards

- Canadian musicians and comedians (2006-07 and 2007-08)
- my beverage of choice (2008-09)
- famous people who died during the past year (2009-10)
- where I'd like to be (2010-11)
- vegetables (2011-12)
- big life events in a year full of Big Life Changes (2012-13)
- cheese (2013-14)
- types of travels (2014-15)
- famous people who died plus famous people who died, part 2 (2015-16)
- the picket line (2016-17)
- movies (2017-18)
2018-19: 1-5 ☮s
2019-20: 1-5 💉s
2020-21: 1-5 😷s (without the tear!)
2021: best of 2021 april to december
2022: best of 2022

the secret pocket: children's books on residential schools, reading for reconciliation, and other library things

This post started as a standard "what i'm reading" post. But as I thought about it, I realized that it touches on several other themes that are important to me: history, Reconciliation, libraries, readers' advisory... and maybe some others I'm not seeing yet.

The Secret Pocket

In September, for National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, I was updating a list of children's books about residential schools, and found The Secret Pocket, by Peggy Janicki. It immediately became my favourite children's book about the residential school experience.

The Secret Pocket tells the story -- in the first person -- of a Dakelh girl who was taken away from her family when she was four years old. She is brought to a place far away from her home, where the children are always hungry and cold. The girls are forbidden to speak their own language, and are frequently punished -- often by the withholding of food.

The older girls sew hidden pockets into their clothes. They secretly gather materials and sew at night, then use the pockets to hide pieces of apples, carrots, and bread to share with the younger girls, and the girls who are hungriest.

In the Dakelh culture before contact, sewing skills were passed down through generations of women. The girls who were a bit older when they were forcibly removed from their families already had this knowledge. So not only were they helping to feed each other, they were keeping a piece of their culture alive.  

The Secret Pocket records and preserves the stories that the author's mother told her about her own experience -- a story of courageous, creative, and collective resistance. I highly recommend it to all adult readers as well as children. 

How to talk to kids about...

Canadian schools now teach about Canada's colonization of Indigenous people, and about the Residential Schools, at every grade level. It's about time! My Canadian-born friends never learned about this when they were growing up. Many of them lived right near a Residential School but never knew about the genocidal system that they represented, let alone what went on behind the prison walls. 

Many people I know are particularly upset at learning that Duncan Campbell Scott was one of the principal architects of the system that vowed to "kill the Indian in the child". (Apparently this phrase is falsely attributed to Scott. Nevertheless, he created the system that tried to make it a reality.) In school, my Canadian friends and co-workers learned about Scott as a celebrated Canadian poet. They learned about his dark legacy as adults, through Reconciliation education through their workplaces. 

(Incidentally, those three names -- Duncan, Campbell, and Scott -- are found all over Vancouver Island place-names. I hope one day those names will be expunged, and places returned to their ancestral names.)

Reconciliation education stands in stark contrast to so many school districts in the United States that are no longer teaching about slavery. This choice is truly Orwellian, even surreal. And so indicative of the progress of the fascist state.

There are ways to talk with children about difficult topics, in age-appropriate ways. I'm no student of education, so I'm not well-versed in method and curricula, but I see it taking place all around me. 

Reading for Reconciliation

For non-Canadian readers, Reconciliation is the process of educating ourselves about the historical (and ongoing) colonization and oppression of the Indigenous people who live in what is now called Canada, and finding ways to create more equity and justice. 

This work is happening in workplaces, schools, unions, churches, and other organizations, and it is also happening on a personal level. Individual Canadians are taking responsibility for learning, and to the extent that we can, for decolonizing our lives. The 94 Calls to Action created by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission provide a framework for this. 

Obviously not every Canadian cares about this, and a certain percentage of the non-Indigenous population is blatantly hostile to the idea. But evidence also shows that huge numbers of non-Indigenous Canadians care deeply about this and are finding ways to participate in acts of Reconciliation.

One of the ways that Canadians further their own Reconciliation journeys is through reading. Books written by Indigenous authors, both fiction and nonfiction, for every age group and nearly every genre, are burgeoning in sales, libraries, and book clubs. I find this especially heartening when I consider that much of the subject matter in these books is disturbing -- and many people (unfortunately, in my view) avoid reading anything with disturbing content. 

I want to note that in Indigenous Relations: Insights, Tips & Suggestions to Make Reconciliation a Reality, author Bob Joseph lists reading work by Indigenous authors as a tangible act of Reconciliation.

If you have not already done so, I highly recommend reading Joseph's 21 Things You May Not Know About the Indian Act. It's a short, highly accessible book, and my number one pick for beginning Reconciliation awareness. Here's a very good interview with Bob Joseph in The Tyee.

We💓booklists

Many library systems, including mine, offer booklists -- lists curated by librarians, grouped by subgenre, age group, or subject matter, to highlight hidden gems and help customers choose titles.

Booklists are an important form of readers' advisory. Staffing levels -- in every library in North America -- are very low, and in many libraries, there may be no professional staff who have been trained in readers' advisory. Even if staff are available, many customers won't ask for reading recommendations, for various reasons. So most libraries offer various forms of passive readers' advisory. Booklists are a part of that. 

In our system, lists are created by any staff who have an interest. A call goes out, staff sign up for topics within an audience group (adult, youth, or children), or suggest creative list ideas. We put our annotated picks into a template, so the lists have a uniform look and feel. Our lists are always diverse and current, and many are really creative.

I love readers' advisory, and my position doesn't give me much opportunity to keep those skills alive, so when the call goes out, I always raise my hand. It's an opportunity "to librarian". Right now I'm working on two adult lists -- current travel memoirs, and memoirs and biographies. I almost always choose nonfiction lists, with one exception: I love the challenge of creating diverse lists of modern classics. I also sometimes contribute to lists of children's books, which is how I found The Secret Pocket.

happy new year from wmtc

what i'm reading: 2023 wrap-up, a reading plan for 2024, and why i now create reading plans

I've finally figured out this reading plan thing. A list that will guide me but not overwhelm me. A way to make sure I read at least a few old titles that have been languishing on my Books Universe list for ages. A list that will keep me obsessively reading, but not obsessed with the list itself.

Here are the results of my 2023 reading plan.

Five current (within three years) nonfiction ✅

Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Family (2021), Patrick Radden Keefe (review)

The Invisible Kingdom: Reimagining Chronic Illness (2022), Meghan O'Rourke (review)

Madame Restell: the Life, Death and Resurrection of Old New York's Most Fabulous, Fearless, and Independent Abortionist (2023), Jennifer Wright (review)

The Story of Jane: The Legendary Underground Feminist Abortion Service (2022), Laura Kaplan (review)

Galileo and the Science Deniers (2020), Mario Livio (review to follow)

An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us (2022), Ed Yong (currently reading; review to follow)

Five older nonfiction from my Books Universe ✅

How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence (2018), Michael Pollan 

Bread and Roses: Mills, Migrants, and the Struggle for the American Dream (2006), Bruce  Watson (review)

Sea People: The Puzzle of Polynesia (2019), Christina Thompson (review)

Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference (2010), Cordelia Fine (review)

Raising Expectations (and Raising Hell): My Decade Fighting for the Labor Movement (2014), Jane McAlevey and Bob Ostertag

Ten fiction ✅, including five (total) from authors I have not previously read: Margaret Laurence ✅, Donna Tartt ✅.

This year most of the fiction I read was for the Labour Book Club I was leading through my union. The reading wasn't particularly satisfying, but I loved LBC, so on balance that was a win. 

Of the list of authors I hadn't read but want to sample, five turned out to be too many. But I did read two of them, and in previous years read another two or three, so that is slowly happening. 

Here's the fiction I did read.

The Goldfinch, Donna Tartt (loved, recommend highly)

Crook Manifesto, Colson Whitehead (loved, recommend highly -- of course!)

My Notorious Life, Kate Manning (review)

Shuggie Bain, Douglas Stuart (review)

Young Mungo, Douglas Stuart (loved, recommend highly)

In Dubious Battle, John Steinbeck (LBC) (had read before, a very long time ago)

God’s Bits of Wood, Ousmane Sembène (LBC) (review)

In the Skin of a Lion, Michael Ondaatje (LBC) (had read before; a very good book)

The Stone Angel, Margaret Laurence (second time I've tried to read this)

The Cold Millions, Jess Walter (LBC) (had read before)

The Last Ballad, Wiley Cash (LBC) (had read before)

For the Win, Cory Doctorow (LBC) (review)

Gilded Mountain, Kate Manning (LBC)

Advance one ongoing goal ✅✅ 

Completed weekly installments of Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898 (whoo-hoo!)

Returned to Taylor Branch's America in the King Years trilogy, and finished the final third of the final book, At Canaan's Edge, abandoned in 2007

My 2024 Plan will separate this goal into two: "advance one ongoing goal" and "one massive book to be read in weekly installments".

Also read

A First Time for Everything, Dan Santat (excellent children's graphic novel) (review)

The Secret Pocket, Peggy Janicki (children's, indigenous, excellent) (review)

Many feature-length stories in The Atlantic, The New York Times, Harpers, The Guardian, Vox, The New Yorker, and elsewhere, saved and tracked through "Reading List" on Chrome

Why do I have a reading plan? 

Sometime in the late 2000s, I realized I was spending less time reading. Or, more accurately, I was spending too much time reading a whole lot of nothing -- scrolling, reading headlines, a paragraph here and there. It was very unsatisfying, and was contributing to feelings of disconnection, lack of focus, and general dissatisfaction. I had all but lost the deep reading that I love, and have done all my life.

With this realization, I began a gradual lessening of time spent on social media, less time consuming news, and more time reading books. The more I did this, the better I felt. 

This is not only because I love and value reading. The larger issue is being intentional about how I use my time. Time is our most valuable resource. Time is our only non-renewable resource. I don't want to waste it -- and by waste, I mean using non-work time in unsatisfying ways. We're all familiar with frittering away time and not knowing where it went. That's what I'm striving to avoid.

I've always been a bit obsessive about how I use my time. I never take on a new project without first figuring out how I will prioritize it in my life, what I will reduce or move in order to fit in the new thing. The internet and social media had fractured that, and I wanted to reclaim it. 

The Attention Merchants by Tim Wu was enormously helpful for this. By the time I read Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport, it was clarifying and articulating what I already knew. If this is something you're looking for, I recommend reading both these books.

So in keeping with all of this, a reading plan has helped me focus my reading, and be more intentional with my reading time.

what i'm reading: the invisible kingdom: reimagining chronic illness

The Invisible Kingdom: Reimagining Chronic Illness by Meghan O'Rourke is a important book. I would even call it a landmark. 

For ten years, O'Rourke suffered from a debilitating condition that was either misdiagnosed or dismissed. Her search for answers forms the structure of this book. 

Although the author writes about her own experience, The Invisible Kingdom is not a typical illness memoir. It doesn't follow the familiar trajectory of illness-adjustment-recovery-lessons learned. O'Rourke uses her own story as a springboard to explore chronic illness from social, cultural, and political perspectives, intertwined with the personal story.

O'Rourke exposes how the American healthcare system, medical training, and culture conspire against chronically ill people, creating insurmountable obstacles and destroying lives. 

This book is a must-read for anyone struggling with chronic illness, but even more importantly, it's a must-read for health care practitioners. 

It's written in a US context -- a culture which worships individualism, where healthcare is not a universal human right, where both the amount and quality of care one receives is dependent on privilege. However, readers from countries with universal health insurance (that is, all other so-called "developed" countries) shouldn't dismiss this an American problem. While some conditions aren't in play, far too many still apply. At its core, this story is happening all around us, no matter where we live.

A complicated gaslighting

The Invisible Kingdom illuminates how the dynamics of conventional medicine obstruct and prevent people with chronic illness from receiving appropriate care. The issues fall into three categories.

Not being believed.

This is the one condition nearly universal to people with chronic illnesses and invisible disabilities: doctors discount and dismiss their patients' stories. When test results turn up negative, doctors -- at best -- shrug their shoulders and move on. At worst -- and frequently -- they assume that the patient is exaggerating, attention-seeking, or drug-seeking, or that their symptoms are the result of anxiety or depression. I venture to say that everyone -- and I do mean everyone -- with chronic illness has encountered this. A majority of doctors simply do not believe their patients. 

Instead of realizing or admitting that their diagnostic tests are inadequate -- that medical science is imperfect and incomplete, that it has not conquered every condition, that this patient's symptoms exceed either the doctor's own knowledge or the current limits of medical knowledge -- the doctor discounts or dismisses the patient. Rather than question the adequacy of the tests, the doctors question the validity of the individual's own experience. The Invisible Kingdom shows how one group of doctors who dealt with Lyme disease took this to extremes. They  

long seemed unwilling to acknowledge that patients were coming to them with their own knowledge. . . .  Instead of devoting compassion and energy to patients with persistent symptoms, many doctors focused on discrediting their testimony.

Hypochondria is a thing, as is Munchausen Syndrome. But those psychiatric conditions are relatively rare, and not difficult to diagnose. Most people do not seek the care of specialists for fun or out of compulsive need. It's exhausting -- physically, emotionally, and in the US, financially. The vast majority of sufferers are, in fact, suffering. Yet all too often, doctors attribute undiagnosed pain as evidence of a psychiatric condition.

More than one doctor told O'Rourke that "everyone is tired," or "it's normal to have some aches and pains as we get older". This was maddening to even read about! O'Rourke reminds us that most people have no trouble distinguishing between normal tiredness and all-encompassing, crippling fatigue. As she writes:

Just because a symptom is common -- and subjective -- does not mean a patient cannot tell the difference between a normal version of it and a pathological one, the way we experience the difference between the common cold and the flu.

I can't help but wonder why this dynamic is so common. One maverick autoimmune specialist O'Rourke interviews espouses the necessity of a personalized approach -- which is exactly the opposite of how western medicine operates.

Alongside the usual standardized protocols, [patients with unusual and persistent symptoms] clearly call for the tactics of personalized medicine, because the immune system is so complex -- and so individualized. . . . This complexity is a problem for the conventional medical system. . . . The conventional folks are very, very good at what they do. . . . But a patient with a constellation of symptoms that doesn't clearly fit a diagnosis is not somebody that they want to deal with. . . . Nothing is more threatening to who you think you are [as a doctor] than a patient with a problem you cannot solve.

Medical silos. 

As she searched for answers and relief, O'Rourke saw many specialists. Throughout, she was forced to coordinate all the results and manage her own care -- while enduring mind-bending physical pain, extreme fatigue, and the added stress of not being believed.

Insurance companies, and doctors who allow their practice to be driven by billing systems.

Insurance companies expect doctors to see patients for 10 minutes at a time, no matter what their needs, and to see massive numbers of patients every day. Chronically ill people can't fit their needs into this system, so the system shunts them to the margins. 

This is typically as true for publicly-funded systems as for private, for-profit healthcare. (BC's NDP government recently changed the provincial health authority's billing system in recognition of this barrier to care. It can be done!)

Alternative medicine may be useful, but is not a panacea

O'Rourke also sought help from practitioners of alternative or complimentary medicine. She had some good experiences, but she also brings a critical eye to this system. 

Complimentary medicine is typically very expensive, and not covered by insurance -- meaning, it is usually only available to people with privilege. Offerings run the gamut from those well supported by evidence to outright quackery. A person who is hurting and desperate, and who has been abandoned by conventional medicine, is easy prey.

However, alternative practitioners offer two things that conventional medicine does not: they believe their patients, and they have time for them. This is a powerful combination, and that power makes it a potentially dangerous (and incredibly expensive) path.

The mind-body link: a confusing picture

Complicating this picture is the undeniable link between the neurological system and the immune system. Simply put, our state of mind does impact our health. As everyone with chronic illness knows, stress can trigger and exacerbate symptoms. Yet this doesn't mean the illness is caused by stress, and it certainly doesn't mean our symptoms are psychosomatic or imagined.

It's a conundrum. Positive thinking will not make illness go away, yet negative thinking actually does make it worse. With some autoimmune conditions, hopefulness has been correlated with a lessening of symptoms. This confusing and seemingly contradictory reality can bolster the disbelieving doctor's suspicions. As O'Rourke's husband said at one point, "This seems like one of the hardest things about being sick in the way that you're sick: being sick makes you stressed. But being stressed makes you sicker."

O'Rourke writes about the growing field of psychoneuroimmunlogy: a new, greater understanding of the interactions between the nervous system and the immune system -- between body and mind -- is beginning to emerge.

One glimmer of hope is the emergence of autoimmunity centres, modeled on cancer centres -- a multidisciplinary approach, with same-day specialist appointments in the same facility, and cases discussed in a team setting. In her research (but unfortunately, not in time for her own illness), O'Rourke finds an automunine centre boasting 17 disciplines and a commitment to streamlined continuity of care. In this setting, physicians may spend hours meeting with patients and with one another, searching personalized answers.

Practitioners in this emergent field acknowledge that diagnostic tools are limited -- as they have been throughout medical history -- and that there is much medical science does not know. The research arm searches for more tools, while doctors from the clinical arm listen, believe, and brainstorm creative solutions.

Another sign of hope is the conventional medical community's recognition of long covid. Long covid has proven that medicine's understanding of viruses is flawed and incomplete. Many doctors are suffering from long covid, and this has apparently brought an ah-ha moment to treatment of viruses and autoimmune disease.

Social determinants of health

O'Rourke also reminds readers that systemic racism, substandard housing and nutrition, food deserts, intersectional bigotry, and other social determinants of health are always in play. As she fights for care, she is always aware that as a white, cis, educated, middle-class woman, she has access to care that so many others do not. Suffice to say that if the author found it nearly impossible to access appropriate care, we can assume that many others are left behind at the outset.

A story known to many

Meghan O'Rourke lost ten years of her life to this struggle -- ten years that should have been her most productive professional years, and her best childbearing years, as she did want to have a baby. She was in nearly constant pain, and subject to fatigue that made it impossible to function, with no way to predict or control when a cycle would strike. 

It's no wonder that O'Rourke became severely depressed, and at least one point, lost hope. That she continued to search for answers and function to whatever extent she was able is testament to remarkable inner strength, grit, resilience, and determination. Reading The Invisible Kingdom, I often thought of the original meaning of the Finnish word sisu (not the current, pop-culture meaning). Sisu is used to describe the Finns' national survival in the face of multiple Russian invasions. Meghan O'Rourke did the same.

I have never faced an illness as debilitating and mysterious as the one that O'Rourke writes about. But although my experience was more mild by comparison, the elements and the trajectory were very familiar. I believe most people with chronic illness, especially women, will also recognize the pattern.

I frequently say "I was misdiagnosed for seven years." But actually, my original diagnosis was correct. For insurance reasons, I had to see a different family doctor, and he threw out that initial, correct diagnosis, pronouncing it a "garbage can diagnosis" for a nonexistent syndrome. He decided I had a different condition. When my bloodwork did not confirm his diagnosis, he ignored the results. He supposedly knew of a cutting-edge treatment that was getting good results, and applied that to me. I now realize I was used in a long-term, nonconsensual treatment experiment. 

For seven years, I took the wrong medication, while my symptoms worsened and expanded. The medication negatively altered my digestive system and my metabolism. 

As my symptoms worsened, I became less active; eventually the joint pain became so severe that I was nearly sedentary. The wrong medication, inactivity, and stress-eating led to weight gain -- at which time my doctor declared that my joint pain was caused by my weight. In reality the cause and effect were exactly the opposite.

This doctor refused to refer me to a specialist, claiming a specialist would only confirm what we already knew. Of course, the insurance scheme included financial disincentives for doctors to make referrals.

I felt like I was falling apart. I felt desperate. Friends urged me to insist on a referral. When the doctor said I appeared to be anxious and stressed, and suggested I go on anti-depressants, that was the last straw. Once again, he was reversing cause and effect. I was anxious and stressed -- because I was in so much pain, and because he wouldn't help me. Not the other way around.

I insisted on my right to see a specialist, and the doctor finally wrote a referral. In one visit, the specialist made a diagnosis: the original diagnosis I had gotten seven years earlier, the one the family doctor threw out. I never returned to that family doctor, and I began the long road back to health. (If you are interested, the whole story is here. I share that link only in that it may help someone.) 

A vow of honesty

Meghan O'Rourke teases out the many threads that are woven into this story -- how an invisible, chronic illness impacts friendships, relationships, work life, family life, and worst of all, our very sense of self. O'Rourke is also a poet, and some of her metaphors and descriptions were too esoteric for me; other readers might find them exactly on point. Regardless, she brings a unique and compelling storytelling style to the issue. 

The Invisible Kingdom contains many reflections on illness, pain, and suffering from a wide spectrum of sources -- Susan Sontag, William Styron, Elaine Scarry, Barbara Ehrenreich, Alexander Pope, Bernie Siegel, Alice James, and Norman Cousins, among others, and a wealth of complex medical information rendered in plain language.

The book is equally notable for what it doesn't contain: there's no bright-siding. O'Rourke rejects "the wisdom narrative", where "illness is a vehicle for self-improvement and hard-won acceptance". She writes:

There is a razor-thin line between trying to find something usefully redemptive in illness and lying to ourselves about the nature of suffering.

It is difficult to look at the shadows of physical suffering clearly, because to do so, I know, is to risk inviting depression, or a terrifying apprehension that the world is made of pain. But when I was at my sickest, I resolved that if I got well enough to write about my experience, I would not give false assurances. I would not write letters reassuring those I loved that my life had not been utterly compromised. Now that I am somewhat better, I can tell you the truth: When I was at my sickest, my life was utterly compromised, and my very sense of self was gone. When I was less sick -- and there were periods of relief in my illness -- I could step back from the experience and take pleasure in the vividness of the blue sky from my bedroom window. But I will not repeat falsehoods; I will not say that wisdom and growth mean I wouldn't have it any other way. I would have it the other way.

write for rights 2023: my fifteenth year #w4r2023

2023 marks the fifteenth year that I have participated in Amnesty Interntional's Write for Rights.

Fifteen years ago, I chose one case, one person. I wrote to officials about them, and wrote to them as well. 

I upped the ante a bit more every year, until the year (date unknown!) when I challenged myself to write a letter for every featured case. Since then I've written at least one letter for each of the 10 featured cases, and at least one letter of support.

In 2014 I also joined Amnesty's Urgent Action Network. Urgent Action sends you cases on an occasional basis; you write to officials on their behalf if you can. I respond to about half the emails I receive, depending on what's going on in my life. 

There is one more piece I want to add: I want to organize a virtual letter-writing group event. This is an obvious step for me, but so far I haven't been able to get it off the ground. But I haven't let go of the idea. Eventually I'll figure it out.

I'm not sharing this to win praise or admiration. I'm sharing it to encourage you to write with me.

It's very easy

My annual W4R letter-writing takes about an hour -- and that's because I choose to write for every case, 10 global cases plus one from Canada. You could easily do the whole thing in 15 or 30 minutes.

The only cost involved is international stamps, as I like to send paper mail when possible. I consider this part of my end-of-year charitable donations (albeit not the tax-deductible kind). If postage money is a barrier, you can easily choose only cases that can be contacted by email.

Amnesty offers tons of support. There are sample letters, toolkits, case cards. If you're intimidated by doing this on your own, there are groups you can join to help motivate you. There are also resources for educators and organizers. 

This year there was even an option to receive a paper kit by postal mail. That's a lot of paper, so I didn't order a kit, but if it would help motivate you, sign up for Write For Rights and Amnesty will send you one.

It works

Amnesty has developed Write For Rights because it works: go here and scroll to "success stories".

Last year, people in more than 200 countries took over 4.6 million actions -- letters, emails, tweets, petitions. They helped individuals in dire circumstances, while exposing conditions and highlighting urgent issues.

Write For Rights saves lives. It gives comfort and support to people who are suffering for their activism. It shows families of these heroes that they are not alone. 

W4R 2023: this year's global cases

This year's global cases focus on these individuals, countries, and human rights.

➤ Maung Sawyeddollah, in Myanmar, is exposing Facebook's role in the murderous campaign against people from the Rohingya ethnic group. 

➤ In Australia, two Indigenous people known as Uncle Pabai and Uncle Paul are fighting to save their ancestral lands from the ravages of climate change. To save a culture that has been passed down through generations for thousands of years, they have gone to court to demand Australia take immediate and meaningful action against climate change.

➤ Thapelo Mohapi, in South Africa, is in hiding and fears for his life. Thapelo is a leader of Abahlali baseMjondolo, a grassroots movement working to improve the lives of people in South Africa. Members of the group are being targetted and murdered.

➤ In Tunisia, Chaima Issa speaks out against an autocratic government. She has been arrested, detained, and banned from meeting with others or speaking in public. She remains defiant, despite facing decades in prison.

➤ Rocky Myers is an intellectually disabled Black man in the US state of Alabama. He is on death row for murder, despite there being no evidence linking him to the crime. His trial was a riddled with issues, including a witness who has since admitted that they lied. After nearly 30 years on death row, Rocky could be executed at any time. 

➤ Justyna Wydrzyńska, in Poland, has been arrested, prosecuted, and convicted for helping women access safe abortions.  

➤ In the United Arab Emirates, Ahmed Mansoor is being held in an isolation cell. Ahmed's "crime" is speaking the truth about the UAE, providing the world with a very rare glimpse of the rampant human rights violations in that country -- including fake trials, and the detention and torture of dissenting voices. For more than a year, no one knew where Ahmed was being held. Now he faces a decade in prison.

➤ Thulani Maseko, in the southern African nation of Eswatini, endured more than a year in prison, until he was executed in his own home. Thulani's "crime" was defending human rights in a country ruled by an absolute monarchy.

➤ In Brazil, the son of Ana Maria Santos Cruz organized "Walks of Peace", where people would speak out against police abuses. He was repeatedly threatened, and then murdered. Ana continues to fight for justice for her son.

➤ In Kyrgyzstan, Rita Karasartova leads the Institute for Public Analysis and is a member of a democracy movement. For her peaceful work against poverty and injustice, Rita was arrested, detained, and denied access to healthcare. She is now under house arrest, charged with attempting to "violently overthrow the government".

Human rights abuses in our own backyard

In the list of annual cases, Amnesty reserves one spot for the letter-writer's country. I love this idea. It reminds us that urgent human rights issues don't happen only in faraway lands. The cases in Canada usually involve Indigenous peoples, and are often taking place in my own province -- still known as "British Columbia".

➤ The Wet'suwet'en First Nation is under threat from a huge pipeline being constructed through their traditional and unceded territory. Wet'suwet'en land defenders have been harassed, intimidated, forcibly removed, and criminalized by the RCMP, Canada's national police force. They need our support.

five years on: reflections on the big life change

The Port Hardy skyline

Since starting this blog in 2004, I've experienced three Big Life Changes. 

The first, of course, was emigrating to Canada. 

The second was becoming a librarian. More than a career change, this was a huge shift in lifestyle and identity. 

The third Big Life Change was moving west, to a small, remote community on Vancouver Island.

So this feels significant: five years ago today, we arrived in Port Hardy.

27 November 2018

We started the day in Delta, took the ferry, then drove north, the final day of our seven-day road trip. We were driving our little Kia, our big boy Diego in the back seat. Behind us, my brother was driving the truck; my sister-in-law had joined us in Calgary. (They travelled from Oregon to do this with us!)

As we left Campbell River, it was dark, and it was raining, and it felt like we were driving forever. Every time we passed a sign showing kilometres to Port Hardy, we cheered. And then: the welcome sign, and some lights. And finally, our rental home, which we thought would be our permanent home for many years, and turned out to be a brief pitstop.

Professionally, a rocky start

Only days later, I drove down to Nanaimo, for two weeks in both Nanaimo, my employer's headquarters, and Campbell River. I always say, "I had a rocky start", but that's a euphemism. My first few days were a disaster. When I finally started working in Port Hardy, my confidence was in shreds.

My job was a newly-created position; I was (am) the only professional librarian in all five of my branches. Early on, I had many good experiences, but for every one of those, there were two or three (or five or ten) uncomfortable or disturbing ones. 

I had never seen such under-resourced libraries. The conditions that were accepted as normal were shocking to me. I had to fight the bureaucracy just to get basic supplies. Most of my tech didn't work. 

Managing people remotely, by phone and email, was a new challenge. Some of my staff were unaccustomed to being supervised. Some were suspicious of outsiders and sought to undermine me whenever possible. Much of my experience didn't translate easily, or at all. I made many wrong turns, hit many dead ends.

In addition, and unbeknownst to me, there was a systemic barrier between the library and the local Indigenous communities, and between the library and the public schools. Both had suffered dismal, disrespectful experiences with our library, and wanted nothing to do with us. 

There was much reason to be hopeful

Luckily for me, sprinkled amid all that frustration, there were lovely exchanges with customers, and some staff who welcomed me and were eager to work together. My professional colleagues, although geographically distant, were incredibly welcoming and supportive, and so engaged with our union -- far more so than I had experienced in Ontario. 

There was also an upside to things being in such bad shape: I was making improvements all the time. There was so much room for growth.

Personally, a magical beginning

While the professional situation was challenging and frustrating, the personal end was simply wonderful. We instantly loved the quiet, simple life. Allan loved working from home, and I loved my five-minute "commute".

There was so much natural beauty all around us. Down the street we could see the bay, fringed by distant snow-capped mountains. Driving anywhere meant winding "country roads" (known here as a highway) through the rainforest. We saw eagles every day. Ten minutes away, we could take the dogs to a magnificent beach, mountains on the horizon, eagles overhead.

Diego needed surgery, and was near the end of his life. That was as horrible as we knew it would be, but we very quickly found a whole new pack. Then we did something completely unexpected, another massive change: we bought our home. About ten minutes later, housing prices skyrocketed. Timing is everything!

Five years on

Fully understanding my new library role and the organization I work for took longer than I expected. It's been extremely rewarding. It's never boring -- which is fortunate, since I intend to stay in this job until I retire.

Becoming part of the community of service providers took much longer. When I share this observation with other professionals in our town, everyone remembers the same experience. Working in the North Island region is often a career stepping-stone; people come for two or three years, then move on. Because of this, whether consciously or no, locals are reluctant to invest. People are waiting to see if you mean business. It took the better part of three years to get past this. 

It's wonderful to feel at home, both personally and professionally.

Of course there are limitations and annoyances of living in a remote region, but everything's a trade-off. There are plenty of annoyances about living in New York City, but I wouldn't have traded my years there for the world. It's great to feel that way again.

_________

My moving to BC post are here. Allan was sharing his reflections and observations in comments on those posts -- now lost.

an obvious life hack: how to make streaming more affordable and still enjoy ad-free viewing

Much ink is being spilled, metaphorically speaking, about the changing trends in subscription-based streaming services. Headlines scream that shows on Netflix and Prime will now include ads, implying that users will pay the same rates plus see ads, as we did with cable TV. 

But that's not true (at least not yet). So far, most streaming services have started offering a tiered system, with a less expensive, ad-supported level, and a more expensive level without ads.

For Netflix, the difference is substantial: $5.99 vs. either $16.49 or $20.99 for the two ad-free options. Disney also has three tiers: $7.99 with ads, $11.99 or $14.99 without. Amazon's deal is worse: in order to avoid an upcoming price increase for Prime Video, you'll need to pay an additional three dollars a month. (These are Canadian prices only, of course.)

No ads. Ever.

No one likes price increases, and I'm no exception. But for me, ads are a deal-breaker. I'd go back to watching on DVD before I'd subject myself to advertising during shows. No question.

The only time we see ads are on YouTube. We've opted not to subscribe to YouTube Premium -- me, because I don't use it often, and Allan, because he's more motivated to keep expenses down. (The apps that block ads on YouTube can't be used on our streaming devices.) But I don't watch full movies or series on YouTube, so it's not a big deal.

Up until now, I've enjoyed the convenience of subscribing to multiple platforms at the same time. With the price increases, the convenience feels more like a luxury. 

Streaming on rotation

So I'm using a simple solution: rotate monthly subscriptions according to what we want to watch. 

As my thrifty partner points out, you can only watch one show/series/movie at a time. (Even if you follow several series at a time, your eyeballs are only one at any given moment.) So when you're watching something on one platform, you're still paying for all the other service that you're not currently watching. 

Like most people, I find the movies and series I want to watch scattered across different platforms, and there's a limited number of shows that interest me from any one service. Take AppleTV+ as an example. When we first got Apple's streaming service, I thought it was amazing -- so many great shows! Then we saw five or six really good shows*, a few others...  and that was it. There was nothing else we were interested in.

So why not rotate?

Subscribe to Netflix to watch specific titles, then after you've seen what you're there for, find something that appeals on a different service, subscribe to that one, and cancel Netflix. Keep an eye on what other services are offering, cancel and subscribe, mix and match. 

It will take a bit more planning, for sure. I'll put reminders on my calendars for the monthly renewals. That's not a big deal, plus if I miss one, it's not a disaster. (I acknowledge this is challenging for some people. I have many challenges, but staying organized is not one of them.) 

Current streaming lineup

Right now, I'm subscribing to Disney and Crave on annual plans. I fell for what appeared to be a better value, imagining I would want to continue indefinitely. When those annual subscriptions run out, I'll put those on rotation, too. 

I'll continue to subscribe to Prime, to get free shipping on Amazon.

I want to get Paramount, to finish "Yellowstone," then watch the two Yellowstone prequels; I've been waiting for the second half of Yellowstone S5 to drop. Now I'll also wait for a good break from some other service, cancelling something before I get Paramount. 

There is one Canada-only snag: when licensing runs out, shows disappear. With this mix-and-match approach, I may miss something I wanted to see. But that's what downloads are for.

Many people will choose lower prices over ad-free, because paying less or "saving" money is more important than not seeing advertising. And for some people, Netflix may suddenly become affordable. But I can't imagine that many people will go back to cable -- expensive, tons of ads, limited viewing options, scheduled (as opposed to on-demand), and for the most part, crappy shows.

------

* Best: Bad Sisters, Shining Girls, Slow Horses, The Morning Show (S1 and S2 only). 

Very good: Severance. 

Good: Ted Lasso (S1 only, emphatically!), Truth Be Told (S1-S2), For All Mankind (S1-S2), Shrinking.

11.11: as genocide continues in gaza

The Palestine Project

I almost missed my annual Remembrance Day post. While a handful of countries commemorate the most pointless and horrific of wars to end all wars, a genocide against the Palestinian people is being perpetrated by the State of Israel.

In the English-speaking world, people are being punished for condemning it. 

Many American Jews continue to rationalize it, or worse, defend it.

When I was a child, I would frequently hear: "How did the world let the Holocaust happen? Did they not know it was happening? Was there no way to prevent it?" Now, today, we can never say, We didn't know. 

The sight of the Star of David flag turns my stomach now, like the swastika. 

There's no coming back from this. Any possibility of peace, justice, and coexistence has been destroyed. 

There lies before us, if we choose, continual progress in happiness, knowledge, and wisdom. Shall we instead choose death, because we cannot forget our quarrels? I appeal as a human being to human beings: remember your humanity, forget the rest.

Bertrand Russell

The Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation

The Russell Tribunal on Palestine

achievement unlocked! what i'm reading: gotham: a history of new york city to 1898

Ta-da! I finished! 

I've been reading Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898 in weekly installments, since March of 2022. And now I have finished it.

I thoroughly enjoyed both the book and the reading experience. I have a list of doorstoppers that I'd like to approach the same way. I'm thinking of reading one giant tome each year, in addition to everything else I'm reading.

An absolutely brilliant book

Gotham is a marvel. Authors Edwin Burrows and Mike Wallace write history from a progressive point of view, and in a lively, entertaining style. The book brings to the surface the histories that have been hidden from the mainstream. It's honest and refreshing, and naturally full of myth-busting.

Although the book is organized chronologically, it is also organized topically. The authors periodically check in on the status of women, the lives of Black Americans, and the progress of the labour movement, along with religion, politics, media, entertainment, social attitudes toward poverty, the lives of the elite, and other areas that bring each period to life.

I have so many notes -- in more than one notebook, and in the camera on my phone, and the book itself is bristling with yellow sticky notes -- that it feels exhausting and pointless to try to encapsulate even a small portion of them. I have a huge number of notes on socialism, unions, the rights of women, Black Americans, the media, the theatre, sports... and more. 

Many New Yorks

Gotham is divided into five sections. 

The first part looks at the geological formation of the island now known as Manhattan, and its original inhabitants, the Lenape and other Indigenous peoples: "Lenape Country and New Amsterdam to 1664". We visit New Amsterdam and meet the Dutch colonists. New Amsterdam was undeveloped and very short-lived, although the Dutch legacy lives on in the modern era in dozens of place-names, in the City and throughout New York State. 

Almost immediately, an oft-repeated origin story disintegrates into dust: no one "sold" Manhattan for $24. This sets the overall tone: almost everything I thought I knew about New York was wrong. Not that I believed the racist myth of the $24 purchase. But again and again, I found that the scraps of history I had received over the decades were misreported, distorted, or just plain wrong. 

Part two looks at "British New York" (1664-1783). For women, Blacks, Indigenous people, and anyone without money and a family lineage, this was a painful transformation. Dutch women enjoyed a high degree of independence and many rights: they were able to own property, which remained theirs after marriage, and could enter into their own legal agreements -- status Englishwomen would not see until the 1920s. Dutch women could live independently without becoming social outcasts. The British brought an end to all that, and much more. 

This is also the time leading up to the American Revolution. And let me tell you, if you learned (as many Canadians have) that the American colonists break with England was did not constitute an actual revolution, you are wrong. (I've had a post in drafts about this for years. Maybe it's time to bust it out.)

The third part is called "Mercantile Town" (1783-1843) and part four is "Emporium and Manufacturing City" (1844-1879). Now the City is expanding, mushrooming, ballooning. And of course, it is utterly unprepared for this rapid growth, both physically and culturally. Immigration, labour, the Civil War, so-called race riots (anti-Black pogroms), massive building projects, machine politics -- everything is rapidly changing. The City is being transformed from a mostly English, Protestant city into a giant polyglot of languages, traditions, and cultures.

The final section is called "Industrial Center and Corporate Command Post" (1880-1898). In this era, the robber barons and another tsunami of immigration are remaking New York yet again. Entertainment and sports begin to look vaguely recognizable to modern eyes. Industry, technology, and imperialism are transforming the country, and New York is leading the way in everything, assuming its place as a powerful global city, and the most important city in the country.

So much I didn't know

One topic that was particularly fascinating and surprising was slavery, and how utterly integral it was to New York City. Indeed, the entire northern economy completely relied on slavery. Although as an adult I've always known that slavery and racism were not exclusively Southern, I didn't know how enormous extent that New York City profited from slavery. Whether directly from free labour (and there was plenty of it), or indirectly through the shipbuilding industry that literally kept the slave trade afloat, the massive importing and exporting industries that revolved around sugar and cotton, or the financial institutions that supported the whole horrendous enterprise, New York City was as much of a slave power as Atlanta and Richmond.

German immigrants played a huge role in the development of the City, far earlier and far greater than I knew -- forming unions, agitating for socialism, and generally influencing culture at every turn.

Anti-Catholic bigotry was virulent and rampant for decades, as the Catholic Church, at first reviled and feared, gained a toehold, then a seat at the table, before becoming a major power in the City. 

I knew about the struggles of Irish and Eastern European Jewish immigrants -- why they left their home countries, and what they found in their new world. But I was ignorant of the struggles of Italian immigrants, and what motivated so many people to leave southern Italy in the 1880s.

Where the Jews were trapped in the shtetls, southern Italians were mired in the isolated valleys and lowlands formed by the mountain chains into which the mezzogiorno was divided. Within these provincial pockets, society was frozen into a quasi-feudal mode. A handful of aristocrats owned the bulk of the land and exacted profit and prestige from peasant tenants as their forebears had done for centuries. With the higher clergy and professionals, they formed a tiny ruling elite, utterly uninterested in agricultural improvements. As a result, the contadini (peasants who leased land or owned small plots) and the giornalieri (day laborers) worked the soil essentially as their Roman ancestors did, with wooden plows. . . . 

The area also suffered from primitive housing conditions, illiteracy (perhaps the highest rate in Europe), microdivision of farm plots, an absence of public welfare programs, limited diet, earthquakes, deforestation, soil erosion, malaria, and harsh sirocco winds blowing up from North Africa. The result was La Miseria -- a miserable, impoverished way of life.

. . . The northerners dominating the new nation [after Italian unification] considered southerners little better than African barbarians, and just as available for colonial plundering. The authorities failed to provide roads or schools, which could help eliminate backwards conditions, but siphoned off in taxes what capital and resources existed. 

Another revelation of something I thought I knew: Coney Island! 

Both my parents grew up in Brooklyn, my father in Coney Island (which is not an island at all, just a section of Brooklyn), and my grandparents and other relatives lived in Brooklyn their entire lives. We visited the Boardwalk off and on throughout my childhood, and I even went to Coney Island a few times on day outings in the 1980s. So I had always heard stories about the old days: Luna Park, Steeplechase, the Cyclone. But what did I really know about Coney Island? Next to nothing. 

In its heyday in the late 1880s, Coney Island was divided into four "wildly diverse communities". Each area offered entertainments catering to people of different socioeconomic levels, from rough brothels and gambling dens, to raucous but harmless music and dancing, to elite opulence.

Coney Island, in the space of a decade, had leapt from marshy obscurity to preeminence among the world's beach resorts. It was remarkable for its size and its segmentation -- the way its component parts were sorted and sequenced by class, from "low" to "high," with each zone governed by its own conventions. Even more remarkable -- and alarming, to guardians of the traditional order -- was the way West Brighton encouraged unconventional behavior. Reformers called it "Sodom by the Sea." They were upset by the doings in the Gut, of course [brothels, peep shows, gambling, opium], but also by the spooning on the beach, the frolicking in the waves, the way people acted (said one shocked observer) "precisely as if the thing to do in the water was to behave exactly contrary to the manner of behaving anywhere else." 

One of my favourite historical novels about New York is Peter Quinn's The Banished Children of Eve, which includes the horrific 1863 draft riots. This, too, turned out to be more complex than I knew. 

That year, in the midst of the bloody Civil War, the National Conscription Act went into effect. In response to "heavy losses, dwindling recruitment, and soaring desertion rates," Congress had passed a sweeping draft law which included a "crude assertion of class privilege": $300 could buy your way out of service. This at a time when workers were paid around $1 a day.

The Irish were the poorest and most despised of all the immigrant groups. There was only one group "beneath" them on the socioeconomic ladder: Blacks. Employers could hire Black people for wages even lower than what they paid Irish workers, stoking Irish belief that Black people were "stealing their jobs". Now poor Irish immigrants would be drafted into a war to "free the slaves". 

This much I knew. 

What I didn't know: thousands of federal troops normally stationed in New York City had been deployed to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, to defend the country against General Lee's advancing Confederate Army. This left New York City "virtually stripped of defenses" -- which is why the rampaging mobs easily overwhelmed the police prescence, and the extreme violence raged unchecked for three full days, and into a fourth.

Four thousand troops were pulled out of Gettysburg to contain the violence in New York, and it would take another two days to bring the pogrom to an end. (The Zinn Education Project is a good place to read more about this.)

And this is how it went, as I read. I knew a little, but the reality was so much more complex and fascinating than I knew. Or I knew nothing. Or whatever I knew was wrong.

Some things change, some not so much

There were many parallels to our contemporary world. Foremost among them is probably the boom-and-bust, uncontrolled cycles of capitalism. The economy was wholly unregulated, and crashes occurred with regularity. People like John Jacob Astor made fortunes during good times and bad, while workers were pushed into poverty, and those already in poverty died off in the streets. Poverty was generally blamed on bad breeding or moral failure. Government corruption was a given. The police were little more than a gang with fancy uniforms and permanent immunity. 

Did you know that in the earliest days of electrification, having electricity at home was a luxury enjoyed by only the wealthiest citizens? Power monopolies scooped up the means of production and delivery, often operating under different names to give the appearance of competition. Even for the wealthy, prices soared while service sank. Only government regulation transformed electricity into a basic public good, albeit one laced with many layers of profit. Sound familiar? It's the same pattern we've seen with telcos and internet providers, heaping profit and controlling access to what should be a public utility.

And the people!

The sheer number of fascinating individuals -- writers, revolutionaries, organizers, politicos, entertainers -- in this book is breathtaking. Many became household names -- Joseph Pulitzer, P.T. Barnum, Teddy Roosevelt, Nellie Bly, Alexander Hamilton, Walt Whitman -- but dozens were unknown to me, yet no less fascinating. 

Madame Restell shows up, as does her nemesis Anthony Comstock. I fell in love with Fanny Wright, a feminist, socialist, abolitionist who founded (be still my heart) a utopian community. With George Henry Evans, Wright formed the Workingman's Party, known as "the Workies". I discovered Langton Byllesby, who wrote Observations on the Sources and Effects of Unequal Wealth: With Propositions Towards Remedying the Disparity of Profit in Pursuing the Arts of Life, and Establishing Security in Individual Prospects and Resources. Gotta love those Victorian-era titles.

In a chapter called "White, Green, and Black," I learned more about Black resistance to slavecatchers and kidnappers, which was thrilling.

With young girls being snatched on trips to the water pump, black parents began keeping their children off the streets after dark. Then, with white abolitionists on the defensive or concentrated on their national campaign, the city's African Americans formally organized for their own protection. On November 20, 1835, David Ruggles led in setting up a New York Committee of Vigilance. Ruggles, a migrant from Norwich, Connecticut, had opened a bookshop and circulating library at 67 Lispenard Street, specializing in antislavery publications. Now he became the eyes and ears of the black community.

Ruggles identified slavecatchers by name in the Emancipator. He pointed them out to blacks on the street. He publicized descriptions of missing Afro-Americans. He went door to door in fashionable neighborhoods inquiring as to the status of black domestics, implenting a New York law that freed any imported slave after a residence of nine months. . . . He boarded incoming ships, to see if slaves were being smuggled in, and on one occasion won an indictment against a French man from Guadeloupe. (Such actions were denounced by the New York Express, a militant Whig organ, as an embarrassment to trade.) Ruggles had to change lodgings repeatedly to foil efforts at kidnapping him. 

The Vigilance Commitee also aided those they called "persons arriving from the South." They explained to fugitives their rights, protected them from blackbirders, and established them in new locations. 

At one point, Ruggles hid the young Frederick Douglass for two weeks, before sending the "penniless fugitive" on to New Bedford, Massachusetts. Ruggles' work became a cornerstone of the developing Underground Railroad.

The Vigilance Committee was not always successful. On July 23, 1836, George Jones, a "respectable" free black man, was arrested at his workplace, an attorney's office at 21 Broadway, supposedly for assault and battery. At first he refused to go along with his captors, but his employers advised him to submit, promising they would help. However, once in custody, Jones was whisked before Recorder Riker*, where several notorious blackbirders declared him a runaway, a propostion to which Riker assented. Less than three hours after his arrest, Jones, bound in chains, was dragged through the streets of New York "like a beast to the shambles" and carried south. Ruggles described the kidnapping in the Sun. The piece, widely reprinted, helped Ruggles win public support for granting accused "fugitives" a trial by jury -- a right secured five years later.

I also learned more about the violence faced by abolitionists, fanned by a lying nativist (anti-immigrant) press that hurled bizarre racial and sexual accusations at activists. The southern states, with help from the federal government, successfully blocked the flow of abolitionist pamphlets and letters. People in the movement faced intimidation and violence on a regular basis, but they had plenty of company. There were riots against Irish immigrants and riots against Catholics. Then the victims of those riots would turn around and do the same to Blacks.

1,236 pages and not a wasted word

Gotham took 20 years to write. Burrows and Wallace unearthed an enormous amount of published research, and synthesized it into a narrative that reads like a novel. They illustrate history with the perfect details about both ordinary, everyday life, as well as the outsized people who influenced the development of the City.

This is one time where it's fun to read reader reviews on Amazon: one unqualified rave after the next.

Having read this book feels like the nerdiest thing in the world, but it shouldn't be. Don't be put off by the length and weight: if you love history and you love cities, this book will delight you. Sometime in the future, I will definitely read the second volume, Greater Gotham: A History of New York City from 1989-1919.

I think my next year's weekly read will be Visions of Jazz: the First Century by Gary Giddins, a birthday gift from my esteemed partner some years ago.

__________

* Yep, that's who Rikers Island, New York City's main jail complex, is named for: a notorious anti-abolitionist who sent kidnapped Black people (both fugitives and free-born Blacks) into enslavement at every opportunity. Irony upon irony, given the demographics of the US prison population. It's time to change the name.

from the archives: my journey to palestinian solidarity and the myth of the self-hating jew (a three-part story)

This seems like a good time to re-post this three-part series. It remains one of the best pieces I've written. 

Part one, my Jewish identity: my journey to palestinian solidarity and the myth of the self-hating jew

Part two, my awakening: my journey to palestinian solidarity and the myth of the self-hating jew, part 2

Part three, my response to typical anti-Palestine and pro-Zionist arguments: my journey to palestinian solidarity and the myth of the self-hating jew, part 3 and final.

There were many interesting comments on the original posts, now gone. I'll make commenting available on this post, with the caveat that this blog is not a forum for debate, nor for racism, anti-Semitism, or Islamophobia.