For the love of books

For as long as I can remember I have always loved books - both reading and being surrounded by them.  Which, I suppose is what has inspired this particular post.  I have given myself a deadline of having a draft of my dissertation proposal to my PhD supervisor by Monday, August 6th.  So, here I sit in my living room / office with books (and copies of journal articles in labeled manila file folders) piled on the fireplace mantel, my coffee table, on the little desk behind me and on the floor.  Our dining room has also turned into a makeshift library with ever expanding bookcases lining the walls.

My favorite activity growing was playing library.  My Dad, who traveled a lot for business,  always brought us home small presents when he returned from his trips.  My two favorite, and most memorable gifts were my black and yellow Oops! pen (I think it was a Parker ballpoint.  The yellow body of the pen was covered by the word oops! in various sizes and typefaces) and a changeable date stamp.  As a seven year-old these two gifts, together with white cardstock, tape and glue were all I needed to be a real librarian.

Fortunately, I had three younger siblings and parents who encouraged us to read.  I remember creating little library cards, carefully measuring and drawing lines on them so that they looked just like those cards that appeared at the backs of the books in the library.  I created pockets for the cards and carefully taped or glued them to the back page of all my books.  I collected the books from our bedrooms, playroom and anywhere else I could find them, placed them on the painted white plywood bookshelves my Dad built in our basement and my little library was open for business.

Reading, books, libraries and school all melded into one social reality and part of the real world that I felt I was part of, as opposed to the world of childhood that my younger siblings still inhabited.  I think, I somehow thought it was my job to enlighten them and speed up their entry into the exciting world of books, reading and learning.  So playtime, included me creating lessons on the giant black, or actually greenboard in our basement and checking out library books to my brothers and sister.

This morning a discussion post on the TED: Ideas Worth Sharing LinkedIn group page caught my attention.

Eliana wrote:  Are physical books going away?  Are they bound for dinosaurism? Do you still read books?  Buy books? Or do you read on kindle or pdfs, or some other electronic device?

The thread is 4 days old and to date there are 47 comments which range from the impracticality of storing and caring for a large physical book collection, the convenience of e-readers and the importance of the physicality of the traditional book.

I spend most of my day looking at and working on a computer.  I have my four-year old MacBook which is my constant companion, and equally old iMac, an iPad and iPhone.  I am comfortable reading and working on a variety of screen sizes, yet given the preference I still want to hold, read and turn the pages of a physical book for serious and engaged reading.  The ease of which you can glide from one page to another on an eReader is slick and seductive, however, it still can not compete with moving between pages and passages I have flagged in a physical book, or like now having the piles of books that surround and inspire me as I embark on my writing process.

While I was doing my MA my husband gave me a copy of Tom Raabe's Biblioholism: The Literary Addiction and joked that the reason I loved grad school is that it gave me an excuse to buy books.  I know now that he is really just a touch envious that I am working with titles such as C. Wright Mills' The Sociological Imagination, Sarah Pink's Doing Sensory Ethnography, David Harvey's Spaces of Hope, Rojek and Urry's Touring Cultures, Ronald Pelias' A Methodology of the Heart, and John Van Maanen's Tales of the Field; while the books he has on his desk right now include Field Epidemiology and the International Handbook of Survey Methodology.  I have to admit that I rarely, okay never, enter his literary scientific world, however, he vicariously enters mine and we share our interest in narrative during our 2 hour commutes to the university, where he drives and I read aloud.  Our current commuting book is Pelias' Leaning: A Poetics of Personal Relations.

Christopher Plummer, the Oscar winning veteran actor spoke to Jian Ghomeshi on the July 11, 2012 episode of Q about his life-long love affair with literature and books and how they inspired his auto-biographical one-man show A Word or Two which opens in the Avon Theatre in Stratford today.

Walter Benjamin in his 1931 essay "Unpacking my Library: A Talk about Book Collecting" gives us a glimpse into the intense relationship he had with not only literature but the act of book collecting.  Benjamin opens his personal tribute to his library with: "I am unpacking my library.  Yes, I am.  The books are not yet on the shelves, not yet touched by the mild boredom of order.  I cannot march up and down their ranks to pass them in review before a friendly audience. ... Instead,  I must ask you to join me in the disorder of crates that have been wrenched open, the air saturated with the dust of wood, the floor covered with torn paper, to join me among piles of volumes ... so that you may be ready to share with me a bit of the mood - ... one of anticipation - which these books arouse in a genuine collector."  (Benjamin 1968:59)  Benjamin talks about his books as friends, laden with memories that conjure up images of times past, places visited and events that marked his life.

My book collecting is at odds with my personal aesthetic.  I love the look and feel of stark minimalist interiors but can not balance this with my need for a life filled with books.  I remember reading an interview with architect Daniel Libeskind a number of years ago.  He discussed his love of reading, of literature, of books; yet in the accompanying images of his New York City apartment there were no books.  He explained that he had the luxury of having his library at his office, only blocks away.  While I loved the look of his apartment, I could never live like that as I need my books, they are part of my life, part of who I am.

Books tell stories.  Not just the stories contained within their individual pages, but the stories that result from their proximity and distance to the other books they live with and amongst.  Perusing the bookshelf of someone else gives you a window into their psyche.  It is a visual portrayal of what interests them, or in some cases what they feel they want others to think they are interested in.

For a couple of years I did home staging to help offset the costs of going back to school.  Home staging is about creating an environment that potential home buyers want to own.  My secret weapons were original works of art, orchids, green apples, matching wood hangers and a well curated library.  It never ceased to amaze me when I would walk into a house or apartment and there were no books; and the tremendous difference it made to the feel of the house when I brought in books.

Home staging and teaching at the undergraduate level have opened my eyes to the awareness that a lot of people don't read.  It is not that they just don't read books, they don't read - period!  I was told by a group of students in a class I taught last term that unless there is an in-class writing assignment tied to a particular reading, they do not do the readings.  One student proudly proclaimed that she has managed to get through four years of an undergraduate degree with an 80% average and has never bought, nor read a text book.  "I don't like reading.  Never have and never will."  She proudly and confidently declared.  I replied to her that she must be kidding, and looked at the other ten faces sitting around the seminar room table.  Another student claimed that she only reads the abstract and discussion section of articles and then only if they are interesting and easily available on-line, another stated that if she can't read it on her iPhone, then obviously it is not worth reading.

I sometimes worry about this and am always saddened when another independent bookstore is forced to close its doors, or when funding restrictions force libraries to shorten their hours or narrow their collections focus.  Yet, I am not ready to believe that books will disappear.  As we spend more and more time immersed with technology, I believe that most of us still want and crave the tactile, tangible and physical quality of a real book.  We want to be able to turn the page, crack the spine, feel the weight of the paper, inhale the smell of new ink or the old leather of a treasured family heirloom.  Books hold and create memories, they tell stories and have a life of their own.

Sean Ohlenkamp with his volunteer crew of book lovers created this loving ode to books at Type Books at 883 Queen St W. in Toronto.

The Joy of Books

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKVcQnyEIT8&feature=plcp

Sean Ohlenkamp Director, Editor and Cinematographer

Grayson Matthews  Music

No thinking required!

It has been exactly 375 days since I lasted posted on this blog and getting close to a year since I posted on my other blog. Kind of ironic, as I encourage - well actually force - my students to blog.

I build a blogging assignment into almost all my courses as I believe it is an excellent tool to encourage critical and reflexive thinking, while also forcing students to write. There are always a few students who complain bitterly, citing how blogging is useless, irrelevent, stupid, a waste of time or that it has nothing to do with course content.

It is funny how many of these students that complain so vehemently spend most of their class time on Facebook, Twitter, or BBM. While there are always a few of the student blogs that barely meet the weekly posting criteria of one post per week and do not delve any deeper than a discussion of their weekend or a cursory overview of the class lecture; there are always a number of other students who really take to blogging and write interesting, creative and insightful posts which inspire me to incorporate the blogging assignment again next term.

So this term I have two groups of students blogging. My fourth year seminar class in Cultural Management and my second year Marketing class. However, it is one of the students in my Marketing class that spurred me on to take the time to start blogging again. Not that I have not wanted to blog as I have really missed it - but between teaching, commuting and trying to develop my dissertation proposal - something had to give.  That something has been blogging and exercise!

One of the students in my class came to see me to complain about his grade on a group project. Not the groups grade - just his individual grade. I knew the student was coming to see me, so I reviewed the group's project paper in advance. Unfortunately, the group missed the point of the assignment, had paraphrased vast sections of the paper without acknowledging the source, and quoted U.S. taxation regulations on a project that focused on a Canadian non-profit organization.

I went over the paper in detail with the student, explaining why they received the grade they did.  I attempted to show him how they could have improved their paper, why it is not only good practice but imperative that they cite any and all sources, which led into the requisite discussion regarding the serious ramifications associated with plagiarism.  I concluded by explaining why U.S tax law has absolutely no bearing on Canadian non-profit organizations. The student replied that he still did not think he deserved to lose marks and reminded me that I did not specifically state anywhere in the instructions for the assignment, in class or in the course syllabus that they could not use U.S. examples when talking about Canadian organizations.

It still surprises me that many students seem to feel that they start with an automatic 100% regardless of the quality of their work, or the effort expended, and that somehow it is our responsibility as instructors to justify why we have unfairly taken marks away from them.

So, I replied to this student that part of a college education is to learn to think.  To which he replied that he is not paying good money to learn to think, it is my responsibility as his teacher to tell him exactly what he needs to do and what he needs to know.     

I Know it's Just a Chair .........

Knoll Generation

http://www.knoll.com/products/product.jsp?preview=1&prod_id=865

It was supposed to be the perfect chair. I have waited for it for seven and a half weeks after deliberating about it for almost three weeks. However, it is not the ten plus weeks that this chair represents it is years of searching, trying, justifying and waiting.

Herman Miller Aeron

http://www.hermanmiller.com/DotCom/jsp/designResources/imgSearchResults.jsp?prodId=8

I remember seeing a photo of the Herman Miller Aeron chair in the Levinger catalogue around 1996. It was unlike any other office chair I had seen. A few months later the Room & Board in Denver had one in their showroom. I used to go visit "my" chair. However, as the Director / Curator of a small contemporary arts organization I was earning less than $1000 a month - so the Aeron was not in my budget.

I have been hunting for the perfect office / task chair for years. Ever since injuring my back when I was twenty I have found sitting for any length of time uncomfortable and often incredibly painful. As a result chairs are very important to me. I think it was my Dad, who sold restaurant chairs, who told me that the average household has 5 - 6 chairs per person. That would mean that between my husband and I we should have 12 chairs. HA! Doing a quick count - I would say we are well over 24 and that is counting our sofa as 1. The problem is that I am always trying out chairs - hoping that this one or style will be the one.

Which is why this current chair is so important!

I have 2.5 days left until I submit my PhD comprehensive exam. I have been doing a lot of sitting over the past four months and my back has been getting progressively more painful. So, one month into the process, my husband decided that it was time for us to finally get me a really good chair. I started the process debating between the Aeron chair that I have had an almost 14 year crush on, and the Herman Miller Mirra chair which I had flirted with briefly when I tried it out a few years ago.

Herman Miller Mirra

http://www.hermanmiller.com/DotCom/jsp/designResources/imgSearchResults.jsp?prodId=205

We embarked on the mission of testing chairs. I quickly ruled out the Mirra, tested a few Humanscale models and then discovered the Knoll Generation. It felt perfect. But after a decade and a half of being in love with Aeron, I was not sure if I was able to just move on. So, I spent the next couple of weeks going back and forth, trying to make up my mind. I knew the Knoll Generation was the one, but I had been thinking about the Aeron for so long. A visit to the Knoll showroom changed my mind. I loved the chair, the woman that assisted us was wonderful, helpful and truly passionate about her Generation chair. I was sold.

I had only one choice left. Who do I actually buy it from. Molly at the Toronto Design within Reach studio had been really helpful and was wonderful to work with. However, their prices were obviously higher then an online retailer. I am a student, on a TA salary, so price is an issue. Molly came through, and although the Design within Reach price was still a bit higher, I do value personal service. So, I ordered my perfect black Knoll Generation chair from Molly.

My chair arrived this morning! I was so excited. I was looking forward to spending the last few days of writing, in comfort, on my new chair. I opened the box and instead of seeing my perfect black chair, I found a perfect Generation chair - except the back support frame was light grey. Now someone else might find this perfectly acceptable. It is a nice looking chair. And looking at the photos on the Knoll website, there are numerous shots of individuals who look perfectly happy in their black and grey chairs. However, I really wanted my black chair! I love black! You can never have too much black! Everything looks better in black!

My Knoll Generation Chair

So, my chair sits alone in the corner, waiting to learn its fate. Molly is on the case! I can't believe that I have spent the last few hours obsessed about the colour of my chair. There are so many more pressing problems in the world and I have a comp exam to finish.

My Love / Hate Relationship with Shopping: Clothes vs. Books

I sat on the streetcar on the way home this evening and started wondering - when did I start hating shopping? I used to love to shop. I loved farmers markets, and specialty boutiques. I loved checking out that new little shop, or meandering along some funky shopping strip. On occasion, I even liked the mall. Well, maybe not all malls - I liked well designed urban malls with a good atmosphere and mix of interesting and unique stores.

When I worked in a downtown bank in Vancouver during a break between first and second year university, I spent pretty much every lunch hour at Pacific Centre, or when the weather was nice I would walk along Robson Street. On weekends I would go shopping with a friend, my sister, my Mom or sometimes my brother. Weekends were not for the mall - malls were a noon hour distraction. Weekends were reserved for discovering new shops and visiting different areas of the city from Kerrisdale Village, to Commercial Drive, and from Gastown to West Vancouver. It was about exploring the city, and I think about discovering and developing who we were.

When I moved to Calgary to go back to school, my relationship with malls and shopping changed. In the winter when my husband and I wanted a break from studying we often headed to Chinook Centre or Mount Royal Village. We rarely bought anything - we just walked, watched people, critiqued the store displays and talked.

I think I became seriously addicted to malls and shopping when we moved to the United States after our graduate degrees. Perhaps it was because we now had disposable income, or more time, or because as the Director of a small art contemporary art museum, I had an excuse to buy clothes again?

We discovered Cherry Creek Shopping Centre our first December in Colorado. It was a cold, very snowy year and the mall was warm, large and open late. We came to not just like, but love shopping at Cherry Creek. For a mall it was well designed and comfortable. Instead of the typical benches found in most malls, Cherry Creek had comfortable well-designed armchairs arranged in conversational clusters, with little side tables to rest your coffee, or shopping bags. It had a better than normal selection and quality of stores and four good department stores (Saks Fifth Ave, Neiman Marcus, and at the time Lord & Taylor and Foleys). Lord & Taylor had the best dresses, Saks the best shoes, Neiman Marcus had the best mens wear, beautiful washrooms, and the best sales, and Foleys is where I seriously fell in love with and developed a wardrobe of mostly black cashmere. It was Cherry Creek that turned us into consumers. Shopping there was kind of like a game, a hunt, and was fun. You never knew what you would find, but we would always come home with something new and fabulous.

Since moving back home to Canada, my relationship with shopping and clothes has changed. I still love clothes, but the experience of shopping is not the same. I will admit that I miss Saks and Neiman Marcus. Holt Renfrew is just different. But I think it is more than this. We no longer have the same level of disposable income, and I no longer have a job that requires, or gives me an excuse to have an entire closet full of black cocktail and evening dresses and great stylish suits and dresses. Canada has some amazing young fashion designers - but yet, I no longer have that desire to constantly update my wardrobe.

Which brings me back to earlier this evening. A month ago we went to see Love, Loss and What I Wore. As we were leaving the theatre, we each received a $10 coupon for Winners (for any American readers that happen to come across our blog - Winners is what we call TJ Maxx here in Canada). I can typically find something at Winners - a basic skirt, boots, a shirt, or exercise wear. But today I had a physio appointment at the University of Toronto and as it was a crisp fall day, decided to walk to the Winners at the corner of College and Yonge, after my appointment. This is a 'good' Winners. Not as good as the Bloor St. Winners, but still on average pretty good and much better than my local Winners.

I quickly perused the Runway section - which was heavy on coats and jackets, and then headed for the skirts. I can pretty much always count on finding and usually justifying needing another black skirt. I gathered up a selection of skirts - black, grey and black mini-check, grey, black tweed, another black, and really stepping out of my comfort zone a brown and black mini-check. I headed for the dresses and resisting the temptation to try on a couple of really adorable evening dresses (that I so do not need and have absolutely no occasion to wear right now) selected a few dresses. I lined up at the fitting room, having to leave a few items with the attendant, as I was over my 6 item limit. I tried each of the items on and nothing worked. NOTHING! One of the dresses fit perfectly, was on sale, was black - but was too short. I used to wear short - but as I get older, I have discovered that there is a very distinct line between short that is okay as long as it is black and you are wearing black opaque tights and too short. This was too short!

I left the change room empty handed, but was not ready to give up. I was determined to find something, so started my hunt over again. This time I expanded my search first checking the shoe department first. With the exception of boots, which I often find, I rarely find shoes at Winners. I am very picky about my shoes. I tried on a pair of black leather ankle boots, but did not like them enough. I passed on a pair of open-toed boots. What is the point of open-toed boots anyway? I live in Canada - where you wear boots because it is cold, snowy or raining. Not just for fashion!

My next stop was the purses and bags. I am not good at bags and with the exception of this purse / briefcase type bag that holds my laptop, a few files, maybe a book, my iPhone, one lipstick, a highlighter, pen, gum, mini flashlight and my camera, I typically just carry my wallet. However, I have this fantasy that there is the perfect bag out there in the universe somewhere. I used to lust after the brightly coloured bags in Furla on Georgia St in Vancouver, but never even went in the store. So - I checked out the bags, which for the most part seemed perfectly hideous, too glitzy, or totally impractical. I finally spotted a red leather bag that could work and was big enough to hold my laptop. It had nice clean lines and was almost perfect, except it had a big silver medallion on the the front with an "A" engraved on it. I have a few simple rules - I wear black, and I do not wear clothes with logos on them and I was about to add a new rule, I am not going to carry something with my initial on it. Just as I was about to give up on the bags - I spotted what had the potential to be an almost perfect black bag. That was until I looked at the price tag - $455. Really! I just wanted to use my $10 coupon - not spend a considerable chunk of my TA salary on a bag.

So - I kept looking, I checked the mens wear - thinking at least I could pick up something for my husband, checked the athletic wear, went back through the Runway and New Hot Designer section, returned to the dresses, tried on more clothes and still NOTHING! I wondered is it me? I looked at my watch. I had spent over two hours in Winners. I was tired, hot, frustrated and had nothing to show for my time and effort. This was not fun, was not a nice distraction from working on my Ph.D comp exam - this was work! And all this for a $10 coupon?

It felt so great leaving the hot, noisy, crowded, fluorescent environment and stepping out into the cold, dark night. I walked south on Yonge St towards the streetcar to go home. Some guy at the corner of Yonge and Gerrard was yelling at us as we waited for the crosswalk light. Something about the world being run by fascists and that we better do something about it now. We all ignored him. He moved in front of us as we waited. Obviously frustrated by our inattention, he tried to look at each of us directly and asked, " Do any of you even know what a fascist is?"

I remembered that I had another coupon in my wallet - this one for 25% off a book at Chapters. So I turned the corner and headed to the World's Biggest Bookstore (is it really?), which is part of the Chapters - Indigo chain. Although I prefer independent bookstores - I have to admit that the WBB does have a pretty good selection and I had a 25% off coupon. I took the escalator upstairs, heading straight to the cultural studies section. My typical route is cultural studies, art / art history / art theory and criticism, and then philosophy. I had just finished ordering way too many books on-line, so I was going to limit myself to the one book that my coupon allowed.

Why is it that I could spend over two painful hours in Winners and not find anything and here I was in a bookstore for 10 minutes and I found myself trying to decide which of the five books in front of me I was going to buy?

I quickly narrowed it down to bell hooks' Feminism is for Everybody and Christine Overall's Thinking Like a Woman: Personal Life & Political Ideas. But then I spotted Carol Dyhouse's Glamour: Women, History & Feminism. It was published this year - a good sign, and had a decent bibliography. I kind of had to have this. I knew it was partly because of my unproductive clothes shopping experience at Winners, partly because I was feeling anything but glamourous in my going to physio workout clothes wandering around downtown Toronto on a Friday night, and partly because I am writing my comp exam and working on a question dealing with feminist theory, fashion, clothing and women's identity. How could I not be drawn to a book with chapter titles like: "Princesses, tarts and cheesecake", or "Glamazons, grunge and bling", or "Dreams, desire, and spending." So I headed to the cash. Three books, fifteen minutes of shopping and $55. Not bad!

So, I am wondering do I really hate shopping, or has my relationship with shopping simply changed? I still love clothes - but these days I rarely find the process of shopping for clothes enjoyable, fun or satisfying. Maybe it is just the context of the particular shopping experience?

My written responses to my PhD comprehensive exam are due exactly three weeks from today. Although I have been reading and writing about clothes, fashion, and identity - I do this most days in my favorite black exercise tights and charcoal grey cashmere sweater; or in a black skirt, black tights, and black turtleneck cashmere sweater. I still care about how I look, but in the context of being comfortable in a somewhat artsy / athletic / studious sort of way. I am not going to meetings with civic and business leaders, raising money, going to black tie dinners and parties, or any of the things I used to do that required a different sort of wardrobe. Writing papers in a black taffeta gown, or in a dark suit with a silk blouse and sheer hose, just seems a bit silly not to mention totally impractical.

I think it is all about context and priorities. While I still like clothes, and am interested in the notion of how we present ourselves, my priorities have shifted. I am more interested in substance than in surface decoration. As I said to a colleague at a meeting last night. "I think I have a book problem. It used to be a shoe problem." Don't get me wrong. I LOVE shoes - but right now I think I LOVE books just a bit more. I have always loved books, but there were periods of my life when I prioritized shoes just a bit more than books. (Does it all come back to Heels or Think?)

So, I don't think I hate shopping - my interests and priorities have just changed a bit. I know there will be a time when I once again will get excited about shopping for the perfect black dress or splurge on an amazing pair of heels. But right now I am content just thinking, reading and writing about the conflicted relationship we have with fashion and identity, and unless someone else wants it - I am going to let my $10 Winners coupon go unused.

Heels: A hot button topic!

What is it about heels? Are they sexy or powerful? Do we love them or loathe them? What do they say about who we are? Can we wear heels and still call ourselves feminists?

Heels in store window display, Venice IT

A couple of weeks ago the five of us met in Toronto on a Friday evening to see Love, Loss and What I Wore. I had already seen it twice! The first time with a friend and colleague, the second time with my husband to take notes as research for my PhD comprehensive exam and this last time with the four other amazing women who are joining me on this blogging journey we are calling Heels or Think?

Heels or Think? is a line taken from Nora & Delia Ephron's play based on Ilene Beckerman's book, Love, Loss and What I Wore, that stuck and resonated with me. You see, I pretty much always wear heels. I don't need to wear heels as I am almost six feet tall, I love and WANT to wear heels. I think, in some weird way it is a form of resistance.

What struck me about the line Heels or Think? is that it assumes that we have to make a choice, or that this is the only choice. Heels or Think? Can we not wear heels and still be considered intelligent and capable? Why is the choice heels or sensible footwear? I will admit that there have been times when part of me wished I was wearing sensible, comfortable footwear. (Like the four days that I stood on polished concrete floors at the Toronto International Art Fair.) However, I never wavered. The secret, I discovered, is not to change into comfortable, sensible shoes, but to change into a new pair of heels!

While heels do that amazing thing to your legs, if you are not used to wearing heels or, I contend, wearing the wrong pair of heels, the pain of balancing your weight on the ball of your foot can make any hope of reasonable, rationale thought impossible. So we are faced with the dilemma - heels or think?

We hope you join us on our journey as we explore, question, comment on and grapple with issues relating to gender, feminism, popular culture, the media, our varied lives and our academic careers.