The Scope

Running for change

Jennifer McCreath is a marathon runner, and she’s a she. But she hasn’t always been that way—at least on the outside.

In January of 2007, after a long battle with depression, she reached the conclusion that she had been dealing with Gender Identity Disorder—also known as Transsexualism. McCreath knew she wanted to become a biological woman.

As a way to get fit and prepare herself mentally and physically for the process—the surgeries, the social issues­—she decided to take up running. As it turned out, running, and marathons in particular, soon became a passion.

Just this year she successfully ran three marathons in eight days. Then she brought that tally up to five marathons in 30 days.

McCreath is officially “in transition” and fighting her way to becoming legally and socially recognized as a female. She is undergoing hormone therapy, and has had her testicals removed. She’s “part op”.

For competing in sporting events, transsexualism brings up some unique issues. Later this month, for example, at the World Outgames in Denmark, she will compete in a third gender category for athletes in transition.

Elling Lien got a chance to sit down to speak with Jennifer about her transition, and about running life.

Photo by Mark Bennett.

So when did you start running?
I used to be fairly athletic in my teen years. I played high school tennis somewhat competitively. Then I became somewhat of a couch potato. I beefed up… ballooned up… until I was fairly heavy. I stayed that way for quite a while and then I realized it was time to start the transition journey (early 2007), and one of the first things I felt I needed to do was get in good physical shape.

Transition requires a certain level of physical fitness. You don’t have to be a marathon runner, but physical health is important and it also crosses over into good mental health. It was kind of the first step in my transition. “I’m going to lose some weight. And meanwhile, before I go and talk to a doctor or ask for a drug or anything, it’s going to give me some time to really think about this.”

Can I ask how heavy you were?
January 1st, 2007 I weighed 238 pounds. I had been as high as 255 at points in my life. I set a goal: 60 pounds in six months. That would give me six more months to think about the Jennifer journey. How do I do this? What are the steps? If I could do that, I figured I could do anything. So I started running.

And did you make it?
I did. It started with a run around the block for ten minutes. I said, “we’re going to do this tomorrow, and the next day, and the next day.”

Did it hurt?
It was challenging, but I did a little bit of research on why people take up running, and it’s usually because they want to lose weight. It’s not necessarily because they want to run a marathon. But I knew the pitfalls to avoid: Too much, too soon, too fast. If you do any of that, you’ll get hurt and you’ll quit. So I was careful.

Slowly and gradually I increased the distance and the speed. I wanted to be a little bit more careful about what I ate. I wouldn’t say I’m a nutrition nut… Though I am eating a chocolate Canadian maple doughnut right now. I don’t eat doughnuts very often. [laugh] Marathon runners tend to eat healthy. But some don’t! But that’s a whole other topic.

So I went to one of my doctors and said, “I want to lose weight,” and they said one kilogram a week—2.2 pounds—is kind of the maximum. So I figured, okay, I can handle that.

And it was working.

I’m known for setting very high expectations of myself. I’m a perfectionist, and I often set goals that I can’t reach. I set what I felt were very ambitious, challenging running and weight loss goals, and I was not just hitting them, I was shattering them. Destroying them!

It got to the point where I had to set even tougher goals.

How did you get into running marathons?
You don’t have to know much about sports to understand and respect the word “marathon”. So I figured that was the ultimate in endurance sport. If I can run marathons, I will probably lose the weight I want to lose. I will probably gain respect and credibility in the process.

So I slowly built up my training, and I was losing the weight as scheduled—two pounds a week. Boom, boom, boom. And the runs went from 10 minutes to 15 to 20 to higher and higher. I kept challenging myself, and then once a week I would do a “long run”. And the long run got a little longer each week.

Where would you do your route?
At this point I was living in Toronto, so I was just running in the neighbourhood around the streets. Running around the block a second time, and a third time. And it didn’t take long until I reached the point when I was doing a marathon. A marathon is 42.2 kilometers. I think it was five or six weeks into it. I had only lost 12 or 13 pounds, and I ran 42 k around the block…

What was that like?
I remember that night really well. It was midnight, or one o’clock in the morning, and I realized I hadn’t taken my run that day. I was going to go to bed, but I decided finally to do a lap. Once I did that, I did another one. And one more. Another…

That’s not the way to plan to run a marathon, but I tend not to follow the book usually.

By four o’clock in the morning I had finished 42 k, and it hit me: I had run a marathon. I didn’t have a heart attack. I didn’t pass out. I didn’t die. It was an incredible feeling. Once I realized what I had done—almost on a whim—I thought, “let’s try that again next week!” And after doing that a couple of times, I thought, “maybe I should go and run an actual, official race.” There was one coming up in Mississauga, so I signed up for it.

People are impressed to see a marathon finishing medal, or a picture of you crossing the finish line. You tell people that you ran 42 k around the block, it doesn’t quite have the same feeling to it. Some would say that I love the spotlight and to not necessarily be boastful, but to express pride, and it was appealing to me to have my accomplishment documented on the race website, and to have a finishing medal and a t-shirt that said I did it.

So I did it. It was exciting.

At this point I was still 200 pounds on the nose, and I had set a goal of running the marathon in four hours and thirty minutes, and I crossed the finishing line in four hours and 18 minutes. I felt fine. I felt great. I didn’t pass out, I didn’t have any serious health effects. So I wanted to do it again. Then people were saying, “no, don’t do that. You need time to recover.”

Who was telling you that?
Everybody. People who were experts and people who weren’t. It’s funny how some close family and friends like to give you advice, even if they’re not necessarily experts. I have to be the judge of my own body and I thought, “there’s another marathon the next weekend in Cleveland. I want to go.” So off I went to Cleveland and did the marathon faster. Two marathons in 8 days. Then I got a job offer here in Newfoundland. I had to organize the move, but before I left, I knew there was one more marathon in Buffalo. So I ran the Buffalo marathon, which means I did three marathons in 14 days at 200 pounds. I did it, and I ran that one even faster.

How were your knees?
They were a little sore. [laugh] You ask a lot of your knees when you’re carrying weight. 200 pounds is not necessarily obese or anything, but most marathon runners weigh a lot less. I crossed the finishing line at the Cleveland marathon and the MC said, “we’ve got our first couch potato! Look at this!”

This was all before the transition.

Then I got to Newfoundland, and I still had the transition in mind… When would I do it? How would I do it?

So you had made the decision before moving here…
Yeah, I had made the decision, and it was something I needed to do. But I hadn’t actually started talking to people about it. First things first, I was unemployed, I was in debt, and I was unhealthy. So I needed to fix those things. I needed to get in shape, and I needed to get my finances in order, since I knew most of the transition-related matters I would have to pay for them myself.

I grew up in Nova Scotia, so the thought of coming back east was exciting. I’m going to get to live on the ocean again! I’m going to be able to go swimming in ponds, and I had heard nothing but great things about Newfoundland.

Transition was on the back burner for a while. First things first: let’s try to settle into my new job and try to meet some new friends. I thought I would come to Newfoundland and work for a couple of years and then go back to Toronto again.

But it just so happened that I couldn’t wait. I realized I needed to start the Jennifer journey here in Newfoundland. I didn’t come right out and tell people I was a transsexual, but I started dropping hints that there was this side of me.

How did you do that?
I put in earrings. I bought a purse and carried it around at work. I dressed up as a girl for Hallowe’en at work, just to see what sort of reaction I would get. Generally, it was really positive, so once I had done that it was easier to say I was ready. Once you set the table, it’s easier to digest the meal. Then I went and talked to people: “that wasn’t really a Hallowe’en costume, here’s what’s really going on with me.”

So it was generally a positive reaction?
Yes…

Do you think it would have been any different in Toronto? Newfoundland’s a small place!
In Newfoundland, I would say in general, people are open and accepting of diversity. Even if there’s not necessarily a lot of diversity. I think Newfoundland feels isolated by the rest of Canada, perhaps? I think that’s a fair statement. So people here often can understand what it feels like to be different. So on some level, I think people here can identify with what I’ve done. Not necessarily from the transsexual perspective of course, but I think people can appreciate someone who’s a little different who’s struggling to gain societal acceptance. They know I’m still a human being. That was the most important component to “going full time” as they say.

A lot of trans people will start off part time, and they’ll present themselves one way, but still be their old selves at work. But you’ve got to go full time eventually. One of the standards of care (Harry Benjamin Standards of Care for Gender Identity Disorders) is that you must go full time, and be full time for a year to prove that this is right for you before you can get a recommendation for surgery. I knew going full time was an important thing to do, not just because of the protocol, but because it was who I am. It was what I needed to do. I’m Jennifer. I’m a woman. Why not start now? I’m ready. And once I found out that the people at work were open to that at the Hallowe’en party, and that they would help me with it, I changed my name.

I’ve always loved how on Hallowe’en people can express themselves like that…
Way back when I first decided on the transition journey, I sensed that Hallowe’en would be the perfect opportunity to come out to a certain extent. Here is an excuse to dress up at work in women’s clothing and it won’t be totally off the wall. And there will be a hidden message that some people will get. I knew that Hallowe’en was going to be a very important part of it. The reaction I got at work would determine whether or not I felt this was the right place to do this. And the reactions I got made me realize that yes, this is the place to do it. You don’t have to go back to Toronto, you can do this here in Newfoundland. You’re going to be accepted here. Go for it.

And off I went.

—

Let’s take a step back. How did you know you wanted to transition?
There was a moment when I was living at home, out of work, where I was dressing up part time, thinking it was just a hobby.

A hobby?
A hobby, a fetish, I don’t know…

Then I looked at the laundry basket. I hadn’t left the house in a week and there were all womens’ clothes in there. I started shaving my legs and underarms without really understanding why I was doing it. All these things started adding up to the realization that I was a transsexual, not a transvestite or anything else. And that really hit me, and I went through a bit of a panic attack. [laugh] “Oh my goodness! Now what? Can I do this? How can I do this?” I knew the implications. This was going to divide my family, my friends… Every time I walk out the door, I’m going to face scrutiny and a spotlight. A microscope. I knew it was going to be challenging, and it would require a lot of patience.

Can I ask how your family reacted to your decision?
Generally, the longer people knew me, the tougher this was on them, because I masked this well.

People liked who I used to be, and they had no clue that I was confused and unhappy. I even had myself confused. It takes a lot of time to undo 33 years of being a male. Newfoundlanders only knew me as a man for a short time, and most people I know now have only known me as Jennifer. So it was generally tougher on the older, longer-term friends. I have lost people over this. It’s unfortunate, but there’s really not much I can do. I can’t decide not to do this on their account. I need to do this.

And that would be my message to any transsexual that thinks they can’t do this. You can. This is doable. I would like to think that over time, society will better understand this, and be more helpful toward the process. There’s the idea of societal descrimination. People may not discriminate against me as an individual, but I think society descriminates just based on the way society is. The fact that buildings only have two bathrooms, and there’s no third one [for people in transition...]

And at the World Outgames, where I contacted them and said they should consider having a third category for people in transition. Not just for me, but for others like me. There’s no reason they can’t let us run, or swim, and it’s nice to see some movement.

—

How did the transition go along with your running?
I had introduced myself to the running community here at that point. I was running and living as a man, but then the time came where I decided, “I want to run a marathon in a pink skirt.”

So I went to Toronto and did that.

Like Hallowe’en, a marathon is like a party, and some people dress up when they run. I knew that people were going to see, what they thought was a man wearing a skirt. Fair enough. I knew they wouldn’t know why I was in the skirt, but still, it was more acceptable to wear a skirt while running a marathon than in everyday life.

I was slowly edging myself along like this.

A week after the marathon there, I was in Newfoundland, running the Cape to Cabot 20k run. That was October, 2007. So on went the pink skirt and all that, and, quote, “Jeff McCreath,” as I was known then was wearing a pink skirt running from Cape Spear to the top of Signal Hill.

And again, I know people saw me and thought, “okay, that’s interesting!” [laugh] I was setting the table. The reaction that day was fine, positive… indifference, even! I had more people laughing or yelling or pointing fingers in Toronto!

Running up Signal Hill there were people cheering “come on! Keep going! You can do it!”

And shortly after that was the legal name change.

It was at that point, I guess, that I had gotten the competitive bug. I didn’t want to run marathons just for fun any more, I wanted to see how well I could do.

And you say the words “Boston Marathon” and it means something to people who run.

Even outside of the running community…
Yeah, it ranks up there with words like “Wimbleton” and “Stanley Cup”. You don’t have to know anything about sports to know those are important sports events. If you tell people that you’ve run the Boston Marathon, it’s going to bring instant respect. Many people are under the awareness that you have to qualify in order to run, so only the best runners go to Boston. It immediately became the goal. I knew the hormones were going to start soon, and I knew that would slow me down, so I was on a mission: I need to qualify for Boston before I start the treatments. That’s when I started running multiple marathons.

I ran the Mississauga marathon a year after my first race, and I did it an hour faster. But just missed the Boston qualifying mark by a couple minutes.

What is the Boston qualifying time?
It’s based on age and, interestingly enough, sex. [laugh] I was shooting for the male 35-39 standard, which was three hours and 15 minutes. And they have a grace period of what I thought was 59 seconds. I was doing great in Mississauga until I had a cramp. I was a little dehydrated. So it was tough. So I lost a couple of minutes.

But there I was, I bettered my personal best. I ran a 3:19, but I was really frustrated with myself at the end. “I suck! I can’t believe it! I failed!” So back I came to Newfoundland a couple of weeks later, where I ran the Eastern Marathon — another chance to qualify. It’s a really tough, hilly race through Portugal Cove-St. Philips, but I thought, “I can recover. I’ll be fine. I may not be 100 per cent, but I think I can do it.”

Again, I came up a little bit short in that race.

One week later I was back at it again in Nova Scotia, and I was just too sore. I had to slow down.

That’s also when I started the meds. The first one was a testosterone blocker.

Then the next marathon was in Toronto.

Did the meds slow you down?
Oh yeah. I could notice, already, an effect. But that race was where I posted my best ever result: 3:16:59. The magic number for qualifying for Boston was 3:15:59.

Here I was, seeing the seconds tick off, and thinking, “darn it! I was so close!”

Then I started estrogen, which would make it even tougher. And I knew I wanted to run the Newfoundland Marathon, so I trained extra hard. I trained my butt off over August and September. I came in on race day thinking I could do it, but I just wasn’t able.

That’s when I started thinking, “maybe I’m never going to get there. Such is life.” It was more important that I become Jennifer and take the hormones. Boston wasn’t going to happen.

Then I called Boston. I said, “I’m a transsexual, here’s what I’m doing. I was this close. I’d love to run your race.”

And then they explained they had that unwritten policy, beyond the fine print: if you’re within two minutes of the qualifying time, they’ll still let you run.[laugh]

It was pretty anticlimactic. [laugh] I thought I would look up at the end of a race and see the finishing time and shout “I made it! I’m going to Boston!” And here I was, sitting at home on the phone hearing about an unwritten policy. It was in November that I had that discussion.

By that point I was Jennifer, and I had my testicles removed in December of 2008. The next goal for me was to continue to run as many marathons as I could, not worrying about time but to gain acceptance outside of the male label.

What are the Marathon Maniacs?
It’s a club organized by some folks in the States. Membership is exclusive to people who do maniacal things related to marathons, like running multiple marathons in short time frames. I thought that was pretty neat. They have a criteria—from one to ten—and their level five criteria was to run three marathons in nine days in three different states or provinces. So I figured, if I’m flying to Boston, I might as well run a couple more when I’m on the mainland. So that’s what I planned on doing.

Were you competing as a male at that time?
Boston initially said you qualify as a male, we want you to run as a male. You had the sex operation in Pennsylvania, fine, but this is the way we do it here. So I thought, okay, how about I run three marathons in three sex categories? Because others were fine, and said they would let me run as a female, or enter you into the system as “neutral” or “other”. So that became the catch phrase: “three marathons in three gender categories.” I actually contacted the Guinness Book of World Records people to see if that would be acceptable as a world record.

What did they say?
They said, “fill out these papers.” [laugh] Yeah, they said they would consider it, and when I called Boston again, I explained myself: “I’d really like to run as a female. I’m not going to win your race, and it would mean a lot to me from a dignity and respect standpoint to run as a female.” And they said okay!

So I was happy. At that point I had decided never to run as a male except for this Boston race, and in the end I didn’t even have to do that.

So off I went. I ran Charlottesville, Virginia, and two days later I ran Boston, and then five days later I was in Ontario. Three marathons in nine days.

What was your time for Boston?
Four hours and 28 minutes. Some runners criticized me though, and said “you’re disrespecting Boston by not showing up in tip top form.” [laugh] But at that point, no matter what I had done, the times would have still been slower because of the transition. I wanted to cross the finish line with a smile on my face. I didn’t care what others thought.

I came home from that trip feeling awesome. I did it. I ran three marathons in eight days, having just had fairly major surgery on my genitals a couple of months earlier.

I felt good about myself.

A couple of weeks later I was running two more marathons, to make it five in 30 days. Now it’s a bit of an obsession. I got my level five in the Marathon Maniacs club. I love being recognized as “Jennifer McCreath, the Marathon Maniac.”

And Denmark is next, right?
Yeah. The World Outgames. But a scary thing that’s happened recently is that I found myself in the emergency room a month ago with breathing difficulties. Something going on with my lung, and they’re not really sure what. There are conflicting opinions from the doctors I’m working with as to what exactly is wrong with the lung. Bottom line is I’m having trouble running right now, which is making running an awful lot more difficult. I may not, in fact, make it to Denmark. It’s going to be a last minute decision, “do I go, or do I not?”

I hope I get to go, because I feel it’s important to do this.

I ran 20k yesterday, slower, but at the end it had felt like I had sprinted the whole thing, and I was exhausted. I don’t want to have a heart attack. So this race will probably be my slowest race ever.

It’s frustrating. I don’t want to be recognized as a declining athlete. I want to be recognized as an exceptional person who has perservered through so much hell.

McCreath will be a guest speaker at this year’s Pride discussion forum on the queer experience in local healthcare. She will be discussing transsexual health issues.

As well, fingers crossed, McCreath will be competing in Denmark at the World Outgames on July 26. You can read her blog at jennifermccreath.blogspot.com and check out her website at www.geocities.com/jennifermccreath

Cover issue 85

Cover photo of Jennifer McCreath (braving the cold waters of Topsail Beach!) by Mark Bennett.

Storefront

Photo by Sydney Blackmore

Sydney Blackmore flies through local business news.

Acrodisiac
At the Acro-Adix School of Acrobatics on 161 Thorburn Road, a class of aerial students learn to sail across a flying trapeze 20 feet above the ground and into the arms of a bar-dangling catcher.

“It’s an adrenaline rush that you don’t get used to, but it’s not scary,” says Victoria Howard, a student with serious trapeze talent. “The hardest part is catching the return bar. You should give it a try,” adds Chuck Tilley, a former gymnast taking his fifth Acro class.

Josh and Dany Munden are Acro-Adix, a husband and wife team with over 20 years of combined professional experience as aerial entertainers and instructors. Josh, originally from Whitbourne, met Dany on the resort performance circuit and after years of travelling the world together as performers, the couple decided it was time to open their own school.

“It’s just amazing to see the progress of a student who says, ‘I don’t know if I can do this!’ to doing catches and returns after one class,” says Dany.

“We’re the only flying trapeze school East of Quebec,” says Josh. “People here wouldn’t get a chance to learn or try this here if we didn’t open our school. That’s very rewarding.”

Since June 2009, Acro-Adix has been offering outdoors flying trapeze classes for locals itching to fly. The two-hour intensive trapeze classes are structured so students learn new tricks and perfect positions on the bar for one hour and then attempt catches and returns for the second hour.

“Students start with a knee hang and over time they’re swinging and doing tricks,” explains Dany. “You can get really good in a month or two.”

Dany and Josh are always on-site, instructing and coaching their students while giving individual feedback after each flight. All flights have appropriate safety measures in place, including a safety belt and net.

Acro’s classes are $30 and run Monday to Friday, 10am-12pm and 1-3pm for kids and 4-6pm for adults. Acro also offers Saturday Fun Fly days, an open class where people pay $20 to fly as much as they can. For more information on the Acro-Adix School, call Dany or Josh at 743-3618, or e-mail acro_adixtrapeze@mac.com.

The Jighouse: re-loaded
The Jighouse liquor store at 123-125 New Gower Street just pulled an ace from its sleeve. It’s been opened since May 2008, but this spring the NL Liquor Corporation teamed up with Spirit of Newfoundland Productions to offer a Screech-inspired superstore in the location’s basement.

“It’s like an alcohol museum,” explains Jighouse worker ‘Bucky,’ one of two Spirit of Newfoundland actors who host the location’s screech-in sessions.

The store was revamped to showcase the diversity of local liquor goods, explains NL Liquor communications manager, Greg Gill.
“It’s not your traditional liquor store, it’s an opportunity for locals and tourists alike to get in and see what products are actually made here.”

Some standouts include Cabot Tower’s 100 proof rum, spiked teas, jams and BBQ sauces, as well as a brand of Screech flavoured coffee and Old Sam flavoured hot chocolate—both by Jumping Bean Coffee Company.

And then there’s the free screech-in sessions, happening every afternoon at 1pm, 2:30pm and 4pm.

Business is booming, says Bucky. “I’d say we’ve seen around 600 visitors to the store since June 15th.”

So could the Jighouse’s success have the potential to sideswipe other local screech-in services offered throughout the city?

Brian Day, owner and operator of Christian’s Bar on George Street (home to Keith Vokey, the screech-in master) feels that his business is actually profiting from the Jighouse’s buzz.

“It creates awareness and we benefit. There’s no way possible that they can be doing even close to the job that we do during our ceremony. You haven’t gotten screeched-in until you go to Christian’s.”

For more information on The Jighouse call 724-1600 or visit the Spirit of Newfoundland website at www.spiritofnewfoundland.com. Christian’s Bar is at 753-9100.

Hot fun in the summertime
If you’re looking for someone else to handle the BBQing, you’ll be happy to know Red Rock Bar & Grill has just opened at 686 Topsail Road. All of the beef featured on the menu, with the exception of their Triple A Beef Burger, is Angus certified.

“From the cooking and training, to the knowledge of the product, it was an intense licensing process,” says Joanne Byrne, who co-owns the restaurant with her husband Tom. “They want to make sure that any restaurant that carries it won’t diminish its quality.”

Red Rock is open seven days a week. For info or reservations, call 745-2767.

The Fluvarium’s summertime cafe, The Deck, is now open for its third season. The outdoor cafe overlooks The Fluvarium’s gardens and its menu changes weekly, featuring soups, salads, quiches, entrees and vegetarian options, courtesy of chef Katie Greene. The Deck is open 11:30am-2pm from Monday-Friday. For reservations call 754-3474.

Send your fresh business news to storefront@thescope.ca

Field Notes

Original photo by Megan Nicole. Kiss makeup added by us.

Kerri Breen was made for lovin’ you baybeh.

COE’s big break?
A certain immaculately conceived Newfoundland metal band will be opening for KISS at Halifax Rocks.

Children of Eve, a local band which was transplanted to Halifax in 2007, won the opportunity through a Molson Canadian Rocks contest after successfully facing off against other bands from Atlantic Canada.

They didn’t expect to be selected to compete, let alone win the grand prize.

“None of us in [the band] really like the idea of music as a competition,” says vocalist Joel Upshall. “Everyone who plays music is out there doing the same thing, and pitting East Coast musicians against each other isn’t something we’re all about. …We were just feeling extremely fortunate to be playing with some awesome bands from Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and PEI.”

The band is honoured to be playing with the guys who boldly wore black and white face paint back when WCW’s Sting was still in short pants.

They aren’t die-hard fans, but they respect the impact KISS has had on rock and roll.

“We like Love Gun and their harder tunes,” Upshall says. “As long as it isn’t a ballad we’re cool.”

The show is happening on July 18 on the Halifax Common. Fellow Newfoundland band The Novaks will also be performing at the show.

—

O’Leary at large
Renowned photographer Sheilagh O’Leary is giving politics a shot.

She’s running for one of four councilor-at-large positions on St. John’s city council.

“I always had my eye on the councilor-at-large position,” she says, adding that it is a philosophical, issue-based position.

O’Leary has been a community activist for two decades. She’s a mother of three, a small business-woman, and she’s worked for “umpteen” non-profit organizations in the city. She says there’s a strong connection between being an artist and an activist, and that her personality is suited to being an advocate at the source of decision-making.

“I’ve been frustrated for a very long time watching other people run the city either in a very laissez-faire or tepid way, or in a way I’m in deep opposition to.”

O’Leary’s first priority is city planning. She’s pro-development, but says development should lend itself to the creation of vibrant communities. The city, she says, has been functioning on a piecemeal, development-by-development basis for too long.

She’s also very interested in environmental preservation, community safety, and of course, she’s a huge advocate for cultural and heritage issues.

Nominations won’t close until Sept. 1, at which time the full list of candidates will be released. The election will be held on Sept. 29.

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Solitary summer
Artist Mike Flaherty is spending his summer completely off the radar.

For the next three months, he’ll be hanging out by himself on the Grey Islands—an uninhabited island group off the east coast of the Northern Peninsula—as part of an art project investigating the romantic cliché of the rural potter.

He’ll be building his own pottery kiln while there (which is why he had to bring a ton of bricks by boat).

“The project is quite simple in concept: I will bring the necessary materials (bricks and other hardware) with me to the islands, along with everything I need to document the piece and to survive there alone for the summer, says Flaherty on his website. (He could not be reached for an interview, naturally.)

He is documenting the experience with video, photography, drawing, and his own oral narrative. He was inspired by a book of poetry called The Grey Islands by John Steffler, writes Flaherty.

The protagonist travels to the Grey Islands for an extended period of time to realize his romantic notion of survival. Flaherty sees a connection between this idea and the archetype of the rural potter “who survives on the margins of contemporary society and economics.”

In the end, Flaherty will exhibit the results of this massive, unique project.

If you’re curious about his whereabouts, you can follow his GPS signal online at www.tinyurl.com/mikegreyislands

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NLAC dough spread thin
The Newfoundland and Labrador Arts Council (NLAC) says the province’s increase in artistic output has posed a challenge to its budget.

Applications for the spring professional project granting session were up 60 per cent from the fall, and 20 per cent from this time last year.

This resulted in an acceptance rate of just under half the applications received from artists, groups, and organizations, with many grant recipients receiving just a fraction of what they asked.

“The quality of applications has been getting higher and higher in recent years,” says NLAC Chair Carmelita McGrath in a release. “Peer assessment committees are faced with the unenviable task of deciding whether to provide partial funding to several worthy applicants, or full funding to a few.”

The organization says its major funding boost from the provincial government has stimulated artistic production. In the process of getting its budget doubled over three years, the organization also gained a heightened public profile, which also may explain the increase in applications.

On the not-so-somber side, the projects that were awarded funding this time around look diverse and fresh. Field Notes will be profiling some of them in the coming weeks. You can check out the full list of recipients and brief project descriptions at www.tinyurl.com/nlacgrants2009

Up to something field noteworthy? E-mail kerri@thescope.ca

May we Bixi?

Why not think big?

With the St. John’s bike plan officially underway, there has never been a better time to seriously consider a city-wide bike sharing system. This May, Montréal became the first Canadian city to develop its own such system, and is actively trying to export it to other cities. Would St. John’s be suitable for such a move?

Shawn Hayward takes the idea out for a spin.

June 26 was a beautiful day to be in Montréal on vacation. The air was warm and the sky was blue. It was a perfect day to bike downtown, past Parc Lafontaine and down St. Laurent Boulevard, on a bike that wasn’t even mine. No I didn’t steal it. As a tourist visiting from Newfoundland, I didn’t have a bike of my own, so my friend Alex suggested taking Montréal’s newest mode of transportation: a Bixi bike.

Bixi is Montréal’s bike sharing system, a way for people to rent a bike for a short period of time, and then drop it off at another one of the 300 automated Bixi stations around the city. There is a small access fee, and the service is free for the first half hour. So like any commuter service, it’s designed for short trips—to get people from here to there.

A portmanteau of the words bicycle and taxi, Bixi was designed independently by Stationnement de Montréal, Montréal’s parking authority, and unveiled in May of this year. Since then, the city has made 3,000 bikes available to the public.

To recover the costs of researching and developing the first large-scale bicycle sharing program in the country, Stationnment de Montréal intends to export Bixi to other cities in Canada and around the world.

“What we want to do is to share that R and D with other cities so everybody can benefit from the research and development we did and have a good system that will be self sufficient,” says Alain Ayotte, executive vice president for Stationnment de Montréal.

Back home
Phase one of the St. John’s Cycling Master Plan officially began on July 9, after $1.6 million in funding was received from the provincial government. The first phase includes painting 43 km of bike lanes throughout the city, and putting up signs alongside another 73 km of road. The city says it will also create 20 bike parking facilities and install bike racks on 53 city buses with the money.

According to Ayotte, this expansion will provide the minimum requirement for a program like Bixi to operate in St. John’s.

“You need a minimum of infrastructure,” he says. “If a city doesn’t have any bike lanes it can be a problem.”

Already Bixi has expanded to Ottawa-Gatineau and will be there on a trial basis until September. Ayotte says Toronto, Boston, and Minneapolis, Minnesota have expressed interest in the system.

St. John’s isn’t as large as any of those cities, but Ayotte says it’s not the size that counts, it’s density.

“If you have a very dense downtown, then it makes sense to have a system in that core location,” he says. “St. John’s is a dense city, so it would make perfect sense.”

The closest thing to Bixi in St. John’s right now is Bikeshare, a program run by MUN’s Project Green which offers bikes (and soon access to a repair shop) to students and faculty of the university for an annual $20 fee.

Alanna Felt, a member of Bikeshare’s steering committee, says she’d be in favour of having a program like Bixi in St. John’s, even if it made Bikeshare obsolete.

“In the initial stages of Bikeshare we had discussed eventually handing it over to the city of St. John’s and having them run it as a public service, for everyone,” she says. “If the city was to initiate a program like Bixi, we would happily hand it over.”

Rain on the parade
For various reasons Bixi bikes in Montreal are supplied without helmets. St. John’s, unlike Montréal, has a bylaw that prohibits riding a bike on city streets without a helmet. Bylaw No. 1332 sets the fine for riding without a helmet between $20 and $40.

Ayotte says one solution would be to partner with a manufacturer and offer Bixi users discounts on bike helmets.

Drivers’ experience with cyclists is also different in St. John’s than in Montréal. While St. John’s is now getting bike lanes, Montréal has had them for years, and according to Feldt, many drivers here aren’t used to sharing the road with bikers.

“There seems to be a lot of tension between drivers and cyclists,” she says. “I know a lot of potential commuter cyclists who refuse to commute around St. John’s because they feel unsafe doing so when they would in cities like Montréal, Toronto, or Ottawa.”

The Bixi system itself isn’t perfect either. In June Bixi officials told CBC that dozens of bikes had been stolen after thieves forced open the locking mechanisms.

People have also reported glitches in the payment system— something I experienced for myself when I tried to take a Bixi bike out again. My credit card was refused, and when my friend called Bixi they said the bike hadn’t been returned. When I checked my credit card statement days later I found I had been billed $40. Someone had used the bike for three hours after I had, and the charge was billed to my account. It was the most expensive bike ride of my life.

Ayotte says glitches like this are unavoidable with a new system like Bixi, and they are correcting problems as they appear.

Back home
Cleaner air, less traffic, more parking space, and less dependence on fossil fuels all come from encouraging people to use a bike and not a car. It’s still a relatively new idea, but Bixi and bike sharing programs like it would provide more access to bicycles for those who want to take advantage of the city’s new bike infrastructure. Sure, Bixi has problems, and Ayotte admits some cities aren’t suited to bike sharing, but he says St. John’s has the density and will soon have the bike infrastructure to support bike sharing.

“Knowing St. John’s, I would say it would welcome a bike sharing system quite easily,” he says.

What do you think? Have your say online at thescope.ca

Photos by Elling Lien.

The Index

Names, residence and time period of the first same-sex couple in recorded history:
Khnumhotep and Niankhkhnum, Egypt, circa 2400 B.C.

First place in the world to pass jurisdiction prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation: Quebec, 1977

Year in which Glen Murray, former mayor of Winnipeg and first openly gay mayor of a large North American city, was elected:
1998

Date on which Newfoundland and Labrador issued its first marriage license to a same-sex couple:
December 21st, 2004

Year in which same-sex marriage was legalized in Canada, under a Liberal government:
2005

Year in which Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper made an unsuccessful motion to re-evaluate that legalization, as per one of his campaign promises:
2006

Number of countries which grant full legal marriage rights:
6

Minimum number of countries in which homosexuality is still punishable by death:
5

Sources are linked.

Fruit-topped ricotta tart

Andreae Prozesky isn’t normal, but she’s virtuous.

Every year, it’s the same. It all starts with the rhubarb. Then it’s the strawberries, then the raspberries, the gooseberries and blackcurrants, and then comes the glut of autumn blueberries and partridgeberries and rosehips.

Local foraging. I spend my winters and springs dreaming about, nay, obsessing over local foraging. I dream of someday challenging myself to survive the year on local fruit alone. I’m sure it can be done. Already I’ve been out scouting for tangled raspberry patches and pincherry trees and crabapples and chuckley pear bushes in my neighbourhood’s vacant lots. I’m sure there are neighbours who wonder at my frequent emergence from treed-in urban wilderness, the spots which are inhabited by semi-feral cats and the occasional underhoused human. I’ll admit, it looks a little dodgy. But I really am up to something totally normal. Well, perhaps not normal, but virtuous.

Already in the season, I’ve taken a spin around the bay to pick wild strawberries in a friend’s overgrown field, and I’ve eaten as much rhubarb as friends and relatives can throw at me. Almost.

Some of the spoils of my summer foraging, like the tiny and almost unnaturally sweet strawberries, will be mostly eaten out of hand, thrown over cereal or yogurt at breakfast, or smooshed between my thumb and forefinger to feed to my happy nine-month-old kiddo, who scarfs them down with inspiring abandon.

Other fruits will be cooked down and made into preserves. Crabapples aren’t really fit to eat, at least not in any serious amount (unless you have guts of steel), but they make delicious jelly. Same for rosehips, which grow wild and abundant all over St. John’s. So long as they’re wild roses, and not somebody’s cultivated and possibly pesticide-drenched ornamentals, the fruit is pretty much free for the taking after the first frost. Blueberries and partridgeberries are the best to freeze.

And last year was the first time I ever picked chuckley pears. They grow all over town, in green spaces and along walking trails, and nobody under the age of 65 ever seems to notice them. If you’re not familiar with the name “chuckley pear,” you might know them as Saskatoon berries. People all over the rest of Canada go cracked for them, and they’re so full of antioxidants that I’ve read a number of references to them as a new “superfood” (like chocolate and coffee and pomegranates… good company).

I do, of course, bake with lots of the berries and fruits that I forage over the summer. Usually it’s muffins, but over the last couple days I’ve come up with what I think may be my go-to fruit tart. The base is made with ground almonds and buckwheat flour, and it’s a press-in crust, so you don’t have to worry about messing around with delicate rolled pastry in the summer heat (it’s also gluten-free, if you’re among the gluten-averse). The filling is sweetened ricotta cheese, which you can buy in a shop or make at home (the instructions are in this article here), and the topping is whichever fresh, local fruit I’ve hauled home. So far I’ve tried it with rhubarb (result: yum) and with a rhubarb-strawberry combo (result: double plus yum). I’m fantasizing now about making the same thing with raspberries and blackberries on top, knowing that the raspberries will be gone before the blackberries ripen—remind me to set some raspberries in the freezer for this experiment, will you? And chuckley pears will be great on this, perhaps with some lemon zest stirred into the ricotta filling.

The fruit-jelly glaze is what makes the tart so pretty. You know when you go to a bakery and their fruit tarts are all shiny and gorgeous, and then you go home and make what seems like the same thing, but it just looks kind of amateurish? It’s the glaze factor. It just takes it over the top. I’m not saying you should make a batch of apple or rosehip or gooseberry jelly just to have on hand when the mood strikes you to make a fruit tart, but, you know, it wouldn’t hurt. Failing that, store-bought apricot preserves, with the big chunks strained out, are a pretty standard substitute.

Either way, it’s delicious.

—

Fruit-topped ricotta tart

Crust:
¼ cup brown rice flour
¼ cup buckwheat flour
½ cup ground almonds
¼ cup icing sugar
½ cup chilled butter, cut onto small pieces

Filling:
1 ½ cups ricotta cheese
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/3 cup sugar
1 tablespoon cornstarch
½ teaspoon salt

Topping:
1 ½ cups fresh summer fruit, pitted/chopped/stemmed as necessary, combined with up to ½ cup sugar, depending on type of fruit (rhubarb will need lots, blueberries won’t need any… judge accordingly)
½ cup light-coloured fruit jelly (rosehip, crabapple, white grape, gooseberry) or heated, strained apricot preserves, optional

INSTRUCTIONS:
Preheat oven to 350F.

In a large bowl, combine flours, ground almonds, and sugar. Work butter into flour mixture with your fingers until it forms a coarse meal. There will still be small lumps of butter, but that’s okay. Press the mixture into the bottom and up the sides of a 9-inch tart pan. If the dough is too sticky, sprinkle with some additional rice flour.

In another bowl, using an electric mixer, mix ricotta, eggs, and vanilla. In a small bowl or cup, stir together sugar, cornstarch, and salt. Add to ricotta mixture and mix well.

Pour ricotta mixture into crust. Carefully place in oven – the filling will be quite liquid, so you might want to place the tart pan on a cookie sheet first, for less sloshing about. Bake tart about 25 minutes, until the filling has begun to set. Remove tart from sheet and distribute fruit evenly across the top. Return to oven and bake another 30 minutes.

In a small saucepan, heat jelly to boiling, stirring with a whisk to break up any lumps. Set aside. Remove tart from oven and spoon warm jelly over top to cover fruit. Set tart aside to cool, then refrigerate to chill thoroughly.

Send your questions, comments, and sweet and sour suggestions to dreae@thescope.ca

On the origin of banjo

Boulder, Colorado banjo virtuoso Jayme Stone is a man who takes his whimsy seriously. His new Juno award winning album Africa to Appalachia, a collaboration with griot (West African poet) singer and kora player Mansa Sissoko was the product of several years of travel in the heart of Mali learning the roots of the banjo, it’s music and the idiosyncrasies that never made it to America. On Saturday, July 18th, as part of the Wreckhouse International Jazz and Blues Festival, Stone and Sissoko will be performing in the Bowring Park Amphitheatre.

Patrick Canning caught up with him to ask a few questions.

How did you and Mansa Sissoko meet?
We met during Mansa’s first visit to Canada in 2004 and hit it off immediately. He’s as warm and generous a person as he is a musician and the music happened so naturally. Mansa was invited to play a show in Toronto and I ended up sitting in the whole night.

The kora (a 21-string harp-lute) and banjo seem to compliment each other quite naturally and beautifully. Does it surprise you that there isn’t more of a precedent for the combination?
Well, we’ve spent some quality time together, learning about each others’ playing and trying to build bridges between our different musical cultures. I also spent a couple of years learning and listening to music from Mali, which helps make the collaboration feel organic. There’s a long history of the kora and the ngoni, an African lute considered to be one of the banjo’s ancestor, so it makes sense. The banjo is like an ngoni that went through the industrial revolution.

You spent quite awhile in Mali studying African music and the historical roots of the banjo first hand. Did you find the locals understood what you were trying to get at with your research or was it difficult to get that across?
What everybody got was that I was passionate about their music and I was doing my homework. When you show up in a village and play them traditional songs people are familiar with, they understand the intent and get excited about making music.

What was the most surprising discovery you made on that trip?
Seeing people in remote villages playing banjo-like instruments with a technique that looked almost exactly like Pete Seeger’s was astounding.

Living proof of the banjo’s African roots.

Did Mansa have any part in your decision to go to Mali?
Absolutely! While I knew the banjo came from West Africa and I loved the music, it was meeting Mansa that made the whole project come to life. I knew immediately that I wanted to immerse myself in his culture and find out where the music came from.

Are there any other areas of global cross-cultural pollination that you would like to explore or do you feel there is still a lot of ground to cover in this present combination?
I am beginning to dream up a new album that will explore music based on dance from around the globe: reels, hornpipes, polskas, mazurkas, strathspeys and sambas from Sweden, Scotland, Brazil and the Americas. Look out for that in the fall of 2010.

Jayme Stone and Mansa Sissoko will be performing at the Bowring Park Amphitheatre on July 18 at 3pm as part of the Wreckhouse International Jazz and Blues Festival. For more information, visit www.wreckhousejazzandblues.com

In on the umlaut

Brüno (In Theatres)

What is Brüno, beyond the filthy/fabulous successor to Borat? Is the movie satire or aimless shock schlock?

Cohen is both brilliant and heartless, simultaneously making homophobia ridiculous and giving homophobes the ultimate gay clown to laugh at.

Brüno’s narrative is thinner than a coked-out runway model. If you’ve seen Borat: Cultural Learnings of America to Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, a funnier and better film, you already know the plot: A cartoonish ‘other’ leaves his usual environment with a devoted assistant in tow. They criss-cross America, encountering bigotry and idiocy that is hilarious and chilling, often simultaneously. Mayhem ensues.

Cohen loves putting people in awkward situations. The very few times he almost breaks character are during these most torturous encounters. He remarks, on a gay-curing camping trip with three of the reddest necks in Alabama, that the night sky “makes you think of all the hot guys in the world.” You can almost glimpse glee in his face as he twists that knife. Is it the righteous joy of a saboteur or just a sadist getting his fix? Whatever it is, it’s ballsy. How many of us would tell a terrorist, on his home turf, that “your King Osama looks like a dirty wizard”? (Panicked interpreter: “Leave! Now!”)

But what are people laughing at, Brüno’s ludicrous antics, or the grim folks he encounters? Take the crowd at the cage match and how they react to two men making out. Their dismay was hilarious; some looked horrified and others were frothing with rage. I was laughing at them, but maybe other folks in the audience were laughing at the kiss, in slow motion, with Celine Dion crooning away in the background. After all, the idea of two guys kissing is still funny to a large segment of the population.

Leaving the theatre, it reminded me that gay rights are in a similar place to race relations in America not that long ago. You know, White Heterosexual Man doesn’t have a problem with you as long as you don’t live in his neighbourhood or act too gay / black in his presence.

So, yeah, there’s fodder for serious thought in all this. Making hate laughable could be a powerful means to combat it… But then again, how many people will read Brüno that way? Is the trade-off worth it?

A friend of mine wasn’t so keen. “Fuck this shit,” was his conclusion. “It’s harmful.”

Michael Collins

The steps by the courthouse

Between Duckworth & Water

“We’re mainly exploring gravity in the dancers’ bodies,” Gerry Morita explains over the phone from Edmonton.

Morita, artistic director for Mile Zero Dance, has choreographed Spatial Pull, a dance piece in which dancers flow slowly and languidly down a chosen set of stairs, in a movement she describes as a “melting, continuous falling.” The inspiration came about while she was studying an obscure form of Japanese dance, called Noguchi, which stresses movement of the body which mimics movement in the natural world.

On July 23rd and 24th, at 12:30 p.m., she and her crew of ten local dancers will be performing the piece as part of the Festival of New Dance on the Courthouse Steps, the staircase leading from Duckworth to Water adjacent to the Courthouse.

They couldn’t have picked a better spot. The effects of gravity on the human body have been “explored” at that particular locale since the early nineteenth century. Back then, it was called Market House Hill and was home to the rowdiest public hanging gallows in town, alongside a public market, the post office and the old Courthouse.

Catherine Snow, the last woman ever hanged in Newfoundland, dangled from that very spot in 1834, right after giving birth to a child she conceived with the man who killed her husband.

Not to worry, though—the authorities made sure she was good and recovered from the birth before putting her through the physical demands of a hanging, bless their gentle hearts.

“You know, because of the way that we’re dressed in the piece, there is a macabre element to it,” muses Morita upon hearing about the hill’s weighty history.

“We’re all wearing formal wear, and tumbling, fumbling and falling down the steps. If people know that history, it could really add to their experience.”

— Sarah Smellie
Suggestion for a nook? nooks@thescope.ca

The Dead Weather’s debut album is a bit of a mixed bag

The Dead Weather
Horehound
(Third Man)
The debut album of Jack White’s new supergroup— featuring members of The Kills, The Raconteurs and Queens Of The Stone Age—is a bit of a mixed bag. White’s duties take an uncharacteristic step away from the spotlight by (mostly) sticking with the drums while backing up singer Alison Mosshart. There’s plenty of swagger and bravado, and if nothing else White as a producer is a master of getting guitars to sound wickedly bestial, but the riffs miss just as often as they hit. The greasy high-plains groove of “60 feet tall” and oppressive grind of “New Pony” attack just right, while rote rockers like “Treat me like your Mother” and “I Cut Like a Buffalo” come across as an uncomfortable fit of Rage Against The Machine and Black Mountain. Bottom line, The high points of this album compare favorably to most of White Stripes’ catalog, but the low points reek of “disposable side project”

—Patrick Canning
www.throwingstonesatyou.blogspot.com

Truly, Madly, Deeply

The skies are clean and bright outside while I sit behind a mahogany desk in my shapely, icily air-conditioned office. I call in my secretary, affectionately known in the office as “Cupcake”, to dictate a letter. As the phones ring outside,  I swerve in my Corinthian leather chair and light a cigarette. Nothing is better than planting your ass in that soft, buttery cloud of a chair, if it weren’t for that persistent howling outside. Repetitive, almost like caterwauling…

With a spine-cracking jolt, the fantasy dropped. I had no office, no buttery-ass chair and no cupcakes. I’ve been sitting in my Super Dave beanbag chair this whole time. The howling I heard was my brother’s cat, Rick Cheeseburger, reminding me that his litter box is full of shit. My glamourous dream world has been swallowed up by a temperamental cat’s bowels.

Watching Mad Men will do that to you. Reality seems like a cruel joke after spending an hour in its sleazy fantasy world.

For those not in the loop, Mad Men is a TV series airing on AMC, detailing the personal and professional lives of the men and women of the fictional Sterling Cooper ad agency in the early 60’s. Central amongst them is Don Draper (Jon Hamm), the company’s creative director, whose closet contains more skeletons than the 1929 Disney short “The Skeleton Dance”. Despite his heavy drinking, loveless marriage and absentee parenting, Draper still has a twinge of morality that frequently comes into conflict with his life and work. His attempts to maintain a loyalty to his clients, co-workers, wife and children (in that order) are the series’ main lure, as he just seems to sink deeper and deeper into a personal hell. Equally compelling are the company’s young blood, Pete Campbell (Vincent Kartheiser) and Peggy Olson (Elisabeth Moss), who embody both sides of the game. Olson is flawed, but retains her humanity; Pete is as vacuous as they come.

The show’s received a lot of attention for depicting an unflinchingly sexist club, but there’s a lot more going on than empty shock. The lewdness and sideways glances at every woman’s butt feel real, as do the the rivers of cigarette smoke and the constant alcoholism. The debate about Mad Men’s factuality is unimportant because it is written and performed in such a way that it seldom seems implausible. No one would dare claim Mad Men to be reality, as it’s arguably as much of a soap opera as Dallas was. The melodramatic aspects are part of the fun; so much so that you almost forget how tight the writing really is.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to clean a litter box.

Adam Clarke

DIY micropublishing

I’ve only ever made two 24 page mini-comics, but that’s a good start, and I love doing it. I used to make homemade colouring and puzzle books as presents when I was a kid, so I suppose I was onto something all those years ago.

I’d been wanting to make a mini-comic for a long time, but the thing that made me do it was the San Diego Comic Convention last summer. I wanted to have something to give away to the comic writers I was hoping to meet and buy stuff from. When I went to the Toronto Comic Arts Festival, Mr. Mini-Comic Number Two was born. I thought it would be nice to be able to say, “Can I give you a copy of my mini-comic?” instead of just, “Hi, I like your comic.” It helped a bit, but I still need to work on my real-life social networking skills.

So far, I’ve played things safe with cardstock, computer paper, screen-printing, and staples. I’ve seen some very nice books done in accordion style, or stitched and Gocco-printed, with sleeves, incorporating anything from fancy paper, cardboard, wood, bark, Mylar, to old board game boxes. If you can draw on it, you can use it. Know any good origami moves? Go to town! Can you cross-stitch in glorious 8-Bit? Then you may be my hero. Buddy’s got a button machine? Butter him up, brother.

The most important thing, though, is to plan your project carefully. Winging these things usually leads to frustration, so make a little model of your book, number every page, and then when you take it apart to make copies so you can see which pages will have to be next to each other.

Then comes the most difficult part: Draw! Write! Then make a cover that is both eye catching and not boring. For inspiration, be sure to read plenty of other mini comics, artist books, and zines, and Google ‘making mini-comics.’

Once you’ve finished creating, scan, photocopy, resize, cut & paste or use image editing software to reformat your pages. Then reproduce them via printer or photocopier. Get some pals to help you collate or bind your books, but be sure to use good, heavy-duty staples if you go that route. If you are so inclined, it’s cool to make inserts, coupons, stickers and buttons to slip inside.

Finally, you have to promote, distribute, and network. Share your work with friends, galleries, libraries, comic shops, conventions and coffee shops so others can see what you’ve done. Budget for some trades and give-aways. (The standard for pricing is $1 per 10 pages.)

My Best Tips So Far:
• Draw bigger than you normally would, that if you shrink it all down people will be able to see your work. For example, if you are going to make a comic that well end up ¼ the size of an 8.5×11 piece of paper, write your words four times as big.

• Give yourself lots of time and plan for errors at the photocopy place. Start with a manageable amount of copies for your first run (25-50); you can always get more printed later. Don’t overwhelm yourself either; start with a small number of pages (<24).

• And, like pretty much any other art form, make sure you’re doing it for fun.

Links To Get You Going:
Your Comics Will Love You Back by Alec Longstreth. This was a lecture he gave at the Center for Cartoon Studies (2008). I met Alec briefly at TCAF and he traded comics with me! He also has a huge beard.
www.alec-longstreth.com/comics/comics_love/

This is a good illustrated demo of how to construct minicomics, but I don’t know who the author actually is. www.caption.org/2002/minicomics/

Liz Baille makes tonnes of comics and you can subscribe to her Minicomic of the Month Club, which is awesome because you get real mail. www.lizbaillie.com

Illustration by Tara Fleming

diy@thescope.ca

Savage Love

Sex and love columnist Dan Savage prays it away.

You were recommended to me by an acquaintance familiar with your column and podcast. Lacking other resources at this particular moment, I have decided to write to you. I am a 20-year-old male, and as such have certain desires that almost all 20-year-old males have (desires of a sexual nature). However, I am deeply religious. Religion has been for me a source of strength in my times of weakness, a rock in the times of storm, and above all a home to return to when I have lost my path. In the teachings of my particular religion, to indulge the particular desires I am experiencing will condemn me to fates too grotesque to mention. I am rational enough to realize that there is no way that I can “pray away” these desires. My question is this: How does one prepare for a life of celibacy and solitude (as that is what is required of me to remain a member of this particular faith)? Based off of what my friend has told me, I know you have little respect for religious practices and beliefs. However, these desires are not exactly something I can talk about with other members of my spiritual community. And while I am currently seeking counseling related to other issues, I was wondering what a so-called expert on sex and sexuality would have to say.

Clever Acronyms Escape Me

Get over yourself, faggot.

If it’s possible for you to act on your unnamed-but-easily-identified desires in an ethical manner—if you desire to do whatever it is you desire to do with consenting adults who desire to take their turn doing it to you—this so-called expert on sexuality thinks you should crawl down off that cross and find yourself a boyfriend already. (“Pray away” the gay? I’m guessing you’re Christian, probably Catholic.) And if you experience a moment’s anxiety the first time you stick your ass in the air—pull the Jesus stick out first!—just remind yourself that things have been crawling on top of each other and madly humping away for 850 million years. Sex came first, then humanity (200,000ish years ago), then religion came along tens of thousands of years after that. Which may explain why religion, when pitted against sex (really old) and human nature (pretty old), always loses. Always.

If you’re on the cross, CAEM, it’s because you put yourself up there. Which means you’re not some poor mortal trapped between a cosmic rock and an existential hard place; you’re just another closeted cocksucker with a martyr complex.

Look, kiddo, you get one life, one chance at happiness. If it gives you a spiritual semi to fantasize about a God who created you gay but forbids you to act on your emotional and sexual attraction to men, knock your damn self out. But you can have a boyfriend and Jesus, too—look at the pope—you just have to do what people have been doing since the first terrified idiot invented the first bullshit religion: improvise. Find yourself a brand-new religion or sect, or jettison the bits of your current faith that don’t work for you. If you know anything about the history of Christianity—and it sounds like you don’t—then you know that the revisions began before the body was cold. No reason to stop now.

And finally, CAEM, there is no God—you do realize that, right? No hell below us, above us only sky, etc.

—

I’m an only child, male, born to a single mom. I’m about to turn 21, and I’ve been with a great guy for over a year. I may be in love. We both have steady jobs, and we want to move in together. He came out to his parents after we started dating, and now I think it’s my turn. Problem is, I don’t know how to break it to my mother. She’s a tiny Mexican woman who isn’t afraid of smacking me. I’m afraid to tell her. She always talks bad about the gay lifestyle because she considers herself Christian, although not the churchgoing kind. When and how do I break the news that she’s not getting grandkids from me?

Her Only Male Offspring

Your mom is my favorite kind of “Christian.” She’s not the “churchgoing kind,” as that would require some personal sacrifice on her part (of her Sunday mornings, at least). And she certainly didn’t let her faith interfere with her sex life (I’m assuming your conception was something short of immaculate*). But when it comes to other people’s lives, when it comes to your sexuality and mine, HOMO, then her Christian values kick into high gear.

How convenient.

Okay, HOMO, lots of us have come out to hostile moms and dads and watched in awe as they morphed into the loving, supportive parents we didn’t know they were capable of being. For some parents the process is quick, for others it’s slow, but it can’t start until you come out.

Now here’s when you come out: The sooner the better—but don’t come out to your mother while she has the power to harm you, i.e., if you’re dependent on her for a place to live or if she’s paying for your education. And here’s how: by U.S. mail. Don’t give your mother the chance to smack you. Write her a letter, include the contact info for the PFLAG chapter in your area, and tell her you’ll discuss this with her after she attends a meeting, not before.

Finally, when I came out to my mother, the first thing out of her mouth was, “I don’t ever want to meet any boyfriends.” She said the word “boyfriend” like it had been dipped in shit. On her deathbed, my mother told me to tell my boyfriend that she loved him (“like a daughter”). My mom came around, HOMO, and so can yours.

But not until you tell her.

—

My husband and I got married recently. His first pick for best man was his older brother, “St. Paul,” a seminary student studying to become a priest. When my husband asked, he started crying and said he had hoped my husband would return to the church. We are both liberal ex-Catholics. For a wedding gift, Paul gave us a book called Man and Woman He Created Them: A Theology of the Body, 700 pages of dogma by JP2. In the five years I’ve known him, he has rarely said more than one sentence to me, yet he speaks boldly in favor of the church’s most conservative doctrines at family gatherings. How much of his bullshit do I have to deal with? I’m a huge fan of yours, and I know that you’ve had some issues reconciling your own life with loved ones within the Catholic Church. Your advice would be appreciated.

The Schismatic

Man… so intolerant.

I’m talking about you, TS, not your brother-in-law. Don’t get me wrong: Your brother-in-law sounds like total douchedrizzle. But he has a right to his opinions and a right to express them. You have a right to your opinions, too, of course, and just as much a right to express them. When St. Paul goes off on premarital sex or the ordination of women or the gays and their Prada loafers, smile and tell him he’s full of shit. But unless you live with him—and I can’t imagine you would’ve omitted that detail—you don’t see him too often, right? Tolerate his bullshit—that’s what family does—and count your blessings.

And don’t complain about every word that comes out of his mouth and then gripe about how little he has to say to you.

mail@savagelove.net

Download Dan’s podcast every Tuesday at www.thestranger.com/savage

I’m running late for Spartopia

On set of the filming of Republic of Doyle on Water Street.

Photo by Mark Bennett — www.markbennett.me

Zebra is showing

FOOM

Precious Fathers’ new album takes time to fully digest

Precious Fathers
Alluvial Fan
(White Whale Records)
Vancouver-based instrumental band Precious Fathers’ new album is a dense soup of cavernous guitars, grandiose swells and dramatic dynamics—but it never strays too far from a warm emotional center. The band constructs its songs from slow tidal crescendos, always with a steady, driving pulse moving things forward. While the album is on the introspective and meditative side of the Tortoise/Do Make Say Think canon, the album never feels overly melancholic. It’s hard to describe the sound without using the word “cinematic” or imagining wide open vistas while you listen to it, the songs go for gradual understated shifts as opposed to sudden shocks and if there’s a major problem with the record it’s that it lacks the show-stopping technical showiness to grip the listener fully on first listen. This album takes time to fully digest, but if you’re a patient listener it’s well worth the effort.

—Patrick Canning
www.throwingstonesatyou.blogspot.com

Free Will Astrology

Photo by Nico van Diem

Cancer (June 21 – July 22)
I invite you to write down brief descriptions of the five most pleasurable moments you’ve ever experienced in your life. Let your imagination dwell lovingly on these memories for, say, 20 minutes. And keep them close to the surface of your awareness in the week ahead. If you ever catch yourself slipping into a negative train of thought, interrupt it immediately and compel yourself to fantasize about those Big Five Ecstatic Moments. This exercise will be an excellent way to prime yourself for a New Age of Unhurried Bliss and Gentle Beauty, which I predict is just ahead for you. If you can keep the morose part of your mind quiet, there’s a good chance you will stir up a new ecstatic experience that will belong near the top of your all-time list. Happy birthday to Ryan Davis, Dan Galway, and Mark White.

Leo (July 23 – August 22)
Welcome to your aromatherapy workshop, Leo. We’ll be using imaginary scents because, frankly, sometimes fantasy yields better results than the real thing. (Especially for you right now; keep that in mind as you deal with other situations in your life.) For your first exercise, imagine the aromas of eucalyptus and vinegar. That’ll clear your head of static, creating a nice big empty space for your fresh assignment to come pouring in from the future. Next, imagine the fragrance of hot buttered popcorn. It will make you more receptive to the outside help that has been trying and trying and trying to attract your attention. Have you ever taken a new computer out of the box? Remember that smell? Simulate it now. In your subconscious mind, it will awaken the expectation that the next chapter of your life story is about to begin.. Happy birthday to Neil Conway, Jordan Canning, and Carolyn Stokes.

Virgo (August 23 – September 22)
O ye of little faith: Do ye not understand that the events of mid-July through mid-August of 2009 are but the fruition of seeds ye planted in September, October, and November of last year? Do not thank or blame the gods, but only thyself, for the destiny that is upon ye. Now please prepare to assume thy new goodies and perks, O favored one, as well as thy new temptations and headaches, with full knowledge that ye are receiving the exact rewards and responsibilities ye earned many months ago.

Libra (September 23 – October 22)
Sometimes this job of mine grinds me down with a heavy sense of responsibility. Am I doing the right thing by divulging so many cosmic secrets? Do people use my advice in good ways? This week I’m especially tormented. Would it be ethical of me to reveal that you could dig a hot tip out of a wastebasket, or that you could prosper because of someone else’s foolishness? Or how about if I disclosed that you’ve temporarily acquired a dicey edge over a competitor who’s previously kicked your butt? And would it be mean of me to suggest that you shouldn’t share a vast idea with a half-vast person? I guess I’ll just have to trust that you’ll show maximum integrity in using all of this inside dope.

Scorpio (October 23 – November 21)
There goes your exaggerated respect for warped chunks of complications. Here comes an opportunity to make a break for bubbly freedom. To take advantage, Scorpio, you’ll need to travel much lighter. So please peel off your armor. Wipe that forty-pound sneer of doubt off your face. Bury your broken-down theories by the side of the path, and donate all your unnecessary props to the birds and the bees. Strip down, in other words, to the bare minimum. Where you’re going all you’ll need are your good looks and a big fresh attitude.

Sagittarius (Nov 22 – December 21)
Don’t leave me hanging, Sagittarius. What happens next? How could you even imagine you’ve wrapped the whole thing up? According to my analysis, you’ve got at least one more riddle to solve, one more gift to negotiate, one more scar to wish upon. (Yes, that says “scar,” not “star.”) To stop pushing for more adventure at this pregnant moment would be a crime against nature and a whole chapter short of a bestseller. Get out there and bring this story home.

Capricorn (December 22 – January 19)
It makes me famished just to think of you there stewing in your hunger. You almost remind me of a bear that’s just awoken from hibernation or a political prisoner who’s been on a hunger strike. And yet I know it’s not a craving for food that you’re suffering from. It’s not even an impossible yearning for sex or fame or power or money, either. You’re starving, you’re ravenous, you’re mad for something you don’t have a name for — something whose existence you don’t fully understand and can’t quite imagine. But I predict you’ll uncover a fuller truth about this thing very soon, and then you’ll be more than halfway toward gratifying your hunger.

Aquarius (January 20 – February 18)
If I were your daddy, I’d take you mountain-climbing or buy you a three-week intensive class in the foreign tongue of your choice. If I were your president, I’d give you a Purple Heart for your undercover heroism and make you ambassador to Italy. If I were your therapist, I’d send you on a pilgrimage to a sanctuary where everyone means exactly what they say. But I’m merely your five-minutes-a-week consultant, so all I can really do is say, “Escape the cramped quarters of your own mind. Slip away from the corners you’ve been backed into. Stop telling the convoluted stories you’ve concocted to rationalize why you should be afraid. Get out of the loop and escape into the big, fresh places that will rejuvenate your eyes and heart.”

Pisces (February 19 – March 20)
Long-standing myths are on the verge of mutating. Stories that have remained fixed for years are about to acquire unexpected wrinkles. The effects may be pretty spectacular. I suspect it’ll be the equivalent of Sleeping Beauty waking up from her long sleep without the help of the prince’s kiss, or like Little Red Riding Hood devouring the wolf instead of vice versa. There’s something you can do, Pisces, to ensure that the new versions of the old tales are more empowering than the originals: For the foreseeable future, take on the demeanor and spirit of a noble warrior with high integrity and a fluid sense of humor.

Aries (March 21 – April 19)
I fear you’re on the verge of slipping into a state of mind that wants everything and is therefore in danger of getting nothing. I worry that you’ll be lusting for such total control over so much wild sweetness that you won’t actually formulate a foolproof plan to commune with even a pinch of that sweetness. Let’s see if we can motivate you to overthrow this state of mind. Let’s try to coax you into devising a precise strategy to assemble paradise piece by piece.

Taurus (April 20 – May 20)
Cuckoo birds build no nests of their own. Instead, they rely on trickery to raise their young. The female cuckoo lays her eggs in the nest of a host whose eggs are similar in size and color. The host, often a sparrow, cares for the cuckoo’s eggs as her own, and usually rears the hatchlings until they reach maturity. Does this behavior ring a bell? I suspect that something analogous is unfolding in your world. I’m alerting you to the situation so that you will be fully informed as you decide how to proceed. (P.S. I’m not saying this is a bad thing; just want you to acknowledge the truth.)

Gemini (May 21 – June 20)
I hate to admit it, but love is not always enough to solve every problem. On some occasions you need love, clever insights, strategic maneuvers, and fierce determination. In my astrological opinion, this is one of those times. Take a moment right now to shush the grumbling dialogue you keep having with yourself about what’s fair and what you deserve. Save all that mental energy for the work of fighting like hell for the fair share you deserve. Oh, and while you’re fighting like hell, don’t forget to be as strategic as Gandhi, as loving as Einstein, and as fiercely determined as Jack Black, Ben Stiller, and Sarah Silverman combined.

Homework: Make a guess about the most important bit of self-knowledge you’re still ignorant about. Testify at www.FreeWillAstrology.com

Google is not a source

Music Thursday, July 16

Classic Rock Thursday: Terry Mack, Jace Hardcack, no cover, Loft 709

Denis Parker & Scott Goudie Band, Fat Cat Blues Bar

Dave Panting, Erin’s Pub

Downstairs Mix-Up, 11pm, $3, CBTGs

Fergus O’Byrne (7pm), Larry Foley & Patrick Moran (10:30pm), O’Reilly’s Irish Pub

Fred Jorgenson & Arthur O’Brien, Kelly’s Pub

International Student Night: DJ Chamba, Turkey Joe’s

Jazz Fest Party: The Al Robmon Quintet, $5, 10pm, Distortion

Jerry Stamp, Andrew Ledrew, midnight, no cover, Bull & Barrel

Karla Pilgrim (I‘ll Think of You Cd release), Chris Kirby (blues), Terri-Lynn Eddy (rock), Jill Porter (rock), 8pm, $10, Bella Vista

Kyle Keough & Adrian Whelan, Whalen’s Pub

MacLovin, Dusk Ultra Lounge

Matthew Byrne (7pm), Middle Tickle (10:30pm), Shamrock City Pub

Night Music: Anchor band is AE Bridger, improvisors welcome, 9:30pm, $4,The Ship

Rockin’ Thursdays, The Levee

Scott Conway, Whalen’s Pub

Steve Colbourne & Friends, Rose & Thistle

Terry Mack, The Dock

The Slaughter: Metal Night, 10pm, The Levee

Tony Benn (Irish singer-songwriter) 10:30pm, The Grapevine

Unlimited, Green Sleeves

Women of Motown & Soul Tribute, $26, Holy Heart Theatre-55 Bonaventure Ave 579-4424

Wreckhouse Jazz & Blues Festival: Griffith Hiltz Trio (8pm), Patrick Boyle Trio (10pm), $15, Yellow Belly Brewery

Wreckhouse Jazz & Blues Festival: Jimmy Thomson Trio with Katie Hopkins (9:30pm & 11pm), Brandi Disterheft (10:15pm & 11:45pm), $15, Martini Bar

Wreckhouse Jazz & Blues Festival: Johnston & Lear, 4pm, $5, Martini Bar deck

Wreckhouse Jazz & Blues Festival: Gramercy Riffs (9pm), Kirsten Price (10pm), $10, Dusk Ultra Lounge

Wreckhouse Jazz & Blues Festival: Parker Goudie Band, 9:30pm, $10, Fat Cat Blues Bar

Wreckhouse Jazz & Blues Festival: A Tribute to the Women of Motown & Soul, 8pm, $30, Holy Heart Auditorium