Search Results for: The Globe and Mail

The Great Cannabis Experiment: Ian Brown on Growing Your Own Weed

Cannabis has been legal in Canada since October 17, 2018. As part of a fun experiment, Globe and Mail journalist Ian Brown attempts his own miniature grow op in a sealed hydroponic container called a Grobo. It will be easy, they said, it will be odor-free, they said. Sadly, neither was true. After one failed sprout and one dead sprout, Brown succeeds as his plant, Gretchen, grows to maturity. Growing your own pot is a lot harder than it looks.

Suddenly, Mr. Stewart said: “Why don’t you grow some pot?” His theory, from what I could make of it, in between the references to Moby Dick and fly fishing – Mr. Stewart likes to operate on at least three channels at once – was that this quest to grow marijuana would acquaint me with the obsessions of the gardening mind, that jungle of detail and duty in which a watchful soul evades the thugs Random Weather and Lurking Pestilence and manages, with little more than a seed and her dirt-stained hands and her patience, to create something more. At least I think that was what was on my editor’s mind. The point is, he did not for a moment consider the likelihood of humiliation. Editors seldom do. But it’s always lurking somewhere in a gardener’s sense of the future.

The following September, I happened upon the Grobo, a marijuana-growing device. It seemed to solve a lot of problems. I am an eager if inept gardener, but growing pot is complicated. It was winter, for starters. Growing it indoors in my house was never going to happen, because of the smell and the stigma.

The Grobo, on the other hand, was a data-based, tech-driven, algorithmic answer to the mercurial unkemptness of Nature herself: a self-contained metal unit that did the dirty work for you. It looked like a stereo speaker, and was depicted on the Grobo website sitting demurely in the sleek living room of what was obviously a high-rise. It grew hydroponic cannabis of any variety one plant at a time, from seed (nowadays clones work, too), and was managed via an app on a cellphone. For an inexperienced blackthumb, it seemed perfect.

I tested some of my first weed that very afternoon, drying it beforehand for 10 seconds in the microwave, which I have since learned does not enhance the terpene profile of cannabis. But the high did not make me want to cut off my head and mail it to some Salome of my ancient acquaintance, which I thought was a plus. Meanwhile, my most experienced pot-smoking friend popped some in a jar for two days with a two-way humidity-control packet. He later sent me an evaluation. “Pretty much exclusively a head high,” he wrote, “in the classic sativa style … the vibe is more torque than speed so the effect lasts longer but you don’t get the burnout. Very serviceable.” He noted that the taste was “a bit musty front end, turns sweet at the back end with a hint of cinnamon and goat.” His note was spatially disorganized, uncharacteristically for him: he later admitted that the pot had made him want to do his housecleaning at the same time. I took that as a compliment.

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There Is No Other Way To Say This

Tony Comiti / Getty, Illustration by Homestead

Melissa Batchelor Warnke | Longreads | May 2019 | 14 minutes (3,668 words)

 

“What you have heard is true. I was in his house.” So begins one of the most famous poems of the late twentieth century, Carolyn Forché’s “The Colonel,” which was part of an early body of work that seemed to contemporary admirers as if it had “reinvent[ed] the political lyric at a moment of profound depoliticization.” The poem describes a meeting Forché had with a Salvadoran military leader in his home in 1978, a year before the coup that sparked that country’s extraordinarily brutal civil war, which lasted for more than twelve years. The poem’s power lies in the quick juxtaposition of quotidian details — the colonel’s daughter filing her nails, a cop show playing on TV, mangoes being served — with his sudden sadistic flourish:

…………..The colonel returned with a sack used to bring groceries
home. He spilled many human ears on the table. They were like
dried peach halves. There is no other way to say this. He took one
of them in his hands, shook it in our faces, dropped it into a water
glass. It came alive there. I am tired of fooling around he said. As
for the rights of anyone, tell your people they can go fuck them-
selves. He swept the ears to the floor with his arm and held the last
of his wine in the air………..

“Something for your poetry, no?” the colonel says next. The implication is clear; the young human rights advocate’s writing is pointless, the colonel’s position will forever afford him impunity. Read more…

If You Should Find Yourself in the Dark

Illustration by Wenting Li

Debbie Weingarten | Longreads | May 2019 | 14 minutes (3,460 words)

If your son cries in the night, begin a slow insistent hush. With your lips, make the sound of a snake. Even before you are fully awake, place your bare feet on the floor. Say, Mama is coming, and then creep past the purple glow of the nightlight to where he is a ball in his bed.

Lay your hand on his back.

If the covers have gone astray, or if his brother’s pinwheel feet are in his face, or if he has rolled onto the plastic toy he took to bed — fix it all. Place the covers back beneath his chin. Readjust the brother, put the toy on the shelf, kiss the forehead. Feel your way back through the darkness, over the sleeping dog.

***

Long ago, my parents were spelunkers. They would disappear into a hole in the ground, unsure of where the cave would lead, and pick their way along in the dark, their carbide lights illuminating the stalactites and stalagmites. They insist they felt excitement and possibility.

Once they brought my brother and me to a cave they remembered from college. It was supposed to be a family adventure. Together we would explore, and my parents would remember the way out.

What I recall is the surprising totality of darkness. And the terror I felt when we squeezed through the smallest of passageways. And the solidness — the unmoveableness — of the rock. If I breathed out or turned my shoulders in a certain way, I imagined I could be stuck there forever. If anything were to give, it would not be the rock; it would be my girl-sized bones.

Decades later, I still cannot relax into the dark.
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Canada’s Breeding Ground for Hate

Jacques Boissinot/The Canadian Press via AP

The country that seems so attractive to so many Americans fatigued by Trump, racism, and conservative politics is not immune to the violent nationalism that plagues its southern neighbors. For the Globe and Mail, Shannon Carranco and Jon Milton examine some 150,000 messages posted on a video game app to expose the new Canadian far-right’s attempts to expand its network, recruit members, and influence politics. Better educated and organized than past generations, this new generation of racist, anti-immigrant, sexist homophobes aims to create a white ethno-state. Rather than paraphrase the nationalists’ vitriol, the Globe chose “transparency and accuracy” by including direct transcripts of offensive conversations in order, the paper writes, to paint “a disturbing portrait of a virulent subculture that speaks in a graphic, hate-fuelled vernacular.” This is excellent reporting.

Not long ago, the far right seemed a negligible force. In 2014, CSIS declared on its website that right-wing extremism was not a significant problem in Canada. In part, that lack of concern reflected a view of the far right as self-defeatingly fractious. Groups tended to spring up – and disappear ­– with regularity, often destroyed by infighting. They were dismissed as an ineffectual rump of high-school dropouts who couldn’t effectively organize anything.

According to Barbara Perry, a professor at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology and a leading expert on the far right in Canada, the threat of far-right violence here is often underestimated. Between 1985 and 2015, her research shows, roughly 120 violent incidents in Canada could be attributed to far-right groups and individuals. That compares, she says, with a relative handful of incidents that can be attributed to Islamist-inspired suspects, who tend to draw far more intense scrutiny from police and intelligence agencies.

Among the most horrific examples in recent years were a deliberate attack on police in New Brunswick in 2014, in which three officers were killed; and a shooting at a Quebec City mosque in January, 2017, that left six people dead. In both cases, the men convicted of the killings had been radicalized online.

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The Women Characters Rarely End Up Free: Remembering Rachel Ingalls

Gaia Banks / New Directions Publishing

Ruby Brunton | Longreads | April 2019 | 10 minutes (2,674 words)

Rachel Ingalls, who passed away earlier this year at the age of 78, was a writer who did not seek out the spotlight, but found it not at all unpleasant when at last it came. Beyond a small circle of loyal friends and regular visits to Virginia to see her family, Ingalls lived a fairly reclusive existence after her move from the U.S. to the U.K. in 1965. “I’m not exactly a hermit,” she said, “but I’m really no good at meeting lots of strangers and I’d resent being set up as the new arrival in the zoo. It’s just that that whole clubby thing sort of gives me the creeps.”

A writer of fantastical yet slight works of fiction, with a back catalog numbering 11 titles in total, Ingalls flew more or less under the literary radar until recent years, when the newfound interest that followed the 2017 re-issue of her best-known book, Mrs. Caliban, also finally allowed her readers to learn about her processes and motivations; the attention slowly brought her into the public eye. Reviews across the board revered the oddly taciturn novella, in which mythic elements and extraordinary happenings are introduced into the lives of otherwise normal people by a prose remarkable for its clarity and quickness. “Ingalls writes fables whose unadorned sentences belie their irreducible strangeness.” Wrote Lidija Haas in The New Yorker; in the same piece she described Ingalls as “unjustly neglected.” (Mrs. Caliban was also lightheartedly celebrated as a venerable addition to popular culture’s mysterious year of fish sex stories, a fittingly strange introduction of her work to a broader readership.)  Read more…

No Heart, No Moon

AP Photo

Matt Jones | The Southern Review | Summer 2018 | 22 minutes (4,337 words)

 

The space race killed the sparrow.

Of course, there were other factors.

There was the decision in ’46 by the Brevard Mosquito Control District to slather the Merritt Island salt marshes in DDT dropped aerially from a No. 2 diesel–fuel carrier.

Then, because the mosquitoes grew resistant to DDT, there was the application of BHC and Dieldrin and Malathion.

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Family Animals

The Philippine Constabulary Band at the 1904 World’s Fair. Grace’s great grandfather, Pedro Navarro, stands in the front row second to the right holding a piccolo. Photo courtesy of the Missouri Historical Society, St. Louis / Restless Books

Grace Talusan| an excerpt from The Body Papers | Restless Books | April 2019 | 16 minutes (4,046 words)

 

“Did I ever tell you about the dog I had in the Philippines?” my father asked me when I was younger.

As a boy, my father lived in Tondo, the most densely populated area of Manila, infamous for its slums and high crime rates. Before it burned down, his family lived in a house above their sari-sari store, where they sold prepared foods, snacks, soda, and other convenience items. You could buy single sticks of cigarettes and gum, a dose of aspirin, or a packet of shampoo good for one wash. When he shared stories about his childhood, my American sensibilities were always shocked.

One day, a street dog followed him home and joined the other dogs already living in his family’s yard. The dogs didn’t have names; they were all called aso, dog. “Our dogs were not for petting,” my father explained. “They were low-tech burglar alarms and garbage disposals.”

But this dog was special. Totoy named his dog, “Lucky,” after, Lucky Strikes cigarettes. This detail still astounds me: At eight years old, my father had a favorite brand of cigarettes.

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Other Rachel Lyons

Getty / Photo illustration by Katie Kosma

Rachel Lyon | Longreads | April 2019 | 23 minutes (5,849 words)

 

I signed up for Gmail in 2005, a month after graduating college and outgrowing my .edu address. Technically the service was still in beta testing. It was early enough that I could claim my entire name, beginning to end, no numbers or crazy characters. The simplicity of my “OG handle”speaks to its vintage. I have to admit I’m rather proud of it. It also means I get a lot of correspondence not actually meant for me. Since I joined Gmail, it has grown to more than 1.5 billion active users: 20% of the world’s population. Since I joined Gmail, the world’s population itself has increased by 1+ billion! There are only so many words in the English language. There are only so many variations. Social media handles are stolen and sold like Uranium on the black market. IP addresses are finite.

I am included on the timesheet of a Melbourne store, Boost Juice — scheduled to work the closing shift on March 24 — and on the agenda for the 64th annual general meeting of the Citizens Advice Bureau in a small town outside of London. World Vision UK writes to thank me for my “donation of 10” (ten what, I don’t know). Kid to Kid Utah thanks me, too, for a donation of $9.32 worth of used children’s items. I am notified that my job application to teach at primary school in Leeds, UK, has been received. The school is rated 2.6 out of 5. One review reads: “Want your child to be bullied then send them there.”

One November I receive a note from Matt, who thinks he knows me from East High. “You Freshman Scum! A belated happy birthday this week. Hope all is going well.” (My birthday is in April, and no one would have called me “scum” when I was a high school freshman. I would have blushed. I might have cried.) December, I get a photo from Zoe — subject line: “SNOW,” body copy: “Happy Winter!” — of a courtyard, stone walls, and iron grate, blanketed in white. Adam sends me a photo, accompanied by no text at all, of three men in a lush, walled garden, one holding a Smart Water, the second holding a Starbucks cup, the third showing off three tickets to a Colts game. An American flag is stuck in a flowerpot.

Sophie writes to say how proud she is of my daughter, who “was such a sweet leader in the classroom today.” Marci tells me she signed up her son Cameron for the Abundant Life Garden Project, an after-school program at St. Philips Episcopal Church in Durham, NC, and she thinks my son Jack would have “a fabulous time” there, too. An automated message arrives from a public school in Cherryvale, KS, notifying me that my son Gary is failing English 11. His grade is 39%. What can you do with a kid like Gary? His future is looking bleak. I write to the school to let them know that the email address they’ve got on file for his mother, a different Rachel Lyon, is actually mine. They apologize and I don’t hear from them again — until the following year, when Marla writes to say she’s collecting pictures for a senior slideshow on graduation night, and will need photos of Gary no later than April 19. So Gary’s graduating after all! I’m glad he turned himself around.

One reason for all this misdirected correspondence is there are at least a few hundred people around the world who share my name. According to the dizzying website howmanyofme.com, there are 186 Rachel Lyons, Rachael Lyons, Rachel Lyonses, and Rachael Lyonses in the United States. The consonant-rich website uknames.gbgplc.com approximates 45 people in the UK, including spelling variations. (Canada — not known for its big egos, really — doesn’t seem to have an equivalent site; a search for an equivalent Australian site yielded suggestions for the following “related searches”: how many Daniels are in the world? how many people are named Mitchell? how many people in the world are named Humphrey? Apparently Daniels, Mitchells, and Humphreys are peculiarly given to egosurfing.) We Rachel Lyons are a not insignificant population.

Another reason I get so very much email, I suspect, is that when people are prompted to enter their email addresses to get something they want — free samples; access to 30 days of unlimited whatever — but don’t want to get all the spam that comes with doing so, they enter something else. What’s an easier address to think up than one’s-own-name@gmail? Given the number of digital receipts I get for things I didn’t buy, I know many Rachel Lyons have put my address down to misdirect their spam. If you’re a Rachel Lyon and you’re reading this, please know: I am here, I am real, I am receiving your correspondence, and I don’t want your spam any more than you do.

I do, however, very much enjoy the non-spam correspondence. An email is a glimpse into another life, a fragment of a story. Maybe I love getting other people’s mail because I am a fiction writer. Maybe I’m a fiction writer because I love getting other people’s mail. Chicken or egg, I do not know. All I know is it gives me a little rush. I read my misdirected correspondence carefully. I read it nosily. I read it with a little voyeuristic thrill and odd surprising pangs of envy. Rationally I know that to share a name with someone is a simple, random thing. Irrationally I can’t help but feel connected to the other Rachel Lyons of the world.

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‘Craft Is My Belief System. My Obligation To Writing Is Religious.’

RASimon / Getty

Lily Meyer | Longreads | March 2019 | 9 minutes (2,302 words)

 

Nathan Englander has been writing fiction about Jews in America for nearly as long as I’ve been a Jew in America. I stole my mother’s copy of his debut collection, For the Relief of Unbearable Urges, as a nine-year-old, and was both enthralled and baffled by his stories of Orthodox identity and longing.

Since then, Englander has written a play, another story collection, and three novels, the most recent of which, kaddish.com, opens with a secular Jew named Larry who refuses to say daily Kaddish for his dead father. Saying Kaddish is, according to Jewish law, the eldest son’s duty, but Larry can’t bring himself to return to the synagogue he has left behind. Instead, he finds a solution on the then-new Internet: he’ll pay a rabbinical student in Jerusalem to take on his filial duty. Years later, Larry returns to Orthodox Judaism, reinventing himself as a yeshiva teacher named Reb Shuli. He’s happily married, and comfortable in his reclaimed community. The sole stain on his Jewish life is his failure to say Kaddish for his father. His guilt swells into an obsession, and soon, he’s off to Israel to track down the proprietor of kaddish.com and get back the birthright he e-signed away.

Englander tells Shuli’s story in the language Shuli knows best: The Yiddish-inflected, Hebrew-sprinkled English of religious American Jews. He writes with humor, pathos, and irrepressible life. I thought often of Grace Paley as I read kaddish.com, and of the Coen brothers’ movie A Serious Man, which, as it turns out, Englander loves. We spoke on the phone about the Coen brothers, Philip Roth’s secular funeral, and other questions of Jewish-American identity. Like my nine-year-old self, I was enthralled. Read more…

Uncertain Ground

Getty / Photo illustration by Katie Kosma

Grace Loh Prasad | Longreads | March 2019 | 16 minutes (4,021 words)

In early October, I noticed my Taiwanese and Chinese American friends posting photos of large family gatherings and moon cakes. Others posted photos of visiting the graves of family members. I felt a wave of panic and guilt. Had I missed Tomb Sweeping Day, when I should have been honoring my deceased parents? On the other hand, I remembered and looked forward to Dia de los Muertos, a holiday I hadn’t grown up with but learned about over more than 20 years of living in California. How could I feel such a strong affinity for a Mexican cultural tradition, while being so ignorant of the holidays observed by the Taiwanese and Chinese diaspora?

A quick Wikipedia search revealed that I had gotten my holidays mixed up. Mid-Autumn Festival celebrates the full moon at harvest time, with families reuniting for a traditional feast and moon cakes. Tomb Sweeping Day (Qing Ming) is one of several holidays to remember your ancestors, but it’s observed in spring. I could not remember which was which because my family did not really celebrate these holidays. Although I was born in Taiwan, I spent my early childhood in New Jersey, and then from fourth grade through high school graduation, we lived in Hong Kong.

We were a curious cultural hybrid: a family of Taiwanese origin living as American expatriates in a British territory where we resembled the local Chinese population, but did not speak the same language and had little in common with them. I attended an American school full of American and international students. One of the advantages of attending Hong Kong International School was that we got American, British and Chinese holidays off: Thanksgiving, the Queen’s Birthday and Lunar New Year.

I’m sure we learned about Mid-Autumn Festival and Qing Ming, but they weren’t as memorable as Lunar New Year, the biggest holiday of the year when everyone got a week off from school or work. Children and younger relatives received lai see (hong bao), red envelopes filled with spending money, and employees received their annual bonuses. I remember going with my parents to join the enormous crowds down in Causeway Bay, pushing for a spot close to the harbor to get the best view of the spectacular fireworks. Stores and restaurants tried to outdo each other with elaborate “Kung Hei Fat Choy” decorations and special menus and promotions. Everywhere you went, people were in a festive good mood.

Since we did not have any relatives in Hong Kong, there were no family obligations during Lunar New Year. It was only the four of us — my mom, dad, brother Ted and me — so at most we would go out for a fancy restaurant meal. We did not go from house to house with bottles of Johnny Walker or baskets of tangerines. We did not make hundreds of homemade dumplings or go to the bank to request a wad of crisp new bills to stuff into red envelopes for my younger cousins, nieces and nephews. My parents might have hung up modest decorations outside our apartment door, but I think it was just for show, so we would not appear strange to our neighbors.

Once I asked my parents why we didn’t do more to celebrate the Taiwanese and Chinese holidays. “Well,” my dad said, “it’s because we are Christian. From when we were little, we only celebrated Christmas and Easter. Your grandpa was very strict. We were forbidden from observing any of the non-Christian, Taiwanese traditions because that was considered superstitious.”

I was relieved that my ignorance was not my fault. But I still felt a void.
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