Jean and I are huge Stratford fans. Most every summer, we get in the car, head west on the 401 and gorge on Shakespeare for two or three days.
Last week I was on the phone with the nice woman from the Festival, and she happened to say: “I see the last time you came to the Festival was in 2019. Welcome back!”
2019? Seven years ago? No way.
She replied. “Perhaps if you used a different credit card?”
Hmmmm…I haven’t changed my credit card in eons.
I hung up and thought: “Could it possibly be true?” And of course, my sad, adult conclusion was yes, it was true. And all these years, I’d thought of myself not just as an annual Stratford-goer, but a Stratford-gorger.
This shocking realization naturally led me to ask, What else have I been wrong about? Well, the Shaw Festival for sure. Then there’s Luminato and the Pride Parade and Taste of the Danforth and Caribana. And of course the first part of September is always the Film Festival. I had to admit that I hadn’t been to most of them in years.
The truth is that we go to a lot less than we thought we did.
This earworm of a realization soon spilled over to other things. Like restaurants. If anyone asks what our favourite special occasion restaurant is that we celebrate at or take friends from out of town to, I automatically think Scaramouche even though I know that’s not true. Our one and only special occasion resto for years has been Ki.
Shockingly, the same goes for cities. I love London. I spent my Junior Year Abroad there. But only after going there last month did I realize it had been a decade since I’d visited my favourite second city. Other destinations – new, urgent, enticing – have edged it aside. Yet I still speak of London the way I do of Stratford. (New York is different because I think I’m boycotting it. We’ll see.)
The biggest fallacy of course is exercise. I discovered this to my shock two summers ago at the cottage when I tried to leap across some rocks on the Georgian Bay shore. I almost killed myself. Where did my fantastic sense of balance go? The same place my throwing arm did. Both of these aging realizations landed on the same day. I invited my 9-year-old grandson to throw a baseball on the lawn, and discovered that my arms were as bad as my feet in doing my bidding.
True, part of this forgetting is a function of age. But a much bigger part is from refusing to age. It’s part of my character. I think of myself as the kind of person who goes to Stratford every summer, and not just for the Shakespeare, but for the food and the ambiance and, of course, for being in the company of other Shakespeare-food-ambiance people.
A branding friend explained this to me one day when he asked whether I liked Starbucks coffee or Tim Hortons coffee. I thought hard about that and told him that when I’m in the city, I always go to Starbucks, but when I’m outside the city, on the way to our cottage, I only go to Tim Hortons.
“So there’s a City Bob and a Country Bob?”
Yes, I guess there is.
And the fact that City Bob likes to go to Stratford Country, or even thinks he does, speaks to the marvelous ways we can delude ourselves into thinking what we believe is what we do.
So I’ll see you next Saturday night at Othello where Iago says in Act I, Scene 1: “I am not what I am.”
Meanwhile…
0. As in Ground Zero for the strange soupy yellow air in Toronto. It’s all about this.
1. The surprisingly comforting science behind grief. Grief isn’t just feeling very sad for a long time. It’s one of the most stressful things people can endure.
Last week, The New Yorker advanced our thinking on that science, with an article about EMDR Therapy. Indeed, there’s now an EMDR International Association website.
2. Room for just two more hem-of-heaven seekers. Join us at The Canada Summit, the fabulous four-day heli-hiking trip from Aug. 30 to Sept. 3, where four leading Canadians (Steve Paikin, Dr. Heather Ross, Ron Deibert, and Cynthia Wesley-Esquimaux) will discuss where we’re headed around politics, healthcare, cyber and Indigenous relations. If you can walk around your kitchen table, you can heli-hike. Details here and register here.
3. In what world is Canada the 13th most powerful country on earth? It’s true.
And here are the best countries for quality of life. We’re Number 3! One reason could be the next-gen Einsteins we’re attracting, like Sabrina Gonzalez-Pasterski.
Oh, and here’s another reason Toronto is so cool.
4. Heart attacks in soccer spectators… where penalty shots trigger heart attacks. And especially in watching and playing in the World Cup.
And speaking of which, here’s the Norwegian team landing back home. And speaking of winners, this Canadian agency designed the uniforms for all the Women’s Professional Baseball League teams.
Here also, The Paris Review sums up the World Cup. Except for this: Do you know there was a Women’s World Cup in 1971 in Mexico City? But despite being played in front of 112,500 spectators, FIFA covered the whole thing up, as this documentary reveals. And finally, what happens 9 months after the World Cup ends?
5. Weston winner. Join Hanif Abdurraqib, the winner of this year’s Weston International Award for non-fiction, on Monday, September 14, at a public talk at the ROM hosted by CBC’s Ali Hassan. Tickets here.
Meanwhile, tickets for the Canadian Opera Company production of La Traviata go on sale on Monday. Verdi’s romantic opera runs from Sept. 18 to Oct. 17 and stars Lucia Cesaroni, Long Long and Russell Braun. When you get your tickets, be sure to key in LUCIA26 to show your support for our pal Lucia who plays Violetta Valery, the tragic protagonist.
6. They’re out there. Unidentified Flying Objects have had a bad rap. But serious science is now looking at them and finding…well, they’re still not sure. After a name change in 2021, UAPs (Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena) are getting their own conference, the first outside the U.S. On the weekend of July 24-26, the Scientific Coalition for UAP Studies (UAP) will present Christopher Mellon, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, and former Minority Staff Director, U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Details here. Oh…and speaking of Mellon Collections, see here (paywall, but it’s free).
Also out there are the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted Fugitives and the RCMP works with other Canadian police forces on the 25 Most Wanted and Britain’s National Crime Agency has the Most Wanted. The Canadian site is by far the best.
7. Moving the Bayeux Tapestry. The 950-year-old depiction of the Norman Conquest of England in 1066 is coming ‘home’ to The British Museum. It will be on show there from Sept. 10 to July 11, 2027.
8. Tom Cruise doesn’t look himself. But in Digger, which opens in October, I don’t think he has to. Speaking of aging action heroes, damn that Van Damme is so good. And on the subject of optical illusions, do you think you can tell if something is written by AI? Or photo-ed by AI? Also, how do you explain (let alone survive) that it’s sufferingly hot?
9. Canada: 2. Ocean Gravesites: 0. The Royal Canadian Geographical Society scored an unheard of twosome, unearthing two famous ocean shipwrecks in a single expedition. First for the Heroic Age Expedition was Shackleton’s last ship, Quest, and this week, the Terra Nova, the last ship of the British Antarctic explorer Robert Falcon Scott. The RCGS and partners Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution are creating a three-dimensional twin of both ships to be used for future study and storytelling.
10. How to get your book published. The CEO of Hachette, one of the world’s largest book publishers, explains what they look for. Also, you can join the Princeton Pre-Read. Also, what one word describes “fear of palindromes”? A palindrome itself. Also, what human trafficking looks like. And prosthetic limbs as works of art, and finally, why can’t we have ‘click to cancel’ legislation like they will in New York City?
11. What I’m listening to. A wonderful CBC podcast called “Aftermath: The Hunt for the Anthrax Killer.” Most of us have forgotten that right after 9/11, there was a second terrorist attack via anthrax-laced letters. People died, but the attacker has never been caught. Worth a hearing for sure.