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Spring! And Conferences are popping up all over!

After a long and difficult winter, it’s finally spring: conference season. While academic conferences run year ‘round, there’s an overabundance of them when the winter term ends and before everyone takes off to wherever for research and/or down-time. I’d submitted abstracts for two, completely forgetting about a third conference that had been postponed from last year. So having done no conferences last year, I did three in three weeks—which is kind of nuts, but sort of fun too.DSC_0240

The Canadian Society for the Study of Comics held its third annual conference on May 9-10 in Toronto in conjunction with the Toronto Comics Arts Festival. I’d submitted a proposal on the medicalization of comic book superheroes, something I’m considering expanding towards post-doc research. I thought it might be a little off-side for them, but they went for it. I was hoping to get input from people who’ve read more comics than I have, and I wasn’t disappointed. Having taken lots of notes, however, I’ve set that work aside for now to focus on the dissertation. Can’t do a post-doc until I’ve finished the doc!

From May 20-22, I attended an independent conference held at Humber in Toronto. I’d never been to their campus and was really impressed with both its buildings and its green space. In November 2012, I’d attended a conference sponsored by the International Network for Alternative Academia in Montreal. Unfortunately, it was just days after Hurricane Sandy had decimated the north-eastern seaboard and wreaked havoc on air transportation in North America. About half the delegates weren’t able to come, and some of them spent the conference stranded in various airports. This time, in Toronto, with no major catastrophes, attendance was, surprisingly, almost as poor. A bit disappointing. What I really like about these conferences is that they’re interdisciplinary and international; we had scholars in English, philosophy, communication and linguistics, and professionals from psychiatry, writing, activism and acting (I’ve probably missed a few). People came from Ireland, Japan, Spain, the US and Canada (again, I’ve probably missed a few). The other thing I like is that although the papers presented are a jumping off point, the real event is the dialogue between attendees. There’s something exhilarating about a dozen or so intelligent people sitting around a table hashing out some thorny abstract debate. Supporting the conference’s theme of Creating Characters, Inventing Lives, I presented a paper called Embodying Story-Life examining narrative from the seemingly very different perspectives of patient narrative (drawing on work by Arthur Frank) and Native narrative (drawing on work by Thomas King). While there was some interesting discussion, this also brought me back closer to my dissertation.DSC_0239

Yesterday, I took a day-trip to Brock University in St Catharines which was this year’s host for Congress. With many of the major roads in and out of Toronto under repair and causing massive delays, I decided to take the train, which I prefer anyway. VIA proved an expensive option and had limited scheduling for this trip, so I took the GO train. I got out of the city without issue and had a smooth ride to Burlington, where I transferred to the GO bus, well beyond Toronto’s stagnant traffic. The problem is that the GO bus doesn’t arrive at the main terminal in downtown St Catharines, but stops at Fairview Mall. To get from there to Brock via transit requires two city buses and another 30-40 minutes. After two hours in transit already, I splurged on a cab; it’s a short but expensive ride. After arriving on campus, I discovered that I’d worn the wrong shoes. One doesn’t just arrive at Congress; one has to register… on the far side of campus. This was where the throng was gathered. Hot and cold running academics wandered the corridors and great hall, some, like me, looking lost, others hooking up with comrades they only see once a year.

I confess that when I first heard academics talk about Congress with breathy excitement, it sounded like an orgy—and in a way it is. Congress is a veritable smorgasbord of intellectual delights. Organized by the Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, aka SSHRC, Congress brings together 75 Canadian associations and over 8,000 delegates in an annual eight-day interdisciplinary intellectual feeding frenzy. Keynotes, meetings and panels make up the conference’s +2,500 events and +5,000 presentations. Clearly, it was a very different experience from the previous weeks’ more intimate conferences. Although it’s a Canadian academic mainstay, I confess that this is the first time I’ve attended. The numbers make it sound much more daunting than it is in practice, as each organization breaks off into its own area for panels and presentations.

The Canadian Communication Association conference I was part of offered six concurrent sessions, so we ended up with about a dozen people in the audience. What was really exciting was presenting with two of my colleagues from Communication and Culture, Sara Martel and Yukari Seko. It made sense, as we’re all working around imaging related to health, but in very different ways. As I think we’d all intuited when writing the panel abstract for Health Beyond the Visible Surface: Visuality, Technology, Power, our unique work fits together really well. Someone had suggested to me that co-presenting with colleagues would take the pressure off, but I actually felt the opposite. When I was writing Data Ghosts Haunt the Living: Medical Imaging’s “Productive Encounters with Corpses” I was conscious of a sense of responsibility towards the panel, not just myself. Although we had some idea of each others’ dissertation research, engaging with it in twenty-minute presentations clarified how much commonality and divergence our work has. I’m hopeful that we’ll find something more to do with this work together.

I didn’t give myself much opportunity to explore Congress—maybe next time. Someone suggested doing multiple presentations for different organizations at Congress to rack up professional development activities on burgeoning academic curriculum vitas, but that just sounds exhausting to me. I’d want to have everything prepared well in advance. We’ll see what next year brings.

So now I’m back home. Tired, fighting allergies, but enjoying the increased sun and heat. No more conferences on the books for the moment. I won’t be teaching again until late June, and even then it’s only one course. I’m looking forward to having time to focus on the dissertation. I feel much better when I’m actively working on it. Pushing to complete the writing this summer. We’ll see how that goes.DSC_0096

© Catherine Jenkins 2014 all rights reserved

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Old Friends and New Transit

This is my update for Marpril (March and April), even if that does sound like an Agatha Christie heroine. It was an overly busy winter and between an out-of-town reading, researching and writing two articles for peer review, teaching five classes—oh, and trying to write my PhD dissertation—I kind of ran out of time to post anything in March. So this post, on the last day of April, will have to do double duty.

On March 10, I was in Ottawa. I was invited to read at the Carleton University Art Gallery for an event celebrating the work of Dennis Tourbin. I was flown in, put up at a hotel overnight, flown home, and paid a reading fee. Poets don’t usually get treated like that. I felt like a rock star.

The flight left from the Toronto island airport. Calculating transit and the half-hour buffer requested by the airline, I figured that leaving 90 minutes to travel the maybe 40 minutes to the airport, was ample. The subway, which had been closed for signal upgrades the previous weekend (I was travelling on a Monday morning) moved painfully slowly down the University line. I waited 20 minutes for the airport shuttle that runs every 15 minutes. I waited 15 minutes for the airport ferry. I arrived at the island airport as my flight was gunning down the runway. For the first time in my life, I actually missed a flight. They readily re-booked me, and another passenger, on the next flight to Ottawa. But seriously, there’s no way it should take 90 minutes to get from the Annex to the island. That’s longer than it takes me to get to Pearson International airport. It just shows how truly broken Toronto transit is.

My old friend Michael Dennis picked me up in Ottawa. When I hadn’t arrived as expected, he wondered if we’d missed each other, if we’d failed to recognize each other after so many years. But in fact, we recognized each other instantly. He drove me back to Kirsti and his house where we spent the afternoon talking. Their house is full of art. It made me realize that I need to get the art back up on my walls. I took it down to repaint a couple of years ago and still haven’t gotten around to putting most of it back up. I realize that this is part of why I feel somewhat dislocated these days. We picked up Kirsti from work and went for dinner, then on to the main event.

More than fifty people packed into a gallery full of Dennis’s work. I got to see folks I hadn’t seen in decades, folks from Ottawa and from Peterborough too. There was John and Terri and Billy the K, Grant and Rob, Gilles and Larry. I was only in Ottawa overnight, so wasn’t able to see Peter or Sandra or Stuart, but so happy to see the people I did see.

I hadn’t done a reading in a while, and it felt good. Mostly, I read Dennis’s work, adding a couple of my own poems about his death. Being there, reading that work, to a largely familiar audience, was incredibly moving. I was also humbled that Nadia, Dennis’s wife, enjoyed what I did and said that my reading of Dennis’s work gave her chills. That got me thinking about how we are, in sometimes unexpected ways, products of our mentors. I learned cadence and a lot more from Dennis, embodied it without realizing. I felt privileged to be part of this event. Thankful to Dennis for pulling us all together once again; he always did have that kind of magnetism, that light, that pulled people together, that ignited the room with joy. In addition to the artwork and the words, he also left behind a strong sense of community. Thank you.

Waiting to hear about the two articles I submitted. Just received proof pages for a peer-reviewed book chapter being published this fall. More on those happenings as news comes available. As of this morning, I’ve finished this term’s classes, grades are in, and I can relax about teaching for a while. I’m presenting at three conferences in May, two in Toronto and one a day-trip to St Catharines. Mostly, I’ll refocus on the dissertation over the next few months. Some events in the offing for late summer, but if I tell you now, it’ll spoil the fun.

© Catherine Jenkins 2014 all rights reserved

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The Human “Management” of Non-Human Animals

I was as strong in biology in high school as I was in the arts. When, after some trial and error and debate, I finally chose a path, I pursued the arts. When I see the direction biology has gone in the ensuing decades, I’m grateful for the wisdom of my younger self.

When I was in school, the notion was that animals existed as part of a food chain—with humans at the apex (of course). The human ego likes to place us at the top. This is the rhetoric of “Man, the Custodian of Creation,” based on the religious idea that men (and women and everyone between—humans), were placed on Earth as caretakers of what God (or Gods or Goddesses or Mother Nature or Gaia) had created. Given our record, we are clearly at risk of being smote. Whether considering wild or domesticated species, the way we “manage” non-human animals is appalling.

In practice, humans remain at the apex, so that if a human animal is threatened by a non-human animal, even if the human animal is encroaching on the non-human animal’s turf, the non-human animal usually winds up dead. But as we begin to understand how species actually inhabit their territories, we’re realizing that the correlations between animals are much more complex than we’d previously imagined. While we’ve shifted our thinking away from a food chain and towards a food web, these webs are much more complex than we fully comprehend or appreciate. And yet we have the audacity to continue thinking that wild species are somehow ours to “manage.” Through a combination of recklessness and ego, we’re doing a lousy job.

Image by Mansur Gidfar from http://www.bewareofimages.com/

For instance, tigers have lost over 90% of their habitat to human encroachment. Wild tiger populations are down to about 3,200 individuals, and yet they continue to be killed by poachers and because of conflict with human interests. Three tiger subspecies have been hunted to extinction.

In the oceans, estimates for the number of sharks killed annually from overfishing, finning and bycatch range from 100-200 million. While humans generally fear sharks, this slaughter compares with only 72 attacks by sharks on humans in 2013, only ten of which resulted in death. The Pacific coast off California has seen a marked increase in the Humboldt squid population—an animal in whose waters it would be much more dangerous to intrude. While reasons for this population explosion are up for debate, some scientists think it may be due to shark overfishing, as sharks enjoy raw calamari. Sharks, like tigers, are apex predators; remove the sharks, and the natural balance and environment are shaken, sometimes in surprising ways.

But this isn’t just a pissing match between human and non-human predators. Elephants and rhinos are strict vegetarians, and yet they too are being poached at an alarming rate for their tusks and horns. In spite of sanctions and political pressure, demand continues to grow, along with the estimates of the numbers of animals killed. A shocking 30,000 elephants are killed each year for their tusks. In South Africa alone, over 1,000 rhinos were poached in 2013. Consider too that these animals are slow to reach sexual maturity, have long gestation periods, and usually produce only one calf that requires maternal care for at least two or three years.

And these are just a few of the species being decimated by human greed and ignorance. In Canada, we’re acutely aware of the plight of polar bears due to loss of habitat from global warming. Right whale populations are now estimated at about 300-400 individuals worldwide, due to competition with industry and fishing, as well as climate change.

While some organizations, like the World Wildlife Fund and Wild Aid raise awareness through education, support ecotourism as more financially viable than poaching, and work to protect species at risk, other organizations created to caretake wildlife use culling to control populations, rather than supporting natural ecosystems to do this work. I wrote about some disturbing culls a few years ago.

This is the kind of “management” practise that recently led the Copenhagen Zoo to kill a giraffe named Marius, publically dissect him, then feed him to the lions. The zoo refused all alternative offers, and the zoo’s biologist, Stenbaek Bro, argued that Marius was cluttering up the gene pool and that the public dissection was educational. While he’s correct that in the medieval era public dissections were performed for this reason, there is no possible justification now. Anyone who wants to see a giraffe’s anatomy can simply go online or read a book to find the information, without killing another giraffe or traumatizing curious humans.

But it’s not just zoos killing animals. American Wildlife Services are reported to have “accidentally” killed in excess of 50,000 animals since 2000, including protected and rare species. Some organizations are bizarre hybrids that support conservation so their members have plenty of “game” for “sport.” For instance, the British Association for Shooting and Conservation aims, “to promote and protect sporting shooting and the well-being of the natural environment.” This is the kind of statement that assumes that we have a right to “manage” other species and that we actually understand all the complexities of interspecies interrelations.

And it’s not just wild animals at stake. Domesticated animals are non-human animals that human animals have tamed over many generations. We have altered their DNA and behaviour. Recent evidence shows that cats have been domesticated for over 9500 years and dogs have been our pets for 18,800 to 32,100 years. To my mind, a non-human animal that we have domesticated, tamed, is now our responsibility. And yet we don’t act very responsibly. Toronto has an estimate feral cat population of 100,000-200,000. Some of these cats started as someone’s pet, but the someone who adopted them, for whatever reason, didn’t have them spayed or neutered, or abandoned them when they moved. Cats reproduce at an alarming rate (even in the wild, given adequate habitat and hunting grounds), causing the feral population to spike. Organizations like Toronto Street Cat, a coalition of rescue organizations, work hard to neuter these animals, provide them with food and shelter, and find homes for adoptable kittens.

What happens when such volunteer measures aren’t taken? Prior to the 2008 Bejing Summer Olympics, thousands of stray cats were killed. Before the Euro 2012 Soccer Championship in the Ukraine, thousands of stray dogs were killed. And before and during this year’s Winter Olympics in Sochi, thousands of stray dogs, deemed “biological trash,” were killed. In many cases, these domesticated animals were dispatched in horrifying and inhumane ways. But with millions of stray cats and dogs euthanized in shelters each year, we can hardly boast of a superior record.

And this doesn’t even touch the millions of non-human animals killed each year in the name of “sport,” or “fashion,” or “science,” when better alternatives are often available. This doesn’t even touch the contentious issue of the billions of non-human animals raised and slaughtered for food for human animals each year.

Although human animals have enormous egos and a strong sense of entitlement, it is abundantly clear that we do not have the necessary knowledge to “manage” non-human animals successfully. And yet we like to pretend that we do. Part of the oil/tar sands rhetoric is that this destructive industry will put nature back just the way it was when they’re done. Unfortunately, we don’t know how to do that.  A recent short film, How Wolves Change Rivers, underscores how much we don’t understand about natural systems and ecological balances, how much we don’t understand or appreciate the complexity of the natural web of life. When we do such a lousy job of managing our own population, how are we possibly qualified to manage the populations and habitats of other animals?

 

© Catherine Jenkins 2014 all rights reserved

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Recovery, Reflection and a Bright New Year

In mid-August, my head cleared. One morning I woke up feeling normal again. Just like that.

In September 2012, the car I was driving was T-boned by a cabdriver on his cell phone. In seconds, I had a complicated whiplash involving my neck, shoulder and pelvis, and I had a concussion. I didn’t hit my head; I wasn’t knocked out. I had what I have come to refer to as brain slosh. My brain, one of my favourite organs, had been bruised against the inside of my skull. The injury wasn’t immediately apparent. In retrospect, I used the language people use when they have a concussion; I said I was shaken up, dazed. I was able to function, but I wasn’t fully functional.

I kept hearing that it would be a year before I fully recovered. I kept not believing that. I kept kidding myself that I was fine, although I wasn’t. Recovery from the physical injuries took some time and work, with physiotherapy, daily exercises and massage. Of course, healing takes energy, so I was chronically exhausted.

I didn’t have time to be injured, so I carried on. Of course, trying to do something challenging, like a PhD dissertation, is that much more challenging with a brain injury. I did the best I could, but every time I sat down to work on this rich and complex document I’d started, what came out was at the level of a first-grade reader; Dick and Jane visit Vesalius for a lesson in medieval anatomy. Even though I was the only one who saw that work, it was embarrassing.

And there was the terrifying thought that this was it. That I wouldn’t recover, that I’d never be able to write again, that the books planned in my head would stay trapped there, unable to get out. After a few months, I was able to write more successfully, but it was much harder work than it had ever been.

I couldn’t think clearly. It was as if there was a cloudy veil over my brain. I could detect the thought, but had to tease it out of a haze. I was working through some kind of early film dream sequence gossamer fabric special effect. The work seemed to float. It never fully clarified. Even now, when I edit sections written through that haze, I can’t quite grasp them. They’re blurry and I’m still unsure if they work.

My memory was also affected. Routine information would suddenly evaporate. I spent three days trying to remember the name of someone I work with, someone I know. Bass lines I was relearning for the band reunion would quietly dissipate, even though I’d nailed them with practice. I said things that I couldn’t recall later. Someone would kindly follow up on some concern I’d expressed, and I would have no memory of verbalizing it or even thinking it.

But forty-nine weeks after the accident, three weeks shy of a year, I awoke one morning and my head was clear. By then, I’d come to accept the murkiness of my thoughts. I’d accepted this new normal. I’d accepted that I was never going to be fully functional again, that I would never function as well as I had. To wake up suddenly feeling normal again is a wondrous thing. But I couldn’t quite trust it at first. I didn’t know if it would last. To my relief, it has.

Last fall, it was as if my brain was re-checking its circuits, or maybe rewiring some connections. I experienced intense, lucid memories. Things I hadn’t recalled in decades would suddenly spring up with great clarity, sometimes with associated sensory cues. I recalled the taste of cocoa quickies from grade school home ec. I inhaled the scent of the bath beads I used to get in my Christmas stocking. I recalled, with great longing, the red mohair sweater my Mum knitted me that I practically lived in through high school. I felt the impact of reading the two column inches on a back page of the Examiner about Jim Croce’s death. These recollections didn’t have the faintness of normal memories; it was as if I was reliving them or verifying their veracity, checking that they were still intact.

The fatigue I’d been carrying had also become my new norm. I often felt too exhausted to work, like I was dragging myself around. I managed to stay on top of things, but not get ahead, and the bare minimum seemed an inordinate effort. I often felt swamped and overwhelmed, like I was barely managing my life. Again, I’d adjusted to this new reality. I rationalized that because I was getting older, I should expect to have less energy. I’d accepted this new state, telling myself that I just had to hang on a little longer, work a little harder, to get through the PhD.

It wasn’t until the Christmas holiday that I bounced back, again having assumed that I wouldn’t. I started the New Year with a renewed energy and vigour that I hadn’t felt in about fifteen months. And that’s exciting!

People often say that they have a good feeling about a New Year, but I’ve rarely felt this ecstatic in January. Although it had some wonderful moments, I’m very happy to put 2013 behind me. It was one of the tougher years I’ve lived. I felt like I was treading water, trying not to drown, rather than making progress. Now I feel fully recovered, as if I’m back on top of things, as if I can move forward in my life. And what an exciting life it is! I’m making good progress on the dissertation and expect to finish this year. Once that’s done, I can resume revising the new novel. I’m enjoying teaching university communication. I’m back into music and knitting (more on that in a future post), I’m using my time and energy efficiently, I’m sleeping well, I’m socializing more, etc. Life is good.

© Catherine Jenkins 2014

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Of Chance and Choice and Christmas

December 22 at 2:40 a.m. my power went out due to the worst ice storm Southern Ontario has seen in years. Tree limbs that lacked resiliency snapped off under the weight of ice, taking power lines with them and landing on a few cars and roofs. Hydro’s initial estimate was that power would be restored within 72 hours. That’s a long time in a society so addicted to gadgets that require electricity to function, but it’s a really long time when temperatures are below freezing and when fridges are packed with perishable holiday fare. It’s a really long time for people trying to travel home for the holidays. Flights in and out of Pearson International are delayed or cancelled.

The ice storm was beautiful--but inconvenient.

The ice storm was beautiful–but inconvenient.

This Christmas won’t be the Christmas a lot of people had planned. A lot of folks won’t be able to get home. Travel plans will be changed at the last minute. A lot of food will spoil or will have to be consumed before it spoils. Barbeques will be fired up out of season. A winter’s worth of wood will be burned in a few days trying to keep pipes from freezing. Kids will spend the holidays camped out on living room floors in sleeping bags trying to stay warm. Strangers will share feasts of homemade cookies in airport lounges. Some will be disappointed. Some will think it’s the worst Christmas ever. Others will be creative and resilient and find ways to improvise. Arriving safely for Christmas is more important than arriving on time for Christmas. Even without power, tomorrow will come.

A low-light Christmas tree decorated in low light.

A low-light Christmas tree decorated in low light.

I’m lucky that my building has a back-up generator, so there is some heat, running water, and enough power for lights in the common areas and to run the elevators. This is a long way from a UN refugee camp, with multi-generational families crammed into unheated tents without adequate food or water. We are so spoiled to have been born into such privilege that we feel entitled to get angry when we don’t have everything we think we need. Yes, there will be hardships, but even if it takes a full week to get everyone’s electricity restored, we will recover very quickly.

I’m enjoying a warm cup of tea made from water heated on my fondue set. The building seems quiet without the hum of industrial systems and almost no traffic outside. It’s a little like being in the university library after exams, after the students have left, on the last day before campus closes for the two-week winter break. An eerie silence. A bit post-apocalyptic.

Monday morning 8:45 a.m. the power is still out. I’ve moved everything from the fridge into a cooler on the balcony. The building across the street from me, and everything southward, has electricity. I wonder if this is a little of what it feels like to live in places that don’t have our advantages, to look across borders and see the wasted resources. Makes me think even more about what we have and how we use it.

I’m enjoying the adventure of using my fondue set for cooking. I was getting tired of cold food, so managed to cook some noodles, as well as a cup of tea. Tried knitting by candle light this evening; it’s difficult to tell the knits from the purls. I rigged up a four-candle powered heater I saw online a couple of weeks ago (I am the child of an engineer; how could I not give it a go?). The air from the chimney was about 34°C / 94°F but I would need several to heat a space this size. The temperature in the apartment had dropped to about 17°C / 64°F and the outside temperature is going down to -10°C. I hauled out extra blankets and one of the cats cuddled up with me. Without the interference of artificial light, my diurnal clock is even louder; by about 4 p.m. it feels like bedtime and I have to struggle to stay awake until 8. It’s cold and bed is the warmest place to be. I settle in for a long night.

I'm the child of an engineer. How could I not try this out?

I’m the child of an engineer. How could I not try this out?

By Tuesday, Christmas Eve, 6:17 p.m. word is that power may not be restored until the weekend, a full week after the outage. I confess to finding a certain pleasure in the absence of the demands of electronic devices. I was seriously considering giving up my land line, but I’m glad I haven’t; it’s the only way I can contact the outside world. And I broke into the Harvey’s Bristol Cream Sherry. The cause for celebration? We were informed that we could access more heat! It’s been about 15°C / 60°F all day. That doesn’t sound so bad, but when you’re sitting in it, you start to feel it. With another cold night ahead, someone from the building came in and diddled with the radiator override, so now heat is pouring forth! Much relieved and so is my cat. Water and heat—the only convenience missing is electricity for lights and cooking.

Fortunately, a friend invited me to his place for Christmas Day, where I had good company, a hot meal, and was able to cook some perishable food before it spoiled. When I got home later on Christmas Day, the power had been restored, thanks to the efforts of numerous local and visiting Hydro crews. It was out for a couple more hours on the 27th, but generally things seem to be returning to normal.

I hope that this holiday, without reliable power or transportation, causes people to reflect on their good fortune, testing their resiliency in the face of unpredictability, finding faith in themselves and humanity, to make the holidays bright and moving, even if they are not quite as planned.

A good time for quiet reflection.

A good time for quiet reflection.

© Catherine Jenkins 2013

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