Meet Pinky. She was born on December 16th. She has lots of brothers and sisters, but is the smallest of the litter, and her mother has been ignoring her a bit. So her owner brought her into the clinic for a little extra care and attention.
A. brought Pinky home last night and she will stay with us for a few days. We'll keep an eye on her and make sure she is fed regularly (with cat milk substitute!). But she is nearly of an age where she could start on solid food, so we'll see how she gets on with that.
In the meantime, she is beyond adorable. She sleeps most of the time, but is quite alert and curious when awake. Hopefully in another week, she will be bigger and stronger, and can go home to her littermates.
From my vintage postcard collection.
While in Montreal last week, J. and I went to the Museum of Fine Arts to see an exhibition, Warhol Live: Music and Dance in Andy Warhol's Work. I really enjoyed it - and learned a lot about Warhol in the process.
The exhibition started out by looking at the teenaged Andy's fascination with Hollywood stars. It then moved on to his lifelong love of classical music and dance. I wasn't aware that he'd done stage designs for dance companies - but one of the more interesting rooms in the exhibit replicated one of his designs. It consisted mainly of pillow-shaped silver-foil balloons, filled with a mixture of gases which enabled them to float just above floor level; the dancers then performed around them, to a cacophonous soundtrack. It went down a storm with J.'s five-year-old daughter A., who came with us to the exhibit and who had a ball playing with the pillow-balloons.
However, most of the exhibition focused on Warhol's interest in music. There was a big display of all the many album covers he designed over the course of his career. Quite a lot of attention was given to Warhol's management of the Velvet Underground, and later to his involvement with Studio 54 and Interview magazine. However the best part of the exhibition, in my opinion, was the room which attempted to replicate the atmosphere of Warhol's Silver Factory, which featured a large divan in the centre of the room covered with throws and cushions. Visitors are encouraged to crash on the cushions while trippy colours and patterns are projected onto the walls and ceiling, and tracks from the Velvet Underground are played.
All in all, a fun and interactive exhibit. It's moving on in the new year to San Francisco and Pittsburgh. Highly recommended!
Last week, I spent a few days in Montreal visiting with J. We took in a show by Duran Duran at the Metropolis club, which was fantastic. The band looked and sounded great, and the crowd was enthusiastic.
I put an album of concert photos over here on Flickr, as well as two video clips on YouTube - "I Don't Want Your Love" and "Save A Prayer". I'm lucky I got those, as I filmed them on my digital camera right in front of the security guard. He very nicely asked me to stop recording at one point - lucky he didn't threaten to take away my cam....
And so it begins.
Has there ever been a home renovation project in history that has gone smoothly and according to plan? I think not. And true to form, ours has gone off the rails before it has even started.
Our project - gutting our old kitchen and enlarging it - was meant to begin in early October. My stint in hospital in September obviously delayed things by a couple of weeks. Then, we had a major problem. The contractor we wanted - a guy we have worked with before - announced he was no longer available. Due to poor communication between him and our designer, he thought we were no longer interested in having him do the work, and so he took on another job that would keep him busy through to December.
We decided that we really wanted this guy to be our contractor, and that we would wait for him. We agreed upon a new date of January 2nd, to begin the work once the holidays were over. And in many ways, this was for the best, as we spent October and November doing stuff that should have been done over the summer - except that we could never get a hold of our designer. I met with cabinetmakers, ordered the sink and tap, priced countertops, and decided on a lighting plan. Things were going very well.
Then today, we got the rug pulled out from under us. A. called the contractor, only to be informed that he has decided not to take on our job after all. He cited continued communication problems with our designer, and said he felt he'd not been treated with respect. So instead of contacting us earlier with these concerns, so we could resolve them, he decided to walk away from the project, three weeks before it was due to begin. He did give us the name of a colleague who was willing to take on our job - but even still, we are pretty shocked at this turn of events. We really trusted this guy and it was the last thing we expected from him.
Anyway, the project will go on. A. seems resolved to act now as project manager himself, and do as much work as he can. He'll take a few weeks off work in January, to get on with things. I suppose the silver lining to this cloud is that this will probably save us a bundle on labour fees, which would be a good thing. But still, we could have done without the aggro. Gah.
Interesting story in the paper last weekend about recent trends in the awarding of Rhodes Scholarships in Canada. Apparently, in recent years, many of the award-holders have been immigrants from war-torn or otherwise unstable parts of the world. All are incredibly accomplished, of course. But I think it just goes to show how competitive these elite awards have become. Of course, the bar has always been set extremely high. To wit: the year I finished grad school in Halifax, a guy from Saint Mary's won a Rhodes. He had straight As, was quarterback of the SMU football team, and tutored little kids in his spare time. But it seems like nowadays, to win a Rhodes, it's no longer enough to be an athlete with a minimum 4.0 GPA and an impressive record of volunteer work. Now, it seems, you need all that *plus* a degree from the School of Hard Knocks.
The article raised questions about whether Canadian-born applicants from secure, "pampered" backgrounds are now at a disadvantage when it comes to competing for the Rhodes. I wonder if there may be some validity to this, given my own experience. Earlier this year, I received notification from the Commonwealth Scholarship Plan - the funding scheme which allowed me to do my doctoral degree in England - that awards tenable in UK have been subject to massive funding cuts from the British Government. While it was decided to continue offering Commonwealth Scholarships to qualified candidates from developing nations, those for candidates in developed countries like Canada and New Zealand were to be eliminated (thankfully, they have since been partly reinstated). Many reasons - some of which were rather insulting - were given for this decision, but one of the most troubling was the suggestion that scholars from developed nations don't need all-expenses-paid funding. Because we're all rich and pampered, obviously. On the contrary, I can say with certainty that if I had not been a Commonwealth Scholarship recipient, there is no way I'd have been able to do my doctorate at an English university - not when tuition fees and living on a shoestring budget cost over $30,000 per annum in the mid-1990s.
So I have a bit of empathy for the Rhodie-wannabes who may feel a bit hard done by, just because they come from nice middle-class homes. But then again, life ain't fair. When I was applying for funding to do my doctorate, I remember being encouraged by a few of my professors to consider applying for the Rhodes ("They don't *all* go to jocks", as one remarked). But I knew there was no point, without a stellar extracurricular record. And I remember feeling a little resentful about that, because if I hadn't had to spend every summer plus 10-20 hours a week during the academic year working part-time, in order to pay for tuition and residence, I would have had all the time in the world for student clubs and volunteering. So to my mind, the selection criteria for the Rhodes Scholarships discriminates against economically-disadvantaged applicants, also.
I'm just glad I got through the system when I did, before tuition fees got really crazy and things like scholarship schemes were increasingly viewed by politicians as frivolities that could be easily cut from budgets. I wish the current generation luck in pursuing graduate work. Funding for education just ain't what it used to be, and the era of fully-funded studies for all those of sufficient merit is disappearing.
