Footnotes to a Conversation, August 22, 2022

“Life is a verb, not a noun.” – Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Slow

I walk everywhere I possibly can. It’s slow. I know I’m not ‘accomplishing’ as much as if I used a car. I spend more money shopping in a local deli cum grocery store than I would in a supermarket. But I’m happier. I smell the roses, watch the otters diving for fish, admire the solitary herons, and feel the sun on my skin and the breeze on my face.

“In a society where speed is a core cultural and economic value — what French philosopher Paul Virillo called a ‘dromocracy,’ riffing off the Ancient Greek word “dromos,” or speed — people who move in slow ways that don’t generate or consume maximum capital are ignored, while maximizing the velocity of ‘commuters’ becomes a policy obsession. It’s the reason why we track journey-to-work times on every national census and don’t bother to record trips to the park or the library or to walk our kids home from school. It’s why engineers obsess over optimizing ‘level of service’ on the roads they design — and also why they don’t overhaul those designs when speed-focused designs directly cause metrics like human lives lost to skyrocket.” [StreetsBlog USA]

Chivalry

Courtesy is alive and well in the Lower Mainland. As I was walking down a long flight of stairs at the New Westminster SkyTrain station, a young man offered to carry my suitcase for me. On the bus to the ferry, a young man got out of his seat before I’d even entered the bus as he could see I was loaded down with luggage. On the bus into Victoria, another man embarrassed me by calling out loudly for someone to vacate their seat on an overcrowded bus so I could sit – and a woman did just that. A woman offered me her seat on the SkyTrain, but I declined as I was only going to the next step – plus, she looked as old as me.

There was one man sitting on a SkyTrain who observed me standing next to him, reviewed the sign in the window that said his seat was reserved for seniors and people with disabilities, and stayed seating. But I’m going to look on the bright side and presume he thought I was far too young-looking to be a senior :-)

Locked Room Murder Mystery

A murder, and then another, have been committed in a storm-bound house at the remote northern tip of Japan in a house designed to confuse and deceive – the floors slant, the stairways only reach certain floors, and there’s a drawbridge to reach the topmost bedroom in the tower. Murder in the Crooked House by Soji Shimada kept me reading to the very end to find out how on earth the murders had been committed and by whom.

Footnotes to a Conversation is a weekly Monday feature covering an assortment of topics that I’ve come across in the preceding week – books, art, travel, food, and whatever else strikes my fancy. I also post occasional articles on other dates, including frequent book reviews and travel tales.

If you share my love of nature, check out EcoFriendly West, an online publication encouraging environmental initiatives in Western Canada, and Nature Companion, a free nature app for Canada’s four western provinces.