03.27.08 kulturnatib

Snow-lidarity

The other day the meteo or weather forecast that I avidly listen to while eating breakfast, not only to tell me the weather for the day but also to teach me French for the rest of my stay in French Canada and elsewhere, announced the arrival of spring.

Such announcement would have been greeted with dancing in the streets. But, it only generated what I gathered later as a general wry expression of puzzlement and a you-have-got-to-be-joking incredulity, much the same sentiments I expect that greeted the huge billboards of Bench announcing their Fall line of clothes.

Seriously, had spring really arrived it would have had to be wrapped in three layers of clothing topped by a thick jacket. In fact, two days after that announcement the forecast called for snow, more snow on top of what looks to be more than 4 meters that has fallen since mid-November.

That measure is a mere guesstimate, but what is certain is that this winter's snowfall has already breached the record for snowfall here set in 1971.

Among other things, this has made for a very big white Christmas. In fact, it has been so big that it has been causing problems hardly ever intimated in that all-time favorite Christmas carol that admitted or not has also contributed to the drawing power of snow-bound countries, chief of them, the U.S.

These problems can be huge ones. A decade ago, last January, most of Quebec experienced what is now known as 'La Crise du Verglas,' the big ice storm that hit eastern Canada and mostly Quebec with such force that roofs collapsed, trees were uprooted and, most damagingly, electric pylons were toppled.

It is hard to imagine winter without electricity. It is harder to live it. In some places it took a month before power was restored. But, in many more places, it was the response, the solidarity of the people, families, neighbors and communities that made the province survive that natural catastrophe.

Natural catastrophe met its match in the natural human decency, sympathy and empathy of the Quebecois, the hardy natives – including the original natives, the autochtones – of this mainly French-speaking Canadian province.

Yet, it doesn't need a big natural catastrophe for this Good Samaritan or simple human gesture to manifest itself. Snow and ice can bring about simple, everyday winter emergencies that happen just outside the door of your house, or, the doors of a bus, as happened recently.

Priscilla is a young black girl, taking up some tourism course. She was coming from school. When she stepped off the bus onto what she thought was a puddle of water, she slipped. It was ice. She fell. She tried to stand but her right foot was enveloped in pain.

She struggled to get further away from the curb and the traffic on the corner of Bank Street and Macleod in downtown Ottawa. She was able to stagger a few steps before she fell again. This time the pain made it impossible for her to move any further.

Kim and George, a couple, were walking and getting into the same corner when they saw Priscilla fall the second time. They immediately went to her aid. By the time I got to the same corner, moments later, Kim was comforting Priscilla and talking to 911 on Priscilla's mobile phone.

Seeing that Priscilla was leaning on her one arm, while the other hand was holding on to a metal fencing around a traffic signal pole, I knelt behind her and told her to lean on me so that the pain on her legs was not compounded by the strain on her arms.

A previous experience with an accident last year to a fellow bicyclist not far away from this corner told me that the emergency services would not be very long. But, this time, they were. In the meantime, a police car drove by and stopped. Two officers came over and asked what happened. One immediately got onto his radio, reported the incident and, again, requested for an ambulance.

While waiting, Kim engaged Priscilla in a conversation, encouraging her, telling her, among other things, how brave she was and how she just had to keep on being brave for soon the ambulance would arrive. This had a visible effect on Priscilla even as she continued to grimace in pain.

The ambulance finally arrived. Priscilla was bundled into a gurney, loaded up to be whisked away to the nearest emergency health facility. We waved to her as the paramedic closed the ambulance doors. Through her tears, she smiled weakly.

As I proceeded to cross the street I realized that my right leg pants were soaked through at the knee from kneeling in the snow. It will dry, I thought. What will not or should not, I thought further, was human solidarity.

03.13.08 kulturnatib

Wishful thinking

Were you at the Guitar Festival at the Outpost Restaurant last November? Well, that makes two or more of us who where not there, if your were not. Although in some sense I consider myself to have been there since, as an Outpost regular and a friend of the organizers of that very laudable project, I was in some ways privy to the preparations.

But there is being there and being really there. Too bad that a week before the event, my number was up. I had to leave. I had to content myself with reports from friends after the event that were unanimous in saying how enjoyable the three-night festival was for both the audience and performers, especially for guest and festival star guitarist, Sammy Asuncion of Pinikpikan/Spy.

For a first time and a first ever event organized with barely minutes to spare, this was a rousing success despite the inevitable glitches, this time, a rather major one; a power outage. Fortunately this happened towards the end of the last night, the night that, incidentally, Asuncion was in the spotlight.

Still the consensus was that it was an event worthy of a repeat annually into perpetuity. I cannot agree more. I had always thought that something like this has a more legitimate claim to becoming a festival or at least becoming an annual event than the many and growing number of Sinulog copycats based on fanciful or invented histories or contrived traditions.

But why after so many months am I belatedly scratching this itch?

Celso Machado, that's why. Over the weekend, he played his specially infectious brand of Brazilian music at a local cultural center. This venue is among the centers in the city that have facilities for concerts, workshops, exhibits and other cultural activities or events which are located near or, mostly, in the same building with the bibliotheque, the public library.

It appears that among these centers there is a big push, this year, for featuring musicians and other artistic groups or individuals from a variety of cultural or national backgrounds. Among them is Machado, who, I have to admit, I do not know from Adam despite having a just-your-next-door neighbor name.

To those in the know about Canadian music, however, he is familiar, having been nominated twice for a Juno award, the Canadian equivalent of the Grammys, in the global music category and as he has been based in British Columbia, in the far west, for some time now.

I was tempted, earlier there, to say Brazilian guitar music but that would be calling a mountain a molehill. Machado is a mountain of a musician. The guitar is, indeed, his instrument. He is a virtuoso with the guitar. At the same time, I have never seen a guitar manhandled so badly yet still made to play very interestingly beautiful music.

In one piece, in between a flurry of speedy and serially strumming with all of his right hand fingers, fan like, he was turning the tuning knob of the one of the strings, which made for a very strange playing or at least tuning – while playing! -- technique. He then proceeded to pull the now very loose sixth, base string across the other strings for a musical effect that was simply astounding. All the more because it still somehow managed to remain melodic!

This was just with the guitar. With other instruments, most of them percussive, he was simply a wizard but none more than with his own body and voice that produced or reproduced sound that you could swear to have heard with another instrument if only you could remember what it was called. The tabla, jembi, marimba and others?

Then, not only that, he also shared this wizardry. He distributed instruments to the audience and with just a few examples of how they were played he had the small, intimate room with about a hundred people erupting into an unlikely tropical, rainforest Amazonian jungle in a thunderstorm while outside a real snowstorm was silently raging.

I could not help thinking while enjoying this musical spectacle how, while in pidgin Tagalog machado might be too much, this Machado will not be too much at all but will, for sure, be more than enough for an event like the Cebu Guitar Festival.

I wish.

03.06.08 kulturnatib

Snowman

Where is my snowman? This was the question asked by a friend, by email. This was asked in jest. It was more to ask about how I was adjusting to snow in particular and winter in general than to actually locate a snowman.

Also, since he comes from a country that did have snow, this could have been some kind of challenge though I can only guess this as snowmen seem to be popular only in North America and not in Britain where he comes from nor in the rest of the snow belt countries.

Answering, I said, there has not been an opportunity to make one. Not only does it take time to make a snowman but it also takes a particular kind of snow, as I was made to understand when I inquired about making one; It has to be within a range of temperatures, must have the right moisture, compactness, fluffiness and stickiness.

In short, there is a science to this that goes beyond the simple cutesy-tootsy images found in postcard pictures.

Even then, science has yet to catch up with the Inuits of the Arctic for whom there are some 80 words for snow. Although snowmen do not seem to have any particular place in their culture they must have a word or two for the kind of snow suited for snowman making.

Still, time was and is really the harder to come by than snow which has been and will continue to be a veritable deluge, at least for a few more weeks. In fact, in one place I visited, snow had piled up so high -- the service to haul snow away no longer reached that part of the city -- that they topped the roofs of some houses, some of them on, appropriately, Rue Everest or Everest Street.

Also, there was enough snow for the outdoor snow sculpture exhibit during last month's Bal de Neige or Winterlude. Each of the 10 provinces and 3 territories of Canada was represented by a sculpture created by a team of artists.

These works were huge and as elaborate as any that can be done in more stable, lasting or workable material. If one were prone to hyperbole, marble is the material that would leap to mind by way of comparison. Both are generally white and both are cool to the touch though one is more likely to be touched barehanded while the other gloved.

Enjoying these sculptures made me all the more resolve that the answer to my friend's somewhat rhetorical question would somehow be an actual snowman. Sooner than later, as snow season comes and then goes.

Sooner happened soon enough.

Over the weekend, we visited friends in Toronto. They had recently moved houses to a bigger, if older, house with something the lack of which, where we live, has all the more handicapped my snowman making opportunities: a backyard.

So, with the warm sun in the sky, warm breakfast in our bellies, we, four adults and a baby, proceeded outdoors with a mission: to have fun and to make a snowman.

In the end, we had loads of fun and no snowman. Or, we had two that could not roll up to size. This does not mean that we achieved nothing. While we didn't have the optimum snow for a proper snowman, we had the perfect snow for a snowsnail.

It was a snowsnail the likes of which has never been seen before. It turns out to be fitting as well. Snowmen don't go anywhere. Neither do snownails, but they get there even slower. On a slow, sunny winter day this is all just as well.