In Our Time
This morning I chose to listen to a time machine.
As soon as the needle touched on and the record started spinning I was transported back to summer 2018. I'm at the Calgary Folk Fest, sitting on the little hill at stage 4, partly in the shade of the trees but also still bathed in sunlight. Drinking one of those shaken lemonades and eating kettle corn all while being serenaded by this musician I've never heard of before called AHI. And he is good. Like really good. There's something so compelling about his lyrics, they're personal yet universal. He sings about his own family and you feel like you are a part of it. He sings about his earlier life and you, somehow, were there too.
I bought In Our Time on vinyl about a month after the Folk Fest when I saw him in Vancouver. We took a short trip out after our wedding that August and my husband surprised me with tickets to see AHI open for Michael Franti (another favourite artist of mine) at the Commodore Ballroom.
This turned out to be a bitter sweet choice. The Folk Fest is a huge part of my identity. I have been attending since I was a baby, taken to the Edmonton festival by my parents. I remember every summer of my childhood running around (first in Edmonton, then Calgary) the kids area, playing on the playgrounds, listening to music on a tarp with my family. As a young adult I used to camp out on Prince's Island to get a good spot for main stage. Now I volunteer every summer doing setup and take down jobs. It is, without a doubt, my favourite 4 days of the year. I love being transported back to it in my mind.
At the same time though, the logical part of my brain tells me that it is unlikely I'll be able to attend this summer. The City of Calgary has cancelled all events up to June 30 and I'm dreading the cancellation of July events that would see the Folk Fest removed from my summer plans. I've been desperately looking forward to bringing my daughter and watching her dance in the sun. I feel like I'm being robbed of these precious moments and I am so sad and so angry.
I've read a few interesting articles about self-care during the pandemic that recommend allowing a time to grieve. Grieve the plans you made that had to be cancelled, the moments that could have been that will forever hang in limbo, just out of reach. Grieve family vacations, dinners, weddings. Grieve concerts, sporting events, hobbies, work, the things that got you out of the house and fuelled your passions. So today I'm going to make space to grieve the plans that would have been.
The numbers keep going up. It seems like Spain and Italy might both be coming down now though - through the worst of it. The US is still expanding exponentially and we know that testing is not being done thoroughly. In Canada our numbers seem reasonable compared to others but we also know they don't tell the whole story. In an attempt to preserve tests and not overwhelm our labs only the sickest members of each home are tested, the rest are presumed positive and not recorded in official stats as a result. It makes sense - but I thrive on information and wish that we had a full picture to look at, even a column that included presumed cases would be helpful to ease that part of my brain.
As soon as the needle touched on and the record started spinning I was transported back to summer 2018. I'm at the Calgary Folk Fest, sitting on the little hill at stage 4, partly in the shade of the trees but also still bathed in sunlight. Drinking one of those shaken lemonades and eating kettle corn all while being serenaded by this musician I've never heard of before called AHI. And he is good. Like really good. There's something so compelling about his lyrics, they're personal yet universal. He sings about his own family and you feel like you are a part of it. He sings about his earlier life and you, somehow, were there too.
I bought In Our Time on vinyl about a month after the Folk Fest when I saw him in Vancouver. We took a short trip out after our wedding that August and my husband surprised me with tickets to see AHI open for Michael Franti (another favourite artist of mine) at the Commodore Ballroom.
This turned out to be a bitter sweet choice. The Folk Fest is a huge part of my identity. I have been attending since I was a baby, taken to the Edmonton festival by my parents. I remember every summer of my childhood running around (first in Edmonton, then Calgary) the kids area, playing on the playgrounds, listening to music on a tarp with my family. As a young adult I used to camp out on Prince's Island to get a good spot for main stage. Now I volunteer every summer doing setup and take down jobs. It is, without a doubt, my favourite 4 days of the year. I love being transported back to it in my mind.
At the same time though, the logical part of my brain tells me that it is unlikely I'll be able to attend this summer. The City of Calgary has cancelled all events up to June 30 and I'm dreading the cancellation of July events that would see the Folk Fest removed from my summer plans. I've been desperately looking forward to bringing my daughter and watching her dance in the sun. I feel like I'm being robbed of these precious moments and I am so sad and so angry.
I've read a few interesting articles about self-care during the pandemic that recommend allowing a time to grieve. Grieve the plans you made that had to be cancelled, the moments that could have been that will forever hang in limbo, just out of reach. Grieve family vacations, dinners, weddings. Grieve concerts, sporting events, hobbies, work, the things that got you out of the house and fuelled your passions. So today I'm going to make space to grieve the plans that would have been.
The numbers keep going up. It seems like Spain and Italy might both be coming down now though - through the worst of it. The US is still expanding exponentially and we know that testing is not being done thoroughly. In Canada our numbers seem reasonable compared to others but we also know they don't tell the whole story. In an attempt to preserve tests and not overwhelm our labs only the sickest members of each home are tested, the rest are presumed positive and not recorded in official stats as a result. It makes sense - but I thrive on information and wish that we had a full picture to look at, even a column that included presumed cases would be helpful to ease that part of my brain.
We're now into the weeks where the potential effects of our social distancing, isolation, and quarantine may start appearing in the numbers for Alberta. I remain optimistic that the curve will show a flattening by April 11 as originally predicted.
My students are starting in on the rise of Hitler and Ultranationalism this week. I am just itching to get to the internationalism part of the curriculum (which in itself is wild, I have a history degree that focused on the world wars, I love teaching this part we are in). I just want to explore all of this with them in a real way. Soon though.
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