Three Things from Edmonton podcast - Episode 92: big smiles, roaring 20s, alphabet


Happy end of the week, y’all! Here are three things from that past week that for now have left behind some tracks of happiness and gratitude.

                                       

1. Big smiles 

We filled up on beers and bar food at Towers, and, then, Shelagh and I brought down the average age at the MacEwan University pub by paying our tab and leaving. We walked up a few blocks, took the bridge over 109 Street to Allard Hall and got seats at a fundraising concert for Ukraine. It felt quite downtown-y and undergraduate-y. The pianist John Stetch was the draw. He banged out variations on J.S. Bach, F. Chopin, N. Diamond, T. Swift and S. Twain during the concert, which also featured a jazz take on Beer Barrel Polka, I think. 



Stetch, who grew up in these parts, used the word “tentacles” to describe the connections re-experienced being back in his Edmonton roots. My tentacle to him is slender. Our future mothers were friends in nursing school. His father had a dental practice in Norwood where, around the corner, our family dentist pulled teeth in what I sometimes suspected was a conspiracy with the orthodontist downtown to push them back together again. Watching John Stetch manipulate the piano keys while he periodically winced like jazz artists who are in contact with some other kind of metronome do was dentistry fantasia.


For the final two tunes of the bill the solo act turned quintet, featuring MacEwan students on stage. He introduced them by name: Morgan on guitar, James on drums, Jeremy on bass and Jacob on saxophone. They all soloed. It was a triumph. The players were happy. The audience was on its feet. Everyone was smiling for now.



2. Roaring 20s 

Whatever the opposite of statistical thinking is, that’s what I do. I took a stats course at university. I was below average. I can’t follow much from our financial advisor about the long term. I can’t explain quickly the difference between mean and median. (I hit a median driving a rental in Vegas, that made an impact.) A Bell curve was what CTV threw me towards the end of my time as a news director. Actually, the opposite of statistical thinking is probably something that resembles TV newsroom thinking. Tell it to me in pictures with emotion, or I’m not feeling it. 



These thoughts about what the truth looks and feels like have been piling up as Edmontonians enjoy what feels like a strangely mild and pleasant October. It’s almost Halloween and I am still wearing shorts and going barefoot in the afternoon. I am still picking fresh tomatoes off the plants in the backyard garden. People everywhere start conversations with some version of, I can’t believe how warm it still is this month!



My skeptical buddy Chris can’t quite believe the disbelief. He met my it’s-unseasonably-late-for-October-warmth newsflash with this question at Coffee Outside last week: When was the last October in history that Edmonton had a day with a 20-degree high this late in the month? The unexpected, non-news answer was: October 2021. Yes, just last year.

“I think we always remember the worst case, and so we remember when it snowed in September or October a couple of years ago but we don’t remember that it was 20 degrees on October 16 just last year,” Chris said. “You know, I remember when I was a kid it was -24 one Halloween, do I remember that it was also 15 degrees a bunch of Halloweens? Not so much I think in Edmonton we’re conditioned. We remember those January deep freezes, we don’t remember that it was 6 degrees in January a whole bunch of times.” 

That’s what I mean about people who think statistically. They like to knock the wind out of feelings. They make me check the cold data. I’m pretty sure I’m glad I know these people, 19 times out of 20, whatever that means. (Speaking of 20s, and I did check this with Chris, Edmonton has now recorded 12 days this month where the high was in the 20s. The only other year that happened was 1923. So, I’m right, too. For now, it has been a postcard October.)




3. Alphabet 

It’s worth repeating. A great good of riding a bicycle in the city is how easy it is to stop. Stop to talk to our friend Wendy and her mom as they walked past us in the autumn glow from the elms on 102 Avenue last week. Stop to watch the sunrise as I pedalled north along the MacKinnon Ravine Bridge.



It struck me last week. The ease of stopping to experience things more consciously is the same reason I love reading.  I was going through a book on strategic communication, scanning the sentences like morning rush hour cars flowing across the bridge when a few old words jumped out and startled me with new meaning. What those words were doesn’t really matter, but what they did and then what I could do, and did, does. I stopped, extracted myself from the flow and re-read the words. I read them again. I made a new, tentative conclusion about things I have been mulling over. And about the good old unseen technology of the printed alphabet and the way its letters make sounds visible on the page, which, in turn, makes it possible to stop, go back, and hear them and consider them one more time before making up my mind, for now. 

Thanks for being out there, friends. 

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