http://www.greglaviolette.com/blog.html?cq=1 en-us Wed, 09 Jul 2008 20:22:01 GMT http://www.greglaviolette.com/blog.html?cq=1&p=50 As I was making coffee this morning, I watched Mini Toy cross the front lawn on his way to the park. In a flash, in my underwear, I was outside calling him over to me. The gate to the back yard was open. Someone had gone into my yard in the night; probably from the housing project that I back onto to retrieve something that ended up on my side. Frida was waiting at the open gate, Daisy was not in the yard. I sprinted into the house. She was already back in bed. There are not many circumstances that would find me outside in my briefs. The safety of our dogs is one.

All of our dogs are Mexican street rescues. We flew them to Canada, two in baggage one as carry-on, when we relocated from Mexico to Toronto. We were all cramped into a small one bedroom apartment. We could not afford to rent a house in Toronto. If it were not for the dogs, we would almost be certainly be living in the city now. Their well being was the tipping factor in the debate to move to my home town. We gave up fantastic restaurants, a vibrant night life, proximity to my closest friends, culture and all that a metropolis has to offer for a big yard.

Mini Toy was the first to find us. Seven years ago, he took refuge outside of our door in an apartment complex in Guadalajara during a thunder storm. He was not easy to coax in but was eventually won over with a slice of ham. We immediately bathed him and claimed him as our own. We found out the following day that he had been put out on the street by a woman who had recently broken up with her boyfriend. Mini Toy was a gift to her from him.

Frida's arrival was planned. We moved to a small town south of Guadalajara in the fall of 2003. I was working 60 hour weeks and Eddy was commuting daily to Guadalajara to attend school. Mini Toy needed company. Eddy found Frida at a street market. A saint of a woman, Anita of Anita's Animals, sets up shop every week at the street market in Ajijic with her abandoned dogs and cats in hopes of finding them homes. When we adopted Frida, Anita had more than 100 companion animals which she cared for with very little help. Frida and all of her brothers had been found in a garbage can and brought to Anita. If it were not for the thankless work of Anita, we would not have Frida in our lives. It's time for another donation.

Daisy simply followed us home. We were walking home from a small fish and chip restaurant that we briefly owned. Daisy was hanging around a taco stand that we passed by. I'm sure she tagged along behind us because we smelled like food. I tried several times to shoo her away but she would not be deterred. The walk was about 15 minutes and when we got close I said to Eddy that I would put some food and water out on the street for her and if she were still around in the morning, we would take her in. When we arrived at our corner, we encountered the large male German Shepperd that lived across the street. He took an immediate interest in Daisy. I scooped her up and brought her inside. That was the Spring of 2005. She has been with us ever since.

I could not nor would want to imagine our lives without the dogs. If I weren't sleepily looking out the window this morning while the coffee was brewing, this blog entry could have been much different.

G


]]> Wed, 09 Jul 2008 20:22:01 GMT http://www.greglaviolette.com/blog.html?cq=1&p=49 I was a fat teenager. I was a skinny kid until about 12 years old then , over the course of one summer, I became known as, "Chunky". I don't know how it happened. I ate the same garbage as I had before the gain. Some metabolic component had obviously switched on or off. I was now a kid who had to shop in the hefty section of the department store just as I entered puberty.

I was an outcast in high school. My weight took my self-esteem and as hard as I tried to be part of the high school vibe, I was too fat for cool clothes which was devastating in a microcosm run by 14 year olds. I had a few friends but for half of grade ten, I spent every lunch hour at my aunt's house. I switched from a catholic to a public school in the second term of that same year. I was on the run. I would finish high school in yet another school.

Being a fat kid was an all encompassing emotional head-fuck. There is not another time in ones life that looking good is more important. For all you that are reading this and were popular in high school; Fuck you! There is no way that popular kids can ever know what it was like to be ridiculed in high school. When I was thin and popular I use to make fun of the kids who would eventually become my posse. Ironic? Karmic? I do take some comfort in the equally Karmic turn that those who were the most popular in high school used up all of their glory days' credit early in life.

I'm thinking of my inner fat kid because I recently watched an on-line thread on obesity turn from civil to emotionally super-charged on a dime. There is a still a huge disconnect between the rational and emotional approach to food. To be rational is to sometimes be cold and clinical, a harsh environment for a set of fragile emotions.

I was fat because I ate junk. There were those around me that ate the same but never gained. I thought that this was the absolute nastiest joke perpetrated by a god that I was quickly losing faith in. For a long time, I lived with the conviction that if other kids weren't getting fat and were eating the same things that I was eating, it wasn't my fault and there was nothing that I could do about it. I ate whatever I wanted and a lot of it until, at 15, I had had enough with being an emotionally over wrought socially unaccepted fatty that I began eating laxatives in earnest. I don't know if it was related but my appendix ruptured and I spent a couple of weeks in the hospital, one week hooked up to a drip. I lost 60 pounds. I still had breasts but they were much smaller.

I spent the next 25 years fluctuating between 145 and 175 lbs. I was either eating like I always had or I was dieting. It wasn't until I was 40 that I began taking responsibility for what I ate. It took me that long to realize that if I ate garbage I got fat and maybe the best solution would be to just not.

When I was a kid, being fat was the mother of all stigmas. Now it's the new normal. It's probably easier being overweight in high school today. There is strength in numbers and because of this there is little chance that these kids will ever be healthy adults. Having experienced both sides of the weight coin, I have to say that the thin and healthy side is much preferred.

I am at peace with my inner fat kid. It took a long time to be able to tell him that he couldn't have an Orange Crush. He cried and acted out but I remained steadfast and he eventually shut up and I, at 40, stopped eating like a 12 year old.

G
]]> Wed, 18 Jun 2008 14:05:55 GMT http://www.greglaviolette.com/blog.html?cq=1&p=48 http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2008/06/16/condemned-lakes.html
]]> Wed, 18 Jun 2008 12:07:25 GMT http://www.greglaviolette.com/blog.html?cq=1&p=47 You have to check out this website. Watch the video on Daryl Hannah's dhlovelife.com first.

http://www.dhlovelife.com/v2/show/

http://www.terracycle.net]]> Wed, 11 Jun 2008 16:12:05 GMT http://www.greglaviolette.com/blog.html?cq=1&p=46 I have started a container garden. It was not my intention to plant in re-used ice cream tubs. I would have rather planted in the ground but there is so little sun in my yard that only lettuces and weeds will grow there. There is an abundance of light in my front yard and if this were my house, and not rented, I would have dug up the grass without a second thought. The only spot on this property that I could put down containers to grow food is the driveway and it is there that I have cultivated beets, carrots, sunflowers, beans, dill, basil, tomatoes, chilies and broccoli. There are peas planted along a chain link fence.

This is my first attempt at growing food and I am humbled by the power of a seed to produce and sustain life. There is a thrill when a sprout breaks through and alternatively a sadness when that sprout does not survive a cold night. Even though I am well educated and disciplined about what I eat, I still had a disconnect with that food. I was amazed that a pea seed is a pea and a bean seed is a bean. I suppose that if I had thought about these things I would have figured it out but why think? I bought. The deeper I delve into the wholeness of the reality of food as life, the more confirmed my existence as a steward and dependant becomes. Reading the ingredients was once enough of a thoughtful approach to nutrition. Now, the participation in the creation of what sustains my life force is required to move up the rungs of personal enlightenment. I plant therefore I am.

G

]]> Wed, 04 Jun 2008 00:55:57 GMT http://www.greglaviolette.com/blog.html?cq=1&p=45 http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/nature/an-epidemic-of-extinctions-de...
]]> Fri, 16 May 2008 18:19:04 GMT http://www.greglaviolette.com/blog.html?cq=1&p=44 http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/20/magazine/20wwln-lede-t.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/07/dining/07urban.html?_r=1&ei=5087&em=&en=3f45ca39a536f8a7&ex=1210392000&pagewanted=print&oref=slogin



]]> Fri, 09 May 2008 18:14:43 GMT http://www.greglaviolette.com/blog.html?cq=1&p=43 In 1983 I knew that I was somehow different and that there was a brave new world awaiting my arrival. I'm not speaking of sexuality, rather I refer to the fashion drenched music driven New Wave phenomenon that was molding my malleable imagination and forging the direction of my life. There were no music stations in Canada yet so the influence happened via radio and television music programs like Solid Gold, which I never missed. One afternoon, after school, I was watching a local dance program out of Chicago and broadcast on a Detroit station when my life suddenly and irrevocably changed: I saw Boy George for the first time. I was mesmerized. I had heard the single, "Do You Really Want to Hurt Me", but had never seen the singer. He immediately became my ideal and I began to morph. Boy George gave me the permission to throw my sense of non-belonging into the very faces of those that made me feel like the perpetual outsider.

Shopping for clothing really wasn't an option in my home town so I began making some of my own clothes and altering what I had hanging in the closet. I started sketching different looks for myself. All of my creative energy was funnelled into fashion. My new passion emboldened me but unfortunately the aesthetic was not embraced by the public at large. I became a verbal punching bag in the halls of my high school and on a few occasions, narrowly escaped becoming a literal punching bag. My parents were so confused that they simply chose not to acknowledge or discuss my blossoming expression of individuality. For them, it was nothing more than a phase that would pass and I would once again become the nice boy that I had always been. To this day, my mother contends that all of my decisions are still based on trends and holds a torch for the return of her normal son.

I finished high school that same year and moved out of my parent's house. Because of my ever evolving look, I was not able to find work and had to collect welfare. The cheques were not large so I was forced to creatively acquire clothing. Late at night, with my friend Tom as a look-out, I would lower myself into one of the many donation drop boxes around town and throw out as many bags that would fit into his car. We would then take the bags back to the room that I was renting in an apartment in the back of a wicker shop and sort through them. After they were picked over, we returned the left-overs. By returning what I did not want, I felt that I really wasn't stealing. I was only taking what I needed to survive on planet Fashion. It was Darwinian.

I was all about layering. The shoes were always black converse high tops. I preferred over sized plaid pants that I would shorten with masking tape or staples to between the knee and ankle and hold up with a neck tie as a belt. I would cut the arms off of children's sweaters and wear them as leggings. I enjoyed wrapping lace around one ankle and fastening it with a brooch (I had an extensive collection of costume jewellery). Any shirt with an enormous collar would do. It would be worn under a fit cardigan or vest and that under a very large suit or tuxedo jacket that would hang to the knees. I was never really into hats. Instead, with the miracle of Final Net, I sculpted my blue black asymmetrical hair depending on my mood. Up, if I were feeling like a fashion warrior or down, if I wanted to hide (my bang covered both eyes). I really was fearless in a way that only the young can be. This new decade was mine and fuck you if you didn't get it.

I eventually got a job in the kitchen of a dinner theatre/English pub through a lesbian friend. I became instant best friends with two Toronto actors who were performing, "Butterflies are Free". They had rented an apartment down the street from my room. I brought over my stereo and all of my records. I hung out with them every night of their six week run and followed them back to Toronto when they returned. I had visited Toronto several times but had been intimidated by the city. It was one thing to romanticize about living in a place where people wouldn't stop their cars to shout the obvious at me, it was entirely another to pick up and do it. With a place to stay, I decided that it was time to let my star rise.

We, the small town outsiders, were pulled like moths to a flame from all across the country and assembled in the few alternative clubs that existed at that time. These places weren't really about making money; anybody who went didn't have any. They existed to perpetuate this vital force of new cool. It was a symbiotic relationship between punk or romantic and club. This trend needed to be and without either it could not. There was nothing more important, or so it seemed.

I entrenched myself in the mascaraed youth culture of the early eighties. I was still not legally old enough to drink but almost always made it past the doorman; it's difficult to put an age to a face full of make-up. Life was simple. Work, get ready, dance. I relentlessly lived the look until 1985. The era of the Boy ended with, "Waking Up with the House on Fire"; Culture Club's tragically bad third album followed by the front man's descent into cocaine addiction. After dozens of colours and cuts, I dyed my hair back to it's original colour and drastically changed my look to, "A Room with a View" preppy.

There are times now, as I approach 43 years old, that I achingly miss the simplicity of those years. There are also occasions, when I reflect upon my youth, that I am dismayed by my vacuous lack of global concern. It wasn't that I thought that my hair was more important than the war in Afghanistan. I didn't realize that there was a war.

G


]]> Tue, 06 May 2008 16:28:00 GMT http://www.greglaviolette.com/blog.html?cq=1&p=42 www.greglaviolette.com/gltv
]]> Mon, 28 Apr 2008 12:28:12 GMT http://www.greglaviolette.com/blog.html?cq=1&p=41 www.greglaviolette.com/gltv


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