“Geeeee!”
My grandma’s sister (so, my great aunt), Joan, has a catch-phrase: “Geeeee!”
So, now, my grandma have started saying it. Geeeee! we say to each other.
Geeeee! I say, to her.
Geeeee! she says, to me.
We say Geeeee! because so many things seem to warrant a Geeeee! these days.
Earlier this year, much of Los Angeles burned to the ground. A couple weeks later, Republican Donald Trump was elected President of the United States (for the second time). A sort of quiet chaos ensued. Tariffs. Executive orders (seventy three, so far). Declarations, threats, denials. It’s all designed to overwhelm and it does overwhelm. Everyone says to not let it overwhelm — to focus, to “process our feelings about horrible headlines,” to “use that outrage to join efforts to block many of the most egregious policies all while casting a very different vision for America’s future” — but I suspect that even the most committed focussers and feeling-processers would be among the first to admit that there’s something otherworldly about this call to resist overwhelm. It may be true and possible and necessary, but it is more than difficult (emotionally, mentally, somatically). With nearly the whole world reeling, it is affectively absurd. It is the sort of call, then, that speaks the language of faith. And there are few of us left, now, that have that.
(Geeeee!)
Yesterday, the City of Vancouver passed Mayor Ken Sim’s motion to temporarily pause “net-new” supportive housing in the city. Earlier in the day, there was a big rally to protest the proposed motion. I only got to City Hall at about 2:00 p.m. but I was there until it closed. It was exhausting for me, so I can’t imagine how it felt for people who are un- or under-housed and/or living on social assistance.
One woman just screamed. One man brought a piece of wood to show Mayor and Council how unhoused people keep warm. Another woman told a story about nearly getting shot in her SRO, during a trip to the bathroom. In total, about 80+ people who had registered to speak (of a total of about 95 registered speakers) opposed the Mayor’s motion. Many people, myself included, emphasized that this motion will kill, that people will definitely die as a result, if it were to be passed (and of course, it was passed). Councillor Fry even emphasized in his speech that these statements were not hyperbole. He, along with Councillors Rebecca Bligh (newly Independent, after being kicked out of the ABC caucus) and Lisa Dominato (ABC-for-now!), opposed the motion.
But of course, Ken Sim and his cronies voted in favour of it. So, it passed.
And they tell us to be civil.
(Geeeee!)
I should be writing the preface to my dissertation. I was writing it, actually, before I started writing this.
But I started writing this because I could hardly focus on my dissertation. And I deleted all my social media (billionaires, doom-scrolling, you get it), so I had nowhere to publicly drop thoughts. And whatever thoughts I dropped, I didn’t want them to make all that much noise. (If a woman publishes a blog on the internet but no one reads it, did she really publish a blog?)
Anyway, here I am, dropping thoughts. Welcome to Fieldnotes: A Public Journal.*
* Edition 2.0. Because I first published Fieldnotes: A Public Journal on Substack, but I deleted Substack when I deleted all my social media, including the first iteration of Fieldnotes and all its original posts.