On Saturday morning my back and my left
thigh were still sore from the bike accident I’d had the day before. A guy
carrying a dog stepped in front of my bike on Bloor Street but when I clenched
my brakes I lost my balance and fell off my bike. My back ached through yoga,
although it didn’t affect my flexibility. Once I started standing and playing
guitar however, most of the pain went away.
I
made the tenth video recording of my daily song practice. I made a few mistakes
but I’m getting more comfortable performing for the camera and I think a few of
the songs came through okay. I’ve got room on my computer to upload one more
session and then I'll either have to edit the videos or make space to record
more.
I
went to the food bank around 9:45 and for the third week in a row my spot was the
blue heart at the end. The guy in front of me was a big guy who's been a food
bank regular for a long time and in front of him was Beth.
Beth
was complaining that the distance between the hearts was wrong because it was
two and a half meters. I pulled out my tape measure and found that the distance
between the tail of the heart in front of mine and the tail of my heart is two
meters and six and a half centimetres. She said it was illegal because it’s
more than two meters. I tried to tell her that they don’t care if we are
further apart than two meters, they just don't want us to be less. Beth was
unphased by my logic and insisted that they were being "evil".
Beth
suddenly took off her mask for the first time and said that the masks are
unhealthy. I quoted Jon Stewart commenting recently that no one complains if
their surgeon is wearing a surgical mask and asks them to take it off to be
healthier while operating on them. She said she thinks surgeons should wear
respirators. I suppose that would be better protection if one is operating on
someone with a virus.
Beth
said that people have been fined for not social distancing but I didn’t think
they really had. I see now that she was right but so was I. I don't think that
one person standing too close to someone is going to get a ticket but when
large groups of people are hanging out together and ignoring the rules the
tickets are issued. As of the first week in May there had been 594 tickets
handed out in Toronto.
Beth
said she used to volunteer at the food bank but she got fired because she
didn’t steal. She told us that she suggested to them at the time that there
should be a day set aside for volunteers to get their food and that they should
line up outside and have the boxes brought up to them like everybody else. From
what I've always understood the volunteers get their allotment of food before
the food bank opens. I don’t know how closely the volunteers’ shopping is
supervised but there seems to be a general belief among the clients that it's a
free for all and the volunteers take all the best stuff for themselves.
Marlena
has always been the main volunteer working at street level, sending the clients
downstairs before the pandemic and distributing the food upstairs since it
began. Beth claimed that Marlena told her that she wants all of the food banks
to be closed down. I find that hard to believe, since she wouldn’t be
volunteering there if she didn't think it was worthwhile. Beth also asserted
that the reason that Marlena works outside is because they want her out and
that the next step is to fire her. That seemed like an absurd thing to believe,
since Marlena has always had that position ever since the food bank moved from
King Street three years ago. It seems to me that Marlena’s job is the best one
a volunteer could have at this facility. It’s the one that I would choose if I
were to volunteer there.
It
was around 10:15 and it occurred to me, after all this talk about Marlena that
that I hadn’t seen her or any other volunteers yet. They had usually come out
to hand out some food items or at least to look at the line-up by this time.
At
10:30 two young men of about college age, who I didn’t recognize at all, came
out, one with a cart and the other with a clipboard. They worked together and
one took down the name and birth date of each client just before the other
handed them a box. Neither of them looked like Parkdalians and since I didn’t
see any of the regular volunteers from the neighbourhood the presence of these
guys seemed weird and gave me the feeling that the Parkdale food bank had been
gentrified and taken over by outsiders.
When
I received my box I was told that there were vegetables at the front by the
door.
As
usual I didn’t keep most of what I was given.
I
took two 71 gram bags of mountain blend coffee from Club Coffee, a company
which started in Toronto in 1906; a 170 gram bag of fudge dipped Oreo thin
bites; two cans of tuna; and a tin of cream of chicken soup.
The only imported
product was a 370 ml carton of Cirio crushed tomatoes with onion and garlic.
The tomatoes were a year and two months past their best before date. Cirio was named in a lawsuit in 2017 that
came about after a farm labourer in the tomato fields at the heel of Italy died
of a heart attack. It was asserted that he could have survived if he had been
allowed medical help. The workers labour twelve hours a day, seven days a week
without breaks but with no visits from health care professionals. While Cirio
does not employ the labourers it was charged in the suit that the company
profits from the poor conditions under which the labourers, some legal
immigrants and some illegal, work.
I got the usual
three eggs, a half litre carton of 2% milk, and two small yogourts, one lemon
and one lime.
I put the bag of
noodles, the bag of dinner rolls, the pack of what seemed to be vegan ground
beef, the can of tomato soup, the tin of stewed tomatoes, the box of sugared
cereal, the gravy cubes and probably a few other items that I can’t remember
back in the box and gave most everything to Beth. The only thing she didn’t
take were the gravy cubes and the noodles. A woman nearby however took those
off my hands.
Over by the door
was a box of bags containing two bananas, two apples and two yellow peppers.
Next to that was a box of young coconuts. I shook a few and picked the one with
the most liquid inside. The guy behind me was very excited because he’d never
had a coconut before. he asked me if there was water inside that he could drink
and I told him they have milk that he could even use to make ice cream.
When I went unlock
my bike Beth was still packing her cart. It didn’t look like she was going to
have room for everything and she said she’d have to carry the cereal in her
hand. She gave me her can of organic chickpeas, which was good because I hadn't
gotten any beans in my box.
As I was riding
away I saw the guy who usually helps Marlena hand out food, sitting across the
street and watching what was going on with a brooding expression. I wondered
what was happening inside the food bank.
I took my food back to my place. My second
floor neighbour Benji was pacing in front of our building and looked like he
was guarding the place. I asked if everything was in order. He said he was just
stretching his legs. I told him to make sure he stretches both legs so that one
wouldn't be longer than the other. He commented that he had nothing to do and
all day to do it and so I suggested that he take half the day off so he doesn’t
have to work so hard at doing nothing.
After
putting my food away I rode down to Freshco to take some money out of the bank
machine, then I rode to No Frills. I bought seven bags of grapes, two half
pints of raspberries, a wedge of two year old cheddar, mouthwash, hair
conditioner, Murphy Oil Soap, a can of dark coffee, some Greek yogourt, some
skyr and a bag of natural potato chips. At the checkout I had to remind the
cashier that I was supposed to get $10 back.
For
lunch I had a cheese, cucumber and lettuce sandwich with ranch dressing.
In
the afternoon I skipped my exercises to work on my journal.
I
uploaded the video I’d shot that morning but didn’t have time to look at it.
I
had an egg over easy and toast with a beer for dinner while watching “Meeting
in Paris", which is the eighteenth episode of the 1957-1958 Alfred
Hitchcock produced TV series, "Suspicion”.
In
the story, Peter Lockwood is a very successful oil man who has come to Paris
for a funeral. One day while leaving his Paris office he finds his ex-wife
Clare sitting in his convertible. He has never gotten over Clare and he invites
her to lunch. She says she needs his help because her husband, Eugene Stengler
is in trouble and needs to get back to the States as soon as possible. Peter
says he will help her but after they part he is approached by a Major Denbrow
of the US military. He says that Stengler is a traitor selling US secrets.
Peter tries to bring Eugene the freighter tickets to his room but he had run
just a few minutes before. Peter finds Clare and she explains that Eugene left
because he saw that Peter was being followed. She says that she is staying and
Eugene is leaving. He is being pursued by black marketeers that mean to kill
him. Peter arranges for someone to take Eugene the tickets to his new location
and then he once again is approached by Denbrow. The major convinces Peter that
Stengler is a traitor and so he rats him out. Thinking that her husband is safe
Clare goes back into the arms of Peter but then it is reported that Eugene has
been found dead. Peter explains to Clare that Eugene was a traitor and he takes
her to see Denbrow so he can corroborate this to her. But at US military
headquarters in Paris it turns out that the real Major Denbrow is not the
person with whom Peter had met earlier. Clare is horrified and runs out. That’s
the strange end to the story. It made me wonder if Elliot West’s original story
also ended that way.
Clare
was played by Jane Greer, who is descended from John Donne. Her mother entered
her in and she won baby beauty contests. She had palsy at the age of fifteen
and it partially paralyzed her face. The facial exercises that she practiced
helped her achieve a versatility of expression that aided her acting career. As
a teenager she sang with big bands. One of her first films was the 1945 movie “Dick
Tracy”. She is best known for her role in the film noir, “Out of the
Past". Howard Hughes was obsessed with her and she married Rudee Valee to
escape but Hughes fought to ruin her marriage so she would return to him.
