The thing is, if it was a whole show devoted to poking fun at it wouldn't be necessary. I spent a number of years in a relationship with more than a decade of age difference. It wasn't something that was fully legitimized by my peers... until many years later when they began to do it. Then it was the new, great thing. Course I've never been married, so that must be the difference. Once you've escaped the constraints of a long-term marriage getting it on with a younger man can only be seen as "empowering." I guess.

I've seen this "cougar" thing gain ground, fade, gain ground and fade. I actually think it's pure silliness. Rather than empowering, it's degrading. I don't spend alot of time talking about my experience with it because I didn't think it was anything to brag about, it was a personal and very real relationship.

Trivializing it, branding it a trend takes away from the reason an older woman might choose to spend time with a younger man. Here it is: at a certain age it becomes extremely difficult to meet men who are free - either because they are married, or married-looking -to-fool-around. At one point it was important to me to be with someone who hadn't been married, and that's also difficult to find over 40.  It's not an immaturity thing, a point of empowerment or a thumbing your nose at societal mores. It's just a circumstance and, mostly, a personal decision that is diminished by so much scorn posing as acceptance.

At the risk of sounding bitter, I would also like to say that our culture is increasingly infantilized by our entertainment sources. I'd rather see women portrayed as smart, insightful and empathetic (whether they are mothers or not, I might add). Now that is empowering.

***

As an aside to this post. I have not had sufficient time lately to write more updates on this blog. Regretfully. Regular readers know I have so much more to say, alot more frequently. Alas, the day job has sucked the life (and brain) out of me. It's also been an extremely difficult year in my career life. Hopefully all that will change sooner than later and I can get back to being ME.

Thanks for coming back.

C

I've read Angela's Ashes a handful of times, listened to it twice on tape (read to me by the man himself), I've given this book to at least a dozen people as gifts for various occasions, or none at all, and seen the film (only once, generally I dislike books to film). It's safe to say I've done some serious time with Mr. McCourt.

It's hard to believe I resisted reading this book that makes you cry and then laugh through the tears. I guess I thought it was just too popular so not my kind of read. Hey, I'm a self professed book snob. Published in 1996, I think I finally got to it a couple years later, and of course, didn't put it down til it was finished. While reading it I found a newspaper photo of McCourt and pinned it to my bulletin board at work. I simply couldn't believe he had lived through his miserable childhood But live he did, and the literary world was richer for it.

Me & Frank McCourt, Bravo! Rehearsal Hall, 2000Now, I've met alot of famous people. Just about anyone you can think of - writers, musicians, actors, celebrities. It doesn't faze me usually. But when wee Frank McCourt came into Bravo! (where I worked at the time) for a news interview, I suddenly felt very shy. Though I was determined to get my book signed I didn't know what I could possibly say to a man who had lived ten times the life, and hardship than I ever would. Feeling nervous, I waited in the wings while the interview wrapped up and then timidly approached. Lacking the courage to say very much I just asked for a signature. A co-worker who must have known what it would mean to me later, snapped our photo. I shook McCourt's hand and walked away. Happy.

When I got the photo I tucked it away for safe keeping. Then, when I moved to Vancouver, changing my career to fulltime writing and journalism, I framed the photo and put it the desk by my computer. Inspiration.

I didn't know if I'd ever meet him again, but his book, life and this meeting had made enough of an impression.

And yet I did meet him again. A few years later, working as a producer on a TV show in Vancouver I had the opportunity to invite him to the show while he was promoting his book Teacher Man. Now, getting authors on this particular show wasn't easy, it simply wasn't the best venue for a considered interview. But noone expected to ever have the chance to score this particular author, so there I was one bright, sunny, early morning greeting Mr. McCourt again. This time I had to overcome my shyness to talk to him since I was producing his interview. We chatted in the green room about his teacher anecdotes, deciding which ones he would tell and discussing how the profession has changed since his early days.

He was quite simply a lovely man. And though I didn't by any means begin to know him, I will miss him and his unwritten words.

Here's my fave clip from yesterday's memorial. A performer who used his unique talent to pay tribute to a singular talent.

Loss of a Family Man

These Women Take Flight

To be able to watch nature in action is pretty amazing. One evening I saw an intruder that looked like another eagle try to snatch one of the eaglets. Another time the male eagle dropped off what looked like a dead rabbit, which startled the female when it tried to hop out of the nest. She killed it right before the prying eyes of thousands of enthusiastic bird-watchers. The eaglets,  hatched two and 4 days apart from one another sometimes fight to be the first to feed; the eldest pecking at the youngest until he/she plays dead just to stay out of its way. The chat rooms go crazy when these things happen. Some people lament nature's cruelty saying they can't watch. They give human qualities to the eagles, calling them mom, dad and babies.

One clever chatter coined the term "nestovers" when the eagles feed their young in the evening from the same fish or fowl they caught in the morning. They worry the parents aren't catching enough food, that the littlest one isn't eating enough to sustain him or that his nest-mates will peck him to death. They imagine they see blood in the nest, they wonder if the parents are experienced enough to shepherd their eaglets into the world. They say they'll cry their eyes out should anything happen to them and fret when one chatter informs the room that 40% of eaglets die while learning to fly.

The other night a fight broke out between the die-hard nature-watchers and the ones who can't stomach the ups and the downs of natural life. Lots of caps were used. Finally the die-hards left the room and the others traded quips about how they were killjoys and why can't they just lighten up! Mostly the chat rooms are a friendly places where people catch each other up on the days events on the nest and eventually, during the long stretches when the eaglets are sleeping, talk to one another about their own lives, where they live, what they do for a living, their kids, grandkids, etc.

It all reminds me of the first summer I lived in Vancouver and joined a small but dedicated group of swan-watchers in Stanley Park's Lost Lagoon. Before then, I had never really been much of a nature lover, mostly because I had rarely been exposed. My family didn't have a cottage and I guess I was an urban, concrete-jungle kinda gal, thriving on the adrenaline a busy city provides. Vancouver's urban setting is against the backdrop of nature and it changed me. That and the summer trips I took through BC and Alberta where wildlife is much more abundant than say... downtown Toronto.

Me and the other swan-watchers initially gathered to witness the incubation and hatching of the cygnets, but over the couple of months of meeting at the nests, we soon began to know each other above and beyond the swans. Some I kept in touch with, some I only saw the next year at the nests. We were all very invested in the success of the eggs and the new little lives. How thrilling it was to watch them take their first swim, how fascinated we were at how it all happens by an instinct that we as humans learn all too often to second-guess in ourselves.

It's instructional and awe-inspiring.

Watching the eagles breed is a nice reminder of that part of the country and my fairly recent appreciation of nature.

My first summer back in Toronto, I wrote this post about my experience with the swans.

Back when I was swan-watching in Vancouver I wrote this story for a local paper.

Those sentences aren't meant to sound like platitudes. I find them to be true, for me at least.

The state of loneliness, or even the odd afternoon of feeling lonely, isn't a popular topic to discuss. I think people pretty much shy away from declaring loneliness as their frame of mind. I know from experience that admitting you're lonely can clear a room. I recently read a blog post discussing a new book called The Lonely American: Drifting Apart in the Twenty-First Century by psychiatrist team Jacqueline Olds and Richard Schwartz. The book apparently discusses why people have fewer trusted connections now, in the age of hyper connectivity, than in the last few decades. The blog post talked about how lonely people are often social misfits and how social isolation is a health risk. I hear this alot, especially around Christmas and it always kind of scares me.

I spend most of my time alone, at least 75%. Some of it is deliberate. But not all.

I also spend quite a bit of time feeling lonely. Sometimes it's overwhelming, other times it's useful. Solitude is good for the soul, but too much of it is not recommended. It's a delicate balance. Either way, I have learned to push through loneliness. I know now what it's based on.

I never once felt lonely until the day my mother died at the end of 1997. At the time, I was just learning about how much solitude I needed but never once equated that need or practice with loneliness. After my mom left the world, I was utterly bereft and have never really recovered. This is because, try as I did to replace the friendship and kinship I had with her, I finally had to face the fact that it couldn't be done. She was my preferred company, my best friend, the one person with whom a single conversation offered me the gifts of comfort, intellectual sympatico and stimulation and just plain fun. We shared many common outlooks and ideas about life and how to live it. We had an extremely strong connection and I still believe that even if I was not born of her womb, we would have found each other in the world.

Feeling this way does not mean I haven't moved on with my life, cultivated strong friendships and continued to be a social animal. This does mean that my particular brand of loneliness is not easily "cured" (for lack of a better word). It only means I have learned to live with it and am still learning not to react impulsively because of it.

After my mom died, I realized almost immediately that I had a different, newer, more intense need for my friends than ever before. I was perhaps a bit hard on them for not meeting this need to my specifications. At the time, in our late 30s most of our careers were on an upward movement, many of us were settling into serious coupledom, marriage, kids. I could never see enough of my pals and because I felt I never saw them, and my best friend was gone, why not move away and start fresh in a part of the country that I perceived had a more balanced approach to life.

It worked for a time in the sense that a change is as good as a rest. But slowly, the loneliness crept back in. Just like a Vancouver cabbie once said to me "the rush is in you, not the city you live in," it's also true that loneliness does follow you. Living there, taking a stroll along the seawall could sometimes alleviate the feeling. Montains, ocean. Living here, I often feel stuck. But I've learned this is also something immovable living inside me. Toronto doesn't inspire movement in me. Vancouver does. A true inner struggle that I'm still working out.

Working at home I spend a lot of time talking to people electronically - email, instant messaging, Facebook, Twitter. I can spend days in a row without hearing the sound of my own voice, and yet I have "talked" to quite a few people. It counts, and it doesn't count. You can feel all talked out before you even get to any real connection. I enjoy it, but there are times when I just have to tune out the noise of e-connection for real live human interaction. The truth is, the voice, the eyes and the body have it. Nothing can ever replace the soothing touch of a compassionate friend, the synchronized laughter of a shared joke, or that certain knowing look during a conversation.

As for lonely people being anti-social, or socially anxious. That's a strong denial of the denial of loneliness in our culture. One really has not a lot to do with the other. I can spend days and weeks alone, and then walk into a party or gathering perfectly alone and not have a problem. Maybe not everyone who spends as much time alone as I do can do that, but to paint any segment of the population with one brush is most annoying. Especially when it's the social culture itself that is contributing to the feeling of isolation.

I guess I just think that loneliness is a fairly misunderstood state of mind. And before we take it out to examine whether or not it needs to be medicalized (the next step I'm sure), we should spend some time trying to understand its source. I think we'll find that it is highly individual, and fairly common.

It begins with two of the best sentences of clarification I've heard in a long time:

"Let's get something straight: The television industry is not in crisis.

The economy is in crisis. Simultaneously, the news industry is in a state of flux."

As a freelance journalist looking for television work and writing assignments, the daily hyperbolic reminders (based on a misunderstanding of the facts) that mainstream media is dying are a little too much to handle. It's all I can do some days to not ask myself, why did I choose this or why bother trying? Add to that all the twittering about how new media and social media are taking over and you've got a recipe for some very high levels of anxiety for a good deal of people still working in "old media."

Now I'm not saying things won't change, aren't changing or shouldn't change. I think they should, in fact they'll have to. They'll have to change to accommodate a new demographic that doesn't consume mainstream media, or at least in the traditional way. But I also don't think it's changing as fast as the twittering public seems to think. It can only change at the rate that the people running the old business models can figure out how to update them.

And like Doyle says, people are still watching TV in large numbers. He also says:

"... there's one thing I can't figure out – that is why local TV stations are suddenly not viable. In the case of CanWest Global's E! channels, I can see some reason for the current circumstance. Those channels, once resolutely local, were turned into absurd, unworkable hybrids that offered a little bit of local content, a little bit of prime-time drama and comedy, and a lot of celebrity-centric garbage reality TV."

I watched this happen to my alma mater, Chum Television when it was bought out by BellGlobemedia who slowly but surely cut out most time-honoured in-house productions, and veteran management and  staff. But even prior to that, when Chum bought Craig in an attempt to broaden its national reach. At that time, local entertainment news was replaced by a national entertainment segment, broadcast out of Toronto. Back then I was working at Citytv Vancouver and felt saddened that a city like that, that has a thriving local arts community, lost one of its only venues for reflecting that community to itself. Too bad. After that the 6 and 11 newscast were cut. Even worse.

So much has been lost in Canadian television by media concentration - it doesn't look too bad in Toronto, maybe here we barely notice it. But in the smaller cities, it's truly devastating, and not only because talented journalists lose their jobs. All that stuff predates this recession, and I believe it's something the CRTC should have had its eye on. Now it seems just fine to sweep it all under the recession rug causing and spreading misinformation and therefore more panic (and panicked decisions) than necessary.

I really think everyone should just calm down.

Please?

So, what to do with the free time in between applying for tv jobs and sending out story pitches to newspapers and magazines?

What else? Start a new blog.

Bound to Write is my new literary blog, a venue for book news, reviews, author profiles, Q & As and all things to do with books and reading. Basically it's a place for me to talk about the creative art I love the most, Literature. And help promote wonderful writers - well established and brand new.

I'm just getting started and I hope you'll join me there.