A beautiful day!

Dunno what reminded me of this today, but:

When I was in elementary school, the schoolyard had a line painted down the middle to divide it by gender. [This was a simpler task in those days, as there were only two.] When we arrived before school, we waited in the schoolyard on our designated side. When the bell rang, the boys clustered at the boys' door on one end of the school, and the girls did likewise at the opposite end.

Of course, once we were inside the school, the genders mingled, because you would have to pass some of the opposite on their way to their classroom while you were on your way to your classroom. Once in the classroom, seating was non-segregated. As were lessons. When we were divided into groups for group projects, they generally tended to be co-ed.

But when the bell rang for morning recess, we lined up at the classroom door in two lines, divided by gender. And then, when dismissed, our lines diverged toward the designated outer doors. When we were out for recess, we played on our designated side. Facilities were duplicated: there was a girls' and boys' baseball diamond, girls' and boys' basketball nets, etc. Being caught on the wrong side was grounds for squeals of snitching, courtesy of the correct gender, and chewing out, courtesy of whichever teacher was on monitor duty.

This repeated throughout the day: returning inside after recess, being sent outside at lunch [our school had no cafeteria, it was assumed everyone could go home for lunch], returning, out and in for afternoon recess, and then final bell to leave for the day. Segregated outside, integrated inside. [Granted, they couldn't stop us from mingling over lunch or after school. But recess was enforced.]

It didn't take me more than a couple of grades to grow old enough to see the pointlessness and waste of all this. But I was always too meek to question it out loud.

In grades seven and eight, the boys were obliged to take wood shop, and the girls to take home ec — the first segregated instruction. This is also when phys ed classes became segregated. In my darkest secret recesses, I suspected puberty had something to do with the phys ed situation.

Once I hit high school in grade nine —

— then wood shop became an elective. Along with auto shop and metalworking. No longer obligatory. But also not available for girls. Home ec was similarly optional, and also not available for boys. No matter how much they might be interested in the subject, or benefit from it. It simply wasn't up for discussion.

But at least, in high school, the schoolyard and entryways were no longer segregated.

I still have no real explanation for all of this. But I'm glad my kids came up in a school system which no longer indulged in such eccentricities.

hearing robins right when I wake up

a rainy day

Today's forecast is for rain all day, heavy at times. I've been saying for the last couple weeks that we need it — the lawns and fields have begun to look like straw. Plus our air has been full of wildfire smoke for the past week and a good rain could help clear some of that out. It's unusual for us to go so long without rain in the spring...

I find myself thinking about this expression, and how often I heard it in my childhood and younger adulthood:

“Don’t be such a baby.”

So often, this was the reply we received when we found something difficult or stressful or painful, and dared to express this. The clear undercurrent to such a sentiment was that it is somehow morally superior to endure a situation rather than improve it. The deeper and subtler message was Don’t try to change things.

Nowadays, at least in some circles, I can see resistance to this whole dynamic becoming more vocal. People are speaking up about the fact that we are not all equally abled, and some people need more help to navigate the world than others do, and that it is A Good Thing® for those people to get it.

I think this is a social change for the better, and I hope it progresses. I have some regrets that this change in perspective is arriving too late for me in many ways, but I don’t begrudge it for those who need it now.

Swapping my new War Amps tags onto my key rings — I find it an oddly, quietly satisfying annual tradition.

Today's the first day this year I wore my spring/summer shoes instead of my winter shoes.

My parents married on this date seventy-three years ago. Today is the day I remember that, had they not done so, I would not be here. Part of what Alan Moore called a “thermodynamic miracle” in Watchmen...

After two heavy snowstorms in the space of a week, and me sitting here feeling the aches and pains of shovelling the latest one yesterday....

...the sight of light flurries outside my window just now immediately fills me with a flash of dread.

In my recent cartooning work, I've been using a cheap round watercolour brush to fill in large black areas with ink. Sometimes I've tried inking some of my lines with it as well, but it's not quite as good for that because it's not a great brush.

Today, I dug up some better brushes I bought years ago, when I wanted to learn proper brush inking someday, and decided to test-drive one. I ended up choosing an Isabey No. 1 Kolinsky sable round. Kolinsky sable brushes have been considered top of the line for decades in both comics inking and watercolour painting, and Isabey has a decent reputation, so it seemed a safe choice for today.

However, I couldn't help noticing how ragged the brush looked [you can see it on the left]. I didn't remember it being such a mess when I bought it, that's for sure. One of the most important things a round brush needs, in either inking or painting, is to be able to form and hold a sharp point — this gives you the control and precision you want in a round. I figured I could still use this one for low-precision fills anyway, and I gave it a whirl.

But then I noticed what happened when it got wet [you can see it on the right]. Gorgeous point that it holds together while in use. What a pleasant shock, I gotta tell ya. This brush doesn't look like much at first, but the quality of its performance is all you could want. (Kinda like me!) And yes, after I cleaned it and let it dry, it went all ragged again — that's just its way.

So there's that whole “don't judge a book by its cover” aspect to this, yes indeed.