Alison Garwood Jones

In conversation with Maureen Judge

May 3, 2010

In a display of human nature at its worst, I once worked with a fashionista who sneered, “Old ladies smell like sour milk.” Wow, I thought, if women can be this disdainful of their mother’s generation, we’ve got a problem. Judging by popular culture, society as a whole finds post-fertile women not worth looking at or listening to.

I wrote about this in a post called Best before dates back on March 4th. I said, one way we could encourage a cultural shift in our uncompassionate take on women and aging would be if filmmakers started telling more cradle-to-grave stories of women’s lives on the big and small screen. Pounding away on my keyboard I went on to say, it’s time to break the pattern of ending women’s stories a quarter of the way through with a fairy tale wedding, a climactic shopping spree, a premature cancer diagnosis or a car chase off a cliff (à la Thelma & Louise).

Seeing women on screen in all their various stages of life — and not just the first blush of youth before anything interesting or noteworthy has happened — is an affirmation of our entire time on this earth. Call it kitchen wisdom, but if we want to live, we have to age. So let’s stop averting our gaze before it’s over. Let’s follow the narrative arc of a woman’s life right to the end, highlighting her accomplishments, sharing the lessons she’s learned and spilling a few tears over the moments when the meaning of it all burned the brightest.

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When I wrote these words three months ago, I hadn’t met Maureen Judge. Judge is an award-winning Toronto filmmaker who is filling that storytelling gap I lamented with rich and complicated profiles of Canadian women, ranging in age from 18 to 101. Her one-hour docs hold up a mirror to situations we’ve all experienced (or will experience), but have a hard time acknowledging: the changing nature of love over time, where we go when we age, and what happens to us when life doesn’t unfold the way we thought it would or should.GetAttachment.aspx

Her latest film, Mom’s Home, premiering May 5 at 10:00 pm on TVO, focuses on the autumn of three mother/daughter relationships and how aging, and in one case an Alzheimer’s diagnosis, has changed the dynamic in each. All three stories show the commitment most women feel “to do what’s best” for their families, and often without the support or input from men.

[pullquote]Mom’s Home premieres May 5 at 10:00 pm on TVO.[/pullquote]

I sat down with Judge last week to talk about Mom’s Home. But before I launch into our Q&A, I want to introduce you to the three mother/daughter duos she captures so beautifully on film. Economic and health concerns have forced the women to move in together.

May and Gloria

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May moved in with her daughter, Gloria, three years ago just after her husband died. Gloria is also a widow. Originally from Scotland, this mum and daughter duo live together in a cramped walk-up in small town Ontario. May is 82, still puts on bright red lipstick every day and keeps the ashes of her husband and a pet budgie in decorative boxes on the dresser of her cluttered bedroom. Gloria wrestles with having to leave her mother every day to go to her job as a cook at the local diner. May has Alzheimer’s and as her condition worsens, Gloria realizes something’s got to give. She needs help.

Harrian and Charmaine

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Harrian moved in to her daughter Charmaine’s suburban home after years of living with her son, Carl, and his family. Both women are divorced. Despite getting the heave-ho from Carl —“Moms should stay with their daughters,” says Carl, adding that his mom was starting to “annoy” him — Harrian is wonderfully good natured about the prospect of moving into Charmaine’s place and taking over the cooking, cleaning and entertaining. Charmaine, who has always wanted her mother’s approval, is only too pleased to have her. “I don’t’ know how long I’m going to be here,” says Harrian. “We’ll see.” Charmaine works with a real estate firm, staging houses for sale. Harrian often accompanies her on jobs, although, at times, her daughter finds her more of a burden than a help. That upsets Harrian.

Pam and Liz

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Pam and Liz are the most conflicted about their living situation. Both are divorced and have been roommates in Liz’s home, along with Liz’s two young sons, for the past eleven years. Worried about money and her mother’s well-being, Pam feels bitter and stuck that she can’t get back her own life. Pam also wants a final period of independence before her she gets too old to take care of herself.

Q&A

AGJ: Has Alzheimer’s touched you personally?

MJ: My great aunt Rebecca had it. She lived most of her life in Windsor. She was a batik artist and made quite a mark through her work. She married late in life because she was looking after her mother. But it wasn’t long after she married that her husband got sick and died. She was always forgetful, but this was long before she had Alzheimer’s. At one point, my brother, who was living in Windsor at the time, noticed there was nothing but cigarettes in her fridge. That’s when my parents invited her to move to Toronto so they could keep an eye on her. She moved down the street from them. By that point, I was already living on my own, but I still saw her. Aunt Rebecca would take long walks. Every day she would go to the TD Bank at Sherbourne and Bloor [in Toronto]. They all knew her there. I would run into her a few times at The Bay and she’d say, “Dearie, Dearie, can you tell me how to get home?” She was totally lost. There were times too when she’d wander up to my parents house in the middle of winter with no coat on. She almost lived like a bag lady, but she wasn’t. My family was there for her. Aunt Rebecca lived down the street for quite a while until her behavior became too erratic. The final straw was when she jumped from her first floor window in the middle of the night with no clothes on. At that point, my parents put her into a nursing home.

Why is it important for you to tell these kinds of stories?

They go right to the heart of family realities. Family has always been my centre. It’s how I relate to the world. I’m one of eight kids. We moved around quite a bit when I was young, so when people asked, Where are you from? I’d say, Well, I dunno, I’m from my family. I was born in Montréal, then lived in Kingston, then Chicago and I finally ended up here in Toronto. I think there is a lot of drama in families. It’s a microcosm of society as a whole. For me, that’s where I find my nourishment for stories and for love and for all the ugly stuff too. It all gets mashed up together.

What do you like best about working with older women?

They’re funny. They say what they think and don’t care about the consequences anymore. I love their sense of freedom.

Do you think that women who are widowed, divorced, or temporarily “over men” tend to team up more to form support networks than men do (divorced men just look for a new woman to look after them).

That’s really interesting. I don’t know. I don’t have any stats. But I would think that’s true because, for women, family is still their base, so they’re able to reach out more. Even in a car, if someone gets lost who’s the one who asks for directions? It’s the woman because we don’t have that sense of having to be independent and alone and making it in the world without anyone else’s help. Also, women live longer than men. There are a lot of single mothers, divorced women and widows out there.

How did you find your subjects?

I found community newspapers were the best way to get at people. Those papers hang around for a week. People flip through them and tear out pages. I was also a guest on CHUM FM with Roger, Rick and Marilyn and got a ton of responses after I described what I was doing. I did CBC radio in the afternoon with Matt Galloway. I also got in touch with the YWCA, and did a couple of seniors speaking engagements.

Did the three pairs of mums and daughters you finally chose let you know why they wanted to get involved?

No. And I never ask, but I usually know.

Why did May and Gloria decide to participate?

That’s an easy one. Gloria wanted some entertainment for her mother. May was so excited to have the camera there because she had always wanted to be a movie star. I thought they’d be the love pair. Actually, I think Charmaine and Harrion are the love pair because there’s less pain in their lives. With May and Gloria, they had to move in together, but they also loved being together. They’re joined at the hip.

Pam and Liz came next. They were much more reserved, more WASP. I chose them because they really didn’t want to be together. They were both in this rut and didn’t know how to get out of it. Both had other dreams, and they weren’t shared dreams. But here they were sharing this house together with the kids and the dog. They were tied together and it wasn’t so much about love, it was economics. I thought a lot of people would understand them.

I think Liz represents the resentment that a lot of adult daughters feel. Her life is on hold. She can’t decide if she should marry her boyfriend, but she doesn’t want to pull him into her current situation. She’s stuck.

But Pam is stuck too. She’d like to go out on her own before she’s too old. She’s wondering, What’s going to happen to me?

What about Charmaine and Harrian?

I chose them because they were so much fun. By then, I’d been around Gloria and May and realized there was a pretty dark side to their circumstances. Charmaine and Harrian’s situation wasn’t all that dark. Yeah, ok, her son pushed her out. Carl wasn’t very nice, but Harrian had so much spunk. I also liked the fact that Charmaine basically wanted her mother to like her. She wanted to be the favourite child. That’s why she wanted her mother to live with her. This was her way — and I don’t mean this negatively — of insinuating herself more deeply into her mother’s life. Being one of eight kids I really understood that. You want to figure in your mother’s life. Charmaine’s goodness was allowed to express itself as a result.

Did any of the women have troubles letting you into their lives with a camera?

No. I don’t start shooting until I have some sort of relationship with my subjects. I got to know them over coffee, over phone calls. I wanted them to like me too. I have to let them into my life as a filmmaker. I know that if I miss anything in my initial interviews, when I don’t have cameras and mics around, I’ll get it again. People’s lives are very repetitive.

In the story of May and Gloria the word “Alzheimer’s” wasn’t spoken until about 9 minutes into the film. And it only came up once.

Right.

The women weren’t saying it. Why was that?

Because they live it. May was repeating herself all the time. You know, it’s there but it’s not spoken. She’s also in the really early stages. I didn’t want the medical condition to take over the whole film. And it doesn’t. This is not a film about Alzheimer’s; it’s about relationships and how they are changed by Alzheimer’s and all the other concerns related to aging.

I like what Charmaine said, “I’m learning to live with a completely different woman [than the one I grew up with].” It’s about meeting your mother at another stage of her life and getting to know her all over again.

Yeah, it really is.

Do you think people dance around Alzheimer’s the way they used to dance around cancer? You know, “She’s got the “C” word” (said in a whisper).

I think people do. I think they’re afraid of it. They’re afraid of getting it themselves. I think losing your mind is scarier than anything else. I have a brother who’s schizophrenic. It’s the same idea of losing your mind and not being able to control where it goes.

Do you think this teaming up of the generations will be a social trend over the next 30 years as Baby Boomers age?

I do. I think it’s an economic necessity mostly. All three pairs in the film had financial problems. They weren’t able to have their own homes. I think it’s a cultural thing too. As more people from other countries immigrate to Canada it will be more acceptable for multiple generations to live under the same roof. This will just become assimilated into our culture. I think it’s a good thing. When push comes to shove, you may not have chosen your family, but you are born into it and that’s who’s going to be there for you in the end. I also think mothers and daughters are inextricably bound together. That is the most satisfying part of making this film. I got to know some really great people who taught me a whole lot of life lessons.

 

Studio Tour of Pen Jar Productions

November 2, 2018

 Click on image to play my video greeting, or click here.

An email I sent my contact list on November 1st: 

Top of the morning to my friends, family and work colleagues:

For those of you who haven’t heard from me since high school, here’s what’s new:  I cut my hair, became an art historian, unbecame an art historian (too academic), pivoted to journalism, let my silver highlights show, wore all black, rediscovered colour, said goodbye to steady journalism work (thanks internet), and hello to content marketing (thanks internet). And when Steve Jobs unveiled the first iPad back in 2010, I rediscovered my childhood love of drawing —first through apps, and then with real paper and paint sets. Art stores are my candy aisle.

Instagram has been a great way to stay in touch with a lot of you through all of our iterations (several of you are  getting in on marijuana and bitcoin). Thank you for your enthusiastic feedback on my various comment threads as I explore the possibilities of illustration. It’s because of you — Greg G, Terry L, Isabelle V, Ken H, Caitlin C, Sarah P, Eden S, Martin, W, Maureen J, Gini D, Valerie S, Donna P, and Rona M, to name just a few — that I’ve been able test the market for my ideas, and offer the kinds of illustrations and designs you’d want to live with in your homes. You are my very first customers and cheerleaders, and I am so appreciative.

I made this short video to show you what I’m up to in my sunny apartment. Five months ago, I opened an illustration studio called Pen Jar Productions (read: I added another Ikea desk].  From this simple post, I’ve been making designs for pillows, phone cases, laptop skins, tees, totes, and silky scarves. Hence, my tag line: From My Sketchbook to Your Home™️. I don’t print them myself. A cool POD manufacturer named Notion does the printing and shipping for me.

If you would like to get occasional updates from illustrator me, please feel free to sign up for my Pen Jar Newsletter. Here I will occasionally share new seasonal designs, highlight craft fair appearances, and offer special discount codes for subscribers.  You have the option to unsubscribe whenever you want (I take no prisoners).

Click on image to subscribe

Now that it’s November 1st, our minds are gearing up for the hunting and gathering of gifts. I know people scratch their heads to come up with original ideas for Christmas, Hanukkah, and the 14 other religious and pagan holidays celebrated in the month of December. And just when that’s over, there are  birthdays and Valentine’s Day to think about. The longer you’ve been in a relationship, the harder it is to impress. I’d like to help in that department.

To the first 100 people who sign up for my Pen Jar Newsletter, I am offering 10% off your first purchase. A Discount Code to follow.

Happy Holidays, everyone!

Alison

 

A star is born

July 19, 2017

Girls on the Bus illustration by Alison Garwood-Jones

TORONTO, JULY 2017: Filmmaker Maureen Judge‘s next documentary, Girls on the Bus, in development with TVO Docs, explores the challenges faced by teenage girls whose expectations of success and sexual equality are not being met.

Maureen will follow four to five subjects during their final year of high school, and look at how the perception of a glass ceiling, and their place in the world affect the teenage girls’ attitudes, actions and goals.

I got out my black Uniball pen to create this drawing for their flyer and social media accounts. I’m a huge fan of how Maureen gets inside the lives of her subjects. Check out her work at MakinMovies.ca

Here is what Maureen is looking for in her own words: “While it seems like future possibilities for girls across North America are limitless, and more girls graduate high school than boys, a recent Gallup poll found 77% of teens still believe there’s a glass ceiling. Girls continue to encounter overt and shameless sexism. And, as they become aware of the disappointing job statistics for women, they begin to wonder about their goals and dreams. For instance, in two years Canada has fallen from 19th to 35th place globally in the gender wage gap ratings. And there is still a gap of close to 20% between full-time male and female wages.

Throughout the film, we observe the subjects dreaming about their futures and, despite the odds, see one believing she can achieve anything she wants, while another feels isolated, insecure and defeated. We relate to their passions, anxieties, sexual awareness, and frustrations as they navigate the social landscape of school, their families, and the digital world; fall in and out of teen love; and struggle to assert themselves in a male-centric world, amid a myriad of challenges and growing pains.”

Maureen’s last film, My Millennial Life won BEST DOCUMENTARY at the Canadian Screen Awards (Canadian Screen Awards).

GIRLS ON THE BUS – WHO ARE WE LOOKING FOR?
Age Range: Girls going into grade 12 or senior year of high school
Profile: Full of personality, sense of humour, witty…and eager to be on camera!

If you or anyone you know is interested in participating, please get in touch via email: info(at)makinmovies.ca

 

Covering female territory on film

January 5, 2017

Is being female ever an advantage in filmmaking? In Ep. 3 of Willful, filmmaker Maureen Judge discusses

• getting female territory on film.
• how she deals with setbacks.
• her seminal influences.
• the constant exploration of ideas and new technologies.

Willful is the web series that tracks how artists and creative entrepreneurs work, thrive and survive. We interview one artist a week, then post five three-minute snack films from that interview on YouTube every day.

Follow us here on our YouTube Channel or on our website WillfulProject.com for more inspiring interviews.

To check out Maureen’s work and some of her influences, go to:

http://www.MyMillennialLife.ca
http://www.makinmovies.ca/productions-3/docs/unveiled
http://greygardensonline.com/the-documentary/
https://www.criterion.com/people/1057-eric-rohmer

 

Capturing transformative moments on film

January 4, 2017

One of the greatest pleasures and saviors of working in the arts is losing yourself in the work. In Ep. 2 of Willful, filmmaker Maureen Judge describes

• what moves her the most about documentaries.

• how she chooses her subjects.

• how she sets out to capture those transformative moments in people’s lives. “I look for subjects who are living the broader shifts and changes in society.”

To wit: Her latest TVO doc, My Millennial Life, formed in her mind after she read news articles about youth unemployment in Spain and Greece. “It really resonated for me as a parent of Millennials.”

Willful is the web series that tracks how creative entrepreneurs work, thrive and survive. I interview one artist a week, then post five three-minute snack films from that interview on YouTube every day.

Follow us on our website or on our YouTube channel for more inspiring interviews.

 

Getting her start in filmmaking

January 4, 2017

In this episode of Willful, award-winning documentary filmmaker, Maureen Judge, tells me how she got her start in film.

Maureen heads up the production company, Makin’ Movies, and creates documentaries that take you inside people’s lives.

Highlights in this interview include:
• Why Maureen chose documentaries over other forms of filmmaking.
• Her first camera.
• How photo albums, sewing, and studying philosophy all worked together to shape Maureen’s vision as a documentarian.

Willful is the web series I’ve created with Yann Yap. It tracks how artists and creative entrepreneurs work, thrive and survive. We interview one artist a week, then post five three-minute snack films from that interview on YouTube every day.

Follow us here and on our YouTube channel for more inspiring interviews.

 

 

Willful web series

January 3, 2017

Alison Garwood-Jones interviews Andrew Dobson of dobbernationloves.com

This is me talking with my pal, Andrew Dobson, creator of the food and travel media empire, DobberNationLoves.

Andrew is one of dozens of creative entrepreneurs and artists I’ll be interviewing in Willful, a new web series I co-created with my friend, Yann Yap, a producer, photographer and videographer currently working at TFO.

yann-yap-and-alison-garwood-jonesA selfie of the creators, Yann Yap and Alison Garwood-Jones

Willful tracks how creative entrepreneurs work, thrive and survive, and today is the series launch!

I’ll be interviewing one artist a week, then posting five three-minute snack films from that interview on YouTube every day.

As freelancers,  Yann and I are always looking for good stuff to jump start our day, whether it’s an inspiring story, advice on process, how to pivot or transfer your skills as jobs change, and tips on the economics of being (and staying) creative. I know tons of people who geek out on that stuff. So, this is for you!

In each episode, you’ll meet women and men who are:

• Gutsy and joyfully oblivious to “You can’t do that” and “Who do you think you are?” (it’s a Canadian thing)

Opera5 Creators

Rachel Krehm and Aria Umezawa (above), the co-founders of Opera5 are a good example of that.

• Determined to make things, then put them out into the world.

Filmmaker Maureen Judge

Genie award-winning documentary filmmaker, Maureen Judge (above), is someone I admire because she has chosen a career that matches her determination to stay curious and interested in life. Her latest doc is called, My Millennial Life. Maureen is our first guest this week.

• Innovators and disruptors whose focus and positivity has elevated them above the snark of flabby, anonymous commenters.

Alison Garwood-Jones interviews Ricardo McRae

Painter turned “vision activator,” Ricardo McRae (above), has many insightful things to say about dancing with fear. And I’m not talking the kind of fear spread by crooked politicians, but private fears that stop us from speaking out or crafting original solutions to problems. In addition to his work with brands, Ricardo is the founder of Black in Canada, an organization that seeks to shift the popular narrative of Black achievement in this country, and around the world.

There’s a current of willfulness running through every creative person I’ve ever met — a certain scrappiness and determination. “Willful” is something you have to be if you want to make a real difference in the world. Hence, the name for the series.

Ladies and gents, the trailer to Willful:


 

If you like what we’re doing, please share using the appropriate buttons down below.

To be a part of “Willful”

If you are creative and have a “Willful” story worth sharing on camera, contact us at willfulproject@gmail.com, or on Twitter @WillfulProject.

Our thanks to The Merchant Tavern for generously offering us a stage.

 

 

In conversation with Google’s Robert Wong

July 3, 2012

I recently sat down with Robert Wong, the co-founder and Executive Creative Director of  the Google Creative Lab. You may not know about the lab, but its products are unforgettable. Take “Parisian Love,” a 52-second video the lab produced that’s all about “search” and the serendipity of finding true love through the internet. This video instantly went viral on YouTube and was up for three months when it was submitted at the eleventh hour as a commercial during the 2010 Superbowl. That decision forever reversed the company’s stance on brand advertising, what the founders had once called, “the last bastion of unaccountable spending in corporate America.” Since then, the lab has released a handful of commercials. None are obvious product pleas in the bacon-flavoured dog food mold, but all catch our eye and our hearts with familiar desktop demonstrations of web tools we’re all using that are drawing us progressively deeper into more meaningful interactions with others.

 

Robert Wong was born in Hong Kong and moved to The Netherlands with his family before they all finally settled in Scarborough, Ontario. Well, they settled but Robert didn’t. At first he tried to play the “good son,” sporting an ill-fitting accountant’s suit in downtown Toronto. It wasn’t long before he threw his hands up in the air and moved to New York with his sketch pad and an incoherent sense of more.

Today Robert lives in New York City with his wife and daughters and travels back and forth between Google’s Manhattan office in the Meatpacking District and the company’s HQ in Mountain View, California. Now when Robert walks into the offices of his colleagues, Sergey Brin, Larry Page and Eric Schmidt, he’s still throwing his hands up in the air — but out of excitement, not frustration. Here is an edited and condensed version of our chat:

AGJ: So you went to Sir John A. MacDonald Collegiate in Scarborough …

RW: Yup, right after Mike Myers and Eric McCormack.

AGJ: After high school you enrolled in accounting at the University of Waterloo. Why? That sounds so painful.

RW: Well, that’s how type-A geeky I was. Not that I chose that. It was a co-op program where you work for 12 months and go to school for 12 months. I was trying to make my parents proud. We didn’t come to North America until I was ten and I was the first in my family — of any generation — to go beyond high school. There was a lot of pressure on me, my brother and sister to be a doctor, lawyer, accountant.

AGJ: What changed that?

RW: I had to put toothpicks in my eyes to stay awake in accounting class. I realized after my first year that life is short and I didn’t want my work box and my life box to be separate. But before I could say anything, my co-op director sent me to work in a top accounting firm in downtown Toronto. I went down there with my little briefcase and suit. It was on the 25th floor of one of the “black towers.” [the TD Tower]. Within three months I knew I was kidding myself. I’d been studying accounting for all the wrong reasons: the money, the security, the career, for my family. It didn’t help that I was getting scholarship offers to enroll in MBA programs. I had to break it to my parents that I just couldn’t go through with accounting, not even an undergrad. I didn’t tell them I was dropping out. I asked them, and they were totally supportive.

AGJ: After the toothpicks snapped, what did you do next?

RW: In between all of those accounting and math classes, I drew. But for the longest time, I’d been telling myself that I couldn’t seriously pursue drawing because that was for people who didn’t get good grades. Thankfully, I got over that. After I dropped out of Waterloo, I moved to New York to enrol in graphic design at Parsons. [Yes, he got good grades, earning the  “President’s Award” at graduation]. At the time, I thought I was going to be a fashion designer.

AGJ: Instead, you got into advertising. [Here is Robert’s résumé on Madison Avenue]:

AGJ: Was becoming an ad man always a goal of yours?

RW: No. I hated most advertising. But the very best stuff made me feel so amazing. I thought a good ad campaign shaped culture in a way that design couldn’t because the megaphone is so big in advertising.

AGJ: Some would say now we’ve invented an even bigger megaphone with the internet.

RW: Right. And when things are open and there are no walled gardens innovation and the shaping of culture happens faster and more people benefit. It’s about the democratization of everything. Information should not be in ivory towers. The Google home page isn’t done as a big sexy Flash site, it’s optimized so everyone with a connection — even dial up — can access it. We believe in freedom of expression where you don’t take sides.

AGJ: Google doesn’t strike me as having to advertise itself offline through traditional means like billboards, print, TV spots or even on a JumboTron. The product is free. But every so often the company releases a spot on TV. Why?

RW: The Creative Lab [which Wong co-founded] and the commercials we create exist to remind the world what it is they love about Google. That phrase actually came out of Eric Schmidt’s mouth one day and we all jotted it down quickly. I think everyone who works here has a mission: to do good things that matter. The computer scientists, designers, writers and creative coders are all about, ‘How can I impact the world as positively as I possibly can with the skills I have?’ That’s in the DNA of the culture at Google. It’s certainly what the Google Chrome campaign of TV ads has been about, starting with “Parisian Love,” then “Dear Sophie” and followed up with the “It Gets Better” campaign with Dan Savage.

AGJ: Tell me about “Dear Sophie.”

RW: That came about when Daniel Lee, one of the engineers at Google, set up a Gmail account before his first child was born. He wanted to write to his daughter while his wife was pregnant, before she was born and as she was growing up. One day he’ll present her with the whole thing: the emails, the family photographs, home videos and maps he created of where they lived. I thought it was brilliant hack! And the point of the ad was that old browsers were made for viewing and browsing web pages, but nothing more. The Chrome browser features applications and plug-ins like Gmail, YouTube, Picasa and MOV files as well as Google Docs and Maps … so it’s so much richer and stronger.  The ad also celebrates all the people in and outside of Google who are using the tools to do amazing stuff.

 

AGJ: I liked it the Chrome ad for “It Gets Better.” I thought it fit in with your belief that the internet can build a better world and inspire a life with better results.

 

RW: That’s what we we wake up to do. If you want to make a difference, it starts with doing things for others. Sure, we pump out technology but it’s never about the technology itself, it’s about the genius of what people do with the stuff. We followed that up with a two more Chrome ads with Lady Gaga and Johnny Cash. But those ads and the search piece on love at the Superbowl are the only ads we’ve done.

AGJ: What other initiatives has the Lab turned out?

RW: Last month we launched the World Wonders Projects which takes users on tours of castles, parks and archaeological sites around the world, things like the Palace of Versailles. In the same way we went into museums with our Street View cameras, we’ve filmed the Wonders of the World. It fits in with our theme of making good stuff accessible to more people. Another one of our goals is to make heroes out of people who make and use art. We launched the YouTube Symphony Orchestra, which is made up of 101 musicians from 33 countries all chosen on YouTube. We also launched YouTube Play to give video artists a chance to showcase their stuff with the Guggenheim Museums. Anyone from around the world can submit a creative video for the chance to become part of the Guggenheim’s permanent collection. It’s a biannual thing. Let’s see, what else have we done? Oh! How can I forget? We spearheaded Life In a Day, an online movie that collects 4500 videos taken by people in 192 countries around the world and it documents the happenings from one day on earth: July 24, 2010. Ridley Scott produced it.

AGJ: When you were on Madison Avenue working as an ad man, you said once, “There needs to be more listening, less talking, more feeling, less thinking, more doing, less promising, more inventing, less polishing.”

RW: [Laughs] I still feel that way. I’m always trying to find the shortest distance between an idea and the magic and inspiration a person in the real world will be able to feel and see and touch. To do that you have to skip a lot of unnecessary steps. For example — and I don’t know if you’ve ever done any consulting — but one of the things you have to do, and we skip, is building multiple page decks to justify your fees. No one has the patience for that stuff here and no one would ever read it. Our founders certainly don’t have the patience for it. They always say, ‘Just show me.’ When we present our ideas to them, we do everything in either the form of a poster or a video where all you have to do is press “Play.” It has to be a prototype you can interact with. That’s it! That’s where the rubber meets the road. There’s no one giving commentary in real life. It has to be brilliant and move and touch people with all the thinking built-in. It you have to explain it, it probably isn’t very good.AGJ: What old-school habits as a graphic designer have you carried forward to working at Google?

RW: Certain things should never change. I keep coming back to qualities like empathy: think of the user and leave your body so you can really experience it from the other side. And storytelling. Everything is a story, not just words on a page or moving images with sound, but we all learned and got motivated by stories, stories of someone’s life or the story behind a certain product and how it went on to change the world. Everything in life is a narrative with a protagonist and a goal and motivation. Having all the work come from that place is important, and also very, very hard to do. And one more thing, less of anything wins. So stripping an idea down to its pure essential. That’s a big one.

AGJ: Does graphic designer even feel like the right description for you now?

RW: You know what? I still put it as my profession on my business card and passport. I like the idea of trade schools, of learning how to make stuff as opposed to doing lots of abstract thinking. Making is the cool thing now. Other than graphic designer, I don’t know what else to call myself? I have an engineer friend who before he worked here at Google he was in a job that tried to promote him to “Chief Innovation Officer.” That’s when he knew he had to quit, meaning that if innovation wasn’t carried through the core business everywhere, that was a big problem!

“In Conversation” is a popular Q&A Segment on “Society Pages” that features interviews with creative risk takers. Other people I’ve profiled include Bruce Mau, an industrial designer turned global thinker, Maureen Judge, a Genie Award-winning filmmaker whose real life docs focus on family dynamics, mezzo-soprano Erin Cooper Gay, and Evan Jones, a pioneer in Alternate Reality Games. Evan’s computer feats have forever changed our relationship to our phones, TVs and computers and have won him not one, but two Emmy Awards.

 

In conversation with Erin Cooper Gay

May 22, 2012

“In Conversation” is a popular Q&A Segment on “Society Pages” that features interviews with creative risk takers. So far, I’ve profiled Bruce Mau, an industrial designer turned global thinker, Maureen Judge, a Genie Award-winning filmmaker whose real life docs focus on family dynamics, and Evan Jones, a pioneer in Alternate Reality Games. Evan’s computer feats have forever changed our relationship to our phones, TVs and computers and have won him not one, but two Emmy Awards.

Bo Huang Photography

Last week I sat down with Erin Cooper Gay (pictured above). I met Erin a few months ago when we struck up a conversation at a Robbie Burns Day celebration. When I asked Erin what field she was in, she said, “I play the French horn with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra … but I’m switching careers.” After a pause, I thought she was about to say something like, “I plan to teach full time.” Instead, she leaned in just as they were about to pipe in the haggis and said, “I’m training to become a singer.” Career switches fascinate me, so I asked if I could call her.

Not many among us have the guts to follow a whisper in another direction, especially something as exacting and as public as, in Erin’s case, belting out love songs in foreign languages. She wants to specialize in Baroque music. Here’s what Erin told me about her move from the orchestra pit to centre stage.

AGJ: After we met, I went to your website and listened to snippets of your voice. [I invite my readers to do the same here]. When I heard you sing the libretto from Purcell’s Fairy Queen, I got a prickly neck. We’ve all heard about people who go half a lifetime not knowing they can sing or paint. Are you one of those?

ECG: [Laughs] No. My mom [Ann Cooper Gay] started the High Park Girls Choir in Toronto when I was seven and I was heavily involved in that until I was 16 — first as a singer, then a teaching assistant and finally as assistant conductor. And my dad [Errol Gay] was the librarian and a frequent guest conductor for the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. I grew up doing my homework in the stacks at Roy Thomson Hall and hung out a lot backstage. This was my world. I knew all the musicians from the time I was knee-high.

AGJ: With all that exposure, then, what did that little kid dream of becoming?

ECG: Ha! Good question. I always knew I would be a musician, but I didn’t know what form it would take. In the beginning, I was totally romanced by the idea of being in the orchestra. I wanted to be in the back of the pit cracking jokes with the boys because I was always a bit of a tomboy. The horn felt natural to me and I wanted to shine at it, but I’ve never had the same passion for it as I do for singing.

AGJ: So what held you back from pursuing singing first?

ECG: I didn’t see myself working to become an opera diva. Years ago, my mom was an opera singer with the Canadian Opera Company. She’s Texan and really charismatic, and I love that about her, but maybe early on I balanced things out by being more quiet and that’s why I chose the horn first. Like any kid, you want to forge your own path. With both my parents being musicians, I didn’t want to be known for doing exactly what they were doing.

AGJ: Was there a moment that changed all that?

ECG: Yeah. Five years ago, my dad wrote an opera called A Dickens of a Christmas for the Canadian Children’s Opera Company that premiered at the Enwave Theatre at the Harbourfront Centre. Dad and I were going through his first draft of the score and he asked if I could record all the parts for him. I did my best baritone, tenor and soprano voices just so he would have something on tape. Later, the singer who was playing Scrooge (a baritone named Mark Pedrotti) said to him ‘I think Erin’s really got a voice. Why doesn’t she come and study with me?’ I jumped at the chance because Mark is so wonderful [Pedrotti has performed as a soloist at at the Lincoln Centre in New York, The Kennedy Centre in Washington D.C., and the Mozarteum in Salzburg, among other venues]. At that point, I had just come back from Seattle after the breakup of my marriage, and I while I really wanted to play for the TSO [out West she had been playing with the Seattle and Vancouver Symphonies], I was starting to feel like I needed something else. I wanted to sing, but I didn’t know if it was going to go anywhere. Still, I felt like I had to take a chance. It was now or never!

Bo Huang Photography

AGJ: Is Mark your only teacher?

ECG: No, I have multiple teachers and mentors. When soprano Laura Claycomb came to Toronto to perform with the Canadian Opera Company as Gilda in Rigoletto, she took to my family. She’s a Texan. So am I. I was born in Alpine, Texas, but we moved to Toronto when I was three. I suppose you could say I’m fiercely Canadian, but with a Texan pride. Laura is from Dallas, which is where my mom is from. We all hit it off and Laura came to Easter Dinner at my parents’ place. By then, I had been studying with Mark for two years and he was saying that it was important for me to also start working with female singers. The timing was perfect. I met Laura, she offered to hear me sing, and what was supposed to be an hour meeting turned into four. We immediately discovered we work the same way, so we didn’t stop until things improved. At the end of the session, Laura invited me to her home in Italy. She’s been living in Europe for over ten years, just outside Turin with her husband “Tullio from Puglia!” [said with a lyrical Italian accent]. Laura was taking that whole summer off so I joined her in Turin, rented a room and we worked for three or four hours every day for 10 weeks.

AGJ: Are you working with anyone else?

ECG: After I met Laura, my world just opened up. I started singing for other veterans in the industry and they kept introducing me to more people I should know and programs I should take to hone my craft. In January, [soprano] Mary Morrison, [the guru of voice in Canada], took me on as one of her students. She’s 85 and made her radio debut on CBC Radio in 1944. Every single lesson with Mary has been gold. Her approach is very Scottish. She’s exacting and no-nonsense. Then not long after Mary I met Daniel Taylor, the countertenor. I went back stage after one of his performances with Tafelmusik. Later I sang for him and he said, ‘You need to come out to the Victoria Baroque Institute,’ and I was like, “Huh?” It’s so funny when Dan will say something in passing and it’s piece of music or a program that I don’t know about. He always says, ‘What do you mean you don’t know about X?! You need to know this NOW!’

AGJ: Didn’t you mention you’ve also been travelling to Quebec?

ECG: Yes. Last summer I met Bernard Labadie when he was guest conducting with the TSO. [Bernard is the founder and artistic director of two ensembles, the orchestra Les Violons du Roy and the choir La Chapelle de Québec, and has established himself worldwide as a leading conductor of the Baroque repertoire]. I was on second horn in the TSO when he was conducting, but I also worked with him briefly a few years ago when I coached the little kids who were playing the three spirits in the TSO’s production of The Magic Flute. Bernard is also very exacting and demanding and a fantastic conductor, particularly of 17th and 18th-century music. He remembered me and agreed to hear me sing. Afterwards, he said, ‘I think there’s something there. You need to work out some technical stuff, but I can help you with that.’ I took my dog Obi [a big, friendly chocolate lab] and we headed to Québec City last July to work with Bernard. He’s coached me several times since then. [In addition to playing French horn for the TSO, Erin is also playing for Labadie’s Les Violins du Roy and singing in his choir La Chapelle de Québec which performed the St. John Passion last Christmas at Carnegie Hall].

“Obi howls when I’m practicing my horn. But for whatever reason, he doesn’t howl when I’m singing. He likes to lie on my feet. Maybe he can feel the vibrations.” Bo Huang Photography

AGJ: Who’s your favourite singer?

ECG: Emma Kirkby, hands down. She’s the grande dame of early music singing and, in my mind, she’s IT. [Emma studied classics at Oxford then worked as a school teacher, singing in choirs for pleasure. When she started her voice wasn’t large, so she wasn’t a standout or an obvious star-in-the-making. But her fascination with early Renaissance and Baroque music, and all its associated instruments, was unique to the late 1960s and early seventies. Kirkby trained for decades, kept singing in ensembles and carved out a niche for herself, slowly rising to become Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2007. Kirkby’s awards are well deserved, but what Cooper Gay seems to be drawn to isn’t her volume, but the crystal clarity of her voice].

AGJ: Has Kirky’s voice affected yours?

ECG: Yeah, I gravitate to singers, like Kirkby, who don’t manipulate their voices a lot. I’ve always wanted a more natural-sounding singing voice, so I work hard on creating a more natural vibrato. For me, it’s not about adding more volume and vibrato, but freeing up my voice and spinning it. My teachers, like me, believe that there should be a connection between your speaking voice and your singing voice. I naturally speak quite quite low with some resonance, so for me to all of a sudden go, “Laaaaaaaaa!” [she screams a high F in my ear], is just plain jarring. I want to use a straight tone as an expressive tool.

AGJ: Hmm, I like that. I think I became a better writer the moment I stopped trying to be writerly and started making my writing voice match my speaking voice. That’s when I learned how to put a more natural tone and rhythm down on the page. I didn’t know that applied to singing as well.

ECG: You talk about singing naturally … well, I secretly always wanted to sing, not like this or that famous diva, but like a choirboy in the Vienna Boys Choir. Oddly enough, I didn’t understand why I couldn’t grow up and be a choirboy! I was upset that I couldn’t get the same tone — it’s pungent and so focused and, yet, has this unbelievable warmth and roundness to it that girls can’t come close to. I’ve always gravitated to that sound.  I even think, at one point, I manipulated my voice to try and sound like a boy soprano. All the musicisans I admire say, ‘Go back to the text and sing it like you would speak it, like it’s the most natural thing in the world.’ When you do that it’s easier to connect with your audience.

A member of the Vienna Boys Choir

AGJ: What’s a typical week like for you?

ECG: Well, it’s not just singing and orchestral performances. I also teach horn to several students. And I’m still a vocal coach. Almost every day of the week I’m getting ready for my next recital, so I’m memorizing, singing over and over or listening to recordings and repeating the text and speaking it as if I were an actor. On Tuesdays I sing in a master class at the University of Toronto after which I run down to Roy Thomson Hall for rehearsals with the TSO. Did I mention I’m also back in school?

AGJ: No. What are you taking?

ECG: When I met Daniel Taylor, he convinced me to join his one-year advanced certificate program in early music, so I’m studying for that too.

AGJ: Wow, your schedule is full. Do you need a nap?  Can I take one for you?

ECG: It’s a very busy time! And because I’m a freelance soprano I also take care of lots of organizing and self-promoting for my recitals at ateliers and small venues. One thing I’ve realized is that with an orchestra, you sit in the back, play your part and go home. The music director and the marketing department handle everything else. But as a freelancer, you invest much more of yourself not just in performing, but in organizing and event planning. At least that’s how it is when you’re first starting out. It’s A LOT of work, but I like the feeling of ownership I have over everything.

AGJ: Do you live in a house where you can really let it rip, vocally-speaking?

ECG: I live in a condo. Luckily the guy next to me is also in the music biz, so he gets it. He’s into digital recording. We’ve worked out our schedules but, still, I’d like to move at some point because it’s a bit expensive where I am. Ideally, I’d love to house sit for someone to reduce my costs and sing and play as I want. As a musician, you never want to feel muffled in any way. You need to be able to go to extremes to find your sound.

AGJ: Are you keen to see more people in their 20s and 30s getting into opera?

ECG: Yes! I grew up in a musical family and had this really narrow path and narrow perspective, so I haven’t really met too many people outside that world. The coolest thing about having my dog is that Obi introduces me to people from all walks of life when we’re in the dog park. I’ve struck up so many friendships with people in other fields and it’s amazing to tell them what I do. Some go, ‘Oh, what’s that?’ Others have so much knowledge. — like this one woman I met who said, ‘I love Prokofiev’s piano music.’ And I was like, ‘Really?!’ Baroque and early music is hot right now with the general public, and it’s lot easier to sell to the younger crowds.

AGJ: As a freelance writer, I’m always interested in the logistics of how someone pays their bills without giving up on their dream. I write, I teach and pick up shifts at a neighbourhood pub to make ends meet. How do you make it work?

ECG: I have a patchwork income too. And I’m not even sure I consciously designed it that way. When an opportunity comes up I go for it. I’ve always made things work, but maybe not in the smartest way, financially-speaking. Like going to Italy to study with Laura. I’m in debt right now from that trip and still trying to work it out with a money coach. To get your dream off the ground, though, sometimes you have to sacrifice being financially responsible up to a certain point, then figure it out later.

AGJ: Where do you dream of performing?

ECG: Severence Hall in Cleveland.

AGJ: Really? I was expecting to hear La Fenice in Venice. Why Cleveland?

ECG: I went to school at the Cleveland Institute of Music. And I went there because of the Cleveland Orchestra. The caliber of musicians in that orchestra is second to none, as good as any in Vienna or Berlin. I can still pick them out in recordings. I had incredible teachers in Cleveland and had the opportunity to play with the Orchestra nearing the end of my time there [she was subbing for them]. It was a thrill to sit on the stage of Severance Hall, one of the most beautiful concert halls in the world. I dreamed in college of playing for the Cleveland Orchestra and I did, so performing there as a soprano would be like coming home.


 

Spotlight: Growing Pains

April 16, 2012



Alice grows too tall for the room, from "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland," 1891 by Lewis Carroll. Illustration by Sir John Tenniel.

SPOTLIGHT is Society Pages’ newest column focusing on questionable occurrences. Read other columns here.

A dozen years ago, when the thought of becoming an academic art historian had lost its luster, I found myself throwing all of my investigative energy into a more personal story. This was back when I was trying to break into journalism, with no degrees or contacts, and pitching stories like, “I grew an inch in a week and, God Almighty, it hurt.” (Aside: it took me another 4 years of pitching and flailing to call myself a journo).

Still, it’s true. I grew an inch in a week and I’ve always insisted that the pain I felt in my spidery arms and legs coincided down to the minute with the moment my limbs were taking off in all four directions. For about a century, though, the idea that kids could feel themselves growing made the white coats smile and shake their heads. As a result, growing pains took pride of place next to the dreaded ice cream headache as these perplexing, slightly silly tales worthy of Newbery Medals, but serious scientific attention? No.

Yeah, whatever. All I know is that after a few years of crazy growth spurts, I crested at 6’1″ by grade 10 and the rush to recruit me to play on the basketball and volleyball teams was on. That happened before it was determined if I had any talent. And I remember thinking, for the first time, how invested everyone seemed to be in the idea that height=power. It’s in our DNA. It’s why tall people are hired faster than shorter ones, and paid more too — except if you’re a writer. Then you sit for most of your life (making you as tall as a child), and take peanuts for pay because you’re powerless to do otherwise. It’s like juvenile detention … the bastards.

I should probably cool it and just tell my story.

As it turned out, volleyball was a natural fit for me since I was good at racquet sports and I loved finishing points off at the net. But basketball was a disaster. For whatever reason, my head and body never came together on the court. Instead, I inspired a wave a snickers in the bleachers for my signature technique. “Windmill arms,” someone shorter and sportier called it. “What …” I stared back with a glare so stern it could have turned our school mascot (a Trojan warrior) to stone. But not the peanut gallery. They just grinned back.

Twenty five years later, I still find myself reading Wikipedia entries trying to understand what centre forwards are supposed to do. Apparently high school trauma never fades.

Here’s how it went down: back in the summer of ’82, when Whitney Houston was a junior model for Seventeen magazine and Princess Di was a walkabout rockstar, I was not so patiently waiting for the transistor radio pressed to my ear to play Men at Work or the J. Geils Band again. I was also completely dreading bed time because it meant another possible invasion of the body stretcher. Friends suggested I was achy a lot because I was playing too much tennis, and my muscles were overworked …

 

… but, no, that wasn’t it.

For four nights running the ache in my limbs came in waves around 3 am. I remember folding my legs up under my chin and trying to rock away the pain, then stretching them out and rubbing the length of my shins and thighs until I imagined I saw sparks. My mewing woke the entire house, turning my brothers over in their beds and sending my parents from room to room gathering up the necessary rescue gear: two heating pads plus an extra heavy blanket to weigh them down, and a Dixie Cup filled with cool water for taking the aspirin nestled in my mother’s extended palm. Mum and dad always tag-teamed on these nights, taking one leg each. “I’m growing,” I said with the kind of fury women, mid-delivery, save for their husbands (OK, so I exaggerate, but it was intense). Mum and Dad kneaded my muscles and didn’t question the cause. Neither did I.

Every time this happened — I grew over two feet between my tenth and fifteenth birthdays — my dad and I would meet before breakfast the next day for a “height-in,” similar to a jockey’s weigh-in. I’m sure it appealed to the side of him that was into sports stats and breaking records. We used to watch ABC’s Wide World of Sports together, a show that threw in words like “agony” and “human drama” into its classic opening montage, the one with the thunderous kettle drums and Jim McKay’s frantic voiceover accompanying clips of Indy crashes, World Cup wipeouts and Russian weight lifters shaking under barbells bigger than truck tires. At the height-in, Dad would slide a Bic pen over the crest of my skull and carve a blue notch on the wood inside of the cupboard door housing my mum’s winter coats. “Up an inch,” he’d say before carefully writing the month and year beside the notch. Now as my brothers and I start the sad task of cleaning out our childhood home, I wouldn’t mind claiming that door.

Whitney running through the pages of Seventeen.

If we can feel the push of a new tooth, the pinch of ovulation, and the itch and stab of multiplying cancer cells, why not the accumulation of healthy bone cells as they barrel forth ahead of attached muscles and tendons? This is what I was thinking as I looked for clues in the medical journals stacked up around me.  Surfing online pulled up nothing of consequence on growing pains back in 2000, so I relied on actual visits to the University of Toronto’s Gerstein Science Library to find answers.

And here’s what I confirmed: children really do grow at night. The pituitary gland shoots human growth hormone (HGH) into the bloodstream in rhythmic pulses during the deepest stages of sleep, between about midnight and 4:00 am, which is when kids wake up with complaints of sharp intermittent cramps in their legs and occasionally arms, groin, back and shoulders. I learned that it takes the body between twenty minutes to half an hour to metabolize human growth hormone, the same amount of time that a “growing pains” episode lasts.

That’s when I began studying this twenty minute time period even closer. I wanted to find out what our bodies are doing while they’re using and absorbing human growth hormone, and if anything about this process might register with our senses — making some of us go, “Ouch!” The oft-repeated line by paediatricians that growing was “a silent and imperceptible process” felt wrong, quite frankly. Body wisdom told me otherwise. I abandoned the idea that growing pains stemmed from realtime stretching muscles and overtaxed tendons — too cartoonish, too Incredible Hulk. My research seemed to point to another, less obvious, culprit. When a diabetic friend of mine told me one day that her legs ached when her blood sugar was high — “like when I had growing pains” — DING, DING, DING,  I wondered if high blood sugar levels might be to blame for my nighttime pulsating ache?

My focus turned to the side effects of high blood sugar. I learned that when HGH is released into the bloodstream it temporarily raises blood sugar levels, first by instructing the liver to make more sugar, then by convincing the muscles to get their energy from free fatty acids instead of sugar. With nothing to do and nowhere to go this rejected sugar makes it was back into the bloodstream at which point the pancreas senses an imbalance and tries to correct the high sugar levels by throwing insulin at the problem. But the muscle tissues couldn’t care less; for this short period of time — twenty minutes or so — while they are feasting on free fatty acids, they stubbornly ignore the incoming insulin which only makes the pancreas release more of the stuff. Again, I wanted to know how the body reacts to this struggle, producing an uncomfortable side effect? Does high blood sugar feel the same in all of us, whether we’re diabetic or not? I even started wondering is growing pains was like a case of temporary diabetes?

With the help of my Complete Home Medical Encyclopedia I ran my finger down the list of possible symptoms for hyperglycaemia (high blood sugar), past extreme thirst, frequent urination, weight loss and impaired vision until I landed on “leg cramps.” Bingo! Then I got my diabetic friends involved in a completely unscientific survey (I surveyed three people). “Have you ever had leg cramps?” I asked without telling them why I wanted to know. “When do you get them and how feel?” I learned from my friends that achy legs is one of their first symptoms when their blood sugar begins to climb. One subject, a friend at work who had Type 1 insulin-dependent diabetes, began reporting to me every time she had achy legs. “Test your levels! What are you at?” I asked. She consistently read between 10 and 12 mmol/L on her hand-held glucometer. Normal blood sugar readings are between 3 and 6 mmol/L. Being a doctor, I had no idea if her accompanying leg aches were related to her high blood sugar levels or poor circulation, another side effect of diabetes. This friend was new to diabetes — having been diagnosed three years earlier — but she hadn’t been told yet by her doctor that her circulation was suffering, so I stuck to the high blood sugar diagnosis.

Now I was thinking, I need more proof. All I had to do is convince doctors to equip parents with glucometers. That way, when their non-diabetic children woke up in the middle of the night because their legs hurt they could take on on-the-spot blood sugar reading. If enough kids consistently registered above normal blood sugar readings (i.e. above 6), I may have just solved the mystery of growing pains.

Mary Cassatt, Mother and Child

But parents aren’t just curious to know what causes the pain, they want to know how to relieve it, or, better yet, prevent it. In 1988 Drs. Maureen Baxter and Corinne Dulberg, in co-operation with the University of Ottawa and the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario, published what is now a frequently cited study in the Journal of Pediatric Orthopaedics. It claimed that kids with “growing pains” who performed regular muscle stretches at bedtime “showed more rapid resolution of their symptoms over an 18 month period” than kids who did nothing. But the doctors had no explanation as to why, at least at the time. That finding brought me full circle: maybe, I thought, that’s because exercise is one of the most effective ways of lowering high blood sugar. Just ask a diabetic. Apart from dietary changes, exercise is one of the first things their doctors tell them to add to their routine.

Afterword: I sat on my findings for over a decade, became a journalist, travelled the world, moved from one apartment to the next, then dusted off the banker’s box labelled “growing pains” a few weeks ago during a visit to my storage locker. When I went back to Google, now an infinitely bigger search engine than it was in 2000, I discovered that my hunch and my “leg work” were spot on. Since that time, growing pains has been taken up by researchers some of whom, like me, pinpointed complications from high blood sugar as a probable cause. Others, still aren’t sure. I was slightly ticked I didn’t beat them to the punch, but also amazed what focused research and a personal stake in the outcome can lead to. This was no Lorenzo’s Oil, but a fascinating journey for me nonetheless.

 
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