From: Jessica Murray <death.to.koalas@gmail.com>
To: grandmother’s email address
hi nana...
most
of the mail is probably from banks, some of it from student loan stuff,
and the rest of it i don't know. maybe tax stuff? i've updated my
address at one bank and will update the address at the other one soon.
for now, the student loan stuff will have to wait until i figure out my
phone situation. i'm just going to ask you to hold on to it for now and
i'll call you in a few weeks and we can sort through stuff i may want
you to forward and stuff you can throw out.
i'm not
sure what i'm going to do about the phone. i don't want to pay for phone
and internet. i'm happy to pay for internet, though, so i'm hoping i
can work something out with an internet phone. it could conceivably be
free. i'll probably get a used iphone and use it just for pay-as-you-go
text messaging, but that's not for a while still.
i
actually kind of like not having a phone, to be honest. anybody i
actually want to communicate with can and will contact me over the
internet. i find that phones are just used by telemarketers and bill
collectors. but having a number over the internet will be useful for
various things, if it's free.
the place is still in
flux. i've spent the last month cleaning it, getting appliances and
furniture and doing little fix up things like building shelves. it's
been a long and slow process but i think i should be done with most of
the place by monday. the room i haven't started with yet is the
recording room....
i'm almost two weeks not smoking and don't plan on going back.
i've
been posting lots of pictures and stuff on facebook, but i'll send you a
sort of report in pdf format when i'm done. to describe it? when you
walk in, there's a big walkway with a living room off to the side.
there's a room off the living room that i'm going to use as a sort of a
porch. when you go through the walkway, there's a very large kitchen off
to the across from the living room and a bathroom straight ahead. if
you take a turn there's a bedroom. then, if you turn all the way around
there's another walkway that is parallel to the first one that goes out
to a second entrance. there's a second bedroom (which i'm using as a
recording studio) off of the second walkway. there's also a door that
closes off the second entrance.
the way it's set up has
led me to the conclusion that the second entrance was probably meant
for a servant at one time. the building is fairly old, and windsor is in
an area of ontario that has a background of slavery and racism leading
well into the 20th century. as canadians, we take a lot of pride in the
underground railroad, which shipped a lot of slaves out of the united
states and into southern ontario. but, the history is actually pretty
bad if you take the time to read through it more closely. southern
ontario was also populated primarily by white british empire loyalists
that migrated north at various points to escape the various american
revolutions, and they brought a lot of southern attitudes into the area.
so, when the slaves were let out at the other end of the railroad, they
may have been "free" but they faced massive amounts of racism. there
were actually segregated schools in this area up until the 1960s. the
weird thing about the segregated schools in ontario, though, is that
they were created by the government in order to try and *minimize*
racism that was happening through integration.
it's an
old city, and while some of it is quite lovely, a lot of it has a very
dark character to it. you can guess i've been trying to learn a bit
about it...
anyways, i'll call you about the mail in a few weeks.
j
