I’ve been writing up bucket lists for a few years now, and while I rarely cross off everything on them, I do find that they’re a great way to remember what fun thing I wanted to do or try…especially when the humidity of summer and the humdrum of working has put me in a fugue state of just wanting to rot in bed on my days off.
While I do think taking some time to yourself to not be ‘productive’ is both healthy and occasionally even necessary…I also don’t want to get too stuck in the rut of mindless media consumption in the guise of ‘resting’ for days on days.
April just so happens to be the month where I get all aspirational about life again, so I thought, why not share some of my bucket list items with you? Maybe this will inspire you to join me in creating your own bucket list, or adding to yours if you already have one! Therefore, in no particular order, here’s a short list of things I would love to do in 2024.
My alternative title might make this post sound more grandiose than it is, but if you’ve already fallen for the clickbait, you may as well read the rest of the post, right? I’m a nerd, I make no attempt to hide or apologize for this fact. And it should be evident that one of my flavours of nerddom is library nerd. So imagine my elation when my application for Vaughan Public Library to send me to the Public Library Association Conference was approved. VPL coordinated with libraries across southern Ontario to send a busload of librarians across the border and down to Columbus, Ohio, for three days of library programming and learning. It was a blast, and I’ve come back with ideas I can use for my programs and things that I need to talk to people higher up to implement. Sorry, there are no spoilers about any of that, but since VPL is constantly innovating, you shouldn’t be at all surprised when new things happen; just astonished by what they are.
So, why am I even mentioning this if I won’t divulge what I learned? Because alongside the informative lessons was a giant vendor hall packed with all kinds of neat stuff. Including therapy dogs! I very much want some of it for my own branch, but precisely what I’m hoping for is another thing I’m keeping hush-hush1. Aside from the doggos and cool STEAM stuff, though, there were a whole lot of publishers there giving out books. Sometimes advance copies, sometimes signed copies, sometimes just regular copies, but the point is: I brought back a whole bunch of books. Piles of books. More books than any librarian should ever collect2. But it’s soooooo hard to say no to a free book! And, to be fair, I mostly tried to be a good uncle and took books for my..? I had to look this one up: Niblings. So, I don’t have to worry about storing them, and get to thrust that issue on my siblings while still being the cool uncle.
It’s probably obvious that this post is a response to the release of Beyoncé’s new countrified album Cowboy Carter, to which I have been listening religiously. Despite her insistence that Cowboy Carter “ain’t a country album, [it’s] a Beyoncé album”, the album is a self-admitted response to “an experience I had years ago where I did not feel welcomed…and where it was very clear that I wasn’t.” Fans suspect this is a reference to her 2016 performance with The Chicks at the Country Music Awards, during which they performed Beyoncé’s “Daddy Lessons” to a chilly audience. As (sadly) expected, some folks in the country community still have their hackles raised at (the horror!) a Black woman daring to wade into the country waters, despite being from literal Texas and shouting out Houston every chance she gets (their argument might be that Beyoncé is a pop artist and therefore doesn’t have the chops for country, but I don’t remember any hubbub when the loudly Italian-American pop queen Lady Gaga released Joanne).
When I ask if country music can be “cool”, perhaps I should clarify what I mean by that vague descriptor. Maybe it’s different for the kids now, I don’t know! But for me “cool” indicates that timeless quality of being slightly outside—and, to channel 90s smugness, slightly above—the mainstream, of possessing an effortless je ne sais quoi, of challenging social norms instead of supporting the status quo. It’s by this definition that today’s mainstream country music misses the mark: as a genre (and this is speaking broadly), it is dedicated to upholding the conservative, patriarchal, exclusionary values of a certain racial and social class. It’s not the only popular genre dominated by white (blond, even!), straight, cis men—rock music has that in spades as well, but rock musicians tend to lean more alternative. Not so with mainstream country. Ontario’s annual Boots and Hearts festival returns this year boasting Jason Aldean as a headliner, the singer whose controversial “Try That in a Small Town” has been derided even by a Tennessee State Representative as a “pro-gun, pro-violence, modern lynching song.” It’s the opposite of cool (apologies to Luke Combs, whose cover of “Fast Car” is lovely, and he seems chill enough).
