Pete Seeger

I have spent part of the day listening to my CD of the Weavers. It is an enjoyable double set and I like to listen to it every once in awhile but today I listened to it because Pete Seeger was one of the Weavers (along with  Ronnie Gilbert Lee Hays and Fred Hillerman) and I wanted to hear his voice.

Pete Seeger died yesterday and my world is just a bit emptier than it was on Sunday. So much of the music that shaped my musical taste was his music. So many of my political beliefs were shaped by his politics. The whole folk music scene that existed in the 1950s and 60s and still exists today does so because of people like Seeger, the Weavers, Almanac Singers, Guthrie, Leadbelly and Cico Huston amongst others. All of the groups that followed them such as the Kingston Trio, Peter, Paul and Mary or Fairport Convention could only have existed because folks like Peter Seeger spent a large part of the lives traveling the country singing their songs and telling their truths about peace and justice.

He was a man of conviction and he wore those convictions loudly and proudly. He not only never avoided a political confrontation , he actively went out and found them.  Whether it was refusing to participate at the McCarthy Hearings in the 1950s  or singing at Occupy New York or participating in the cleaning of the Hudson River - where ever he was - he sang for the truths that to him were self evident.

So the next time you sing around a campfire or at a protest march.... remember Pete Seeger. He showed us how.

Time for a change?

Last week Rick Mercer during his weekly rant on CBC mentioned that he had made a New Year's resolution to not get as angry at the Canadian Government; to at least make the attempt to look at both sides of the issue. It was a short lived resolution.

I never thought about making such a resolution. I am more of a realist than Mercer is both in terms of my ability to restrain myself and the government's apparent limitless capacity to make fools of themselves.

Keeping up with the disaster that is the Harper government can be exhausting. I am almost afraid to watch the 10:00 news on CBC. I know there will be at least one item that will cause me to, at one point during the night, lay awake and wonder what I can do. I keep on having this dream/nightmare that one day I will get to chat with Mr. Harper and then I can tell him how much I disagree with him. Of course I know that that would never happen and if it did there is nothing I can do to change his mind. We come from different planets. Or at least our perceptions of reality are profoundly different that we might as well.  I think I could live with those differences if he would acknowledge that not everyone agrees with him; that there is another point of view which has validity; and people who think differently are not terrorist, anti-Semitic or bad Canadians.

I am so tired of someone from the Harper Government starting a sentence with "all Canadians believe/think/feel or agree". I am tired of them making assumptions that they know what I think or believe (it is far more likely they just don't care how I think or feel). I am tired of them weakening our capacity to protect ourselves environmentally (by laying off or muzzling our scientists) and then saying that we have more protection than ever and that they are making decisions that are in best interests of all Canadians. I am beyond tired of their sanctimonious and condescending comments to other countries. We lecture them about human rights while denying the same rights to so many First Nation Canadians or to some Palestinians. We make big announcements about how wonderful we are, and then do nothing.

Take for example the issue of Syrian refuges. As noted by the CBC Sweden has welcomed approximately 14,000 refugees from that war torn country. Canada's commitment? To take a total of 1,300 individuals between 2012 and 2014. Sweden has a population of less than ten million but have already accepted ten times as many people as Canada has promised to do. Makes Canada look rather ungenerous. We have nothing to brag about. Similarly last week Harper made a big deal about money given to Palestine. From numbers available from The Globe and Mail it looks as if the aid package committed to that country is less than it was last year although quite frankly with the way the Harper Government makes numerous announcements about the same pot of money it is hard to tell.

Most of all I am tired at Harper's assumption that I don't care or that I am stupid. Neither is true. I am hoping there are millions of Canadians who can and will say the same thing.

Science and the Canadian Government

I watched a depressing, sad and infuriating TV program last night. CBC's The Fifth Estate devoted the entire hour to a discussion about how internationally recognized Canadian scientist are being laid off and world renown Canadian scientific programs are being dismantled by the current government. This is not a new story. Bits and pieces of it have been on the national news for the past five or six years. (Although the news that the government had closed a number of scientific libraries and dispersed/ destroyed the information only came to light this week). But it was, at least to me, incredibly sad to hear from and to see the faces of the scientists who had lost their jobs speak with such passion about their work. 

Click on the above link and watch the program. It is worth the time. We all need to know what is going on. We need to understand the consequences of the Conservative Government's decision to ignore science when it says things they don't like. But there is also a deeper perhaps more worrying aspect to the story; there is a lesson to be learned about the political strategy that this government employs to weaken the country and thereby reduce resistance to the changes that they are bringing about regardless of whether or not the majority want them.

When I was attending university about 10 years ago, there was a lot of conversation in the "Arts" part of the school. There was great concern and frustration amongst those who had a passion for the Humanities and for the Social Sciences that funding was being re-directed from their programs courses to the science departments. There was a sense that the courses that talked about the world in terms of history, literature and how people matured as societies had become less important AND that the science folks thought that that was the way it should be. I never heard anyone say that both the arts and the sciences were equally integral to the university community. Quite frankly I think most of the science departments were delighted that they had more access to funding and therefore to the power at the administrative level of the university. The very people who had made it their life's work to understand how the world worked from a social point of view were demoted to a second class position within some universities. 

Now science is being attacked or at least certain branches of it are. It makes one wonder who is in line to have their funding chopped and their research maligned.  Will the "golden programs" of economic or applied research be next? One could almost wonder why the government appears to be afraid of anyone who thinks differently from them?

This tactic of divide and conquer is not a new tactic. Mike Harris won two elections in Ontario using this strategy. One wonders when we, as a collective, will understand and stop responding to it.

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out--
Because I was not a Socialist.
 
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out--
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
 
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out--
Because I was not a Jew.
 
Then they came for me--and there was no one left to speak for me.
 

Martin Niemöller

Holocaust Encyclopaedia

Light Bulbs

I do not like being told what to do. I especially do not like to being lied to, tricked or manipulated into doing the "right thing".  My most recent complaint is the Canadian government's moral high ground stance on saving the planet by insisting that I need to switch to using compact fluorescent lamps, or CFLs. 

It is an absurd proposition to assume that if everyone uses a more efficient light bulb we will start to resolve the issues around climate change. It is the same sort of logic that argued that we should turn off the water when we brush our teeth to deal with the issues of water shortages. I would perhaps be more supportive of such government initiatives if that government demonstrated an equal concern about how industry uses water or electrical energy.

For example the Tar Sands of Alberta - so dearly loved by the Conservative Government - use "to produce 1 barrel of oil from the Athabasca oil sands ....., on average 2 to 4 barrels of water in the case of mining projects or.4 barrels of water in the case of SAGD projects " (Industry Report).( see also United Nations Environmental Alert Service).  Turning off the water when I brush my teeth (which I do) is not going to address the issue of the reduction of available groundwater. Far more water would be saved if the government banned the raising of beef for the simple reason that the production of meat uses a surprising amount of water. For example  "In 2010, 838 million cubic metres of water (in Canada) were used for irrigation"(Statistics Canada) . Hay was the most common crop watered (ibid)).

There are so many ways that we could save energy. Getting out of the Tar Sands is one obvious way. According the Globe and Mail, it is anticipated that the amount of energy needed to produce a barrel of oil will continue to increase. In a different article the same news service reported that "a new estimate by Ziff Energy Group, a Calgary-based energy advisory, predicts that oil sands gas consumption will rise to three billion cubic feet (bcf) a day, up from 1.1 bcf today" (Globe and Mail). To be clear -  we are using natural gas to extract oil - why don't we just use the natural gas?

On a personal level we could start to turn off the lights when we leave a room and turn off all of electronic gadgets. (10% of the average electric bill is because of phantom power) 

In the meantime we are stuck with a weak law that has so many holes in it that it is not going to be very effective. For the next year "75- and 100-watt incandescent bulbs will be banned, followed by 40- and 60-watt versions on Dec. 31, 2014" (CBC News). On top of that, the aforementioned bulbs can still be sold as long as they were manufactured before January 1, 2014. Who wants to bet that there is a huge stock pile somewhere and that those bulbs will start to become more and more expensive? It is a law that will allow the government to say it cares about the environment and perhaps even worse, allow people (who can afford to purchase the far more expensive CFL bulbs) say that they are doing something useful.

It is a bad law that does little good and may in fact do harm. I believe that we all need to do our part. But we need to make sure that we are focusing our efforts in the right direction. We also need honest leadership.

Dirty Bingo

A few weeks back while I was waiting for the computer to warm up and load my PowerPoint slides for the morning's class I asked the students who were there "what is Dirty Bingo?".

I had noticed a poster advertising an event put on by the Student Association called Dirty Bingo and I was naturally curious what it was. It is not the first time that this event has occurred. In fact I think it probably is an regular event. I had just never gotten around to asking someone what it was. I suppose if someone had asked me what I thought it was I might have wondered what word could be used to replace "Bingo". If pushed harder I would have perhaps tried to imagine playing some game outside on large squares.... but  in all honesty I did not have a clue.

The answer I got from my students was simple. "It is like regular bingo except the prices are sex toys". I expressed a bit of surprise, the computer warmed up, my slides appeared and the class started. But their answer has been laying somewhere in the back of my mind - festering a wee bit. I am not too sure why but there is something about the students hosting something called Dirty Bingo that bothers me.

The easy answer is that much of my attitude around sex and all things related to sex was shaped by my upbringing. I am far more a product of my father's Baptist beliefs than anything that happened later including coming of age in the late 60s. Therefore I might be a bit of a prude and therefore naturally offended by the thought of sex toys being given to young adults. But that is not what is bothering me.

Why is it called "Dirty Bingo"? If someone decides to run a bingo game and hand out such toys - that is fine. But I don't understand why such toys are labelled as "dirty".  It would seem to me that if we are as liberated and as well educated as we think we are, then we should not need to titillate the audience by labelling the prizes in such a fashion. It is as if we still need to perceive sex as being dirty or not quite OK.

I don't understand.