Grandsons and Giving

As we go through life, it is always difficult to know whether or not we have made a difference in how the people close to us think or react to the chaos that is our world. Certainly as parents or grandparents I suspect that most of us are never really sure as to the impact that we have on our children or grandchildren. There is, of course, the long standing "nature or  nurture" argument that at its core is really about whether or not parents are useful. As a someone trained to think as a sociologist, I am committed to the  belief that we are shaped by our experiences, including those our parents give us. But at times it is difficult to ignore the other reality that sometimes kids act and think in profoundly different ways than do their parents.

When one reads of the newly hatched terrorists who appear to have come from reasonably stable homes; who were raised by families and in communities where radicalism was neither preached nor tolerate and who almost overnight (relatively speaking) become people who believe that the only solution is to kill as many people as they can while killing themselves, one has to wonder what role families or communities have in shaping anyone. It can be almost disheartening. It would seem to me that while the world in the short term needs to deal with methods of apprehension, incarceration and prevention of terrorism, in the long term we need to apply the best brains available in considering what we as a world society are dong that shapes young people into terrorists.

Then there are the goods days. Those days when it is clear that what you have done has had a least a little bit of an impact upon a child or grandchild. Because of the amount of time that I spend in my grandchildren's homes, I suspect I am more fortunate than most in being able to observe this at least minimal impact. Both of my children, in their unique ways, demonstrate an honesty about what is important and a passionate commitment to their children that at least in part is related to their upbringing.  It is a joy to watch. However this past week, my eldest grandson passed any bar that I could have ever imagined.

I, for the past few years, have not bought my two older grandchildren Christmas presents. They have so much stuff - it has always been difficult to imagine what I could buy that they would both need and treasure. Instead I have donated money in their name to various organizations. We initially chose through World Vision what kind of animal their money would buy for a family in the developing world. For the past two years they have donated money directly to an individual through an organization called Kiva. They have always participated in this process with grace and thoughtful consideration as to what they wanted to donate money to. Not once did I have the smallest hint that they would have preferred to get something tangible for themselves. But as they  never talked about it very much outside of Christmas, I had no sense of whether or not the decision not to buy Christmas presents had an impact on their lives. At least not until this past week.

My grandson, whose birthday is approaching soon,  sent me an e-mail asking if I would consider donating his birthday money to the school's food bank drive. One could argue that as I have generally given the grandchildren a gift card from Chapters so that they can chose their own books and he does not like reading, that it was not a big deal. But it is. One ten year old kid giving his birthday money to help others who are struggling is not going to change the world - unless other kids do it too, Perhaps his act will be a model for a couple of other kids in his school, and then a few more students will learn from those and then who knows how far it could go.

My grandson goes to a great school that actively encourages raising money for various worthwhile charities, he has a mom that works full time at being an active member of both of her children's schools and he lives in a neighbourhood where people talk to their neighbours. All of these experiences have shaped who my grandson is becoming. I cannot take much if any of the credit for his generosity or of his awareness that others both around the world and in his home town need his help. But on those darks days where I despair of where the world may be headed - it is good to know that there are a whole bunch of young folks out there who have learnt something positive from the adults around them.

It is good to know that I might have been part of that learning experience.

Moving #4 - What a mess - Still

I am exhausted.

It would be so much easier to either take all of my stuff, just dump it into boxes - and lie to myself that I will decide what I need when I got out west, or I could just dump it all into garbage bags and buy new stuff when I get out there. Either possibility would mean that packing would be quick with little or no thought involved.

But in my attempt to be responsible and organized, I have decided that I will take neither of those two simple paths but instead will look at every single item and decide what to do with it before I pack it into a box. Nothing is ever simple. For example I decided that I don't need a turntable or a VCR. The local St. Vincent de Paul thrift store tells me that they can't sell them so I can't leave them there. I take the VCR to the electronics dump and try to give away the turntable. A week later it is still sitting on my dining room table. I think someone is coming tomorrow to look at it. If they don't want it, I don't know what I will do. I hate the thought of throwing away something that works just fine.

Similarly I no longer need my queen size futon. I am almost giving it away - please just come and get it. After countless e-mails and two postings on Kijiji - I think someone is coming in an hour to look at it. It would be so much easier if I packed up my car and left everything else behind. If I did that I would not have to waste my time thinking about how many pairs of dress pants or long sleeve, button collar cotton shirts do I really need or do I need to bring the heavy crowbars with me and if so, do I need three different sizes?

There are a few obvious problems in going through stuff so methodically. One is that it takes more time and therefore I have stuff already packed in sealed taped boxes. In this process of sorting and packing I have discovered a fundamental rule of nature that within one hour of sealing a box with a mile or so of tape, there is something in that box that is needed. There are also boxes scattered around the apartment. It is getting hard to navigate. I suspect that when the truck is almost loaded, I will find stuff that I did not pack because I did not see it. Sorting stuff means that I have to look at stuff and then make a decision. I have not used the electric blanket since selling the farm (although I have lent it out to two different people), I clearly do not need it so it should be an easy decision to dispose of it but there is that little niggling voice at the back of my head- what if it gets really cold? My mind is exhausted having these conversations with itself.

But the worse part of this process is coming across stuff that I forgot I had. Pictures of trips, me building the canoe, the kids, etc. Do I really need them? Will anyone else? But some of that stuff I just can't throw away - some things that the kids or grandkids have made for me are going west as are far too many keep sakes or knick knacks that have been given to me over the years and some family items such as my Dad's christening cup and my grandmother's button hook. The long and short of it is that I have more boxes of stuff than I thought I would which if nothing else means that I will need to build more shelves when I get out there.

And I am not even close to being finished yet. Don't get me started on having to roll $540 worth of coins,  taking apart the loom or in the midst of this chaos both washing five fleeces and getting ready for a one day show a week before I leave. I never said I was very bright.

Paris and the Aftermath #3

Two final observation on  the terrorist attack in Paris. They are not related to each other but both need comment on.

1) It was around 12 years ago that France decide not to participate in Bush's invasion of Iraq. At that time many Americans were outraged that France, a country that had been set free because of the efforts of the American people during WWII ( an exaggeration if there ever was one) would not support  the right of the American government to attack another country. Throughout the USA there were silly attempts to express that anger by deciding that "french" toast or "french" fries needed to be called by some other name so that, one assumes, that Americans would not need to sully their lips with the name of such a terrible people. The French were vilified, accused of being cowards and it seemed that on each of the late night talk shows there was a mandatory joke demeaning the French.

Somehow in the past few years and more specifically in the past week or so, the character of the French has changed. They are no longer cowards refusing to fight but rather they are people who need to be supported and encouraged to continuing to attack the enemy. They are being portrayed as heroic, as being noble, as being world leaders in the fight against terrorism.

 Of course the French have not changed at all. The media are just playing with us - telling us who are the good guys one day and potentially the bad guys the next. It is hard to believe anyone would be that gullible.

2) It is interesting to read some of the more conservative columns in our mainstream press. Immediately after the terrorist attack, writers started to suggest that new Canadian government's plan to with draw our jets from the skies of the Middle East needed to be put on hold. I think the argument is that the terrorist attack is clear proof that we need to bomb them more - that if we keep dropping bombs on them - eventually ISIS will be defeated.

I think the argument could be made that if, after all of the bombs that have been dropped on ISIS  (Yahoo news states that there have been over 8,000 air strikes (Yahoo)), ISIS still has the capacity to engage in terrorist attacks - perhaps the bombing strategy is not working. But then what do I know?

Paris and the Aftermath #2

 I find it rather remarkable that the Western world's media can spends so much energy in reporting on the myriad of details surrounding the attack in Paris. For example, last night it felt as if CBC's National News spent almost a full 30 minutes discussing the attack, who did it, how people felt, who the victims were etc. etc. etc.

 I, in no way, want to diminish the horrendousness of the terrorists attack. What those people did was an anathema to any part of their faith and to any sense of justice. Such attacks are a cowardly and I hope, an ineffective way of seeking attention. There can be no justification for random violence or violence whose only purpose is to cause more violence.  However, if the almost overwhelming news coverage is being provided because the world needs to know what happened, then one also must question why the world doesn't need to know all of the other horrendous events of the last week. It is almost as if someone has decided that the attack in Paris was the worst thing that happened last week and therefore anything else that happened, regardless of how terrible it was for the individual(s), is irrelevant.

Ishmael Beah in speaking about his experiences as a child soldier in the Sudan (A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier) talks about the dangers of making one person's story of trauma to be more significant than someone else's. That while as terrible as it may have been for someone to see their father killed in a war, for someone else, the loss of a grandparent through natural causes can be an equally as traumatic and painful memory. Beah's point is that it is not a competition to see who has the worst life experiences. When the media decides which stories are the most important, it negates the value of those other life stories. There is always the risk that people who have had their stories ignored or devalued will need to increase the stakes to be heard.

In the media's rush to focus of the terrorists' attacks in Paris, they have lost sight of the fact that not only were there other similar attacks in other parts of the world, but that during the same time frame, hundreds and hundreds of people died of preventable illness, that thousands of children went to bed hungry, that the majority of people in the world did not have access to clean water or that far too children (especially girls) did not have access to free primary education. It is not that these stores are more important than the Paris attack, but surely they are equally as important.

By ignoring the larger picture we appear to be incredibly self-centered. We appear to be only worried about our safety and what we can do to insure that we can continue in our present way of life without being inconvenienced. Fair enough. We all want to live safe, comfortable lives. But it should be a right of all humans to live in a world where they feel safe. Those of us fortunate enough to live in Canada do not have exclusive rights to that privilege. We are fooling ourselves if we believe that we can be safe while people in other parts of the world get sucked into the ever present maelstrom of violence that is their lives.

 To paraphrase one of my favourite songs - None of us are safe if one of us is afraid. ( Solomon Burke  None of us are free if one of us is in chains)

Paris and the Aftermath

It is difficult to find the right words that would accurately portray the dismay, the fear, the anger, and  the sadness that much of the western world feels as it reflects upon the events in Paris. It is difficult because there are no words that can portray our collective horror. The range of responses in the last twenty-four hours has been interesting.

There are of course, those yahoos who lurk on the fringes of various social medias who are already pontificating that the attack proves that Canada should not allow any immigrants into our country.  I am sure that there are, in every European language, similar comments on other Facebook pages. There are, thankfully, an even larger number of those (although that might be because of who my Facebook "friends" are) who have combined their picture with the tri-colours of the French flag or who have used some other neat app to show their solidarity with the French people. Political commentators, depending upon which network is paying them, dance that careful two step of wanting to look politically correct while at the same time acknowledging that there is some legitimacy to being afraid.  I suspect however, that future historians will not spend any time looking at our emotional and frequently short responses but instead will study our political responses. For it is by those responses that we will be judged by the future.

Part of the political response must be to examine who the suicide bombers were. Were they always radicalized? Had they been taught by their fathers that violence was the only way to convince people to listen to you? Were they "soldiers" who hid in the great waves of refugees streaming  into Europe as a result of the Syrian war? Were they French citizens, or had the at least been offered the opportunity of citizenship? Had they had access to a reasonably useful education and at least knew that there was a possibility of employment that was meaningful and sustainable? Were they young people who felt engaged in their society and who felt that that society was evolving and changing to meet the needs of its members? I, Of course, don't know who profoundly those misguided terrorists were. In the upcoming weeks we will hear little bits of pieces about their lives - but we will never truly know who they were. And that is a shame because it is only by understanding what led them to this outrageous act, will we prevent others from doing the same thing.

Everything I know and believe about society says that people act in a deviant fashion when the bonds to that society are weakened. That people act in ways that are destructive to themselves and their world around them when they have no allegiance to that world. And that the degree of destruction is directly related to the degree of alienation. No one destroys something that they are willingly part of.  It needs to be clearly stated that no rational person could ever justify the random killing of a hundred plus French citizens.  But these terrorist were not rational - the fundamental question must be what made them irrational. What made them so vulnerable to this doctrine of hate and destruction? If we can't understand that - then we are doomed to having to find words to accurately portray the dismay, the fear, the anger, and the sadness again and again and again.

 It should be noted that our collective horror is restricted to this sort of thing happening in the "West". Such events, while perhaps in not quite these numbers, are a far more common event in other parts of the world - we, in the west, are just less inclined to notice them.  

Moving #3 - What a mess!!

I suspect/hope that other people are better at moving than I am. It is not as if I have not done it before. This will be my third time moving 5,000 kilometres. One would hope/assume that I would be getting better at it. I don't think that I am.

I have so much stuff!! In spite of my best intentions to de-clutter my existence, I am having an extraordinarily hard time doing so. Take for example my books. I love books. In every room of my house there are books laying about in various stages of being read. I love the thought of books, of touching them, of opening them up and getting lost into whatever story the author has decided to tell me. I long ago decided that I would not keep any novels. At one point I had an eight by ten room whose walls were hidden by bookshelves filled with books, two layers deep. I never put a book up on those shelves unless I was interested in reading it again. It saddened me to get rid of those books but we have libraries that are more than willing to keep those books and hundreds of others for me. And now, of course, we have those same libraries lending books on-line. So with the exception of some boy's novels (mainly by Henty) that belonged to my father and a few other books, I have very few novels to get rid of. Of the handful of paperbacks I do have, they will all go to the library to be resold at their next used book sale.

I however, have a large number of text books. One of the many joys of teaching at the college level was receiving books from the publisher who hoped that I would order that text for a class. I read every one of the books given to me. I never chose one for my class, but for the most part I enjoyed reading them. I also have a number of other non-fiction books that I have collected through the years. Do I keep them? Why? The odds of me ever teaching sociology or community development again are so remote that even the most ambitious odds maker in Las Vegas could not do the necessary calculations. But some of the books were really good and have important data in them. I have other books - some that I have had for years that are important to me - my first book of poetry that I ever bought (Cohen's Flowers for Hitler), John Porter's The Vertical Mosaic (the first theoretical  book that I read outside of school work), some plays I worked on at university, a book about Hitler (from which I wrote a paper in some ways admiring his sociological skills in mastering the public's emotions - it was the first time that I wrote a paper that I knew was doomed to not be like by a professor and did it anyways) and other assorted books that mark milestones in my intellectual/academic/ emotional life.  So I will keep about half of my books - which still leaves me needing, in my new place to create space for about twenty feet of shelving. I had hoped to do better. Perhaps I will do one more cull before I seal up the boxes.

Disposing of books always makes me sad. It is not only that I am leaving good human friends behind as I move out to the West Coast, I am also abandoning some friends - some of whom have sat on my bookshelves for over thirty-five years. They have given me pleasure by their feel, their smell. their content and sometimes, as books are almost the first thing I unpack when I move, their very look upon their shelves telling me that I am home.