Moving #5 - Feeling Sad

 I went up to Sudbury this past week for my grandson's birthday, to watch him at a basketball practice and then two days later at a game as well as a whole day of watching my granddaughter play in a volleyball tournament. While most of my trips are not as busy as that, I have gladly made the five hour drive at least four or five times a year for the past seven or so years. One of the joys of the trip (quite frankly there are relatively few on the drive up and back) is looking at the various rock cuts that have been carved out of the pre-Cambrian Shield to create the highway. There are a few sections where the thin white or pink granite lines buried in the darker rock are almost vertical suggesting massive geological upheavals in the past. As I was driving by the rock cuts on Friday, I reminded myself that the next time I drove south and it was a sunny day, I should stop and take a picture of these remarkable reminders of the earth's long distant and turbulent history. Then I remembered that I in all likelihood will never drive that highway again. I will go up one more time on my way west, but never again drive south.

While, especially because the state of my apartment, I am constantly reminded that I am moving - I sometimes forget that moving means that I won't be coming back here again. That every time I drive down a street, it might be the last time that I do so. Every time I think about that, I grieve a little bit. Every time I realize that there are so many people or places that I will never see again, I want to cry. I have lived almost my entire adult life in the counties of Haliburton, Victoria or Peterborough. There are literally hundreds of highways, streets and back roads that I have travelled on. There are almost secret waterfalls, meadows in the middle of nowhere and dark cold lakes and rivers that I can see so clearly in my mind but that I will never see again in reality. I think of getting a good car and going for a four or five day drive to re-visit those places one more time, But I suspect some of those places such as the Eddy on Coleman Lake Road or the Fur Farm where my son and I spent so many hours fishing are probably over built and almost disappeared. Perhaps it is better that I remember it the way I want to, rather than the way it is now. But I will miss those spots and a hundred others. I will never drive by or at least think about driving by all of the homes that I built, all of the places where I worked or any of the places where I hung out and made friends while arguing about politics, values or the way the world could be.

A week ago I needed to contact someone in a local organization. I had tried but it felt as if my e-mail had probably gotten lost in the over-whelming number of emails that flood most of our mail servers. So I contacted a friend who works part time for that organization and asked who I should contact. Within a few hours I had a response to my question. When I emailed my friend to thank her for her help I said "...... one of the harder things about thinking about moving is the realization that I am moving to a place where I sort of know some people, but I am going to have to make new relationships with people who know how things work." That quite frankly scares the living crap out of me. I am not a particularly social person. Quite often the social niceties that are required to make those connections are beyond me.

I am moving to a place that while I know the geography a little bit and I know a few people - I am starting over. I have no history in the place, I (outside of my son and his family) only know a few people and I perhaps will never understand how the social system works. I am going from someone who knows a lot of people, including some who make the system work, and as someone who has in a few small sectors created part of that system to someone who will always be someone who just moved in later in life.

I am not too sure if I am looking forward to

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)