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.

Surprises in th Media

I read a fair amount. I start every morning reading the online version of the CBC, the Globe and Mail  and CTV News. I also look at a variety of other websites and read a little bit of the current edition of the Walrus. While I would never want to assume that I know all that is happening, that I understand what is happening or that what I read is completely accurate or un biased, I think I have a basic handle on what is going on in the world. Of course if specific world events are not reported on - then there are gaps in my knowledge. I do rely on my Facebook "friends" to post the great secrets of the age that the mainstream media won't print (in case you can't tell, I am being more than a little bit facetious here).  I would like to think that I am not easily shocked by the news. Far too often the news makes me angry, frustrates me to the point that I just want to scream or occasionally causes me to almost weep in sheer despair over humanities inability to learn from our past mistakes.  But I am seldom surprised to the point where I need to re-read a bit of information a couple of times before it actually sinks in. Sometimes it takes a day or two before I can figure out why a specific bit of news surprised me.

An example of this was when I read (I don't remember where) that Calgary's electrical Ctrain system runs on energy derived from wind power. For those who have never been to Calgary, the Ctrain is a light rail system that connects the outlying areas to the downtown core. One can ride within the downtown area for free. It is run on a honour system and only once have I ever seen anyone asked to show their ticket. From my limited use of the system, it appears to work wonderfully well. What of course was somewhat mind boggling to me when I first heard about how it was powered, was the fact that Calgary - a city built by and on oil revenues, did not do the obvious and use diesel to run their trains, did not use oil to generate electricity but used a renewable resource to run their system.  It is wonderful but a bit counter intuitive.

This week I read in the November edition of the Walrus that Sault St. Marie, Ontario generates significantly more electricity than it uses. Sault St. Marie exports power to the rest of the province and they generate that power using the sun and the wind. I had to read the article a couple of times. It just did not feel like it could be possibly true.

I like Sault St. Marie. On my first trip out west, I met an individual named Reg who had a profound effect upon my life. Partially because of that experience, my life underwent a radical transformation.  But Sault St. Marie has never struck me as a particularly progressive city. Its economy was initially based on the selling of the natural resources that lay buried in the ground or grew on top of it and of course as a major port on the Great Lakes. Every time I have been through the city, it has had a general sense of being both financially and if cities can be - emotionally depressed. Parts of the city feel over used and worn out. Of all of the places that I spend time in my annual trips out to the west coast, I would never have thought that Sault St. Marie and the surrounding  would have managed to do something that most cities can't even dream off. It seems as if Sault St. Marie has managed to work together to achieve a viable vision of how the world can work and be self sustainable. They would have had to deal with the multitude of issues that can arise when First Nations communities, private enterprise, government bureaucracies and environmentalists all sit around the table.  And they did.

The purpose of this blog is to remind me that in all parts of life, there are hidden examples of how people working together can make a difference in the world. That sometimes, in spite of our best intentions, it is easier to accept the standard interpretation of how the world functions and to not look deeper. I need to remind myself that sometimes I need to stop being lazy about how I view the world around me. I need to dig just a little bit deeper. While it is fun to play the role of the cynical old curmudgeon, I may be missing things that could bring me joy.

 The fact that Sault St. Marie has managed to create a system that allows it to export power should not be taken as absolute proof that the world is changing - but only that it can.

Sunny Days

I spent part of the morning watching the new Canadian Prime Minister and his cabinet being sworn in. It was an interesting experience and certainly there was a small part of me that wished I had driven up to Ottawa to be part of the crowd. Justin Trudeau could not have picked a nicer day for the event. The lawn around Rideau Hall looked as Canadian as one could ever imagine with some of the fall colours still showing on the trees and the leaves on the ground.

It is difficult not to be cynical about the process or at least about the possibility that it is all just for show and that nothing will change. Commentators have made the obvious comparison to President Obama and suggested that the new Canadian leader will fail to deliver change just as Obama has failed to make any real changes in the American political landscape. There are of course, some very clear differences between the two political systems. In the American cabinet, the heads of various departments (ministries) are appointed, in Canada every minister has been elected to sit as a member of the Parliament. The Prime Minister does not need to seek approval for their appointment. Secondly, the Prime Minister already has the support of at least the lower house. Every bill that he proposes at least technically will pass whereas Obama has had to battle both a congress and a senate that has opposed him on principle. In these times of promised new civility and the increasing lack of patience of Canadians towards the Senate, it is hoped that Trudeau will not face as nearly a partisan Senate as did Obama.  And finally, Obama came into power just as the worst economic crash since the 1930s was occurring. One hopes that there will not be another economic disaster any time soon.

However, some of the changes that Canadians expect will not happen quickly or easily. For example neither the CBC or the postal system will ever get the degree of government support it got 20 years ago. There is neither the money nor the political will to do so. Those services and others within the public service that have lost staff, systems and a specific corporate culture. It is a reality that once an organization is gutted both emotionally and financially it is probably impossible to rebuild it to its former glory. As well whether or not 25,000 Syrian refugees will get here before Christmas, whether or not there will be a clear Canadian consensus on how to stop (if not reverse) climate change before the world meetings on climate change, or whether or not investing in rebuilding our infrastructure will grow the economy are question that will only be answered in time. I suspect that the greatest quality that all Canadians need to have right now in terms of their expectations is patience.

Trudeau promised a gender balanced cabinet and he delivered. The cabinet appears to be made up of a nice mix of men and women  and women seem to have some important positions - they clearly are not just window dressing). As well there are MPs elected from all parts of Canada, there is a reasonable diversity in terms of heritage and  there are two people with visible disabilities. Some of the people look incredibly young (but that may be me just feeling old), while others may have had very interesting life experiences, but they don't know a lot about politics or about running a large bureaucracy. I am sure for all of them, they are committed to the Liberal plan which at its heart said we need to do things differently.  

They looked excited and I suppose that is a good thing when one has just got a new job. I will wait.

Last Day at the Market

Saturday was my last day selling at the Peterborough Famer's Market. It was a good day in spite of the fact that it was just below zero for the first hour. In fact, I don't think it got above four or five degrees before 11:00 AM. It is really hard to spin wool with fingers that are numb from cold.

It was in so many ways a sad day. A number of people came by to talk for a bit and to wish me luck. While it has never felt as if I was becoming friends with the other vendors (there really is so little time to just have a chat with them) , I realized that I did know quite a few of them. So it felt good that people knew who I was, that I was moving to Vancouver Island and that this was my last day. I would not want to suggest that anyone was particularly sad at my leaving but it was nice to know that my presence at the market had made some sort of impact.  

A number of my "customers" also dropped in. While I, of course, wished that they had bought more things, it was nice to hear that they were still enjoying the rug or the shawl that they had bought a few months ago. I never thought that I would enjoy selling as much as I do. It is a bit of a show that I put on as I sit there and spin, talking to the little kids, some of whom seem to be mesmerized by the wheel spinning around and around and around, answering questions from people who want to know how it all works (they never seem to believe me when I say it is sort of like magic or that I really don't understand) and telling my story of how I wash the wool in my bathtub and then card, spin, dye and weave it all in my apartment. It is immensely gratifying when someone spends a $125.00 or more on one of my larger items. It is nice when a relative says thank you for a gift that I have made, but it is more exciting when someone says they like something enough to pay for it.

It was a good day in part because I sold a couple of rugs and a shawl or two. It was not my best day in terms of sales but it was pretty close.  It certainly, in spite of a very slow start in May and June, was my best year ever.  My goal was to earn enough to pay for my food for the year. I think by the time I pack everything up, I will have earned enough to pay for my food and most likely my hydro. That feels pretty good. I am not getting richer, but at least, in spite of being retired, I am not getting any poorer.

I am immensely grateful that I took the plunge and started to sell at the market. I would never have done so if I had not had a few friends who encouraged me and one in particular who helped me make the right connections. It has been a very rewarding experience, not just in terms of money but because my network of relationships has expanded, my "social" skills have improved and perhaps most of all, I have had hundreds of people, regardless of whether or not they bought something, say how beautiful my stuff is. It feels great to have one's work validated.

Selling has also allowed me to articulate a philosophy of why I do what I do. I am not an "artist", in fact I am not that great of a spinner or weaver. There are hundreds and hundreds of Canadians who have taken classes, worked incredibly hard and have earned the right to call themselves master spinners or weavers. I am quite simple someone who makes things that people can walk on and to wear. I make basic, simple, perhaps even plain items that are functional. So to the doctor from somewhere on Vancouver Island (who was here on holidays), to the people from Nova Scotia (it was a present from their son), to the elementary school principal from the Cobourg area ( her office was cold and she wanted a shawl for the warmth) to the lady from England (her father is the farmer from whom I buy wool from) and to the hundreds of people who have stopped, asked me questions and perhaps bought something large or small - thank you.

Utopian Novels and the Internet

 I first read Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand  a long, long time ago. I can remember being absolutely entranced by the narrative and her under lying, not so subtle critique of society. I can remember being slowly seduced into her desired world of lassie-faire capitalism where people earn their rewards; of a society where neither the state or any individual has any responsibility for people within the society; where there are no handouts to those who are struggling. In spite of the fact that I was actively involved in both my early career of working with young teenage males, many of whom came from economically, socially and emotionally deprived backgrounds, and all of the anti-war protest etc. of the late 1960s and early 1970s, I found myself almost agreeing with her vision of what life could be/should be like. I remember the almost sick feeling I got when I realized that her vision had almost captured me. Her logic was so clear, it was hard to argue with it.

I can also remember even earlier reading A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift. That short essay, written in the early 1700s, is equally as seductive in its suggestion as to how the economy of British run Ireland could become more self sustaining. Of course Swift was being satirical, but to the casual reader his proposal rings true. It is a good plan - just inhumane.  For a number of years I made the assumption that Ayn Rand must have been, had to have been using satire to critique society's inability to support to those who needed support and more importantly to mock those who denied their obligations to do so. Then a few years ago I tried to read Atlas Shrugged again. I could not finish it - it made me just too angry.

By the time of my second reading I was far less naive, far better read and much more aware of the neo-liberal agenda. Atlas Shrugged now sounded like a prescription, a game plan written by a collective of corporations to justify their activities in the world market place. In my darkest days, it sounded like a plan that was in fact being implemented in parts of the world including Canada.

I am pleased to be able to say that I have just finished "reading" another book that is as intriguing as Atlas Shrugged in its ability to make or at least almost make the reader believe in the logic of a new utopia. I spend a large part of my day playing with wool. For at least part of that time I have an audio book, borrowed from the local library, playing on my tablet. Sometime the books are pretty bad and I don't finish them but The Circle by  Dave Eggers kept me working longer than normal as I wanted to see what would happen next. I don't want to suggest that it is as in-depth as Atlas Shrugged  (it is also a lot shorter) or even as well written as A Modest Proposal , but it is well worth reading.

The book portrays a utopian vision of what could evolve if we continue to see social media as the ultimate way of being in touch with each other, if we continue with the belief that how many "likes" we get on Facebook validates our existence, and if we continue with the trend of accepting the accumulation of "followers" as proof that we are completely connected to our world. The ease in which the young, twenty something female protagonist becomes not just immersed into the this world as created by an internet company but in fact fully embraces it, is frightening.  It is frightening because it feels possible.

I suspect some people will read this novel and want to yell out "YES" in the sheer joy and excitement that a world where everyone is connected, where all information on everything and everyone is available to all, where the blending of state and of private companies is so seamless that there is no need for governments to exists is a glorious thought. For the rest of us, it should give us nightmares. There were times as I was listening that I felt myself agreeing that we should all be connected through things like Facebook or Twitter. I would then have that same sinking feeling that I got when I long ago read Atlas Shrugged.

It is entirely possible that I liked this book because it makes comment upon the assumption made by so many people that the internet and all of its related applications makes our life so much easier. So many people are already convinced that everything can be can be and should stored somewhere in the "cloud", and that when it is all connected, many of the world's problems will disappear. Dave Eggers like all of the good Utopian writers of the past starting with Thomas More in the mid 1400s has a few people screaming from the sidelines (and usually seen as being somewhat mentally disturbed) questioning if the new way of doing things is good.

A book worth looking at.