tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-101813662024-03-19T04:52:00.234-05:00Otte RosenkrantzA collection of (mostly) humorous rants and rambles, as well as some editorials and columns published by me in various Canadian newspapers and magazines or heard on CBC radio. Although copyright remains with me, permission to reprint can be arranged through email. Enjoy! Let me know what you think.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger78125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10181366.post-25983758206723409992011-11-13T19:04:00.001-06:002011-11-13T19:06:23.060-06:00Occupy Your Mind<br />
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Occupy your mind<br /><br />
So they kicked the occupiers out of Victoria Park on the strength of a by-law. It doesn't seem right, somehow, does it? Not considering all the other by-laws that could use a little reinforcing from time to time. Still, there we are; the protesters were unceremoniously ousted and their belongings tossed, all without a violent retaliation or threats to occupy city hall or much of anything. It could well be that the London version of the Occupy movement has folded up and gone home.<br />
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What are we to make of this local experiment in civil disobedience? Did the activists achieve any of their goals? Hard to say, in part because it's a little difficult to tell exactly what the goals were. The Occupy movement is clearly an expression of the frustration felt by thousands around the western world that they have been excluded from the wealth of the super-rich. But aside from a sentiment that they want some of those riches too, there really seems to be very little focus to this movement. <br />
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We are a country at war - soldiers and civilians are dying, homes and lands destroyed, and the war is costing a fortune. The environment is collapsing, unemployment is rising and personal privacy is being invaded at every turn. Poverty is rampant and human rights are being eroded; children are abused and there is corruption and shocking dishonesty in the halls of power. There is, in other words, no shortage of things to be angry and outraged about; no lack of reasons to take to the streets in a show of protest, solidarity, and civil disobedience. <br />
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In order for any movement to have even the slightest chance of being noticed, much less taken seriously and drawing some favourable response from the great, silent majority, it must first win the hearts and minds of the people it’s trying to engage, and being unhappy because not everybody has the same amount of money is not doing it. Where are the songs, the poetry, the writers and the artists? Where are the great orators, the righteous, angry leaders and philosophers? How can we honestly expect a social movement without leaders and thinkers to drive any influence for significant change? <br />
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As things stand the Occupy movement is in danger of becoming silly - a camp-out for the wanna-be Starbucks generation. If this slide into insignificance is to be halted or even reversed, I recommend an immediate application of "Howl" by Allen Ginsberg, set to the music of Joan Baez and Bob Dylan, laced with several doses of "Steal this Book" by Abby Hoffman. Better still, cultivate your own prophets, artists, philosophers, and visionaries, pick a cause, then commit to it and make it stick.<br />
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None of this will be easy, but some day you may be able to say that you made a significant contribution to making the world a truly better, cleaner, more equitable, honest and harmonious place.<br />
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Good luck, and Peace.<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10181366.post-54469826570778217242011-05-18T11:03:00.004-05:002011-05-18T11:14:36.620-05:00M3 and the Royal Wedding<div><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBsZCPb2M9C1pbd3_Fbt-VO4qzOagIhYOtZn-zY8xdDiYb_u47Jf1J9s47FPhIibsLVPq7SxBFYJP2qttoOOT1I88J5CgkaOuAkEpDQDTd_nWafwdcVVOdSTb2PTQT0MwC4xmJ/s1600/M3%255B1%255D+stare.jpg"><img style="MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 320px; FLOAT: left; HEIGHT: 214px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5608088345303120818" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBsZCPb2M9C1pbd3_Fbt-VO4qzOagIhYOtZn-zY8xdDiYb_u47Jf1J9s47FPhIibsLVPq7SxBFYJP2qttoOOT1I88J5CgkaOuAkEpDQDTd_nWafwdcVVOdSTb2PTQT0MwC4xmJ/s320/M3%255B1%255D+stare.jpg" /></a><br /><br /><strong>Report to the Agency:</strong><br />I must apologize for the long absence in my reporting, but I am confident that you will understand my reasons once I explain. As you know better than most, the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middelton has been one of the most important events to come to the Royal Family in many years, and one of the top concerns of their Majesties, MI5, Scotland Yard and Interpol has been the security of all concerned. When I received the call a few months ago that my service were needed, and that my mission would be top secret until after the ceremony I was, of course, immediately ready to serve. The problem was simple enough: While <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQZJnF4VfqB9yNBgQK40YHeTafSEZCerlgbjqfDPaZZez-5roDPVFfDEk1jDG9LSUxvXDQOdsA9x5avXr1VVi2jat3JLf8LfxhHJzoga869Ekh9aKP5wl4s60KX6UTBRxM3vkr/s1600/teddy_welsh_corgi_08_w450.jpg"><img style="MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; WIDTH: 320px; FLOAT: right; HEIGHT: 240px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5608089157535791394" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQZJnF4VfqB9yNBgQK40YHeTafSEZCerlgbjqfDPaZZez-5roDPVFfDEk1jDG9LSUxvXDQOdsA9x5avXr1VVi2jat3JLf8LfxhHJzoga869Ekh9aKP5wl4s60KX6UTBRxM3vkr/s320/teddy_welsh_corgi_08_w450.jpg" /></a>Her Majesty the Queen and Prince Phillip and their extensive staff were at the ceremony at Westminster Abby, somebody had to guard the Royal Corgies. I confess that at first I was not thrilled by an assignment that initially appeared to be glorifies puppy-sitting, but once it was explained to me by the head of the K9 unit – also known as the Alsatian Guard, even though the force is largely made up of English bulldogs - that I and C1 would be exclusively responsible for the safety of Her Majesty's favourite dogs, I accepted the assignment proudly.<br />More about this later. And next time I will detail my attempt to stop Princess Beatrice from wearing as a hat - or "fascinator" what was actually intended to be a toy treat for the Royal Corgies.<br />Yours, as always.<br />Facinated,</div><br /><div>M3 </div><br /><p align="left"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 246px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 213px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5608088578552611810" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPpPIhT1a6hmng9N76S5gAraEq_L9sYjsERXtsikSYLwfZ-B0vd007v0La60inviJFLcRT6pgetqOST1eeerq-GA7ZyAhBfeiHzVZcHLbUDtRainKez6uUlrZ_f2V3iDn2N4cI/s320/millie+computer+eye.jpg" /></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10181366.post-85192532804435778082009-10-21T10:07:00.002-05:002009-10-21T10:11:39.104-05:00Reason and syntaxIn response to Jeff and Lindz at www.sagecomm.com<br /><br />Ahem. <br />At the risk of sounding pedantic, I would offer up a gentle reminder that the purpose of syntax and the myriad of related rules and regulations is not intended to stifle creativity, communication, or any of the delightfully whimsical flights of verbal invention that pass for “dialogue” these days. The rules of syntax exist to enhance and clarify communication – verbal or written. The problem with sweeping away all the rules in an effort to remove the restraints of creativity is that without structure we have ignorance and chaos – as it is in politics, so it is in grammar. <br />You may have forgotten what happened to the literacy and numeracy skills of high school students in this country when the rules were removed in favour of creativity and in an effort to avoid harming the fragile egos of our nation’s students. The result of all this ego-friendly, non-restrictive creativity is that colleges and universities are having to roll out large and expensive remedial writing and math programs in order to bring high school graduates up to some sort of minimal standard that will enable then to at least begin to comprehend and engage their various curricula. The current trend in education and general language use takes away from students the ability to experience the pleasure of crafting a graceful sentence, which I think borders on the criminal.<br />Picasso and Vonnegut knew the rules of their respective arts so well and so intimately that they knew how and when to bend and break them to enchance their creativity – but they knew the rules. Breaking the rules is not for amateurs… don’t try this at home because havoc will ensue, and you won’t know from whence it came, nor what it means.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10181366.post-47388432667184740022009-09-11T15:04:00.001-05:002009-09-11T15:06:11.039-05:00Eschew the ClicheBusiness writing; plain and simple. <br /><br />On September 1st of this year, Canadian journalist Robert Fulford published in the National Post a column called The Most Irritating Phrases in the English Language. The column is an erudite rant against the use of banal phrases and exhausted clichés currently so much in vogue among political pundits, business writers and far too many journalists who should know better. <br />Quoting British writer Jeremy Butterfield's book: “Damp Squid: The English Language Laid Bare,” Fulford places the expression "at the end of the day" right at the head of the "Top 10 Most Irritating Expressions in the English Language." Damp squid, by the way, comes, according to Fulford, from the mistake people make when they want to describe something as a failure and use the term “damp squib,” meaning a firework that fails to go off. Misunderstanding the root of the metaphor, they pronounce or spell it “squid.”<br />Along with “the bottom line” and “going forward,” surely “at the end of the day” has to be one of the most overused and, as a result, almost meaningless, expressions in common currency in business communication. But these dregs fished from what Fulford refers to as "… a tiny and stagnant pool of stock expressions," are not the only offenders to dog the long-suffering copy editor. “At a team, moving forward together, into the future,” marries three others exhausted business clichés, and the expression “sea change” has got to be close to the top of my personal list of expressions I love to hate. “Sea change” is used by business communicators who want to suggest a dramatic new change in a company’s direction, often from imminent failure to sudden success. The fact that the expression has found its way into business English from Shakespeare’s play “The Tempest,” where Prospero uses it to refer to decomposition caused by the sea, confers a nice ironic twist to the current, intended meaning of “sea change.”<br />As someone who has spent most of his career either writing, editing or teaching business writing, Fulford’s column and Jeremy Butterfield's book are among some rare and wonderful reminders that the language of business and politics does not have to be irritatingly hackneyed, predictable and, far too often, incorrect.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10181366.post-50288477710941409942008-08-27T20:18:00.001-05:002008-08-27T20:21:34.929-05:00HeroesLondon Free Press, August 12, 2008<br /><br />Shortly before the opening of the Beijing Olympics, the headline “Our Olympic heroes” appeared in an Ontario newspaper over a story that profiled some local athletes who were preparing to compete in the Olympics.<br /> No-one can argue that the athletes who compete in the Olympic Games don’t put forth enormous effort in order to reach the goal of competing in the Games. Many of the athletes make great personal investments in their goal in terms of physical training, finances, delayed educational opportunities and relationships that are put on hold. But are they really heroes?<br /> Since the 9/11attacks on the Twin Towers in New York, it seems that North American society has taken to calling people working in all sorts of professions “heroes.” From firefighters who respond to emergency calls every day, and police officers who patrol Canada’s cities and highways, to Canadian soldiers serving in Afghanistan and now to Olympic athletes, people in any number of professions are being called heroes. The term “heroes” is being used so often to describe people who are doing what some might consider little more than their jobs, that it’s becoming easy to forget what the word “hero” really means, and how a person might earn that title.<br /> The Oxford English Dictionary tells us that a hero is “A man, now also a woman, distinguished by the performance of extraordinarily brave or noble deeds…” also “[Someone] admired or venerated for his or her achievements and noble qualities in any field.”<br /> It’s perhaps the phrase “distinguished by the performance of extraordinarily brave or noble deeds…” that make it a little difficult to think of people who go about the day-to-day performance of their duties as “heroes.” There is unquestionably a very large element of courage involved in serving as a police officer, soldier or firefighter, or indeed even in nursing or farming or construction work, and many other fields of endeavour. But surely being courageous is not the same as being heroic.<br /> When Canadian climber Andrew Brash, for instance, tossed aside his dream of summiting Mount Everest in 2006, just some 200 metres from his goal, in order to rescue climber Lincoln Hall who was discovered half-clothed, sitting on the edge of a cliff in the Death Zone of the mountain, and just days after climber David Sharp was left to die by others, Brash surely performed “an extraordinarily brave and noble deed” - a heroic deed - and earned the right to be called a hero and to receive the medals and commendations given to heroes. Being a mountain climber made him courageous, but it was sacrificing his dream and risking his life to save another climber that made him a hero.<br /> If we’re going to refer to athletes getting ready to compete at the Olympic Games as heroes, then what are we going to call people like Andrew Brash?<br /> The indiscriminate use of the term “hero” to describe someone whose job entails some degree of risk or exceptional dedication – a coal miner, for instance, or an athlete – diminishes the ability of the word to honour those who go far beyond the call of duty to perform an extraordinary feat of self-sacrifice in the service on humankind, and indeed diminishes the acts of those who performed heroic deeds before the word entered into such common currency.<br /> Take, for example the story of Sergeant Thomas (Tommy) Ricketts. Born in Newfoundland, Ricketts was only seventeen, and a private soldier in the Royal Newfoundland Regiment in the First World War when, On October 14, 1918, he and the rest of his machine gun crew were pinned down and out of ammunition in a battle near Ledgehem, Belgium. Ricketts volunteered to run across 100 yards of open field to gather more ammunition for his crew’s Lewis gun. Returning over the same dangerous ground, Ricketts and a fellow soldier captured a number of German weapons and prisoners. For his uncommon valour, Ricketts was promoted to sergeant, and awarded the Victoria Cross, the youngest soldier ever to receive this important military honour.<br /> Sergeant Ricketts, like Andrew Brash, performed “an extraordinarily brave and noble deed,” and was a hero.<br /> It may be true that we live in a time that needs new heroes, but misusing the word is not going to meet that need.<br /><br />– 30 -Unknownnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10181366.post-24690781379020034002008-05-04T09:05:00.002-05:002008-05-04T09:09:39.390-05:00For the Sunday EditionHello Michael,<br />I was listening to the iPod version of your story about the plastic bag in the tree outside your house, and your observations about the need for people to cut back on their use of plastic bags. For several years my wife and I have used cloth bags when we shop for groceries. In fact, I can’t recall the last time groceries or other shopping purchases were brought home in a plastic bag, and as we have no dog, there is no need for us to have plastic bags on hand for scooping purposes although I will confess to using them for cleaning out the cat litter used by our two cats. All things being equal, we really ought to be a household pretty much devoid of plastic bags. And yet. On the inside of the pantry door we have one of those tube-shaped containers sold by IKEA designed to store plastic bags, and that tube is always crammed full to over-flowing. Every time I take a bag out to clean the cat litter, or on rare occasions to dispose of wet garbage, I expect to see the level of bags in the tube drop. But it doesn’t. Like the storied magic purse that produces an unlimited amount of coins, this tube apparently generates its own endless supply of plastic bags, mocking our attempts at eliminating the wicked things from our lives. Perhaps – as with the question of where do all the vanished socks go when they disappear from the clothes dryer - the answer to the question of where do plastic bags go when they are blow down the street or out of people’s trees is that they mysteriously wind up in tubes such as ours all over the country to continue their malignant presence in our consumer driven world. I would love to get rid of the tube, but I confess I’m a little afraid of it now. If I didn’t have the tube, where else in my house would all those plastic bags show up?Please help. The cats are doing the best they can, but it’s not enough.<br />Otte Rosenkrantz<br />London, OntarioUnknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10181366.post-38928620714435036492008-04-12T14:47:00.001-05:002008-04-13T19:20:13.925-05:00The Muffin Man and Canadian Road Rage[The soundtrack for this blog, BTW, is "Good Day" by Luce.]<br /><br />I take some pride in my driving record. It’s not perfect by any stretch, but I have – touch wood – so far managed to avoid serious accidents and ruinous speeding tickets. But it’s also true that there are times when I could perhaps be a little more attentive to my driving than I am. This was brought home to me a few days ago when I encountered what felt like a quintessential case of Canadian road rage on my way to work.<br />After an early morning fill-up at a gas station I had to pull back into two-lane traffic close to an intersection. An Urban Assault Vehicle (SUV) had stopped to let my little Saturn in, and I nosed into traffic, unable to see very much because of the looming vehicle blocking my view. As I eased into the left turn lane, thinking I was free and clear, I heard the squeal of tires. I glanced up in the rear-view, and saw a rusted out old Chev slide up behind me. In the split second that can seem an eternity before an accident I thought for sure he was going to hit me, and braced myself for the impact. But it didn’t come. Fortunately the young man in the black toque at the wheel had hit the brakes just in time.<br />Much relieved, I waved to him to show my gratitude and by way of an apology, but he wasn’t having it. He was seriously pissed, and while I watched in amazement he rolled down his window and lobbed… a muffin… at me. Having apparently just come from the Tim Horton’s up the street he had, in his moment of road rage, reached for the first thing he could use to vent his frustration at me, and that thing was a Tim’s frosted something-or-other. I know it was frosted because of the streak it left on my back window.<br />When I told the story to an American friend later in the day he doubled up in laughter and pointed out how very Canadian the experience had been: road rage Canadian style, with a breakfast muffin as the weapon of retaliation. “Had that happened in Los Angeles or Texas, you might be having bullet holes in your car plugged, instead of cleaning whipped cream off your windshield.”<br />All I can say is that I’m just happy it wasn’t a “fruit explosion”.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10181366.post-24159605172284870832008-02-16T15:35:00.002-06:002008-02-16T15:44:23.861-06:00To tell the truth.In rebuttal to Paul Berton’s editorial. “This Paper is not a Promotions Vehicle.” Saturday, February 9th, 2008.<br /><br /><br /> Paul Berton’s editorial in last Saturday’s Free Press was very thought-provoking, and answered a question that has been on my mind for a long time: to what degree, if any, is The London Free Press a vehicle to be used by the city and by local businesses and organizations to promote themselves?<br /> The headline to Berton’s column suggests the answer: “This paper is not a promotions vehicle.” And yet in his opening paragraph Berton says: “Is it the job of this newspaper to be a booster for London? Many journalists would say no; I would say yes, but we can only go so far.” Although Berton does go on to qualify his statement, the very fact that he would suggest that it is the newspaper’s responsibility to, in any degree, act as an vehicle of what used to be called “boosterism” is unsettling.<br /> To be sure, the nature of journalism has undergone some significant changes in the last couple of decades, especially since the advent of the Internet and what is being called “citizen journalism.” Print journalism – the oldest medium - like all media outlets, is finding itself having to compete for advertising dollars with not only the more traditional media such as radio and television, but with the Internet, which is increasingly replacing all these forms of media, as consumers of news turn to online sources for everything from breaking news and quick updates, to in-depth backgrounders and analysis.<br /> But one hopes that these changes will not engender a complete departure from the role of journalists as reporters of truth, no matter how unpleasant it may occasionally be for those who buy the advertisements or who are in positions of political power and influence. The Canadian Association of Journalists’ Statement of Principles makes a point of noting, in its preamble, that, among other things, “It is our privilege and duty to seek and report the truth as we understand it… speak for the voiceless and encourage civic debate to build our communities and serve the public interest.” Under the section “The Public Interest” the Principles expand on the latter point by clearly stating that “The right to freedom of expression and of the press must be defended against encroachment from any quarter, public or private, because we serve democracy and the public interest.”<br /> Codes of ethics and statements of principles are lofty and often seem almost impossible to adhere to, but it’s especially important for journalists to maintain their impartiality precisely because they do serve the cause of democracy and the public interest. The CAJ Principles enlarge on this important aspect in the section “Act Independently” by pointing out that a journalist’s responsibility to democracy and the reporting of the truth sometimes “conflicts with the wishes of various public and private interests, including advertisers, governments, news sources, and, on occasion, with our duty and obligation to an employer.” The Principles, however, do not excuse any favourable treatment being given to any group, no matter how influential, and states in clear and unequivocal terms that “We will not give favoured treatment to advertisers and special interests. We must resist their efforts to influence the news.”<br /> If a newspaper does not impartially and fairly report all the news that’s fit to print, regardless of who may withdraw their political support or advertising dollars, then it becomes reduced to being little more than a publisher of advertising flyers, propaganda and deliberately inflammatory and misleading rhetoric, and surely we already have enough of that.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10181366.post-75833909608193565722007-06-19T20:19:00.000-05:002007-06-19T20:21:23.293-05:00In Search of a Soul ReviewIn Search of a Soul: Designing and Realizing the New Canadian War Museum. By Raymond Moriyama. Douglas & McIntyre, Vancouver/Toronto. 2006.<br /><br /> Canadians have long been in some confusion about how they feel about war. We take a lot of pride in the performance and reputation of our troops in the First and Second World War, and we’re proud of our country’s international reputation as both brokers and keepers of peace. We are all in favour of supporting the UN, and we are also in favour of having our troops go to war-torn parts of the globe to help people restore order, set up schools, purify drinking water and so on.<br /> We’re not, however, as keen on the part where our troops have to kill people or risk being killed themselves, and we are certainly not happy about incidents such as the behaviour of the Canadian Airborne Regiment in Somalia in March of 1993 when Shidane Arone, a 16-year-old Somali youth, was tortured and beaten to death by members of the Regiment which was subsequently disbanded. The current role of Canadian troops in Afghanistan and the casualties they have suffered are also not sitting easily with a lot of Canadians.<br /> And yet we attend memorial services in record numbers, and feel a very deep, national desire to remember and honour the history of our armed forces.<br /> Our national ambivalence about war, and – Somalia notwithstanding - our pride in the history of our armed forces, is reflected in the creation of the new Canadian War Museum that was completed in Ottawa in May, 2005, in time for the sixtieth anniversary of VE Day.<br /> In the introduction to his book, In Search of a Soul: Designing and Realizing the new Canadian War Museum, architect and author Raymond Moriyama reflects on this sense of, if not discomfort, then uncertainty, that Canadians often feel when contemplating Canada at war as he described his feelings about taking on the task of designing and creating the museum:<br />“I struggled between happiness and frustration. In the process, memories of my first foray into architecture… emerged from the deep crevices of my mind. Seeking solace from the degradation of life in an [Canadian] internment camp, I designed and secretly built a tree house on the side of Little Mountain, an elongated hill next to the Slocan River in the shadow of the Rockies. Remarkably, this spot shares many similarities with the war museum site in Ottawa. However, my tree house was not a museum – it became my sanctuary during wartime.”<br /><br /> What a fine, Canadian irony it is that a child of a wartime internment camp of Japanese Canadians should eventually create what is both museum and monument to Canada at war.<br /> All Canadians would do well to visit this remarkable structure, and to reflect on its meaning. The building emerges eastward from the ground, with textured concrete that makes it look both like a bunker, and like the prow of a battleship clad in copper to match the rooftops of other public buildings in the area. The small windows on the bow spell out lest we forget in both English and French using Morse code. The copper used on the interior of the building is from the roof of the Library of Parliament which was refurbished in 2004.<br /> As he remembers the journey from the government’s decision to replace the old museum on Sussex Drive in Ottawa and the invitation sent out to architects to submit a proposal, to the completion of the project in 2003, Moriyama takes the reader on a detailed and often emotional journey of this important and lasting project. The book is gratifyingly filled with colour photographs that enhance the detailed and fascinating account of every meticulous step in the building of the museum.<br />Included in these colour plates are images of some of the exhibits, and images of landscape features and war images that supplied much of the inspiration for the highly unusual design of the museum. Some of the innumerable challenges faced by Moriyama and his large team is summed up in his observation that<br />“This vitally important content [the exhibits] requires safe storage, strict environmental controls and protection from vandalism and flooding. At the same time, the museum that houses it must be able to display this content in an accessible, appropriate, enjoyable and educational manner. The heavy artefacts – artillery, vehicles, airplanes and a fifty-four tonne Centurion tank – require not only a substantial volume of space, but also special floor loading and ceiling supports. The design of appropriate displays that respected the unique and precious qualities of every artefact, from paintings and medals to love letters and uniforms, was one of the most challenging tasks.”<br /> <br />The result of Moriyama’s experiences, genius, and clear understanding of the importance of his work are carefully detailed in this insightful and fascinating book of the creation of the Canadian War Museum. Most of all, of course, the building itself stands as a monument to not only Moriyama’s vision, but to his country’s struggle to come to terms with its own military place in the world.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10181366.post-55777655293056595282007-06-03T14:09:00.000-05:002007-06-03T14:10:51.448-05:00OK, so I buried the lead in this one – sue me.It’s Saturday, and I am once again hurtling down the bicycle path on my rollerblades, cruising along by the river in my usual near suicidal out-of-control fashion, arms flailing, people leaping out of my way iPod ear buds firmly screwed into my ears, pumping out the kind of motivational music I tend to think of as road trip music – ZZ Top, CCR, Rolling Stones, BB King, that sort of thing.<br /> I spent the morning at yard sales looking for more useless junk to clutter up the garage, when I saw a cd, and not just any cd. No, this was Family Style by the Vaughan Brothers from 1990. The minute I get home, and before I headed out on my rollerblades I loaded it up on my iPod. The album includes the song Tick Tock, one of my absolute favourites.<br /> So as I swing onto the path, past the soccer games and the long line of parked minivans, I have Tick Tock blaring in my head… remember?<br /><br />“Tick tock, tick tock, tick tock people, time's tickin' awayRemember thatTick tock, tick tock, tick tock people, time's tickin' away”<br /><br />Still sends a shiver up my spine.<br /><br />“One night while sleeping in my bed I had a beautiful dreamThat all the people of the world got together on the same wavelength,and began helping one anotherNow in this dream, universal love was the theme of the dayPeace and understanding and it happened this way.”<br /><br /> Well, we didn’t do so well with that, we Babyboomers, did we? We had great ideas about bringing peace and understanding to the people of the world and of helping others. But other things got in the way, didn’t they? The paradigm changed, as so many of us loved to say… What became important was not so much peace in the world as gated neighbourhoods, lots of technology, and SUV’s to ferry the kids to the mall. We got derailed, and things have gone from bad to worse.<br /><br />“The sick, the hungry, had smiles on their faces,the tired and the homeless had family all aroundThe streets and the cities were all beautiful places,and the walls came tumblin' down.”<br /><br /> Well, not so much – what we did was put up a lot of walls, physical and otherwise, rather than tearing them down – and don’t throw the Berlin Wall at me – that was just good economics.<br /><br /> And the environment? We were going to do something about that too… All those environmental movements and the organic food co-ops and the local produce farmers’ markets were all started in the 1960, for the love of monkeys! These movements are more than 40 years old!! And we still insist on having fresh fruit in our grocery stores in January, and damn the environmental costs of shipping it half way around the world so it can get to our tables in a perfectly ripe, spotless condition.<br /><br />“I had a vision of blue skies from sea to shining sea,all the trees in the forest stood strong and tall againEverything was clean and pretty and safe for you and me,the worst of enemies became the best of friends.”<br /><br />It’s embarrassing, isn’t it? And we’re all patting ourselves on our backs for changing light bulbs and “recycling” plastic shopping back by using them to pick up our dog’s poop… future generations will be so grateful.<br /><br />“Tick tock, tick tock, tick tock people, time's tickin' awayRemember thatTick tock, tick tock, tick tock people, time's tickin' away”<br /><br /> But, as I ricochet under the overpass and narrowly miss a couple of bicyclists and a tree, I wonder if there is any chance our kids will do better. Although we failed miserably in our own promises and pious proclamations, perhaps we did at least plant a seed with our kids that the time has come to do better. It’s too late to stop the coming damage, but if our kids will do even half of what we said we were going to do, there may be some hope still for a better world for their children.<br /><br />“People of the world all had it together,had it together for the boys and the girlsChildren of the world look forward to a future.”<br /><br /> Then I remember a picture and story in a recent edition if the Toronto Star. The photograph shows my son in a small crowd at a farmer’s market, one Canada’s first two certified local farmers’ markets dedicated to selling locally grown produce only, and not reselling food from around the world in the guise of being locally grown. Seeing my son there, obviously keen on being part of this vitally important concept gives me some hope that maybe the promise of the future will be better in the hands of his generation than it was in mine.<br /><br />“Tick tock, tick tock, tick tock people, time's tickin' awayRemember thatTick tock, tick tock, tick tock people, time's tickin' away”<br /><br /> I land in the grass… safe and only a little bruised… happy that this patch of natural green hasn’t been paved over yet – the pavement really bites.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /> <br /><br /><br /><br /> <a href="http://evergreen.ca/rethinkspace/?p=178"></a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10181366.post-12750395631621456862007-05-16T17:25:00.000-05:002007-05-16T17:26:19.182-05:00Postcard From the CityPostcard From the City<br /><br /> There she sits, in the seat across from me on the train to Toronto. She’s of an indeterminate age: anywhere between 35 and 50, I would think – maybe even a little older. She got on the train the station after mine, carrying only a large shoulder bag, and without looking around sat down in the seat opposite me. She looked out the window for a few minutes as the train pulled out of the station, then reached into her purse, pulled out a Styrofoam bowl of some sort of pasta salad for which she, according to the label, had paid $2.50 as some local farmers’ market, and proceeded to eat a little of it with a plastic fork. After a while she replaced the bowl in her purse, zipped closed the bag, arranged herself in the seat, carefully avoiding crowding those around her, put her head back and fell almost instantly into a deep sleep.<br /> She is not a large woman, but she looks strong, compact and solid. Her clothes – a pair of khaki Capri pants, running shoes and a dark green polo shirt – are clean, but worn. Both the pants and shirt show the early signs of fraying a little at the edges. Her arms are crossed over her chest, showing the muscled forearms and hands. The skin on the arms is still firm, but starting to show some wrinkles close to the elbows; there are a few white marks here and there that look like small scars or scratches.<br /> Her hands are clean, but clearly use to hard work: the finger nails are very short and unpainted. She wears no rings. Her knuckles are large, but not red as one might expect from hands that spend a lot of time in water, cleaning or doing dishes. These are more the hands of someone who might work with tools of some kind.<br /> The sleeping body radiates exhaustion. Her head rests on the back of the seat in a position that looks awkward and uncomfortable, yet she sleeps soundly through the various stops, the rolling and jerking of the train, the coming and going of passengers. There are lines on her face, but they are not pronounced yet. Her skin is sallow as of someone who spends a lot of time indoors and who is not getting much sleep. She wears no makeup, yet her hair, brittle and dry though it is, has been dyed a dark auburn, but it is surely only a cover for what is almost certainly grey or greying hair.<br /> In the depth of her sleep, her mouth has fallen open a little, and she breathes regularly and slowly without any fitful moves or sounds. She remains in almost exactly the same position for the nearly two hours she’s on the train.<br /> As we roll into our final destination, she awakens without any of the startled and somewhat self-conscious behaviour so common to people who have fallen asleep in public. She merely sits up, runs her hand over her face, collects her hand bag, and with a look out the window as if double-checking that we have, in fact, arrived, she stands up, joins the line to get off the train, and disappears into the crown on the platform, and into the rest of her life.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10181366.post-21191620701305604642007-04-16T19:13:00.000-05:002007-04-16T19:14:59.197-05:00Riding the busI wonder why it is that people riding the bus try so incredibly hard to as appear mean and solitary creatures. The world is surely a grim and unpleasant enough place without making it worse by appearing to hate those around us.<br /><br />Today, I was lucky enough to be part of a brief moment on the bus when that shell of petulant, sullen resentment that seems to radiate from most of the passengers was briefly dispelled. There was a young man with very little mobility in a motorized wheelchair who was on the bus, and when it came time for him to get ready to get off, he turned as best he could to me and asked me to put the hood on his jacket up for him to protect him from the rain that was starting to fall outside.<br /><br />I had my briefcase and umbrella with me, and was reading a book at the time, and didn’t want to leave it all on my seat while I got up to help him, knowing that the lurching of the bus would send it all over the place. So I handed the book to the young lady on one side of me, and the umbrella to the woman on my other side, and went to tie up the guy’s hood.<br /><br />When I was done and went to sit down again, collecting my book and umbrella, there was a moment when I noticed that several people around me were smiling, some at the guy in the chair, some at me, and others at the people who had been pressed into service to help me. The spell of gloom and irritability was briefly dispelled.<br /><br />Then the guy in the chair left, the seat, which has been put out of the way to make room for him, was put back, the bus moved on, and as the usual pall of sulky antipathy settled back over the passenger, I reflected with regret that things had returned to normal.<br /><br />But for a moment there, we had, in fact, all smiled at one another.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10181366.post-5956630380568501952007-04-07T19:54:00.000-05:002007-04-07T19:57:32.400-05:00The Dance is a PoemSo I went to watch my daughter perform with her dance company. On the train there I thought about how many times I have seen her is a dance performance. For more than a decade I have watched her go from looking like a frothy little cake decoration twirling slowly, uncertainly, on the stage during her dance school’s end-of-year performance, to being an athletic and self-assured young woman driving herself to deliver as perfect a performance as possible, and it has been delightful to watch the transformation.<br /><br />But truth be told, I have not always enjoyed every show. I have, of course, been completely enthralled every time my daughter’s on stage, but over the years she has been part of dance recitals that went on for upward of three hours and ran to some thirty or forty numbers. Getting all the children from the dance studio involved in the performances sometimes required great creativity on the part of the dance instructors and the director. I can remember, for instance, on one occasion being amazed to discover that “The Little Mermaid” had performances by children in traditional Tyrolean peasant clothing, Spanish tap dancers, and chimney sweeps – I don’t recall reading that in the original. Still, every child had several parts, and all the parents got to reflect how much more talented their child was than all the rest.<br /><br />Over the years the themes of the performances matured along with the dancers. Through high school and into university the performances also became shorter and more sophisticated, and they have now become something to which I look forward, rather like I might look forward to an entertaining evening at the theatre.<br /><br />But this year there was something very different. This year I found myself caught up in the performances like I have not been before. The infamous 1st World War era dancer and courtesan, Mata Hari, is quoted as having said that “The dance is a poem of which each movement is a word.” At this performance, I felt the truth of that on a visceral, rather than just cognitive, level. The combination of the music the group had selected, as interpreted by, and put to, dance, was extraordinarily powerful. Effective, compelling, poignant and cathartic, the performances drove home all the emotions they explored with a force that was almost physical. It was an extraordinary, transforming, experience.<br /><br />I must have seen almost a hundred dance performances over the past 13 or 14 years. But this was the first time I began to understand what dance can really communicate.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10181366.post-43683287084258760722007-03-18T11:08:00.000-05:002007-03-18T11:10:31.283-05:00Visiting Second LifeI’m not sure what to make of the Second Life phenomenon. On the one hand, I like the idea of having this virtual environment where participants can create a separate reality.<br /><br />It’s actually a lot of fun – a game of make-believe of sorts. The opportunities for meeting people – real people, not just computer-generated entities – are everywhere, and make for interesting insights into human nature – or at least into the nature of the humans who participate in these 3-D virtual environments such as Second Life.<br /><br />There are, I think, also some interesting opportunities for educational institutions to deliver programs and courses having to do with communications and design, especially for the purpose of delivering distance learning content. There are a number of colleges and universities that have set up shop in SL, as it’s called, and the listservs that deal with education in SL are filled with research proposals and commentaries that indicate the enthusiasm with which some educators and students are embracing the SL environment and opportunities.<br /><br />I too see opportunities for delivering education in SL, to the point where I have formed a small group of like-minded people at the college to act as a project exploration group, and we have applied for a small research grant.<br /><br />And yet. There is something – unsettling – about the phenomenon. On the one hand the technology is making it possible for people who have difficulties interacting with others for reason of distance or disability to interact with others in this delightful, highly interactive and constantly growing environment. On the other hand, life is SL is a lot easier than life in the real world (RL). Unpleasant environments or people can be changed or avoided; everybody is young and healthy, the environment can be made beautiful, predictable and safe; the cost of living is very small, nobody breathes or eats or has to be concerned with unpleasant bodily functions; people are never too hot or too cold. It is, in other words, a kind of virtual utopia.<br /><br />Carlos Castaneda might recognize it, and so might Timothy Leary: SL is RL on acid – or grass. What would Aldous Huxley make of, I wonder?<br /><br />SL is opening the doors of perception, as Huxley called it, to both heaven and hell. Like any mind-altering drug, SL is both beneficial and dangerous – it depends on how it’s used. SL can facilitate communication and entertain and educate. It can also become intensely addictive, and I fear that we will soon hear of people sitting in their decaying apartments, locked into Second Life – Matrix-like - while their real world crumbles around them.<br /><br />More later…Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10181366.post-33258450923102551492006-12-26T22:17:00.000-06:002006-12-26T22:19:06.238-06:00The Third Wave in FeminismLast month we had a quick overview of the state of modern feminism. This month we are going to take a closer look at what has been referred to as Third-wave feminism, and some of the associated writings.<br /> As Michelle Doege, Professor of English and Women’s Studies at Fanshawe College, pointed out last month, it’s generally thought that there are three waves of feminism: “The first takes us back to the turn of the last century and is concerned primarily with access issues such as getting women the vote, property rights, and access to education. The second runs through the 1950s to the 1980s, and includes the acceptance of women in the workplace and in positions of authority in government and society.”<br />The beginnings of the notion of a third wave of feminism can probably be traced to the nomination of Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court of the United States by President George Bush Sr. in the fall of 1991. During the subsequent Senate Judiciary Committee hearings, Anita Hill, an African-American law professor, claimed she was sexually harassed by Thomas a decade earlier while in his employment. In response to the Thomas hearings, Rebecca Walker, a leading American feminist and writer, published an article titled “Becoming the Third Wave” in a 1992 issue of Ms. magazine in which she wrote, “I am not a postfeminism feminist. I am the Third wave,” and thus coined the term.<br /> According to the Wikipedia entry dealing with Third-wave feminism, Third-wave feminism seeks to “challenge or avoid what it deems the second wave's ‘essentialist’ definitions of femininity, which (according to the third wave) often assumed a universal female identity and over-emphasized the experiences of upper middle class white women... Third wave theory usually encompasses queer theory, women-of-color consciousness, post-colonial theory, critical theory, transnationalism, ecofeminism, and new feminist theory.” The entry goes on to note that Third wave feminists often focus on "micropolitics," writing about forms of gender expression and representation that are less explicitly political than their predecessors. They also challenged the second wave's ideas of what is, and is not, good for females.<br /> But there seems to be very little awareness of, and literature related to, this new wave of feminism. In 2000, Jennifer Baumgardner and Amy Richards wrote Manifesta: Young Women, Feminism, and the Future (Farrar, Straus & Giroux), a book that argues for the continued importance of feminism in politics, education and culture. The authors, both established journalists and Third-wave leaders, had spent five years examining the state of the women's movement, trying to define the controversial ascendance of "girlie culture," a phenomenon of female self-empowerment that emerged in the 1990s with movies such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the all-girl, punk rock, musical groups such as Riot Grrrl – a name that would evolve to encompass a female, do-it-yourself punk subculture - and books like Elizabeth Wurtzel's Bitch: In Praise of Difficult Women (Anchor Books, 1998).<br />Baumgardner and Richards advocated so-called “girlie culture” because they felt that Second Wave feminists, and especially Second Wave politicians and journalists, were largely against their idea of a the Third-wave feminist movement. According to Tamara Straus, writer and senior editor of AlterNet.org from 1999-2002, in her article, A manifesto for Third-wave Feminism on AlterNet.org, women such as former New York Times columnist Anna Quindlen have argued that “equating lipstick with empowerment, however playful or ironic, and reclaiming such words as bitch and slut, makes a mockery of feminism's longtime and still unachieved goals of social and economic equality. Second Wavers bemoan girlie culture's focus on the personal and the cultural over the political.”<br />But what else did they have six years ago, and what else is there now? A quick look at a brief bibliography of Third Wave literature would indicate that there has not been much truly seminal written on the subject since the turn of the century. The Web site Thirdwavefoundation.org, for instance. is a “feminist, activist foundation that works nationally to support young women and transgender youth ages 15 to 30.” By raising money and working in leadership development, and philanthropic advocacy, this organization support groups and individuals “working towards gender, racial, economic, and social justice.” The organization does have a newsletter called change it!, but the groups seems more dedicated to fundraising and social justice, than large-scale societal consciousness-raising.<br />As Professor Doege mentioned last month, “The Third wave is what we’re in now, and what I am seeing is young women who do want some change, but who experience their sphere of influence more locally… They use poetry and music, or they think about how they can publish their thoughts in small college and university publications, but their sense of power is very localized.”<br />Is it possible that Third wave feminism, and feminism in general, has become so localized that it’s in danger of losing its political and social relevance?<br /><br />A bibliographical sampling:<br />Alfonso, Rita and Jo Triglio1997 Surfing the Thrid Wave: A Dialogue Between Two Third Wave Feminists. Hypatia 12(3):7-16, Summer.<br /><br />Bailey, Cathryn1997 Making Waves and Drawing Lines: The Politics of Defining the Vicissitudes of Feminism. Hypatia 12(3):22-28, Summer.<br /><br />Baumgardner, Jennifer and Amy Richards2000 Manifesta: Young Women, Feminism, and the Future. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.<br /><br />Drake, Jennifer1997 Book Review of Listen Up: Voices from the Next 1998 Feminist Generation and Listen Up: Voices from the Next Feminist Generation. Feminist Studies 23(2):97+, Spring.<br /><br />Finlen, Barbara<br />1995 Listen Up: Voices from the Next Feminist Generation. Seattle: Seal Press.<br /><br />Higginbotham, Anastasia2000 Book Review of Manifesta: Young Women, Feminism, and the Future. Women's Review of Books XVIII(1):1+, October.<br /><br />Orr, Catherine1996 Charting the Currents of the Third Wave. Hypatia 12(3):29-45, Summer.<br /><br />Shah, Sonia<br />1996 Book Review of Listen Up: Voices from the Next Feminist Generation. Sojourner 21(9):43, May.<br /><br />Siegel, Deborah L.1997 The Legacy of the Personal: Generating Theory in Feminism's Third Wave. Hypatia 12(3):46-75, Summer.<br /><br />Straus, Tamara1999 A Manifesto for Third Wave Feminism (interview with<br />Jennifer Baumgardner and Amy Richards). In Independent News and Information <<a href="http://www.alternet.org/">www.alternet.org</a>><br />Wingfoot, Alana1998 Abortion: Beyond Legality. In The 3rd WWWave: Feminism for the New Millennium <<a href="http://www.io.com/~wwwave">www.io.com/~wwwave</a>>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10181366.post-71327398480187080472006-12-06T20:02:00.000-06:002006-12-06T20:04:22.448-06:00Feminism: the third wave?Part one of two.<br /><br /><br /> Given that the feminist movement has been around for decades, and that so much progress was made by society through the 1960s and 1970s towards establishing equality of women and men in Western society, it seems strange that issues of concern to feminists have fallen way from the public’s attention over the past few years. There doesn’t seem to be much literature produced by great feminist leaders these days, nor, if we are to believe the media, do young men and women of today seem particularly with the topic.<br />Michelle Doege is a Professor of English and Women’s studies at Fanshawe College where she teaches the university level course: Introduction to Women’s Studies. Doege says the suggestion that feminism is either dead or dying is not correct; it’s merely changing form. “When I think of the younger generation of women’s attitude towards feminism, I think of two things: One is that they believe that everything is OK between the genders, and the other is that some are very aware that whatever activism they want to engage in will be very different from that of the older feminist movements.”<br />Doege points out, for instance, that even a basic issue such as whether or not a woman should take her husband’s name in marriage is not one that seems to be very troubling to her class of almost exclusively female students. “It’s not even that I would ask them to consider changing a societal norm. That there might be a problem at all doesn’t seem to occur to many of them.”<br /> According to Doege, it’s is generally thought that there are three waves of feminism: “The first takes us back to the turn of the last century and is concerned primarily with access issues such as getting women the vote, property rights, and access to education. The second runs through the 1950s to the 1980s, and includes the acceptance of women in the workplace and in positions of authority in government and society.<br />“The third wave is what we’re in now, and what I am seeing is young women who do want some change, but who experience their sphere of influence more locally. How this group expresses itself is very creative. They use poetry and music, or they think about how they can publish their thoughts in small college and university publications, but their sense of power is very localized.”<br /> One problem is that there is still a real stigma attached to the term “feminist.” The old notion so familiar in the 1970s - that feminists were a bunch of man-hating lesbians - is still surprisingly prevalent today. “For some of my students, even taking my course and showing up for class takes courage. This is even more true for the few young men who take the course.”<br /> Another part of the problem is that there appears to be little awareness of feminist issues in society at large. There are more women graduating from post-secondary institutions than men, for instance, yet women are still paid less, and they are still hampered by institutional glass ceilings. “My concern is that people are considered these things non-issues these days, as though the problems have gone away.”<br /> Young people of both genders are also up against an almost insurmountable obstacle in the form of popular media. “The central issue for young women is body and beauty. They may be critical of the idea that beauty is important, but they buy into it. They are perhaps not strong enough within themselves to take a stand against it – not confident enough. They are aware and critical, but societal expectations of femininity are so strong, they often feel unable to address it within themselves.” <br /> And the demands and restrictions of popular culture do not affect only young women; young men are also swayed by the same influences, and hold the same notions that the issues related to feminist thinking have passed into history.<br /> In all of this, the question remains: Where are the leaders? Where are the great thinkers and writers who did so much to lay out the path towards true equality between the sexes, and to set the example?<br /> “Perhaps this generation doesn’t really need the kind of leaders we identified with in the past. I know that out of a group of some 60 students, most of them female, only a small handful will have even a passing familiarity with the writings of the first and second wave of feminists, usually from a course they took in high school. Perhaps there is power in that individuality and the need to start over again on some level, but I’m not convinced that’s true.”<br />It would seem self-evident that the messages of feminism are still needed, and that these messages needs to reach both young women and young men. But how? Through high school courses? Through poetry and music of pop artists? Where will the third wave of feminism go from here?<br /><br />Next month, we will take a look at trends in third wave feminist writing.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10181366.post-36775057600815528612006-10-21T10:35:00.000-05:002006-10-21T10:43:23.088-05:00Comments welcome - sort ofSo after much commenting unpleasantness following the posting of the column "There May be Some Profanity" a few weeks ago, I decided to disable the comments feature on the blog. Some of the comments were obviously posted by someone who needed professional assistance, and I'm in the wrong profession to provide the necessary help...<br />Anyway, I have reinstated the comments feature, so post away. I am, however, moderating the comments before they are posted now so I can re-route the "unusual" ones to the proper psychiatric, law-enforcement agencies or trash.<br />Compliments are, or course, always welcomed... :-)Unknownnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10181366.post-1159735483160068822006-10-01T15:41:00.000-05:002006-10-21T10:32:01.653-05:00The English Language: Part Deux“If those who have studied the art of writing are in accord on any one point, it is on this: the surest way to arouse and hold the attention of the reader is by being specific, definite, and concrete.”<br /> - Strunk and White: The Elements of Style<br /><br /> Last time we had a look at the state of the English language, and what many think of as its deterioration in the hands - or perhaps more correctly – in the mouths, of modern users as the language evolves in what seems to be uncontrollable patterns. This month we consider how we might shape some of those patterns.<br /> Following the influence of the women’s movement in the 1970s and 1980s, and aided by the work of many multicultural groups, society has become more aware of, and sensitive to, language that might be offensive to members of various identifiable groups.<br /> There is no question that the language journalists use shape the thoughts of their audiences, and by inference, shape the thoughts of society. The English language has always been dominated by the use of the male pronoun, for instance, with the result that for decades it was almost automatic to think of people in positions of power and authority, and those working in the professions, as male.<br /> In addition, there have been distinct differences in the way women and men are described in the media. We might, for instance, see something like: “The communications consultant, a petite, blonde in her early twenties, arrived at the meeting…” Well, unless the facts that the communications consultant is a petite, blonde female are somehow central to the information being shared, they have no business being included in the story. It’s difficult, if not impossible, to find a comparable descriptor saying: “The communications consultant, a balding, middle-aged white male, arrived at the meeting…” Both descriptors are unnecessary, and both impart a sex-role stereotype to the minds of the readers. It would be a special circumstance indeed that could warrant the inclusion of the age, sex, racial background and overall appearance of a person in a piece of journalism.<br /> Writers – and speakers - must make special efforts to be sensitive to the language they use in order to avoid alienating members of their audience, and to avoid raising stereotypes and triggering bias in the readers.<br />The problem of how to avoid the generalized male pronoun – the so-called pseudo-generic pronoun – is a thorny one. “A new student at college must be aware that he is responsible for his own success” implies that college students are male. Some writers have suggested mixing up the pronouns to indicate equality: “A new student at college must be aware that she is responsible for his own success,” but that’s just nonsense and confuses the reader. Other writers have suggested combining the pronouns: “A new student at college must be aware that s/he is responsible for his/her own success.” While that does work, and may possibly catch on in time, it’s still too awkward and clumsy.<br /> The best of bad solutions is probably to simply pluralize the pronouns: “New students at college must be aware that they are responsible for their own success.” This works pretty well in almost all cases, and does not “readjust” the facts.<br /> One of my favourite “fuzzy” words that is much used in everyday language, yet has no really clear meaning, is the word “manmade.” If something is “manmade,’ is it hand-made? Machine-made? Simulated? Artificial? Made by men only? The temptation might be to say “all of the above,” but clearly something can’t be both hand-made and machine-made. I would suggest it is clearer and more accurate to say what the item is. If a machine made it, it is machine-made, if a person made it by hand, it is hand-made, if it is made out of synthetic fibres, it’s synthetic, and so on.<br /> To think of all this bias-free, gender-neutral language as political correctness gone mad would be to miss the point. Language really does shape and influence the way we think of others and of ourselves. Since we need everybody to be involved in our society in order to make it work, we need to make sure everybody is included in the language, and we need to make sure we don’t belittle anybody and make them feel less than they are.<br /> Look at the way people who disagree with one other use language to help make their case: For people who support abortions, it’s a matter of “choice.” For people who don’t, abortion is “murder.” One scientist’s unborn baby is “foetal tissue,” while to those who oppose the use of foetal tissue for scientific research, it is an “unborn baby.”<br /> Words clearly shape how we think of ourselves, how we establish relationships with others, and our place in society. Language that is accurate, inclusive and bias-free will go a long way towards breaking down barriers in communication.<br /> And let’s put a quick stop to those who object to the use of bias-free, gender-neutral language because it “changes the English language” by reminding them that one of the things that makes English such a delightful language is precisely the fact that it is in a constant state of change and adaptation. The English we use now is idiomatically very different from the language our parents and grandparents used, and heaven knows it’s being changed yet again by our own children.<br /> People and the language they used cannot be judged out of their time – that would be an anachronistic fallacy. What we can do, however, is look at their language, and then look at our own, and see if we are any better at getting the communication across clearly.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10181366.post-1157029753946743822006-08-31T08:03:00.000-05:002006-10-21T10:32:01.592-05:00There will be some profanityEnglish is a fascinating and complex language which, to those who speak it as their first language, seems fairly straightforward and uncomplicated. To those who have to learn it as a second language, however, it’s a bewildering morass of double meanings, hidden allusions and words and expressions from other languages. The rules of spelling are hopelessly complex and contradictory, and the grammatical structure of English seems to have been created by someone who didn’t like people much.<br />Depending on what source you refer to, there are about a million words in the English language. Maybe about half of those are words specific to the various professions in science, the law, and the arcane world of technology. That still leaves us some 500,000 words from which to build our vocabulary. Again, depending on sources, it’s estimated that an average five-year-old might know some 5000 words, and someone with a basic university education might have access to a mental lexicon of about 20,000. You can more than double that figure if you are a voracious reader, and triple it if you teach at the university level. Let’s not talk about what watching television will do to someone’s ability to express themselves clearly – it’s too depressing.<br />What matters in all this, of course, is how you string together whatever words you know in order to make yourself understood. It’s usually at this point that that people will sigh in exasperation and start to mutter darkly about the younger generation’s frightful abuse of the Queen’s English. References to the fall of Rome usually follow. But what has enabled English to not only survive but to thrive since a fairly recognizable version of the language was finally cobbled together out of Celtic, Latin, Scandinavian dialects, French and other languages into what scholars think of as the Later Middle English period around 1500, has been its ability to adopt and adapt.<br />Unlike the French who have The foundation of the Académie française (French Academy) which was created in 1634 by Cardinal Richelieu as an official organization whose goal was the purification and preservation of the French language, the English have allowed their language to evolve willy-nilly (which, incidentally, is an expression that dates to about 1608, and is a contraction of will he, nill he, or will ye, nill ye, meaning with or without the will of the person concerned). The Académie française still exists, by the way, and looks after the policing of the language and the adaptation of foreign words and expressions. There’ll be no donne moi un hot dog in Paris, but in London it is de rigeur to include French words and expressions in everyday language, as indeed it’s all right to toss in a little ad hoc Latin just to impress.<br />But what about profanities? And all those other awful words and expressions use by rap musicians and rock and roll singers? And what about the incursions of spellings employed by kids who use their cell phones to text one another? Surely none of that should be allowed into the Queen’s English, otherwise we’ll all be writing “OmGd C u l8r,” and surely that won’t do.<br />Well, like it or not, English is a very democratic language, and as in any working democracy (from Greek demokratia, from demos meaning common people, and kratos" meaning rule or strength), the majority rules. In other words, once enough people use a word that it can be considered as being in the common parlance, it enters the standard lexicon.<br />For many people who care about these things, one of the most standard of standard lexicons is the venerable Oxford English Dictionary (OED). In 1992 Canada got its own Canadian Oxford Dictionary, and the lexicographers who work on these tomes are the ultimate arbiters of what constitutes “proper English”, remembering always that they draw their information from the words in common use.<br />So, for better or worse, the OED includes “hassle” and “dweeb” (“A person who is boringly conventional, puny or studious,” and yes, I’ll take that as a compliment), and any number of other words many people who worry about the state of the language would consider too colloquial to be appropriate.<br />The OED also includes – brace yourselves - the word “fuck” which to anyone over the age of, say, forty, is a profanity of such magnitude that it can’t be included in even informal conversations, but which to younger people is, as the OED describes it, merely “… a meaningless intensifier.” And by the way, the OED, which includes etymologies in its definitions, says nothing about “Filed Under Carnal Knowledge” or anything like that. It refers to the word as coarse slang of unknown origin. So there.<br />The fact remains that fuck, which I, being much older than forty, can barely make myself type out, has become so pervasive in the parlance of young people as to all but completely remove its original, coarse, meaning. The ubiquity of the word is even earning it a dialect descriptor of its own as “fuck patois” (from Fr. Patois meaning "native or local speech," and may have referred to a clumsy manner of speaking). The word still has some power to shock, but once that power is lost, it may fall out of fashion as have so many slang words, only to make way for something even more egregious – perhaps even something that will shock the linguistic sensibilities of today’s younger generation.<br />What those who care about the state of the English language are faced with is a choice between trying to rein it in, which would be like trying to rein in the Internet, and letting the language evolve as it will, even if that means losing much loved words and expressions to the vagaries of fashion. But after all, nobody speaks like Shakespeare anymore. Does that make English any less vibrant or useful? Methinks not.<br /><br />Next month: to the rescue of the language: insisting on clarity in communication, if not politeness.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10181366.post-1149784662188463802006-06-08T11:34:00.000-05:002006-10-21T10:32:01.455-05:00Yet another reason to grown your own vegetables..."If those stimulants to exertion which arise from the wants of the body, were removed from the mass of mankind, we have much reason to think that they would be sunk to the level of brutes from a deficiency of excitements, than that they would be raised to the level of philosophers by the possession of leisure." <br /><br />-- Thomas Malthus, 1766-1834Unknownnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10181366.post-1149167396638889252006-06-01T08:09:00.000-05:002006-10-21T10:32:01.379-05:00The State of Things – So Far.Now that the school year has come to an end for college and university students, it’s time once again to have a look at what I’ve learned from my students. The following “state of things” report is collected from selected passages of student writings containing errors that have resulted in, one hopes, unintended, and often humorous meanings.<br />So, for instance, on the world stage, there are questions to be asked: “Every day there is hunger and suffering in the world. Millions of people are dying. What’s really going on with the war? Where is Osama?” Where indeed. All we know is that he was “boring into a very large family,” and that the attacks on the Americans “were followed by the Osama Bin Laden decree to kill … any person who had ties and followed the Americans.” Clearly “We are not living up to the rules and guile lines.” Then again, “The need for a black and white world leaves no room for a medium.” <br />The war in Iraq has dominated the news, especially since “the region was taken over by Islamic surgeons,” after “The war was brought about by what the Muslims call G-Had.” They will “…continue in a violent manor until their goal is achieved,” although “Neither Hamas not Jihad clammed responsibility.” In the end, “Terrorism is not a reason to rage war on terror,” although it “is a problem and is running ramped through the world!” It’s important to note, however, that “Terrorism has gone through changes under many people, one of the largest being Vladimir Illich Lenin.” Hitler, on the other hand “started small, as any other person in the world.” But clearly, “When planes start crashing into buildings, something is obviously wrong.” Remember, though, that “They were not all westerners in that building, out to oppress the world, some were just janitors.”<br />Closer to home, “The house fire embellished most of the appliances and furniture,” but happily, “Within minutes of the accident, the fire station arrived!” Sadly though, “Obese children are on the rise,” and in the second to last election, “Prime Minister Cretien behaved with extinction.” Bullying continues to be a problem in our schools, and the “Consequences for students who bully will be one day suspension or explosion.” So behave, is clearly the message. Not all politicians understand the importance of behaving well, as a few got into hot water because “There was a problem with a minor miss communication.”<br />Also, “Today’s society dictates that a beautiful woman is one who is 110 pounds tall…” and “Martha Stewart has broken out into a line of bed linens.” Poor woman – as though things weren’t bad enough. Remember how her trial “…brought Martha Stewart a deformation of character”? On her show, “She watched members of the audience multiply,” perhaps in an effort to increase the number of people watching. <br />In sports, “The parent was upset about an elbow his son received from another player in a game,” suggesting that some athletes are clearly generous to a fault. Still, “It’s up to high ranking officials to drop the axe on violence in sports.” Perhaps if they weren’t high, they’d come up with a better metaphor. But because the player is a local favourite, “…the Free Press will give him a good clipping in the paper,” which will, almost certainly, do little to reduce the violence.<br /> The real question for our nation is: “In order for our country to advance we need everyone to advance. But how can we when so many are behind?” Whatever the reason for our troubles, there are many who think that “Most of the trouble originated in the Untied States of America because “Canada has had relations with the US for decades…” <br />Solutions are being sought everywhere, except perhaps, among the “intellectually combatable who tend to coagulate.” The trick this past year was is to maintain an optimistic outlook when listening to politicians, and note that “The speaker used a good mix of self-defecating humour” while the speech was “defiantly full of fact and opinion.” Remember: “If we on this plant don’t work together…” we will continue to be in trouble.<br />What has been the role of the media in all this? We’ve discovered, for instance, that “Newspapers run just as businesses do: with the bottom line on the table,” which sounds terribly uncomfortable, and may explain all the grumpy editors. The media also “… absorbs people twenty-four hours a day,” and “…has shown a hunger for drowning celebrities in the public eye…” Very small celebrities, one assumes. <br />Unfortunately, “The news, and the journalists who write it, can’t help but become slanted.” As a result we find that “The words spilled over the page like a bowl of alphabet soup. This makes the reading a little sloppier than it needs to be.” Truer words were never spoken. Keep in mind that “When your life is affected because you are fallowed by reporters, you will change.” Well, who wouldn’t?<br />All of this can only leave us to ask: “Are we no mare than this?” and most importantly: “Terrorism: Will there never be peas??”<br />“Have a great weak end!”<br />The ned.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10181366.post-1147894972633054102006-05-17T14:42:00.000-05:002006-10-21T10:32:01.313-05:00Media barred from covering soldiers' return.Media barred from covering soldiers' return.<br /><br />Otte Rosenkrantz<br /><br />May 3, London, Ont. The decision by the Harper government to bar the media, and through them, the public, from the Canadian Forces Base in Trenton, Ontario, where planes carrying the remains of Canadian soldiers killed in Afghanistan arrive, comes at the same time as Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor’s policy to not lower flags on government buildings to half-mast every time a Canadian soldier is killed.<br />Both decisions echo the attempt in 2003 by the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush to keep the reality of the casualties of war from the American people by imposing a publication ban on images of coffins carrying the bodies of American soldiers coming home.<br />The successful muzzling of the American media grew out of the Americans’ experience in the war in Vietnam where the media had unfettered access to soldiers in the field. The uncensored and often quite gruesome images of the death war invariably brings to combatants and civilians alike shocked an American population out of its complacency, and did much to stir up the massive anti-war protests across the country that eventually forced President Nixon to reconsider his country’s role in Vietnam, and led to the ignominious retreat from Saigon in April, 1975.<br />Both the American government and military learned that lesson very well. Never again would the media have that kind of access to things military. In subsequent overseas military adventures the media would be strictly controlled and censored. This was especially evident in the first and second wars on Iraq where access was granted only to members of the media either selected from a carefully chosen pool of journalists or “embedded” with specific military units, and only censored reports from those unit reporters were released to the public. <br />The images from the wars in Iraq seen on American and, in most cases Canadian, television, were “sanitized” to remove images of dead or wounded US soldiers, and to make sure that no images of the almost 2400 flag-draped caskets that have arrived at Andrew’s Air Force Base near Washington, D.C. so far are seen by the public at large.<br />For the most part, the American media has acquiesced to these restrictions on their reporting. No such restrictions, however, have been applied to the images of dead Iraqi soldiers, of which there have been some 35,000 to date, although it is impossible to get an exact count. Seeing “the enemy’s” dead will not, apparently, shock the delicate sensibilities of the American public. Seeing dead American soldiers, however, either on the battle field, or coming home in caskets, is, so the reasoning goes, bad for national morale, and might undermine the war effort – Vietnam has not been forgotten.<br />Now that Canada is at war in Afghanistan, with a Canadian population about evenly divided on the whether or not we should be there as combatants, Harper’s Conservative government has decided to follow the unfortunate example set by the Americans by restricting media access, and by refusing to recognize the death of Canadian combatants by lowering the Canadian flag on government buildings every time a soldier is killed.<br />The attempt by the Harper government to screen the Canadian public from the realities of war is both transparent and clumsy, Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor’s protestations about trying to protect the families of the dead soldiers “during this emotional time” notwithstanding. And the policy is not nationally accepted. Alberta Premier Ralph Klein, for instance, says that flags at the Alberta legislature will be lowered to half-mast as an act of respect for fallen soldiers on the day of the funeral.<br />The fact is that Canada is a country at war, and as long as that state of affairs continues, there will be casualties. To imagine that Canadians don’t know about the grim realities of war, or somehow need to be sheltered from those realities, is patronizing at best, and state-sponsored censorship at worst. Canadians are surely mature enough to make up their own minds about the value of this war, and the price the country is willing to pay for being part of it. <br />Fifteen Canadian soldiers and one diplomat have died so far. Their deaths were not gentle; their deaths should not be ignored or hidden. Respect should be paid, and the Canadian public should be encouraged to pay attention.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10181366.post-1141173933665013562006-02-28T18:45:00.000-06:002006-10-21T10:32:00.671-05:00When is enough enough?There are some huge guys at the gym. I mean these guys are enormous! They look like large bundles of thick rope walking around. How do these guys find suits to fit them? How do they turn over in bed? Who ties their shoes for them? And it's not just the guys. There are women too who sculpt and tone until they look like they've been poured from plastic. All of which begs the question: when is enough enough?<br /> I go to the gym three or four times a week. Becaue of my schedule I can't always go at the same time, but no matter when I show up, there are about half a dozen or eight people who are always there, pumping iron or running on treadmills like they were trying to get away from something. How do they find the time? Don't they have work - or homes - to go to? They don't look particularly stressed about their apparent unemployment, nor do they strike me as lottery winners. But there they are, sometimes at noon, or in the morning, or in the evening, and apparently all weekend long. They lift weights the size of volkswagens. Their shoulders are like cliff ledges, their legs - well, truth be told, their legs are often very spindly. The bundles of ropes totter around on sticks. I blame the condition of their legs on the height of the mirrors. These guys like to look at themselves when they hoist the iron, but most of the mirrors extend just to the point where you can only see yourself from the waist up.<br /> Anyway. How do these people know when they are done? When will they look in the mirror and say, "That's it! I'm exactly how I want to be. I can stop now." Can they tell that some of them are getting over-done? That they are starting to look like caricatures of themselves? Telling them seems like a bad idea, but I feel that someone ought to come along, tap one of them on their massive shoulders and say: "That's it, pal. You're done. You're perfect the way you are. One more curl or bench press, and you'll have crossed the line from athelete to freak. Go home. Have a beer. Watch a little TV. Or better yet, go for a walk if you still can."Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10181366.post-1140450470817230322006-02-20T09:09:00.000-06:002006-10-21T10:32:00.600-05:00The Fun of The Winter OlympicsThe Winter Olympic Gamers are very exciting, aren't they? The Canadian hockey team has been doing very poorly though, still, their defeats so far have been off-set by Cindy Klassen's silver medal win in the 1,00 metre... what? You've stopped reading? Why? Don't you care about how well our athletes are doing? Doesn't their performance in Turin somehow reflect on our national pride? Given the amount of coverage devoted to the games by our national media, you'd think the war in Afghanistan was over, the bird-flu in Europe cured, and the victims of the mud-slide in the Philippines recovered. Are you suggesting that the news about a tyrant who is about the be re-elected in Uganda is more important, or that Osama bin Laden is accusing, fairly accurately, as it appears, the Americans of perpetrating the same crimes on the people of Iraq as did Saddam Hussein should be discussed in the news? Well, all these stories are having a very hard time squeezing Gretzky off the front pages, or supplanting the deliriously ecstatic news about Canada's silver medal in the two-man bobsled because… well… I really don’t know.<br /> I like watching the games – it’s all very diverting entertainment, like watching the PGA or international rugby. But it’s not really news, or if it is news, it’s entertainment or sports news, and shouldn’t be on the front pages of the papers or running as the lead stories on radio and TV.<br /> Other than being entertaining to watch, and a lot of fun for the athletes, the point of these sporting events completely escapes me. Yes, there was a time when the Olympic Games had a political purpose in that the very apolitical nature of the games made them important. But those quaint old days are long behind us. Now the games represent sponsorship opportunities for the winning athletes and the corporations that back them, and humbling ignominy for the losers. And that’s about it. The public is exhorted to fork out stacks of money for clothing like the athletes wear, and even larger stacks of money for Olympic Games venues – Quebeckers – and by extension, all Canadians - are still paying for the dome that was built for the 1976 Montreal Olympics.<br /> And what for? A quick tour of the Internet will show you what has happened to other Olympic venues, and the amazing amount of corruption that has been associated with the biding procedures over the years. The money seems to be there for these peculiar sporting events, but not for things like health care, education, housing and job training, to say nothing of protecting the environment. The British Columbia government’s commitment to the 2010 Winter Games is $600 million, including $139 million in contingency funding; let’s call is a billion and be done with it. Overall spending for the Turin Games is expected to be more than US$3.6 billion.<br /> I hope the athletes appreciate it – it seems a lot of taxpayer money to host a party and some sporting events..Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10181366.post-1139633197512763152006-02-10T22:44:00.000-06:002006-10-21T10:32:00.534-05:00Great quote about the flag controversy"And where are the Danish flags all coming from? I couldn't get my hands on one if I was in a scavenger hunt and the prize was a Ferrari, but suddenly, they're all over the Middle East..." -- -Seth Greenland<br />[Sorry, I don't know who Seth Greenland is, but you've got to wonder about that last name, given that Greenland belongs to Denmark...]Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0