My native city is generally scorned by everyone else in Canada.That's not bad enough. The principal detractors are the chattering classes right here in good old Hogtown. Journalists earning a living right here in this city are the first to throw stones.
So this is for all those people who sneer at the city. To Montrealers who insist that we don't know what a good smoked meat sandwich is, or have no idea what the "right" bagel is. To the Vancouverites who sit smugly in their little town famous for it's wonderful view, and I admit, for it's growing chic. To the Calgarians whose hubris is manifest in a very puffed up version of their cowtown. To Maritimers who think our city is unfriendly and unwelcoming to everyone from "away." These are the usual annoyances we citizens of beautiful Toronto have to endure. And the antipathy goes 'way back. I remember w wonderful radio play by Lister Sinclair on the CBC "Stage" series: "Why we all hate Toronto."
And yes, I remember this place when the only presumably "good" food was stuff like the coconut cream pie at Bassel's, the breaded veal cutlet at LaPlaza and the roast beef at the Royal York. I admit - we used to be a gustatory wasteland.
I am moved to write this paean to my city because today, in honour of the passing decade the Star's Rosie Dimanno wrote an unfortunately amusing column about the zany stuff that has happened here. But it was the headline, probably written, not by Rosie, but by some headline writer who couldn't resist the chance to make a point: "As the city at the centre of the universe never tires of boasting about itself: We're world-class jackasses."
It is that self-loathing that bothers me most. It begins with the cityscape critics who complain endlessly about the "ugly wall of condos that rims the harbour," and about how "the Gardiner cuts off the view of our waterfront." And about how we should learn from Chicago which is proud of its uncluttered vista of Lake Michigan.
It's all rubbish! I happen to love the ride into the city from the west along the Gardiner, especially at night when the lights highlight the view. On my right are condos and on my left are (if you subtract the ugly billboards) the office and condo towers of a city where people want to live downtown. As for the "walk" along the water, there is no better urban view that a walk along Harbourfront with the bay on one side and the towers on the other. And for a Chicago-like walk, something Chicago does not have, the Island. The southern side with beaches and a stunning lake view. The north side with it's equally stunning view of the city. Want another kind of "view?" How about a stroll or a bike ride from Cherry Beach all the way to Balmy Beach?
The chronic scorners of the media; the ones who endlessly compare the joys of Chicago to the mess called Toronto, also giggle out loud at our pretentiousness in calling our city "world class." The CN Tower comes in for a lot of scorn, because as a symbol of our city it is not the Eiffel Tower. True, they have heaped praise on the Gehry-designed Art Gallery of Ontario, but have perversely approved of the recent designation of the new Liebskind ROM as the ugliest building of the decade.
They don't talk about the wonderful downtown resting places like the elegant little plaza behind the old Bank of Commerce Building, or the peaceful serenity of the park at St. James, or the growing number of people who make up the critical mass that enriches downtown living, or the St. Lawrence Market, or the wonderful restaurants, the abundance of music and drama.
I make my own little joke about being a Toronto-booster. Some facts: did you know that Toronto is the fifth largest city in North America? Did you know that Toronto is the third largest English-speaking theatre centre in the world? Did you realize that the CN Tower is the second tallest free-standing structure in the world?
We don't seem to be first with anything, except old stuff like Insulin was discovered here.
I am a home exchanger. I have the pleasure of trading places with people in Paris, Chicago, Stockholm, Aberdeen, Auckland, and North Carolina, to name a few. I enjoy showing them around. They are always startled at how much there is in this city. Our friends in Paris, with whom we will exchange for four months starting in April, will spend at least two months based in Toronto.
I am sorry that so many of us short-change this city. I am even sorrier that the media leads the charge.
And a happy New Year,even to those unlucky enough to live somewhere that is not Toronto.
Thursday, December 31, 2009
Monday, December 28, 2009
CONSERVE OR DIE
This morning I was drawn to a piece in the Toronto Star by architecture and urban critic Christopher Hume about a company called SAS which has turned their downtown office building “green.” It is a cautionary tale about what will happen if we don’t start to conserve. It should be read by every near-sighted politician who insists that the economy comes first. “The economy trumps the environment,” is the clarion call of the myopic corporate world and of “market forces” ideology of too many politicians.
In spite of the fact that economic models have been created to show that green policies, conservation, and pollution-control, will generate an entire new industry and will not only be cost-effective, but profitable. However, when business takes a short-term, quarter-to-quarter point of view, there is scant hope for change. Unless.
Unless there is a will by governments everywhere to intrude on the “rights” of the corporate giants and act on behalf of the people and of social sanity, we will march down the road to ruin. The failure at Copenhagen where so-called economic reality overwhelmed global common sense is indicative of how far we still have to go.
Empty words about the environment don’t do the job. The grotesque part of all this is the presence of global climate change deniers who claim that the climate change movement is propaganda and, in the words of the Senator from Oklahoma who went to Copenhagen to protest – “a hoax!”
Sixty Minutes gave us Arnold Schwartzenager promising to do something to alleviate the critical fresh water shortage in California. The majority of our fresh vegetables come from hot, arid California valleys where irrigation turning desert-like acres into lush gardens. It was done with water, the same fresh water that runs in the taps and toilets and garden hoses of Los Angeles. We were shown the reservoir and saw how far it had shrunk. In places like California and Phoenix, people grumble when they are told to stop watering their lawns, the looming water shortage is not as dominant as it should be. It won’t be until the day the taps run dry.
It is years since the crisis appeared. The great plains heart of America has been, since the first plough broke the plains, irrigated by water from the Ogallalla aquifer, a giant underground water table thousands of square miles in size. They have known for years that this abundance was coming to an end. In the Imperial Valley of California, so much underground water has been pumped into the air for wasteful (but cheap) irrigation, that ocean water has been seeping in so that the irrigation water is becoming brackish. It will soon be useless. And that story goes back at least 20 years!
If we want to be truly green we can’t wait for lily-livered governments to do it. We have to vote our consciences. We have to create, and we have to do it right now – a system, that does not water lawns and wash cars and flush toilets with fresh drinking water. How many years ago did countries in Europe pioneer on-site home filtration systems that would filter “waste” water for re-use? Here in Ontario, under the late and maligned Rae government, we built a huge cachement basin to divert storm-sewer water and restore our local beaches. I wonder, as I watch the growingly frequent flooding from colossal rainfall, how long it will be before a country like the United States builds enormous cachement basins so that instead of flood water flowing our and leaving destruction, will form giant freshwater lakes. Look, for example, at Winnipeg, where they have dug diversion canals to handle the annual flooding of the Red River. The canals divert the water from the city. Could they not divert the same water into giant cachement basins and create artificial lakes?
I am not making a political statement in favour of the Green Party. I think they are a one-trick pony. The mainstream parties must put the environment up front. We can no longer tolerate politicians who proclaim that “employment trumps environment.”
In spite of the fact that economic models have been created to show that green policies, conservation, and pollution-control, will generate an entire new industry and will not only be cost-effective, but profitable. However, when business takes a short-term, quarter-to-quarter point of view, there is scant hope for change. Unless.
Unless there is a will by governments everywhere to intrude on the “rights” of the corporate giants and act on behalf of the people and of social sanity, we will march down the road to ruin. The failure at Copenhagen where so-called economic reality overwhelmed global common sense is indicative of how far we still have to go.
Empty words about the environment don’t do the job. The grotesque part of all this is the presence of global climate change deniers who claim that the climate change movement is propaganda and, in the words of the Senator from Oklahoma who went to Copenhagen to protest – “a hoax!”
Sixty Minutes gave us Arnold Schwartzenager promising to do something to alleviate the critical fresh water shortage in California. The majority of our fresh vegetables come from hot, arid California valleys where irrigation turning desert-like acres into lush gardens. It was done with water, the same fresh water that runs in the taps and toilets and garden hoses of Los Angeles. We were shown the reservoir and saw how far it had shrunk. In places like California and Phoenix, people grumble when they are told to stop watering their lawns, the looming water shortage is not as dominant as it should be. It won’t be until the day the taps run dry.
It is years since the crisis appeared. The great plains heart of America has been, since the first plough broke the plains, irrigated by water from the Ogallalla aquifer, a giant underground water table thousands of square miles in size. They have known for years that this abundance was coming to an end. In the Imperial Valley of California, so much underground water has been pumped into the air for wasteful (but cheap) irrigation, that ocean water has been seeping in so that the irrigation water is becoming brackish. It will soon be useless. And that story goes back at least 20 years!
If we want to be truly green we can’t wait for lily-livered governments to do it. We have to vote our consciences. We have to create, and we have to do it right now – a system, that does not water lawns and wash cars and flush toilets with fresh drinking water. How many years ago did countries in Europe pioneer on-site home filtration systems that would filter “waste” water for re-use? Here in Ontario, under the late and maligned Rae government, we built a huge cachement basin to divert storm-sewer water and restore our local beaches. I wonder, as I watch the growingly frequent flooding from colossal rainfall, how long it will be before a country like the United States builds enormous cachement basins so that instead of flood water flowing our and leaving destruction, will form giant freshwater lakes. Look, for example, at Winnipeg, where they have dug diversion canals to handle the annual flooding of the Red River. The canals divert the water from the city. Could they not divert the same water into giant cachement basins and create artificial lakes?
I am not making a political statement in favour of the Green Party. I think they are a one-trick pony. The mainstream parties must put the environment up front. We can no longer tolerate politicians who proclaim that “employment trumps environment.”
Saturday, December 26, 2009
THE UNOFFICIAL OPPOSITION
The media used to view itself as the unofficial opposition. The press was there to hold politicians feet to the fire. They were the unelected conscience of the people. That was then. This is now. The precipitous decline of media, especially the print form has led us to where not just print, but all media, embattled and almost forgotten radio, TV confronted with sugar-candy programming on cable – all are in decline. The “new” media has become the internet. But you know that already.
We like to believe that it was Obama who moved into the space of so-called “social media” to gather in voters. But it was, if you recall, Howard Dean, who made the leap from conventional media to the internet, especially to fundraise. Now, as I watch him deploring the present state of American health reform debate, I wonder what America would have been if Dean had not made that unfortunate shout for the cameras, a blood-curdling squeal that was all the mainstream politicians needed to oust this pretender. Even now, wouldn’t he have made a better Secretary of Health that governor Sebelius?
Perhaps the one “new” media intruder that has made the most difference is: the “blogger.” There are tens of thousands of us, all competing for your attention. Some have risen to great heights. Others languish unread.
If Obama can remake America with his own form of compromising gradualism, then good for him. But he has almost lost me entirely. After a year in office Guantanamo is still running (albeit on the way to closing) there are more “contractors” in Afghanistan raking in millions than there are simple soldiers raking in I.R.D.s The banks have retreated into their shell of self-preservation and speculative investment. The latest is that Goldman Sachs, a true survivor, was actually double-crossing its own customers. They were, it is alleged, selling them another even more sophisticated version of mortgage backed securities, while at the same time betting against those securities by short-selling and raking in huge profits while the original investors took it on the chin. If that’s Free Enterprise I’m Attila the Hun!
Meanwhile, as the same-old-same-old continues, the country wallows in unemployment. From the very beginning the president warned America that the last thing to recover would be employment. But who expected to hear from experts that the automotive industry was unlikely to return to pre-crash employment levels for at least another four years?!!
There used to be talk that Obama would be “transformational;” that he would not only make things better but he would create whole new programs designed for the future; that he would change the “landscape” of America.
Great, I thought. What a chance for him to start a public-private partnership to build a network of high speed rail all over America. If Eisenhower could do it in the 50s with his monumental Interstate highway system, breaking totally new ground and creating roads where none had been before, why can’t Obama do it with trains? I imagine a travel network that combines air and high-speed ground connections and includes an inter-modal system that gets heavy trucks off the road and onto rail. In European countries you can get off a plane and get onto a train. You can connect at Charles de Gaulle in Paris or at Schipol in Amsterdam. As air travel heads toward partial obsolescence, why not partner with willing airlines to build surface routes? And just as at America’s entry into WW2, the car companies turned to building bombers and tanks, why not turn them into building people movers to operate on the new Obama high speed lines?
It’s all pie-in-the-sky and this blogger does not expect the White House to notice. I wish they’d take me off their Emailing list and stop asking me for money.
We like to believe that it was Obama who moved into the space of so-called “social media” to gather in voters. But it was, if you recall, Howard Dean, who made the leap from conventional media to the internet, especially to fundraise. Now, as I watch him deploring the present state of American health reform debate, I wonder what America would have been if Dean had not made that unfortunate shout for the cameras, a blood-curdling squeal that was all the mainstream politicians needed to oust this pretender. Even now, wouldn’t he have made a better Secretary of Health that governor Sebelius?
Perhaps the one “new” media intruder that has made the most difference is: the “blogger.” There are tens of thousands of us, all competing for your attention. Some have risen to great heights. Others languish unread.
If Obama can remake America with his own form of compromising gradualism, then good for him. But he has almost lost me entirely. After a year in office Guantanamo is still running (albeit on the way to closing) there are more “contractors” in Afghanistan raking in millions than there are simple soldiers raking in I.R.D.s The banks have retreated into their shell of self-preservation and speculative investment. The latest is that Goldman Sachs, a true survivor, was actually double-crossing its own customers. They were, it is alleged, selling them another even more sophisticated version of mortgage backed securities, while at the same time betting against those securities by short-selling and raking in huge profits while the original investors took it on the chin. If that’s Free Enterprise I’m Attila the Hun!
Meanwhile, as the same-old-same-old continues, the country wallows in unemployment. From the very beginning the president warned America that the last thing to recover would be employment. But who expected to hear from experts that the automotive industry was unlikely to return to pre-crash employment levels for at least another four years?!!
There used to be talk that Obama would be “transformational;” that he would not only make things better but he would create whole new programs designed for the future; that he would change the “landscape” of America.
Great, I thought. What a chance for him to start a public-private partnership to build a network of high speed rail all over America. If Eisenhower could do it in the 50s with his monumental Interstate highway system, breaking totally new ground and creating roads where none had been before, why can’t Obama do it with trains? I imagine a travel network that combines air and high-speed ground connections and includes an inter-modal system that gets heavy trucks off the road and onto rail. In European countries you can get off a plane and get onto a train. You can connect at Charles de Gaulle in Paris or at Schipol in Amsterdam. As air travel heads toward partial obsolescence, why not partner with willing airlines to build surface routes? And just as at America’s entry into WW2, the car companies turned to building bombers and tanks, why not turn them into building people movers to operate on the new Obama high speed lines?
It’s all pie-in-the-sky and this blogger does not expect the White House to notice. I wish they’d take me off their Emailing list and stop asking me for money.
Thursday, December 24, 2009
MY REPUTATION IS AT STAKE
It isn’t easy to contradict a reputation. It was incumbent upon me at all times to live up to my press clippings: hard, irascible, rude, arrogant, uncompromising, bullying and more. My reputation was that I did not tolerate fools gladly and never believed that every one, including the totally uninformed, is entitled to an opinion.
Every so often I would have to relent. A gentler side of me would emerge. Because, after all, in spite of my reputation, I had (and still have) a side that is almost pedestrian in its ordinariness. From time to time, exhausted by confrontation, I would open the phone lines on my radio talk show to talk about, believe it or not, cooking.
I love to cook. It’s right up there with playing the piano, visiting Paris, and in my rowdier days – sailing. Of all the material I ever had in print, I don’t think there is anything that I enjoyed more than my column about preparing a Sunday brunch and trying not to do the unforgivable: ask my guests how they were enjoying the food. Never, ever do that. Bite your tongue. Even if some of your guests are so busy talking to each other that the food enters their mouths without even a flicker of approval or disapproval.
I love to cook, because I enjoy making people feel good. My daughter does it too. She is what I call a “feeder.” She is like a grandmother who stands at the doorway of the kitchen with her aprons on and a dish towel in one hand watching other people eat.
Most of my friends don’t understand why I like to cook. They say all the obligatory stuff: “How can you go to all this trouble,”? Or “Why don’t you open a restaurant?”
The answer to that one is easy. With a restaurant the patrons are not your friends. They can be bluntly critical. Friends only smile and enjoy. Or pretend to.
We are having a few people over New Year’s Eve for a late snack-style supper, and for those who can stay awake long enough. Champagne toasts at midnight.
Let me share my menu. (And for those who take the trouble to read this, share your menu with me.) There will be barbecued back ribs, done on my rotisserie cooker and basted every few minutes. I like my ribs to be caramelized and chewy. I don’t pre-cook them so they fall off the bone. There will be chicken fingers using a recipe that once made Dave Nichols (the originator of President’s Choice) grimace with discomfort. It is a recipe that no one else I know of uses. I stumbled on it while experimenting with different coatings. The chicken is first rolled in flour, then dipped in eggs then rolled in – are you ready – a mixture of flour and white cake mix! My grandsons love it. They all want “Papa’s Chicken.” The fingers are served with a dipping sauce. It can be soy based or what prefer, an orange sauce like what I make for crepes suzettes,
There will be what most people call liver pate but which I know is just plain old Jewish deli style chopped liver. The original chopped liver was either chopped or ground. I like a smoother texture. I use a food processor. The original chopped liver was made with a cholesterol-filled killer called “gribennes.” That is the Jewish version of cracklings, but instead of pork rind we use chicken skin. The fat is rendered off the chicken which is fried in a mixture of onion and garlic. The onions are caramelized almost to charcoal. The resulting combination of fat (schmaltz) onion and ch8icken skin cracklings are added to the mixture. Today’s health conscious chopped liver is lightly fried in olive oil; an onion is cut in quarters. Three quarters of it is well fried, the other left raw. All are put together in the Cuisinart with two or three hard-cooked eggs, salt and pepper and a generous amount of garlic. It is then made smooth, put into a dish to make a spherical mold... I line the dish with plastic wrap, cover the bottom in roughly ground fresh pepper, place the liver on it, press down, and when ready to serve, invert the bowl, remove the plastic warp, and voila.
I may also make meatballs that are reasonably diet conscious. I use three parts ground chicken to one port of ground pork. (The pork defeats the cholesterol promise, but what the hell.) I roll them in panko and bake them. They are served with my own dipping sauce that is just a slightly sweet and sour tomato mixture.
Confession. I still have some wonderful spanakopita in the freezer. The people I buy it from make it in stick that look like small spring rolls.
Now I have shown you the human side. All that is left is my best wishes that your New Year’s Eve promises good stuff and the year to come fulfills at least a few of your dreams.
Every so often I would have to relent. A gentler side of me would emerge. Because, after all, in spite of my reputation, I had (and still have) a side that is almost pedestrian in its ordinariness. From time to time, exhausted by confrontation, I would open the phone lines on my radio talk show to talk about, believe it or not, cooking.
I love to cook. It’s right up there with playing the piano, visiting Paris, and in my rowdier days – sailing. Of all the material I ever had in print, I don’t think there is anything that I enjoyed more than my column about preparing a Sunday brunch and trying not to do the unforgivable: ask my guests how they were enjoying the food. Never, ever do that. Bite your tongue. Even if some of your guests are so busy talking to each other that the food enters their mouths without even a flicker of approval or disapproval.
I love to cook, because I enjoy making people feel good. My daughter does it too. She is what I call a “feeder.” She is like a grandmother who stands at the doorway of the kitchen with her aprons on and a dish towel in one hand watching other people eat.
Most of my friends don’t understand why I like to cook. They say all the obligatory stuff: “How can you go to all this trouble,”? Or “Why don’t you open a restaurant?”
The answer to that one is easy. With a restaurant the patrons are not your friends. They can be bluntly critical. Friends only smile and enjoy. Or pretend to.
We are having a few people over New Year’s Eve for a late snack-style supper, and for those who can stay awake long enough. Champagne toasts at midnight.
Let me share my menu. (And for those who take the trouble to read this, share your menu with me.) There will be barbecued back ribs, done on my rotisserie cooker and basted every few minutes. I like my ribs to be caramelized and chewy. I don’t pre-cook them so they fall off the bone. There will be chicken fingers using a recipe that once made Dave Nichols (the originator of President’s Choice) grimace with discomfort. It is a recipe that no one else I know of uses. I stumbled on it while experimenting with different coatings. The chicken is first rolled in flour, then dipped in eggs then rolled in – are you ready – a mixture of flour and white cake mix! My grandsons love it. They all want “Papa’s Chicken.” The fingers are served with a dipping sauce. It can be soy based or what prefer, an orange sauce like what I make for crepes suzettes,
There will be what most people call liver pate but which I know is just plain old Jewish deli style chopped liver. The original chopped liver was either chopped or ground. I like a smoother texture. I use a food processor. The original chopped liver was made with a cholesterol-filled killer called “gribennes.” That is the Jewish version of cracklings, but instead of pork rind we use chicken skin. The fat is rendered off the chicken which is fried in a mixture of onion and garlic. The onions are caramelized almost to charcoal. The resulting combination of fat (schmaltz) onion and ch8icken skin cracklings are added to the mixture. Today’s health conscious chopped liver is lightly fried in olive oil; an onion is cut in quarters. Three quarters of it is well fried, the other left raw. All are put together in the Cuisinart with two or three hard-cooked eggs, salt and pepper and a generous amount of garlic. It is then made smooth, put into a dish to make a spherical mold... I line the dish with plastic wrap, cover the bottom in roughly ground fresh pepper, place the liver on it, press down, and when ready to serve, invert the bowl, remove the plastic warp, and voila.
I may also make meatballs that are reasonably diet conscious. I use three parts ground chicken to one port of ground pork. (The pork defeats the cholesterol promise, but what the hell.) I roll them in panko and bake them. They are served with my own dipping sauce that is just a slightly sweet and sour tomato mixture.
Confession. I still have some wonderful spanakopita in the freezer. The people I buy it from make it in stick that look like small spring rolls.
Now I have shown you the human side. All that is left is my best wishes that your New Year’s Eve promises good stuff and the year to come fulfills at least a few of your dreams.
Monday, December 21, 2009
NO TIME FOR RELIGION
My personal beliefs intrude. My intolerance and total incredulity are showing. I read that there is a meeting of prominent Christian Conservative convening in New York. Of principal concern is the takeover of Washington by the forces of the anti-Christ, specifically left-leaning Democrats.
I confess my own bias. As a total unbeliever I have trouble reconciling my sense of fairness with my sense that fraudulent science lurks behind the extremes of theology. How, I have always wondered, does being a “Christian” imply belief in less government, lower taxes, and intolerance of anyone who disagrees?
Setting aside the reality that there is little room for civilized discussion on matter like “Choice” and same-sex marriage, because the “Christian” people (I put the quotes there because these extremists have seized what they think is a monopoly on the title) are as firm in their beliefs as I am in mine. My intolerance stems from the unalterable fact that my beliefs are based on scientific and human reality, theirs seem entirely based on what they call “faith,” suggesting that only their version of faith is the True Faith. Which means that mine, which exalts the primacy of man and of the measurable achievements of man – is not?
From the conference comes this tired old dogma: “Sexual relations outside the marital bond are contrary not only to the will of God but to the good of man. Indeed, they are contrary to the will of God precisely because they are against the good of man.”
My question is: who decided that the “good” of man is? But I don’t even want to argue definitions. I can argue that the presence of same-sex marriage does not in any way cast a pall over traditional man-woman-make-babies marriage. The great majority of couples are man and woman. Heterosexual people will continue to marry, and most of them will have children. They will, in the view of the conservative Christian, be fulfilling their role as defined by god. So here we go again. It all comes down, not to human understanding, but to entrenched dogma.
By the way, did anyone else, except Jews, complain that Pius XII might be headed for sainthood - the man who was complicit in issuing Vatican passports to thousands of Nazis who fled to Argentina and Paraguay at the end of the war.
So much for deeply held “belief” and “faith.”
I confess my own bias. As a total unbeliever I have trouble reconciling my sense of fairness with my sense that fraudulent science lurks behind the extremes of theology. How, I have always wondered, does being a “Christian” imply belief in less government, lower taxes, and intolerance of anyone who disagrees?
Setting aside the reality that there is little room for civilized discussion on matter like “Choice” and same-sex marriage, because the “Christian” people (I put the quotes there because these extremists have seized what they think is a monopoly on the title) are as firm in their beliefs as I am in mine. My intolerance stems from the unalterable fact that my beliefs are based on scientific and human reality, theirs seem entirely based on what they call “faith,” suggesting that only their version of faith is the True Faith. Which means that mine, which exalts the primacy of man and of the measurable achievements of man – is not?
From the conference comes this tired old dogma: “Sexual relations outside the marital bond are contrary not only to the will of God but to the good of man. Indeed, they are contrary to the will of God precisely because they are against the good of man.”
My question is: who decided that the “good” of man is? But I don’t even want to argue definitions. I can argue that the presence of same-sex marriage does not in any way cast a pall over traditional man-woman-make-babies marriage. The great majority of couples are man and woman. Heterosexual people will continue to marry, and most of them will have children. They will, in the view of the conservative Christian, be fulfilling their role as defined by god. So here we go again. It all comes down, not to human understanding, but to entrenched dogma.
By the way, did anyone else, except Jews, complain that Pius XII might be headed for sainthood - the man who was complicit in issuing Vatican passports to thousands of Nazis who fled to Argentina and Paraguay at the end of the war.
So much for deeply held “belief” and “faith.”
Sunday, December 20, 2009
ERECTILE MALFUNCTION
I have grown attached to certain TV commercials. There are now three products vying for supremacy in the male impotence sweepstakes: the original Viagra, the johnny-come-lately Cialis, and a product called Levitra that seems to hover somewhere between a cure for “E.D.” and a high blood pressure and clot removing drug. None of the above is in my medicine chest. In fact, I think they should not be in a medicine chest in the first place, but in the bar. But that’s another story, or just a bad joke.
I am fascinated because last month marked the 39th anniversary of my sudden departure from talk radio after a frank series about sexual failure, which I pronounced a national epidemic, an opinion that is borne out today by the attention paid to male failure.
But wait. When I did my ill-fated series, we believed, and the belief was supported by all those who understood male AND female sexuality, that sexual ability did not originate in the nether regions – it originated between your ears! Impotence, or what today we love to call erectile dysfunction – was perceived to be caused by physical problems about 5% of the time. The problem was cultural, emotional, and spiritual – whatever you use to define intellectual activity. Now presto – you don’t need a shrink – you need a pill! You don’t have to understand WHY you can’t function, because in today’s society there is a pill for everything. But the success of the pill masks a far deeper problem. Male vanity coupled with a lack of real ego strength leads to insecurity, which leads to E.D. You can take a pill but the “real” problem won’t go away.
In fact, the apparently inaccurate title I used here is a lot more valid that the rather antiseptic word "dysfunction" which suggests that it is a "condition."
Going back to 1970 my real problem seemed to be that I countenanced masturbation as a method to have people, especially women, actually experience the feeling of orgasm. I used the most circumspect language. I believe today that that so-called circumspect language, which tries to avoid vulgarity, also disguises and camouflages the ability to understand. Today, nearly 40 years later we can’t use the words, although, in fairness, a word that helped get me off the air, is commonplace to-day: erection. As in “if you have one lasting over 4 hours see your doctor.” You should be so lucky. I remember using the word “priapism” which to many people was undecipherable.
Now to the most glaring lack of real sexual understanding: when Viagra first came out there was some plaintive questions from females about what the product could do for them. Answer: nothing.
Which brings me back to the final straw in my own downfall all those years ago: long and frank conversations with women about their own failure to achieve orgasm. Today of course there is open discussion from people like Sue Johansson and even to the titillating giggly style of yesterday's frank-talking guru: Dr. Ruth.
I remember my last visit to Istanbul. Viagra had just exploded onto the world’s sexual stage. There in the Spice Bazaar was a product with the unabashedly frank label: ‘Natural Viagra.”
One thing good: they’ve taken sexuality out of the closet.
I am fascinated because last month marked the 39th anniversary of my sudden departure from talk radio after a frank series about sexual failure, which I pronounced a national epidemic, an opinion that is borne out today by the attention paid to male failure.
But wait. When I did my ill-fated series, we believed, and the belief was supported by all those who understood male AND female sexuality, that sexual ability did not originate in the nether regions – it originated between your ears! Impotence, or what today we love to call erectile dysfunction – was perceived to be caused by physical problems about 5% of the time. The problem was cultural, emotional, and spiritual – whatever you use to define intellectual activity. Now presto – you don’t need a shrink – you need a pill! You don’t have to understand WHY you can’t function, because in today’s society there is a pill for everything. But the success of the pill masks a far deeper problem. Male vanity coupled with a lack of real ego strength leads to insecurity, which leads to E.D. You can take a pill but the “real” problem won’t go away.
In fact, the apparently inaccurate title I used here is a lot more valid that the rather antiseptic word "dysfunction" which suggests that it is a "condition."
Going back to 1970 my real problem seemed to be that I countenanced masturbation as a method to have people, especially women, actually experience the feeling of orgasm. I used the most circumspect language. I believe today that that so-called circumspect language, which tries to avoid vulgarity, also disguises and camouflages the ability to understand. Today, nearly 40 years later we can’t use the words, although, in fairness, a word that helped get me off the air, is commonplace to-day: erection. As in “if you have one lasting over 4 hours see your doctor.” You should be so lucky. I remember using the word “priapism” which to many people was undecipherable.
Now to the most glaring lack of real sexual understanding: when Viagra first came out there was some plaintive questions from females about what the product could do for them. Answer: nothing.
Which brings me back to the final straw in my own downfall all those years ago: long and frank conversations with women about their own failure to achieve orgasm. Today of course there is open discussion from people like Sue Johansson and even to the titillating giggly style of yesterday's frank-talking guru: Dr. Ruth.
I remember my last visit to Istanbul. Viagra had just exploded onto the world’s sexual stage. There in the Spice Bazaar was a product with the unabashedly frank label: ‘Natural Viagra.”
One thing good: they’ve taken sexuality out of the closet.
Thursday, December 17, 2009
RUNNING SCARED
How well laid were “the best laid plans….?” An enormous chasm has opened between Obama’s election promises and their fulfillment. His waffling has created a yawning gap in the Democrat’s hopes for the off-year election and for 2012. The absurd health care “reform:” bill that is before the Senate is a “lose-lose” situation for Obama. If it is passed he will forever be known as the president who “caved.” If it is rejected, he will be known as the President who couldn’t control his own party. All of this because ideology trumps pragmatism, and expediency trumps necessity. His attempts to assuage the anger of the opposition have led him into a swamp.
Never mind the health care mess, how about the promise to introduce new controls on the financial system? How about the reality that having bailed out the banks with the “TARP” system, and watching those same banks return to improving their profits by investing in the very financial instruments that brought them down in the first place. Under the president, there has been nothing but empty threats about bonuses and salaries in the financial world, empty promises to reform the system from its continuing state of casino-gambling style derivatives.
The President can say “The banks just don’t get it,” all he likes. But his strength now seems to be speech-making. Ruefully I remember that his opposition said that it took more than eloquence to make a leader. Is it happening? Sadly, yes.
I am spurred to write this with the news that the French Finance Minister has announced a 50% tax on bank earnings that exceed a certain amount, she also is expected to levy the same tax on bankers whose personal income from stock options, and bonuses rises above a certain figure. In the U.K. there have already been moves made in the same direction. But not in the U.S. – where the “Free Market” rules and the whole word has inherited the fallout from the policies of an economist who is a big fan of Ayn Rand and her insidious brand of libertarianism. Right, Alan Greenspan, who admitted he had been wrong, that the marketplace did not automatically react and solve its own problems – is an Ayn Rand devotee! Talk about chaos.
Can you imagine what would happen if Obama and his Wall-street-centred finance people decide actually to take action against abuses? We have seen how powerful Big Insurance is in the face of a threat to their profits. It is beyond imagining what Big Finance would do if suddenly all those promises for reform were to turn into action.
The irony is that when financial ruin was hovering like a hungry albatross, banks took billions to save themselves. Now, in typical free market Wall Street fashion, they are buying their way out by selling enormous new stock issues, which are being snapped up by investment houses also on the route to quick and easy profits. The fact is that, not only do the bankers “not get it,” but the President had no idea how powerful the forces arrayed against him were and still are.
There is no reason for Canadians to sit smugly with our own Health Care system, or our well-run banks, or a government that, surprisingly for real Tories, actually thinks we can spend our way out of recession. How novel. How Keynsian.
But the U.S. trudges along in its own unchanging rut. The Securities Exchange Commission has still not moved to demand disclosure on the running of derivatives and hedge funds. No one has even thought of indicting the rating companies (Moody’s and S&P) for their part in declaring mortgage backed securities a triple A investment.
It is enough to turn a thinking man into a Socialist. At least then the preposterous claims by the “tea-baggers would gain some credibility.
Finally, I feel sorry for the man who started out in the bright sunshine of hope and has disappeared into the gloom of defeat. I feel most sorry for the millions of Americans who still believe that change is possible.
Never mind the health care mess, how about the promise to introduce new controls on the financial system? How about the reality that having bailed out the banks with the “TARP” system, and watching those same banks return to improving their profits by investing in the very financial instruments that brought them down in the first place. Under the president, there has been nothing but empty threats about bonuses and salaries in the financial world, empty promises to reform the system from its continuing state of casino-gambling style derivatives.
The President can say “The banks just don’t get it,” all he likes. But his strength now seems to be speech-making. Ruefully I remember that his opposition said that it took more than eloquence to make a leader. Is it happening? Sadly, yes.
I am spurred to write this with the news that the French Finance Minister has announced a 50% tax on bank earnings that exceed a certain amount, she also is expected to levy the same tax on bankers whose personal income from stock options, and bonuses rises above a certain figure. In the U.K. there have already been moves made in the same direction. But not in the U.S. – where the “Free Market” rules and the whole word has inherited the fallout from the policies of an economist who is a big fan of Ayn Rand and her insidious brand of libertarianism. Right, Alan Greenspan, who admitted he had been wrong, that the marketplace did not automatically react and solve its own problems – is an Ayn Rand devotee! Talk about chaos.
Can you imagine what would happen if Obama and his Wall-street-centred finance people decide actually to take action against abuses? We have seen how powerful Big Insurance is in the face of a threat to their profits. It is beyond imagining what Big Finance would do if suddenly all those promises for reform were to turn into action.
The irony is that when financial ruin was hovering like a hungry albatross, banks took billions to save themselves. Now, in typical free market Wall Street fashion, they are buying their way out by selling enormous new stock issues, which are being snapped up by investment houses also on the route to quick and easy profits. The fact is that, not only do the bankers “not get it,” but the President had no idea how powerful the forces arrayed against him were and still are.
There is no reason for Canadians to sit smugly with our own Health Care system, or our well-run banks, or a government that, surprisingly for real Tories, actually thinks we can spend our way out of recession. How novel. How Keynsian.
But the U.S. trudges along in its own unchanging rut. The Securities Exchange Commission has still not moved to demand disclosure on the running of derivatives and hedge funds. No one has even thought of indicting the rating companies (Moody’s and S&P) for their part in declaring mortgage backed securities a triple A investment.
It is enough to turn a thinking man into a Socialist. At least then the preposterous claims by the “tea-baggers would gain some credibility.
Finally, I feel sorry for the man who started out in the bright sunshine of hope and has disappeared into the gloom of defeat. I feel most sorry for the millions of Americans who still believe that change is possible.
CELEBRITY FOR HIRE
I think it should be an axiom: never marry a celebrity! Why? You’re immediately in competition with thousands of other wannabes.
Of course,” marrying for love” is real, at least it appears to be for those who are smitten, besotted, or otherwise failing to control or understand their emotions. Like in A Chorus Line, “What I did for love,” is often self-destructive. There is an air about celebrity that attracts interest like honey attracts flies. Does anyone still wonder who the “groupies” are? Does anyone still not understand that for both the seducer and the seducee, there is a lot of endorphin at work? The one who attracts the groupies (or you can call them wannabes – as in “I wannabe in bed with a star”) is only partly to blame. There are more than enough truisms to go around, like “fame is an aphrodisiac.” For those who have the fame their sense of entitlement is enormous. For those who covet proximity to that fame, the urge is compelling.
Celebrities usually make bad spouses. They are carried away by their own celebrity and will forever be hunting for that next challenge – sexual, vocational – whatever. When a celebrity marries a celebrity, unless one of them is prepared to retire from celebrity, there will be competition. The stories about what we now call “Brangela” (or something like that) describe a somewhat preposterous alliance between two narcissists, each bathing in the splendour and bright light of their own celebrity. They are not to be relied upon for intelligent or thoughtful decisions. When they become parents they do it for reasons that escape ordinary would-be parents. I get the sense that with Angelina or Madonna, they are not parenting as much as they are “accessorizing” They are embellishing their lives and their personae the way they would embellish their wardrobe with a new silk scarf.
I am not going to state flatly that Elin married Tiger because she coveted celebrity. Giving her the benefit of the doubt, we could say that she truly adored him, notwithstanding the fact that he would be a “trophy” husband.
That’s it! Struggling through this essay on celebrity, I finally stumble on the cliché: “trophy.” It describes perfectly the attraction, often hidden by the endorphin reaction, which a celebrity has. Celebrity carries an aura and the supplicant wants to bathe in it.
Tiger is not alone. He has been a philanderer, and that is not supposed to be acceptable. Acceptable it is not – inevitable it almost always is.
There is still a lot to be said for the “boy/girl next door.” If it is happiness you are looking for, stay out of the spotlight of celebrity if you can. Marry into it at your peril.
Even a moderate amount of fame attracts interest. I know. I’ve been there. The salvation has been that my time in the bright sunlight has faded and I can be what I always should have been: a hard-working, caring husband and loving father.
Tiger is not there yet. The senators from North Carolina and Nevada are not there yet. The governor of South Carolina is not there yet. Only the wreckage remains.
Of course,” marrying for love” is real, at least it appears to be for those who are smitten, besotted, or otherwise failing to control or understand their emotions. Like in A Chorus Line, “What I did for love,” is often self-destructive. There is an air about celebrity that attracts interest like honey attracts flies. Does anyone still wonder who the “groupies” are? Does anyone still not understand that for both the seducer and the seducee, there is a lot of endorphin at work? The one who attracts the groupies (or you can call them wannabes – as in “I wannabe in bed with a star”) is only partly to blame. There are more than enough truisms to go around, like “fame is an aphrodisiac.” For those who have the fame their sense of entitlement is enormous. For those who covet proximity to that fame, the urge is compelling.
Celebrities usually make bad spouses. They are carried away by their own celebrity and will forever be hunting for that next challenge – sexual, vocational – whatever. When a celebrity marries a celebrity, unless one of them is prepared to retire from celebrity, there will be competition. The stories about what we now call “Brangela” (or something like that) describe a somewhat preposterous alliance between two narcissists, each bathing in the splendour and bright light of their own celebrity. They are not to be relied upon for intelligent or thoughtful decisions. When they become parents they do it for reasons that escape ordinary would-be parents. I get the sense that with Angelina or Madonna, they are not parenting as much as they are “accessorizing” They are embellishing their lives and their personae the way they would embellish their wardrobe with a new silk scarf.
I am not going to state flatly that Elin married Tiger because she coveted celebrity. Giving her the benefit of the doubt, we could say that she truly adored him, notwithstanding the fact that he would be a “trophy” husband.
That’s it! Struggling through this essay on celebrity, I finally stumble on the cliché: “trophy.” It describes perfectly the attraction, often hidden by the endorphin reaction, which a celebrity has. Celebrity carries an aura and the supplicant wants to bathe in it.
Tiger is not alone. He has been a philanderer, and that is not supposed to be acceptable. Acceptable it is not – inevitable it almost always is.
There is still a lot to be said for the “boy/girl next door.” If it is happiness you are looking for, stay out of the spotlight of celebrity if you can. Marry into it at your peril.
Even a moderate amount of fame attracts interest. I know. I’ve been there. The salvation has been that my time in the bright sunlight has faded and I can be what I always should have been: a hard-working, caring husband and loving father.
Tiger is not there yet. The senators from North Carolina and Nevada are not there yet. The governor of South Carolina is not there yet. Only the wreckage remains.
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
FATTER FAT CATS
President Obama didn’t endear himself to the banking community with his outburst against Wall Street banker on 60 Minutes. But the next day, lo and behold, the bankers all seem pleased. Is there a contradiction here? Sadly, I don’t think so.
“Sadly” because The Great Hope for Change seems to have become compromised by Washington’s version of reality. I intuit that Obama was talking to America when he spoke of fat cats. But it was for public consumption, privately, he seems less and less inclined to rock the boat.
Is it possible for me, after all these years of naïve denial, to start believing the truism about there being one law for the rich and one for the poor? Naïve I am because I still do believe that people come first.
Unless you are rich. Then you come first.
This week’s real scandal, far more significant to me than the media-frenzied scandal over the torture of Taliban soldiers by the Afghans; far more meaningful is the continuing “right of privilege” of the affluent. Magnates, millionaires, big-time entrepreneurs – they make their money here, but just as quickly sneak it away into some foreign bank to avoid taxes.
More than any other group in society, it is the wealthy, not as you would suppose – the middle-class – who lead the charge against taxes – any taxes.
It is this attitude that has permeated society. It has made so many of us mean-spirited, stingy, and politician-hating. The plaintive “Just another tax grab..” comes up every time the government – OUR government, you and me (!) decides to raise taxes.
When we were much younger we used to say” I’d love to pay a million bucks in taxes because I would be making a lot of money.”
No, instead, every tax is an unfair burden. People elect governments who promise not to raise taxes. Even worse, who promise to "reduce spending." (That code for stick it to the needy)Not for me.
I love the fact that I pay taxes. I love it that I live in Canada and share with fellow Canadians the freedom we have; share with fellow Canadians the policies that extend safety nets to the less fortunate among us.
As a famous Canadian politician once said: (it may have been Frank McKenna) “It costs money to be a Canadian. I can’t think of any place I would rather live.
But the fat cats don’t agree. They believe it is their god-given perquisite to hide as much income as possible. It may be true that the difference between the wealthy and not-so-wealthy is that the former have the money to hire accountants and tax lawyers who show them how to sequester money so the nasty old government, the government that protects them and gives them shelter, can’t get their greedy hands on their hard earned money.
Those offshore swindlers - that’s the big story.
“Sadly” because The Great Hope for Change seems to have become compromised by Washington’s version of reality. I intuit that Obama was talking to America when he spoke of fat cats. But it was for public consumption, privately, he seems less and less inclined to rock the boat.
Is it possible for me, after all these years of naïve denial, to start believing the truism about there being one law for the rich and one for the poor? Naïve I am because I still do believe that people come first.
Unless you are rich. Then you come first.
This week’s real scandal, far more significant to me than the media-frenzied scandal over the torture of Taliban soldiers by the Afghans; far more meaningful is the continuing “right of privilege” of the affluent. Magnates, millionaires, big-time entrepreneurs – they make their money here, but just as quickly sneak it away into some foreign bank to avoid taxes.
More than any other group in society, it is the wealthy, not as you would suppose – the middle-class – who lead the charge against taxes – any taxes.
It is this attitude that has permeated society. It has made so many of us mean-spirited, stingy, and politician-hating. The plaintive “Just another tax grab..” comes up every time the government – OUR government, you and me (!) decides to raise taxes.
When we were much younger we used to say” I’d love to pay a million bucks in taxes because I would be making a lot of money.”
No, instead, every tax is an unfair burden. People elect governments who promise not to raise taxes. Even worse, who promise to "reduce spending." (That code for stick it to the needy)Not for me.
I love the fact that I pay taxes. I love it that I live in Canada and share with fellow Canadians the freedom we have; share with fellow Canadians the policies that extend safety nets to the less fortunate among us.
As a famous Canadian politician once said: (it may have been Frank McKenna) “It costs money to be a Canadian. I can’t think of any place I would rather live.
But the fat cats don’t agree. They believe it is their god-given perquisite to hide as much income as possible. It may be true that the difference between the wealthy and not-so-wealthy is that the former have the money to hire accountants and tax lawyers who show them how to sequester money so the nasty old government, the government that protects them and gives them shelter, can’t get their greedy hands on their hard earned money.
Those offshore swindlers - that’s the big story.
Sunday, December 13, 2009
TOO MANY "OLD DOGS."
In politics you can’t teach new tricks to anyone. They are stuck. They are mired in an ideological rut so deep they simply don’t know how to change, and even worse, don’t seem to know that change is imperative.
Reading Frank Rich in the Sunday Times is refreshing but nothing really gets done. He fulminates endlessly about how things must change, but real change is never part of the argument.
Look at the chaos around the Health Care changes. The President, who has showed far less backbone that I had hoped for, has been backed into a corner. He can hope only to salvage some “face” by having the reluctant Congress make some changes. But the changes take place only within the ideological mindset of the country. Have I got your attention so far?
As I said in at least one recent posting, countries foundering in economic distress have to look at their “value added” production. At the heart of the problem of sending manufacturing offshore is the reality that America, and Canada, both have no real economic policy. The policy is dictated by corporations.(Just as in America where health policy is controlled by insurance companies)They understand that their power is so great that governments will accede to their imperative – make it cheaper, but enhance profits.
I can’t blame them.If we believe in a Free Enterprise system, we should also believe that it works.
But not always. And certainly not now.
I admit that I come from an ideological mindset, but it is not fixed in cement. I have always believed in the value of a “mixed” economy. I have always believed that Free Enterprise is often, as Tommy Douglas used to say: “Neither free nor enterprising.”
Both our countries need an economic policy that reaches beyond resource exploitation, or consumer demand for low(punitive) prices. Other countries have been very successful in creating models that we should try. For example: when Bombardier wins a contract to supply transit for a country, part of the deal is that they will “partner” for some of the production with a company in that country. They will be in effect “spreading the wealth.” And as the pundits like to say: it’s a “win-win situation.
The only way we can add a value-added dimension tour economic policy is to admit that we have allowed that policy to float, to be unregulated, to be controlled by corporations.
It’s like urban sprawl that cannot be controlled by municipalities because housing “policy” originates at the offices of the developer. He has the land. He builds the houses. We stammer out a few words asking for restraint, but the builder, with the help of the Ontario municipal board, gets his way.
One final indication that ideology trumps good sense: the cabinet recently overturned a CRTC ruling and gave a new wireless company access to the Canadian market. Most people seem to be in favour. Most people don’t understand that high-powered, often punitive competition, while it lowers prices, ravages the industry and eventually the consumer gets stuck with the remains.
I would ask the cabinet, which in the name of “competition” has sent an industry into cost-cutting chaos; will America reciprocate by allowing Canadian capital a majority role in any of its wireless or broadcast facilities?
I ramble. I hope you’ve kept up. Without you there will be no change.
Reading Frank Rich in the Sunday Times is refreshing but nothing really gets done. He fulminates endlessly about how things must change, but real change is never part of the argument.
Look at the chaos around the Health Care changes. The President, who has showed far less backbone that I had hoped for, has been backed into a corner. He can hope only to salvage some “face” by having the reluctant Congress make some changes. But the changes take place only within the ideological mindset of the country. Have I got your attention so far?
As I said in at least one recent posting, countries foundering in economic distress have to look at their “value added” production. At the heart of the problem of sending manufacturing offshore is the reality that America, and Canada, both have no real economic policy. The policy is dictated by corporations.(Just as in America where health policy is controlled by insurance companies)They understand that their power is so great that governments will accede to their imperative – make it cheaper, but enhance profits.
I can’t blame them.If we believe in a Free Enterprise system, we should also believe that it works.
But not always. And certainly not now.
I admit that I come from an ideological mindset, but it is not fixed in cement. I have always believed in the value of a “mixed” economy. I have always believed that Free Enterprise is often, as Tommy Douglas used to say: “Neither free nor enterprising.”
Both our countries need an economic policy that reaches beyond resource exploitation, or consumer demand for low(punitive) prices. Other countries have been very successful in creating models that we should try. For example: when Bombardier wins a contract to supply transit for a country, part of the deal is that they will “partner” for some of the production with a company in that country. They will be in effect “spreading the wealth.” And as the pundits like to say: it’s a “win-win situation.
The only way we can add a value-added dimension tour economic policy is to admit that we have allowed that policy to float, to be unregulated, to be controlled by corporations.
It’s like urban sprawl that cannot be controlled by municipalities because housing “policy” originates at the offices of the developer. He has the land. He builds the houses. We stammer out a few words asking for restraint, but the builder, with the help of the Ontario municipal board, gets his way.
One final indication that ideology trumps good sense: the cabinet recently overturned a CRTC ruling and gave a new wireless company access to the Canadian market. Most people seem to be in favour. Most people don’t understand that high-powered, often punitive competition, while it lowers prices, ravages the industry and eventually the consumer gets stuck with the remains.
I would ask the cabinet, which in the name of “competition” has sent an industry into cost-cutting chaos; will America reciprocate by allowing Canadian capital a majority role in any of its wireless or broadcast facilities?
I ramble. I hope you’ve kept up. Without you there will be no change.
Saturday, December 12, 2009
FINALLY ALL IS HUBRIS
My wife and I argue, gently of course, about how we want to have our remains disposed of. (You see, even with the morbid stuff I am “Looking Ahead.” We disagree. Both of us are unbelievers, but for some atavistic reason she wants a “proper” burial and interment in a nice, neighbourly Jewish Cemetery. I, on the other hand want, contrary to Jewish Law (which makes no difference to her either) to be cremated. Since the remains are barred from the traditional cemetery, I will go to someplace like Mount Pleasant. Fine with me. A couple of my great friends, recently deceased, also opted to flout religious law and become ashes and be buried in secular surroundings.
I mused about all this as I watched a news item about a cabinet maker cum casket maker in Milan. You can leave this world in a $20,000 handmade casket, inlaid with mother-of-pearl and adorned with exquisite carved wood details. Not prefab carving, but done painstakingly by skilled cabinet makers.
My sense of just about everything is offended. But I am offended by funerals anyway. The pomp, the ceremony, the long faces, the endless tributes, the reverence and above all, the sepulchral (respectful?) quiet – people murmuring quietly, exchanging shared sorrows.
I’m fine with the sorrows. I just think we’ve turned dying into denial of dying. Like the Pharoahs, we want to enter the world beyond with as much ceremony as possible.
I am not sure that my wife and I will ever resolve the problem. But legally, as I understand, you can leave all the instructions you want, but finally your surviving family will make the decisions.
I couldn’t care less. I certainly think that anyone who needs a hand-made casket must be denying death.
I’ll never be “ready,” but that certainly makes no difference. Gone is gone.
I mused about all this as I watched a news item about a cabinet maker cum casket maker in Milan. You can leave this world in a $20,000 handmade casket, inlaid with mother-of-pearl and adorned with exquisite carved wood details. Not prefab carving, but done painstakingly by skilled cabinet makers.
My sense of just about everything is offended. But I am offended by funerals anyway. The pomp, the ceremony, the long faces, the endless tributes, the reverence and above all, the sepulchral (respectful?) quiet – people murmuring quietly, exchanging shared sorrows.
I’m fine with the sorrows. I just think we’ve turned dying into denial of dying. Like the Pharoahs, we want to enter the world beyond with as much ceremony as possible.
I am not sure that my wife and I will ever resolve the problem. But legally, as I understand, you can leave all the instructions you want, but finally your surviving family will make the decisions.
I couldn’t care less. I certainly think that anyone who needs a hand-made casket must be denying death.
I’ll never be “ready,” but that certainly makes no difference. Gone is gone.
Friday, December 11, 2009
WHY WOMEN ARE NOT REALLY FROM VENUS
My wife and I argued this morning. For us, an argument is a difference of opinion. I believe that I come armed with logic. I believe she comes, as most women seem to be, armed with emotion. Nothing wrong with that in itself. But it does tend to shut out rational debate. To argue against passion is like having a dispute with someone who bases an opinion on “faith.” It’s a dead end proposition. A Mexican stand-off. A dialogue of the deaf.
If you live in Toronto you know that our T.T.C. is agonizing over running bus and subway card advertising that appears to promote adultery. I say “appears,” because the reaction to the ads for an internet registry of people wanting to have an affair no more causes adultery than condom advertising promotes promiscuity, or ads for lotteries promote prodigality, or ads for beer promote drunkenness.
The T.T.C. apparently, in a fit of righteous indignation, will not allow this company to advertise its website, which, very simply, does what other “dating” and “relationship” websites try to do: to put people together who might otherwise try to do it with bar-crawling.
Paradoxically, I have negative feelings about the Ontario Lottery Corporation advertising with stuff like “the Happy Dance.” It is bad enough that millions of people indulge their fantasies in a tax on the stupid, but that it validates and make acceptable to a whole generation, that luck is what makes you rich.
I am much more irritated by the ads which appear regularly in the business to business sections. Aside from the usual bankruptcy and dividend notices, there are some pretty insidious ones like: you can earn 15% on your money now! There are always a rash of financial eruptions, especially among older folks who need income and succumb to these often blatant come-ons. (Not that all or perhaps even most are cons.) If the TTC can delete "improper" ads, why can't the newspapers operate under standards of vigilance to prevent exploitation and perhaps even downright larceny?
It’s not the same with the adultery website. They are simply taking advantage of an appetite that millions of people have. But, you might say, the same thing could be said for legitimizing drug dealers because there are millions who have the habit. Not the same. Adultery is not against the law. Against moral code I admit, but so is lying, or gambling with other people’s money and a host of other forms of “aberrant” human behaviour.
I think we should all cool it and get off our moral high horses. Without advertising of any kind the existence of a website where you can meet other “party” type marrieds, will become popular. It has underground appeal. It doesn’t happen because some sexually unfulfilled person sees a website ad.
Adultery is, whether we like it or not, a fact of life for many. The governor of South Carolina, the senator from Nevada, and of course Tiger.
I rest my case.
If you live in Toronto you know that our T.T.C. is agonizing over running bus and subway card advertising that appears to promote adultery. I say “appears,” because the reaction to the ads for an internet registry of people wanting to have an affair no more causes adultery than condom advertising promotes promiscuity, or ads for lotteries promote prodigality, or ads for beer promote drunkenness.
The T.T.C. apparently, in a fit of righteous indignation, will not allow this company to advertise its website, which, very simply, does what other “dating” and “relationship” websites try to do: to put people together who might otherwise try to do it with bar-crawling.
Paradoxically, I have negative feelings about the Ontario Lottery Corporation advertising with stuff like “the Happy Dance.” It is bad enough that millions of people indulge their fantasies in a tax on the stupid, but that it validates and make acceptable to a whole generation, that luck is what makes you rich.
I am much more irritated by the ads which appear regularly in the business to business sections. Aside from the usual bankruptcy and dividend notices, there are some pretty insidious ones like: you can earn 15% on your money now! There are always a rash of financial eruptions, especially among older folks who need income and succumb to these often blatant come-ons. (Not that all or perhaps even most are cons.) If the TTC can delete "improper" ads, why can't the newspapers operate under standards of vigilance to prevent exploitation and perhaps even downright larceny?
It’s not the same with the adultery website. They are simply taking advantage of an appetite that millions of people have. But, you might say, the same thing could be said for legitimizing drug dealers because there are millions who have the habit. Not the same. Adultery is not against the law. Against moral code I admit, but so is lying, or gambling with other people’s money and a host of other forms of “aberrant” human behaviour.
I think we should all cool it and get off our moral high horses. Without advertising of any kind the existence of a website where you can meet other “party” type marrieds, will become popular. It has underground appeal. It doesn’t happen because some sexually unfulfilled person sees a website ad.
Adultery is, whether we like it or not, a fact of life for many. The governor of South Carolina, the senator from Nevada, and of course Tiger.
I rest my case.
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
HEWERS OF WOOD AND DRAWERS OF WATER
The title is traditional. It describes a country that exports raw materials; a country that has little (or has lost it) “value added” production; a country that ships the means to manufacture to other countries and then imports the finished goods. The Third World is full of these countries exporting raw coffee beans, raw cocoa beans, unprocessed bauxite and other resources. Just like Canada!
Just the other day I heard that America, the bastion of industrial might, now manufactures only two percent of the clothing worn by Americans! About 20 years ago the number was 50%. It means that America has become what Canada continues to be, an exporter of raw materials and an importer of finished goods.
America, I think, still grows enormous quantities of cotton, and makes millions of yards of synthetic fabrics, or at least they have the capacity to do it. But it cheaper to send the cotton to El Salvador or Honduras and keep Wal-Mart prices low. I giggle at “Save money – Live Better.”
It’s profitable of course, or no one would do it. But profitable for whom? Certainly not for the citizens, even though in the short term we pay lower prices. But if jobs have flown and they haven’t the money to spend, the question of whether a price is too high or too low becomes academic.
But America was a world leader. It is now the world’s biggest debtor nation, its per capita share of accumulated debt second only to the U.K.
But I wander. The issue is: economic survival. The debate has been heating up and cooling off for years, even before Walter Gordon, Lester Pearson’s Minister of Finance in the 60s pronounced in “A Choice for Canada” that we now generate enough wealth to own all our own resources.
But there has never been an economic policy, except the policy foisted on us by the system of the “corporatocracy.” Even an economics beginner knows the theory of “value added.” (I don’t mean value added tax,) If you convert raw material, say a log, into dressed lumber, you increase the value tenfold. If you go further, and manufacture something – say furniture – from that finished lumber – you increase the value another tenfold. Do the math. From raw logs to finished wood product, 100 fold increase in value! Mind-boggling. Last year when I visited New Zealand, where a pine tree grows to full maturity in 25 years, I visited their largest (by tonnage) port. There were cargo ships everywhere carrying – you guessed it – raw logs. When I asked a kiwi how much finished lumber they export, he said the countries they ship to, like Japan, want to do their own finishing. Sound familiar? Scratch the soft-wood lumber debate in Canada and you uncover the real reason for the tension: Americans will take all the raw logs we can sell them. They want to do the finishing. They need the jobs.
But our economy rests, not on finished products, and the jobs that go along with it, but on exporting raw materials to countries where the wages are low, working conditions are poor, and no one is especially fastidious about the environment. It’s commonly called “the rush to the bottom, e.g. using the cheapest labour possible.
How many Canadians know that Saskatchewan is the world’s leading producer of mustard seed? But how much finished mustard comes from Saskatchewan? None. It comes back to us from France as Dijon, from Japan as Oriental, from America as hotdog mustard.
When the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund get into financing third world countries’ economic expansion, they seem unable to help them create valued-added industry. Africa is the world’s greatest producer of cocoa beans, and could be one of the world’s biggest producers of sugar. All that is missing is milk. Wouldn’t you think that Ghana or Tanzania might be able to produce chocolate? Perhaps the world’s greatest chocolate maker, Belgium, got in the chocolate business using cheap coca beans from King Leopold’s empire in the Congo. Why doesn’t Jamaica or Trinidad make finished aluminum? Whey don’t sugar-rich emerging economies follow Brazil and make ethanol. Why wouldn’t the World Bank lend money to Cuba and get them fuelling the world?
Those are all silly questions aren’t they? Yes they are’
Just the other day I heard that America, the bastion of industrial might, now manufactures only two percent of the clothing worn by Americans! About 20 years ago the number was 50%. It means that America has become what Canada continues to be, an exporter of raw materials and an importer of finished goods.
America, I think, still grows enormous quantities of cotton, and makes millions of yards of synthetic fabrics, or at least they have the capacity to do it. But it cheaper to send the cotton to El Salvador or Honduras and keep Wal-Mart prices low. I giggle at “Save money – Live Better.”
It’s profitable of course, or no one would do it. But profitable for whom? Certainly not for the citizens, even though in the short term we pay lower prices. But if jobs have flown and they haven’t the money to spend, the question of whether a price is too high or too low becomes academic.
But America was a world leader. It is now the world’s biggest debtor nation, its per capita share of accumulated debt second only to the U.K.
But I wander. The issue is: economic survival. The debate has been heating up and cooling off for years, even before Walter Gordon, Lester Pearson’s Minister of Finance in the 60s pronounced in “A Choice for Canada” that we now generate enough wealth to own all our own resources.
But there has never been an economic policy, except the policy foisted on us by the system of the “corporatocracy.” Even an economics beginner knows the theory of “value added.” (I don’t mean value added tax,) If you convert raw material, say a log, into dressed lumber, you increase the value tenfold. If you go further, and manufacture something – say furniture – from that finished lumber – you increase the value another tenfold. Do the math. From raw logs to finished wood product, 100 fold increase in value! Mind-boggling. Last year when I visited New Zealand, where a pine tree grows to full maturity in 25 years, I visited their largest (by tonnage) port. There were cargo ships everywhere carrying – you guessed it – raw logs. When I asked a kiwi how much finished lumber they export, he said the countries they ship to, like Japan, want to do their own finishing. Sound familiar? Scratch the soft-wood lumber debate in Canada and you uncover the real reason for the tension: Americans will take all the raw logs we can sell them. They want to do the finishing. They need the jobs.
But our economy rests, not on finished products, and the jobs that go along with it, but on exporting raw materials to countries where the wages are low, working conditions are poor, and no one is especially fastidious about the environment. It’s commonly called “the rush to the bottom, e.g. using the cheapest labour possible.
How many Canadians know that Saskatchewan is the world’s leading producer of mustard seed? But how much finished mustard comes from Saskatchewan? None. It comes back to us from France as Dijon, from Japan as Oriental, from America as hotdog mustard.
When the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund get into financing third world countries’ economic expansion, they seem unable to help them create valued-added industry. Africa is the world’s greatest producer of cocoa beans, and could be one of the world’s biggest producers of sugar. All that is missing is milk. Wouldn’t you think that Ghana or Tanzania might be able to produce chocolate? Perhaps the world’s greatest chocolate maker, Belgium, got in the chocolate business using cheap coca beans from King Leopold’s empire in the Congo. Why doesn’t Jamaica or Trinidad make finished aluminum? Whey don’t sugar-rich emerging economies follow Brazil and make ethanol. Why wouldn’t the World Bank lend money to Cuba and get them fuelling the world?
Those are all silly questions aren’t they? Yes they are’
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
CONFESSIONS OF A FORMER POLITICIAN
There is a delicious irony in Finance Minister Flaherty’s assertion that stimulus programs must continue, regardless of how much they expand the deficit. What he used to say has to be coming back to haunt him.
For years I sat on the journalistic sidelines throwing stones at politicians. Not that they didn’t deserve it, but it is always easier to judge from the outside. All it requires is arrogance,
I decided at last, that I wanted to be part of it. I ran provincially for the N.D.P., believing then that they were our best hope for fairness and social justice. I was then, and still am, idealistic. Some of that idealism has since become tarnished with age.
I ran in a riding against the sitting member: journalist Isabel Bassett and up-and-comer for the Liberals: Michael Bryant. He won. But so did I. I won something I had not had before: the freedom to pursue a path that made sense, a path that was pragmatic and not ideological. It was the realization that if you want to get anything done, you can’t be guided by rigid political dogma, but with judgment based on reality, e.g. pragmatism. I was quite tired, even bored, with the party’s political straightjacket. I quit the party.
I did however believe, and still do, that Bob Rae knew that the only way out of recession was to spend money, even if it meant deficit.
I ran at a time when the “Common Sense” Conservatives were running roughshod over everything in their mindless quest for fiscal responsibility, but only fiscal enough not to harm their buddies with the money, but enough to shut down the silly people who believed government had a part to play in making things better for people.
So were endured years of teacher-bashing and welfare wacking and a cabinet minister who advised welfare people to shop more carefully, like buying cans of tuna that were dented, a government that shut down Toronto’s subway expansion program, even filling in one subway that had been started.
The irony is that the most outspoken supporter of the Harris program was the Finance Minister Jim Flaherty. It was he who led the battle cry: you can’t spend your way out of recession. It the most important part of the skinflint and cruel financial program from the Harris government, it is what won them the election. It was how they defeated the idealism of Bob Rae, even though during the Rae government, more public housing was built, and more money spent on public works. I remember a Toronto construction worker saying: “If it weren’t for Bob Rae spending money there would be no work for construction workers.” (And even then there was little of it.)
I am not trying to re-argue the Rae government’s approach during a serious recession. I am only more that a little amused at the irony of it. Because the irony derives from the horrible fact that when you trot out ideology and call it politics, you abandon hope of getting anything done. It gets you votes.
So what got Bob Rae hammered was the very thing that his arch-enemy Jim Flaherty now endorses as the best medicine for recession.
Go figure.
For years I sat on the journalistic sidelines throwing stones at politicians. Not that they didn’t deserve it, but it is always easier to judge from the outside. All it requires is arrogance,
I decided at last, that I wanted to be part of it. I ran provincially for the N.D.P., believing then that they were our best hope for fairness and social justice. I was then, and still am, idealistic. Some of that idealism has since become tarnished with age.
I ran in a riding against the sitting member: journalist Isabel Bassett and up-and-comer for the Liberals: Michael Bryant. He won. But so did I. I won something I had not had before: the freedom to pursue a path that made sense, a path that was pragmatic and not ideological. It was the realization that if you want to get anything done, you can’t be guided by rigid political dogma, but with judgment based on reality, e.g. pragmatism. I was quite tired, even bored, with the party’s political straightjacket. I quit the party.
I did however believe, and still do, that Bob Rae knew that the only way out of recession was to spend money, even if it meant deficit.
I ran at a time when the “Common Sense” Conservatives were running roughshod over everything in their mindless quest for fiscal responsibility, but only fiscal enough not to harm their buddies with the money, but enough to shut down the silly people who believed government had a part to play in making things better for people.
So were endured years of teacher-bashing and welfare wacking and a cabinet minister who advised welfare people to shop more carefully, like buying cans of tuna that were dented, a government that shut down Toronto’s subway expansion program, even filling in one subway that had been started.
The irony is that the most outspoken supporter of the Harris program was the Finance Minister Jim Flaherty. It was he who led the battle cry: you can’t spend your way out of recession. It the most important part of the skinflint and cruel financial program from the Harris government, it is what won them the election. It was how they defeated the idealism of Bob Rae, even though during the Rae government, more public housing was built, and more money spent on public works. I remember a Toronto construction worker saying: “If it weren’t for Bob Rae spending money there would be no work for construction workers.” (And even then there was little of it.)
I am not trying to re-argue the Rae government’s approach during a serious recession. I am only more that a little amused at the irony of it. Because the irony derives from the horrible fact that when you trot out ideology and call it politics, you abandon hope of getting anything done. It gets you votes.
So what got Bob Rae hammered was the very thing that his arch-enemy Jim Flaherty now endorses as the best medicine for recession.
Go figure.
GREAT CONSPIRACY
The Globe and Mail today (Dec 1) ran a double page spread on renewable energy: gasoline additives and biofuels to replace diesel. There was something missing. It is missing because there may be a conspiracy to keep it missing.
Conspiracy theorists abound. There are still people who believe there has never been a moon landing and that everything was filmed on earth at someplace like the wasted moon-like fields near Coniston, Ontario. And of course there are those who ardently propound the theory that President Obama was not born in America.
Closer to reality are the conspiracy theorists who suggest that the auto and tire makers were behind the dismantling of southern California’s rail and transit systems in the 40s leading to the building of freeways and the birth of the car-based shopping mall. At the fringe of this one are all those stories of people who developed carburetors that would give an ordinary car 100 m.p.g. but they were bought out and shelves by the big car makers. There was even supposed to have been a guy who developed a car that would run on water!
Not all are nitwits. My old friend, the late and very lamented Richard Thomas proved that he could run his car on alcohol distilled from a plant that grew on third class farmland.
Which brings me to the “missing” element in the Globe’s big spread on alternative energy: jatropha seed. I first came across it reading how in Mali, which is plagued with millions of hectares of arid land that is practically un-farmable. Except that they are able to grow jatropha. Jatropha will (according to Wickipedia) yield four times a much oil per hectare as soybeans. One acre will yield 1,892 litres of biofuel.
There are already serious barriers to the development of new biofuels. We all know that America levies a punitive tax on ethanol from Brazil, in order to protect corn growers in the U.S. We know that ethanol production from sugar, which Brazil has plenty of, is eight times more efficient than production from corn.
In our case, the Globe article made a case for the use of Canola. But canola oil uses prime farmland. According to supporters of the Ghea theory, we will cause starvation by using arable land for industrial products when it should be used to feed people.
Which brings me back to jatropa. If it can be grown easily in semi-desert, where it can also benefit poverty-stricken, famine-prone countries like Mali, why does it seem to be kept secret? Are we seeing yet another conspiracy by interests whose profits are vested in present commercial farming assets? Are we to be denied a solution to protect someone’s investment in second rate technology? Who is behind all this? Are governments complicit – as they are in America with their huge import tax on Brazilian sugar-based ethanol?
I am not a wild-eyed conspiracy theorist, but I believe that business will serve its self-interest before they service the interests of the general public.
Can you imagine what could be done with millions of semi-arid hectares in the Australian Outback? Boggles the mind.
Conspiracy theorists abound. There are still people who believe there has never been a moon landing and that everything was filmed on earth at someplace like the wasted moon-like fields near Coniston, Ontario. And of course there are those who ardently propound the theory that President Obama was not born in America.
Closer to reality are the conspiracy theorists who suggest that the auto and tire makers were behind the dismantling of southern California’s rail and transit systems in the 40s leading to the building of freeways and the birth of the car-based shopping mall. At the fringe of this one are all those stories of people who developed carburetors that would give an ordinary car 100 m.p.g. but they were bought out and shelves by the big car makers. There was even supposed to have been a guy who developed a car that would run on water!
Not all are nitwits. My old friend, the late and very lamented Richard Thomas proved that he could run his car on alcohol distilled from a plant that grew on third class farmland.
Which brings me to the “missing” element in the Globe’s big spread on alternative energy: jatropha seed. I first came across it reading how in Mali, which is plagued with millions of hectares of arid land that is practically un-farmable. Except that they are able to grow jatropha. Jatropha will (according to Wickipedia) yield four times a much oil per hectare as soybeans. One acre will yield 1,892 litres of biofuel.
There are already serious barriers to the development of new biofuels. We all know that America levies a punitive tax on ethanol from Brazil, in order to protect corn growers in the U.S. We know that ethanol production from sugar, which Brazil has plenty of, is eight times more efficient than production from corn.
In our case, the Globe article made a case for the use of Canola. But canola oil uses prime farmland. According to supporters of the Ghea theory, we will cause starvation by using arable land for industrial products when it should be used to feed people.
Which brings me back to jatropa. If it can be grown easily in semi-desert, where it can also benefit poverty-stricken, famine-prone countries like Mali, why does it seem to be kept secret? Are we seeing yet another conspiracy by interests whose profits are vested in present commercial farming assets? Are we to be denied a solution to protect someone’s investment in second rate technology? Who is behind all this? Are governments complicit – as they are in America with their huge import tax on Brazilian sugar-based ethanol?
I am not a wild-eyed conspiracy theorist, but I believe that business will serve its self-interest before they service the interests of the general public.
Can you imagine what could be done with millions of semi-arid hectares in the Australian Outback? Boggles the mind.
Sunday, November 29, 2009
OH SAY CAN YOU SEE
I have relatives who live in Detroit, and like many Americans, are discontented. Like a few other Americans, they watch and listen to the CBC. Detroit is right across the river.
They listen for what they describe as a more balanced, informed view of the world, untainted by the chronic American need to propagandize. That may be an overstatement, because there is much in U.S. media that is informed and balanced.
I, along with millions of Canadians, religiously watch CBC 60 Minutes. It is an outstanding piece of newsmagazine work. There are times when I prefer The Fifth Estate, but generally 60 Minutes is entertaining and sometimes informative.
I also watch a lot of MSNBC simply for the almost un-American left-leaning bias. And biased they are, sometimes even shrill. They have cashed in on the popularity of President Obama, even as they see his popularity slipping away in the never-ending swamp of American politics and ideology-based “truth.”
I have a new favourite: Power and Politics on the CBC Newsworld’s re-invented format. It is a favourite because of the quality of the host: Evan Solomon. I have always believed that Solomon is the best interviewer on the network, and miles ahead of most American interviewers, even Charlie Rose.
Nowhere was it more evident than in his penetrating and human interview with Canadian journalist-filmmaker Maziar Bahari, only recently released from prison in Iran.
I saw him interviewed on 60 Minutes by Bob Simon, a capable interviewer but no Evan Solomon. 60 Minutes leans toward entertainment, drama, and some politics – often choosing style over substance. Simon did give us a glimpse at the near-death terror inflicted on Bahari but the interview leaned heavily toward political bias. Fundamental to U.S. politics is the obligation to demonize Iran, especially president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and Khomeini. It is all part of America’s declared war on Islamist terror. It is “required” in American television news coverage. That in itself, is not evil or devious. It is America.
It is a trap I have not seen Evan Solomon fall into. In his interview with Bahari he leaned toward the human side of the ordeal of a man, who after 14 years in Iran, was thrown into prison and regularly subjected to threats of execution. It fell to the Solomon interview to have Bahari tell us something we already should knew, that Ahmadinejad has very little power. Because of his preposterous statements he has become a convenient target for anti-Iran politicking. (I do not minimize in any way the threat Iran could pose to the rest of the world.) But Solomon, as he wove his way cleverly through the ordeal, evoked far more real information than Simon on 60 Minutes. The real enemy iS the Revolutonary Guard who have a stranglehold on the Iranian people and negate any possibility of democracy, replacing hope with terror.
60 Minutes entertains. They aleady have one Canadian, Morley Safer, who was drafted many years ago from This Hour Has Seven Days. CBS sent him to Viet Nam, at least partly because with a Canadian passport he would have access to places Americans did not.
Will Evan Solomon with his piercing, trenchant, communicative interviews, be the next recruit?
If you have not seen him, first on his Sunday night gig, and now on Power and Politics, go to Newsworld between 5 and 7 and be delighted with what Canadian TV can do if it wants to.
They listen for what they describe as a more balanced, informed view of the world, untainted by the chronic American need to propagandize. That may be an overstatement, because there is much in U.S. media that is informed and balanced.
I, along with millions of Canadians, religiously watch CBC 60 Minutes. It is an outstanding piece of newsmagazine work. There are times when I prefer The Fifth Estate, but generally 60 Minutes is entertaining and sometimes informative.
I also watch a lot of MSNBC simply for the almost un-American left-leaning bias. And biased they are, sometimes even shrill. They have cashed in on the popularity of President Obama, even as they see his popularity slipping away in the never-ending swamp of American politics and ideology-based “truth.”
I have a new favourite: Power and Politics on the CBC Newsworld’s re-invented format. It is a favourite because of the quality of the host: Evan Solomon. I have always believed that Solomon is the best interviewer on the network, and miles ahead of most American interviewers, even Charlie Rose.
Nowhere was it more evident than in his penetrating and human interview with Canadian journalist-filmmaker Maziar Bahari, only recently released from prison in Iran.
I saw him interviewed on 60 Minutes by Bob Simon, a capable interviewer but no Evan Solomon. 60 Minutes leans toward entertainment, drama, and some politics – often choosing style over substance. Simon did give us a glimpse at the near-death terror inflicted on Bahari but the interview leaned heavily toward political bias. Fundamental to U.S. politics is the obligation to demonize Iran, especially president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and Khomeini. It is all part of America’s declared war on Islamist terror. It is “required” in American television news coverage. That in itself, is not evil or devious. It is America.
It is a trap I have not seen Evan Solomon fall into. In his interview with Bahari he leaned toward the human side of the ordeal of a man, who after 14 years in Iran, was thrown into prison and regularly subjected to threats of execution. It fell to the Solomon interview to have Bahari tell us something we already should knew, that Ahmadinejad has very little power. Because of his preposterous statements he has become a convenient target for anti-Iran politicking. (I do not minimize in any way the threat Iran could pose to the rest of the world.) But Solomon, as he wove his way cleverly through the ordeal, evoked far more real information than Simon on 60 Minutes. The real enemy iS the Revolutonary Guard who have a stranglehold on the Iranian people and negate any possibility of democracy, replacing hope with terror.
60 Minutes entertains. They aleady have one Canadian, Morley Safer, who was drafted many years ago from This Hour Has Seven Days. CBS sent him to Viet Nam, at least partly because with a Canadian passport he would have access to places Americans did not.
Will Evan Solomon with his piercing, trenchant, communicative interviews, be the next recruit?
If you have not seen him, first on his Sunday night gig, and now on Power and Politics, go to Newsworld between 5 and 7 and be delighted with what Canadian TV can do if it wants to.
Saturday, November 28, 2009
ON BEING RUDE AND IMPATIENT
I met an old friend yesterday. He was a kid in radio when I was already a self-described “legend.” Today he is a very successful lawyer and I am someone who once was. He was, and still is, a very funny man. He “did” me – angry, impatient, and abrupt.
When I am asked, which is not often any more, what makes a good Talk Radio host – my answer is “You have to be able to get angry quickly, or in extremis: very angry very quickly. My wife says I am utterly lacking in both patience and tolerance. So be it.
I have just risen angrily from in front of my TV set where I was watching one of my favourites: The Food Network. Was I angry about the food? Certainly not. It was, in fact, very very good. But the cook? That’s another story entirely. It is the story of how they have massacred, and we have let them do it, the English language. Americans, having adopted it as their mother tongue, have proceeded to decimate it, bowdlerize it, misshape it, and mutilate it until it is almost unrecognizable!
The female chef did it all: she said “erb for herb. It is this practice that make Huron and urine homonyms. She referred to “the oil” in the way that civilized people long ago decided that it was not “thuh oil” but “thee oil.” She added baysel – which we call baa-sil, to her salad. The long “a” is especially prevalent in their version of our language.
But how about the "soft" a? They say “plahza” and Viet Naaahm” when it is more correctly Viet Nam – which is how the Vietnamese say it. The paradox is that they abandon the soft "a" when they mispronounce “Adolf” as “Ay-dolf. Then of course there, and it was commented on by an American who equally deplores the destruction – the name of the country In the news as “eye-ran” which is right up there with the English pronunciation of Eye-talian.
One of my favourites is still “hollow-een. As in “Hollowed be thy name…”
One of my saddest realizations is that Canadian commentators on TV seem to have been educated by watching U.S. TV so they Americanize the language also. They say "pruh-meer" for "premiere. Which adds to the fact that is not only Americans who have corrupted “chez longue” into “chez lounge” And “hor’s d’oeuvres into “hor durve” rhyming with curve.
The critics of my hair splitting will tell me that English is always evolving. But the principle of evolution is that we adapt the species to deal with changing conditions. We improve our ability to survive. If that stuff with the language is “improving” I am turning into primordial jelly.
When I am asked, which is not often any more, what makes a good Talk Radio host – my answer is “You have to be able to get angry quickly, or in extremis: very angry very quickly. My wife says I am utterly lacking in both patience and tolerance. So be it.
I have just risen angrily from in front of my TV set where I was watching one of my favourites: The Food Network. Was I angry about the food? Certainly not. It was, in fact, very very good. But the cook? That’s another story entirely. It is the story of how they have massacred, and we have let them do it, the English language. Americans, having adopted it as their mother tongue, have proceeded to decimate it, bowdlerize it, misshape it, and mutilate it until it is almost unrecognizable!
The female chef did it all: she said “erb for herb. It is this practice that make Huron and urine homonyms. She referred to “the oil” in the way that civilized people long ago decided that it was not “thuh oil” but “thee oil.” She added baysel – which we call baa-sil, to her salad. The long “a” is especially prevalent in their version of our language.
But how about the "soft" a? They say “plahza” and Viet Naaahm” when it is more correctly Viet Nam – which is how the Vietnamese say it. The paradox is that they abandon the soft "a" when they mispronounce “Adolf” as “Ay-dolf. Then of course there, and it was commented on by an American who equally deplores the destruction – the name of the country In the news as “eye-ran” which is right up there with the English pronunciation of Eye-talian.
One of my favourites is still “hollow-een. As in “Hollowed be thy name…”
One of my saddest realizations is that Canadian commentators on TV seem to have been educated by watching U.S. TV so they Americanize the language also. They say "pruh-meer" for "premiere. Which adds to the fact that is not only Americans who have corrupted “chez longue” into “chez lounge” And “hor’s d’oeuvres into “hor durve” rhyming with curve.
The critics of my hair splitting will tell me that English is always evolving. But the principle of evolution is that we adapt the species to deal with changing conditions. We improve our ability to survive. If that stuff with the language is “improving” I am turning into primordial jelly.
Saturday, November 21, 2009
MOVE OVER JANET FLANNER
She is remembered by New Yorker readers for her beautifully crafted series about the City of Light. But that was sooooo many years ago, and I promised that this weblog would “look ahead.” And here I go being nostalgic about a writer so few people, except my contemporaries, would remember. In spite of Montréal-born Adam Gopnik, who also wrote from Paris for the New Yorker, and offered a stinging wit that even the great Flanner could not match – I want to do it too.
Yes, I want to do a 2010 version of “Letters from Paris.” How’s that for “looking ahead?” At my age, not only do I want to commit to a regular set of communiqués from Paris, but I want finally to achieve decent fluency in my country’s other language, Granted, the French I speak, and would improve with a stay in Paris, is not the Canadienne version, with it’s delightful twang and elisions, the dropping of half a word, a practice that leaves even the Frenchman wondering what exactly was being said. Not for me is the “bon fin de semaine” that is insisted on by the purists, but rather the very jovial Parisian “Bon week-end.” Rather “Le drug store:” than “pharmacie.” Rather “Hoover” than “respirateur.” But now I am indulging in speculative etymology. (Is there such a word?)
In the spring, all things being equal e.g. no serious health problems or sudden financial collapse, my wife and I will take up residence in the Porte Maillot area, which is just north of the Arc de Triomphe, for at least four months, exchanging with Henri and Michele. They will come to Toronto and we will go to their pied-a-terre, and perhaps to their wonderful home in Chantilly. While they do what they will in Toronto (Henri’s a designer and I am sure he will see all the new architecture that has sprouted here in the last few year) my wife and I will be taking regular French lessons at L”Alliance in Paris. (We will start immersion courses here in December.)
Because we have been to Paris about ten times for periods from five days to three weeks, we will not rush hither and yon for the sights. The Eiffel Tower still startles us. The Louvre intimidates us. The Orangerie and the Musee D’Orsay excite us. We have taken a for-old-times-sake trip on the Seine on the Bateau Mouche and we have walked and walked and walked. We have sat at a café on Rue Mouffetard (where half the people are tourists anyway) and chatted in French with the locals. We have watched the small boys with their boats in the pool at Luxembourg. We have seen the tombs at Pere LaChaise.
At the heart of this “adventure” is my own response to the dictum to be Looking Ahead.
How many years do I have left? That is not my concern. I am not ready to start resting up for the eternal rest. There are new things happening at a rate that statisticians revel in, a rate that increases exponentially with time, a rate that says we can and will learn as much in the next ten years as we have learned in the last one hundred and in that one hundred as much as we have learned since the dawn of history.
The only downside to getting older is the recognition that I will not be able to “see how it all comes out.” But to all who have reached senior years, and more especially to those looking ahead to them. Learn, do, live, experience, grow. Et Bonne Chance.
IF YOU WANT TO CONTACT ME USE THE INTERNET: lsolway@sympatico.ca
Yes, I want to do a 2010 version of “Letters from Paris.” How’s that for “looking ahead?” At my age, not only do I want to commit to a regular set of communiqués from Paris, but I want finally to achieve decent fluency in my country’s other language, Granted, the French I speak, and would improve with a stay in Paris, is not the Canadienne version, with it’s delightful twang and elisions, the dropping of half a word, a practice that leaves even the Frenchman wondering what exactly was being said. Not for me is the “bon fin de semaine” that is insisted on by the purists, but rather the very jovial Parisian “Bon week-end.” Rather “Le drug store:” than “pharmacie.” Rather “Hoover” than “respirateur.” But now I am indulging in speculative etymology. (Is there such a word?)
In the spring, all things being equal e.g. no serious health problems or sudden financial collapse, my wife and I will take up residence in the Porte Maillot area, which is just north of the Arc de Triomphe, for at least four months, exchanging with Henri and Michele. They will come to Toronto and we will go to their pied-a-terre, and perhaps to their wonderful home in Chantilly. While they do what they will in Toronto (Henri’s a designer and I am sure he will see all the new architecture that has sprouted here in the last few year) my wife and I will be taking regular French lessons at L”Alliance in Paris. (We will start immersion courses here in December.)
Because we have been to Paris about ten times for periods from five days to three weeks, we will not rush hither and yon for the sights. The Eiffel Tower still startles us. The Louvre intimidates us. The Orangerie and the Musee D’Orsay excite us. We have taken a for-old-times-sake trip on the Seine on the Bateau Mouche and we have walked and walked and walked. We have sat at a café on Rue Mouffetard (where half the people are tourists anyway) and chatted in French with the locals. We have watched the small boys with their boats in the pool at Luxembourg. We have seen the tombs at Pere LaChaise.
At the heart of this “adventure” is my own response to the dictum to be Looking Ahead.
How many years do I have left? That is not my concern. I am not ready to start resting up for the eternal rest. There are new things happening at a rate that statisticians revel in, a rate that increases exponentially with time, a rate that says we can and will learn as much in the next ten years as we have learned in the last one hundred and in that one hundred as much as we have learned since the dawn of history.
The only downside to getting older is the recognition that I will not be able to “see how it all comes out.” But to all who have reached senior years, and more especially to those looking ahead to them. Learn, do, live, experience, grow. Et Bonne Chance.
IF YOU WANT TO CONTACT ME USE THE INTERNET: lsolway@sympatico.ca
Thursday, November 12, 2009
STAYCATIONS
I have become a fan of stay-at-home travel.
To the dismay of the travel-dependent companies: cruise lines, airlines, hotels, restaurants etc. the new word for travel is “staycation.” The Americans have coined it. No one more than Americans have reacted so vigourously to the economic downturn. They have pulled back their discretionary spending to the point that many travel organization s are offering to-good=to=-miss bargains. In a similar way, companies like Remax TV commercials claiming you need a kick in the pants not to invest in the current real estate market.
Everywhere, those who are still standing are looking for bargains. Hence the “staycation.” Between the worst recessions since 1929 and the fear of travel to countries that appear to be anti-American, a nation of travelers has reduced their travel. Not only have trips abroad tumbled, but even the distances traveled within their own country, have been reduced. Stay at home or staycation has become popular.
It is true that it is far less expensive to “discover” your own backyard, than to fly off to exotic places. For the past two weeks my wife and I have sallied forth into our own Ontario countryside. Two weeks ago we did one overnight in the Elora region. I had forgotten how beautiful the rolling lush farmland north of Kitchener could be. (If we were driving through Tuscany we would marvel at the beautiful view.) We don’t have to. An afternoon in tourist-favourite St. Jacobs included a visit to the shoppes at The Silo where we gawked and bought. A new hall carpet and asset of table place mats. Then off to a glassmaker where we did it again, adding to our collection of art glass. In Elora, we visited the scène of our previous glass purchase. My wife cautioned me against more spending. I reacted with: “If something jumps off the shelf and says “buy me,” how can I resist. We didn’t buy this time, but the young woman operating the shop advised us to head across the road for dinner. (The shop person has, by the way, a Masters in History and is working on a doctorate in Library Science.) The restaurant was “Whispers” and a surprisingly good one it was, comparable to any chic big city eatery.
So pleased were we that we did it again the following week. This time to “discover” the new “Art and Wine Trail” that begins at Wooler road at the 401 highway west of Belleville and winds its way along the Loyalist Parkway to Picton.
It was out of season so some of the wineries were not open for tasting and buying. We found two that were, located in and around Hillier. The Chardonnay is exquisite, with an undertaste of apples and pears. The red lack some maturity but time alone is on the side of a vineyard, and soon the reds will compete.
The Loyalist Trail takes us through Wellington, once a thriving fishing village, now home to at least a dozen fine galleries. Yes, we did it again: more are glass “jumped” off the shelf.
The buying spree continued at the “Maker’s Hand” craft show in Picton. Mark Armstrong, the glassmaker from Wellington was there and we spent more money. This spending “spree” may seem to be the height of prodigality, but you have to remember that there is no airfare to pay, and no high priced resort hotels, which is what a Staycation is all about.
Maybe the best in newly-chic Picton was Currah’s restaurant. You simply don’t expect this level of gourmet quality in a small town, even though the tourists abound. The dinner was spectacular. My pickerel was superb and topped with a magic chutney sauce which included tender capers. The waiter would not divulge the other ingredients.
Neither of us are big fans of touring when the crowds are at their peak. We prefer the off-season times when most of the facilities are still up and running, and access is easier.
Having extolled the virtues of close-to-home travel, I am embarrassed to report that come next spring we will be spending (via exchange) four months in Paris. But even that will be a staycation. We also exchange cars so our French visitors can cruise Ontario, and we can drive to Provence. The only expense in air fare. And I’m hoping the French Healthy Care system will embrace me.
To the dismay of the travel-dependent companies: cruise lines, airlines, hotels, restaurants etc. the new word for travel is “staycation.” The Americans have coined it. No one more than Americans have reacted so vigourously to the economic downturn. They have pulled back their discretionary spending to the point that many travel organization s are offering to-good=to=-miss bargains. In a similar way, companies like Remax TV commercials claiming you need a kick in the pants not to invest in the current real estate market.
Everywhere, those who are still standing are looking for bargains. Hence the “staycation.” Between the worst recessions since 1929 and the fear of travel to countries that appear to be anti-American, a nation of travelers has reduced their travel. Not only have trips abroad tumbled, but even the distances traveled within their own country, have been reduced. Stay at home or staycation has become popular.
It is true that it is far less expensive to “discover” your own backyard, than to fly off to exotic places. For the past two weeks my wife and I have sallied forth into our own Ontario countryside. Two weeks ago we did one overnight in the Elora region. I had forgotten how beautiful the rolling lush farmland north of Kitchener could be. (If we were driving through Tuscany we would marvel at the beautiful view.) We don’t have to. An afternoon in tourist-favourite St. Jacobs included a visit to the shoppes at The Silo where we gawked and bought. A new hall carpet and asset of table place mats. Then off to a glassmaker where we did it again, adding to our collection of art glass. In Elora, we visited the scène of our previous glass purchase. My wife cautioned me against more spending. I reacted with: “If something jumps off the shelf and says “buy me,” how can I resist. We didn’t buy this time, but the young woman operating the shop advised us to head across the road for dinner. (The shop person has, by the way, a Masters in History and is working on a doctorate in Library Science.) The restaurant was “Whispers” and a surprisingly good one it was, comparable to any chic big city eatery.
So pleased were we that we did it again the following week. This time to “discover” the new “Art and Wine Trail” that begins at Wooler road at the 401 highway west of Belleville and winds its way along the Loyalist Parkway to Picton.
It was out of season so some of the wineries were not open for tasting and buying. We found two that were, located in and around Hillier. The Chardonnay is exquisite, with an undertaste of apples and pears. The red lack some maturity but time alone is on the side of a vineyard, and soon the reds will compete.
The Loyalist Trail takes us through Wellington, once a thriving fishing village, now home to at least a dozen fine galleries. Yes, we did it again: more are glass “jumped” off the shelf.
The buying spree continued at the “Maker’s Hand” craft show in Picton. Mark Armstrong, the glassmaker from Wellington was there and we spent more money. This spending “spree” may seem to be the height of prodigality, but you have to remember that there is no airfare to pay, and no high priced resort hotels, which is what a Staycation is all about.
Maybe the best in newly-chic Picton was Currah’s restaurant. You simply don’t expect this level of gourmet quality in a small town, even though the tourists abound. The dinner was spectacular. My pickerel was superb and topped with a magic chutney sauce which included tender capers. The waiter would not divulge the other ingredients.
Neither of us are big fans of touring when the crowds are at their peak. We prefer the off-season times when most of the facilities are still up and running, and access is easier.
Having extolled the virtues of close-to-home travel, I am embarrassed to report that come next spring we will be spending (via exchange) four months in Paris. But even that will be a staycation. We also exchange cars so our French visitors can cruise Ontario, and we can drive to Provence. The only expense in air fare. And I’m hoping the French Healthy Care system will embrace me.
STIMULUS OR STAGNATION
It doesn’t seem to be working. rOBERT rEICH, former Labour Secretary in the Clinton administration, claims that the real unemployment figure is closer to 20%! Wow.
There is a paradox here. If the “engine” of recovery is the private sector, why has the stimulus not been reflected in more jobs? Simple. Companies in a down market can only hope to improve their financial bottom line by instituting economies and the major cost in running any company is labour cost – from, the over-paid CEO to the hard-working serf at the bottom of the feeding chart.
It is no surprise that productivity is up. “Productivity” is a code word for getting more work from fewer people. In the long run the policy is self-destructive because it erodes the energy and ambition of the people working under close to sweat shop conditions.
I don’t blame business for this. They’re in business to do business. They’re in business to show a profit. That’s at the heart of the capitalist system, which is not all bad, in spite of the greed of Wall Street. I’m waiting to see the movie sequel to “greed is good” as Hollywood gives us Gecko (played by Michael Douglas) recreated in the age of economic chaos.
Governments are not making the best use of their stimulus programs. The principal objective is to improve corporate balance sheets and in the “rising-tide-lifts-all-boats philosophy, the stimulus will filter down to the unemployed.
There is a better idea. Instead of increasing Employment Insurance, or increasing the length of time it can be paid, present employers with an opportunity to help return us to full employment. Critics of job-sharing suggest that cutting back on payroll lets the best workers thrive and the others fall by the wayside. (Of course, in a unionized situation, there is to merit clause in the laying off or rehiring of employees.)
To make the economy work; to revive retail sales; to create new consumer confidence, the jobless numbers must go down. Stimulus as it plays out does not do the job. If we can increase the number of people working, we can recover. You have already guessed where I’m heading. Government, instead of paying out billions to the unemployed, uses that money to supplement incomes. It would be a confidence-booster. By reducing the size of each worker’s work week, and replacing those lost hours with work for someone who has been laid off, will cause us to return to optimistic prosperity. I haven’t done the math, but it would seem to me that the same money paid as unemployment insurance used instead to ramp up reduced income would keep more people working and not cost government any more money that is already being spent to support the unemployed.
The hitch is of course, that it takes employment policy out of the hands of the corporations and gives it to government. So here we go again with critics of the "nanny” state bellowing their protests.
The truth is that we need government. Who else will do it?
There is a paradox here. If the “engine” of recovery is the private sector, why has the stimulus not been reflected in more jobs? Simple. Companies in a down market can only hope to improve their financial bottom line by instituting economies and the major cost in running any company is labour cost – from, the over-paid CEO to the hard-working serf at the bottom of the feeding chart.
It is no surprise that productivity is up. “Productivity” is a code word for getting more work from fewer people. In the long run the policy is self-destructive because it erodes the energy and ambition of the people working under close to sweat shop conditions.
I don’t blame business for this. They’re in business to do business. They’re in business to show a profit. That’s at the heart of the capitalist system, which is not all bad, in spite of the greed of Wall Street. I’m waiting to see the movie sequel to “greed is good” as Hollywood gives us Gecko (played by Michael Douglas) recreated in the age of economic chaos.
Governments are not making the best use of their stimulus programs. The principal objective is to improve corporate balance sheets and in the “rising-tide-lifts-all-boats philosophy, the stimulus will filter down to the unemployed.
There is a better idea. Instead of increasing Employment Insurance, or increasing the length of time it can be paid, present employers with an opportunity to help return us to full employment. Critics of job-sharing suggest that cutting back on payroll lets the best workers thrive and the others fall by the wayside. (Of course, in a unionized situation, there is to merit clause in the laying off or rehiring of employees.)
To make the economy work; to revive retail sales; to create new consumer confidence, the jobless numbers must go down. Stimulus as it plays out does not do the job. If we can increase the number of people working, we can recover. You have already guessed where I’m heading. Government, instead of paying out billions to the unemployed, uses that money to supplement incomes. It would be a confidence-booster. By reducing the size of each worker’s work week, and replacing those lost hours with work for someone who has been laid off, will cause us to return to optimistic prosperity. I haven’t done the math, but it would seem to me that the same money paid as unemployment insurance used instead to ramp up reduced income would keep more people working and not cost government any more money that is already being spent to support the unemployed.
The hitch is of course, that it takes employment policy out of the hands of the corporations and gives it to government. So here we go again with critics of the "nanny” state bellowing their protests.
The truth is that we need government. Who else will do it?
Sunday, November 8, 2009
THEM THAR HILLS
I have a friend who went “long” on gold several hundred dollars ago. If I had taken his advice I would be looking at pretty good profits today. But I didn’t. Putting your money in gold realizes no income, just possible capital gain, or – bubble-bursting time – ruin. (Remember when those scoundrelly Hunt brothers – Lamar and Nelson Bunker - “cornered” the silver market a few years ago. People were buying Canadian dimes and melting them down for their silver content. I even considered disposing of our sterling silver cutlery. The bubble burst and the Hunt brothers were indicted.) But the gold rush is real!
Now it has taken on a new dimension. “See you at a gold party!” The new Tupperware is here, and it is old chains, rings, anything that is gold. I arrive late on this one. Am I the last to notice the ads? Am I lagging behind the rest of the world?
While poking around through the New York Times on the web, I noticed an ad for Toronto gold parties. I had an inkling about what w=it would be. Hey, I’m not from Mars and I didn’t just fall off the turnip truck. I’m hip. I’m today. I am not surprised at gold selling about a thousand dollars an ounce. But this is simply too much.
This company is like the old Tupperware or Mary Kay cosmetics with get-together parties. And you can host your own gold party.and get a commission on every transaction.
Everyone wants your gold. The biggest new arrival in TV commercials is the send-m-your-gold guy. Cash for old stuff. And what I read is that a company in Switzerland melts down tons of gold and resells it in 100 gram bars or big ingots. The hunger for gold is worldwide, and all because of the decline of the American dollar, the worry that inflation will rear it’s ugly, and that continuing stimulus will increase deficits and make cash worth less. (as opposed to worthless.)
I am struck dumb. I know, and so do most people, that most of the gold that has ever been smelted is still around. Not all of it is accessible, like the tons of the stuff that is in Spanish gold galleons resting at the bottom of the sea, or in traveling museum shows like King Tut (which comes to Toronto’s AGO soon.). Can you imagine the money that is being invested in treasure hunting? I’m waiting to see figures about another boom and a bonanza for more scoundrels.
Gold is magic. As a metal is has many virtues, but as a symbol it has even more.
It is not without reason that the legend of King Midas has been a favourite for generations. We are emotional about gold. We are hysterical about gold.
Now we can actual get in on the action. I wonder if I should host a “bring-me-your-gold party.” Someone out there is getting rich. It sure as H isn’t me!
Now it has taken on a new dimension. “See you at a gold party!” The new Tupperware is here, and it is old chains, rings, anything that is gold. I arrive late on this one. Am I the last to notice the ads? Am I lagging behind the rest of the world?
While poking around through the New York Times on the web, I noticed an ad for Toronto gold parties. I had an inkling about what w=it would be. Hey, I’m not from Mars and I didn’t just fall off the turnip truck. I’m hip. I’m today. I am not surprised at gold selling about a thousand dollars an ounce. But this is simply too much.
This company is like the old Tupperware or Mary Kay cosmetics with get-together parties. And you can host your own gold party.and get a commission on every transaction.
Everyone wants your gold. The biggest new arrival in TV commercials is the send-m-your-gold guy. Cash for old stuff. And what I read is that a company in Switzerland melts down tons of gold and resells it in 100 gram bars or big ingots. The hunger for gold is worldwide, and all because of the decline of the American dollar, the worry that inflation will rear it’s ugly, and that continuing stimulus will increase deficits and make cash worth less. (as opposed to worthless.)
I am struck dumb. I know, and so do most people, that most of the gold that has ever been smelted is still around. Not all of it is accessible, like the tons of the stuff that is in Spanish gold galleons resting at the bottom of the sea, or in traveling museum shows like King Tut (which comes to Toronto’s AGO soon.). Can you imagine the money that is being invested in treasure hunting? I’m waiting to see figures about another boom and a bonanza for more scoundrels.
Gold is magic. As a metal is has many virtues, but as a symbol it has even more.
It is not without reason that the legend of King Midas has been a favourite for generations. We are emotional about gold. We are hysterical about gold.
Now we can actual get in on the action. I wonder if I should host a “bring-me-your-gold party.” Someone out there is getting rich. It sure as H isn’t me!
DIALOGUE OF THE DEAF
Critics of the monumental stand-off between “democracy” and the fanaticism of the Islamists (as opposed to the everyday Muslim who believes but continues to live in a civilized way) say that there is no possibility that the gap can be bridged. The ideological and religious differences are so extreme that it will be impossible to build a bridge. (I put democracy in quotes because not all our friends are anything like democracies – i.e. Saudi Arabia)
The same critics believe that all of us should pull out of Afghanistan and leave it to the Afghans to solve their problems. In short, we are simply no good at nation-building, especially against a background of fanaticism and ideological absolutism.
Critics like to suggest that the flash point is the State of Israel, an alien nation in an Arab world, and that somehow, if the state did not exist, the stalemate would disappear. Tom Friedman, writing in the New York Times, makes this trenchant comment: “Today, the Arabs, Israel and the Palestinians are clearly not feeling enough pain to do anything hard for peace with each other — a mood best summed up by a phrase making the rounds at the State Department: The Palestinian leadership “wants a deal with Israel without any negotiations” and Israel’s leadership “wants negotiations with the Palestinians without any deal.”
I agree – somewhat. There is no negotiation either with the extreme orthodox Israelis who believe that “God gave them the land” or the equally extreme Islamists who believe that America is on a war against Islam and the Crusades are still alive and well.
President Bush took a stand that implicitly suggested a kind of Armageddon between the dark and the light, between enlightened Christian democracy and blighted Islamic intractability.
Friedman is wrong. Bush was – well let’s not even talk about him.
The fact is that it makes political good sense for the Muslim world (I avoid the word “Arab” because Iran is not Arabic) wants to see the end of Israel, which, for political purposes, they view, not as an island of democracy in a sea of absolutism, but as a puppet of American oil-crazy imperialism.
Israel obliges by continuing expansion of their settlements in the West Bank. Israelis say it is not expansion” but the improvement of existing settlements. Quibbling over what they are doing doesn’t add light to the darkness.
The only light will have to come from an initiative so massive, so generous, and so workable, that neither side could resist. Only America, with the support of the reluctant Chinese, Russians – and even Iranians, has the financial power to make it happen.
To continue to revile Hezbollah and Hamas does nothing. To quibble over “war crimes” in Gaza does nothing.
Only to turn an entirely new page will work. Only to fund and support a Palestinian state will work. Or will any success in that direction magnify the reality: the fight is not over a Palestinian State or the survival of Israel – it is still the almost Armageddon between suicide bombers and the “democracies” of the developed world?
We need change. We need a whole new vocabulary. We need change on both sides, backed by political will and money.
The same critics believe that all of us should pull out of Afghanistan and leave it to the Afghans to solve their problems. In short, we are simply no good at nation-building, especially against a background of fanaticism and ideological absolutism.
Critics like to suggest that the flash point is the State of Israel, an alien nation in an Arab world, and that somehow, if the state did not exist, the stalemate would disappear. Tom Friedman, writing in the New York Times, makes this trenchant comment: “Today, the Arabs, Israel and the Palestinians are clearly not feeling enough pain to do anything hard for peace with each other — a mood best summed up by a phrase making the rounds at the State Department: The Palestinian leadership “wants a deal with Israel without any negotiations” and Israel’s leadership “wants negotiations with the Palestinians without any deal.”
I agree – somewhat. There is no negotiation either with the extreme orthodox Israelis who believe that “God gave them the land” or the equally extreme Islamists who believe that America is on a war against Islam and the Crusades are still alive and well.
President Bush took a stand that implicitly suggested a kind of Armageddon between the dark and the light, between enlightened Christian democracy and blighted Islamic intractability.
Friedman is wrong. Bush was – well let’s not even talk about him.
The fact is that it makes political good sense for the Muslim world (I avoid the word “Arab” because Iran is not Arabic) wants to see the end of Israel, which, for political purposes, they view, not as an island of democracy in a sea of absolutism, but as a puppet of American oil-crazy imperialism.
Israel obliges by continuing expansion of their settlements in the West Bank. Israelis say it is not expansion” but the improvement of existing settlements. Quibbling over what they are doing doesn’t add light to the darkness.
The only light will have to come from an initiative so massive, so generous, and so workable, that neither side could resist. Only America, with the support of the reluctant Chinese, Russians – and even Iranians, has the financial power to make it happen.
To continue to revile Hezbollah and Hamas does nothing. To quibble over “war crimes” in Gaza does nothing.
Only to turn an entirely new page will work. Only to fund and support a Palestinian state will work. Or will any success in that direction magnify the reality: the fight is not over a Palestinian State or the survival of Israel – it is still the almost Armageddon between suicide bombers and the “democracies” of the developed world?
We need change. We need a whole new vocabulary. We need change on both sides, backed by political will and money.
GOVERNING CAN BE DANGEROUS TO YOUR (POLITICAL) HEALTH.
The House of Commons voted to repeal the Long Gun Registration Act. (It’s still only 2nd reading and has to go to committee and the Senate so there are still many hurdles ahead) I am horrified. Not by the choice to abandon a costly boondoggle, but that our politicians echo American Congressmen who vote only the way their constituents want them to. The best example is the passing i8n the House of the new Health Care legislation. Commenting is this from the New York Times: “The Democrats who balked at the measure represent mainly conservative swing districts, signaling that those who could be vulnerable in next year’s midterm elections viewed voting for the measure as politically risky. “
But we come from a long parliamentary tradition of “voting our conscience.” Yes, I know – when the party leader says “jump” you do as you are told. Party discipline often wins out. But when push comes to persuasion, it comes back to staying politically wise enough with your vote to be re-elected. But in an open vote, there is no party discipline. It comes down to doing what politicians should do best: vote for what he/she believes in.
The issue evokes the so-often-repeated stand taken by Edmund Burke, M.P. Bristol. He supported an issue related to Free Trade with Ireland. His constituents opposed him. In his famous statement he said: "If, from this conduct, I shall forfeit their suffrages at an ensuing election, it will stand on record an example to future representatives of the Commons of England, that one man at least had dared to resist the desires of his constituents when his judgment assured him they were wrong"
Even though Burke is considered the real founder of modern conservatism, his words ring true. He voted his conscience. It cost him his seat in the next election.
So I do wonder why of our own M.P.s there are those, especially on the Left, who voted with the government, citing the “fact” that theirs is a rural constituency and voters there own guns.
On the issue itself I have never understood the passion of the opposition. Is it because the system has already wasted $2 billion? Perhaps. Is it because, echoing the campaign by the N.R.A. claiming that that the first step in confiscating guns is registration. The NRA always cites Hitler Germany as an example of what gun registration does to the “rights” of people.
The fatal flaw in the opposition is the notion that you somehow will be deprived of your right to own a gun. If that is true we should also believe that having to register your dog will lead to confiscation of the dog. Like dogs, we like to know where the guns are. No one questions the right to own a shotgun. No one questions the right to get married either – but you do have to buy a license.
The interesting paradox here is that the most traditionally conservative group in society – the police – support gun registry and insist that it has already been helpful to them. The paradox is that the naysayers are the first to crow: “Our cops are tops.”
But we come from a long parliamentary tradition of “voting our conscience.” Yes, I know – when the party leader says “jump” you do as you are told. Party discipline often wins out. But when push comes to persuasion, it comes back to staying politically wise enough with your vote to be re-elected. But in an open vote, there is no party discipline. It comes down to doing what politicians should do best: vote for what he/she believes in.
The issue evokes the so-often-repeated stand taken by Edmund Burke, M.P. Bristol. He supported an issue related to Free Trade with Ireland. His constituents opposed him. In his famous statement he said: "If, from this conduct, I shall forfeit their suffrages at an ensuing election, it will stand on record an example to future representatives of the Commons of England, that one man at least had dared to resist the desires of his constituents when his judgment assured him they were wrong"
Even though Burke is considered the real founder of modern conservatism, his words ring true. He voted his conscience. It cost him his seat in the next election.
So I do wonder why of our own M.P.s there are those, especially on the Left, who voted with the government, citing the “fact” that theirs is a rural constituency and voters there own guns.
On the issue itself I have never understood the passion of the opposition. Is it because the system has already wasted $2 billion? Perhaps. Is it because, echoing the campaign by the N.R.A. claiming that that the first step in confiscating guns is registration. The NRA always cites Hitler Germany as an example of what gun registration does to the “rights” of people.
The fatal flaw in the opposition is the notion that you somehow will be deprived of your right to own a gun. If that is true we should also believe that having to register your dog will lead to confiscation of the dog. Like dogs, we like to know where the guns are. No one questions the right to own a shotgun. No one questions the right to get married either – but you do have to buy a license.
The interesting paradox here is that the most traditionally conservative group in society – the police – support gun registry and insist that it has already been helpful to them. The paradox is that the naysayers are the first to crow: “Our cops are tops.”
Sunday, November 1, 2009
WE'RE PEOPLE TOO
For more years than I like to admit, I have railed about getting older and becoming irrelevant. Boy, I am fed up hearing it. Imagine how everyone else, even people with unlimited patience, must feel. My kids. My friends. Complete strangers who make the mistake of remembering me. Like Webb, the co-owner of a B&B in Maryhill who fell into the trap when he said: “You’re Larry Solway. (my VISA card says “Lawrence.”) “I always liked your commentaries.”
Here I go again!
He may have said “I always listened to your commentaries.”
My other response is, thinking to be funny by poking fun at myself: “You’re not old enough to remember me…etc.”
What my friends are most tired of hearing, especially those who by some miracle that has passed me by, are still working, is: “It’s terrible to become irrelevant. I’m not out-of-touch, but no one believes me.” Hey Larry – stand that up against your constant railing about “kids” (anyone under 40) who are hotwired to their IPods or spend hours text messaging, or have conversations that display rank indifference to the “real” world. No wonder they think you’re irrelevant!
I have had my time in the spotlight. I used it. The spotlight went out. Whatever happened, it happened. It is a fact. No amount of elderly carping will change it.
I have had an awakening. (Here we go again you say!) Not an epiphany, a kind of eureka moment of sudden discovery, more like a dawning, a slow and steady arrival of light.
Last week my wife and I went on a brief tour of some of Ontario’s prettiest country, the area generally referred to as “Mennonite” country – the rolling lush farmlands north of Kitchener, which is where I met Webb at his B&B. After he realized who I used to be he asked: “Are you still on the air?” It’s a question I am always asked. My reply, trying not to sound irritated: “No one asks me any more.”
Whining gets you nowhere. It closes more doors than it opens. It makes me think of dismissive comments like: “You want a friend? Go get a dog.”
Originally this was going to be an Email to someone at CBC Radio to present an idea for a show called “We’re People Too.” Not, I pray, another advocacy program trumpeting the rights of seniors and threatening government with Grey Power political action.
No. It would be about older people, for older people, but even more, for the families, the caregivers, and the ones like my own family, who all too often have to listen to me rail against real and imagined ills. Intolerance is still one of my major (?) assets!
There is a great need for younger people (by that I mean “youngsters” in their 40s and 50s) to learn how to cope with older folks while we older folks learn to cope, not just with each other, but with a very fast-changing world.
I wrote about all this in the book “Don’t Be Blindsided by Retirement.” I have tried to take charge of my life. There are millions like me. There are more millions who will soon be like me, And there are today millions who are care-givers because they are family. I want to turn this dialogue into a regular radio show which would include other seniors, geriatric specialists, and especially the kids and families of the CARPing generation. If you have a contact button you could push - I'd like that.
As Joan Rivers always says: “Can we talk?”
Here I go again!
He may have said “I always listened to your commentaries.”
My other response is, thinking to be funny by poking fun at myself: “You’re not old enough to remember me…etc.”
What my friends are most tired of hearing, especially those who by some miracle that has passed me by, are still working, is: “It’s terrible to become irrelevant. I’m not out-of-touch, but no one believes me.” Hey Larry – stand that up against your constant railing about “kids” (anyone under 40) who are hotwired to their IPods or spend hours text messaging, or have conversations that display rank indifference to the “real” world. No wonder they think you’re irrelevant!
I have had my time in the spotlight. I used it. The spotlight went out. Whatever happened, it happened. It is a fact. No amount of elderly carping will change it.
I have had an awakening. (Here we go again you say!) Not an epiphany, a kind of eureka moment of sudden discovery, more like a dawning, a slow and steady arrival of light.
Last week my wife and I went on a brief tour of some of Ontario’s prettiest country, the area generally referred to as “Mennonite” country – the rolling lush farmlands north of Kitchener, which is where I met Webb at his B&B. After he realized who I used to be he asked: “Are you still on the air?” It’s a question I am always asked. My reply, trying not to sound irritated: “No one asks me any more.”
Whining gets you nowhere. It closes more doors than it opens. It makes me think of dismissive comments like: “You want a friend? Go get a dog.”
Originally this was going to be an Email to someone at CBC Radio to present an idea for a show called “We’re People Too.” Not, I pray, another advocacy program trumpeting the rights of seniors and threatening government with Grey Power political action.
No. It would be about older people, for older people, but even more, for the families, the caregivers, and the ones like my own family, who all too often have to listen to me rail against real and imagined ills. Intolerance is still one of my major (?) assets!
There is a great need for younger people (by that I mean “youngsters” in their 40s and 50s) to learn how to cope with older folks while we older folks learn to cope, not just with each other, but with a very fast-changing world.
I wrote about all this in the book “Don’t Be Blindsided by Retirement.” I have tried to take charge of my life. There are millions like me. There are more millions who will soon be like me, And there are today millions who are care-givers because they are family. I want to turn this dialogue into a regular radio show which would include other seniors, geriatric specialists, and especially the kids and families of the CARPing generation. If you have a contact button you could push - I'd like that.
As Joan Rivers always says: “Can we talk?”
WHAT'S HAPPY ABOUT HALLOWE'EN?
Is it just me? Or have we gone completely daffy? I can understand Merry Christmas or Happy Birthday, but what on earth are we doing wishing everyone a “happy Hallowe’en?
Every time there is a special date on the calendar we break out in joyous greeting – signifying absolutely nothing. I am waiting (but I haven’t looked recently so this comment may be obsolete) for the greeting card folks to start printing cards to welcome in Hallowe’en.
I have to bet that not one in a hundred of the cutely dressed up little kids (reflecting revenues in the billions for people who make rubber masks and broomsticks) have any idea what the night is all about.
Quite frankly, neither did I. Well, I knew, but I didn’t recognize what I knew. It was when my wife and I happened to be in Paris one year on November 1st and many of the shops were closed. One restaurant had a skeleton staff. “Why,” I asked naively. The person serving us seemed a bit taken aback: “Mais Monsieur, c'est Toussaintes(I’m not sure I've spelled it right.)
“Of course,” I said, faking forgetfulness.
In France, where the anticlerical movement has a long history and where Descartes and his early Existentialism overshadowed the Divine and led generations of Frenchmen in another spiritual direction, one would not expect so much religious observance.
But here it was. Of course, if the night for goblins and ghosts and witches is actually All Soul’s Day night and the following day is All Saint’s Day, then the day has meaning.
But I suppose the “celebration” is as misdirected as the fact that the Easter Bunny has replaced the Cross as a symbol of Death and Resurrection. Perhaps it’s the overriding pagan influence on religion. The bunny is a sign of sparing and, being a very fertile, fecund creature, a symbol of re-birth. I’m not quite certain why the Danse Macabre of Hallowe'en is pagan, but it probably is.
Having just finished reading (in fact - trudging through) The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown, I developed a larger understanding of the relationship between ancient wisdom and present-day religion. Brown, once he establishes his patented method of suspense, embarks on a tedious, lengthy, preachy look at “The Word” and the wisdom of the ancients and how it has transmuted itself into modern beliefs. (I find that to be an oxymoron - there is nothing “modern” about some of the things people believe so devoutly.)
While I’m at it – how come so many Canadian TV news people call it “Hollow e’en?”
Oh well, they are part of a generation that has grown up being educated by watching
U.S. TV. “Hollow” and “Hallow” I think, are still two different words.
Aha! In one gestalt moments I see it all. The truth is revealed. In fact the American pronunciation reflects the truth: the day and it’s meaning have become quite “hollow.”
So to you – Happy Hallowe’en. Happy Labour Day and Happy Ides of March.
Every time there is a special date on the calendar we break out in joyous greeting – signifying absolutely nothing. I am waiting (but I haven’t looked recently so this comment may be obsolete) for the greeting card folks to start printing cards to welcome in Hallowe’en.
I have to bet that not one in a hundred of the cutely dressed up little kids (reflecting revenues in the billions for people who make rubber masks and broomsticks) have any idea what the night is all about.
Quite frankly, neither did I. Well, I knew, but I didn’t recognize what I knew. It was when my wife and I happened to be in Paris one year on November 1st and many of the shops were closed. One restaurant had a skeleton staff. “Why,” I asked naively. The person serving us seemed a bit taken aback: “Mais Monsieur, c'est Toussaintes(I’m not sure I've spelled it right.)
“Of course,” I said, faking forgetfulness.
In France, where the anticlerical movement has a long history and where Descartes and his early Existentialism overshadowed the Divine and led generations of Frenchmen in another spiritual direction, one would not expect so much religious observance.
But here it was. Of course, if the night for goblins and ghosts and witches is actually All Soul’s Day night and the following day is All Saint’s Day, then the day has meaning.
But I suppose the “celebration” is as misdirected as the fact that the Easter Bunny has replaced the Cross as a symbol of Death and Resurrection. Perhaps it’s the overriding pagan influence on religion. The bunny is a sign of sparing and, being a very fertile, fecund creature, a symbol of re-birth. I’m not quite certain why the Danse Macabre of Hallowe'en is pagan, but it probably is.
Having just finished reading (in fact - trudging through) The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown, I developed a larger understanding of the relationship between ancient wisdom and present-day religion. Brown, once he establishes his patented method of suspense, embarks on a tedious, lengthy, preachy look at “The Word” and the wisdom of the ancients and how it has transmuted itself into modern beliefs. (I find that to be an oxymoron - there is nothing “modern” about some of the things people believe so devoutly.)
While I’m at it – how come so many Canadian TV news people call it “Hollow e’en?”
Oh well, they are part of a generation that has grown up being educated by watching
U.S. TV. “Hollow” and “Hallow” I think, are still two different words.
Aha! In one gestalt moments I see it all. The truth is revealed. In fact the American pronunciation reflects the truth: the day and it’s meaning have become quite “hollow.”
So to you – Happy Hallowe’en. Happy Labour Day and Happy Ides of March.
Monday, September 28, 2009
PORTABLE CITIZENSHIP
When the going gets tough – the tough get going – somewhere else! There is an enormous gap between mythology and reality. The mythology is that immigrants come to your country for a new life, for a life of freedom after the oppression of their native land. A new life free from fear. A life in a free country where democratic principles rise above everything. Those brave and noble words encapsulate what has been one of the great myths of immigrant behaviour.
Of course, it is true that many people flee oppression. It is also true that many people, cynics will say most people, come for economic advantage.
In this country we had what were called “the astronauts.” Like space travelers they shuttled between homes. It was a label applied to many Hong Kong Chinese who could afford to “buy” Canadian citizenship by investing here and providing jobs. Did that make them Canadians? Did that make them honour and praise our democratic traditions, our institutions, our sense of tolerance, our health care system? No it did not. Canada was an address of convenience. They would ship their children here to attend school, have a Canadian address, but fly between Canada and Hong Kong where their real interests were. The principal reason for it was uncertainty about the future of the once-British colony.
I am prompted to write this, not because of my lingering distaste for “portable” citizenship, like the Lebanese whose Canadian citizenship allowed them to complain that ”their” government was not acting quickly enough to evacuate them from their real home – Lebanon, which had erupted in civil war.
Those are passing irritations. What prompted this item is the news that thousands are fleeing the “Celtic Tiger” the once miraculously prosperous Ireland. They came from all over Europe to cash in on the new prosperity and the minute it started to sink – they were off and running. Even more glaringly obvious is the current “brain drain” exodus from the United States. According to a recent article in USA Today there are hundreds, maybe thousands of highly skilled people, mostly Indian and Chinese who are fleeing the downturn in America and running to their homelands for better jobs. I don’t blame anyone for wanted to be where the opportunity is, but I do blame the hype and patriotic drivel that keeps telling us how glad these people are to come to the “land of the free and the home of the brave.” Even more irritating, is how these portable citizens proclaim their love of their new country – until – until they can make more elsewhere.
Closer to home, will you try to persuade me that the exodus of doctors from this country, the exodus of nurses and health technicians, was anything but a flight to where there was more money, and a complete disregard for the deeper sense of being Canadian in Canada?
I am not flag-waving. I am simply looking around me at the truth: survival comes first. And in the words of Cuba Gooding in that great movie: “Show me the money.”
Of course, it is true that many people flee oppression. It is also true that many people, cynics will say most people, come for economic advantage.
In this country we had what were called “the astronauts.” Like space travelers they shuttled between homes. It was a label applied to many Hong Kong Chinese who could afford to “buy” Canadian citizenship by investing here and providing jobs. Did that make them Canadians? Did that make them honour and praise our democratic traditions, our institutions, our sense of tolerance, our health care system? No it did not. Canada was an address of convenience. They would ship their children here to attend school, have a Canadian address, but fly between Canada and Hong Kong where their real interests were. The principal reason for it was uncertainty about the future of the once-British colony.
I am prompted to write this, not because of my lingering distaste for “portable” citizenship, like the Lebanese whose Canadian citizenship allowed them to complain that ”their” government was not acting quickly enough to evacuate them from their real home – Lebanon, which had erupted in civil war.
Those are passing irritations. What prompted this item is the news that thousands are fleeing the “Celtic Tiger” the once miraculously prosperous Ireland. They came from all over Europe to cash in on the new prosperity and the minute it started to sink – they were off and running. Even more glaringly obvious is the current “brain drain” exodus from the United States. According to a recent article in USA Today there are hundreds, maybe thousands of highly skilled people, mostly Indian and Chinese who are fleeing the downturn in America and running to their homelands for better jobs. I don’t blame anyone for wanted to be where the opportunity is, but I do blame the hype and patriotic drivel that keeps telling us how glad these people are to come to the “land of the free and the home of the brave.” Even more irritating, is how these portable citizens proclaim their love of their new country – until – until they can make more elsewhere.
Closer to home, will you try to persuade me that the exodus of doctors from this country, the exodus of nurses and health technicians, was anything but a flight to where there was more money, and a complete disregard for the deeper sense of being Canadian in Canada?
I am not flag-waving. I am simply looking around me at the truth: survival comes first. And in the words of Cuba Gooding in that great movie: “Show me the money.”
Saturday, September 26, 2009
BEING A GOOD (?) HOUSE GUEST
Mark Kolke has asked me to do a piece about being a good house guest. He knows, as do many others, that my wife and I are "home exchangers." We travel very inexpensively, but even more, we get to be guests in someone else's home, and we get to know the neighbours and the local shopping in a way no hotel or resort guest can.
We are just back from another jaunt and the experience was from wonderful to horrid.
Wonderful was to reacquaint with a man in Charlotte, North Carolina. We had already done an exchange. He and his wife came to Toronto and spent two weeks at our place. Unfortunately, we were also away, so we never met. But when we returned to take up our part of the exchange, he and his wife "hosted" us. Meaning: we visited as guests while they were in residence. Being a house "guest" instead of a casual visitor has many advantages. Aside from the obvious - getting to know your hosts, they will take you to visit places you might never have found on your own. There was an emergency. My wife developed an infection requiring a trip to the emergency. They took us. They sat with us. It was as near to being home as one could get. To add to the pleasure, she got up every morning to go to her gym, but also to make hot oatmeal for us. Long story with a bittersweet ending: we were heading south to visit a cousin in beautiful Asheville. I called him, learned his wife had died last December, but that he would be delighted to have us visit with him. The only "price" we had to pay was that I cooked. No problem - it's a joyous experience for me, and he needed it because his wife did all the cooking. Her departure left him helpless in the kitchen. We shared a dinner of a butterflied chicken I make. He was so impressed he asked me to do dinner for neighbours who have been generous to him. I did. I trotted out a sumptuous menu of veal Cordon Bleu and a mushroom/onion risotto. He was delighted, and we met three engaging people, one of whom took us on an art tour of Charlotte.
This almost always happens. In Holland we are welcomed regularly by a couple in The Hague. In Paris we4 have access to a studio apartment in the Porte Maillot district.
In Barcelona a toung couple hosted us in their apartment and when we were robbed, lent us 500 Euro until we could get replacement credit cards and passports.
This week a couple from Stockholm who had previously stayed in our place visited us for the day. They took us to lunch. I responded with a dinner of turkey cacciatore.
We'll be in Stockholm next June. Next week a couple from Scotland will spend most of the week with us. Two years ago they hosted us in Aberdeen where I cooked for them. They had never had French toast. They called it "fried bread," a dish well-known to them.
All these details are simply a background look at the joy of being a special kind of house guest or host. It is enriching and I get a chance to show off in the kitchen.
It doesn't always work out as well. Our trip to Asheville was marred by a kind of jarring meeting with a long lost cousin. I may have said the wrong things but she responded with her own challenge. It was a tense three days, eased a bit by being able to cook and to have civilized conversation. Ironically, Asheville was the boyhood home of Thomas Wolfe, and my visit there proved Wolfe was right: You Can't Go Home Again. I apologized but it was not enough.
So all house guesting does not work out perfectly. Truthfully though, with all the tension, I would not have missed the visit for anything.
It is trivial of me I suppose to quote (or paraphrase) the famous: "house guests are like fish. if they stay too long they start to smell."
We are just back from another jaunt and the experience was from wonderful to horrid.
Wonderful was to reacquaint with a man in Charlotte, North Carolina. We had already done an exchange. He and his wife came to Toronto and spent two weeks at our place. Unfortunately, we were also away, so we never met. But when we returned to take up our part of the exchange, he and his wife "hosted" us. Meaning: we visited as guests while they were in residence. Being a house "guest" instead of a casual visitor has many advantages. Aside from the obvious - getting to know your hosts, they will take you to visit places you might never have found on your own. There was an emergency. My wife developed an infection requiring a trip to the emergency. They took us. They sat with us. It was as near to being home as one could get. To add to the pleasure, she got up every morning to go to her gym, but also to make hot oatmeal for us. Long story with a bittersweet ending: we were heading south to visit a cousin in beautiful Asheville. I called him, learned his wife had died last December, but that he would be delighted to have us visit with him. The only "price" we had to pay was that I cooked. No problem - it's a joyous experience for me, and he needed it because his wife did all the cooking. Her departure left him helpless in the kitchen. We shared a dinner of a butterflied chicken I make. He was so impressed he asked me to do dinner for neighbours who have been generous to him. I did. I trotted out a sumptuous menu of veal Cordon Bleu and a mushroom/onion risotto. He was delighted, and we met three engaging people, one of whom took us on an art tour of Charlotte.
This almost always happens. In Holland we are welcomed regularly by a couple in The Hague. In Paris we4 have access to a studio apartment in the Porte Maillot district.
In Barcelona a toung couple hosted us in their apartment and when we were robbed, lent us 500 Euro until we could get replacement credit cards and passports.
This week a couple from Stockholm who had previously stayed in our place visited us for the day. They took us to lunch. I responded with a dinner of turkey cacciatore.
We'll be in Stockholm next June. Next week a couple from Scotland will spend most of the week with us. Two years ago they hosted us in Aberdeen where I cooked for them. They had never had French toast. They called it "fried bread," a dish well-known to them.
All these details are simply a background look at the joy of being a special kind of house guest or host. It is enriching and I get a chance to show off in the kitchen.
It doesn't always work out as well. Our trip to Asheville was marred by a kind of jarring meeting with a long lost cousin. I may have said the wrong things but she responded with her own challenge. It was a tense three days, eased a bit by being able to cook and to have civilized conversation. Ironically, Asheville was the boyhood home of Thomas Wolfe, and my visit there proved Wolfe was right: You Can't Go Home Again. I apologized but it was not enough.
So all house guesting does not work out perfectly. Truthfully though, with all the tension, I would not have missed the visit for anything.
It is trivial of me I suppose to quote (or paraphrase) the famous: "house guests are like fish. if they stay too long they start to smell."
Friday, September 25, 2009
NOT SO "LOOKINg Ahead."
Anyone over 60 will tell you, if they themselves are aware of it, that nostalgia for "the way things used to be" can overwhelm all your judgements.
So, instead of "Looking Ahead," I am casting a sorrowful glance over my shoulder and whining about "how things used to be."
Is it a kind of overblown self-importance that is expressed by the phone message: "I'm either out of the office, away from my desk, or on another call. Please leave...etc.."
Dammit - whatever happened to the common courtesy of answering your phone? Where does this "busy-man" attitude come from? I even have one friend who never, ever answers the phone. The service picks it up and within a short time I get a call "I was on another line" or some such other lame excuse.
Maybe it's a kind of 21st century urban plague. I didn't grow up with what we see commonly on movie and TV screens. Someone is making an urgent call and of course, gets an answering machine. The picture cuts to the person who is being called listening to the frustrated caller holler: "Pick up, come on pick up. I know you're there."
The plague is aggravated by a device that will show you who is calling so you can deign not to pick up or be simply too busy, unless of course it is a telemarketer, in which case their identity is blocked.
Is it too much technology? Is it too much real indifference? Or is it, as I said earlier, just an exaggerated sense of self-importance.
I am held captive by a banking system that is sometimes absurd. Like millions of you, I carry a line of credit. Because it is a "secured" line, I can't just take money willy-nilly or make any market transcations without first getting permission.
I can't even withdraw earning from my brokerage account, without contacting my account person. That's where the fun begins. "Hello - this is (name) at (bank name)
\I am unable to take your call etc.../or - I am away from the office until (date) Please contact (another name and phone number) and they will be able to assist you. You guessed it, the alternate contact also is either out of the office or away from her desk...etc.."
How anyone gets anything done is quite beyond me. I know I know, you will say "If you sit by your desk trying to get work done and you are interrupted contstantly etc..."
Well my forward looking friends, remember when someone, a real person, would answer the phone with a cheerful "Hello this is (name) office. Can I help you?"
(While I'm carping, who even told people it was more polite to say MAY I help you. My answer would be, I wouldn't have called unless I thought you could help me, which means that CAN I help you is appropriate. The answer to MAY I help you is obvious: my very phone call entitles you to help me, so asking "may I" is stupid.)
Two of my grandsons intend to follow their father, a successful marketing guru into college business courses. Isn't anyone trying to be a poet anymore?
They will, without question or demurral, enter a world of business where a machine allows you to duck answering your phone.
I'm convinced that technology has not in many ways, been our saviour. It only seems to be more efficient. What it does it add another layer to the already heavily layered protocol of going from point A to point B, the process of starting with a problem and going directly to a solution. Too much detail just doesn't hack it. Look if you will, at Occam's Law. Essentially it says that you will get there faster if you strip away all the unnecessary baggage. But phone answering machines (and most people) have never heard of Occam.
So, instead of "Looking Ahead," I am casting a sorrowful glance over my shoulder and whining about "how things used to be."
Is it a kind of overblown self-importance that is expressed by the phone message: "I'm either out of the office, away from my desk, or on another call. Please leave...etc.."
Dammit - whatever happened to the common courtesy of answering your phone? Where does this "busy-man" attitude come from? I even have one friend who never, ever answers the phone. The service picks it up and within a short time I get a call "I was on another line" or some such other lame excuse.
Maybe it's a kind of 21st century urban plague. I didn't grow up with what we see commonly on movie and TV screens. Someone is making an urgent call and of course, gets an answering machine. The picture cuts to the person who is being called listening to the frustrated caller holler: "Pick up, come on pick up. I know you're there."
The plague is aggravated by a device that will show you who is calling so you can deign not to pick up or be simply too busy, unless of course it is a telemarketer, in which case their identity is blocked.
Is it too much technology? Is it too much real indifference? Or is it, as I said earlier, just an exaggerated sense of self-importance.
I am held captive by a banking system that is sometimes absurd. Like millions of you, I carry a line of credit. Because it is a "secured" line, I can't just take money willy-nilly or make any market transcations without first getting permission.
I can't even withdraw earning from my brokerage account, without contacting my account person. That's where the fun begins. "Hello - this is (name) at (bank name)
\I am unable to take your call etc.../or - I am away from the office until (date) Please contact (another name and phone number) and they will be able to assist you. You guessed it, the alternate contact also is either out of the office or away from her desk...etc.."
How anyone gets anything done is quite beyond me. I know I know, you will say "If you sit by your desk trying to get work done and you are interrupted contstantly etc..."
Well my forward looking friends, remember when someone, a real person, would answer the phone with a cheerful "Hello this is (name) office. Can I help you?"
(While I'm carping, who even told people it was more polite to say MAY I help you. My answer would be, I wouldn't have called unless I thought you could help me, which means that CAN I help you is appropriate. The answer to MAY I help you is obvious: my very phone call entitles you to help me, so asking "may I" is stupid.)
Two of my grandsons intend to follow their father, a successful marketing guru into college business courses. Isn't anyone trying to be a poet anymore?
They will, without question or demurral, enter a world of business where a machine allows you to duck answering your phone.
I'm convinced that technology has not in many ways, been our saviour. It only seems to be more efficient. What it does it add another layer to the already heavily layered protocol of going from point A to point B, the process of starting with a problem and going directly to a solution. Too much detail just doesn't hack it. Look if you will, at Occam's Law. Essentially it says that you will get there faster if you strip away all the unnecessary baggage. But phone answering machines (and most people) have never heard of Occam.
Saturday, September 12, 2009
JUST ANOTHER MYTH
There is what remains of a strip mall. The movie house has nothing on the marquee, but if you venture inside there seems to be life. There is a dollar store. There is a Chinese buffet. The rest is derelict. A few cars occupy a large space whose ambitions vanished years ago. It is mostly derelict. It is like the set of The Last Picture Show.
But it is 2009 and I am in Fredonia, New York, a village about an hour west of Buffalo on the Thruway. We stay at a Day’s Inn that is trying hard but has seen better days. There is that slightly damp, mildewy aroma in the hallways and in the room there is evidence of a worn carpet that has been covered over.
It is America in decay. Until…
Until you head into town, It is not what you’d call “bustling” but there seems to be life. There are shops and banks and a few people in the streets. The village, like so many relics of the past, abounds iu luxurious looking frame homes, wrap-around porches and a few cupolas here and there. The biggest mansion is the funeral home. Shirley asks me how I’d like to live in a small town. She knows the answer.
But this is not just a small town. It is a relic. It is a personification of what the most ardent Republicans (like Sarah Palin) speak of as the “real” America. It is the epitome of the great myth of “small town folks.” You know the routine: “ ‘round here everybody knows everybody else. People smile and say hello in the street.” That again is mythic. The fact is that small town folks are friendly enough with each other. A newcomer is often shunned with suspicion as someone “from away.” You can die of loneliness in a small town unless your grandfather was born there. During the 50s and 60s urbanites moved to ex-urbia in search of a new kind of peace. I’m not talking about suburbanites who moved to the boonies because you could get so much more house for your money. (The dream has soured as suburban taxes soar, highways gridlock gets worse, and the daily commute keeps you from your family for about three hours a day, not to mention the cost of the second car and the reality that if you have to buy anything at all you have to drive to get t.)
So it is not the recession that is turning places into ghost towns. It is the new urban reality. Hate it you might, but Toronto is the 2nd biggest high rise condo city in North America – next tp New York. More and more people want to walk to work and to restaurants, and to supermarkets. Downtown is “where it’s at.”
But it is 2009 and I am in Fredonia, New York, a village about an hour west of Buffalo on the Thruway. We stay at a Day’s Inn that is trying hard but has seen better days. There is that slightly damp, mildewy aroma in the hallways and in the room there is evidence of a worn carpet that has been covered over.
It is America in decay. Until…
Until you head into town, It is not what you’d call “bustling” but there seems to be life. There are shops and banks and a few people in the streets. The village, like so many relics of the past, abounds iu luxurious looking frame homes, wrap-around porches and a few cupolas here and there. The biggest mansion is the funeral home. Shirley asks me how I’d like to live in a small town. She knows the answer.
But this is not just a small town. It is a relic. It is a personification of what the most ardent Republicans (like Sarah Palin) speak of as the “real” America. It is the epitome of the great myth of “small town folks.” You know the routine: “ ‘round here everybody knows everybody else. People smile and say hello in the street.” That again is mythic. The fact is that small town folks are friendly enough with each other. A newcomer is often shunned with suspicion as someone “from away.” You can die of loneliness in a small town unless your grandfather was born there. During the 50s and 60s urbanites moved to ex-urbia in search of a new kind of peace. I’m not talking about suburbanites who moved to the boonies because you could get so much more house for your money. (The dream has soured as suburban taxes soar, highways gridlock gets worse, and the daily commute keeps you from your family for about three hours a day, not to mention the cost of the second car and the reality that if you have to buy anything at all you have to drive to get t.)
So it is not the recession that is turning places into ghost towns. It is the new urban reality. Hate it you might, but Toronto is the 2nd biggest high rise condo city in North America – next tp New York. More and more people want to walk to work and to restaurants, and to supermarkets. Downtown is “where it’s at.”
Monday, September 7, 2009
GOD BLESS AMERICA
I love Americans – most of them. I love America – most of it. That country has given the world more Nobel Prize winners I think, than any other country in the world. There are more people in institutions of higher learning than any other country in the world. Henry Ford invented the assembly line and revolutionized manufacturing. The New York Times is one of the greatest papers in the world. Those are not just fanciful or mythic notions – those are facts.
But there is a mythic America, a country that exists in a world of boosterism and over-the-top claims and self-praising ideas. That I can only giggle at, and that giggle is not friendly. Example: “Americans are the most optimistic people in the world.” That statement was made during a discussion about the future of America. Two scholarly experts said it on Public Broadcasting's Jim Lehrer News Report. Where did this man, an obviously well informed, well-read intellectual – get his information? It is part of the American myth, the belief Americans have in themselves.
Americans are easily, among developed nations the most isolated from reality of any people in any other country. They characteristically know little, and care less, about other countries and other people, unless they happen to be involved in some kind of “nation-building” – often described as a “battle for the hearts and minds of (fill in the country.)”
So I ask, where, statistically can they back this wild statement up? Has anyone done an optimist study comparing a cross section of Americans against a similar group of Canadians of Romanians or Frenchmen? They live in a world surrounded by uniquely American superlatives – dreamed up without proof – to reinforce the idea that, after all, where else would anyone in the world want to live?
During the current recession, with unemployment approaching 10% and hope for several tens of millions of American people fading fast, I heard Barack Obama say something like:“Americans are the hardest working people in the world!” He said it witha straight face. I would not be one to differ. Could I say that Americans are NOT the hardest working people in the world?” Who knows? Politicians currying favour will use thus kind of mindless hyperbole. But again, the question I ask is: had anyone done a “hard-work” study to determine whether or not the “fact” is true? Are they harder working than say – the Japanese? How about the millions virtually chained to machines in China producing the world’s all-time greatest volume of consumer goods? How about Asian students who lead in just about every category at schools and universities in Canada?
It beats me. In the next few days I will be taking an extended trip into the U.S., heading for a few days with a friend in Charlotte North Carolina, one of America’s most advanced and progressive boom towns. From there to the slightly chic and artsy, intellectual, picturesque city of Asheville, grandly nestled in the Blue Ridge. Then a return to home with a stop in Cleveland, one of the cities in America that is relentlessly shrinking but has some of the most astonishingly good cultural facilities in the world!
I have a lot of time for what is good in that country. I have a lot of feeling for their sense of being misunderstood. I only wish they would stop the bugle-blaring fanfares for levels of accomplishment that exist only in fantasy.
And finally, I must not, will not, add by railing against their indifference to Canada. They don’t even really know we’re here. Not one American in a hundred knows that we are their largest supplier of energy – not as they would believe – Venezuela or the Middle East.
Besides, they gave us Costco. That’s enough to love them for.
But there is a mythic America, a country that exists in a world of boosterism and over-the-top claims and self-praising ideas. That I can only giggle at, and that giggle is not friendly. Example: “Americans are the most optimistic people in the world.” That statement was made during a discussion about the future of America. Two scholarly experts said it on Public Broadcasting's Jim Lehrer News Report. Where did this man, an obviously well informed, well-read intellectual – get his information? It is part of the American myth, the belief Americans have in themselves.
Americans are easily, among developed nations the most isolated from reality of any people in any other country. They characteristically know little, and care less, about other countries and other people, unless they happen to be involved in some kind of “nation-building” – often described as a “battle for the hearts and minds of (fill in the country.)”
So I ask, where, statistically can they back this wild statement up? Has anyone done an optimist study comparing a cross section of Americans against a similar group of Canadians of Romanians or Frenchmen? They live in a world surrounded by uniquely American superlatives – dreamed up without proof – to reinforce the idea that, after all, where else would anyone in the world want to live?
During the current recession, with unemployment approaching 10% and hope for several tens of millions of American people fading fast, I heard Barack Obama say something like:“Americans are the hardest working people in the world!” He said it witha straight face. I would not be one to differ. Could I say that Americans are NOT the hardest working people in the world?” Who knows? Politicians currying favour will use thus kind of mindless hyperbole. But again, the question I ask is: had anyone done a “hard-work” study to determine whether or not the “fact” is true? Are they harder working than say – the Japanese? How about the millions virtually chained to machines in China producing the world’s all-time greatest volume of consumer goods? How about Asian students who lead in just about every category at schools and universities in Canada?
It beats me. In the next few days I will be taking an extended trip into the U.S., heading for a few days with a friend in Charlotte North Carolina, one of America’s most advanced and progressive boom towns. From there to the slightly chic and artsy, intellectual, picturesque city of Asheville, grandly nestled in the Blue Ridge. Then a return to home with a stop in Cleveland, one of the cities in America that is relentlessly shrinking but has some of the most astonishingly good cultural facilities in the world!
I have a lot of time for what is good in that country. I have a lot of feeling for their sense of being misunderstood. I only wish they would stop the bugle-blaring fanfares for levels of accomplishment that exist only in fantasy.
And finally, I must not, will not, add by railing against their indifference to Canada. They don’t even really know we’re here. Not one American in a hundred knows that we are their largest supplier of energy – not as they would believe – Venezuela or the Middle East.
Besides, they gave us Costco. That’s enough to love them for.
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