Mark Kolke’s “Daily Thought” stimulated this entry. He said, in effect; better to renew old friendships than trying to make so many new ones. I have cause for disagreement. While the idea sounds good i.e. re-affirming old and sometimes forgotten friendships, it can be, as I have found, almost completely unrewarding.
Why? Perhaps it is my “Looking Ahead” mentality which tells me that what lies ahead is richer than what has gone by. Not always of course, but in the sense that it is self-renewing – it is richer. I am perhaps contradicting my own forward-looking idea when I realize how in the past few years, I have wanted to rekindle old friendships, to renew my links with the past. Doesn’t work. Thomas Wolfe was right.
Most of the people I once knew have gone on with their lives in different directions than mine. I didn’t, by design, choose to make all my friends within my vocation, a trap that too many people fall into. You know what I mean. You go to a “lawyer” party and all the lawyers are standing around talking shop while their spouses discuss vacations and cleaning ladies. I know, I generalize. But for me, finding friends who share, not my occupation, profession or vocation, but share my ideas and aspirations about life and family and learning, and politics are my friends.
But that is another story. Unlike Mark, I enjoy meeting new people.(I'm not saying that he does not like meeting people.)I cultivate strangers. One old friend told me I “collect” friends. Perhaps I do. But in my eternal search for renewal and invigoration, I desire the company of interesting people. Often I am snubbed. They already have a circle of friends and seem to have no room for new ones.
But the greatest disappointments have been succumbing to nostalgia. Renewing a forgotten friendship is interesting but only for a while. How long can you reminisce about other old friends? About places and people you used to visit? You quickly discover that each of your lives have taken different paths and that aside from the past, you have nothing in common.
I remember an experience I had with “renewal.” In my struggling years as a young radio hopeful my wife and I made friends with people who were more or less in the same position as we were. One was with a man and his wife who lived next door. We became fast friends. My wife taught her how to play Mah Jong. He was a plain working stiff installing gas station pump islands. I was a young radio station manager. I think he made more money than I did. We moved away. Over the years I developed a career that led me to local prominence, and to a more elevated standard of living. I contacted him, or tried to. He said he was embarrassed. He was still plugging away while I had become “Larry Solway” and everyone knew who I was. It just wasn't a fit for him. He couldn’t keep up. He said thanks but no thanks.
In more recent years, realizing that time was passing more quickly every day; I had a few fits of nostalgia. “What ever happened to…” seemed to haunt me. I started making calls to old friends. In a couple of cases we did get together, but it was no longer a “fit.” One had become the CEO of a major company his father had founded. The other had developed a career in a family-related business. I remembered him best as a brash young announcer with a fair bit of talent for jazz piano. He no longer played. He had:”moved on.”
I’m sorry Mark. Trying to kick life back into long dead relationships is a mug’s game. You rarely win. I do have friends who have been friends for many years. We continue to be friends, but not by harping on old memories. The old friends I have, like me, have new things to do and new ideas to share.
Just one example about "new" friends: my wife and I have been home exchangers for several years. We do it, not because it saves money (which it does) but because we meet new people. We have made friends we would not have made had we stayed within our own restricted circle. And it is not just travel that does it. People who "broaden" their lives with travel simply "see" new things. I am not attracted to spending my time abroad talking to service people: hotel clerks, cab drivers, waiters, or fellow travellers - the people you meet on a paid vacation. You may see and learn some new things if you take a tour, but you will be, because that what tours do, cossetted from any real contact with the locals.
We now have people we can call friends in Paris: they are lending us their apartment for our trip. (They will come to Toronto at the same time.) I just emailed a couple in The Hague who have been kind and friendly to us on several occasions. I plan to visit a man in North Carolina who has become our friend through exchange, to let him know what we may visit him in September when an exchanger from Mexico is in our apartment. We have struck up what promises to be a rewarding friendship through dozens of emails we have already exchanged.(We'll be visiting him in January.)
Perhaps I shall get slapped around when I try to do the same thing in Paris. I’ll be writing about it, I’ll let you know what happens when I, a stranger initiate a conversation and hope for an even brief “friendship” is received by the Parisians I come in contact with. Will they want a “new” experience? Or will they, as someone who has lived in Paris told me, decline my simple overtures. We’ll see.
Monday, March 29, 2010
Saturday, March 27, 2010
BETWEEN THE DEVIL AND THE DEEP BLUE LIES.
America, a country that, as least superficially, adores its democracy more than any other developed country, has more gullible people per square mile than any other country I can think of. Any country that can not only produce, but elevate to heights of high public esteem. the likes of Glen Beck, Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, and Sarah Palin has to be caught between the devil and something-or-other. The sad reality is that millions of them do not seem capable of discriminating between fact and propaganda, between hype and common sense. (Many Canadian fall into the same description of utter mindlessness.)
I “Look Ahead. That’s what the blog is called. It is also an expression of my optimism that in fact, people are not so stupid, that most people will catch on sooner or later. Unfortunately, “later” means that the worst has already happened.
Watching TV, as is my vice for cool, cloudy afternoons, lets me muse on what I see in the commercials. We all know that the pharmaceutical companies scream bloody murder when anyone tries to tamper with their pricing. They always cite the enormous cost of research and development and the failure of most drugs even to reach the market.
Why then do they spend millions advertising their products? TV ads for prescription drugs must run into hundreds of millions of dollars. In fact, it has been said that drug companies spend far more on advertising than they do on R&D.
Even worse perhaps, because America is in the throes of trying to cut health care costs, is the amount of money spent by medical institutions advertising their product. This afternoon I saw that for real help in coping with cancer you need the special services of some caring hospital chain specializing in cancer treatment. I simply do not understand how, in an economy that is trying to cut health costs, hospitals and many doctors, can pass on the cost of all that advertising to their patients, who already spend more than double the amount per capita of the next closest country on health care!
I know, I know. Market economy. Supply and demand. But we are dealing with people’s lives for heaven’s sakes! Who is so gullible as to accept that advertising of medical services and pharmaceutical enhances health care?? Gimme a break.
I “Look Ahead. That’s what the blog is called. It is also an expression of my optimism that in fact, people are not so stupid, that most people will catch on sooner or later. Unfortunately, “later” means that the worst has already happened.
Watching TV, as is my vice for cool, cloudy afternoons, lets me muse on what I see in the commercials. We all know that the pharmaceutical companies scream bloody murder when anyone tries to tamper with their pricing. They always cite the enormous cost of research and development and the failure of most drugs even to reach the market.
Why then do they spend millions advertising their products? TV ads for prescription drugs must run into hundreds of millions of dollars. In fact, it has been said that drug companies spend far more on advertising than they do on R&D.
Even worse perhaps, because America is in the throes of trying to cut health care costs, is the amount of money spent by medical institutions advertising their product. This afternoon I saw that for real help in coping with cancer you need the special services of some caring hospital chain specializing in cancer treatment. I simply do not understand how, in an economy that is trying to cut health costs, hospitals and many doctors, can pass on the cost of all that advertising to their patients, who already spend more than double the amount per capita of the next closest country on health care!
I know, I know. Market economy. Supply and demand. But we are dealing with people’s lives for heaven’s sakes! Who is so gullible as to accept that advertising of medical services and pharmaceutical enhances health care?? Gimme a break.
Thursday, March 25, 2010
FREE SPEECH? FREEDOM TO TELL LIES.
There is a great deal of malicious evil subsumed under the rubric of “free speech.” Because the Americans have a constitution that says anyone can say anything (or at least it appears that way) does not mean it is either legal or moral. In those long ago years when Pierre Trudeau was fighting to “patriate” our constitution (the only one close being the British North America Act) many dissenters said that having a written constitution would not help free speech – it would hamstring it.
It was argued that the common law tradition was a far greater protection against abuse than a rigid constitution.
In the case of Ann Coulter there is no question that she is not entitled, certainly not to be “invited” to express her views. I’m not talking about her Fox-news-biased reporting, even that might be a matter of opinion. But I suggest that she brings a level of uninformed and ignorant opinion to an arena best meant for thoughtful discussion. In short – she doesn’t know what she is talking about. She seems to be able, as almost everyone at Fox News is, to make it up as she goes along. This friends, is not a matter of opinion i.e. my liberal mindset against her ultra-conservative bias. I promise you that David Frum, the Canadian thinker of the Enterprise Institute, and a dedicated conservative, would bring literacy and informed opinion to any forum. Just as William F. Buckley, the arch conservative intellectual came to the table not with wild unsupported ideas, but with his “take” on real affairs.
The one big one that lingers in my memory is one that disqualifies Ann Coulter from any kind of civil debate. I saw her as a guest on “The Fifth Estate.” Lindon McIntyre was interviewing her about her position on Iraq. She chided Canada for not joining the U.S. in the war. She said – and this is almost exactly how the conversation went:
Coulter: Canada came to our aid in Viet Nam.
McIntyre: No we didn’t. We did not go to Viet Nam.
Coulter: Yes you did.
McIntyre (exasperated): We did not.
Coulter: Well, I’ll have to get back to you on that.
If she did, I never heard about it. Coulter does not back down even when she is wrong.
She is a best-selling author. That is more to the disgrace than the credit of the millions of Americans who bought her book. They are the people who also flocked to the bookstores for Sarah Palin’s factually incorrect look at her part in history. It was long on fantasy and short on fact.
I do not, nor have I ever, supported the notion that everyone is entitled to his/her opinion. Unless you know what you are talking about, you’d better shut up until you have more facts. The most glaring and pathetic example of this is how by spending millions in advertising, Big Insurance has managed to sell their brand of skullduggery to the American public. Repeating thing s that are wrong makes them right – if you repeat them often enough. Which is exactly how Josef Goebbels persuaded the German people that Hitler was their savior. He was the master of the big lie.
It was argued that the common law tradition was a far greater protection against abuse than a rigid constitution.
In the case of Ann Coulter there is no question that she is not entitled, certainly not to be “invited” to express her views. I’m not talking about her Fox-news-biased reporting, even that might be a matter of opinion. But I suggest that she brings a level of uninformed and ignorant opinion to an arena best meant for thoughtful discussion. In short – she doesn’t know what she is talking about. She seems to be able, as almost everyone at Fox News is, to make it up as she goes along. This friends, is not a matter of opinion i.e. my liberal mindset against her ultra-conservative bias. I promise you that David Frum, the Canadian thinker of the Enterprise Institute, and a dedicated conservative, would bring literacy and informed opinion to any forum. Just as William F. Buckley, the arch conservative intellectual came to the table not with wild unsupported ideas, but with his “take” on real affairs.
The one big one that lingers in my memory is one that disqualifies Ann Coulter from any kind of civil debate. I saw her as a guest on “The Fifth Estate.” Lindon McIntyre was interviewing her about her position on Iraq. She chided Canada for not joining the U.S. in the war. She said – and this is almost exactly how the conversation went:
Coulter: Canada came to our aid in Viet Nam.
McIntyre: No we didn’t. We did not go to Viet Nam.
Coulter: Yes you did.
McIntyre (exasperated): We did not.
Coulter: Well, I’ll have to get back to you on that.
If she did, I never heard about it. Coulter does not back down even when she is wrong.
She is a best-selling author. That is more to the disgrace than the credit of the millions of Americans who bought her book. They are the people who also flocked to the bookstores for Sarah Palin’s factually incorrect look at her part in history. It was long on fantasy and short on fact.
I do not, nor have I ever, supported the notion that everyone is entitled to his/her opinion. Unless you know what you are talking about, you’d better shut up until you have more facts. The most glaring and pathetic example of this is how by spending millions in advertising, Big Insurance has managed to sell their brand of skullduggery to the American public. Repeating thing s that are wrong makes them right – if you repeat them often enough. Which is exactly how Josef Goebbels persuaded the German people that Hitler was their savior. He was the master of the big lie.
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
THE PROMISED??LAND
I have tried not to weigh in publicly to the controversy in the Middle East. Partly because, as a Jew, my impartiality might be suspect, but mostly because, it seems to be a continuing dialogue of the deaf, with neither side really listening to the other. Each side is so surrounded by its own misery, or its own survival, or its own special axe to grind, that civil discourse seems impossible,
Finally, Netanyahu has got to me. I am a great fan of his father, professor emeritus of Judaic studies at Cornell University, but not of his right-wing, intractable son. Benny is a problem. I do understand his dilemma. He would like, (what politicians doesn’t) to stay in power. To do it he has to ally himself with the religious nutbars. According to a recent piece in the Atlantic Monthly, Washington is publicly denouncing the expansion of settlements in East Jerusalem, while at the same time trying to maneuver Netenyahu into a coalition with Tzipi Livni who actually has more seats than Netenyahu’s Likkud party. She is on the political left. Benny is on the right. If Washington’s quiet urging can move him, there could be a better coalition – one that did not include the religious right.
I am, as you must know, an atheist. I simply do not believe in the divine or that he magically endowed us with a book that is a complete guide to life and human behaviour. I am a humanist and an existentialist. While I am fiercely Jewish, I have no time for the fundamentalists who claim they have some kind of special link to the almighty. It is those people who spend a lot of time in prayer and study, when they are not busy making hordes of children they can’t afford to have, who need the new housing being built in East Jerusalem. They are, for the entire Jewish people, a sad kind of revenge of the cradle. In the years ahead, they will outnumber the moderates and the secular Jews. It is they who proclaim that “God gave them this land” and therefore they are entitled, by divine direction, to hold it. (No mention is made of the ethnic cleansing that is documented in the holy book when Joshua conquered and obliterated Jericho and thousands of Canaanites who happening to be living there in obvious defiance of god’s will.
I know that Netanyahu has to assuage the sensitivities of these people in order to keep their party in the government coalition. But he plays politics with human need. Shame on him.
Finally, Netanyahu has got to me. I am a great fan of his father, professor emeritus of Judaic studies at Cornell University, but not of his right-wing, intractable son. Benny is a problem. I do understand his dilemma. He would like, (what politicians doesn’t) to stay in power. To do it he has to ally himself with the religious nutbars. According to a recent piece in the Atlantic Monthly, Washington is publicly denouncing the expansion of settlements in East Jerusalem, while at the same time trying to maneuver Netenyahu into a coalition with Tzipi Livni who actually has more seats than Netenyahu’s Likkud party. She is on the political left. Benny is on the right. If Washington’s quiet urging can move him, there could be a better coalition – one that did not include the religious right.
I am, as you must know, an atheist. I simply do not believe in the divine or that he magically endowed us with a book that is a complete guide to life and human behaviour. I am a humanist and an existentialist. While I am fiercely Jewish, I have no time for the fundamentalists who claim they have some kind of special link to the almighty. It is those people who spend a lot of time in prayer and study, when they are not busy making hordes of children they can’t afford to have, who need the new housing being built in East Jerusalem. They are, for the entire Jewish people, a sad kind of revenge of the cradle. In the years ahead, they will outnumber the moderates and the secular Jews. It is they who proclaim that “God gave them this land” and therefore they are entitled, by divine direction, to hold it. (No mention is made of the ethnic cleansing that is documented in the holy book when Joshua conquered and obliterated Jericho and thousands of Canaanites who happening to be living there in obvious defiance of god’s will.
I know that Netanyahu has to assuage the sensitivities of these people in order to keep their party in the government coalition. But he plays politics with human need. Shame on him.
SCHOOL DAYS - SCHOOL DAYS
A few years ago I went back to school. It was not for all the reasons in those “get-a-career” commercials on television. I’ve already had my time in the workforce. It was reasonably successful. I have no regrets, save for the feeling I have about never getting even an undergraduate degree.
But I wonder about all the sometimes-desperate folks who are attracted to the ads that promise a whole new life; that promise a career; that promise you can do it if you just pick up the phone.
I don’t know who goes to these highly advertised career and vocational schools. I have to believe that they are people who are highly influenced by media persuasion. That push, coupled with their own sense of failure, leads them to become dental assistants or pharmacy workers. They probably have found themselves, either in the position of having no income other than some government largesse, or perhaps in a dead end job that offers no chance for anything but survival – unless you are laid off.
I have no figures to prove it, but I am betting that if such figures were available, they would reflect a rise directly connected to the drop in employment possibilities. Recessions are good for “career” schools.
Recently, an article looking at all those schools found that many of them made high-pressure promises of guaranteed job placement and did not live up to the promise. The “prepare yourself for a high paying career...” enticement has pulled in some people I am sure, who have succeeded, but has also pulled in many hapless suckers, people grasping at straws. The article points to the enormous burden of debt, because these schools are not cheap, and to the hopelessness of a graduate not making enough money to repay the loans. There is, I am sure, some kind of legislation that protects people from themselves, and makes the schools reach some kind of measurable standard.
It may be a leap, but the attraction of these schools is not unlike the attraction of the multi-million dollar lotteries: a chance to hope. There must be something good happening because the schools seem to thrive and always find new students.
I know that universities and community colleges offer continuing education courses. They don’t come with job placement facilities, but they certainly must open people’s eyes to new possibilities.
It boils down to this: there are too many failed people in our society. There are too many who, at age sixteen, quit school, got a job, bought a truck, and thus achieved their “goals.” The so-called goals are a matter of aspiration, and aspiration – the urge to be better – is not easy to come by and certainly will not be fulfilled by a quick-study miracle offered on a TV commercial.
But I wonder about all the sometimes-desperate folks who are attracted to the ads that promise a whole new life; that promise a career; that promise you can do it if you just pick up the phone.
I don’t know who goes to these highly advertised career and vocational schools. I have to believe that they are people who are highly influenced by media persuasion. That push, coupled with their own sense of failure, leads them to become dental assistants or pharmacy workers. They probably have found themselves, either in the position of having no income other than some government largesse, or perhaps in a dead end job that offers no chance for anything but survival – unless you are laid off.
I have no figures to prove it, but I am betting that if such figures were available, they would reflect a rise directly connected to the drop in employment possibilities. Recessions are good for “career” schools.
Recently, an article looking at all those schools found that many of them made high-pressure promises of guaranteed job placement and did not live up to the promise. The “prepare yourself for a high paying career...” enticement has pulled in some people I am sure, who have succeeded, but has also pulled in many hapless suckers, people grasping at straws. The article points to the enormous burden of debt, because these schools are not cheap, and to the hopelessness of a graduate not making enough money to repay the loans. There is, I am sure, some kind of legislation that protects people from themselves, and makes the schools reach some kind of measurable standard.
It may be a leap, but the attraction of these schools is not unlike the attraction of the multi-million dollar lotteries: a chance to hope. There must be something good happening because the schools seem to thrive and always find new students.
I know that universities and community colleges offer continuing education courses. They don’t come with job placement facilities, but they certainly must open people’s eyes to new possibilities.
It boils down to this: there are too many failed people in our society. There are too many who, at age sixteen, quit school, got a job, bought a truck, and thus achieved their “goals.” The so-called goals are a matter of aspiration, and aspiration – the urge to be better – is not easy to come by and certainly will not be fulfilled by a quick-study miracle offered on a TV commercial.
Saturday, March 13, 2010
STILL LOOKING FOR WORK?
One of my least favourite questions: “So, are you still on the radio?” My past clings doggedly to my present and if it exists, to my future. “Looking Ahead” should be more an example of “re-inventing oneself, not pining for the what-used-to-be.
There was a long and interesting New York Times piece about the new life being found by suddenly jobless people over 55. Most were high-flying, highly paid executives. Many simply couldn’t believe that their prosperity was suddenly over. But they weather the storm and re-rig their sails for the future. (Sorry for the blurry metaphor.)
“More than five million Americans age 55 or older run their own businesses or are otherwise self-employed, according to the Small Business Administration. And the number of self-employed people ages 55 to 64 is soaring, the agency says, climbing 52 percent from 2000 to 2007.” That is really the centerpiece of the entire article: that there is life after you get whacked, but you have to do it for yourself. Out-of-work executives do a retread on their experience and come out doing for themselves the same thing they did for big money as corporate executives.
That would not be my style. Could I, for example, have become a broadcast consultant after my career ended? In fact it “ended” many times. My first radio career ended suddenly in November of 1970 and was replaced by a television career which thrived mightily but ended, or petered out in about 1977. During those few years I worked on the news side doing features, wrote, and hosted several documentaries, appeared on many panel shows. My career in theatre as actor/director/producer was short and only sometimes fruitful. It ended without fanfare around 1983. Finding myself “on the beach” for the umpteenth time, I reluctantly returned to what everyone remembers me for: open line radio. So the eternal question is sadly, appropriate.
If this recounting seems long and dull, imagine how it must feel to the person who is living it. My biggest mistake was to cling to the vocation that produced my reputation. I should have re-invented myself. I didn’t.
During my time on TV I did a feature about mid-life crisis. I found several people who had re-invented themselves. In some cases to the extreme: they left their spouses, abandoned their friends, changed careers, and tried to start all over again. One executive went into making gourmet frozen foods. A plastic surgeon abandoned everything but his vocation. A banker moved away from banking. The central characteristic was that they no longer felt fulfilled. The people in the New York Times piece didn’t leave. They were stranded. They were marooned on the desert island of job dismissal.
To make the circle complete: if you define yourself by “what” you are instead of “who” you are, you will be trapped. You will become, as I once wrote “nothing but the sum total of your obligations.”
I salute the ambitious people who pick themselves up off the carpet. My only comment is: what a chance it would have been to start over again doing something new, refreshing, rewarding, and fulfilling. Alas, too many are in a rut. And it is that “rut” that makes retirement difficult. You have to start believing the world hasn’t come to an end and all that is left is the golf course or exotic travel. So the eternal question: what’s next?
There was a long and interesting New York Times piece about the new life being found by suddenly jobless people over 55. Most were high-flying, highly paid executives. Many simply couldn’t believe that their prosperity was suddenly over. But they weather the storm and re-rig their sails for the future. (Sorry for the blurry metaphor.)
“More than five million Americans age 55 or older run their own businesses or are otherwise self-employed, according to the Small Business Administration. And the number of self-employed people ages 55 to 64 is soaring, the agency says, climbing 52 percent from 2000 to 2007.” That is really the centerpiece of the entire article: that there is life after you get whacked, but you have to do it for yourself. Out-of-work executives do a retread on their experience and come out doing for themselves the same thing they did for big money as corporate executives.
That would not be my style. Could I, for example, have become a broadcast consultant after my career ended? In fact it “ended” many times. My first radio career ended suddenly in November of 1970 and was replaced by a television career which thrived mightily but ended, or petered out in about 1977. During those few years I worked on the news side doing features, wrote, and hosted several documentaries, appeared on many panel shows. My career in theatre as actor/director/producer was short and only sometimes fruitful. It ended without fanfare around 1983. Finding myself “on the beach” for the umpteenth time, I reluctantly returned to what everyone remembers me for: open line radio. So the eternal question is sadly, appropriate.
If this recounting seems long and dull, imagine how it must feel to the person who is living it. My biggest mistake was to cling to the vocation that produced my reputation. I should have re-invented myself. I didn’t.
During my time on TV I did a feature about mid-life crisis. I found several people who had re-invented themselves. In some cases to the extreme: they left their spouses, abandoned their friends, changed careers, and tried to start all over again. One executive went into making gourmet frozen foods. A plastic surgeon abandoned everything but his vocation. A banker moved away from banking. The central characteristic was that they no longer felt fulfilled. The people in the New York Times piece didn’t leave. They were stranded. They were marooned on the desert island of job dismissal.
To make the circle complete: if you define yourself by “what” you are instead of “who” you are, you will be trapped. You will become, as I once wrote “nothing but the sum total of your obligations.”
I salute the ambitious people who pick themselves up off the carpet. My only comment is: what a chance it would have been to start over again doing something new, refreshing, rewarding, and fulfilling. Alas, too many are in a rut. And it is that “rut” that makes retirement difficult. You have to start believing the world hasn’t come to an end and all that is left is the golf course or exotic travel. So the eternal question: what’s next?
Friday, March 12, 2010
BUMPER STICKER "TRUTHS"
Watching MSNBC, the loudest liberal voice on TV, I was pleased to hear some good old-fashioned smarts. It was about how the Republicans always find the high ground when it comes to sound bytes and slogans, while the Democrats problem is that they are too “nuanced.”
Translated, it means that if you take a simplistic view of reality it is easy to make sense with something that fits on a bumper sticker. It needs no thinking. On the other hand, “nuanced” means than the problems and their solutions are far too complex to be reduced to a simple sound byte. The evidence presented was that when it comes to Health Care the Republicans sing a song of disaster and put it in really idiotically simple terms like “Death Panels.” The rise of the Tea Party movement is nothing but a pot shot at sanity using empty sloganeering and talking points like less government and down with Socialism. Easy. Quick. Persuasive. Most of all, the person they reach does not have to exert himself intellectually.
What the speaker on MSNBC said was that the Democrats should be selling health care with scare tactics. I thought of one that would work: “Will you be the next to lose it?” Capitalizing on the fact that tens of thousands of ordinary Americans are dropped from the rolls of health insurers every week, the slogan says “You could be next.” It might shake the frightened people who don’t want change because they are already protected.
Now I read that a certain group (not all thank you) of Evangelicals in America is uniting in a more nuanced campaign to put Evolution back on the front page in education. They have been been demanding critical discussion in schools about Evolution versus “Intelligent Design.” Now they have found another one: global warming. The same people who want to promote Intelligent Design over Evolution now want to promote “both sides” of the climate change issue, giving legitimacy to the global warming deniers. In so doing, they will broaden their platform from legitimizing Biblical "truth” to the larger issue of freedom of speech.
Here’s where the difference between “nuance” (read that informed and questioning) and “knee jerk” (read that “I don’t know nothing” about science but I know what I believe.”)
I have just finished reading the most powerful book I have ever read on climate change: “Under A Green Sky.” The sky being the tropical sky of the Eocene period when there were no ice caps and palm trees grew above what is now the Arctic Circle.
The author Peter D. Ward is a paleontologist. He examines the history of the world through fossils and minute examination of strata laid down millions, even billions of years ago.
“impact” theory – i.e. a huge meteor hitting Earth and causing an endless winter. I won’t try to go into it (and this is exactly where the bumper sticker mentality wins out, because “going into it” requires a lot of patience and a little scholarship) but they have demonstrated that extinctions were far more gradual (in geological terms – millions of years) and were as a result of rising and toxic levels of carbon dioxide and hydrogen sulphide. Now perhaps you see what I mean. This is only a shadow of the scientific explanation and I can see the simpletons going glassy-eyed.
I am not sure if this attitude reflects a “dumbing down” of the general public, or simply an unwillingness to set aside cherished, however wrong, notions.
“Under A Green Sky” nails it, but not for the chronically and willingly uninformed. Heaven help democracy!
Translated, it means that if you take a simplistic view of reality it is easy to make sense with something that fits on a bumper sticker. It needs no thinking. On the other hand, “nuanced” means than the problems and their solutions are far too complex to be reduced to a simple sound byte. The evidence presented was that when it comes to Health Care the Republicans sing a song of disaster and put it in really idiotically simple terms like “Death Panels.” The rise of the Tea Party movement is nothing but a pot shot at sanity using empty sloganeering and talking points like less government and down with Socialism. Easy. Quick. Persuasive. Most of all, the person they reach does not have to exert himself intellectually.
What the speaker on MSNBC said was that the Democrats should be selling health care with scare tactics. I thought of one that would work: “Will you be the next to lose it?” Capitalizing on the fact that tens of thousands of ordinary Americans are dropped from the rolls of health insurers every week, the slogan says “You could be next.” It might shake the frightened people who don’t want change because they are already protected.
Now I read that a certain group (not all thank you) of Evangelicals in America is uniting in a more nuanced campaign to put Evolution back on the front page in education. They have been been demanding critical discussion in schools about Evolution versus “Intelligent Design.” Now they have found another one: global warming. The same people who want to promote Intelligent Design over Evolution now want to promote “both sides” of the climate change issue, giving legitimacy to the global warming deniers. In so doing, they will broaden their platform from legitimizing Biblical "truth” to the larger issue of freedom of speech.
Here’s where the difference between “nuance” (read that informed and questioning) and “knee jerk” (read that “I don’t know nothing” about science but I know what I believe.”)
I have just finished reading the most powerful book I have ever read on climate change: “Under A Green Sky.” The sky being the tropical sky of the Eocene period when there were no ice caps and palm trees grew above what is now the Arctic Circle.
The author Peter D. Ward is a paleontologist. He examines the history of the world through fossils and minute examination of strata laid down millions, even billions of years ago.
“impact” theory – i.e. a huge meteor hitting Earth and causing an endless winter. I won’t try to go into it (and this is exactly where the bumper sticker mentality wins out, because “going into it” requires a lot of patience and a little scholarship) but they have demonstrated that extinctions were far more gradual (in geological terms – millions of years) and were as a result of rising and toxic levels of carbon dioxide and hydrogen sulphide. Now perhaps you see what I mean. This is only a shadow of the scientific explanation and I can see the simpletons going glassy-eyed.
I am not sure if this attitude reflects a “dumbing down” of the general public, or simply an unwillingness to set aside cherished, however wrong, notions.
“Under A Green Sky” nails it, but not for the chronically and willingly uninformed. Heaven help democracy!
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
THE DIRTIEST GAME IN TOWN
Does anyone still need convincing that there are bad guys and good guys? It is not a matter of opinion. I know, I know. You keep harping on “everyone is entitled to an opinion.” Everyone is entitled to an informed opinion. If you believe that America is right to tell Europe to solve its own problem – you are wrong. Dead wrong. If you believe that the problems in Greece, Spain, Portugal, and the once thriving “Celtic Tiger” Ireland should solve their own problems – you are wrong. If you think Iceland should be allowed to rot in its own bankruptcy – you are wrong.
Sorry. It is never a matter of opinion when the facts are in plain sight. If you believe that it is “fact” that America, more than any developed country in the world, is held captive by its ideology – you are dead right.
Witness the Obama White House declaring that it is not America’s business to curb the madness of gambling with derivatives. So afraid is the White House of the disfavour of Wall street, it is willing to let Greece (and perhaps all the others) fall victim to the unrestricted interference of American banks like Goldman Sachs. Proof? Look at the “advisors” the president has surrounded himself with – all Wall street guys. From Timothy Geithner to Larry Somers they are all deeply mired in the orthodoxy of the “investment” industry. And derivatives are an investment about as much as beTting the farm on a hot tip at the racetrack. So, even though the poor, beleaguered and impotent SEC has tried to bring derivatives and hedge funds under control – doing that still appears to be contrary to American buccaneer economics.
Goldman Sachs made $300 million on the derivatives it put in place to mask the Greek bankruptcy. Critics of the financial establishment are right when they say these financial instruments would be illegal even in a casino.
There will be no hope for change unless America is ready to lead the way- even at the expense of making the money barons angry. It is ironic that Obama levels his guns against the greed and selfishness of the health insurance companies, but exempts the big investment bankers. He has to realize that he is losing political points on Main street. He has to realize that he has squandered the good will that Americans bestowed on him during the election campaign. He has caved. And the world suffers for it.
Sorry. It is never a matter of opinion when the facts are in plain sight. If you believe that it is “fact” that America, more than any developed country in the world, is held captive by its ideology – you are dead right.
Witness the Obama White House declaring that it is not America’s business to curb the madness of gambling with derivatives. So afraid is the White House of the disfavour of Wall street, it is willing to let Greece (and perhaps all the others) fall victim to the unrestricted interference of American banks like Goldman Sachs. Proof? Look at the “advisors” the president has surrounded himself with – all Wall street guys. From Timothy Geithner to Larry Somers they are all deeply mired in the orthodoxy of the “investment” industry. And derivatives are an investment about as much as beTting the farm on a hot tip at the racetrack. So, even though the poor, beleaguered and impotent SEC has tried to bring derivatives and hedge funds under control – doing that still appears to be contrary to American buccaneer economics.
Goldman Sachs made $300 million on the derivatives it put in place to mask the Greek bankruptcy. Critics of the financial establishment are right when they say these financial instruments would be illegal even in a casino.
There will be no hope for change unless America is ready to lead the way- even at the expense of making the money barons angry. It is ironic that Obama levels his guns against the greed and selfishness of the health insurance companies, but exempts the big investment bankers. He has to realize that he is losing political points on Main street. He has to realize that he has squandered the good will that Americans bestowed on him during the election campaign. He has caved. And the world suffers for it.
GREAT ONE'S DON'T FALTER
Just the other day, someone asked me if I was still doing any radio. (I am always asked about my radio “career” as if I had never done anything else. The past haunts me.) It was at the Andy Barrie farewell, and it was another of those aging fans who remember me for my Open Line radio days. (I saw rankling because I really did do other things.) Echoes of “old soldiers never die…” and I have faded away. As I always say, sometimes grudgingly, “that was then – this is now.”
Lying in bed at night, collecting thoughts and recollecting memories, I found myself returning to memories of one of the greatest men I ever knew, or at least partly new.
During my years on the news side at CBC TV, I was sent to interview a physician who was visiting Baycrest Centre. He was the man who virtually “invented” geriatrics – the study of aging. A little wisp of a man with a withered arm, a published poet from Cambridge university in England, a man who would later rise to fame in the world of sexuality – he was Alex Comfort.
The geriatric centre at Baycrest was opening and there was no one in the world better to help it come to life, than this remarkable gerontologist. A physician, a scientist, a poet, and a man who devoted himself to understanding the process of aging. Perhaps if he were now to examine “Looking Ahead” he would congratulate me for not caving in.
A few years later I met him again. This time he was not a physician known only to insiders, but a world renowned expert on sexuality. He had written and illustrated:”The Joy of Sex,” which was followed by “More Joy.” The very explicit drawings were perhaps the most compelling element of the book. Comfort, having celebrated aging, now celebrated sexual behaviour and unabashedly, the joy of it.
By now he had moved to California where he became, thanks perhaps to the book, part of the:”touchy-feely” movement that was all the rage in the 70s. The “encounter” group was dominant. Erhard’s EST movement was in full swing. When I interviewed him he had gone from poetry to a kind of loving prurience. (I use the word positively, because he was a man who understood lust.)
He and his wife were part of the "encounter" group movement. He told me about how they spent time at Sandstone (I really forget the name) but it was a place where you and your loved one “got naked” and sat among other naked couples touching and enjoying. I remember picturing Comfort, the little wisp of a man and his short, pudgy, or to be uncharitable “dumpy” little wife – blissfully touching each other in wonderful, soaring, sexually joyful contact. He, always the poet, said “Larry – you can’t imagine what a turn-on it was. Cool.”
It is more than a memory. It is reminder that there is so much to look forward to. It is a reminder that none of us should mourn the passage of time, but treasure the moments ahead.
Last night, my wife, in one of her dream-state moments, thrashed about the bed and seemed to be throwing something at me. She remembered the dream. She was furious because, in the dream, I no longer cared about our marriage. Maybe that’s what brought me back to Alex Comfort and his own special brand of “Joy.”
Lying in bed at night, collecting thoughts and recollecting memories, I found myself returning to memories of one of the greatest men I ever knew, or at least partly new.
During my years on the news side at CBC TV, I was sent to interview a physician who was visiting Baycrest Centre. He was the man who virtually “invented” geriatrics – the study of aging. A little wisp of a man with a withered arm, a published poet from Cambridge university in England, a man who would later rise to fame in the world of sexuality – he was Alex Comfort.
The geriatric centre at Baycrest was opening and there was no one in the world better to help it come to life, than this remarkable gerontologist. A physician, a scientist, a poet, and a man who devoted himself to understanding the process of aging. Perhaps if he were now to examine “Looking Ahead” he would congratulate me for not caving in.
A few years later I met him again. This time he was not a physician known only to insiders, but a world renowned expert on sexuality. He had written and illustrated:”The Joy of Sex,” which was followed by “More Joy.” The very explicit drawings were perhaps the most compelling element of the book. Comfort, having celebrated aging, now celebrated sexual behaviour and unabashedly, the joy of it.
By now he had moved to California where he became, thanks perhaps to the book, part of the:”touchy-feely” movement that was all the rage in the 70s. The “encounter” group was dominant. Erhard’s EST movement was in full swing. When I interviewed him he had gone from poetry to a kind of loving prurience. (I use the word positively, because he was a man who understood lust.)
He and his wife were part of the "encounter" group movement. He told me about how they spent time at Sandstone (I really forget the name) but it was a place where you and your loved one “got naked” and sat among other naked couples touching and enjoying. I remember picturing Comfort, the little wisp of a man and his short, pudgy, or to be uncharitable “dumpy” little wife – blissfully touching each other in wonderful, soaring, sexually joyful contact. He, always the poet, said “Larry – you can’t imagine what a turn-on it was. Cool.”
It is more than a memory. It is reminder that there is so much to look forward to. It is a reminder that none of us should mourn the passage of time, but treasure the moments ahead.
Last night, my wife, in one of her dream-state moments, thrashed about the bed and seemed to be throwing something at me. She remembered the dream. She was furious because, in the dream, I no longer cared about our marriage. Maybe that’s what brought me back to Alex Comfort and his own special brand of “Joy.”
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
LOVING WHERE YOU LIVE
Recently I watched a man come out of his shop, cross the street, and pick up a bundle of paper that was blowing in the wind; blowing in the wind in our pretty little downtown park. I congratulated him. “Someone’s got to do it,” he responded.
In a nutshell, that’s what caring about the city you live in is all about.
Our Toronto Star has announced a program to attract citizens to tell them what they would like to do or have done make our city better. They cite a woman who, all on her own initiative started a program of tree planting. They have recruited a number of bloggers to write about how to return our city to its once-widely heralded slogan as “the city that works.” (They didn’t invite me and my blog.)
What I say is about the city I live in: Toronto. It can be said about almost any city anywhere and the responsibility of its citizens to make it a better place.
There is not one big thing that will remake any city. The big projects, like the Olympics in Vancouver, do help, but when those mega-things have been done, with the passing of time. We lose interest.
Toronto used to be known everywhere as a very clean city. That was about all we had to offer since our restaurants were abysmal and our architecture stuffy and our local politicians grounded in old-fashioned values. I remember the fight mayor Phil Givens had when he wanted to put a Henry Moore sculpture in front of City Hall. The council was outraged. The piece, like everything of Henry Moore, was abstract. The price was $100,000. Citizens and council gasped and recoiled. Phil went ahead and through private subscription, bought the piece “The Archer’ and installed it in our city hall square. Visitors from everywhere take pictures of it. In fact, it was Phil’s intervention that led to our AGO being given probably the world’s largest collection of Henry Moore sculpture, most of it the plasters he used to make his final bronzes. In fact, if you know the city, the Henry Moore gallery was created especially to house the collection, and the gallery was left untouched when the Frank Gehry renovation happened. The fitting finale was that Phil was remembered for his audacity and was not re-elected.
But that was then and this is now. That was when, with unwarranted grandiosity, Toronto kept referring to itself as a “world-class city.” We stopped doing that because you can only get so much mileage out of the world’s (used to be) tallest free-standing structure, and the clamshell architectural beauty of Revell’s City Hall. We sort of stood still. Our subway system moldered away after its brilliant beginning. (But remember, Toronto has the third largest urban transit system in North America.)
I have also written at length about how Torontonians, led by the chattering classes of the print media, are forever reminding us, incorrectly, of how Chicago has created a waterfront and we have simply put in condos and a gruesome looking elevated expressway.
But to return to where I began: caring about the city. If I were running for office (my wife would leave me) I would campaign on a platform that included a very high priority for cleaning up our streets of their litter careless unfeeling people lave behind. Coffee cups everywhere. Newspapers flying in the wind. Cigarette buts by the hundred on the sidewalks. It would be small things but it would matter.
Finally, I find myself thinking about what we all could do. Making a city great is not about what the political bosses want to put into it, buildings, attractions, street fairs etc. but what every citizen want to do. Of course, I could borrow from John Kennedy’s epic statement and say: “Ask not what your city can do for you, ask what you can do for your city.”
In a nutshell, that’s what caring about the city you live in is all about.
Our Toronto Star has announced a program to attract citizens to tell them what they would like to do or have done make our city better. They cite a woman who, all on her own initiative started a program of tree planting. They have recruited a number of bloggers to write about how to return our city to its once-widely heralded slogan as “the city that works.” (They didn’t invite me and my blog.)
What I say is about the city I live in: Toronto. It can be said about almost any city anywhere and the responsibility of its citizens to make it a better place.
There is not one big thing that will remake any city. The big projects, like the Olympics in Vancouver, do help, but when those mega-things have been done, with the passing of time. We lose interest.
Toronto used to be known everywhere as a very clean city. That was about all we had to offer since our restaurants were abysmal and our architecture stuffy and our local politicians grounded in old-fashioned values. I remember the fight mayor Phil Givens had when he wanted to put a Henry Moore sculpture in front of City Hall. The council was outraged. The piece, like everything of Henry Moore, was abstract. The price was $100,000. Citizens and council gasped and recoiled. Phil went ahead and through private subscription, bought the piece “The Archer’ and installed it in our city hall square. Visitors from everywhere take pictures of it. In fact, it was Phil’s intervention that led to our AGO being given probably the world’s largest collection of Henry Moore sculpture, most of it the plasters he used to make his final bronzes. In fact, if you know the city, the Henry Moore gallery was created especially to house the collection, and the gallery was left untouched when the Frank Gehry renovation happened. The fitting finale was that Phil was remembered for his audacity and was not re-elected.
But that was then and this is now. That was when, with unwarranted grandiosity, Toronto kept referring to itself as a “world-class city.” We stopped doing that because you can only get so much mileage out of the world’s (used to be) tallest free-standing structure, and the clamshell architectural beauty of Revell’s City Hall. We sort of stood still. Our subway system moldered away after its brilliant beginning. (But remember, Toronto has the third largest urban transit system in North America.)
I have also written at length about how Torontonians, led by the chattering classes of the print media, are forever reminding us, incorrectly, of how Chicago has created a waterfront and we have simply put in condos and a gruesome looking elevated expressway.
But to return to where I began: caring about the city. If I were running for office (my wife would leave me) I would campaign on a platform that included a very high priority for cleaning up our streets of their litter careless unfeeling people lave behind. Coffee cups everywhere. Newspapers flying in the wind. Cigarette buts by the hundred on the sidewalks. It would be small things but it would matter.
Finally, I find myself thinking about what we all could do. Making a city great is not about what the political bosses want to put into it, buildings, attractions, street fairs etc. but what every citizen want to do. Of course, I could borrow from John Kennedy’s epic statement and say: “Ask not what your city can do for you, ask what you can do for your city.”
I'M NO PSYCHOLOGIST BUT...
It is axiomatic among psychologists and psychiatrists that often the behaviour people hate most is the one they hate most in themselves. I believe they call it “projection.”
This is not, because I am not an authority, a lesson in undergraduate pop psychology,
Just a reflection on a couple of the most recent interesting revelations. Sarah Palin hates the idea of “socialized” medicine, health care with “Death Panels” and rationing of care. Now it revealed, she revealed it herself that when they lived in Skagway, Alaska they would take the ferry to Whitehorse for health care. How she arranged to get it without a health care card I can’t imagine. If she did it fraudulently, then the deed is even darker.
Today I read that a California State senator, conservative Republican Roy Ashburn, an ardent foe of Gay Rights has “come out.” He was tracked down in a gay bar and confessed. And wasn’t there another conservative lawmaker who was caught last year doing unspeakable things in a men’s public lavatory?
My favourite of these self-haters has to be J. Edgar Hoover. Back in the 70s I interviewed a Washington journalist who wrote an exhaustive study of the F.B.I. I remember being startled by what I read. I asked him “Is Hoover a homosexual?” His reply: “Of course!” That was many years before all the post mortem disclosures about Hoover. Clive Tolson, his number two man was probably also his lover. Stories surfaced about Hoover’s obsession with cross-dressing. Yet here was the man who targeted the gay community with utter ferocity. He raided gay bathhouses; he allied with Roy Cohn, the McCarthy lawyer and homosexual subject of the play “Angels in America.” Hoover never married and it was said that his favourite person was Shirley Temple.
“Projection” may not always have negative results. Perhaps someone who is secretly a bigot and hates himself for it, will present himself as a fighter for human rights, and will actually work hard at it. It becomes a kind of self-cleansing. But I’m now in way over my head. I apologize to the professionals for my dabbling.
The Sarah Palin story and the California state senator “coming out” were just too good to ignore. Roy Ashburn, a conservative Republican,
This is not, because I am not an authority, a lesson in undergraduate pop psychology,
Just a reflection on a couple of the most recent interesting revelations. Sarah Palin hates the idea of “socialized” medicine, health care with “Death Panels” and rationing of care. Now it revealed, she revealed it herself that when they lived in Skagway, Alaska they would take the ferry to Whitehorse for health care. How she arranged to get it without a health care card I can’t imagine. If she did it fraudulently, then the deed is even darker.
Today I read that a California State senator, conservative Republican Roy Ashburn, an ardent foe of Gay Rights has “come out.” He was tracked down in a gay bar and confessed. And wasn’t there another conservative lawmaker who was caught last year doing unspeakable things in a men’s public lavatory?
My favourite of these self-haters has to be J. Edgar Hoover. Back in the 70s I interviewed a Washington journalist who wrote an exhaustive study of the F.B.I. I remember being startled by what I read. I asked him “Is Hoover a homosexual?” His reply: “Of course!” That was many years before all the post mortem disclosures about Hoover. Clive Tolson, his number two man was probably also his lover. Stories surfaced about Hoover’s obsession with cross-dressing. Yet here was the man who targeted the gay community with utter ferocity. He raided gay bathhouses; he allied with Roy Cohn, the McCarthy lawyer and homosexual subject of the play “Angels in America.” Hoover never married and it was said that his favourite person was Shirley Temple.
“Projection” may not always have negative results. Perhaps someone who is secretly a bigot and hates himself for it, will present himself as a fighter for human rights, and will actually work hard at it. It becomes a kind of self-cleansing. But I’m now in way over my head. I apologize to the professionals for my dabbling.
The Sarah Palin story and the California state senator “coming out” were just too good to ignore. Roy Ashburn, a conservative Republican,
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