When I started writing this blog I hoped that it would be more than simply my comment and then your opinion if you cared. However, what I wanted most was to have a give-and-take among my readers.I hoped what I wrote would stimulate cross-talk, discussion, argument, disagreement, not only with me but with other readers.
Alas, I have not managed to find my way into that format with the energy generated by differing opinions. Your response would come only to me.
However, there is one way to generate cross-talk: that is to post your answers and let the readers join the discussion.
After my recent blog about "irrelevance" I got one response that I would like to share with all of you.
"Dear Larry:
Your recent cri de coeur was touching. You assumed that "like minded people" of your own generation would sympathize with your admonishments and condemnations, your deep loathing of misplaced apostrophes and those high English hedges that block your view of the ancient homes of the rich and privileged. You preach and preach, as though those who might read your blog didn't already know that the American Right is fraught with religious nuts and pro-lynch rednecks and gun-freaks. Your tedious rants are totally unnecessary and then you blame your readers for not getting it.
Would you want to listen to yourself? You can't even attend a concert without delivering a Mister know-all lecture on the composer and the artist and all that goes with it.
I felt sorry for you, jamming around tourist trap St. Ives, when only a few miles away, in the exquisite Tudor town of Totnes you could have been taking the little cruise boat down the river Dart when the tide was going out, seen the glorious countryside all the way to ancient Dartmouth, eaten the world's best fish and chips near the docks, and, when the tide turned a few hours later, puttered back upriver to Totnes where there are lovely pubs and hostelries and wonderful food to be had in a town built in the reign of Henry VII, not a straight line on the whole street.
What have you learned in 83 years? What truths have you discovered? Where do you find beauty in your life. What makes you happy? What do you love?
I wish you well
(name omitted)
Monday, October 17, 2011
Saturday, October 15, 2011
FORGITTEN PROMISES - OR JUST MISLAID?
FORGOTTEN PROMISES
When I launched my blog I was hoping to attract hundreds – no – make that thousands – of like-minded people with common needs, aims, and ideas. It was all about the retired, and the soon-to-be retired. It was all about staying relevant in a world that seems to be consumed with youth and needs of a rising generation.
I’ve missed the point. Instead of trying to rally like-minded and like-aged people around me with cogent and clear aims, I went back to being who I always was: a left-leaning social critic and burr under the saddle of the young and/or the privileged.
So my rants, which have diminished in number, partly because of my own physical shortcomings and partly because I realized I was singing all the old songs, go, un-listened to.
So I find myself today, far from physically well and 83 years old, striving for relevancy.
I have missed the boat. Instead of uniting people of like minds, I have gone back to be a crabby curmudgeon – railing at everything. I suspect that the railing may still reflect my sense of social injustice, but in fact, I am boring myself to tears. What, I ask myself, would I be saying and writing is I still had whatever media prominence I once had? Who would listen? Who would join the chorus? Very few people have, at least partly because they are, like me, a lot older and more tired than they used to be.
I ask myself what I can possibly say about the rain wreck that characterizes the American political scene? I ask myself why it is that the suburbs tend to be politically right wing and the urban centres a little more to the left. There are simple, perhaps too simple answers: in the 905 for example, the ring of suburbs and small towns surrounding Toronto, the central issue still seems to be taxes. They don’t ant to pay taxes. They comfort their stubbornness, not to self-interest, but with the fact that governments and politicians want to tax and spend. We get taxed. They spend.
It is prevalent. It is epidemic. It is Greece where the national pastime seems to be to outsmart the tax collectors, or simply to cheat. It is Ontario where the Tories’ election campaign consisted mainly of the notion that higher taxes kills jobs and that lower taxes create jobs. Utter nonsense, but it appeals to the discomforted people living from pay check to pay check with a huge mortgage overhanging their hopes; it is fuel for their political choices.
A few days ago on PBS, I watched a “debate” between Michigan Democrat Carl Levin and Georgia Republican Johnny Isakson. More of the same. The Republican mouthed the right-wing boilerplate about how government was stifling enterprise and initiative, and reinforcing that point of view with the “fact” that the proposed tax of people earning a million or more would hurt small business. The Democrat said, and he wins it statistically, that about 1% of small business earns over 1 million. (By the way, many of those so-called small businesses are hedge funds and their investment brothers.) But we are in a generation where emotion trumps statistics, where prejudice trumps knowledge and where an entire generation contributes to what we now call “post literate society.”
Finally thought, I know. I am a small voice in the howling wind of the illiterate landslide. I am too old, too cranky, and too irrelevant to be listened to. The only question I have let is: why do I bother.
When I launched my blog I was hoping to attract hundreds – no – make that thousands – of like-minded people with common needs, aims, and ideas. It was all about the retired, and the soon-to-be retired. It was all about staying relevant in a world that seems to be consumed with youth and needs of a rising generation.
I’ve missed the point. Instead of trying to rally like-minded and like-aged people around me with cogent and clear aims, I went back to being who I always was: a left-leaning social critic and burr under the saddle of the young and/or the privileged.
So my rants, which have diminished in number, partly because of my own physical shortcomings and partly because I realized I was singing all the old songs, go, un-listened to.
So I find myself today, far from physically well and 83 years old, striving for relevancy.
I have missed the boat. Instead of uniting people of like minds, I have gone back to be a crabby curmudgeon – railing at everything. I suspect that the railing may still reflect my sense of social injustice, but in fact, I am boring myself to tears. What, I ask myself, would I be saying and writing is I still had whatever media prominence I once had? Who would listen? Who would join the chorus? Very few people have, at least partly because they are, like me, a lot older and more tired than they used to be.
I ask myself what I can possibly say about the rain wreck that characterizes the American political scene? I ask myself why it is that the suburbs tend to be politically right wing and the urban centres a little more to the left. There are simple, perhaps too simple answers: in the 905 for example, the ring of suburbs and small towns surrounding Toronto, the central issue still seems to be taxes. They don’t ant to pay taxes. They comfort their stubbornness, not to self-interest, but with the fact that governments and politicians want to tax and spend. We get taxed. They spend.
It is prevalent. It is epidemic. It is Greece where the national pastime seems to be to outsmart the tax collectors, or simply to cheat. It is Ontario where the Tories’ election campaign consisted mainly of the notion that higher taxes kills jobs and that lower taxes create jobs. Utter nonsense, but it appeals to the discomforted people living from pay check to pay check with a huge mortgage overhanging their hopes; it is fuel for their political choices.
A few days ago on PBS, I watched a “debate” between Michigan Democrat Carl Levin and Georgia Republican Johnny Isakson. More of the same. The Republican mouthed the right-wing boilerplate about how government was stifling enterprise and initiative, and reinforcing that point of view with the “fact” that the proposed tax of people earning a million or more would hurt small business. The Democrat said, and he wins it statistically, that about 1% of small business earns over 1 million. (By the way, many of those so-called small businesses are hedge funds and their investment brothers.) But we are in a generation where emotion trumps statistics, where prejudice trumps knowledge and where an entire generation contributes to what we now call “post literate society.”
Finally thought, I know. I am a small voice in the howling wind of the illiterate landslide. I am too old, too cranky, and too irrelevant to be listened to. The only question I have let is: why do I bother.
Thursday, October 13, 2011
NOTES FROM A POST LITERATE SOCIETY
Caught on CBC Newsworld morning weather forecast Thursday October 13: "the rain has not arrived "as of yet."
Caught on same Wednesday October 12: a different weather person but she managed to insert "at this point in time" three times in one forecast.
Same program same day, interview with the newly elected premier of Newfoundland - premier said "at this point in time" twice!
Regularly on CBC News weather from the most amiable and dependable meteorologist: the rain blew in "Off of" the lake.
It doesn't really matter except that an organization as important as the CBC is giving licence to massacre the language.
This is the first in a series of "who cares anyway" on the misuse and degradation of language. The generation of text-messagers needs no more encouragement. They are already deeply into the massacre of language and the end of person-to-person communication.
Caught on same Wednesday October 12: a different weather person but she managed to insert "at this point in time" three times in one forecast.
Same program same day, interview with the newly elected premier of Newfoundland - premier said "at this point in time" twice!
Regularly on CBC News weather from the most amiable and dependable meteorologist: the rain blew in "Off of" the lake.
It doesn't really matter except that an organization as important as the CBC is giving licence to massacre the language.
This is the first in a series of "who cares anyway" on the misuse and degradation of language. The generation of text-messagers needs no more encouragement. They are already deeply into the massacre of language and the end of person-to-person communication.
Sunday, October 9, 2011
GIVING 'EM WHAT THEY WANT
One of marketing’s most compelling imperatives is that to succeed with anything – product, service, fashion – you name it- give people what they want.
So the CBC brass can hold their noses and present week-in-week out red-neckery in the service of “giving people what they want.” Don Cherry is at least as outrageous as the most outrageous performer/demagogue that has ever graced mass media. He is a fool. He is also rich. Bruce Dowbiggin, one of the media’s most thoughtful writers went on at length about the pros and cons of Cherry’s latest rant. And the CBC will continue to say he is too valuable i.e. he brings in a lot of revenue, to remove him.
If he does bring in revenue is it because the CBC is stubbornly keeping him employed? Certainly not – Cherry is an acquired taste – like ultimate fighting, another
”sport” that made it mainstream because is what “what so many people wanted.”
I don’t think we should try to be arbiters of public taste. It is what it is. If people want, for example to buy a house on a street with every house dominated by what are called “snouthouses” then that is their taste. The snouthouse is the projecting two car monstrosity that dominates the front elevation of thousands of cookie-cutter suburban houses. And it is what people want. Developers keep telling us that they build “what people want.” A few years ago an architect couple from Florida introduced the novel idea of houses with garages in the back. The front of the house would be dominated not by that two car snouthouse and its accompanying two car driveway where most of the time people park their cars, making the street look a little like a used car lot. But hey – that’s what people want. When I last checked the only place this “novel” idea took root was in Markham
May I cynically suggest, and I am not the first, that marketers know how to plug into and create a herd mentality. They aren’t always right. But in the case of a loud-mouth hockey guru, or organized killer-style fighting, or the subdivision houses that all look the same and are “saved” by having a slightly different front elevation or a different style from door, it seems to be “what people want.”
One has to believe that Hockey Night in Canada is an empire in itself. They make the decisions. If not, and the CBC has some concern over the emphasis on violence, what stops them from decreeing that when a fight begins the cameras do not pay any attention to it. To the contrary – it’s become an essential part of TV coverage
It is not up to any of us to declare Don Cherry persona non grata. It is up to people who tune in to Hockey Night in Canada, as much for Cherry as for the Leafs. I admit that I would tune in just to be there for the next outrageous, homophobic, racist, or brutal opinion the master was going to hurl at me. However, even I have a limit to my patience. After Cherry disgraced himself with his absurd welcome to Mayor Rib Ford and his idiotic comments about bike riding socialists, I was determined, even as a dedicated hockey fan, to be elsewhere when the first period ended.
Frankly, I don’t know how Ron McLean puts up with it. He takes his conversation with the motor-mouth as legitimate. He is made to look foolish, lurking in the corner, trying not to blush when his partner erupts in idiocy.
No my friends, it is not up to the CBC to cut him off. It is up to all of us to ignore him, and let it be known that he is being ignored.
So the CBC brass can hold their noses and present week-in-week out red-neckery in the service of “giving people what they want.” Don Cherry is at least as outrageous as the most outrageous performer/demagogue that has ever graced mass media. He is a fool. He is also rich. Bruce Dowbiggin, one of the media’s most thoughtful writers went on at length about the pros and cons of Cherry’s latest rant. And the CBC will continue to say he is too valuable i.e. he brings in a lot of revenue, to remove him.
If he does bring in revenue is it because the CBC is stubbornly keeping him employed? Certainly not – Cherry is an acquired taste – like ultimate fighting, another
”sport” that made it mainstream because is what “what so many people wanted.”
I don’t think we should try to be arbiters of public taste. It is what it is. If people want, for example to buy a house on a street with every house dominated by what are called “snouthouses” then that is their taste. The snouthouse is the projecting two car monstrosity that dominates the front elevation of thousands of cookie-cutter suburban houses. And it is what people want. Developers keep telling us that they build “what people want.” A few years ago an architect couple from Florida introduced the novel idea of houses with garages in the back. The front of the house would be dominated not by that two car snouthouse and its accompanying two car driveway where most of the time people park their cars, making the street look a little like a used car lot. But hey – that’s what people want. When I last checked the only place this “novel” idea took root was in Markham
May I cynically suggest, and I am not the first, that marketers know how to plug into and create a herd mentality. They aren’t always right. But in the case of a loud-mouth hockey guru, or organized killer-style fighting, or the subdivision houses that all look the same and are “saved” by having a slightly different front elevation or a different style from door, it seems to be “what people want.”
One has to believe that Hockey Night in Canada is an empire in itself. They make the decisions. If not, and the CBC has some concern over the emphasis on violence, what stops them from decreeing that when a fight begins the cameras do not pay any attention to it. To the contrary – it’s become an essential part of TV coverage
It is not up to any of us to declare Don Cherry persona non grata. It is up to people who tune in to Hockey Night in Canada, as much for Cherry as for the Leafs. I admit that I would tune in just to be there for the next outrageous, homophobic, racist, or brutal opinion the master was going to hurl at me. However, even I have a limit to my patience. After Cherry disgraced himself with his absurd welcome to Mayor Rib Ford and his idiotic comments about bike riding socialists, I was determined, even as a dedicated hockey fan, to be elsewhere when the first period ended.
Frankly, I don’t know how Ron McLean puts up with it. He takes his conversation with the motor-mouth as legitimate. He is made to look foolish, lurking in the corner, trying not to blush when his partner erupts in idiocy.
No my friends, it is not up to the CBC to cut him off. It is up to all of us to ignore him, and let it be known that he is being ignored.
Saturday, October 1, 2011
FINALLY - WHAT DID ENGLAND GIVE ME?
I have pondered. I have stewed. I have, especially after seeing Bristol, realized that my fruitless attempt to “see” the back roads and byways of the west of England, was nothing (for me only) but a romantic notion that I could see an idyllic element that makes the countryside of the U.K. so attractive. To me – it wasn’t. Yes, the size of the hedgerows was remarkable. Their very impenetrability daunting. But how many hedgerows do I have to see? How many narrow roads to I want to travel? How often did I find myself gazing out the car window at the pattern of farms, every field lush looking and fenced in by the ubiquitous hedgerows?
The small towns and villages did have charm. The castles appealed to my sense of history. But finally I realized once again, I am an urban creature. I think that cities, great and small, are the best reflection of the national ethos. The country road rurality (is there such a word) is interesting, but bucolic. If I were, I suppose, a landscape painter, or a member of the Barbizon school I would worship the outdoors. I don’t.
I am not without care for the quaint, the old and the sometimes exotic. But I am a city person. Which is why my greatest regret was that we stuck ourselves in the little town of Thornbury (kind of like Scarborough with an English accent) when I could have spent more time exploring the historic and the modern, the re-invention of famous cities like Bristol.
I thought that the main attractions in that once-famous city would be the work of Isambard Kingdom Brunel, the engineer responsible for fulfilling the dream of regularly scheduled Atlantic crossings. The only evidence I saw of his brilliance was the steamship Great Britain, and the suspension bridge crossing the gorge of the Avon. Great things most often happen in cities. Brunel characterizes that. His Great Western Railroad was the best in Britain, his suspension bridge was a masterpiece of engineering, certainly rivalling Roeblin who designed and created the first suspension bridge over the Ohio river at Cincinnati, and the famous Brooklyn Bridge spanning the East River from Manhattan to Brooklyn. So our trip to walk the decks and peer into the cabins of the ship was an experience. The ship was built in 1843 and plied the Atlantic before being sold to a consortium that made a fortune transporting settles to Australia. It was the biggest ship ever built. It could hold 700 passengers. Its “luxury” was of course limited, but in its day she was the Queen.
Brunel was responsible for the rebirth of Bristol and its shipbuilding industry. And that is what struck me most about Bristol. There is not much one can do about the twists and turns of the urban roads designed for a more leisurely time of carriages and horses. Bristol is an example, perhaps predicted by Brunel, of what can be done to “make” a city.
Our visits there were all too brief. You become tangled in traffic and wish only to find your way home. But “home” should have been someplace like Bristol or perhaps Cardiff.
I would like to have spent at least a week roaming the streets and back alleys, savouring the wonderful way the waterfront has been reclaimed with tasteful apartment buildings.
Because it was where Giovanni Caboto (John Cabot to us) took a leaky little ship – Henry VII was a real cheapskate) and claimed Newfoundland for Britain. It was Cabot who said the cod were so numerous you could walk on water by walking on the back of them. You “fished” by just putting a bucket overboard and helping yourself.
It all began in Bristol. I asked out exchanger-hosts in Thornbury if there was anything to commemorate Bristol’s position as Britain’s premier storage house for wine from Bordeaux. He seemed puzzled by the question. But he did recognize the name Harvey’s Bristol Cream.” Maybe it dawned on him that it was a name that commemorates a grand history from the time when Britain owned Aquitaine.
So I said farewell to the cunning little towns with their wall-to-wall tea rooms and antique ships, to the rural landscape with its soaring hedgerows, and those aggressive, impatient drivers who risk their lives speeding and passing on two lane roads which are difficult to call highways.
It was not what I expected. But what did I expect?
The night we left my Anglophilia took a real beating. I have always believed, or wanted to believe, that there was something somehow a little more civilized about the British. We sat in the restaurant of the hotel in Gatwick and struck up a conversation with a couple sitting next to us. They were very friendly. They lived in a little village in the shadow of Windsor Castle. They were on their way to Tunisia where he would do a lot of drinking and play golf. I should have stopped there. She wanted me to know how it "really is" in Britain with terrorists and hordes of nasty immigrants. “They don't fit in.” I tried not to argue but told her that where we live there is harmony among the many races co-habiting our city. (Not true of course because we have our share of bigotry.) Nothing would calm her down. I felt like I was back on the radio listening to a half-baking nitwit tell me her very of the “truth.” It went something like: “They come here and are immediately put on the National Health, given money and houses. My own children can’t get a house, but they do.”
I wanted to remind her that “ her own children” had a head start, perhaps a hundred years with the benefit of a state paid education, and opportunities that they could take with no cultural or language difficulties. It was not, I would have said, the fault of some poor guy from Somalia that your kids have not succeeded. But you can’t argue with people who want to scapegoat.
It was a sad finish to the trip that started with so much optimism.
By the way, it seems my not-so-best-selling "Don't Be Blindsided by Retirement"
did not fly off the shelves. Whoever wants one can contact me and when I find out how much it will be to pay for postage. I'll mail you a book. The handling is free.
The small towns and villages did have charm. The castles appealed to my sense of history. But finally I realized once again, I am an urban creature. I think that cities, great and small, are the best reflection of the national ethos. The country road rurality (is there such a word) is interesting, but bucolic. If I were, I suppose, a landscape painter, or a member of the Barbizon school I would worship the outdoors. I don’t.
I am not without care for the quaint, the old and the sometimes exotic. But I am a city person. Which is why my greatest regret was that we stuck ourselves in the little town of Thornbury (kind of like Scarborough with an English accent) when I could have spent more time exploring the historic and the modern, the re-invention of famous cities like Bristol.
I thought that the main attractions in that once-famous city would be the work of Isambard Kingdom Brunel, the engineer responsible for fulfilling the dream of regularly scheduled Atlantic crossings. The only evidence I saw of his brilliance was the steamship Great Britain, and the suspension bridge crossing the gorge of the Avon. Great things most often happen in cities. Brunel characterizes that. His Great Western Railroad was the best in Britain, his suspension bridge was a masterpiece of engineering, certainly rivalling Roeblin who designed and created the first suspension bridge over the Ohio river at Cincinnati, and the famous Brooklyn Bridge spanning the East River from Manhattan to Brooklyn. So our trip to walk the decks and peer into the cabins of the ship was an experience. The ship was built in 1843 and plied the Atlantic before being sold to a consortium that made a fortune transporting settles to Australia. It was the biggest ship ever built. It could hold 700 passengers. Its “luxury” was of course limited, but in its day she was the Queen.
Brunel was responsible for the rebirth of Bristol and its shipbuilding industry. And that is what struck me most about Bristol. There is not much one can do about the twists and turns of the urban roads designed for a more leisurely time of carriages and horses. Bristol is an example, perhaps predicted by Brunel, of what can be done to “make” a city.
Our visits there were all too brief. You become tangled in traffic and wish only to find your way home. But “home” should have been someplace like Bristol or perhaps Cardiff.
I would like to have spent at least a week roaming the streets and back alleys, savouring the wonderful way the waterfront has been reclaimed with tasteful apartment buildings.
Because it was where Giovanni Caboto (John Cabot to us) took a leaky little ship – Henry VII was a real cheapskate) and claimed Newfoundland for Britain. It was Cabot who said the cod were so numerous you could walk on water by walking on the back of them. You “fished” by just putting a bucket overboard and helping yourself.
It all began in Bristol. I asked out exchanger-hosts in Thornbury if there was anything to commemorate Bristol’s position as Britain’s premier storage house for wine from Bordeaux. He seemed puzzled by the question. But he did recognize the name Harvey’s Bristol Cream.” Maybe it dawned on him that it was a name that commemorates a grand history from the time when Britain owned Aquitaine.
So I said farewell to the cunning little towns with their wall-to-wall tea rooms and antique ships, to the rural landscape with its soaring hedgerows, and those aggressive, impatient drivers who risk their lives speeding and passing on two lane roads which are difficult to call highways.
It was not what I expected. But what did I expect?
The night we left my Anglophilia took a real beating. I have always believed, or wanted to believe, that there was something somehow a little more civilized about the British. We sat in the restaurant of the hotel in Gatwick and struck up a conversation with a couple sitting next to us. They were very friendly. They lived in a little village in the shadow of Windsor Castle. They were on their way to Tunisia where he would do a lot of drinking and play golf. I should have stopped there. She wanted me to know how it "really is" in Britain with terrorists and hordes of nasty immigrants. “They don't fit in.” I tried not to argue but told her that where we live there is harmony among the many races co-habiting our city. (Not true of course because we have our share of bigotry.) Nothing would calm her down. I felt like I was back on the radio listening to a half-baking nitwit tell me her very of the “truth.” It went something like: “They come here and are immediately put on the National Health, given money and houses. My own children can’t get a house, but they do.”
I wanted to remind her that “ her own children” had a head start, perhaps a hundred years with the benefit of a state paid education, and opportunities that they could take with no cultural or language difficulties. It was not, I would have said, the fault of some poor guy from Somalia that your kids have not succeeded. But you can’t argue with people who want to scapegoat.
It was a sad finish to the trip that started with so much optimism.
By the way, it seems my not-so-best-selling "Don't Be Blindsided by Retirement"
did not fly off the shelves. Whoever wants one can contact me and when I find out how much it will be to pay for postage. I'll mail you a book. The handling is free.
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