It's in your genes - maybe!

Public Broadcasting is doing a series of programs on the human brain. I lucked into an episode where a panel of experts were discussing the emotions and physical reactions we call “fear.” Most interesting was the agreement among them that physical response to danger precedes cognition, i.e. the physiological response to a fear-inducing incident (such as raised hackles, sweating, increased heart rate, etc.) occurs before we are even able to recognize the danger and react to it on the thought level.

Why is this important? For one, it links us more closely genetically to the rest of the animal world; research in the area of fear when done on animals shows a remarkable similarity to research done on humans. Secondly, it means that whatever impulses lead to violence and aggression, they are built into the biological genome structures.

I grew up being told that we are “born in sin” and that we need to be washed clean of our condition in order to be redeemed, an idea I’ve often questioned. In a sense, though, the research on fear and aggression suggests that we are genetically programmed to respond with “fight or flight,” and that it is not so much about a learning of aggressive responses as it is about the curbing (or not curbing) of aggressive behaviour. In other words, fear and aggression are natural states for every creature from the fruit fly to humans. Civilization is only made possible, however by the stifling of natural impulses in the interest of community. A similar stifling among the creatures of the wild kingdoms would be disastrous.

It’s an interesting area of research. Obviously, biological impulses in general can be shown to serve survival needs. Sexual lust, for instance, is necessary to facilitate procreation and the preservation of the species. Where appropriate controls on this other “emotion” are not learned, though, it threatens the kind of cooperation that is required for a safe and functioning civilization.

Old Testament law—and New Testament reconciliation—can be described as humanity’s struggle to come to grips with the great irony presented by the emergence of human consciousness, namely that the genetic endowments with which we are born because we are biological animals must be suppressed for species-survival’s sake. An evolutionist would probably say that our misfortune is that the evolution of civilization and human invention has occurred in thousands of years while the genetic evolution required to keep pace with it requires millions of years. Civilization has rushed way ahead of biology, in other words.

Have a nice day. Curb your instincts. What a prospect!

What about Beatrice and Virgil?

The top plant is good; bottom plant is not good - the plant critic.

--“Except for luminous moments, the book's language lacks luster, and the symbols positively crash.” Michael Autrey, special to The Oregonian.

--“Beatrice and Virgil is so dull, so misguided, so pretentious that only the prospect of those millions of Pi fans could secure the interest of major publishers and a multimillion-dollar advance.” Ron Charles, The Washington Post.

--“This novel just might be a masterpiece about the Holocaust…. somehow Martel brilliantly guides the reader from the too-sunny beginning into the terrifying darkness of the old man’s shop and Europe’s past. Everything comes into focus by the end, leaving the reader startled, astonished and moved.” Published in Deirdre Donahue, USA Today.

--“Extraordinary…. A novel that is ambiguous and inscrutable — but also provocative and brilliantly imagined.” Adam Woog, The Seattle Times.

What do you make of these four quotations from reviewers of Yann Martel’s Beatrice and Virgil? Agnes and I just read it. We both loved Life of Pi and were looking forward to his latest book. Agnes asked me what I thought of Beatrice and Virgil; I said, “7 out of 10.” She said “That’s where I’d put it too.” A friend lent us the book; she said she couldn’t put it down.

“There’s no accounting for taste.” So when one reader loves a book and another hates it, this comes as no surprise.

But when 4 professional reviewers are so far apart in their assessment of a book’s quality, one has to question their skill, their motives or both.

Beatrice and Virgil is a book where the sentence, “It’s sort of like . . .” has no ending. It’s innovative, breaks new ground while it breaks old rules of novel writing. Perhaps new rules of novel reviewing are called for.

I have a theory. When a novel is as symbolic, as allegorical as is Beatrice and Virgil, the readers who “don’t get it” either fly into a frustrated rage and pan it mercilessly, or they praise it fawningly in hopes that others will assume they “got it.” Most of us get it in part, don’t get it in part, and end up judging it on the basis of whether or not it “tasted good.”

Then there’s that other temptation: harsh criticism has the inherent quality of suggesting that the critic is smarter than the one being criticized.

A good piece of art has the power to heighten the observer’s perception of the world. I think Beatrice and Virgil has the potential of doing this for at least some readers.

A modest political proposal

This historic landmark (the former German-English Academy, Rosthern Junior College) is now a venerable 100 years of age. It's currently the Mennonite Heritage Museum.

Sunday morning. Brown toast with apricot jam and a hot cup of Kick Ass coffee (that’s right, it’s a trade name; organic and fair trade and very good; ground and packaged in BC).

A few days ago, Dwain Lingenfelter, leader of the NDP opposition in the Saskatchewan legislature, called our honourable premier, Brad Wall, “the little thief from Swift Current.” It’s been all over the StarPhoenix since. Seems the people of Saskatchewan are clucking their tongues in unison and the clucking is deafening. How dare Lingenfelter accuse anyone of being from Swift Current!?!

I don’t have to tell you what infantile behaviour is generated by the question periods and debates in those bastions of democracy—our parliaments. (Parliament: Middle English from Old French: speaking.) The reason for it seems obvious to me; democratic structures—in particular the adversarial party systems—have remained stuck in the “Old English” period and as time eroded the stiff-upper-lip politeness in our cultures, the gloves came off and parliamentary debate degenerated into a spectator sport.

I regularly get appeals for donations from a political party. Their come-on is not “let’s work together to make Canada a better place by . . .,” rather, it’s, “it’s time and it’s important to throw the current party out of office.” Something is wrong here. We’re wasting everyone’s time, money and energies on childish competitions for power.

Here’s a modest proposal: political parties are abolished. Independent candidates are put forward in each riding by one hundred (give or take) voters and their election hinges on their perceived quality as legislators. Following the election, an orderly process occurs among the elected candidates to appoint a government, committees, ministries, and they’re off. Not having party antagonisms to feed the rancour of debate anymore, legislators would be confined to dealing with the merits of the issues and the proposals put forward by the government or their fellow legislators. The senate, of course, is abolished.

Elections occur every four years and each duly-nominated candidate is limited to a campaign budget of, say, $5.000. Numerous physical and virtual town hall meetings are the primary means for the public to “parliament” before deciding which candidate deserves their support. Granted, election night would be a big bore with no “team” to cheer for, or against, and getting people to vote might take some concerted public education.

Sounds a lot like municipal government, you say? Or like Nunavut governance? Bingo. That’s where we need to go.

I think I’m done with party politics. If no strong independent candidate is proposed in my riding in the future, I may hand in a ballot with “none of the above” scrawled across it.

And Mr. Lingenfelter, there is no good reason to use the word “thief” and the name “Swift Current” in the same sentence. You’re tempting your rivals in the Saskatchewan Party to find out where you and each of your colleagues are from, and then a whole new round of undeserved epithets will take up another week’s debate in the ledge.

Who needs it?

More on Agnostic Christianity.

Grand Canyon serenity

The word agnostic is a borrowing from the Greek where gnosis means “knowing,” agnosis, “not knowing.” In the previous post I referred to the term Agnostic Christians, which some might assume to be an oxymoron. Fact is, there isn’t a branch of Christianity—as far as I know—that claims its basic tenets arise from knowledge; In general, religious tenets are held by faith, not by knowledge, and so Agnostic Christian is no contradiction in terms at all.

Admittedly, a dictionary definition, even when supported by an etymology, doesn’t necessarily complete the picture of what words mean, or what they meant to people who used them in their original form. The Merriam Webster Dictionary defines an agnostic as “a person who holds the view that any ultimate reality (as God) is unknown and probably unknowable [or] one who is not committed to believing in either the existence or the non-existence of God or a god.” Most of us would associate the word agnostic with a response to religious faith, i.e. the stance that the existence of God or a god is unknowable, and that there is no reason to be either a believer or a disbeliever.

Agnostic Christians would probably argue that one can believe in God and in Christ and still take an agnostic stance on matters like, for instance, how the death of Christ is able to bridge the gap between God and humankind, or how it is possible for there to be a single, triune God. I admit, the explanations for these great conundrums are unknown, possibly unknowable to me, a stance of agnosis whether I am prepared to admit it or not.

Why bother even talking about this? Because the pretence of certainty is, in effect, a grand delusion, or even worse, a corporate self-delusion that is potentially extremely harmful. The pretence of certainty makes it possible to commit wars, supplies justification to terrorism, provides an argument for raping creation, makes theological mountains out of molehills. It also forces cracking of social cooperation and eventually, is responsible for much societal fragmentation.

Certainty inevitably requires intolerance to sustain it.

We need to shorten our creeds, weed out what is unknowable and what is as yet unknown, and admit that everything we hold as opinion or certainty now may be superseded tomorrow. We need to accept that Creator and creation are as mysterious as they ever were, and live our lives recognizing where agnosis lies.

It’s through this recognition that we might someday be able to live comfortably with the proposition that our neighbour just might be worthy, that she might just be right, or—at least—that a person’s value is not determined by how well we understand him.

Check out this link for further thoughts on the subject.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnostic_theist

On Agnostic Christianity

The duck pond is being born again

For whatever reason, some questions seem too personal to ask, too private to be answered. Simple questions arising from idle curiosity, sometimes, like, “Did your girlfriend dump you or was it the other way ‘round?” or “Did you have a shower this morning?” or “How much money did you give to charity last year?” (I just answered this last one on my income tax form yesterday; I’m actually sure the Canadian Revenue Agency’s curiosity is not idle though.)

Or the question I’ve been asked several times in public places like airports or on busses: “Are you a born-again Christian?” Well I know these people are well-meaning enough; I remember how after my one and only “born-again” experience as a 12 year-old, the adults who declared me to be “born-again” impressed on me the duty to witness, to convince others to be “born-again.”

My first impulse, however, to being accosted so intimately by a stranger is to ask, “As opposed to what, a born-only-once Christian?” But that would be sarcastic. So I just say, “Yes, I am,” and he smiles and says, “Well praise the Lord,” and wanders off, and I wonder how one can be burdened for a another person’s soul without being the least bit interested in the person.

Most Christians, I think, would be better labelled agnostic Christians as opposed to born-again. The term exists although it’s seldom heard where I live. It means that although these Christians try to follow the pattern set by Christ and assume that he represents the Creator of all things somehow, they acknowledge that there is much about this that is unknown, and equally much that is unknowable. Agnostic Christians, therefore, have a very short creed:

· There exists a Creator who is the source for the universe and everything in it.
· Jesus Christ, is an important gateway to a relationship with the Creator.
· A cloud of witnesses and our experience of life on earth teach us that love, compassion and generosity are central to God’s will, a tenet reinforced by the record of Jesus’ teaching in the Gospels.
· It is right that we should pay homage to the Creator who gave us this brief moment of life and whose will it appears to be that we should preserve and enjoy the fruits of creation.

I’ve restated these tenets somewhat, of course.

Although less “evangelical” than the “born-agains” generally, Christians who acknowledge that much is unknowable are more likely to approach others as people rather than as projects. Agnostic Christians don’t presume to know the workings of the Creator in the big picture, nor in the microcosm of another person’s soul. They’re more apt to approach strangers on the “compassion and generosity” level, anticipating that the one who made the universe is the only one who can create newness and life.

What do you say when asked if you’ve been born again? Maybe you’re one of those who have drifted so far from the Creator that the metaphor fits. Most likely not. Try saying, “I’m not sure, but I’m definitely on the Creator’s side!” You probably can’t KNOW much more than that in any case.

Food, glorious food

Sunday morning. I’m writing between bites of toast and jam. I could choose to eat a whole loaf of bread if I wanted and no one would suffer as a result. The fridge is full of eggs, cheese, butter, milk and the freezer half-full of meat. There are five cans of Stella Artois Belgian beer in the downstairs fridge (I drank one watching TV last night, I could have had up to 6 if I’d wanted to).

Food surplus. Store shelves brimming with cheap food. A surplus that can be fully accessed by anyone for about one-tenth of an average North American or European income.

In A history of the World in 6 Glasses, Tom Standage traces the development of the beverages we have come to take for granted. Beer, for instance, was the first ubiquitous drink after water and likely developed as a result of the storing of grain and the subsequent accidents occurring when moisture caused the grain to ferment. The book goes on to trace the history of wine, spirits, tea, coffee and Coca-Cola. It’s a fascinating read.

Standage attributes the rise of Western civilization (a word that in its original forms meant “citifying”) to food surpluses. As I understand this viewpoint, cultures in which every able-bodied person was obliged to struggle with the task of growing or finding meagre sustenance were not only malnourished in many cases (with the concomitant effects on brain function, I suppose) but hadn’t the option of pursuing knowledge, invention, art, music, etc. They simply didn’t have the time. Surplus food results in surplus time and energy. Some of that time can be spent foraging in the world of ideas, scientific exploration, world travel or (as I did for a few hours last night, to my horror) staring at a technology that lets me watch other people play a game. It can also be spent gambling, dissipating, sleeping, reading, building and improving, philandering, doing art, whatever.

Agnes is reading Karen Connelly’s Burmese Lessons, a documentary on life in Burma/Myanmar. She asked a rhetorical question over dinner yesterday (as we were enjoying barbequed steak, baked potato and a salad) about why some people have so much (we) and others have been dealt virtually nothing (Burmese poor). The only response I could think of was to bring up Standage’s “food surplus” theorizing.

I teach ESL to two Karen refugees once a week. We have a great time. One of them was an elephant handler back in Burma until conflict drove many of the dissident Karen people to refugee camps in Thailand, and fate happily dealt two families an opportunity to come to Rosthern two years ago. They are learning, among other things, how one lives in a culture that enjoys surplus food. The elephant handler has a job in a pet food factory just out of town. The other gentleman works at picking up recyclables and garbage (surplus and redundant materials) on the streets of town.

Some random Sunday morning musings. There have to be millions more words on the subjects of civilization, food, privilege, etc., I invite you to write them down and share them. I’m going up to get a second cup of coffee, maybe another piece of toast, although I’ve been putting on a few pounds lately.

My Great grandparents, Mr. & Mrs. Jacob D. Epp, ca. 1860

When I am an Old Woman, I shall Wear Purple. The book was published in 1987 by Papier-Mache Press, and is an anthology of poems, essays and stories about getting/being old. The title piece was written by Jenny Joseph and includes some memorable lines on the subject: “I shall sit down on the pavement when I’m tired/And gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells/And run my stick along the public railing/And make up for the sobriety of my youth.”

What will we do when we are old (like tomorrow) to make one last attempt at flair, particularly if we never dared to be ourselves in the public square before? Will we be 80 before we “learn to spit?”

I chatted with the owner of an auto repair shop this afternoon as the insurance assessor was analyzing the dent I’d stupidly put in our brand-new Ford Focus. We got around to the subject of age and nursing homes when I told him that my mother-in-law’s cousin had died two days ago . . . at age 105. “We haven’t gone to the nursing home since my mother died,” he said. “My wife’s afraid of death.”

“Aren’t we all,” I replied.

“Oh, but she’s different. She chooses denial as a way of dealing with it, and nursing homes make her very uncomfortable.”

We watched a few episodes on video of the British sitcom, Waiting for God, with friends on Sunday evening. It’s set in a retirement home and concerns an aging man and woman living next door to each other. She’s playing out a cynical last act to a cynical life, and he’s compensating for his frustrations by taking trips of fantasy into a world of adventure, romance and grandeur, a life as different as is imaginable from his forty years as a functionary in a large accounting firm. Together, they find new ways to be old. They are two people who in their final years begin to dare to “ . . . go out in slippers in the rain/And pick flowers in other people’s gardens . . ..”

I don’t want to romanticize old age, anymore than I want to perpetrate the myth of the noble savage or energetic youth. At the same time, I want to keep in mind that although aging bodies decay and gradually fail, they are often the vessels for “young” souls and minds betrayed by the perverse cynicism of mortality.

Driving to Edmonton a few weekends ago, it suddenly occurred to me that I would turn 70 on my next birthday. I told Agnes that I’d just done the math and it felt like I’d lost a year of my life somewhere between Lloydminster and Vermilion. She corrected me, of course, and I realized that I’d taken 2011 as the current year (I’d just worked on some budget figures for 2011 at the Station) and just beyond Vermilion going west, I got my year back.

“ . . . I shall wear purple
With a red hat which doesn’t go, and doesn’t suit me.
And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves
And satin sandals, and say we’ve no money for butter.

Homecoming - a book commentary

Schlink, Bernhard (translation from German by Michael Henry Heim). Homecoming. New York: First Vintage International Edition, 2009

ISBN 978-0-375-72557-9

260 pages

I expected a book by the author of The Reader to be a gratifying experience, and I enjoyed what I was reading ‘til about page 200 or so when the whole thing fell apart for me. There’s a peculiar syndrome that sets in near the completion of a long project—like writing a book, building a house, circumnavigating the globe in a bathtub (I suppose)—and manifests itself in the urge-to-finish overwhelming the desire to maintain the standard of quality with which one set out. A second factor is, of course, the fact that an author of fiction is as in-the-dark about the ending of his work as is the reader, and sometimes you can almost feel the point where the “how am I gonna wrap this project up and get on to something more interesting?” phenomenon kicks in. The Homecoming, to my mind, reached that point on page 200 where the protagonist ends his Odyssian journey to find a certain author and philosopher—who happens to be his father—by crossing the Atlantic and taking up his sleuthing in New York City. This particular plot “wrap-up” is simply deficient by every standard I can think of.

Homecoming purports to be about, well, homecomings. There is plenty of text about soldiers coming home from POW camps to find their wives married to other men. What do the participants in such a homecoming do? Our protagonist reads Ulysses, and the wanderings, trials and homecoming in that instance become the motifs for this entire story. Unfortunately, these motifs dangle over top of Schlink’s plot rather than supporting it. There’s plenty to learn from the idea of unusual homecomings (like where is home, after all, and can it be owned and bartered away) but this novel tries to do too much altogether, and from page to page, the author loses control of the various threads.

As he does in The Reader, Schlink again grapples—somewhat lightly—with the themes of complicity, evil, goodness and the ubiquitous, haunting consciousness of a holocaust that can’t be undone. Peter Debauer has a ghostly father somewhere in the world, a father who did not die in the war as he was led to believe, but who abandoned Peter and his mother when the boy was still a toddler. This father has left a trail of his meandering thoughts on paper, and Peter—a book editor by trade—becomes obsessed with following that trail.

Central to the father’s philosophy is a theme most pungently described as the replacing of the golden rule with the iron rule: whatever you are prepared to endure yourself, you have the right to inflict on others. Thus, he proposes, evil can be harnessed to serve the good. Thus, many a villainy can be rationalized as an exercise in reaching a “good” objective utilizing a means normally considered “evil.” It’s a mindset where truth and lies become interchangeable, where experimentation on unwitting humans becomes acceptable, where abandoning one’s child has no moral baggage attached.

I haven’t read Homecoming in the original German, and it’s risky to make many judgments about style when a book is filtered through the talents of a translator. I was amused by the comment on the cover of the book, by a writer for The Economist, who (in my opinion) didn’t know what to say about this book and ended up writing: “A beguilingly oblique novel . . .. Despite its intricate, mazelike progression, Homecoming has surprising narrative thrust.” Another cover quote from The New York Times Book Review is similar: “Sensitive and disturbing . . .. The reader’s mind opens to the story like a plant unfurling its leaves to the sun.” Who am I to argue with such erudition?

Well, maybe it’s a great novel. I’m reminded of the warning that when one examines a painting and fails to understand it, assuming that there is nothing there to be understood may be a colossal error. On the other hand . . .

An Ounce of Nard

An Ounce of Nard

Sunday School this morning. The theme was the Matthew version of the anointing of Jesus with expensive perfume. The different gospels have this event occurring in the house of Simon the Leper, a Pharisee’s home or the home of Lazarus, Mary and Martha in Bethany, just east of Jerusalem. Sometimes she pours oil on his head, and in Luke, she washes his feet with her tears and then anoints them with myrrh. In every case, the event involves personal sacrifice and an expression of deep affection.

I spent a long time considering how I might approach this passage, and then decided that it was really one of a number of incidents in which Jesus tries to teach his disciples to avoid categorical thinking . . . fundamentalism, if you will. The disciples, you see, rebuke her in Matthew for wasting the expensive perfume when it could have been converted into cash and benefited the poor. Jesus rebukes them in turn for “bothering” the woman, who has done something wonderful for him.

Because of the variations in fact across the gospels regarding the anointing of Jesus, it clearly falls into the category of legend. It’s what happens in oral traditions where a story may be repeated over decades and may travel long distances. Details evolve, places and times shift until the actual facts are clearly no longer reliable. Amazingly, though, such legends seem to retain a strong similarity in what they are attempting to communicate. In every case, male persons look down their noses at a woman’s act of love and are brought up short by Jesus. Every version has this in common.

I wonder how a director would choose to render this scene in a movie? Take Luke’s version: Jesus is eating supper at Simon the Pharisee’s table, possibly with a group of men. They’re seated on the floor around a low table set out in the courtyard of Simon’s house. A woman known to be a prostitute enters the gate and is unnoticed amid the laughter and conversation. She comes up behind Jesus and wraps her arms around his feet, weeping and wailing. Servants of the Pharisee begin to drag her away and some mutter “If Jesus was a real prophet, he’d know that he’s just been grabbed at table by a whore!” Jesus jumps up and fends them off, shouts at them to leave the woman alone. They reluctantly resume their seats and Jesus tells them the parable of the two men who are unable to pay a debt, one of fifty silver pieces and one five hundred. The point he’s making is that the one who is forgiven the most will love the most; they get that when it’s cloaked in the arithmetic of dollars and cents.

The woman languishes at Jesus’ feet for the rest of the meal, a thorn in the host’s side. She opens a flask of myrrh and anoints his feet with it. The aroma wafts through the air and it’s all the men around the table can do to restrain their desire to throw her out.

I think it could be a great scene.

We, too, can be such Pharisees from time to time. To me, the arts are the myrrh (the spikenard in Matthew) that cannot feed or clothe, but that is capable of blessing the world with an aroma of love. Women seem to get this more easily than men. 2/3 of the people at concerts are women; many come without spouses; there’s a hockey game on TV, or there’s work to be done, or they “just aren’t interested in that stuff.” Categorical thinking. The fundamentalist’s plague. Adopting a singular attitude toward life precluding all others.

An aside. Agnes and I were invited by Persephone Theatre to attend the opening night of Billy Bishop Goes to War on Friday. It’s basically a one-man show with a supporting musician and is a powerful rendering of both the chutzpah and the tragedy of war. The actor was a surprise to us; he also plays the nerd in the A & W commercials. He’s brilliant in this version of this gem of a play. Unforgettable. I’m still spending half my reverie time sorting out the meaning of the play. That doesn’t happen often.
Wow!

Official Olympic Evaluation

Olympic distance runner takes a break while training in Arizona

The Vancouver Olympics have passed the half-way point and I’m reflecting on the whole show, as are many of you. And it is a show. I missed the opening ceremonies because I was working, but I hear they were spectacular. I’ve caught a bit of the action here and there and tonight I watched the last two periods of the USA/Canada hockey game. It could easily have been an NHL all-star game; one of the forward lines on Team Canada was a first line—intact—from the San Jose Sharks, and the names on both teams generally, were familiar from NHL season play.

There was a time when the Olympics were closed to anyone earning pay for performing his sport; we’ve come a long way, baby.

Canada lost the game 5-3. The announcer groped for a scapegoat. “Miller (the US goalie) outplayed Brodeur (the Canadian goalie); end of story.” I’m no connoisseur of hockey, so I don’t know if his implication that we could have won if our goalie hadn’t let us down was accurate or not. I guess nobody knows that for sure.

And I guess a lot of people care—deeply. The emotions across the country run high and I wonder how the “Own the Podium” people are feeling about now, when the USA predictably has an iron-clad lease on our podium, Germany has twice as many medals as Canada and we’re sharing 4th place with—would you believe—Korea. It seems to me a lot of people set themselves up for a big fall when they announced publicly that Canada had a good shot at topping the medal count.

I enjoy watching curling, especially women’s. It’s so intense, but yet civilized. My laptop behind me is tuned to the game between China and Canada; China is leading 3-0 after two ends. There have, however, been no fights, no injuries, no cursing and no one is sitting in the penalty box. Mind you, people who need to see contact in sports probably raise their eyebrows whenever curling is referred to as a sport. Let me suggest that sliding a rock down the ice is probably no less sporting than sliding your ass down an ice course on a baby sled.

Then there are the “sports” that are evaluated by subjective (arguably) judging, like figure skating or half-pipe snowboarding or gymnastics. Figure skating took a black eye some years ago when it was discovered that some judges had made their decisions about winners and losers before the contestants actually skated.

And then there are the timed-race sports. I watched a bit of the skeleton races the other day. You slide down the ice track 4 times and your total times are added. The slider who came in 4th was behind the gold medallist by less than a second in total time. That makes an average of less than ¼ second per slide. I don’t get it. How can being less than ¼ of a second behind the leader relegate one to ignominy? Seems to me they should all get gold medals for having the courage to slide down that track at 140 KPH; the medals should just get smaller proportional to their time behind the leader. Mostly, the differences in medal size using this formula would be indistinguishable.

China is now leading Canada 4-1.

In a few days, the Olympics will be over again and we’ll all forget about them, except for the athletes, sports pundits needing filler material, bean counters . . . and BC taxpayers.
Is what we’re seeing sport? Is it entertainment? Is it nationalism and sport and entertainment? Is it a smorgasbord of obsessive/compulsive neurosis without which no athlete could ever hope to reach any podium . . . anywhere?

I wonder.

(After 5, it’s 4-2; China has the hammer, and they know how to use it!)

An Evening with Yann Martel

Scene from "The Keeper" coming to the Station Arts Centre March 3-14

It was a great evening; most people I talked to agreed. Yann Martel came to the Station Arts Centre and he and his wife and their baby mingled with about 50 or 60 of us in a fund-raiser to kick off the project to re-roof the library. The library board had done a great job; good food, some local poets reading and words from a great author. A summary doesn’t do it justice, of course. Two high school students read from their poetry and a member of our writers’ group enthralled the audience with imagery that literally pings off people’s experiences of life.

Martel’s wife, Alice Kuipers, read from her novel—about to be published—and then it was Yann’s turn. Yann has set himself a project to send Stephen Harper a different book every two weeks along with a letter suggesting why he—as Prime Minister—ought to read this book. Martel reminded us that when Canada’s political leaders were all asked what their favourite book might be, Harper chose Guiness Book of World Records, a book most of us enjoyed—when we were twelve! He read us several of his letters to the PMO.

Yann’s view is that fiction reading is essential to the balanced development of every person. He says that in the reading of the novel, one allows an alternative view into one’s consciousness and lives with it for a while. Sort of a walking-for-a-time in another’s shoes. What this provides is a moral, ethical exercise, an accepted invitation to reconsider one’s own worldview and an opening of the door to honest dialogue.

I agree. In a recent interview I did with the local paper, I said that I consider the art of the short story to be a natural progression from the parables used to teach in earlier times. Stories are not only that, of course. At their best, they also offer relief from the sameness of our days, recreation of our spirits and repeated reminders that the world is a whole lot bigger and provides many more possibilities than our day to day striving would lead us to believe.

In other words, a person who does not read voraciously and who doesn’t have a history of appreciation for novels and short stories can hardly be fit--in at least one aspect--to lead a nation. Something is bound to be missing, and it may be the most vital element of all.

If you don’t know Yann Martel, read Life of Pi, winner of the Man Booker prize of 2002. It’s scheduled to be the basis of a movie soon.

Empire of Illusion - a review

Window sticker: I get along with God just fine; It's his fan club I can't stand.

Hedges, Chris. Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle. Toronto: Alfred A. Knopf, 2009

ISBN 978-0-307-39846-8

203 pages.

In the 8th Century BC, writing during a golden age of Israel, the prophet Hosea issued a warning that all was not well. The New English Bible records it thus:

Hear the word of the Lord, O Israel;
for the Lord has a charge to bring against the people of the land:
There is no good faith or mutual trust,
no knowledge of God in the land,
oaths are imposed and broken, they kill and rob;
there is nothing but adultery and licence,
one deed of blood after another.
Therefore the land shall be dried up . . ..

Readers familiar with the style and message of the prophets may be reminded of Hosea and his fellows when they read Empire of Illusion. Chris Hedges portrays—often in lurid detail—the signs of decay in American culture and sounds the siren of warning: America is on skids, headed for disaster.

Empire of Illusion begins with an analysis of the changes that Hedges sees in the themes dominating professional wrestling. There was a time when audiences responded to images of a Russian being pummelled and defeated by a heroic figure. Now, “the idea of permanent personalities and permanent values has evaporated. It is all about winning. It is all about personal pain, vendettas, hedonism, and fantasies of revenge, while inflicting pain on others. It is the cult of victimhood (10).” This theme re-echoes in TV and movies, shows like American Idol or Survivor where the nation watches as one victim after another is “voted off the island” until only one remains. An illiterate society is seduced by the fantasy, each cheering spectator dreaming of him/herself in the place of the victor, oblivious to the sham of such a perverted scenario.

America has become a nation of fantasizers and wishful thinkers, and the pursuit of knowledge and the skill of acquiring it (literacy) have decayed in direct proportion to the rise of spectacle and illusion. “ . . . endless, mindless diversion is a necessity in a society that prizes entertainment above substance. Intellectual or philosophical ideas require too much effort and work to absorb. Classical theatre, newspapers, and books are pushed to the margins of cultural life, remnants of a bygone, literate age. They are dismissed as inaccessible and elitist unless they provide . . . effortless entertainment. The popularization of culture often ends in its total degradation (43).” Hedges illustrates this point with a lurid tour of the world of pornography, an industry burgeoning as a consequence of the internet and the decay of fixed standards of conduct generally. He’s saying, basically, that the brutalisation of women and the victimization inherent in professional wrestling spectacles are peas and carrots in the same soup.

Of greatest interest to me was the chapter called “The Illusion of Wisdom,” possibly because the classroom has been my life. Hedges makes the linkages among the various prestige colleges in the USA and the political and corporate elites of the nation who are products of these colleges. Education in schools like Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, Oxford, Cambridge, he says, “focus instead (of teaching critical thinking), through the filter of standardized tests, enrichment activities, AP classes, high-priced tutors, swanky private schools, entrance exams, and blind deference to authority, on creating hordes of competent systems managers (89).” The decline in education is evident in the growth of training institutions that are career-oriented along with the decline in the study of language, antiquities, history and the arts, for instance. Education as a branch of career planning rather than education as a preparation for living well in a free, functioning and egalitarian society.

Hedges echoes the voices out there that decry the manipulation of the population by the “elites.” Most of us—I guess—were appalled to learn about the details of the corporate greed and bungling resulting in the most recent economic collapse. What is even more appalling is what we’re seeing now: a return to the same corporate/political “business as usual” phenomenon, and so soon after the taxpayers bailed out the privileged. This may be the most blatant sign that the US, particularly, has passed the point of no return. The health reform bill of President Obama now appears to be a lost hope, evidence again that the privileged classes in the US are neither willing nor capable of reinventing themselves. They were never educated for repentance, were taught only how to manage privilege.

Hedges sees little distinction between the two political monoliths in America. Reading his assessment, one could come to the conclusion that the reins of power have been systematically, successfully hijacked by the corporate/political structure. It takes millions to mount a successful run at a senate seat; that effectively cuts out all the riff-raff and ensures that the economy will always remain in the privileged hands of the establishment.

According to Hedges, America is on the verge of turning into a fully-fledged tyranny, and tyranny succeeds best when the peons are illiterate, and to speed them down this slope, nothing works better than the propagation of fantasies, the cult of celebrity, the provision of endless, on-demand entertainment. If necessary, even the news can be turned into entertainment, hence the rise of tabloid journalism.

Empire of Illusion paints a dark picture of the US today. While that nation purports to be a beacon for democracy around the world, it has squandered its abundant resources on colonial forays into places where it doesn’t belong, has created or tolerated injustice to meet corporate goals and finally, built up a culture of celebrity and fantasy while allowing its educational institutions to decay. The warning is timely.

“Because this nation has rejected the waters of Shiloah, which run so softly and gently, therefore the Lord will bring up against it the strong, flooding waters of the Euphrates (Isaiah 8: 6 & 7a).”

Pleasure for sale

A few years ago, our family spent the Christmas weekend at the spa in Moose Jaw. Our room looked down on the casino next door and I was amazed at the traffic in cars and people at that place, even on a Sunday.

Aboard a cruise ship to Alaska on another occasion, I noticed the prominent placement of the casino on board. Psychology was my minor in College and I learned there that the most effective “training regime” for animals or humans consists of intermittent reward doled out at random. In other words, the pushing of the button on the VLT will reward the player sometime; he just doesn’t know which push will be the big one. A contemplation of that event is apparently a very, very intoxicating sensation for many, a source of addictive euphoria, a pleasure-stroking. A high.

There’s no doubt in my mind that the one who provides the means for people to access this road to pleasure is doing the work of a pimp. Pimping of this sort, furthermore, has become more and more acceptable. I stopped giving to the Red Cross when they began raising money by offering tickets to be drawn for cars, cash and other enticing stuff. Provincial coffers depend on pimping revenue, and First Nations in the US and Canada have latched onto pimping as an occupation that pays.

There are legitimate community interests at stake here. Money extracted by the pimping industry is money that could have circulated locally and done some good for the “commonwealth”. Instead, it’s often siphoned off to who-knows-where. In effect, it distorts the economy to a greater degree than we probably realize and it’s quite likely that the only remedy for this will be some dramatic changes in the way economies are governed.

Unfortunately, there’s no way to clean up an economy if the participants in it are unable or unwilling to act communally. It’s apparent that the rise in the pimping industries (those that cater primarily for pleasure seekers) will succeed more often where community spirit has been eroded and the “amateur” entertainments and pleasures have ceased to function. Where hockey is no longer a community sport, the door is open to professional hockey to retail its kind of spectacle. People who no longer go out on Friday nights for bridge are more likely to wander down to the casino for the relief of their boredom. Enter the pimp.

I bowl with friends every Wednesday evening in winter. The cost for the entire season is roughly the same as a mid-range ticket for ONE Toronto Maple Leafs game. Our bowling fees provide a neighbour—the woman who owns, runs and cleans the place—with a living. Talk about a bargain!

Legal pro******ion 101

Our cat, Horatio, loved being brushed, eating people food and having the area under his chin stroked. There was no doubt that these things triggered intense pleasure in him; cat owners will know what I mean.

Like cats, people are seekers of pleasure, whether in the form of entertainment, sensual “stroking”, relief from pain, vicarious conquest, etc., etc. Sometimes the stroking of our pleasure points is free, as in having someone scratch your back right where it itches. Sometimes, it costs, as in an aroma therapeutic session or a great movie.

Professional stroking is a huge business and frequently illegal as in prostitution, drug dealing, etc. Mostly, though, it’s considered legitimate business; think of professional sports, professional entertainment, cruise ship operation, casino operation, etc.

By some definitions, anyone who provides pleasurable “stroking” for a fee could be considered a prostitute. The debate about which is OK and which isn’t could be really interesting. It impinges on the questions of legalizing drug use and prostitution, for instance, and might well spill over into other realms, like the gouging of the public by offering the stroking they crave for an exorbitant fee.

A case in point: The internet is full of speculation on drug companies’ involvement in the recent swine flu “pandemic.” The reasoning goes like this: the word “pandemic” incites fear; a vaccine relieves the pain of this fear; the purchase of massive amounts of the vaccine means big profits for drug corporations; ergo, the drug companies were probably behind the pronouncement of a pandemic. By itself, the argument is, of course, incomplete. WHO could have raised the spectre without the drug companies’ urging and the profits could have been a windfall for the drug manufacturers, much like the tow truck operator benefits from a blizzard without having had a hand in causing it.

Sometimes when I see the shameless fast-food ads, see the euphoria on the faces of the actors in an ad for a pill, hear about the obscene remuneration paid to professional athletes, film actors, singers, etc., I have to wonder if we've nailed down the right forms of prostitution for prohibition.

Wilderness temptation

Grand Canyon wilderness

Sunday Morning. Hallelujah, schoener Morgen, Heute muss Ich nicht besorgen! We used to intone this perversion of a familiar German hymn (Halleluiah, what a morning, I don’t have to help with the chores today!) We still have some of those feelings. Sunday relieves us of our obligations for a short time. Ironically, on dairy farms that surrounded me when I was a kid, Sunday chores looked a lot like the chores of any other morning.

Our Sunday School discussion will focus on Matthew’s telling of the story of Jesus’ wilderness temptation. Dorothy Jean Weaver wrote the student book, I wrote the teacher’s manual and my friend E.T. will guide the discussion. The discourse will likely run the usual course, namely that the story illustrates Jesus’ temptations to chuck his messianic mission in favour of an easier road to power, self-gratification or personal comfort. If it stays there, however, it will miss an important other aspect: the legend of the wilderness temptation is a teaching parable, and we do well to interpret it more personally.

Take the temptation to turn stones into bread. Taking shortcuts to ensure that we in the West will always have food security—indeed the right to gluttony—is illustrated by this wilderness temptation. We have put our faith in chemicals, artificial fertilizers and technologies to such a degree that we are poisoning our environment in the interest of profits and food security while much of the world starves.

Take the temptation to hurl oneself off the pinnacle of the temple in a show of magic and the favour of God and His angels. The US went into Iraq with the “shock and awe” slogan and the prayers that God should “bless America.” While the citizenry cheered—especially the right wing of the Christian Church—the administration and the military “hurled themselves from the pinnacle of the temple” in a show of might and God’s favour. This will turn out to have been an evanescent dream; the evidence is there before us already.

And then there’s the worship of Satan as a route to ultimate power. Much of Christianity doesn’t get Satan as a mythological stand-in for the evil that all of us humans are capable of. At the root of much of our temptation is not a literal “worshipping of the devil,” but a very human “love of money,” and we are currently living through a depression whose very root is that evil, the worship of that “Satan.” It certainly grants power, this obeisance to that demon, but it is, in the end, a power founded on an evil preoccupation. This temptation is very strong and tests all of us one way and another. Our government has currently told us that “the economy is people’s main concern now,” not the environment or the Afghani detainees, one might add.

Matthew’s parable of the temptation is not actually about Jesus, it’s about you and me.

New wine - old wineskins

The sermon this morning was based on Jesus’ metaphor of new wine in old wineskins. As a whole, it was a petition to us all to consider whether or not new priorities can be pursued successfully through old institutions. An example used was a book by Dambisa Moyo called Dead Aid, in which she apparently argues that African poverty is not so much in spite of foreign aid, but rather because of it. I haven’t read the book yet, but I did hear part of an interview with her in which she said that the governments of many African countries find it easier to obtain handouts than to work to develop their countries infrastructure so that self-sufficiency might one day be achieved. This phenomenon results in guaranteed poverty for the citizens, although the politicians never fail to fatten themselves at the foreign aid trough.

Moyo—we were told—doesn’t condemn all aid; help that is pointed specifically toward the self-sufficiency of targeted individuals, families and communities has an important role to play, as does disaster relief. Government to government foreign aid, however, Moyo maintains, is doing more harm than good.

What do you do when a panhandler holds out his hat to you in the street? “Got any spare change, my friend?” I generally walk right by. Most of the time, I have “promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep,” and that serves as a handy, Frostian, excuse to ignore the supplicant. I sense intuitively that a loony won’t make an appreciable difference to the man’s state of affairs, but at the same time, I expect the hot cup of coffee the loony might buy would be comforting in the short term.

So here’s the new wine. Charity is only given where it saves lives in an emergency, where it contributes directly to the goal of individual, family and community self-sufficiency and where there is no chance of fraud. If dignity, self-respect and self-sufficiency become our goals, then what new wineskin is needed to hold this new wine?

A very pertinent question, don’t you think?

The Fading of Prairie Birdsong – a book review

Herriot, Trevor. Grass, Sky, Song: Promise and Peril in the World of Grassland Birds. Toronto: HarperCollins Publishers Ltd. 2009

ISBN 978-1-55468-038-2

259 pages

A few years ago, I noted the relative scarcity of bees in our garden and in researching possible causes for this, came to realize that there was something afflicting bees generally. It was worrisome. Bees and wasps are instrumental in facilitating fertilization of blossoms and we had cherry shrubs and trees, tomato plants and peas, all in need of a medium for the distribution of pollen if we were to have fruit in the fall.

We are too gradually coming to the realization that much can be learned through the observation of the “little things” in our environment that we normally take for granted, that seem somewhat insignificant in daily commerce. Take grassland birds: the western meadowlark, the piping plover, the burrowing owl, Swainson’s hawk, Sprague’s pipit. These and others were birds whose nesting habitat was and is the native grasslands of the north central US and the Canadian prairie. These and others are in severe decline, some facing extinction.

Many readers will recognize the name of the author of Grass, Sky, Song—Trevor Herriot—from the CBC program, Birdline, where he is the resident bird expert. Herriot has a cabin near Indian Head, his base for pursuing an enthusiasm for prairie-dwelling flora and fauna, more particularly, the birds whose presence there predates settlement, predates by thousands of years even the coming of aboriginals across the Bering Bridge from Asia. In his book, Herriot takes us back to a time before the plow and forward to a prairie that could be if and when we agree that earth-care is in the interest of both bird welfare and people welfare. For Herriot, the signposts telling us where we’ve been, where we are and where we could be—as prairie people—either have birds perched upon them, or else they’re conspicuous by their absence.

Farmers may find Herriot’s views unsettling. He points to evidence that the very chemicals that make it possible to combat grasshoppers, flea beetles, weeds, etc. are accumulating poisons that harm all life; the telling evidence implicit in the decline of the bird population, even where their grassland habitats are being preserved. Like the watcher of the canary in the mine, we are cautioned to take note of the horned lark on the prairie; this bird’s demise is a warning to us.

There are plenty of people still taking the stance that the changes heralded by extinctions, for instance, are “so what?” non-issues. We’ve just passed the Copenhagen conference on climate change, an event that underlined the fact that the developed world tends to recognize hazards only if they are measurable with an economic yardstick. So what if the ice cap melts? What a boon that will be to shipping. So what if McCown’s longspur’s song is never heard again? What (economic) good can this prairie bird do anyone anyway? Herriot’s frustration with the denial mentality peeks out through what is generally an optimistic outlook. There are signs that more and more people are beginning to realize that conservation is not only important, it’s vital to our long-term survival.

Trevor Herriot is a skilled and sensitive writer. He is also a very sensitive man, an aspect that shines through when he writes about walks across the prairie with his daughter Maia and his wife’s struggles to overcome the breast cancer demon. In its totality, Grass, Sky, Song turns out to be much more than a “bird book;” it’s an appeal to all of us to walk more sensitively, more knowledgeably across the land that sustains us.

Grass, Sky, Song was nominated for the Governor General’s award for non-fiction and won the Saskatchewan Book Awards citations for Best Regina Book for 2009 as well as the Best Non-fiction Book for Saskatchewan in 2009.

copyright 2009 - Geo. Epp

The Christ in our Christmas

Merry Christmas, friends, and I mean it. Celebrate! Be merry!

Why? Because we’ve passed the winter solstice successfully and the sun is coming back home—as it were—to the Northern Hemisphere, and that’s a pretty good indication that we may experience another spring soon!

The air is, of course, full of the admonitions to “keep Christ in Christmas,” or “put Christ back into Christmas,” and so on, but as loudly as anyone can shout that from the rooftops, our cultural world will continue to celebrate “Christmas” as a family holiday, a feasting time, a time for gift-giving, readings from Isaiah and Luke and the playing of “Christmas” CDs and old movie classics like Dickens “A Christmas Carol.” Plus—of course—the ubiquitous trees with lights, the wreaths and the mad, stress-driven last minute shopping.

Adding to all this a sideways nod to the babe in the manger may well be a case of too little, too late, too guilt-driven—like phoning grandma on December 26th and wishing her a happy Christmas there in the nursing home in Timbuktu.

Here’s a thought. The Christmas holiday is a cultural habit. It’s a much-needed celebration in the midst of the coldest, bleakest phase of the earth’s cycles, when we fragile humans have to put out our best just to survive and can barely remember green grass and flowers. Let it be a celebration of the fact that the days are lengthening now and hope is abroad again.

I don’t quite get the “Put Christ back into Christmas” admonition, as if it were possible to take him out, put him in, or control his whereabouts in any way whatsoever. Far better to “put him” where he’d rather be: a wise and guiding partner in the way we live our lives every day of the year. Were that to be our stance, Christmas, Easter, St. Patrick’s Day, Thanksgiving, as well as every Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, would have Christ and his gospel implicit at its core, minus the phoney and futile admonitions to (at least) feel guilty if we celebrate in any way excepting on our knees.

So enjoy your families, relish the anticipation of gifts unopened under the tree, give thanks to your creator for the good things (turkey and sage dressing, for instance) that his earth has provided for you, do something to make the turn of the season a hopeful moment for someone else.

Enjoy, enjoy, enjoy.

And when you read, “Put Christ back into Christmas,” think, “Inasmuch as you have done it unto one of the least of these, my brethren, you have done it unto me.” It’s impossible to take Christ out of any part of a life lived by this tenet.

Merry Christmas!

An Advent Sunday morning with hate mail

Click on the image to enlarge

The Canadian Taxpayers Federation column runs in the local paper unless there is ample material from local sources to crowd it off the editorial page. If you don’t know, the CTF is a think-tank-cum-lobby group whose focus is taxes we have to pay to keep this country running. More specifically, their goal appears to be a country where individuals are not required to contribute to the general welfare of the country, or at least as little as that individual can get away with.

A few weeks ago, their columnist made the argument that climate change was a hoax being perpetrated on the public, and that no one would be able to get elected if they espoused policies recommended by the prognosticators of climate disaster looming just over the horizon.

I couldn’t leave this unchallenged, and wrote a letter to the editor—a mild missive—in which I suggested that for Harper (and by implication, other Alberta politicians) this might be the literal case but that overall, Canadians are beginning to get the argument that we will either have to begin making changes now, or be forced to make them soon. It might, in fact, be difficult to get elected unless politicians show us a grasp of this problem and are in favour of taking our collective heads out of the sand.

The paper included my address, for some reason, and I got a hand printed, anonymous letter in the mail a few days later. According to its author, I am an idiot espousing a socialist viewpoint and since socialism and communism are the same thing, I am now a communist, as is every NDP politician in this country. He calls me “Comrad (sic) Epp” throughout.

I would challenge him to a debate on the issue of climate change, but I don’t know who he is, and anyway, he would likely dismiss me because “I don’t know what I’m talking about,” and “it’s a sad day when the editor of the paper would print such garbage.”

Well he may be right when he says I don’t know what I’m talking about re: climate change. Everything about climate change is best-guess stuff, but what I’ve learned, I’ve learned from people who can spell “comrade.” It’s unnerving to think that people like my anonymous stone-thrower might be able to get together and elect a government.

Apparently, we've still got work to do.

Saskatchewan Book Awards

I went to the Saskatchewan Book Awards in Regina Saturday with few expectations, except that I knew Rudy Wiebe would be the guest speaker, the food at the Conexus Art Centre would be great and maybe, just maybe, Off Road would win the "best first book" prize for which I'd been short listed. Well it did, and I won enough cash to buy another batch of books for retailing. Actually, sales have been going fairly well and I had another first a few days ago . . . my first royalty check!

For any of you who haven't seen Off Road, it's available at Amazon.ca, McNally Robinsons, etc. Check out my website at http://www.george-epp.com/ and order it from there directly if you've a mind. Or email me at g.epp@sasktel.net and I'll mail it to you.

Thanks to all my friends who have read the book and provided me with comments.