I think what I am thinking about this morning is maybe heresy in many circles. Be warned.
It's a bit of reverse social engineering, speculating about "security" and "surveillance" before the internet, before Twitter and the whole complex of social media, before video cameras on every street corner, before electronic eavesdropping, before parabolic microphones, before anything even remotely electric let alone electronic. What were the mechanisms that allowed the state or enabled the state to keep its ears to the ground, to help them know what was going on in the bedrooms of the city, state, nation?
Spies, sure. Insiders among the household staff who were paid informants or hapless gossips, sure. I understand that even today, the Duchess of Cambridge is still finding reason to wonder about the motives and loyalties of some of her household staff, these days, and with graphic reason.
In fact, Hunter S. Thompson once held forth on this issue, Rolling Stone 21 July, 1983:
That is the weak reed, a cruel and incurable problem the rich have never solved--how to live in peace with the servants. Sooner or later, the maid has to come into the bedroom, and if you're only paying her $150 a week, she is going to come in hungry, or at least curious, and the time is long past when it was legal to cut their tongues out to keep them from talking.
The servant problem is the Achilles heel of the rich. The only solution is robots, but we are still a generation or so away from that, and in the meantime, it is just about impossible to hire a maid who is smart enough to make the bed but too dumb to wonder why it is full of naked people every morning.
Of course, by the time we have them, the robots might be full of undetected sensors, too, given the direction things are going.
But on a large scale, in pre-electronic times, where was the dirty linen on display regularly. Where did gossip and even self-revelation centre. Where was it encouraged, even made a necessity?
Obvious answer: not the torture chamber--which is notoriously unreliable because people will agree to nearly anything and make up the most convincing stories under enough painful encouragement. No, what comes to mind is more subtle: the confessional.
Confession is supposedly good for the soul. PostSecret and its ilk profit from that truism. They make an entertainment out of it, as well as an outlet, a safety valve for releasing secrets that become public without attachment to an individual. But in the earlier times, when the church and the state were joined at the cradle, when rulers of the realm and of the church were brothers, sisters, cousins, etc.? What a temptation to place injudicious priests in key places, or even priests whose first loyalty was to the human institution of the church, rather than the spiritual calling. Or who could not tell the difference.
Think of it: a household servant comes to confession and admits to peeping on her mistress's indiscretions. And to gossiping about them to others. Both are "sins," but the penance might be made to depend on the nature of the act gossiped about. To get at the kind of gossip than can raise or lower an aristocratic house, confessing really useful gossip might get a surprisingly light penance, to make further such confessions more forthcoming.
The confessional might well be a mechanism to encourage the human need to unburden in private. It would take only a very small body of false confessors, serving different ideologies and different masters than God above, to corrupt that handy mechanism into a conduit for dynastic ambitions and power manipulation. And it could all be done in the name of "security"--of the soul, and of the state.
So I guess the more secretive form of the "general confession" as I learned it in Protestant services--as we confess our manifold sins and wickedness to Almighty God, meekly (or to judge from the groans and cracking of joints, weakly) kneeling, is maybe a reaction against such corruption (real or potential). But there was still a need for the information. That must have been a problem. For a long time in such states.
Maybe that's why so many internet and other kinds of electronic mediators and mechanisms for self-revelation and self-disclosure exist now in our more secular western world. The divinely ordained mechanisms do not have the same draw they once had, but the need to unburden is still there. The electronic means for unburdening are, as McLuhan and others have argued, really just extensions of the human mind and senses into a different, more extensive, mediation.
And we still have no idea over who or what is listening in or reading over our shoulders. Or what their reasons.
Wednesday, 24 October 2012
Sunday, 14 October 2012
Responsibility
Reading accounts of his sentencing hearing is an exercise in listening to the convoluted and self-serving logic of Jerry Sandusky and his wife (who claims these things could not have happened because she never saw them happening, asking others to ignore the fact that many of the incidents happened in the men's locker room and showers at Penn State--a place she herself would of necessity have spent very little time in). It is an exercise in listening to them blame the boys who accused him of abuse, blame them for wrecking Jerry's life, for "misunderstanding," in effect all the things he was in his own mind doing to help them, to make men out of them, to help them grow up.
He wasn't helping them grow up, he was stopping them from being children. It's a different thing.
But his spin allows him to remain the victimized hero in his own narcissistic frame of mind--if that isn't giving narcissism a bad name. The kids from broken homes or deprived circumstances were supposed to be grateful and quiet. They're the problem--they didn't play by Jerry's rules. They are responsible for the mess.
Then we get the other side, grown men shooting three girls on the way home from school in order to stop them from spreading "western" ideas about things like allowing girls to go to school. Then standing up and taking credit, claiming "responsibility" for the act, as if this were in some way some sort of achievement for grown men.
In what distorted view of the world and of human worth is an attack by armed gunmen on an unguarded child in the company of other children an act worth taking credit for? What is it about a worldview that allows for or even claims to require such an act for its continued existence? What values, whose "worth," does it promote? What fear drives such despicable and cowardly acts in the name of responsibility?
This is immaturity of the coarsest kind--the kind that again robs children of the opportunity to be children in order to make physical grown-ups feel that they are also "responsible" adults. It is the childish behaviour of playground bullies, bigger kids, or kids with more social clout, roaming in packs, claiming and protecting their overdetermined, self-appointed right to decide who gets to play on what equipment, under what rules.
The only mature and responsible mind in the crowd belongs to the girl who was their primary target-- Malala Yousufzai--who at 14 has for years shown nothing but true courage in the face of "adult" malice and stupidity. And some of that maturity and a huge measure of courage attaches to her friends and classmates who rode with her on that bus, having to know being anywhere near her put them in danger, too, given the months of threats against her and her family.
Of course, the "unguarded" aspect brings up some issues. The threats against the life of a child who has refused to be intimidated, even though she has openly expressed her fear of those she opposes, have been coming for months, yet her father refused the offer of armed escorts for her to and from school. It was unacceptable in his worldview and the culture of his region for a young girl like this to be and to be seen publicly in too close proximity to adult men. (Unfortunately, the gunMAN or MEN did not feel it inappropriate for them to be seen in such close proximity to a young girl, in public, to force their lethal intentions on her in the name of acceptable public order. )
In a way, for all the pride he has expressed in her campaign for the right of girls to pursue an education, her father is just a lesser version of the men who shot her--someone valuing a cultural practice ahead of the life of a member of that culture. His loyalties have to have been sorely tested in this period--and found strangely, even disastrously, lacking on that one point. He stands up for education for girls--even runs a school for girls--but also serves a tribal culture that in the end puts the girls in harm's way for a bigger principle.
There is a curious inversion of Sandusky-think here. Malala's father seems less bothered by what she is heard saying (or even by the fact that she speaks out at all); in fact, he supports her message. But he is tragically concerned with how and where she she is seen.
P.S.: Girls in that part of the world, or in any part of the world, will be safer only when the boys are properly educated to acknowledge that the girls are human beings, too, and worthy of being accepted as such, and taken seriously and treated with respect. Boys who are taught that girls need be both unseen and unheard get a disastrously distorted view of what constitutes male courage and male hegemony. Girls, they are taught, need to be kept in their inferior place, through force and fear.
But then, the cyberbullying that goes on in "the west" to keep peers in their places (below the level of those doing the bullying) suggests that girls need some education, too. Amanda Todd made one mistake of judgement, and was punished for it, punished for it to death. What is adolescence for, if not for making bad choices and learning from them. By that logic, I suppose cyberbullying is another bad choice, but one that allows for a dangerous level of disengagement and relative anonymity. It is the choice made by hit-and-run drivers on lonely roads late at night.
He wasn't helping them grow up, he was stopping them from being children. It's a different thing.
But his spin allows him to remain the victimized hero in his own narcissistic frame of mind--if that isn't giving narcissism a bad name. The kids from broken homes or deprived circumstances were supposed to be grateful and quiet. They're the problem--they didn't play by Jerry's rules. They are responsible for the mess.
Then we get the other side, grown men shooting three girls on the way home from school in order to stop them from spreading "western" ideas about things like allowing girls to go to school. Then standing up and taking credit, claiming "responsibility" for the act, as if this were in some way some sort of achievement for grown men.
In what distorted view of the world and of human worth is an attack by armed gunmen on an unguarded child in the company of other children an act worth taking credit for? What is it about a worldview that allows for or even claims to require such an act for its continued existence? What values, whose "worth," does it promote? What fear drives such despicable and cowardly acts in the name of responsibility?
This is immaturity of the coarsest kind--the kind that again robs children of the opportunity to be children in order to make physical grown-ups feel that they are also "responsible" adults. It is the childish behaviour of playground bullies, bigger kids, or kids with more social clout, roaming in packs, claiming and protecting their overdetermined, self-appointed right to decide who gets to play on what equipment, under what rules.
The only mature and responsible mind in the crowd belongs to the girl who was their primary target-- Malala Yousufzai--who at 14 has for years shown nothing but true courage in the face of "adult" malice and stupidity. And some of that maturity and a huge measure of courage attaches to her friends and classmates who rode with her on that bus, having to know being anywhere near her put them in danger, too, given the months of threats against her and her family.
Of course, the "unguarded" aspect brings up some issues. The threats against the life of a child who has refused to be intimidated, even though she has openly expressed her fear of those she opposes, have been coming for months, yet her father refused the offer of armed escorts for her to and from school. It was unacceptable in his worldview and the culture of his region for a young girl like this to be and to be seen publicly in too close proximity to adult men. (Unfortunately, the gunMAN or MEN did not feel it inappropriate for them to be seen in such close proximity to a young girl, in public, to force their lethal intentions on her in the name of acceptable public order. )
In a way, for all the pride he has expressed in her campaign for the right of girls to pursue an education, her father is just a lesser version of the men who shot her--someone valuing a cultural practice ahead of the life of a member of that culture. His loyalties have to have been sorely tested in this period--and found strangely, even disastrously, lacking on that one point. He stands up for education for girls--even runs a school for girls--but also serves a tribal culture that in the end puts the girls in harm's way for a bigger principle.
There is a curious inversion of Sandusky-think here. Malala's father seems less bothered by what she is heard saying (or even by the fact that she speaks out at all); in fact, he supports her message. But he is tragically concerned with how and where she she is seen.
P.S.: Girls in that part of the world, or in any part of the world, will be safer only when the boys are properly educated to acknowledge that the girls are human beings, too, and worthy of being accepted as such, and taken seriously and treated with respect. Boys who are taught that girls need be both unseen and unheard get a disastrously distorted view of what constitutes male courage and male hegemony. Girls, they are taught, need to be kept in their inferior place, through force and fear.
But then, the cyberbullying that goes on in "the west" to keep peers in their places (below the level of those doing the bullying) suggests that girls need some education, too. Amanda Todd made one mistake of judgement, and was punished for it, punished for it to death. What is adolescence for, if not for making bad choices and learning from them. By that logic, I suppose cyberbullying is another bad choice, but one that allows for a dangerous level of disengagement and relative anonymity. It is the choice made by hit-and-run drivers on lonely roads late at night.
Friday, 5 October 2012
Twilight and audience responses
This began life as a response to my Popular Culture class, after a spirited reading and discussion of Twilight, by Stephenie Meyer.
First of all: The reviewers and commentators whose responses I put into a series of PPT slides exhibit different levels of skills at explaining their attraction to or disaffection for the books—and the more articulate seem to be the haters (who also seem to be older). That presents a problem—the reasons for liking the books and characters are no less serious (though they do seem rather immature and frivolous at times) to the people who write the positive responses. The two populations are working against different paradigms, different value systems. But maybe we just have to accept that people do not usually waste time and money on things that are meaningless or trivial to them--even if we don't like the meaning we assume they are getting or generating.
The "Michaelas" (a passionate defender of the books and of Meyer) out there are responding out of emotion or passion, "irrationally," maybe, but truthfully within their frame of reference and experience, to a book that represents irrational passion as an ordinary, everyday reality. One to be sought out and cherished, evidently.
Secondly: I’ve been mulling over a phrase that came up from a student: “Safe creep.”
I think that Edward as vampire is an over-determined yet typical romantic hero: a Romantic "superhero," in effect. He’s a dangerous boyfriend, albeit a dangerous boyfriend who understands quite a bit about the range of dangers he represents—to Bella, and to his family because of his relationship to Bella. As a romantic hero variety of "safe creep," he’s threatening, not easy to read, physical imposing, but also rational, knowledgeable, talented, and most of all a “caring animal,” or a “considerate monster,” who can be tamed by his love for the right woman.
As such a “dangerous creep,” he also provides a vicarious set of thrills to female readers, despite or maybe because of his creepiness as a mind-reading peeping Tom who sits in the corners of Bella’s bedroom, "taking care of her" by watching her sleep and listening in on her talking in her sleep. He’s creepy, but safely removed from another version of “reality.”
It’s a fairy tale: “Beauty (Bella) and the Beast (Edward),” in part. And once she becomes “Beauty,” she emerges from another fairy tale as “Bella Swan”—the beautiful swan at the end of “The Ugly Duckling.”
Women (or readers in general) who hate the books or to dislike and mock them, tend to start at Edward’s domineering, temperamental, controlling nature and Bella's lack of any standards of self-expression or self-protection from such a creep. Oddly, the ones who dislike Edward are maybe the ones most like him—restrained, disciplined, refined in taste, rational, looking for a different, more positive order of things. What brings out the irrational in Edward (and for a lot of the "haters") is Bella. It’s his emergent irrationality in dealing with her that somehow “humanizes” the vampire. Yet his rationality (typically a male-gendered trait) and self-control are also part of a different kind of fairy tale, I suppose—or a different myth cycle.
What is truly “creepy” is that he does not seem to understand or respect other people’s privacy or need for a personal space of their own. He's in constant "surveillance" mode, a perfect potential staffer for any of several state or private security firms.
The disapprovers can reject him and his behaviours--a popular position, to judge from the PPT slides. They can resist a gendered power structure by expressing disapproval of the “patriarchal” Cullen coven and od Edward's behaviours as a "model boyfriend."
I wonder at times if a huge influence on the "popularity" of this series is that people love to hate it--it gives them scope to work out their own personal ideological boundaries, by seeing the everyday problems in extreme relief. The only danger they expose themselves to is not the "safe creep," but the angry, mocking disapproval of the other audience—the ones who love Twilight, like Michaela, who calls one such hater a bunch of insulting names: “a little nobody with no creativity,” for openers
But consider: in a book ostensibly designed to bring in or appeal to a female teen audience (and that finds another audience in the mothers of those teens), there are discernible ideas or worldviews, promoted or “advertised” in and by the entertainment in the story. This is just like a magazine, a tv series, etc. The “entertainment” or editorial part is designed to pull in and create an audience that is then sold back as a product to the advertisers. The worldviews that are the "advertisements" are evident in the discerned story shapes that support the various popular and critical stances that might not be "progressive, by some standards, but can be discernibly so by others--again, depending on the fairy tale one is within.
In order to accept Bella as a heroine of a romance, what other ideas does a reader have to “buy” into? Same for Edward as a hero? What story shapes: star-crossed lovers? (potential for tragedy)? Romance couple (grounds for miscommunication? Potential for a comic “resolution” that is typically a resolving of the miscommunication, or an overcoming of an older order of rules and customs).
What is it that the traveling vampires at the baseball game threaten—not just Bella (whom one in his standard vampire frame of reference mistakenly identifies as a "snack") or her relationship with Edward—a lot more: the travelling vampires represent an older, more destructive idea of order; the Cullens a newer, more progressive model of vampirism, a demonstration of the ability to control appetites? restraint? The Volturi, who come up later, are a “Roman Catholic/old European” style of vampire.They represent older, more destructive, even "selfish" worldviews--though Edward seems pretty selfish in his jealous "protection" of Bella from the fumbling overtures from all the teen-aged boys in her school.
[Here's a thought--Bella is truly 17. Edward looks 17 but is around 100 years old. There is a name for old men who pursue young women--and it isn't "hero." Well--maybe to them and their peers.]
What do the Cullens have that could make a family of vampires a model of "patriarchal" success (which is a model the feminist line of cultural criticism finds objectionable and “not progressive”?)—the ability to support each other (and Edward threatens that unity, so Bella has to be worth it)? So, to lovers of the book, part of the answer has to be their response to the question, "In what ways is she 'worth it.'”
First of all: The reviewers and commentators whose responses I put into a series of PPT slides exhibit different levels of skills at explaining their attraction to or disaffection for the books—and the more articulate seem to be the haters (who also seem to be older). That presents a problem—the reasons for liking the books and characters are no less serious (though they do seem rather immature and frivolous at times) to the people who write the positive responses. The two populations are working against different paradigms, different value systems. But maybe we just have to accept that people do not usually waste time and money on things that are meaningless or trivial to them--even if we don't like the meaning we assume they are getting or generating.
The "Michaelas" (a passionate defender of the books and of Meyer) out there are responding out of emotion or passion, "irrationally," maybe, but truthfully within their frame of reference and experience, to a book that represents irrational passion as an ordinary, everyday reality. One to be sought out and cherished, evidently.
Secondly: I’ve been mulling over a phrase that came up from a student: “Safe creep.”
I think that Edward as vampire is an over-determined yet typical romantic hero: a Romantic "superhero," in effect. He’s a dangerous boyfriend, albeit a dangerous boyfriend who understands quite a bit about the range of dangers he represents—to Bella, and to his family because of his relationship to Bella. As a romantic hero variety of "safe creep," he’s threatening, not easy to read, physical imposing, but also rational, knowledgeable, talented, and most of all a “caring animal,” or a “considerate monster,” who can be tamed by his love for the right woman.
As such a “dangerous creep,” he also provides a vicarious set of thrills to female readers, despite or maybe because of his creepiness as a mind-reading peeping Tom who sits in the corners of Bella’s bedroom, "taking care of her" by watching her sleep and listening in on her talking in her sleep. He’s creepy, but safely removed from another version of “reality.”
It’s a fairy tale: “Beauty (Bella) and the Beast (Edward),” in part. And once she becomes “Beauty,” she emerges from another fairy tale as “Bella Swan”—the beautiful swan at the end of “The Ugly Duckling.”
Women (or readers in general) who hate the books or to dislike and mock them, tend to start at Edward’s domineering, temperamental, controlling nature and Bella's lack of any standards of self-expression or self-protection from such a creep. Oddly, the ones who dislike Edward are maybe the ones most like him—restrained, disciplined, refined in taste, rational, looking for a different, more positive order of things. What brings out the irrational in Edward (and for a lot of the "haters") is Bella. It’s his emergent irrationality in dealing with her that somehow “humanizes” the vampire. Yet his rationality (typically a male-gendered trait) and self-control are also part of a different kind of fairy tale, I suppose—or a different myth cycle.
What is truly “creepy” is that he does not seem to understand or respect other people’s privacy or need for a personal space of their own. He's in constant "surveillance" mode, a perfect potential staffer for any of several state or private security firms.
The disapprovers can reject him and his behaviours--a popular position, to judge from the PPT slides. They can resist a gendered power structure by expressing disapproval of the “patriarchal” Cullen coven and od Edward's behaviours as a "model boyfriend."
I wonder at times if a huge influence on the "popularity" of this series is that people love to hate it--it gives them scope to work out their own personal ideological boundaries, by seeing the everyday problems in extreme relief. The only danger they expose themselves to is not the "safe creep," but the angry, mocking disapproval of the other audience—the ones who love Twilight, like Michaela, who calls one such hater a bunch of insulting names: “a little nobody with no creativity,” for openers
But consider: in a book ostensibly designed to bring in or appeal to a female teen audience (and that finds another audience in the mothers of those teens), there are discernible ideas or worldviews, promoted or “advertised” in and by the entertainment in the story. This is just like a magazine, a tv series, etc. The “entertainment” or editorial part is designed to pull in and create an audience that is then sold back as a product to the advertisers. The worldviews that are the "advertisements" are evident in the discerned story shapes that support the various popular and critical stances that might not be "progressive, by some standards, but can be discernibly so by others--again, depending on the fairy tale one is within.
In order to accept Bella as a heroine of a romance, what other ideas does a reader have to “buy” into? Same for Edward as a hero? What story shapes: star-crossed lovers? (potential for tragedy)? Romance couple (grounds for miscommunication? Potential for a comic “resolution” that is typically a resolving of the miscommunication, or an overcoming of an older order of rules and customs).
What is it that the traveling vampires at the baseball game threaten—not just Bella (whom one in his standard vampire frame of reference mistakenly identifies as a "snack") or her relationship with Edward—a lot more: the travelling vampires represent an older, more destructive idea of order; the Cullens a newer, more progressive model of vampirism, a demonstration of the ability to control appetites? restraint? The Volturi, who come up later, are a “Roman Catholic/old European” style of vampire.They represent older, more destructive, even "selfish" worldviews--though Edward seems pretty selfish in his jealous "protection" of Bella from the fumbling overtures from all the teen-aged boys in her school.
[Here's a thought--Bella is truly 17. Edward looks 17 but is around 100 years old. There is a name for old men who pursue young women--and it isn't "hero." Well--maybe to them and their peers.]
What do the Cullens have that could make a family of vampires a model of "patriarchal" success (which is a model the feminist line of cultural criticism finds objectionable and “not progressive”?)—the ability to support each other (and Edward threatens that unity, so Bella has to be worth it)? So, to lovers of the book, part of the answer has to be their response to the question, "In what ways is she 'worth it.'”
Thursday, 4 October 2012
Goodbye, Greenwoods'
When I was young and impressionable in ways different from the ways I am way older and impressionable now, young and fascinated by valiant, stalwart knights in armour and resourceful, humorous heroes in tights, "under the greenwood tree" was Robin Hood with his Merry Men, Maid Marian, Friar Tuck, and all things good, holding out against the evil Sheriff of Nottingham, the stooge of the even more evil King John, and enemy of brave, good King Richard.
When I moved to Edmonton in 1986, and took my first walk along Whyte Avenue (or 82nd, as I had not yet learned not to call it) I first made my way into a Greenwoods' of a different kind, but similar quality, this lavish bookstore, crowded with customers. It was one of my first indications Edmonton was going to be an all right place to call home.
Many years, hours of browsing, and well-spent dollars later, I made what will probably prove my last trip to Greenwoods' as a customer last weekend. It was a sad excursion into a hollowing, echoing, emptying mausoleum. Greenwoods' is closing down on Saturday, Oct. 6, and as of last weekend, there were just not many books left on the shelves or customers left on the carpets.
Marty Chan, on Facebook, is trying to organize a last pilgrimage from among his Friends for Saturday, but ...
An editorial and a column in today's Edmonton Journal celebrate and eulogize the store. They also explain and maybe attempt to rationalize the economics of family businesses and of the book trade in particular that have helped bring down to this whimper of an ending this precious independent storehouse of surprises and opportunities, with its knowledgeable, literate and helpful staff who filled a "Staff Suggestions" section that could keep you satisfied month after month, and whose own brand of magic was that they could find titles for you based on the skimpiest of clues about author, title or even subject matter. Going into a warehouse of a chain bookstore to search its cold computerized database to see if I can locate a title on my own (and I would pretty much have to do it on my own) based on its e-logic is just not going to be the same--even if I do end up with the book, in the end.
Knowing why such places close does not make its closing any easier to accept. And the rationale does not fill me with confidence about the future of the one last notable independent bookstore in the city, Audrey's. Though I hope to be a customer there for quite a while longer.
All I see right now is that Edmonton has more than doubled its population in the years I have been here, and yet, with one closed door, it becomes a diminished place to call home.
Thanks, Greenwoods', for your own kind of magic over the years.
When I moved to Edmonton in 1986, and took my first walk along Whyte Avenue (or 82nd, as I had not yet learned not to call it) I first made my way into a Greenwoods' of a different kind, but similar quality, this lavish bookstore, crowded with customers. It was one of my first indications Edmonton was going to be an all right place to call home.
Many years, hours of browsing, and well-spent dollars later, I made what will probably prove my last trip to Greenwoods' as a customer last weekend. It was a sad excursion into a hollowing, echoing, emptying mausoleum. Greenwoods' is closing down on Saturday, Oct. 6, and as of last weekend, there were just not many books left on the shelves or customers left on the carpets.
Marty Chan, on Facebook, is trying to organize a last pilgrimage from among his Friends for Saturday, but ...
An editorial and a column in today's Edmonton Journal celebrate and eulogize the store. They also explain and maybe attempt to rationalize the economics of family businesses and of the book trade in particular that have helped bring down to this whimper of an ending this precious independent storehouse of surprises and opportunities, with its knowledgeable, literate and helpful staff who filled a "Staff Suggestions" section that could keep you satisfied month after month, and whose own brand of magic was that they could find titles for you based on the skimpiest of clues about author, title or even subject matter. Going into a warehouse of a chain bookstore to search its cold computerized database to see if I can locate a title on my own (and I would pretty much have to do it on my own) based on its e-logic is just not going to be the same--even if I do end up with the book, in the end.
Knowing why such places close does not make its closing any easier to accept. And the rationale does not fill me with confidence about the future of the one last notable independent bookstore in the city, Audrey's. Though I hope to be a customer there for quite a while longer.
All I see right now is that Edmonton has more than doubled its population in the years I have been here, and yet, with one closed door, it becomes a diminished place to call home.
Thanks, Greenwoods', for your own kind of magic over the years.
Thursday, 20 September 2012
Eva has this idea we should retire to Nice. Hot Mediterranean climate for much of the year. Reasonably close to a lot of other places in Europe by plane and train. Big enough to have amenities. Small enough not to be hard to get around. Colorful. Historical. All sorts of reasons.
Neither of us is hugely conversant in French, of course. That's one drawback, though it does have its uses. We will not be tempted to watch a lot of television. Local politics will not be as pressing an issue. And since it is a tourist city, all services are offered in several languages, for the lazy or linguistically not gifted.
Part of me resists: Too far away. Too unsettling. Too many unknowns. Too many unknowns. (Did I write that twice?--oh, oh. ) Too many risks.
That's when the other part of me checks in. "Too many risks"? How many risks is enough? What happened to the man who used to quit a job and move to a new city for the challenges? (Answer--he settled in to one city for way too long and got comfortable. Well--began to settle for this as comfortable enough.) (Other answer--he got a lot older while settled.)
I still look for ways to get out of my comfort zone as I search for writing challenges, for ways to expand my skills. But I do not usually pursue those for publication, just for information and relaxation. That suggests that I'm just locating a new comfort zone, after all. So to get out of my zone as a way to live my life, at my age? Shudder.
Maybe that's the best reason of all to move. To a new continent. To a new city. To a new culture. In a new language. To get over or at least confront the timidity, get on with living my retirement, rather than living out my retirement. Hell--just to get on with living. Maybe then I can quit looking at retirement as this yawning chasm of boredom, a time spent looking for ways to spend time (which it seems to be for a lot of my acquaintances).
Of course, I'm also afraid of what happens when Eva and I have no fall-back, when we have only each other as "community." My parents divorced right after my Dad hit retirement and the wall of his own diminishing capacity, and began to want to micromanage all aspects of their daily lives--in the home that had been Mom's main domain.
What if I'm like him that way (not that I ever was an Alpha in the pack--but then neither was he. He just hungered for that position and hated anyone who got farther up that ladder he thought was or should be reserved for him)? What if I become too difficult for Eva to live with or tolerate? In a place far from home, not quite making it possible for us to feel at home?
Neither of us is hugely conversant in French, of course. That's one drawback, though it does have its uses. We will not be tempted to watch a lot of television. Local politics will not be as pressing an issue. And since it is a tourist city, all services are offered in several languages, for the lazy or linguistically not gifted.
Part of me resists: Too far away. Too unsettling. Too many unknowns. Too many unknowns. (Did I write that twice?--oh, oh. ) Too many risks.
That's when the other part of me checks in. "Too many risks"? How many risks is enough? What happened to the man who used to quit a job and move to a new city for the challenges? (Answer--he settled in to one city for way too long and got comfortable. Well--began to settle for this as comfortable enough.) (Other answer--he got a lot older while settled.)
I still look for ways to get out of my comfort zone as I search for writing challenges, for ways to expand my skills. But I do not usually pursue those for publication, just for information and relaxation. That suggests that I'm just locating a new comfort zone, after all. So to get out of my zone as a way to live my life, at my age? Shudder.
Maybe that's the best reason of all to move. To a new continent. To a new city. To a new culture. In a new language. To get over or at least confront the timidity, get on with living my retirement, rather than living out my retirement. Hell--just to get on with living. Maybe then I can quit looking at retirement as this yawning chasm of boredom, a time spent looking for ways to spend time (which it seems to be for a lot of my acquaintances).
Of course, I'm also afraid of what happens when Eva and I have no fall-back, when we have only each other as "community." My parents divorced right after my Dad hit retirement and the wall of his own diminishing capacity, and began to want to micromanage all aspects of their daily lives--in the home that had been Mom's main domain.
What if I'm like him that way (not that I ever was an Alpha in the pack--but then neither was he. He just hungered for that position and hated anyone who got farther up that ladder he thought was or should be reserved for him)? What if I become too difficult for Eva to live with or tolerate? In a place far from home, not quite making it possible for us to feel at home?
Monday, 17 September 2012
When will they ever learn?...
I'm not so much thinking as snorting the past few days at the posturing coming out of Buckingham Palace and Anglesey about the publishing of photos of the Duchess of Cambridge, sunbathing topless on a private terrace on a private property in the south of France on a private vacation with her husband.
First off--yes, they are entitled to their privacy, and a married couple should have the chance to enjoy each others' company in whatever state of dress or undress suits their mood and the occasion. And the south of France is a great place for getting loads of sun on as much exposed skin as you can stand or dare.
And yes, paparazzi are bottom-feeders. So too are the publishers of magazines that would print such photos. But the publishers and photographers would have no purpose without the purchasers. Popular culture in one of its more sensational forms in the making. And nobody courts popularity any more assiduously than the House of Windsor.
After all, surely after all the outrage over Diana, or even Sarah, the Duchess of York, and even recently of Harry in Vegas, the Cambridges might have been a bit more circumspect, found a somewhat less exposed platform from which to soak up a few rays? They have to know by now that there will be a loaded camera in the hands of a canny cameraperson pretty well anywhere they go. And that it does not take much of an opportunity (even in the middle of something like 640 acres) for a long lens to see things it's not supposed to be seeing?
So now, once again, it's "shoot the messenger" time for the House of Windsor. The message was, "You took too much for granted." Now try this message: "You guys need to smarten up."
But, no, they'd rather come out wildly indignant after the fact at the yellow press, than adjust to the unpleasant reality that they cannot be photogenic celebrities only when it suits them and their charities. And they cannot expect that the photographers, all of them, will play nice the rest of the time. It's the non-op photos that pay the bills, Windsors and Cambridges. Learn that lesson and quit with the pouting when your own carelessness gets exposed.
Or, Cambridges, just tell the publishers to take a flying leap. Explain that you are married, young, and attractive to each other, and intend to act on that set of facts, as couples are entitled to do. Just do it in what is truly private, and not in what you incorrectly suppose to be private enough.
Post Scriptum 18 Sept.:
I hear by the news this morning that the Cambridges have been granted an injunction against Closer, which must hand over the digital originals of the photos and start paying fines if it does not. I guess other injunctions will be forthcoming against other publications in Italy and Ireland that have also published some or many of the photos. So maybe the House of Windsor and its offspring have not yet learned not to get careless and not to get caught, but they have learned that they can fight back--something it was apparently unwilling or unable to do a generation ago. I still wish they would just say "publish and be damned." But that is unrealistic on my part.
First off--yes, they are entitled to their privacy, and a married couple should have the chance to enjoy each others' company in whatever state of dress or undress suits their mood and the occasion. And the south of France is a great place for getting loads of sun on as much exposed skin as you can stand or dare.
And yes, paparazzi are bottom-feeders. So too are the publishers of magazines that would print such photos. But the publishers and photographers would have no purpose without the purchasers. Popular culture in one of its more sensational forms in the making. And nobody courts popularity any more assiduously than the House of Windsor.
After all, surely after all the outrage over Diana, or even Sarah, the Duchess of York, and even recently of Harry in Vegas, the Cambridges might have been a bit more circumspect, found a somewhat less exposed platform from which to soak up a few rays? They have to know by now that there will be a loaded camera in the hands of a canny cameraperson pretty well anywhere they go. And that it does not take much of an opportunity (even in the middle of something like 640 acres) for a long lens to see things it's not supposed to be seeing?
So now, once again, it's "shoot the messenger" time for the House of Windsor. The message was, "You took too much for granted." Now try this message: "You guys need to smarten up."
But, no, they'd rather come out wildly indignant after the fact at the yellow press, than adjust to the unpleasant reality that they cannot be photogenic celebrities only when it suits them and their charities. And they cannot expect that the photographers, all of them, will play nice the rest of the time. It's the non-op photos that pay the bills, Windsors and Cambridges. Learn that lesson and quit with the pouting when your own carelessness gets exposed.
Or, Cambridges, just tell the publishers to take a flying leap. Explain that you are married, young, and attractive to each other, and intend to act on that set of facts, as couples are entitled to do. Just do it in what is truly private, and not in what you incorrectly suppose to be private enough.
Post Scriptum 18 Sept.:
I hear by the news this morning that the Cambridges have been granted an injunction against Closer, which must hand over the digital originals of the photos and start paying fines if it does not. I guess other injunctions will be forthcoming against other publications in Italy and Ireland that have also published some or many of the photos. So maybe the House of Windsor and its offspring have not yet learned not to get careless and not to get caught, but they have learned that they can fight back--something it was apparently unwilling or unable to do a generation ago. I still wish they would just say "publish and be damned." But that is unrealistic on my part.
Friday, 7 September 2012
Surprises where no surprises need be
I was really surprised, and surprised at being surprised, at the number of people (especially among my Facebook friends) who expressed surprise that a thing like the shootings at the P.Q. rally the other night in Montreal could happen in Canada. They seemed to think it was some weird American contamination of our Northern purity. What crap.
Being Canadian is a whole bunch of ways of being human, within a set of national boundaries and travelling assumptions. But let's not be so naive as to try to deny or escape the fact that Canadians are heir to all the strengths and weaknesses of human nature. We are not and never have been some special case island of moral rectitude, too pure to jaywalk, let alone own or hold guns, let alone shoot something or someone with them. Does no one read history anymore?
(I know our Prime Minister and our Minister of Finance like us to think they have walled us off from the economic mess much of the rest of the world is in--but that's probably wishful thinking, too.)
We--we humans, that is, not just we Canadians--seem to have this capacity for thinking that our special way or our special ways of being human are the right ways, the paths to something everyone should be following towards. And when someone with whom we share some identity or identification (middle-aged Anglo-Canadian Quebecer, for example) does something "unusual," or even perhaps criminal, we find our path defiled, and have to assign the blame to some extra-territorial cause. Or to insanity, especially if the perp claims or seems to claim to be acting in our name.
The cause is within ourselves, folks. Maybe that's what really scares us. Not all the would-be pro- or anti-separatism assassins are Quebecois-speaking, bearded FLQers from the Sixties and Seventies. This act and the shouted claim to be among the waking (I typoed "wanking," first time, and wonder now if I shouldn't have left it that way) Anglos is maybe an exaggeration of a lot of Rest-of-Canada attitudes, but it goes only a bit farther in a direction a lot of Comments were already tending (or trending). Well, maybe quite a bit farther.
But try to think of it not as a deviation from norms, but as a partial definition of norms.
Not a good thing, truly. But not a totally outsider thing, either.
Being Canadian is a whole bunch of ways of being human, within a set of national boundaries and travelling assumptions. But let's not be so naive as to try to deny or escape the fact that Canadians are heir to all the strengths and weaknesses of human nature. We are not and never have been some special case island of moral rectitude, too pure to jaywalk, let alone own or hold guns, let alone shoot something or someone with them. Does no one read history anymore?
(I know our Prime Minister and our Minister of Finance like us to think they have walled us off from the economic mess much of the rest of the world is in--but that's probably wishful thinking, too.)
We--we humans, that is, not just we Canadians--seem to have this capacity for thinking that our special way or our special ways of being human are the right ways, the paths to something everyone should be following towards. And when someone with whom we share some identity or identification (middle-aged Anglo-Canadian Quebecer, for example) does something "unusual," or even perhaps criminal, we find our path defiled, and have to assign the blame to some extra-territorial cause. Or to insanity, especially if the perp claims or seems to claim to be acting in our name.
The cause is within ourselves, folks. Maybe that's what really scares us. Not all the would-be pro- or anti-separatism assassins are Quebecois-speaking, bearded FLQers from the Sixties and Seventies. This act and the shouted claim to be among the waking (I typoed "wanking," first time, and wonder now if I shouldn't have left it that way) Anglos is maybe an exaggeration of a lot of Rest-of-Canada attitudes, but it goes only a bit farther in a direction a lot of Comments were already tending (or trending). Well, maybe quite a bit farther.
But try to think of it not as a deviation from norms, but as a partial definition of norms.
Not a good thing, truly. But not a totally outsider thing, either.
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