Category Archives: Musings

A Worship of Writers

You’ve heard, I’m sure, of a murder of crows, a herd of cows, a gaggle of geese.  You know of prides of lions, packs of wolves, and barrels of monkeys.  You may even be familiar with a conspiracy of lemurs, a parliament of owls, and a convocation of eagles.

Almost every animal species has its own collective name, which is sometimes shared with other species.

Humans are no exception.  We recognize band of brothers, pack of thieves, circle of friends.  We may find ourselves from time to time as part of a flock of tourists, a panel of experts, or, sadly, a cortege of mourners.  And there are many more I have learned only recently—sneer of butlers, feast of brewers, helix of geneticists, and one I especially love, slither of gossip columnists.

To my surprise and delight, I have recently been invited to become one of such a collective—a worship of writers.  I had never heard the term before, though I have long worshipped the art of writing.

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We meet once a week to read our responses to a writing prompt, each response no more than a page-and-a-half, and to offer constructive criticism of each other’s work.  The responses are posted on a private blog, if their authors so choose, for all to enjoy and ponder again.

The prompt for this week, the first one for me, is separation.  Each of us must write something to reflect that notion, knowing it can have many interpretations.  Here is my first endeavour—

*  *  *  *  *  *

“There’s no easy way to say this, Harold,” the man behind the desk said.  “So, I’ll come right out with it.  “It’s been decided that we’re letting you go, effective today.”

“W-what?” I stammered, shifting from one foot to the other.

“You know we’ve been consolidating for some time,” he said.  “Rightsizing.  It’s been decided that we can no longer afford to carry your department.”

“But…but what about our readers?” I asked.

Staring at his hands folded carefully behind the nameplate in front of him—Don Mountbank, Managing Editor—he said, “Ruby will escort you out.  You can take your personal belongings, of course, but nothing else.  HR will be in touch with the separation details.”

Ruby, the fat security guard, moved next to me.  I wondered why she’d been there when I first entered the office.  Now I knew.

“Don, wait, this is crazy,” I said.  “I’ve been with the paper for thirty-eight years.  Longer than anybody.  This is all I know.  I’m a news-guy!”

Still not looking at me, Mountbank said, “Harold, this is very hard on me.  Don’t make it even worse.  Nothing you say is going to change a thing.  It’s been decided.”

I felt countless eyes following us as Ruby walked me through the newsroom to my cubicle.  Everything of my own was in the knapsack hanging on the back of my lopsided chair.  I didn’t even open my desk.

At the employees’ door, Ruby said, “Sorry, Harold.”

The door banged shut and I was on the street.  After almost forty years, the separation took no more time than that.

o – o – o – o – o

That was three months ago.  I’m back in the newsroom today for the first time since.  The few people still left, when they see me coming, bolt from their chairs, ducking, running.  It’s not me they fear, of course.  It’s the Winchester 94 I’m carrying, my deer-hunting rifle for more than twenty-five years.

It’s the first thing Don Mountbank sees when I burst into his office.

“Harold!  What the hell…”  He pushes his chair back from his desk, seeking to separate himself from whatever might be coming.

The young reporter he was meeting with rises slowly from her chair, hands splayed in front of her.  She’d been hired shortly before my employment was terminated.

“Mary?” I say, checking my memory.  When she nods, I say, “Sit down, Mary.  Right there.  Take out your phone and record everything that happens here.  Audio only, no video.  Got that?”

She nods again, eyes wide, and takes out her phone.

“Harold, what the hell are you doing, man?” Mountbank says, his voice cracking.  “This is crazy!  You know what will happen when the police find out?”

“Shut up, Don!” I say.  “This is hard enough on me as it is.  Don’t make it worse.”

His arms are raised now, as if to shield himself.  “Harold, listen, you know it wasn’t personal.  I tried to save you.  I went to the wall for you.  It wasn’t my decision.”

I point the Winchester at him.  “Looks like you’re up against the wall again, Don.”

And then he soils himself.  Both Mary and I lean back involuntarily, as if we can separate ourselves from the smell.  Before he can say another word, I shoot him twice, once in the left knee, once in the right hand.  The sound is louder than the flat Crack! I’m used to outdoors, the smell of cordite more pungent.  He screams, writhing in his chair until he slides to the floor.

I turn to Mary.  “This is your story to report,” I say.  “Your exclusive.  We’re going to leave now, you right in front of me.  If you do exactly as I tell you, I won’t hurt you.  Understand?”

She nods again, phone clutched tightly, and we head back to the deserted newsroom.  As we approach my former cubicle, four police officers appear at the far end of the room.  Ruby is with them, pointing at me.

POLICE!  PUT DOWN THE GUN!

Mary and I freeze, the Winchester pointed at her back.

PUT DOWN THE GUN!  PUT YOUR HANDS IN THE AIR!

Mary raises her arms.

“Mary,” I say softly.  “This is your story.  They’ll try to take it away from you, but don’t let them.  You’re part of this, not separate from it.  You report it, understand?”

When she nods, I say, “Okay, start walking away from me.  Go slowly so you won’t scare the cops.  You’ll be fine.”

When we are sufficiently separated, I take my finger off the trigger.  The cops don’t see that.  All they see is me still pointing the rifle at Mary.

SIR, PUT DOWN THE GUN!  NOW!

But I don’t.  Instead, I pivot towards them, the Winchester in firing position, no finger on the trigger.  I’m struck immediately, three times, four, five, driving me backwards…

I’m on the floor…I see the ceiling tiles…the fluorescent lights…one is flickering…

Now I hear Mary screaming…

My chest hurts, it hurts…

And now…

*  *  *  *  *  *

I don’t expect my new writer friends to worship the piece, but I’m eager to hear what they think of it.  This is going to be fun.

One More Time

A few years ago, we sold our home in Florida and I retired from playing ball.  Once the decision was taken, it didn’t seem like such a big deal.  There was no special celebration or ritual ceremony to mark the occasion.  After all, several of my friends had already made the same decision before me.  And furthermore, when it came right down to it, nobody really cared.

PP home

However, last spring we purchased another Florida home, and as this past autumn approached, I began to have second thoughts about that retirement.  I began to question if I could actually carry through with the decision.  I mean, how would I weather another winter in Florida without playing ball?

As September gave way to October, the sunshine state beckoned us again, and, with a sense of quiet desperation, I began to search ‘midst the debris of a sporting life for my trusty old ball glove.

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My wife (whose university degree dealt with biology, physiology, kinesiology, and other -ologies having to do with the human body) tells me that the average male person attains his physical peak around the age of twenty-six years.  If she’s right, that would mean I am fifty years beyond my glorious prime.

These days, I can’t remember what I was even doing when I was twenty-six, let alone how well I might have been doing it.  But I’m pretty sure I was somewhere playing softball, for somebody.

Now I have to admit that, with my level of athletic prowess, it’s difficult to tell if I ever actually reached a peak!  Regardless, I’m long past the point where even I could think of myself as a player ‘on the way up’, a kid ‘with a future’!

A few winters ago, before my decision to retire, several little things occurred on the playing field that, by themselves, weren’t especially significant.  Taken together, though, they presented a pattern which had led to my giving up the game.

First was the change in the distance between the bases; it got longer!  Either that, or I began to slow down.  And, for a ballplayer who couldn’t hit his weight, who threw three-bouncers from centre field to the infield, speed on the base paths was a commodity I sorely needed.

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I also noticed I had stopped caring who won the game.  What mattered more to me was that I got to play my innings.  I don’t think my teammates knew, because nothing changed outwardly in my approach to the game.  But I knew, and I worried about it.  I mean, who wants to be on a ball team with someone who isn’t even competitive anymore?

The clincher, however, was a fall I took in the outfield, after [ahem] catching a long fly ball.  It was similar to dozens of such falls in the past, except this time I tore some ligaments in my shoulder.  Surgery was required twice—once to insert two screws, and again to remove them.  Those were not fun.

Consequently, when we sold our home, I retired.  Hung up the cleats.

However, upon my recent return to Florida this fall, I heard about the first meeting of the new season, to organize teams for winter ball.  I wandered over to the ballpark, just to see who might be coming back.  And I took my ball glove with me for moral support.

Once there, of course, my crumbling resolve to be retired collapsed completely.  Surrounded by past teammates—and wondering how they all got so old—I joyously entered my name and signed on the dotted line.

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I’m back! the boy inside me cried.

I probably still can’t hit for average, and my speed in the outfield will be tragically reduced on my gimpy knees, but I can still spit in the dirt and pound my glove.  So, sometime within the next couple of days, under a warm, winter sun, with all the other erstwhile boys of summer, I’ll trot—or totter—on to that field of dreams again.

One more time.

Dying? When? Or Maybe Not?

For most of our recorded history, we humans have been concerned with the prospect of dying.  Some of us have welcomed it, many of us have feared it, but all of us have recognized its inevitability.

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Today, however, there are at least three schools of thought on the matter.  The first, the majority, accepts that, not until they are called, will they go—no matter how long it takes, no matter how incapacitated they become.  The second, a growing number, wants to determine their own manner of death, at a time and by a method of their own choosing.

A third group has emerged recently, devoted to living beyond the demise of their mortal bodies by digitizing their brains in the cloud—enabling them to live on forever, as it were, as a stream of conscious thoughts interacting with those still alive.

Preposterous?  Maybe not.

The first notion of death is pretty much established.  As of this writing, no one in all our history has failed to die.

The second, though, is becoming more prevalent.  Called by a variety of names (including assisted death, assisted suicide, merciful release, quietus), the concept is that any person, at a time of her/his choosing, may be allowed to die, assisted if necessary by others.

Several countries around the world have enacted laws to enable this in one form or another.  But almost without fail, the legislation requires informed consent from the person at the time (s)he decides to go, and only if (s)he is judged mentally competent in the moment to make such a decision.  Further, the person must be facing a grievous and irremediable medical condition.

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In Canada, where it is called Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID), the procedure requires that the person:

  • have a serious illness, disease or disability,
  • be in an advanced state of decline that cannot be reversed,
  • be experiencing unbearable physical or mental suffering from illness, disease, disability, or state of decline, none of which can be relieved under conditions considered acceptable, and
  • be at a point where natural death has become reasonably foreseeable (but not requiring a specific prognosis as to how long there is left to live), and where all medical circumstances have been taken into account.

One does not need to have a fatal or terminal condition to be eligible for medical assistance in dying.  However, one must be able to give informed consent both at the time of the initial request, and—most importantly—immediately before the medical assistance in dying is provided.

In that last condition lies the rub.  Presumably, one might have put all the steps in place in advance; and then, on the very day when it is to take place, perhaps only moments before the actual act, one could lapse into unconsciousness and be unable to give that final consent.

In such a circumstance, and despite one’s own previously-granted, informed consent, one might linger for days or weeks, or even longer, unable to exert any control over the end of life.

I hope that condition will be changed.

The third concept, disrupting death, is only in its infancy.  Artificial intelligence experts are increasingly working on brain-scanning techniques that will allow them to digitize the brain, and then upload it to the cloud.  Already, specialists have developed digital replicas of brains, virtual avatars, that they hope will be able to communicate with those left behind after the death of their owners.

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With software to mine the gigabytes of thoughts and emotions created every day by those brains, virtual models can be created in the ether.  These will, the developers hope, be able to communicate with loved ones after their owners have passed away.

Just imagine being able to exchange ideas with the dearly-departed who, with the assistance of data inputted regularly into chatbots, will be able to stay abreast of current affairs and form opinions on events that happen after their death.

To be sure, there are many experts who scoff at the notion.  Although it may well be possible to enable such robotic connections, they say, it will prove impossible to replicate human consciousness beyond death.

One such expert, Hiroshi Ishiguro, a Japanese roboticist—who has built an android version of himself and programmed it with all manner of knowledge—says, “If we have an android, we can live forever in society.  But personal immortality is impossible because consciousness is not continuous.”

I confess, I have no idea of the viability of any of this.  My brain, even while still alive, has not the capacity to imagine it.

It probably won’t matter, though.  At my age, I’m more interested in the notion of assisted dying than the possibility of life eternal.  I’d much rather wander the star-filled vastness of the universe than plod endlessly through what is becoming an earthbound wasteland.

Silhouette of man and stars sky. Elements of this image furnished by NASA

Still, I’m suggesting to those near and dear to me that once I am gone, should they happen to hear my voice whispering in their ears, pay it heed.

Stranger things have happened.

Ranting and Raging

Have you ever wondered what you’d have done if you’d had to confront crises from the past—slavery, the Holocaust, the civil rights movement?

We’re faced with equally-serious issues today—the climate crisis, a sixth mass-extinction, the depletion of our freshwater reserves, a global refugee crisis, to name but a few.  What are you doing about these?

Perhaps the best answer is this statement from a young American activist, Aditi Juneja:  If you’ve wondered what you would’ve done during [such upheavals]…you’re doing it now.

My latest book, hot off the press, tackles these very issues head-on, and asks some provocative questions about our role.  I think you will enjoy it.

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A free preview is available at this safe link—

http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/precept

The collected essays are required reading, I believe, for anyone who cares about the future of our planet.

Apologizing? Or Saying Sorry!

It seems Canadian political leaders, be they provincial or federal, are forever offering formal apologies to groups of people disadvantaged or harmed by actions—or inaction—of predecessor governments.

Many of the transgressions go back a long way:  the forced resettlement of Indigenous children in residential schools, where almost 5000 children are known to have died; the imposition of a head tax on Chinese immigrants prior to 1923; the turning away of a refugee-ship carrying Jews fleeing Nazi Germany in 1939; the internment of Japanese-Canadians during World War II; the wilful neglect of Metis veterans following that war.

Why, some wonder, do today’s leaders feel the need to apologize for yesterday’s mistakes?  Large numbers of our fellow-citizens believe they should not.  They appear to agree with the words of a former prime minister, P. E. Trudeau:  I do not think it is the purpose of a government to right the past.  It is our purpose to be just in our time.

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Among the reasons for such thinking is that proffered apologies come far too late for those who were actually wronged; it is their descendants, not they, who benefit, perhaps financially.  From a legal standpoint, formal apologies from a government can be interpreted as admissions of guilt, opening up the possibility of costly liability and reparations, the price of which would be borne by today’s taxpayers.

In fact, when the Queen issued a formal apology to descendants of the Acadians who were expelled from the Maritimes, it ended with these words:  Our present proclamation does not, under any circumstances, constitute a recognition of legal or financial responsibility by the Crown.

Another reason certain people feel formal apologies should not be offered is that they are nothing more than a government’s attempt to absolve itself; in the words of one descendant of a Jewish family turned away in 1939, an apology is nothing but a shallow, empty, meaningless act [that] will not bring back my relatives, or offer me any solace.  Instead, it will whitewash a government that did nothing to help…

During the final years of my working career, I ran up against this sort of dilemma.  A man in his mid-thirties had come to a meeting of the school board where I served as chief executive officer, and in front of the assembled board in a public meeting, he disclosed that he’d been sexually assaulted as a boy of eleven by one of the board’s employees—the principal of his school.

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He further stated that, when his mother lodged a complaint with senior staff at the time, she and he were subjected to an interrogation by the then-CEO and the board’s legal counsel.  They were alone in that meeting.  Nothing was ever reported to the police, the principal vehemently denied the assertions, and the boy was transferred to another school.

Now, in full public view, with the local press in attendance, the man had come to demand an acknowledgement from the board of the assault and ongoing trauma he had experienced.

When he sat down, the entire room had been shocked into silence.

I was tasked by the board to meet with him and his mother, now in her sixties, which I arranged to do the following afternoon.  In our conversation, lasting more than two hours, I learned more details of what the man claimed to have suffered, and what the effects had been on him and his family.  I promised them I would investigate further and meet with them again.

In that investigation, I discovered a number of things.  From my predecessor of twenty-five years ago, I heard that the boy, considered at the time to be something of a troublemaker, had not been believed.  He told me the board’s lawyer back then had advised him to keep the matter private, and to caution the boy and his mother that going to the police might cause them a good deal of grief and harmful notoriety.  Further, they were told that, to relieve the boy of any further anxiety, he would be transferred out of the school he had attended since kindergarten.  At the end of our conversation, the former CEO conceded, somewhat ruefully, that he had not handled the matter as well as he might have.

I agreed.

From other sources, I learned that the principal who had been accused was, a few years later, accused by three other pupils of sexual assault.  On that occasion, he was charged, convicted, and imprisoned for his crimes.  At the time of my investigation, he had completed his sentence, been released, and was living in another district.  His teaching certificate had been revoked.

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None of that information had been conveyed to the boy and his mother, however, because, by the time those events transpired, they had left the community.

From the board’s current legal counsel, I learned that, should the man I was now dealing with decide to sue the board, the courts might very well decide in his favour—the reasoning being that the board could be deemed to have an ‘institutional responsibility’ for the actions of any predecessor board back to the time of its founding.

Not only that, but the current board might also be held accountable by the courts for actions taken by senior staff at the time who were acting as agents of the predecessor board.  In that case, the board could be responsible for the costs of defending those individuals if they were also named in litigation, and for any financial judgements against them.

I took this information back to the board for discussion in private session.  The individual trustees, five men and seven women, were profoundly moved to learn more about what had happened.  Every one of them expressed their sorrow and outrage over what the man had gone through as a boy of eleven.  A few of them had been students in the district at the same time as that boy, and although they did not know him, they strongly identified with his plight.

Nevertheless, the trustees were reluctant to authorize a formal apology on behalf of the board because the tragedy had occurred so long ago, under someone else’s watch.  And they feared such an apology could eventually cost the current board a good deal of money—money it did not have without reallocating it from needed programmes and services for our current students.

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Why should today’s children, they argued, be the ones to pay for the negligence and malpractice of a previous administration?  Where was the fairness in that?  Nevertheless, they agreed that, if such a financial penalty were to be imposed, the board would find a way to pay it.  Their intent was not to avoid acknowledging the harm done to an innocent child, but to avoid litigation.

What to do?

Eventually, they decided that, in my second meeting with the man and his mother, I would convey the board’s deep regret and sadness for what they had suffered—but in such a way as to avoid assuming responsibility.  They believed saying sorry was the appropriate thing to do—while, at the same time, hoping it was all they would have to do.

And so it was.  I met again with the man and his mother, told them what I had learned in my further investigation, conveyed the sincere horror and regret felt by the trustees when they heard the same details, and expressed how sorry they were about what he and his family had experienced.  I gave them a letter to that effect, signed by me and the chair of the board, and offered to make it public if the man so desired.

He did, and it appeared in the body of a report in the local media that same week.

As they listened to me in that meeting, and as they read the letter, I could see a visible weight lift from their shoulders.  Through all those years they had not been believed, and now the truth was finally acknowledged.  The man’s mother wept softly.

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They had no interest, it turned out, in pursuing criminal charges against the former principal over his unpunished crime, for that would open up the whole traumatic experience again, something they both wanted to avoid.  Neither were they interested in litigation against the board.

“All we ever wanted,” the man’s mother said through tears, “was for someone to believe us.  All we ever wanted was for someone to say sorry.”

So now, when I read about the formal apologies being given out by our various government leaders to descendants of groups who have been historically wronged, I think back to that experience.  And I wonder just how worthwhile and sincere such apologies are, especially when they expressly deny financial compensation for those wrongs—or if they do not result in significantly-changed behaviors.

Do the groups receiving those formal apologies really believe them?

My experience taught me that saying a heartfelt sorry is better than formally apologizing.

I thought so then, and I think so now.

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In a Word, Art

This may be hard for you to believe, but I swear it is true.  No less an author than Margaret Atwood—a colossus among not only Canadian writers, but writers the world over, who has published at least sixty books over the past sixty years—has won only four more of Canada’s major literary prizes than I have.  Only four!

That’s remarkable, considering that over the past twelve years, I have published a mere eleven books—six novels, four collections of tales, and one anthology of poetry—although there is a seventh novel and fifth book of tales on the way.

While it’s true that not one of mine has been nominated for a Giller Prize, a Governor-General’s Award, or a Booker Prize, Atwood has garnered only one of the first, two of the second, and one of the third.

Not an insurmountable lead, perhaps, if I keep plugging away.

I am jesting, of course.  Whether the reason for this awards-discrepancy is the considered judgment of the Canadian literati, the fact that Atwood has a much larger canon of work than I, the possibility that she is actually a better writer, or all of the above (the likely cause), there is really no competition.

In fact, art is not about competing.

I have never spoken with Atwood, so I cannot say for sure.  But it may be that, deep down, she writes for the same reasons I do—not to win awards, but to entertain readers; not to become famous, but to satisfy the innate urge to create something that never existed before; not because it’s a job or livelihood, but because it’s fulfilling!

The awards may be just icing on the cake, although they are some icing!

I have spoken with other authors over the years, and with artists of all stripes, none of whom has ever reached the level of fame that Atwood has. These artists are painters, sculptors, potters, singers, songwriters, dancers, actors—all of them doing what they do for the love of their art.

Some have won ribbons and prizes along the way, some have had their works juried into prestigious exhibitions, some have even sold many of their creations.  But almost without fail, they tell me the joy they derive from their work is not from those final outcomes; instead, they say, the true pleasure flows from the process of conceiving and playing with a brand-new idea, developing and nurturing it, striving to transform the fledgling concept into reality.

In a word, art.

I do not belong to a writers’ guild, nor do I attend writers’ workshops to share my work with others.  I prefer to lose myself, by myself, in the various, fictional worlds I devise—godlike as I form, destroy, and re-form what is to happen, engrossed in my endeavours to create the perfect story.  Being alone like that can be lonely sometimes.

Happily, however, I have a kindred soul with whom I am very close—an artist who creates beautiful, one-of-a-kind works in dichroic glass, clay, and wood.

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We disappear from each other’s environs for hours on end, both of us impelled by the same creative urges that drive artists of every sort.  And when we come back together, we regale each other—usually over a glass of wine—with the trials and triumphs we’ve experienced in our latest efforts.

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Neither of us can do what the other does, of course.  Our strivings and struggles, like our talents, are quite different.  But there is a shared understanding between us of the challenges we encounter, of the need to persevere, of the importance of releasing whatever is trying to burst forth from our creative cocoons.

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And while we both celebrate the finish of each work, we find we still must deal with a pang of disappointment that the quest is over.  At least until the next is begun.

What emerges is not always perfect—hardly ever, in fact.  But as Atwood herself has said, “If I waited for perfection, I would never write a word.”

So, it is the process, not the product, that matters most of all.  With my storytelling, I never want to actually finish a novel; there is, no matter how many times I re-read each successive draft, an urge to continue to rework it.  So, to save my sanity, I no longer try to finish.  Instead, I simply stop when it seems best.  And there the books sit for all to read, to judge, to praise or condemn.

1 Precept cover  4 Killed Her cover  6 Lockdown cover  7 Harm cover  9 Missing cover  11 Dying Cover

Would I like to win a literary prize for something I write?  Well, yes, I think that would be quite gratifying.  But is that the motivation to continue writing, the hope that such a prize might be part of my future?  That I might close the gap between me and the redoubtable Margaret Atwood?

No.  I do not write for that purpose, nor do any of the artists I know pursue their passions for such transient glory.  They do have a reason, though, for pursuing the quest.

In a word, art.

Why Write?

What we’ve got hee-uh…is fail-yuh to commun’cate!

That statement appeared in the screenplay of a 1967 movie, Cool Hand Luke, spoken by the warden of a prison in Florida to a chain-gang worker who insisted on challenging his authority.  In the context of the movie, it was a great line.

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That warden, played by Strother Martin, knew communication is a two-way process, involving both an expressive and receptive party.  If either of the two is missing, it can be argued that communication does not occur.  In the movie, it was obvious to the exasperated warden that the convict, played by Paul Newman, was not receiving the intended message.

However, when someone expresses an idea that does strike a response from another, be it in agreement or rebuttal, the two have succeeded in communicating.  And with any luck, both will learn from the exchange.

Friends, acquaintances, and other readers of my work often ask me why I write.  Some seem puzzled by the fact that, day after day, week after week, I continue to pound the keyboard, churning out thoughts about things that matter to me.

On the surface, it’s a simple question, so I generally offer a simple answer.  “Well, I enjoy it,” is all I might say.

But occasionally, when I pause to think about the question myself, I discover it can be quite profound.  And the answer is tied directly to the notion of communicating.

Millions and millions of people worldwide consider themselves readers.  No matter what they read, or how often, or for what purpose, they are consumers of the written word.  But without the writers of those words, there would be nothing to read.

I remember an experience several years ago that helped me come to grips with why I feel compelled to write.  Riding a subway car in the city, I was struck by the fact that so many of my fellow-commuters were reading.  People would enter the train at each station, settle themselves comfortably in an open seat, and begin to read—all with hardly a glance at the folks around them.  Books, magazines, newspapers, cellphones, all capturing the attention of their owners.

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One man in particular caught my eye.  Leafing through a newspaper, appearing not to be reading anything too carefully, he paused on each page only long enough to determine whether to give more than passing attention to any of the articles.  Watching from across the aisle, I smugly assumed he might be one of those who checks only headlines and picture captions—but I was wrong.

After a quick once-over of a page containing a number of articles, he began to read one of them in earnest.  From my vantage, I could see the effect on him of what he was reading.  His very posture changed in his seat.  His facial expressions ranged from quizzical to credulous, from a smile of agreement to a frown of disapproval.  At one point, he stopped, cocked his head back to stare at the ceiling of the subway car, apparently thinking about what he had just read.

And that’s when I knew.  That’s why I write!

I had witnessed the communication of ideas and opinions from the writer of that article to the reader, although neither would ever meet the other.  The writer had reached the reader and elicited a response.  Across the cosmic void, communication had taken place.

In the writing I do—novels, collections of tales, poetry, blog-posts—I have no knowledge of the reactions of my readers to anything I write, save for when people post a comment on my blog, or send me an email, or ‘follow’ me online.  Many of those follows come from faraway nations, from people I will never know.

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But that’s not the point.  It’s my hope, my belief, that whether or not people choose to contact me, they will respond to my writing as I saw the man on the subway respond.  That is what provides the primary motivation to write.

It’s the urge to touch someone, to spark a sense of recognition, to provide a moment of enjoyment.  And most of all, it’s to provoke a response—even if I never know of it firsthand—so that what we’ll have here is a forum to communicate.

It matters to me.

On Being White

Three phrases being bandied about these days, sometimes interchangeably, are causing confusion for a lot of people—and a fair bit of anger.  They are: white privilege, white nationalism, and white supremacy.

The three are discrete in meaning, although they have one common element—they all deal with the assumed advantage or superiority of the white race over all others.

I was born many long years ago, the eldest of five siblings, into a traditional middle-class, Christian, white family.  My parents wanted their children to be the best they could be, as I suppose most parents do for their offspring.  Among the things they taught us in hope that might happen, were these admonitions:

  • keep your elbows off the table,
  • respect your elders,
  • dress neatly and tastefully,
  • choose your friends carefully,
  • speak politely,
  • behave in a way that will make us proud of you.

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They also taught us through their example that the things we do are more important than the things we say—actions speak more loudly than words.  Others will judge us, we were taught, by our behaviours, much more than by our avowals.

Their advice was meant to govern our interactions with people of all backgrounds, socio-economic status, and ages.  Had the issue of gender-identity been current back then, I have no doubt it would have been part of the package.

My parents called my father’s Jewish employer Mr. Halbert, the Italian owner of the neighbourhood fruit market Mrs. Carradona, the Irish milkman Mr. Alcorn, the Greek knife-sharpener with his clanging bell Mr. Kostopoulos—no one was to be treated disdainfully or condescendingly, regardless of their relationship to us.

It certainly never occurred to me back then that all these people were white, that virtually no one with whom we came in contact was a person of colour.

But the world changed as I grew up.  Canada, always a country of immigrants, mostly from white northern-European countries, opened its arms to newcomers from other parts of the world, heretofore largely ignored.  And, as these visible-minority folk and their descendants began to make their way in their adopted homeland, they ran up against the concept of white privilege.  Doors that had always opened for people such as I were barred to them.

Canada Canadian Diverse Unity Togetherness Concept

In 1989, Peggy McIntosh—an American feminist,  anti-racism activist, scholar, speaker, and Senior Research Scientist of the Wellesley Centers for Women—published an article entitled, White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack, which clearly sets out how being white in North America confers an unearned set of entitlements, benefits, and choices upon people solely because they are white.

White privilege explains power structures inherent in our society that benefit white people disproportionately, while putting people of colour at a disadvantage.  For most of my professional career, the biggest impediment to my advancement was not skin-colour, but that was the case for many others.  Equal-opportunity measures did affect me along the way as my employer sought to redress the imbalance in the leadership ranks, but even I, forced to wait, could see the need for those.

On balance, I have benefited from white privilege.  But I hope to live long enough to see privilege and opportunity available equally to any who may earn it, regardless of their skin-colour.  It is when our society actively seeks to maintain that white privilege that it creeps toward white nationalism.

White nationalists believe white identity should be the organizing principle of Western civilization. They advocate for policies to reverse the changing demographics wrought by immigration, which they believe (probably correctly) will eventually result in the loss of an absolute, white majority.  The tide is already turning here.  Ending non-white immigration, both legal and illegal, is seen as essential to preserve white, racial hegemony.

It seems to me they will be as successful as was King Canute in his effort to hold back the tide.  They are on the wrong side of history.

canute

White supremacists take the whole thing several steps further.  Merriam-Webster defines white supremacy as the belief that the white race is inherently superior to other races, and that white people should have control over people of other races.

That control has, indeed, been the case during several periods in the past—not just in North America, but in Africa, Asia, and Australia, where indigenous peoples have been ruthlessly enslaved and slaughtered.  And it’s true, the white race in all its nationalistic fervour was both politically and militarily superior during those periods.  But morally superior?  I think not.

Has white supremacy any chance of succeeding today, anywhere in the world, given the perverted efforts of its adherents?  It seems unlikely to me, although the terrorist acts they commit do wreak fear and havoc.

No dominant group in all of history, regardless of its skin-colour, has ever gone quietly into decline—not the Mongols, not the Nubians, not the Peloponnesians, not the Persians, not the Romans—though all were supreme in their time.  They all fought stoutly against an inevitable reversal of fortune, only to lose—as did the white colonialist powers, as will the white supremacists.  Theirs is a faulty premise.

As we contemplate the state of our planet today—beset by threats of climate change, nuclear war, trade disputes, wealth-disparity, homelessness, famine—it must be obvious to even the dullest or most perverse among us that we have nowhere else to go.  We are all together, adrift in the universe on this fragile vessel we call Earth, no matter the colour of our skin.

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It is past time to set aside the notions of white privilege, white nationalism, and white supremacy, to stop enabling them, to abjure them forever.

As Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote, We may have all come on different ships, but we’re in the same boat now.

Things Happen

Things happen.

We don’t always know about them, of course—not right when they occur, and sometimes not ever.

Trees topple loudly in the forest all the time when no one is present, waves smash spectacularly on solitary shorelines, birds plummet exhausted from the sky to die on uninhabited barrens.  And nobody is there to bear witness.

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It has ever been that way, from the first appearance of our human species until the present day.  Things happen, even when we do not know.

But that truth has become increasingly hard for many folk to accept.  In this age in which we live—one of marvellous, instantly-accessible, graphic, digital reality—it has become easy instead to believe that, unless we are told something happened, or see it on our screens, or experience it first-hand, it did not occur.

If it’s not up and viral on the web, if we aren’t personally in the loop, it cannot have happened.

How foolish we have become!

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And there is another problem.  Much of the information we avidly soak up from our handheld devices is misleading—sometimes inadvertently, sometimes deliberately so.  Too many users, alas, are ill-equipped to assimilate the plethora of information assailing us, to differentiate, to assess, to form coherent conclusions about it all.

Today, many of us assume if it is up and viral on the web, bringing us personally into the loop, it must certainly have happened.

So, what is real and what is fake?  Hemingway wrote, …there is no one thing that’s true.  It’s all true.  And, in many ways, his observation has proven accurate—at least in the sense that it’s all there in front of us, waiting for us to choose from it.

There is a problem with that, though—one associated with our all-too-human tendency to embrace those opinions we are already in agreement with, and to reject those to which we have a preconceived aversion.

Don’t bother me with facts! we seem to say.

Unfortunately, even so-called facts can be fabricated by malevolent purveyors of misinformation, leaving us even more confused and more susceptible to manipulation.  That may not be overly-problematic if we’re being influenced to buy one brand of toilet tissue over another, for example; as an aside, a friend once told me, “On the (w)hole, they’re all pretty good!”

But it might be calamitous if we are being callously misled about the relative merits of one political leader over another.

Political_Banner

Which of these two imaginary politicos would be more palatable to the average voters, do you suppose?  The one who tells them exactly what they want to hear, who panders to their fears and prejudices, even if (s)he has no intention of fulfilling the empty promises?  Or the one who dares speak about the looming climate crisis, for instance, despite knowing the warnings might fall on deaf ears among the electorate?

Which of the two would be more favoured to win, the one who croons the siren-song of making things better—the way they used to be—or the one who tells of the hard slog ahead to deal with climate change, the existential crisis of our time?

The answer, I suspect, is the person who most-closely approximates the baked-in attitudes and ideas of us who are the voters.  Or the majority of us, anyway.  The relative merits of the candidates’ positions come secondary to that.

Facts no longer seem to matter because, while they used to be considered unassailable, almost sacrosanct, they are today viewed as permeable and malleable.  Where they used to be built on a rock foundation, they stand today on shifting sand.

Facts are, in this worldwide web of deceit and falsity, whatever any shill or charlatan wants us to believe they are.

But in a way, none of this matters for the planet.  Not really.  For, in spite of what we are told about this critical issue of our time—whether it’s the truth or a lie, whether we heed or ignore it—there is one fundamental reality that does not change.

Things happen.  Whether we choose to know about them or not.

Glaciers shrink and shed meltwater all the time when no one is present, permafrost thaws in the isolated, wind-swept tundra, animals disappear from our planetary menagerie, never to be seen again.  And too many of us choose to look away, refuse to listen to those who are compelled to bear witness.

The planet will go on, regardless.  But what of us, wrapped in our imperious cloak of superiority?  Will humankind survive?

Things happen.

reaper

A Preponderance of Stupidity

In these perilous times in which we all live—the beginning of the end-of-times, as some might say—I have become increasingly intrigued by the preponderance of undeniable stupidity evidenced by the human species.

Of which I am a part.

Consider the challenges currently facing us worldwide.  According to the oft-maligned Millennial cohort, that generation of innocents born into western culture during the 80’s and 90’s (of which I am not a part), the major issues include the climate crisis; armed conflicts, often religious in nature, with their threat of nuclear annihilation; poverty, linked to increasing inequality among races, genders, and social classes; rampant corruption among government and corporate entities; and the spectre of food and water shortages, even in the developed world.

who-are-millennials

Every day, it seems, I read about extreme climate and weather events that are almost unprecedented, at least in our limited experience.  I hear about regional war-zones expanding in places faraway from me, drawing major nations closer and closer to open conflict.

I learn about the increasing wealth gap between the haves and have-nots in our society and its concomitant effects—homelessness, unemployment, skyrocketing credit debt.  I see public figures from both public and private sectors who have been caught with their fingers in the till, so to speak—people we older generations were taught to respect and admire.

And I watch as our precious arable land, oceans, and freshwater resources are choked by urban development, abuse, pollution, and general mismanagement.

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Stupidity may be defined as—

  • a lack of keenness of mind;
  • inanity or pointlessness;
  • an annoyance, irritation, or troublesome state;
  • a state of stupefaction.

More humorously, here are some definitions essayed by minds more creative and cleverer than mine—

  • Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the universe. (Einstein);
  • There is more stupidity than hydrogen in the universe, and it has a longer shelf life. (Frank Zappa);
  • Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups. (George Carlin);
  • Stupidity cannot be cured. (Robert Heinlein);
  • In politics, stupidity is not a handicap. (Napoleon); and
  • Stupidity is the same as evil if you judge by the results. (Margaret Atwood).

But my favourite is this from Ricky Gervais—

  • When you are dead, you do not know you are dead. It is only painful for others. The same applies when you are stupid.

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The humour is short-lived, however, when one pauses to consider the potential consequences of our collective stupidity.  On a small scale, it’s as if, having finished the last of the toilet tissue in my bathroom yesterday, I fail to notice and decry its absence until I need it today.  And by then, of course, it’s too late.  I must do without until I can replenish the supply from a store.

But what happens when all the stores’ supplies are exhausted, too?  Is this where our stupidity is leading us?

Buckminster Fuller wrote, “Human beings always do the most intelligent thing…after they’ve tried every stupid alternative and none of them have worked.”  Would that he is right before it is too late!

If you have read this far, you might well ask me what I am doing to combat the dire state of affairs I’m bemoaning.  The answer, unfortunately, is not a whole lot—unless you count the several blog posts I have written on this site, which almost no one will read.

Of course, the same question might be asked of you, assuming you share my concerns.  Perhaps the best answer for both of us is this statement from a young American activist, Aditi Juneja:

“If you’ve wondered what you would’ve done during slavery, the Holocaust, or the civil rights movement…you’re doing it now.”

apathy

As are so many, alas.