No Turkey, No Cry

Ok, let's face it-this Canadian Thanksgiving weekend sucked. I am immediately aware that it was not a pleasant experience for many Canadians, specifically for those without enough financial resources to afford a decent meal, or for whom the thought of a cohesive family unit is just a dream, destroyed cruelly by death, divorce, poverty, incarceration, etc... That said, these attributes don't apply to me, and like many of us celebrating the harvest, I was eagerly anticipating three days of indulgent overeating, consumption of alcohol and added family time. It was not to be. My wife decided to visit her parents alone at the last minute, as my father in law is celebrating his 80th birthday, which may sadly be his last. I have seen him deteriorate tragically over the past few years, riddled with Parkinson's Disease, diabetes, and the long term effects of the hard living he experienced before coming to Canada. In perhaps a simplistic way, it brings home the comments uttered by Neil Young in "My My Hey Hey":

Ironically, I saw my own father's decline at the same time fourteen years ago, and in his own words, "the loss of dignity is appalling". Maybe it is better to "burn out than fade away" and I hope my eventual demise is sudden, quick, and without warning. Morbid shit, I must say. Ok, back to Thanksgiving. Left with little money until my next paycheque and a six year old to entertain, I was suddenly transformed into a divorced dad with weekend custody, tramping the city with Jake, and immediately aware of our collective cuteness and ability to play to the crowd of bemused commuters and bored cashiers with antics reminiscent of the type of the independent film that inspires the artistically inclined kid hater to procreate:



Cheap hustlers of people's emotions in reality, Jake and I have our share of disagreements more typical of the average father and son relationship than the fun loving noisy duo in the back of the bus would imply. Still, "playing dressup" is part of what keeps kids entertained, isn't it? In the end, Thanksgiving dinner was takeout and beer shared with my elderly mother, whose bum leg I have propped up of late with an ornate African cane; a conversation piece for another ham in the family. The thought of my 82 year old mother salivating over a Molson M is fun in the same way Betty White is worshiped - the old "hip grandma" icon complete with attempts at poetry in her retirement group and a diligent dedication to tai chi. As a further enticement, I convinced her that its unique formula that produces "microcarbination" is not a cheap marketing ploy by the purveyors of mediocre lager, but somewhat medicinal, likely producing less gas. Pseudo science at it's best! The evening was not a completely redemptive experience, but enough to allow me to be "thankful" for a few things: My son is healthy, my mother is continuing to flourish despite her constant pain, and I don't need Norman Rockwell to understand the meaning of family. Happy Thanksgiving.

Remembering Those I Never Met

A simple photo of four sisters around a table, circa 1922. These women are four of my maternal great aunts, who were living in Riga, Latvia at the time. My grandfather spoke little of his past; in trying to earn a living as a musician in Montreal, there was no time to dwell on history. Raising three kids during the Great Depression meant frequent moves, many different jobs, and bills often left unpaid. From the scant details passed down from him and other relatives, life in the Baltic region of Europe was lousy for a number of Jews in the early part of the 20th century. Other than poverty, there was abuse from the state, exclusion from many opportunities afforded other citizens (if they dared consider themselves that way) and when opportunities dried up, exile.

Two of the sisters did just that. Dora, first from the left, wound up in South Afica, while and Lena, third from the left, escaped with my grandfather and another brother to Montreal, creating a branch of Cantors that left its mark musically as musicians in the Montreal Symphony Orchestra. The other two sisters, Bertha and Minha, both died at the hands of the Nazi's in the 1940's. As such, they are the closest relatives I have who perished in this way.

Today is Holocaust Rememberance Day. Events will take place in many North American Cities to remember the persecution of the Jews during the Second World War. For a long time, the term Holocaust was almost sacred, referring only to one people and one event. In recent years it has become more common to refer to it as "The Nazi" Holocaust, as history has revealed that the concept of organized genocide is almost as old as organized society in itself.

After the recent death of the Polish president and many of his cabinent and senior politicans in a plane crash, I sent my condolences to my Polish friends on Facebook. What ensued was an angry exchange between the descendant of Polish Jews and a Polish person currently living in England. There was the misguided opinion that all non-Jewish Poles had a hand in the Holocaust, and that these politicians, mostly middle aged men born after the war, deserved their fate. Amidst the acrimonony, it was revealed that both friends had families that suffered horribly during this period. Millions of non Jewish Poles were murdered - as a matter of fact, the whole purpose of the Polish delegation was to commemorate a massacre that had been hidded by the Soviets for decades.

In this respect, I mourn the loss of all people during this period in history - there are likely too many photos like this one, and as we think of those whose stories were never told, it is too easy to ascribe blame to others, when the concept of "other" results from a habit of continuously dividing and categorizing ourselves as human beings.

Our Obsession with Self-Destructive Genius

Serge Gainsbourg lived a fascinating, conflicting life. The son of Jewish parents who escaped Russia during the 1917 revolution, Lucien Ginzburg - ironically his parents changed his name to sound more "French"- wore a yellow star in the streets of his adopted Paris, during the Nazi occupation of France in 1940. After escaping to Limoges for the remainder of the Second World War, Serge would live the life of an obscure musician and artist, until finally gaining fame in the late 1950's. He would spend the remainder of his life outraging and tantalizing the country that once reluctantly agreed to call him a "citizen". There were few subjects dared to avoid - his 1969 song "Je T'aime" recorded with his much younger girlfriend, Jane Birkin, caused a scandal for its blatant sexuality, although forty years later, it would hardly raise an eyebrow. He mocked Nazism, and the hypocrisy of becoming a French icon after the horrors of his childhood in an album called "Rock around the Bunker". He nevertheless became a French icon, and his fascinating life is now celebrated in a film that opens in Montreal today, on what would have been his 82nd birthday. "Gainsbourg - Vie Heroique" traces his journey from childhood painter to legend, complete with his association with famous women like Brigitte Bardot and Juliette Greco, and culminating with his downfall, dying of a hear attack at the age of 62. As an ex-social smoker, moderate drinker, sporadic excerciser, and vain seeker of eternal youth, his path of self-destruction fascinates me. The fear of offending has always kept me in check, violated only occasionally by an off-colour comment meant to shock my peers and superiors. Perhaps my relatively closeted live failed to ingnite the type of outrage that Gainsbourg's early stigmatization surely did. Perhaps it's just a personality trait or lack of talent. Either way, I am forever the voyeur, staring into the public window of lives ended too soon, but which fortunately leave behind a legacy of music, art, and mannerisms that conspicuously safe individuals can appreciate and immitate. I can't wait to see this one.

Social Engineering for the Better

I have spent the past week tirelessly advising, entertaining, and sharing classroom space with the latest group of university freshmen, born roughly a year or two before the dawn of the world wide web and subsequent promulgation of little soap boxes like this one. As I see these kids shuffle from one administrative or recreational event to another, I can't help but notice how level-headed, pleasant, and decent everyone seems. I could be wrong, but I'm starting to wonder if the elementary and high schools are getting it right.

When I was a kid, the education system seemed to be struggling to change an ancient curriculum that focused on rote memorization, biased history, uninspired science, and bullying. Attempts were made to focus on encouraging creativity, but it was hard for our twenty and thirtysomething teachers-most of whom with the same negative experiences in school-to do much more than keep order in the class without screaming like drill sargents and resorting to insulting us to make sure we didn't express our ideas out of turn. No wonder we hit the playground with venom, teasing and bullying one another and chiding those who didn't fit it. As the playwrite David Fennario once said, we learned how to show up on time, take orders, and shut up. It was as if we were being prepared for the next war that never came. A dozen or so years of this turned us quite cynical and contemptuous of authority. By the time I was of Freshman age, professors seemed less like mentors and more like objects to avoid on a road leading nowhere.

Things have changed. There are still numerous problems with the education system, especially for those who lack the opportunity to pass through the gates of the institution where I work. Yet for those who shared the same university dreams I had, more effort has been made to make the journey a pleasant and enjoyable one. Children are treated more as people and less as objects, and group projects encourage teamwork and creativity with less competition and more collaboration. In the wake of Columbine, bullying is less tolerated, and teachers have learned to maintain order without resorting to humiliation. They have changed too. Gone are the militaristic men and pious bachelorettes of decades gone by. With a greater sense of mutual respect, it's not surprising that new college students enter their classroom and dorms with more enthusiasm about changing the world and less negativity towards those who will help them get there. Now if only their parents could just relax a little....(more later).

What happened to just doing it?

Here is an upcoming event at McGill:

McGill Centre for Research and Teaching on Women
Seminar Series

Ellen Waterman
School of Fine Art and Music
University of Guelph

Naked Intimacy: Improvisation, Eroticism, and Gender

Wednesday, November 26, 2008
4:00 – 6:00 pm, Leacock 927

Eroticism is the realm of our most urgent desires that leads to the transgression of boundaries, ecstatic identification with others, and ultimately a confrontation with the self. Creative improvisation is an experimental and collaborative form of musical performance. What do these domains have in common? Both are characterized by an incessant confrontation with now that leads to the “naked intimacy” of intense communication. What are the roles of bodies, instruments and performance spaces in constructing representations of the erotic, and how are they articulated through improvisation? How do musicians negotiate representations of the erotic in their work? When and how are these representations gendered – and with what effects for musicians? Drawing on dissonant theories of eroticism by Luce Irigaray and Georges Bataille, this presentation explores a “feminist erotics of creative improvisation” through the fascinating music of violist Charlotte Hug.

I love when the topic of sex becomes completely intellectualized. It makes me think of the first cinematic collaboration between Dudley Moore and Peter Cook - the little known "Bedazzled". Here is the scene that never fails to crack me up. I think we've all been there:





I have to admit; the Dudley Moore of the swinging 60's in England seems infinitely more impressive than the slapstick comedian who would become famous in movies such as "10". I guess the Brits were a little more sophisticated, given their penchant for witty comedies. A nice take on the tale of Faust, that most people probably missed. Ignorant as I am, I can't place the Irish intellectual Moore is imitating, but I imagine it to be an amalgamation of several authors, poets and academic types. Such is life on a busy Monday after an active weekend, when I am looking to revamp the glib devil in me.

The Passing of the New Man for the New Age

emru@cam.org

I still remember this e-mail address, fifteen years after using it for the first time. In 1993, the World Wide Web as it was known, was a new phenomenon. In the basement of the bookstore where I worked,my fellow luddites spoke of the new techniology that would allow for communication from computer to computer, adding a sense of dynamism to what was viewed by most of us as a dull, static piece of office equipment. I would soon change jobs and have a chance to use this new tool, and Emru Townsend was the first person I knew to have his own e-mail account. We were never close friends, but I saw him on occasion until marriage and fatherhood pushed us closer to our families and closest friends, and further from people in our single male periphery who would be great to have a beer with.

I remember a night on a Bishop Street bar, when Emru and I spoke of past loves and current interests, and the remarkable anarchistic personality of Bugs Bunny. He was funny and brilliant, and his enthusiasm for the technological world helped to spread the word to those of us who saw it as the domain of cybergeeks, computer programmers, and isolated gamers. He made "tech" cool in a lot of ways, largely with his enthusiasm for the subject, which he expressed with candour, knowledge, and an understanding of his less well informed audience.


In the past year, I followed Emru's fight to receive a stem cell transplant closely, receiving weekly updates from a Facebook group run by his sister Tamu, someone I had also fallen out of touch with this decade. There was so much drama, as he beat the impossible odds to find an appropriate donor only to have Leukemia claim him last night at the age of 38. Thirty-eight. It is ridiculously unfair to take such a smart, funny, decent guy and loving father, not to mention husband, son and sister away from us. I think of his wife and child and all of the people he touched over his short life. I think of Tamu and all of her efforts, and the number of people who signed up (and still can) to be potential donors of stem cells because of the campaign "Heal Emru".
I also think of the Bush administration and the roadblocks they placed in the way of research in order to satisfy the evangelical zeal of many of their supporters. As they are ready to leave office, I hope only that their influence fades with the end of a disastrous legacy, while Emru's memory lives on. Thanks for the time, even if it was ever so brief.

The Issue of Quebec Politics of Division, or Why Mario Dumont is an Asshole.

A true test of character is often demonstrated by how one acts when they are under stress or in an uncomfortable situation. In the case of the two oppostion political parties in Quebec - the Action Democratique (ADQ) and the Parti Quebeçois (PQ) - character is certainly not at a premium. With both parties fairing poorly since Liberal Party leader Jean Charest decided that people in Quebec have a perpetual election fetish (not), he decided to break the deadlock in minority rule, provincial politics by calling an election on December 8, hoping that only the rich and powerful (many of his supporters) will feel enfranchised enough to go to the polls, while people whose lives are essentially unaffected will stay home. While this may prove to be an example of disatrous folly (another naked emperor, Robert Bourassa, did the same thing in 1976 and ushered in the first PQ government), it has also picked at the scab of the debate on reasonable accommodation that seemed only recently to be healing.

With a new Quebec school curriculum promising courses in world religions, ethics, and culture, ADQ leader Mario Dumont has decided to reopen the aforementioned debate by challening the effect it will have on children who will be deprived of an understanding of their own origins.

"The people who thought up this course are the same people who fight through all kind of roundabout ways to ensure there aren't any Christmas trees in the classroom," Dumont let fly to a room full of parents opposed to the new course.

"Children in primary school must first forge their own identity. You must learn about yourself to then be open towards others."

Funny, this never worked in the past. Many people who had a wonderful sense of their own history and culture used this as a springboard to destroy those who they felt did not belong. On November 11, we honour those who have died in past wars on Rememberance Day. Wars are often fought for money and power, but also to vanquish a perceived enemy who does not share cultural and religious values. It is also the anniversary of Kristallnacht , another example of how a dominant people, despite having a perceived strong sense of their own identity, used this as a conduit to destroy a minority whose religious and cultural values differed from theirs. Identity is not the issue - I would bet self-esteem has a lot more to do with it. Monsieur Dumont should concentrate on examples of how Quebec has demonstrated tolerance and acceptance in the past as a sprinboard to understanding how the knowledge of other cultural and religious norms should be part of a sense of being truly "Quebeçois". Funny, for a man who attended the wonderfully multicultural Concordia University in Montreal, one has a sense that his politics of division reflect less his own experience and personal view, and more the cynical vision of a power hungry politician who feels his unsophisticated electorate cannot handle anything else but the tired old "us vs.them" scenario. Sadly, I have met many West End Anglophones with the same ideals, not to mention English Canadians and their view of Quebec in general. I think we all need to take the new course in question - it might help us to understand how our collective vision of ourselves and the world is fundamentally the same.