tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-88132310249305985902024-03-14T01:12:52.479-06:00Closed Right EyeA look at education, technology, efficiency, community and whatever else happens to catch my eye, ire or curiosity.Pathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08326893120900106683noreply@blogger.comBlogger298125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8813231024930598590.post-50680077669675504112024-01-02T12:23:00.002-07:002024-01-02T12:37:31.197-07:00Would You Print A Sunset?<p>Over the last few weeks I have been taking more <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/pathanlon/albums/72177720313798514">sunrise and sunset shots</a>. It is a simple consequence of walking to and from work each day as those crescendos of colour shade the clouds and sky at the start and end of the day. (It is unlikely that it is something I would keep up from May through July when the dawn twilight will be starting around 4:30am.)</p><p>That aside, I've pondered the question of what is actually happening when I'm pulling out the phone on a cold morning to mark the moment and actually risk my phone conking due to its aversion to the winter. Am I expressing due recognition of a moment I'm engaged with or is it something a little more detached, or Pavlovian, and done for the sake that it is a sunrise? Often on these walks, other things catch my eye and with a bit of processing of the moment I compose a quick haiku, something that requires a little more effort and often results in something more substantial and lasting (to me) than the dawn and dusk colours that catch my attention and erode the remaining storage on the memory card. The impulse shots are numerous but often disappear into the album on the phone to extend an exceedingly long scrawl as I mutter, "<i>That</i> wasn't THAT long ago, was it? 2019... really?"<br /></p><p>All of this leads to another question: which of these dawn or dusk shots would I actually <i>print</i> and put on my wall? Of all the sunrises and sunsets that I could possibly photography, which would be the most distinctive, compelling or representative? What would make yesterday's sunrise shot more worthy of printing than any others past or future? In the process of putting together an online album of some of my sunset and sunrise shots, I realize that there are a few consistent elements that I deploy when composing these shots: use of trees in silhouette to fill the shot and indulgence in reflections on the water. On the technical side, underexposing to bring the colours out in more detail and using cooler light temperatures to ensure that the blues in the sky remain solid enough to offer contrast to the other shades that come off the palette and these moments. With these in mind, I keep an eye on the sky during my on-foot, winter commutes and some days I shoot and other days I don't. For the most part, though, there really isn't all that much distinguishing the skies on the days I do shoot and those I don't and beyond that, little amongst the shots I have taken to prompt me to add it to the one I have printed. With the one sunset I have printed there is the added wrinkle of attempting the shot at sunset and after a fist pump of celebration to myself declared that this was going to be an incredible roll of shots. However, when the shots came back there was a flaw in the roll that left a clear rip in the emulsion and a shard of overexposed whiteness where there was no film to develop. There was no mountain horizon in those original shots. Just rage. So I waited about a year, a year and a half to go back to the same spot for sunset, plunked my tripod down and bided my time until the deer strode past the <i>torii</i> and lined itself up with the sun. Snap, snap, snap... snap, snap. My work here is done, thank you, good-bye. All I really had to do is wait.<br /></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcqzy5zS8UEOmU1VYD80I-nNX72bMBJpIlmmNVuiYm47CdaYqC_LRgQ_94-RXF6OMU1iXeQHyG7ygwmP5V0CeFSi0PH64ssYqLhb3JRsFH19d987SMPsLMZe5PGhHRHQN3aDKySwMoo4C06II61RX3mqs2m48VCeoN5YMyC658d7_lLlnKCGyCkhmQlkU/s450/508964317_955157639c_o.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="300" data-original-width="450" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcqzy5zS8UEOmU1VYD80I-nNX72bMBJpIlmmNVuiYm47CdaYqC_LRgQ_94-RXF6OMU1iXeQHyG7ygwmP5V0CeFSi0PH64ssYqLhb3JRsFH19d987SMPsLMZe5PGhHRHQN3aDKySwMoo4C06II61RX3mqs2m48VCeoN5YMyC658d7_lLlnKCGyCkhmQlkU/w400-h266/508964317_955157639c_o.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>It is good to have that photographic habit built into the day, but the challenges shooting sunrises and sunsets may not be as creatively stimulating as shooting less obvious subjects and elevating them to a status that comes when, as a photographer, you connect more deeply with your subject.<br /><br />The shots that hang on my walls are of things that would not prompt nods acknowledging their obvious appeal as photographic subjects: a mailbox in the rain, graffiti and guano, drying silk, umbrellas, balloons of coconut water (WTF?) and frost-crunchy autumn leaves don't seem obvious subjects for the acclaim of the camera clubs. However, a look beyond the more obvious subjects to identify things that catch your own eye and compel you to photograph them because of their uniqueness and their appeal to you is a key next step in developing your own distinctive eye with the camera.<br /><p></p>Pathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08326893120900106683noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8813231024930598590.post-55082121667326945862023-12-23T21:19:00.004-07:002023-12-23T21:19:58.044-07:00My Reads in 2023<p>Here is a small sampling of my indulgent levels of reading from the past year. It is by no means an account of all the books I've read but those which stuck with me, were worth mention in conversation and returned to my shelf with appreciation rather than set in the stack to trade at some point. I've tried to organize them to an extent by theme or genre as well as I can.</p><p><b>Memoirs: </b>I've tended to find memoirs and biographies quick reads and when one of them has something other than the "born, had a childhood, soared or struggled with trauma and saw things turn around whether welcome or not" arc I light up. Looking back on that I've found myself recalling books that had slipped off my radar. The highlights include Christian Cooper's <i>Better Living Through Birding</i>, which encompasses the entirety of Cooper's life rather than the encounter in Central Park in May 2020 that catapulted him into the public consciousness. Apart from that moment and his love of birding, Cooper's life gives an account of his career as a writer and his work in comic books. It is an absolute pleasure to see a man have this book result from that misfortune. Elliot Page's <i>Pageboy</i> was a remarkable read and underscores the reality that change is a constant in countless ways in our lives. We need to be conscious of what trans means and where we would end up if we remain averse to change and its realities. Andrew McCarthy's <i>Walking with Sam</i>, an account of his El Camino pilgrimage with his young adult son was a resonant book that makes the pilgrimage worth considering and the book one to share with my son when he is on the cusp of early adulthood and trying to reframe his relationship with his father. Sam Neill's autobiography is more of a straight-up account, though he does tell his tale while in the midst of cancer treatment. He provides adoring portraits of many of the people he has met throughout his career and has left me with looking regularly through the NZ wines aisles for his Two Paddocks organic pinot noir. No luck on that front yet. Lastly, Andre Gregory's memoir <i>This is Not My Memoir</i> is the story of an eclectic, inventive, slightly mad actor and playwright whose remarkable career may be most visible for the cinematic treasure <i>My Dinner With Andre</i>. His account of his close working relationship with Wallace Shawn is but one of the treats in this brilliant read.<br /></p><p><b>Celebs at the keyboard</b>: Tom Hanks' <i>The Making of Another Major Picture Masterpiece</i> was a treat and leap beyond the promise of his typewriter-centric collection of short stories <i>Uncommon Type</i>. The story seems full of the insider scoop that someone of Hanks' ilk would be both in on and above having to be on a set for. The story stands on its own and I would be curious about what Brie Larson would think of it given her trials in the Marvel Comic Universe. Susanna Hoffs <i>This Bird Has Flown</i> has a similar detailed look at the world of music. Ethan Hawke's <i>A Bright Ray of Darkness</i> surpasses the pretentiousness of its title with a worthwhile account of a film idol's wobbly transition doing Shakespeare on stage while navigating life post-divorce. Finally, Steven Wright's <i>Harold</i> was an exceptional read, though it may feel like an acquired taste for those unfamiliar with Wright's distinctive comedic voice. The humour of the man who is famous for coining zingers like "I lost a button hole" and "if you melt dry ice can you swim in it without getting wet" puts that humour to great use when presenting a world seen through the eyes of an 8-year-old boy in the 1960s, there are discoveries of stark poignancy in the skewed view of the world that has impacted such rich humour to Wright.<br /></p><p><b>Sci-Fi</b>: I am not one to geek out on SF but two noteworthy reads this year. Kim Stanley Robinson's <i>The Ministry of the Future</i> is a tense, near-future novel about efforts to address the climate challenges we face. It reads more like a thriller than a sci-fi book, though there are other times when it reads like a UN white paper on climate as well. Perhaps my preference is for a near-future perspective as the other read, a collection of short stories titled <i>Children of the New World</i> has that perspective but looks out how our technologies are modifying our ways of interacting with one another and our surroundings. I'd read more by either of these authors.</p><p><b>Nick:<i> </i></b>This year my reading of my favorite authors was minimal. None of them have published any books this year and my lone visit to their collective works was a quick reading of Nicholson Baker's <i>House of Holes</i>, which is not exactly representative of his work and could be best described as NSFW. That aside I did have the opportunity to read a book about his career titled <i>B & Me</i> in which a literary critic and author takes a deep dive into Baker's work. It turned out to be one of my favorite books of the year and just the nudge to re-read Baker sooner rather than later and indulge in his meditative detail on the worlds that he creates out of a lunch hour trip to the drug store or the careful contemplation of a baby bottle's ideal temperature.</p><p><b>Jimmy:</b> As President Carter entered hospice care in February, turned 99 and bid farewell to his beloved Rosalynn, I was prompted to read his work and about his life once again. He has provided an abundant vein of writing over the last 40 years and I recall the comfort and rage that mingled on Election Night 2016 as I listened to his White House Diaries during 10K of hill-running to fend off the disbelief. Earlier in the year I’d read a thin set of recollections from Carter’s A Full Life which included accounts from the years outside his presidency and crowned it later in the year with Jonathan Adler’s His Very Best, which is the only full biography covering Carter’s life and presidency in full detail rather than focusing on isolated aspects of his campaign for the presidency or isolated events such as the Camp David talks or the Iranian Hostage Crisis. It is a touching, warts and all book that acknowledges Carter’s stubborn streak, his self-righteousness but his foresight and pragmatism as well. It is enough to leave one asking “What if?” Repeatedly and regret the neoliberalism of the Reagan error. It is not without its humour as well and cites the occasion when one of the greatest periods of marital strife for the Carters during the post-presidency was when they were asked to co-author a book about how to maintain a successful marriage.<br /><br /><b>Politics</b>: Beyond the Carter bio, I thoroughly enjoyed the political biographies of Angela Merkel and Edward Kennedy. The Merkel bio, The Chancellor, was an addictive read into the life of a leader who had quietly brought and sustained such stability and assurance to Europe throughout her remarkable tenure in office. The Kennedy bio, the first half of a two-parter titled Catching the Wind, covers Ted Kennedy’s life up until the Watergate era when his liberal stance was a favorable and welcome influence on American political life. Coincidentally enough, shortly before I’d read this book, by Neal Gabler, I’d read Dennis Lehane’s (<i>Mystic River</i>) account of the issues around segregation in 1960’s and 1970’s Boston, Small Mercies. Lehane’s grit is in full display here as he displays the hardscrabble lives and includes a scene where Edward Kennedy is so viciously and constantly spat upon by his (apparent) constituents for his position on integrating schools in the Boston area. Perhaps I digress on this coincidence. Gabler’s book acknowledges the complexities of Teddy’s life in particular but takes an interest position on the potential Teddy had has a president and makes the suggestion that he could have been the best Kennedy president America never had. Citing the accomplishments of Teddy’s first ten years in Washington makes a strong case. The most remarkable political book of the year is Jamie Ruskin’s <i>Unspeakable</i> in which he gives an account of his involvement in the second Trump impeachment hearings in the immediate aftermath of his son’s suicide. Ruskin is one of the good guys and his measured, articulate and passionate appeal for reason, justice, community and a deeper consciousness of matters around mental health make him a touchstone who would bring great comfort. He is a remarkable, admirable man and I wish him the very best.<br /><br /><b>Stephen Heighton:</b> One of my favorite Canadian novels of the last 20 years was Heighton’s The Shadow Boxer and I took a particular interest in his work as he had lived and wrote in Japan shortly before I arrived there. This year two posthumous works of his, a book of short stories and a book of poetry were published and each compounded the sense of lose of the man, who passed away in spring 2022 in his late 50s. A huge loss but this year alone he left an exceptional legacy. Whether you track down the shorts, in a volume titled <i>Lessons for the Drowning</i> or the collected poems in <i>Selected Poems 1983-2020</i>, you will be rewarded and astounded.<br /><br /><b>Ah yes, the Bomb:</b> With Oppenheimer doing its part to redefine the parameters of a cinematic blockbuster, I read American Prometheus, Richard Rhodes’ The Making of the Atomic Bomb and Evan Thomas’ Road to Surrender. As a history of World War II, they leave the questions about the bomb unanswered and the dilemma of the bomb intact. It remains a threat, regardless of our hopes. Prometheus left me impressed with how much of a massive tome could actually get captured in a “mere” 3-hour epic film while Thomas tried to make the case for how much effort when into reigning in the impact of the bomb despite the massive impact it still had.<br /><br /><b>Cars</b>: Two of the most impactful books on me were <i>Cobalt Red</i> by Siddharth Kara and <i>Crossings </i>by Ben Goldfarb. <i>Cobalt Red</i> reads like a Joseph Conrad novel, revisiting the Congo and the rest of central Africa to describe the abuses and misconduct that has been central to the extraction of cobalt, a primary metal in ensuring the stability of the ubiquitous rechargeable batteries that connect and move us through our world. The case is easily made that the electric cars and cellular devices that give us so much cache today are not the talismans of eco-consciousness that we need to adopt but a bauble of careless self-aggrandizing consumption that offers little promise for our future if it is premised upon such egregious injustice. <i>Crossings</i>, which is about the decidedly unsexy topic of road ecology, is a masterclass in non fiction. Meticulously researched, passionate, poetic and, at times, outrageously funny <i>Crossings</i> makes the case for the need for all of us to reconsider the ways in which our roads and thoroughfares have impacted the lives of our greater than human co-inhabitants on this blue-green rock. As for the humour, it had more laugh out loud moments than any other books I read with the exceptions of <i>Things I’ve Learned From Women Who’ve Dumped Me</i> which is comprised of post-breakup wisdom from the likes of Stephen Colbert, John Oliver and other clueless males and a passage from the Jimmy Carter bio where someone asked a Carter aide, while Carter was ailing with hemorrhoids, how the president’s asshole was and received the finger in reply.<br /><br /><b>Ruth Ozeki:</b> I finally got around to reading Ruth Ozeki’s <i>All Over Creation</i> and was thrilled by her account of an Idaho farm family’s troubled reunion. Ozeki’s novels are always dense with meaning and this was a layered account that remained full of rewards nearly 20 years after it was originally published. The Ozeki highlight of the year was a thin, hard to find meditation that she wrote after looking at herself in a mirror for three hours. It was a pleasing, thought-provoking look at her experiences of herself as a mixed race American-Japanese who is now middle-aged woman deal with her family, the passage of time and her value as a woman. Time Code of a Face was a unique reading experience. <br /></p><p><b>The Keeper: </b>The highlight of the year would be the twice-read <i>The Creative Act</i> by Rick Rubin. I’ve had a steady diet of books on creativity over the last 5-6 years and this is an instant classic. Rubin’s insights into the creative practice in his role as facilitator or midwife as a producer of some of the most remarkable and influential albums of the last 40 years come with the calling card of Rubin’s contributions to music. He does not rest on his laurels here and the name dropping verges on minimal throughout the book, which consists of brief chapters that have their share of insights and aphorisms to guide you on your way out of whatever rut you may perceive yourself to be in.</p><p>The oversights:<br />Naomi Klein - <i>Doppelganger</i>: Brilliant insights into this upside down brain-f**ked reality of the post-truth, pro-Trump madness of this decade, crowned by a sections of the book that summed up the madness of Israel and Palestine despite being put into print weeks before the recent invasion.<br /><br />Ko-Eun Yun - <i>The Disaster Tourist</i>: A stirring and provocative book about a tourist agency that sells trips to disaster areas. Dark and thoughtful.<br />Charles Frazier - <i>The Trackers</i>: More famous for Cold Mountain another historic fiction, this one set during the Depression as a New Deal era artist heads out to do a mural in a Wyoming and ends up entangled in the sordid doings of a local rancher.<br />Greta Thunberg - <i>The Climate Book</i>: While Thunberg is the headliner, this is a collection of articles and essay by a wide variety of voices pleading and making the case for us to get off our cans before it is too late.<br />Maggie Smith - <i>You Could Make This Place Beautiful</i>: Not <i>the</i> Maggie Smith, but a poet who gives an account of her divorce and her recovery from it.<br />Peggy Orenstein - <i>Unraveling</i>: An intriguing account of one woman's account of the creation of a sweater from the shearing of the sheep through all of the subsequent steps of making a sweater for herself. Not quite the Carl Sagan definition of "from scratch" but close enough and entertaining and enlightening as well.<br />Thomas Mallon - Watergate: A fun novelization of the ratf**kery of the Nixon era and the suggestion of different motivations for the debacle.<br />Rory Carroll - <i>There Will Be Fire</i>: A tense, true story account of an IRA attempt to assassinate Margaret Thatcher.<br />Vincent Lam - <i>On The Ravine</i>: An intersection of safe drug consumption sites, classical music and genius. One of my favorite novels of the year.<br />Whit Fraser - <i>True North Rising</i>: Old CBC North stalwart and an vice-regal spouse Fraser gives a rich and colourful account of his own life and the lives of the Indigenous leaders who did so much as fathers and mothers of Nunavut.<br />John Irving - <i>The Last Chairlift</i>: Could this be Irving's last novel? If so it is massive and a chance to revisit all of Irving's loves and themes. This is not the diminishing novella-length later works of an old lion looking to beat the clock but a dedicated labour to mark a life and career with a substantial thump.<br />Christina Jarvis - <i>Lucky Mud and Other Foma</i>: A biography of Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. as a long-standing environmentalist and global citizen. It prompted me to revisit my favorite KVJ novels and make an effort to dive into his overlooked books too.<br /></p>Pathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08326893120900106683noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8813231024930598590.post-25293506302702401392023-10-17T11:54:00.008-06:002023-10-20T10:26:41.784-06:00A Chemistry Lesson<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="404" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/pYqJhoJaM4Q" width="486" youtube-src-id="pYqJhoJaM4Q"></iframe></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">One of the more audacious front office sequences in recent times would have to be Masai Ujiri's movements in Summer 2018 -- firing <a href="https://bleacherreport.com/articles/2776612-dwane-casey-wins-2018-nba-coach-of-the-year-award-despite-being-fired-by-raptors">2018 Coach of the Year Dwane Case</a>y <i>before </i>he received his award and then parting with franchise talisman DeMar DeRozan later that summer to acquire Kawhi Leonard. Those two moves helped pave the way to the Toronto Raptors' 2019 NBA Championship.</div><p></p><p>The question has been recently posed by <a href="https://www.raptorshq.com/2023/5/8/23715157/toronto-raptors-demar-derozan-stephen-a-smith-championship-unlikely-kawhi-leonard">Stephen A. Smith</a> is whether those moves were needed as the balance of power shifted in the NBA East in Summer 2018. With LeBron James' move to the Los Angeles Lakers, the 2018-19 Raptors would have had a clearer path through the Eastern Conference playoffs as is. The DeRozan-Lowry backcourt under Casey's leadership would be the pillars of a strong contender in the East. The typical off-season tweaks to address the needs for chemistry or a specialist to come off the bench in key situations would have been helpful, especially if the alternate history still includes the deal to add Marc Gasol to the roster at the trade deadline. While we'll never know, Ujiri decided to force destiny rather than rely on it and the impact on the team chemistry may be the most significant impact on those Championship Raptors. </p><p>One of the intriguing stats about the 2018-19 Raptors was their superior record (17-5) <i><a href="https://www.statmuse.com/nba/ask/raptors-record-without-kawhi-2019">in the games they played without Kawhi Leonard</a></i>. That attested to the depth of the Raptors' "Bench Mob," loaded with the
upstart likes of Jakob Poeltl, Pascal Siakim, Fred VanVleet, Delon
Wright and Norm Powell, who kept the pressure on opponents while
spelling the starters as they did in 2017-18. This depth is a key reason
why Stephen A's "what-if" is pretty easy to lay out and becomes so
convincing. However, it may have reflected a certain impulse on Kyle Lowry's part to assert his claim on the leadership of the team. Included in that load management tranche of the season was a December 12, 2018 road game, the second night of a back-to-back without Leonard, where Lowry exceeded his season averages for points, assists, and rebounds, along with 3 steals in a statement victory against the Golden State Warriors in Oracle Arena, the first of their 4 wins in the building that season. Leonard provided the ice-water stoicism that got them through their adversity, but Lowry wanted to stake a claim on the team's adrenal gland.<br /></p><p>Given that record without Leonard throughout the regular season, the case for those as-is Raptors for 2018-19 is strong up until the Raptors' comeback after losing the first two home games of the 2019 Eastern Conference Finals against the Milwaukee Bucks. This would be the first playoff evidence one would cite when arguing that Leonard's impact on defence surpassing DeRozan's. The Raptors regularly looked to Leonard for the guidance and steady hand when the offence was stalled in the half court and the pressure was mounting on the youngsters. Leonard brought the steadying influence on court and perhaps off as his laconic, robotic response to the media indicated when the Raptors lost their first two games at home. Leonard's contributions defending Giannis Antetokounmpo were decisive as well, especially if compared to DeMar DeRozan's possible contributions. Though the combination of Serge Ibaka and Marc Gasol may have been the tonic as well.<br /></p><p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNi0_5ltPS83ySV8pnOBuFjXSpO8-9VnIf8qBafMz7HUTnPZPrUmGOM-NkiK9qCdkOgYVvRurqnm-PL_hGdF5TDq0_Nz-DHU5-4c9ag2t57P7vf85sQhVOo2b5R67Tu6FB9LLeqdfw3pVFDxrZDlALvSDMtOxUrtyK962dAH6ZCxd6Zm3xTTGGdRfcEOA/s639/5ac5e530-229d-11ea-bff7-9bb6f1f6deac.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="376" data-original-width="639" height="235" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNi0_5ltPS83ySV8pnOBuFjXSpO8-9VnIf8qBafMz7HUTnPZPrUmGOM-NkiK9qCdkOgYVvRurqnm-PL_hGdF5TDq0_Nz-DHU5-4c9ag2t57P7vf85sQhVOo2b5R67Tu6FB9LLeqdfw3pVFDxrZDlALvSDMtOxUrtyK962dAH6ZCxd6Zm3xTTGGdRfcEOA/w400-h235/5ac5e530-229d-11ea-bff7-9bb6f1f6deac.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>DeRozan and Lowry at the end of the 2013 <br />7-game series against the Brooklyn Nets</b></td></tr></tbody></table>In a look at the Raptors' progression through that regular season, another question to pose is how all those new relationships came together. Instead of familiar faces coming together to lick their wounds and look at one another with a determination to draw from the same well to achieve the same goals, there were new relationships to form and, perhaps a tentativeness that came with the unfamiliar faces.</p><p>The Raptors training camp in 2018 was, like 2023, a reset and a feeling out process. The familiar dynamics were turned on their head by the departures of Casey, DeRozan and let’s not overlook Jakob Poeltl. The impact of those departures was expressed throughout the early part of the 2018-19 season by Kyle Lowry’s passive-aggressive dap up of the absent DeRozan throughout his pre-game runway rituals. That was a significant shift in mindset for Lowry who was joined at the hip to DeRozan and had shared in the highs and heartbreaks of the Raptors climb from the Rudy Gay trade in December 2012, their 7-game battle with the Paul Pierce-Kevin Garnett Nets the following Spring and through their one-sided encounters to LeBron James in the playoffs.<br /><br />In 2018-19, however, Lowry was untethered from his running mate and nurturing a grudge that lingered throughout that the season, provoked a heart-to-heart sit down with Ujiri in February 2019. It may have aggravated Lowry enough throughout that season to bring out an edge that would not have emerged if he was not compelled to stake a claim as team alpha upon the arrival of Kawhi Leonard. It may have been a claim on the role that he may not have needed to assert when Lowry and DeRozan were the clear <i>co</i>-leaders of the Raptors and may not have wanted to assert because of the close on and off-court relationship he and DeRozan have shared to this day. </p><p>Could Leonard's presence have made Lowry assert himself more than he would have if he and DeRozan were still joined at the hip? With the tandem of Lowry and DeRozan together, there would have been a more collaborative leadership in the room and with that a politeness that may have restrained the Raptors in moments of adversity such as the Eastern Conference finals against Milwaukee. Lowry still may been the more vocal presence in the locker room with DeRozan, but the dynamic with Leonard likely created an environment different enough to prompt Lowry to bring more of that edge that he had trouble harnessing throughout the first stops during his career and upon his arrival in Toronto. Lowry's bristling throughout the 2018-19 season may have threatened a reversion to the form that abbreviated his stays in Memphis and Houston and his level of engagement was such that Lowry and Masai Ujiri needed to have that February 2019 sit down to hash things out and get themselves on the same page for the balance of the season.<br /><br />There is a saying I heard during that season — championships are won on the bus — the implication being that the team harmony and glue amongst the players on the team are a key part of what makes them successful. That is part of the case, but it may overstate the need for that harmony. The 2018-19 Raptors may not have been the most harmonious of iterations of the Raptors roster during the Casey-Nurse period that culminated in that championship. To some extent, there was an internal battle between Lowry and Leonard to be the alpha in the locker room and on the team. While Leonard was the main contributor to the team’s achievements throughout the season and brought an icy calm during moments when the deep may have been shying away from the spotlight, Lowry was the piss and vinegar of the team, striving to assert his place on the roster and within the leadership of the team. These factors motivated Lowry in ways that may not have triggered him if he and DeRozan lead the team with the more simpatico connection they shared throughout the time they lead the team.<br /><br />By no means do I wish to understate DeRozan’s contributions to the team and his status among the pantheon of Raptors players. I would still put him ahead of Leonard on the basis of his length of tenure with the Raptors and his precocious (and ultimately backed-up) declaration after Chris Bosh headed to the Miami Heat in Summer 2010. That statement, "Don't worry, I got us," and his continuous improvement as a player demonstrated for the Raptors the potential of patient internal growth that set the stage for the development of players such as Pascal Siakim, Fred VanVleet, Norm Powell and O.G. Anunoby that has been a hallmark of the team over the last decade of its history.<br /><br />There is a good chance, though, that the moves Ujiri made in the summer of 2018 altered the chemistry of the team in ways that helped facilitate the title run in ways that standing pat with minor tweaks might not have achieved. Perhaps there was a lower profile trade that could have irked Lowry enough to make him play that season the way that he did, but I think the bond with DeRozan, still may have been strong enough to temper the irritation Lowry might feel if a locker room gadfly playing a bit role in the rotation joined and did not impact Lowry’s comfort level the way the Leonard-DeRozan trade got under his skin. While the addition of Leonard’s skill set made an impact, the reset of the locker room environment may have impacted the team chemistry may have allowed Lowry and Leonard to respond to adversity in new ways rather than looking at one another with an unspoken "Here we go again" dread. Ujiri pushed all of his chips to the middle of the table and loaded the team up in the way he felt needed to be done to assert the Raptors championship ambitions rather than leave them to chance. There's a strong possibility that the edge Lowry played with throughout that season may not have been there if he was part of a more harmonious locker room.<br /></p>Pathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08326893120900106683noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8813231024930598590.post-73827423268589795232023-09-29T07:50:00.002-06:002023-09-29T07:50:15.149-06:00MacLennan Revisited: Part 5, The Echoes<h2 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">“Never would we elect a bureaucracy that would compel us to change our ways.”</span></h2><h2 style="text-align: right;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">(p. 244)</span></h2><p>In the last part of the book John Wellfleet reflects on life through the period we are in right now, from 1980 and 2030. There is broad-stroke vagueness whether there are single menaces in Bradbury’s world of <i>Fahrenheit 451</i>, Huxley’s soma-induced trance or the oppression of Atwood's Gilead. MacLennan projects that dissension in underdeveloped countries escalates to the tensions that unfold and lead to the Great Fear and the Destructions. There are nuanced differences if we compare the prediction to the present. There is strife and escalating tensions but the recent events in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/27/world/europe/nagorno-karabakh-armenia-azerbaijan.html">Azerbaijan</a> and <a href="https://carnegieendowment.org/2023/08/31/niger-coup-s-outsized-global-impact-pub-90463">Niger</a> in 2023, are more likely to be perceived at the moment as internal strife within those countries, but that may be a matter of the way we perceive things from the west. Beyond that are the environmental and political forces that are displacing so many people and challenging governments to adjust to meeting the needs of others. Immigration flows and the needs of refugees have pushed countries into new dilemmas that have created opportunities for "strong men" to come down upon immigrants with policies and authoritarian rhetoric that indicate a shift to the political right, even in such unlikely places as <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/world/article-three-killed-in-shootings-explosion-as-deadly-violence-continues-in/">Sweden</a>.<br /></p><p>As we look at our circumstances in 2023, with battles over book bans and the regression on female bodily autonomy proceeding, while large swaths of society are distracted by consumption and the behaviour of celebrities, each of these dystopian novels -- <i>Fahrenheit 451</i>, <i>Brave New World</i> and <i>The Handmaid's Tale</i> -- have captured a component of what we are living through. While MacLennan has fallen short in creating the lasting metaphor of these and other dystopian novels, he has is provided, in passages of <i>Voices in Time</i>, components of our current reality that are chilling to read now. The novel anticipates the depth of the anti-intellectualism that is so prevalent today, it acknowledges that events are unfolding at a pace that is hard for us to grasp and respond to and it asserts, throughout the length of the book, that there is a great need for mercy at this of all times. It seems to elude us.<br /><br />As John attempts to describe the descent of the society he grew up in, he says the following: <br /></p><h2 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">“Those unknown millions we had dismissed as red-necks felt against us a rage deeper than anything they had felt against [terrorists]. Furious voices spewed out hatred and loathing against my whole generation. We were the spoiled brats who had been responsible for all their woes. We were the ones who had destroyed their authority over their children and foisted our own laziness and sensuality onto everyone else. We were the ones who had insisted on abolishing capital punishment, had sneered at the police, had sympathized with the murderer and not with the victim, had pretended that crime is the fault of society as a whole and not of the criminal.</span></h2><h2 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"> They turned with especial fury against our women and some of them bellowed from street corners that they were all whores. Their hatred was soul-shrivelling. These people who roared for law and order — and they craved order far more than they craved law — now took to bombs themselves.” (p. 244-5)</span></h2><p>In the shadow of the January 6, 2021 insurrection in the Capitol building in Washington, DC, the renewed battle over abortion rights, the intolerance that is driving the protests against the individual rights of the 2SLGTBQIA+ are all heralded in this passage MacLennan published in 1980. Despite my re-readings of the book and my obsession with highlighting and underlining throughout my reading life, this passage actually remained untouched for 40 years. Now, though, with little to prompt me to discard it as fiction, revisiting <i>Voices in Time</i> in 2023 has proven impactful. Really, other than hyphenating red-necks, there is little to quibble with MacLennan about here. There is another place in the book where he <br /><br />The illusion of unity in the aftermath of 9/11 proved fragile. Perhaps it was nothing more than a media construction at the time. Now we see societies throughout the world divided from within and teetering toward greater chaos. Climate change and the COVID pandemic have not to rallied us toward unity in the face of a common cause. In the recently-published <i><a href="https://www.indigo.ca/en-ca/the-climate-book-the-facts-and-the-solutions/9780593492307.html">The Climate Book</a></i>, the case is made that the global governmental infusion of funds that kept people afloat throughout the pandemic provided evidence that governments could act and had the resources required to respond to the climate emergency could be mobilized to achieve the goal of keeping civilization going in the face of the realities we are ignoring. So far, though, despite our capacity to avoid the encroaching disaster... crickets. Instead, much of our energy is going into identifying people to marginalize. As the novels winds to its conclusion one character says "They've declared war on the kids," (p. 298) and from the context it seems that these are young adults of college age. Today, however, it seems that there is more of an effort to <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-saskatchewan-pronoun-policy-notwithstanding-clause/">target adolescents</a> and undermine their autonomy and safety.<br /></p><p>There is little desire to engage with one another in manner that proves constructive. As the epigraph to this post underlines, there is little promise of moving forward as long as we accommodate delusion rather than the honesty and strength to address the fates that await us as long as we choose to either bury our heads in the sands or expect our governments to prepare (half-heartedly) for the future that awaits indifference and denial. In addition to entirely incompatible mandates, we also want our governments to be prepared to give us the precise amount of warning to evacuate ourselves only when emergencies are just dire enough to justify urgent flight, but no sooner.<br /><br />MacLennan’s choice to bring us to a post-dystopian setting where the world is cobbling together a new society that has hope of getting it right and being more civilized than the one we are in, seems, in retrospect, too optimistic. He suggests that the nuclear cock-up that leads to the global reset he portrays is somehow benign. The scientists of MacLennan's alternate universe modified the nuclear weapons enough to allow survival of even just a few of us. This is for the most part unlikely, but leaves the future it in the “hands” of computer programs (or algorithms) that set things off with a bit less trigger than we would like. The cock-up occurs all the sooner than what is unfolding now as our societies tear themselves down from within. I don’t know what the timelines would be going forward, but hopefully there will be an intervention to take the abundant knowledge that is available to us RIGHT NOW and make full use of it for the environmental, social and personal renewal that remains possible rather than leave us lamenting the failures that do not have to be as imminent as they seem. This can be done but it will take action to back up the lip service that has been paid. It is time to make it clear that our children, our neighbours, our beautiful inspiring natural environments, peace, love and freedom, real freedom, are as important to us as the things that by our actions we seem value above all of these.<br /></p>Pathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08326893120900106683noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8813231024930598590.post-49727529758096611202023-09-28T16:20:00.002-06:002023-09-28T16:23:48.159-06:00MacLennan Revisited: Part 4, The Muted Historian<h2 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">“[He] knew that what she was telling him was the truth, but he knew it only in the way that a man knows that one day he’s going to die.” <br /></span></h2><h2 style="text-align: right;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">(p. 181)</span></h2><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_XEXrUBo_aAQHPlmC9Z-5_S-3CtuVabix9gedotcAHJQeLbc0gP0egHYxA172V5HlO5oHXvpt18Zj61obYyaFJ_HWeap3qQcjWHX-F7n0Y_jivnZDmPliq8zjhvdD4sAlR9gLtYJB9L41vbRXQTvyHILkkYbnVZ24s8HH3rwGpNgcYvMbQXSVsr58EoI/s3400/COLOURBOX9464700.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3400" data-original-width="2337" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_XEXrUBo_aAQHPlmC9Z-5_S-3CtuVabix9gedotcAHJQeLbc0gP0egHYxA172V5HlO5oHXvpt18Zj61obYyaFJ_HWeap3qQcjWHX-F7n0Y_jivnZDmPliq8zjhvdD4sAlR9gLtYJB9L41vbRXQTvyHILkkYbnVZ24s8HH3rwGpNgcYvMbQXSVsr58EoI/w440-h640/COLOURBOX9464700.jpg" width="440" /></a></div>The next section of the book portrays Germany’s paroxysms with reality and power through the two World Wars. Conrad Dehmel, who makes an appearance on Timothy's program to sound a warning based on his experiences in Germany, had a front-row seat to the catastrophe that occurred in his homeland. The son of anadmiral with the German Navy, he chose not to follow his father’s footsteps, but pursue an academic career that takes him to England and beyond to study classical history. <p></p><p>Conrad is the typical thinking man that MacLennan deploys in his novels. These thinkers are consistently set in opposition to more active, more masculine figures, and the thinkers flounder due to being less decisive, less typically masculine and, more often than not, unfavoured by their thoughtfulness. While the contrast between thinker and man of action may have been a convenient device for MacLennan throughout his career, it would be interesting to see how Conrad, as a more vulnerable and thoughtful man, would now be regarded by readers today. Where Timothy was confident that he could bed any woman he wanted, Conrad's restraint, thoughtfulness and his relations with his fiancé Hanna provide a favorable male figure when compared to the toxic
masculinity apparent with Timothy and several of the other males,
including Timothy’s father.</p><p>MacLennan's decision to position Conrad and Timothy as historian and TV personality not only inclines them to narrate their parts of the story as they do, but intensifies the contrast between them as well. Conrad's painstaking discipline in his vocation is contrasted against Timothy's impulsivity and reckless disregard for factuality and truth. However, as Conrad’s early life unfolds through the first half of the 20th century, his ability to react to events and circumstances in real time is lacking and he ends up succumbing to the forces unleashed in Germany despite his capacity to compare contemporary events to the ancient past he has studied so dutifully. In the face of history, Conrad finds everything too big for him to stop or even protect himself and his loved ones from.<br /><br />Apart from his distinction from Timothy, Conrad’s bookishness and intelligence can also be contrasted with the military careers of his father and younger brother, both accomplished members of the German navy. Conrad ends up in lonely opposition to the version of masculinity that has been amplified by during the rise of the Nazis prior to World War II and when he attempts to make his stand against the falsely justified violence occurring in 1970, he does so based on first-hand experience as well as his studies. The question that remains is whether the forces of history are too big for us to fend off even when we are informed or if Timothy's disregard for truth in favour of the position he chooses to believe is the flaw that sets tragedy in motion.<br /><br />If you want to cite the power of historical forces, the evidence is there from Conrad's youth. MacLennan emphasizes the state of mind amongst Germans in the build up to World War II. The mindset then was not as unanimous as one might be inclined to oversimplified to. Many Germans, including those in positions of authority are appalled by what is unfolding but helpless in the face of the mass psychosis that is spread widely enough to muted dissent and reason. The country tilted toward the insane mission the Nazis pursued despite their mounting losses and their misgivings about the looming outcomes and the immorality. <br /><br />Against this backdrop, Conrad strives to save his fiancé Hanna and her family from the concentration camps. He hopes that he can maneuver his way into a situation where he is able to protect Hanna and her father but the tumult and uncertainty of the era makes it next to impossible to make the progress one hopes to achieve. The novel makes the point throughout this that the Germany of World War II embodies an inversion of all that is right and ordered in the world as we would like to assume it works. There is a prevailing upside-down-ness that puts “scum” (p. 208) in the seat of power, where “logical conclusions proceed… from absurd hypotheses,” (p. 203), “most [people] have decided that the best thing is not to think at all,” (p. 198) and “trained men of reason (like Conrad) are the last to recognize the bared teeth of the human ape when it appears before them.” (p. 178). All of this creates an environment “on the verge of a mass psychosis.” (p. 175) The omens of hysteria, eroding order, mounting intolerance and marginalization are all mounting before Conrad's eyes. The first time he experienced it, he missed out. The second time through, he attempted to sound an articulate warning but his efforts were undone by Timothy's grandstanding and assumptions that he had the truth cornered and defined even though he did little to apprise himself of even his family's history.<br /><br />The lives and well-being of millions of people are discarded to defend and entrench a fixed, delusional definition of what a certain nation ought to be. Beyond that, as war looms, the basic, safe environment for loving relationships to form and thrive. MacLennan expands on this uncertainty: “Love as Conrad understood it meant permanence. Love as Hanna understood it in that particular time meant love in impermanence.” (p. 173). Conrad returned home to Germany from his studies in England, despite Hanna’s warnings, because he could not recognize the threat of what was unfolding. He gradually realizes how dangerous Germany is becoming, but only after it is too late for him to flee the country without there being repercussions for his family. <br /><br />The realities of World War II remain in large part unfathomable today. As John Wellfleet puts it when narrating Conrad's experiences through World War II, “Yes, I knew this had happened, but I knew it only as a fact.” (p. 241). In this quote and in the epigraph I cite at the start of this post, reality turns abstract and, thus, elusive where it needs to be tangible and as vivid as the crimes and atrocities which took place. Today, we hear just enough today about the climate crisis for it to amount to a vague white noise until the impacts hit us directly with one environmental outlier or another. Floods, fires, hurricanes, landslides and more fail to register until we are required to evacuate. We cannot tune it out or regard understanding as too difficult to pursue.<br /><br />This more visceral understanding of the past would help prevent us, today, from assuming that the intolerance that brings people into the streets today is different and justified. It is neither. <br /><br />We know the data and the headlines of wars and disasters, but we have little sense of their visceral intensity. Whether it is a number like 6,000,000 or 100,000 or a cited place, historic brutality requires a massive act of imagination to accommodate anything more than a numb shrug. Hiroshima, Pol Pot, Abu Ghraib, Dresden, Stalin, Dachau…. Ignorance of the past allows sections of our society to oppose inclusion, acceptance and tolerance to the extent that they do. They fear so many things but fail to fear, above all, humanity’s capacity to be cruel to one another in the very way that they appear to be aligning themselves with. They fail to grasp the looming consequences of what certain positions or phobias actually risk. Alternatively, they may feel that their position is worthy of a dispensation because they hold these particular (misplaced) beliefs with an intensity that earns them a free pass when it clearly does not. These positions, currently against the 2SLGTBQIA community, ultimately veer toward criminality with their approval and perhaps their involvement. Whether the gross immoralities of genocides or the smaller scale stunts of political kidnappers and terrorists, it is crime and it denigrates to purported causes they stand for.<br /></p>Pathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08326893120900106683noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8813231024930598590.post-65547703869796115322023-09-27T07:09:00.005-06:002023-09-27T10:09:33.359-06:00MacLennan Revisited: Part 3, The Reckless Media Icon<h2 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">‘Why the hell are we not in bed together instead of going on like this? What’s come over you Esther?’</span></h2><h2 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">‘Reality, perhaps.’</span></h2><h2 style="text-align: right;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><i>Voices in Time</i>, p. 62</span></h2><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/0cnVvcSDGpY" width="320" youtube-src-id="0cnVvcSDGpY"></iframe> </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">Patrick Watson hosting <i>This Hour Has <br />Seven Days</i>. (1964-1966) <br /></div><br />In the second section of the book, MacLennan flashes back to the middle of the 20th century for the story of Timothy Wellfleet, one of the main characters, from pre-World War II to the Vietnam War (covering approximately 1936-1970). It is, at once, the most prophetic and problematic section of <i>Voices in Time</i>. Timothy, a former ad man turned television personality, hosts a current affairs program called <i>This is Now</i>. MacLennan’s depiction of this television program was likely inspired by <i><a href="http://www.cbc.ca/player/play/1560709717">The Hour Has Seven Days</a></i>, which ran on the CBC from 1964-1966 for 50 episodes imbued with rebellion, publicity stunts, cranks, crackpots, dodgy journalism and dollops of controversy before its cancellation. Within the novel, Timothy Wellfleet’s appeal to passion over reason resembles the jarring mix of paranoia, audacity and frankness of <i>This Hour</i> but heralds what we are immersed in today as many television and social media personalities, dispensing with any notion of journalistic integrity or a command of the truth, have toxified the public forum to the point where confrontation is more certain and meaningful constructive dialogue is a rare, remarkable, laborious occurence. <p>Timothy, the child of divorce and the private school regiment of the Canadian elite, drifted through much of his early life with a distrust of adults and society that echoes Holden Caulfield’s disdain of “fakes” throughout J.D. Salinger’s <i>The Catcher in the Rye</i>. MacLennan attributes to Timothy “candid eyes,” in one of the fresher turns of phrase that I found this time around with the book. Despite an occasionally sympathetic portrayal of Timothy Wellfleet, he remains an unattractive character, attuned to power and privilege, and inclined to say the most distasteful things in private as well as in public. Despite the sensitivity of those candid eyes, Timothy’s crassness is off-putting even before we get to his professional denouement. The excesses of 1960s, which were recreated throughout the television series <i>Mad Men</i>, are evident as MacLennan portrays an era he lived through as a writer and a professor of English literature at McGill University, from the perspective of a younger generation as Timothy voices his distrust.<br /><br />As this section of the book traces fictional events that occur around the time of the <a href="https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/october-crisis">October 1970 FLQ</a> kidnapping of <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/james-cross-october-crisis-obituary-flq-1.5879766">James Cross</a> and murder of <a href="https://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/pierre-laporte-quebecers-still-divided-over-tragic-victim-of-the-october-crisis">Pierre Laporte</a>, Timothy experiences his professional nadir while crusading recklessly on behalf of his inaccurate take on truth and justice. The consequences of this reverberate through the subsequent sections of the book and mirror the irresponsibilities we see among media and social media personalities in the 2020s. Grandstanding and performances that both insult and undermine the intelligence of audiences are <i>de riguer</i> now, but Timothy’s fast and loose arbitration of truth, emphasized by camera tricks, editing and sound effects are immature. Unlike the more blatant TV ideologues of the 2020s, Timothy can tread in areas that leave open the varying interpretations. The binary black-white, good-bad, villain-victim assertions that form so much discourse today are more closed. <br /><br />When Timothy makes his first television appearance, he is still in advertising and is speaking about, though not necessarily on behalf of, the industry in a panel discussion with a sociologist. The discussion turns to the topic of sex in advertising and a sociologist argues with Timothy’s point that advertising is not sex-based:<br /><br /> “‘I have to tell you [Timothy] that your statement doesn’t come near a correlation with these scientific findings. So what do you say to that?’<br /><br />‘I’d say it’s one more proof Professor, of why so many people are wax in [advertisers’] hands.’” (p. 90)<br /><br />Timothy leaves questions unresolved despite the sociologist’s data, and prompts further thought on what the implications would be if Timothy’s position — that the products he’s selling are competing with sex, not using it to sell themselves — were right.<br /><br />As his television career progresses, Timothy adopts a more fixed mindset and rejects the news coming out about the kidnappings, saying that “This crisis has been manufactured” (p. 60) and saying that “in this particular moment of history the truth has got to be improved.” (p. 58). These quotes, both directly from Timothy’s lips, belie a tenacious attachment to his own version of reality, and come from the same mindset as those who espouse alternative facts. (The fact that Timothy’s program was on the CBC would motivate some people today to rail against the Corporation’s apparent role as a shill for the government, the system or whatever cabal conspiracy theorists are trying to challenge would indicate their lack of a sense of humour or poor grasp of irony.) Timothy’s headlong rush to prove his points about the older generation without heeding the guard rails of fact leads to his professional downfall and other more fatal consequences.<br /><br />There are so many things that we hold onto whether they serve us or not. There is clutter in our living spaces and in our minds as well. Countless among us still cling to beliefs and assumptions whether out of habit or comfort. The good old days still call, the desire for cars overpowers the need for a sustainable planet and the desire to isolate individuals or groups because we fear the non-existent threat they pose to whatever seat we wish to retain all drive our society toward a precipice. <br /><br />Timothy’s disregard for truth, leads him to target Conrad Dehmel who is a professor invited to speak on Timothy's show during this variation on the FLQ crisis. In the midst of the kidnappings and other crimes of political protest, Conrad voices his disdain for the perpetrators, saying: “a crime is a crime, and crimes committed in the name of freedom are especially vile because they turn freedom upside down.” (p. 111)<br /><br />Such a comment on crime and freedom would be regarded as too on the nose to get past an editor of fiction at most publishers today. In retrospect, it is worth noting that MacLennan was not aspiring to be impressively prescient with his effort as much as make the case that these experiences familiar, that these dynamics, regardless of what “progress” we assume we are making, remain cyclical. The populist politicians who have dominated and poisoned public discourse with their certitude, simplifications and practiced crassness are not a once-a-millennium phenomenon. They are familiar, from a template previous figures have modded themselves to and for all their talk, they will ultimately, “turn freedom upside down” (if they haven’t already.)</p><p></p><h2 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">"...a crime is a crime, and crimes committed in the name of freedom are especially vile because they turn freedom upside down.” (p. 111)<br /></span></h2><p><br />Dehmel is not the first to sound such a warning about our diminished grasp of freedom. A few moments earlier a poet on the same episode of Timothy’s program storms off stage after declaring, “You — the famous freedom-fighter! Now I see that you’re just another of the ones that use people. If people like you ever get power over us, you’ll be three times worse than what we have now.” (p. 108)<br /><br />As Timothy becomes preoccupied with the prestige he gains from his program and assumes that he enormous influence, he becomes less interested in surveying the world in the thought provoking manners he did in his first television appearance. Instead he is driven by a conviction that he is right about everything and that his perspective is the only one that matters. The information that he has that could inform and guide him is neglected and ignored. In the interviews that he conducts, he sheds journalistic curiosity in favour of reckless inquisition and interrogation to such an extent that Dehmel, exasperated at this point asks, “Is it really necessary for you to misunderstand me deliberately?” (p. 115)<br /><br />The media icon serves his ill-formed convictions with little regard for the truth or the need to conduct himself according to a moral code. In this complex character there are challenges about interpreting his motivations, but MacLennan seems content to suggest that it is winter-generational battle and that Timothy’s temper and need to prove his worth to older men gets the best of him.<br /><br />It would not be fair to equate Timothy's conduct on the air with that of the talking heads on Fox News or other personalities who abuse their pulpit to mislead people. Timothy's intention was not an exact representation of that. Like much of what we see on television today, it is challenging to distinguish news and information from entertainment. It has been clear for at least <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFQFB5YpDZE">20 years that the likes of Jon Stewart</a>, John Oliver and Stephen Colbert, to name just three, are better prepared to speak truths than the likes of Tucker Carlson. In the end though, the three comedians are quite honest about the fact that their prime directive (most of the time) is to entertain. If we were to cite <i>This Hour Has Seven Days </i>as representative of what Timothy sought to do, his intention was to challenge audiences with the content he presented. Stewart, Oliver and Colbert, when veering toward political topics, prefer to challenge rather than feed the pablum of disinformation intended to stoke the adrenal gland. Timothy, however, did indulge in that on occasion and the instance of this that occurs in the novel is disastrous. As "disinformation" becomes more widespread and is used as an inaccurate accusation in the face of efforts to find truth, tragedies and disasters larger than that Timothy provoked WILL become more prevalent.<br /></p>Pathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08326893120900106683noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8813231024930598590.post-48185430203255907222023-09-26T10:46:00.005-06:002023-09-27T15:34:04.785-06:00 MacLennan Revisited: Part 2, His Alternate Future<h2 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">“If you want to make a good lie stick, you’ve got to put at least put a little truth in it.” <i> </i></span></h2><h2 style="text-align: right;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><i>Voices in Time p. 11</i></span></h2><p>The novel opens with the description of an almost bucolic exile beyond the limits of a Montreal that has been wiped off the map and is in the slow process of rebuilding itself in 2030, its name forgotten and replaced with "Metro." Before I’m a dozen words into this reading, however, it becomes evident that MacLennan did not anticipate the greenhouse effect and climate change, which first made the news in Canada two years after the novel was published. It is June and Montreal is just escaping the tight clutches of winter. His grasp of the underlying issues in our society today is more germane than the time line or the specifics of other predictions. <br /><br /></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQhGBMlfz2ShOYir9Qxsg7HlVsUrc_7sG0FBdFcuPVb0lqSsidzsbrgwLMIVneqxv12qY2eWA0R4jKW0z04Em2bWE9wKeRY1hfNeQ-iGheJmNnZR6GXjulSmZRJrRXPn2-kNjM-7PrnIXvCb2LNzSqwXKm6TY8R9znrxVYey3SzeheJI8zIi4DIhG8ig0/s2048/_113821669_mediaitem113821668.jpg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1152" data-original-width="2048" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQhGBMlfz2ShOYir9Qxsg7HlVsUrc_7sG0FBdFcuPVb0lqSsidzsbrgwLMIVneqxv12qY2eWA0R4jKW0z04Em2bWE9wKeRY1hfNeQ-iGheJmNnZR6GXjulSmZRJrRXPn2-kNjM-7PrnIXvCb2LNzSqwXKm6TY8R9znrxVYey3SzeheJI8zIi4DIhG8ig0/w400-h225/_113821669_mediaitem113821668.jpg" title="Beirut, Lebanon (August 2020) Courtesy BBC New" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td></tr></tbody></table>In the 30 pages of the opening part, we get a cursory flashback through the period of 1980 to 2030, which preceded this post-dystopian Montreal and its surroundings. Things are being rebuilt in Metro and, perhaps, similar large cities throughout the world. The first person narrator of the novel, John Wellfleet, is sought out by a representative of this younger surviving generation and asked to piece together an account of the times before the destructive era that put a fissure between the past we readers know and the alternate future the novel occurs in. Andre Gervais, one of the younger generation rebuilding Metro uncovered a chest of documents belonging to Wellfleet’s family and asks if he can draft a history from them. Gervais is young enough to be John’s grandson and is ignorant of all that unfolded prior to his birth, having grown up to a version of world history expunged of even the possibility of space travel. As the dialogue between these two men begins, I come across the quote that has called me back to read it this time around: “But if there were men with all that knowledge, why couldn’t they stop what happened?” (p. 11)<br /><br />The question is echoed a page later and it recurs throughout the novel.<br /><br />There are other books that have posed the same question, whether verbatim or not and there's been a surfeit of pandemic and dystopian fiction in recent years to provide more of examples that bypass the question to more or less say, “This is getting real, these are the consequences and these are the causes. Wake up!” While I’m already noticing aspects of the book that I find flawed, MacLennan’s earnest effort in this book is urgent with its relentlessness. It may be that its his ambition that blunts the impact and legacy of the novel. Novels before and after this one sound their own warnings, but the likes of <i>Fahrenheit 451</i>, with its focus on censorship, <i>The Handmaid’s Tale</i> portraying toxic patriarchy, and <i>Brave New World</i> giving an account of a technology-addled society have each served more readily as metaphor and point of reference in the 2020s. <p></p><p>MacLennan’s efforts to draw on historic events from the 20th century and even further back to suggest the trends or cycles that we have been following may lead to a downfall has couched the novel in realism, but may have undermined how compelling it could be. Instead of focusing on one narrowed theme, MacLennan decided to "select all" and endeavours to encompass the entire cycle of history. He may have tried to make the case that the amplifiers of the 20th century — nuclear weapons, mass media, mass production and perhaps mass hysteria to boot — were contributing to a more violent, more entropic swing of the pendulum through its more recent cycles in history.</p><p></p><p>As John starts to tell the tale of the alternate history that he has lived through, he talks about the Destructions, which is the term that has been used for the computer glitch or algorithmic error that triggered nuclear destruction throughout the world. Following the Destructions, a new order emerged and among their initiatives was a retelling of history that was pared down to a myth that discards everything possible of how life was before the Destructions, perhaps in an effort to eliminate the knowledge and the desire for possession that would drive society to another round of acquisition, greed and lust that would repeat the cycle over again. A component of the past that John knows of, but Andre has been kept innocent of was a period before the Destructions called the Great Fear. Within the confines of the book, the Great Fear is described in vague terms and while its shape seems to be more of a mystical, fairy-tale quality int he brief description it is given, the name might be appropriate for what is occurring today.<br /><br />Fear, whether it is wielded by populist politicians and social media profit mongers, or burrowing into our consciousness as we live through the tumult that has been unfolding with little to arrest it, tends to immerse us into surreal situations. More often than not it prompts us to behave in an irrational way that makes us agents of our own individual or collective downfalls. That may not be the nature of what MacLennan wants to describe as leading to the Destructions, but as we see fears weaponized to the extent they are today, it becomes a distinct possibility that we are living in a great fear. At a time when we are conscious of the need to make ourselves vulnerable enough to others to form real community and contribute to our survival, we are more motivated than ever to fear and "other" people who we deem a threat because of their difference. Today, society is polarized in several ways, but more threateningly, inclined to target and marginalize groups in the same way that groups were marginalized throughout parts of the 20th century. Clearly, lessons need to be re-learned, but MacLennan's account of the Great Fear is just a passing thumbnail sketch rather than a more detail portrait of the tumult the book pivots into the future on.<br /></p><p></p><h2 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Bombarded by pentillions of words, pictures, ideas, explanations,
counter explanations — who could have sorted out a fraction of what had
been thrown at them?</span></h2><p>Perhaps MacLennan’s reluctance to indulge in the world building and specificity that Ray Bradbury, Margaret Atwood and Aldous Huxley did in their novels has made <i>Voices in Time</i>, in comparison, less worthy of word-of-mouth and a decades’ long legacy. As a PhD who completed his doctoral thesis on classical history, MacLennan may have been hard-wired to approach his subject manner as didactically as he did. His strengths as an historian are apparent throughout and the book provides a worthwhile telling of the times we live in. He may have also been too disciplined or too Victorian as a narrator to take inspiration from contemporary or younger authors of his day either. Where Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. has tersely humiliated mankind by bluntly citing the available evidence with a fluid, free narration where he uses his own voice quite frankly, MacLennan painstakingly builds his case, linking together evidence from several eras of history to outline the complexities of our times to say that the guard rails of our morality have been diminished. <br /><br />As I re-read the novel in August 2023, with forest fires raging throughout the summer, floods decimating communities in Libya, hurricanes wreaking havoc in such unlikely places as Nevada, the United States shrugging its ambivalence about the heavy-lifting required to keep democracy healthy, the evidence mounts about our inclination to ignore the great minds of our day. Why, though? Perhaps people just want to keep having fun or accumulating more for as long as we can or until someone with authority (as in power, not knowledge on a topic) tells them what needs to be done to ensure our survival. At the same time, though, people continue to vote in governments that defer tough decision-making in favour of the political calculus that bellwethers re-election.<br /><br />The first part of the book remains familiar after all these years, quotable as well and despite MacLennan’s oversight of the changes to the environment he draws on Marshall McLuhan’s insights early on as well, saying in a quote that has gained relevance since I first read it: “Bombarded by pentillions of words, pictures, ideas, explanations, counter explanations — who could have sorted out a fraction of what had been thrown at them?” (p. 29) Perhaps the desire for sufficient warning to evacuate is not merely out of a desire to sustain the distraction and diversion as long as possible, but rather a desire for simplicity in the face of the bombardment of information and disinformation.<br /></p>Pathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08326893120900106683noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8813231024930598590.post-86480003148002122322023-09-25T21:54:00.004-06:002023-09-29T09:24:54.519-06:00 Revisiting Hugh MacLennan: Part 1<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6F1xrJMyb7k-7ykQWP3nnfsanwmsUYDC4Z_dqFZhLs9L5antESaEBKGyLmIdmrtwV9NVM57IRxOqJmfJ9JjLUSP0ynSYek36fOW2ZVwVudQ-9PpV5TlWo77zQ1wRU7H8SP6HJxqFTt0nHcxWS17O4jn3bxV53vVstLD7WNKCDhb618pEFuiWZ4jhsgK4/s475/VIT%20classic.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="475" data-original-width="295" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6F1xrJMyb7k-7ykQWP3nnfsanwmsUYDC4Z_dqFZhLs9L5antESaEBKGyLmIdmrtwV9NVM57IRxOqJmfJ9JjLUSP0ynSYek36fOW2ZVwVudQ-9PpV5TlWo77zQ1wRU7H8SP6HJxqFTt0nHcxWS17O4jn3bxV53vVstLD7WNKCDhb618pEFuiWZ4jhsgK4/w249-h400/VIT%20classic.jpg" width="249" /></a></div>I first read Hugh MacLennan 40 years ago this fall. As a Nova Scotian, I was familiar with the local requirement of his first novel, <i>Barometer Rising</i> during high school, but I got to select the first MacLennan novel I would read, <i>Voices In Time</i>. Grade eleven English, focused on Canadian Literature, 1983. After watching an <a href="https://www.nfb.ca/film/hugh-maclennan-portrait-of-a-writer/">NFB</a> biography of MacLennan that featured an excerpt of the novel, I had to read it.<p>The passage that hooked me described the uncertainty and disorder of a post-dystopian world trying to rebuild after global disaster. Multiple narrators relate what is ostensibly a family saga, but encompasses aspects of history that, to this day, I remain riveted by. The October Crisis of 1970 was still recent, resonant and cloaked in the allure of an event too fresh and too deep-rooted to be addressed and encompassed in the history classes which were bogged down with lengthy, tedious dive into the French Revolution. When I first read <i>Voices in Time</i>, the main instigators of those 1970 kidnappings were returning to Quebec from exile in Cuba. The ripples of the October Crisis were still agitating and a decade’s ability to be too brief or long enough was held up for debate as nationalistic yearnings in Quebec were being legitimized by the Parti Quebecois’ tenure in government. MacLennan's novel gives an account of events that still glowed with the mystique the 1960s have held, and then proceeded to speculate on what would happen in the 50 years that awaited me as I matured into adulthood along with the main narrator of the story, who is about a decade older than I am.</p><p>When I finished reading it, I was hellbent on writing a book report that would make my English teacher want to read the novel if she hadn’t already. Thankfully, Mrs. MacIsaac was not going to take any short cuts and I suspect she knew she’d be signing up for a few new reads each year. She would make sure she gave an informed assessment of my report. In high school, I was a capable but unmotivated student and this was one of the few occasions (the one occasion?) where motivation and I communed. I had no need or desire to prove anything about myself to my teachers, but I was that compelled by the book, and I finished my book report two days early — a telling feat from one prone to finish any project only the night before. <br /><br />I had read <i>Voices in Time</i> several times in the years that followed and again in the aftermath of 9/11 in an effort to get my bearings while I lived through that on the other side of the world. My reading of the book in 2001 had left me feeling it had not aged
well. The writing did not seem to hold up as well as books by
MacLennan’s contemporaries or as well as other books from the 1980s. It
was a technically sound book and MacLennan’s narration of the book from
four perspectives was effective, though there were times when the
suggestion that parts of the book were entirely cobbled together from
journals and the first person sources other characters of the novel had
stashed away during their period of the 20th century were not as
plausible as MacLennan and his narrators might want us to believe. I
took it at the time that MacLennan’s approaches were out of touch and
that he was destined to continue falling out of favour as the years
ticked by.</p><p>The nuclear pessimism that informed MacLennan in 1980 faded in the post-Cold War optimism of the 1990’s, but since then much has changed. Shifts in the balance of power have escalated uncertainty and evidence is mounting that climate-induced battles over scarce resources like food and water will unfold. Forty years after my first reading of the novel, our civilization’s circumstances closely resemble the uncertainty that MacLennan described as the prelude to a nuclear cock-up that wipes the slate clean and leaves survivors to rebuild the world from scratch.<br /><br />Since his death in 1991 MacLennan's significance has slowly diminished. Once considered at the vanguard of English Canadian Literature and having coined the term “two solitudes,” MacLennan has retained his place as an early literary cartographer of the nation, but the still life of Canada he observed from his side of the easel as he wrote his novels from 1941 to 1980 bears little resemblance to the rich view of Canada’s diversity our literature provides today. He may be just a curiosity now, worth reading for the image of the country he provided then. However, there is much that he, and many of his generation, overlooked. If one is to read MacLennan now, there may be a need for caution and a consciousness of the myopia that he brought to his art or his role as a 20th century, male, Canadian writer. Apart from his old maxim about the country, which has been revised to encompass multiple solitudes rather than just two, there is still a lingering cachet thanks to having Leonard Cohen among his students at McGill University and The Tragically Hip dedicating their song “Courage” to him. That may be just enough to remain a curiosity.<br /><br />He has faded into a more remote corner of Canada’s cultural mural, but his last novel has echoed profoundly across the two decades since I last read it. One quote from the novel, “In the face of civilization we blow the smoke of burning books,” (p. 203) would likely earn a “You said it, brother,” today as we observe the disputes occurring in our libraries and schools about what books should be available to whom. <i>Voices in Time</i> also has a credible example of cancel culture that appears three decades before the term was coined. MacLennan, who demonstrated in his writing that he was as much and educator and historian as a novelist, also brings the readers’ attention to the consequences of white-washing the past for the sake of discarding it. <br /><br />From an historical standpoint, <i>Voices in Time</i> may fallen short of my expectations in 2001 because of the commonly-held belief that nations and societies are torn apart by internal forces rather than external ones. We were living at a time when we believed the threats were external rather than internal. The internal threats were likely present, but our attention was turned to menace of Al-Qaeda. In retrospect, that external threat was just enough to get us to stop accommodating diverse points of views. George W. Bush’s position of “Yer either with us or agin’ us” defined the public discourse at that time. Whether it was a harbinger or a cause of the polarization that has followed is a matter for debate.<br /><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZh7ltLLFl6bJfy5wxecuO_VG-5SskMeDsL0AF4h_LMtsuzynkthwXg_CrbQ8BAcrrmd4Wz4oqHDeY_vqVoKfwDeFl5VV2FOs7fMUMUjvmuuah0xqJYN9_oua3VfLXslc4DCkUmqBtzklMZOMxzTVg776cqWlD0wkn_um41XzrWeTr28FCkDhqmetp42g/s285/voicesintim00macl.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="285" data-original-width="180" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZh7ltLLFl6bJfy5wxecuO_VG-5SskMeDsL0AF4h_LMtsuzynkthwXg_CrbQ8BAcrrmd4Wz4oqHDeY_vqVoKfwDeFl5VV2FOs7fMUMUjvmuuah0xqJYN9_oua3VfLXslc4DCkUmqBtzklMZOMxzTVg776cqWlD0wkn_um41XzrWeTr28FCkDhqmetp42g/w253-h400/voicesintim00macl.jpg" width="253" /></a></div><p>Two decades on though, that assertion that unity be defined by that exclusive mindset has sown the seeds for the internal dissension that we are seeing within communities. Nations, provinces, neighbourhoods and families have become brittler over the last two decades as we have become less an less capable of embracing the breadth of perspectives that we were once able to take the time to consider. Social media, a phenomenon that MacLennan may not have ever anticipated, has amplified our differences and cocooned us within cells of comfort among the like-minded and the “with us or agin’ us” mantra has solidified to incline many of us to great umbrage against anyone who cannot see things the exact way we do, even as the world becomes so complex and paradoxical that simplicity and clarity are illusions or delusions. And, so, despite the shortcomings I encountered when I last read the book, the echoes of its most familiar passages have drawn me to it once again, 40 years after I first read it and just seven years before the curtain rises on the opening of the novel and the discovery of old family records that trace the highlights of 20th century history.<br /><br />Knowing both how the novel would address much of is happening in 2023 and how the book disappointed the last time I’d read it, I have taken it down from the shelf. The edition I have is not the one I read in high school that had a simple black cover with portraits of four of the main characters on the cover, but one that I could kindly regard as garish. The artwork is over the top, with a mushroom cloud, swastikas, and a font that makes me think of a pamphlet that I would ignore if it were thrust at me as I walked down the street. It is enough to make me apprehensive about reading it again, but I still crack the spine.<br /><br />Part 2: <a href="https://closedrighteye.blogspot.com/2023/09/maclennan-revisited-part-2-his.html">MacLennan's Alternate Future<br /></a>Part 3: <a href="https://closedrighteye.blogspot.com/2023/09/maclennan-revisited-part-3-reckless.html">The Reckless Media Icon<br /></a>Part 4: <a href="https://closedrighteye.blogspot.com/2023/09/maclennan-revisited-part-4-muted.html">The Muted Historian<br /></a>Part 5: <a href="https://closedrighteye.blogspot.com/2023/09/maclennan-revisited-part-5-echoes.html">The Echoes</a><br /><br /></p><p></p>Pathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08326893120900106683noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8813231024930598590.post-90175900074005349142023-08-20T22:06:00.006-06:002023-08-20T23:37:17.210-06:00A Visit to the Zone<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikU84LynZ27RPDxl6pgvGvZLMuSmZj8uU_CZvSV8Ly5KovtGuf35aTHtaRj-wZaL5A3tzh-8ynyW3vH09_N2KQYapBejAfVtGvMK8fQvzKBk43_ue7bY-yBwZWt06DJSVa3QBItzkQjI4ekcIKB6nVOQl8669qXh5l2JpB1Mo_82Lxqt1Wh39oJ9WXEN8/s4032/IMG_7724.jpeg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikU84LynZ27RPDxl6pgvGvZLMuSmZj8uU_CZvSV8Ly5KovtGuf35aTHtaRj-wZaL5A3tzh-8ynyW3vH09_N2KQYapBejAfVtGvMK8fQvzKBk43_ue7bY-yBwZWt06DJSVa3QBItzkQjI4ekcIKB6nVOQl8669qXh5l2JpB1Mo_82Lxqt1Wh39oJ9WXEN8/w300-h400/IMG_7724.jpeg" width="300" /></a></div>My 16th marathon was not my fastest, but it ended up being among my most satisfying. Multiple doubts left me entirely uncertain about how I would do and have had my second guessing many aspects of training routine and at the risk of overstating, perhaps my life as well. My diet, my approach to exercise and the place of running in my life as a factor contributing to my fitness and, some might say a hobby might raise some question about whether that is an ideal use of my time and body in my mid 50s. Perhaps go to a few more movies if you want a diversion to relax to. How about an occasion swim to stop pound bones to dust and adding to the strain on connective tissues that don't regenerate that quickly (as in, not at all.)<p></p><p>Last year at this time I attempted my first "face-to-face" marathon since 2019 and had a knock-down-drag-out mental battle that started after a mere 5K and that battle went on for another 90 minutes. I tried to coax myself along to get to the half and then get myself into gear at that point. That particular inner dialogue went on uninterrupted with the exception of my ongoing irritation at a runner in Nikes that sounded like a Clydesdale clopping along next to me. I got to the half way mark, my mind resolved. That was enough and whatever I convinced myself to slog through for the balance of that morning would not be worth the effort. The physical and mental toll of an attempt to tough it it for the balance of 42.2K last year would have been too damn much. </p><p>After <a href="https://closedrighteye.blogspot.com/2022/08/the-dnf.html">bailing on that race last August</a>, I resolved to work for a decent race time rather than "buy it" by seeking out a flat race like Edmonton's or sneaking off to sea level to enjoy the benefits of running and training at Calgary's altitude. I rededicated myself to putting the work in. Adding regular stair-climbing to my workday and foregoing the elevator, doing the regular hill work that I shrugged off during the pandemic because throughout those years I was running to keep my head screwed on rather than to get fit for a race that was too far into an unknown distance for me to slog through hills for nothing more than the mere hell of it. The pandemic wasn't occasion to sign up for more hell.<br /></p><p>Rededicated I was and I lined up again this past <a href="https://closedrighteye.blogspot.com/2023/05/the-baffler.html">May to run the Calgary Marathon</a>, which invariably turns into a significant challenge due to the heat and the altitude that I benefit from when I sneak off to race at sea level. As if in the midst of a string of bad relationships, I told myself, "It'll be different this time." You know how that ended. I turned a rather bleak 4:08, a blow to my confidence in my running and something that raised doubts about whether I would try the marathon again. I only committed to my first marathon after giving myself evidence in the half-marathon that I could finish in under 4 hours. That race gave me pause and made me gun shy about making a habit of being on the northside of that benchmark.</p><p>The last few months passed and I was wary of attempting a marathon again. In that interval I'd come across a book called <i><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/20821042-80-20-running">80/20 Running</a></i> which makes a strong, articulate case for running the majority of training at a slower pace that keeps the heart rate at a lower threshold to enhance endurance rather than continually running at the same intensity. (Guilty as charged.) It was a convincing book and I bought in, albeit only in early July. I worked with it a bit and got a feel for getting slow enough to be in that lower heart rate zone but there were still doubts and a month and a half is hardly enough time to make a significant change to marathon fitness. My legs still don't have the bounce and power that I was once accustomed to (or always presumed was there, but never was.)</p><p>All told, I prepared to toe the line again and try to wrestle with the marathon distance once again. There was a strong feeling in my mind that I could finish the race with a declaration to self that I was done with the marathon and perhaps running itself and there were moments the day before the race when I calculated the amount of time I would need to go through my current supply of running shoes if I was limiting myself to more civilian (or is that civilized?) use. I also set aside my bluetooth earbuds in favour of "ye olde corded headphones," such was my uncertainty to finish before the batteries expired and consequently leaving me in a silence that immersed me in my thoughts over the remaining miles than I'd like for the last stretch of the race.<br /></p><p>When I woke up at 6am race morning with my head pounding, there was a big part of me in favour of just getting back into bed and hiding under the covers until check-out time. Despite that, I still dressed, put on the body glide to keep from chafing myself sore popped to ibuprofen and gulped back most of my traditional pre-race hydration and prepared to meet the day. All of it was slower and more tentative than I would have liked<br /></p><p>As I arrived at the start area I got into the chute to start and settled in. Other people were talking about expectations, commenting on the beneficially cool 7 Celsius it was for the start of the race and doing a range of warm-ups from bouncing and striding on the spot. I did that for a moment, starting by loosening up my arms and shoulders and nearly clubbed the coffee out of the hands of someone who was approaching me from behind. I was a bit reluctant to do much of anything at that point and I had absolutely no desire to do the strenuous, but doable stretches a guy in from of me was sprawling in the middle of Jasper Avenue to do. I did indulge in the sumo squat that I favour to stretch my hamstrings and Achilles. After a few repetitions, I moved up in the chute and braced myself.</p><p>Once things got going, I found myself in a much better frame of mind than I was the year before and the questions about doing the full race or not did not occur. If anything I may have been slightly preoccupied with slight changes to the route to accompany construction that was taking place. I rolled with that and took in the sights of the race, my favourite being a older woman who occupied a chair along the route and basically read out a long litany of motivational running quotes that would normally earn their place on a poster. Hearing her reading through lines like "You look hot when you sweat," "Your pace or mine," and "Toenails are for losers" was worth doubling over in laughter for.<br /><br />I was still wary about what I was doing and how I'd hold things together. I kept what I thought was a conservative pace rather than trying to pound through a record of some sort and I kept the possibility of a Boston Qualifier off limits in favour of keeping comfortable and making sure that I did not burn myself out before I got into the heart of the race. I took in the sights, quietly bonded with the runners that were becoming familiar thanks to proximity and around the 8K mark, I told myself, "I want to be doing this when I'm 60!"<br /><br />With that, I settled in. For the bulk of the race -- from the 3rd kilometer to about the 33rd or 34th -- I was consistent, almost metronomic with my pace. My slowest intervals throughout that were no more than 10 seconds slower than my fastest. There were no outrageous accelerations and there were no exhausted trudges from molasses as the legs waved the white flag. My mind remained clear for the most part. In the spontaneous kinships that form during races, there was a length stretch where I ran shoulder to shoulder with a young woman and there was an unspoken sense that the two of us would pace each other, both pushing one another to maintain a decent pace and not too get too ambitious with a pace that was more demanding than we could handle. After a while though she'd started to fade to the point where I was looking back to see how she was managing. In previous cases of this, a fellow runner and I kept pace in this way for about 16-18K and when we got left in the dust by a younger runner who blasted passed as if on a bike we turned to each other, shared a fist bump, shrugged and kept on keeping on. The quiet bond didn't hold this time. I was tempted to shout back some encouragement and tell her, "I've got a sore big toe on one foot, a cranky Achilles on the other and I'm 56! You can do this!" It was clear though that she wasn't going to keep up. I'm not sure what it would take to find her in the results. I never saw her number and we never crossed paths in the parts of the race where there is two-way traffic. It was a good use of my mental energy to get my mind off my run for a while and try to will a manifestation of this teamwork and connect with someone else in this kinesthetic manner. It is a great part of the experience and I favour these quieter bonds over the more exuberant huzzahs to elicit cheering from the spectators. <br /></p><p>Later in the race, I had an experience that I've never had before. As I crossed that half way mark of the race and came to the realization that I was in it entirely I went through a stretch of about 7K where I just did not care or know where I was in the race. Distance covered, speed any of the other data I could turn over and try calculating through did not cross my mind at all. I was just running to run and just absorbed in the movement. I'm not sure if it was a flow state, but there was definitely a clarity of mind and an total lack of concern with anything that I was trying to accomplish. I was there for a good portion of the race though and by the time I stirred out of it I knew that I was going to finish without surrendering to walking long stretches or the remainder of the race whenever I felt like I was tapping out. Physically, I did hit a wall and slowed a bit for the balance, but that overall metronomic feel and sense of calm remained intact. Toward the end I found a gear to pace myself past a few others who were approaching the finish and keep my speed up and came in a full 24 minutes faster than was the case in May and covered the distance I endeavoured to complete a year earlier as well.<br /><br />With the race completed, I faded back into the crowds of spectators and made my way to the hotel for a shower, a bit of decompression and surprisingly, no ibuprofen. Tired, medaled, trudgy in my movements and, content.<br /></p>Pathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08326893120900106683noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8813231024930598590.post-27949375189441927632023-07-01T19:47:00.003-06:002023-07-01T19:47:37.654-06:00An Overpay? Not Really<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtdNZ_97gaTc-U4pD_dO2DUAAni91W2E8BPY__ViXaG3rK3ZtyMGVPszpQ9_L7K4Xw5D-TvWOoXrR_4H6xODolx5zKur7a_eHoYQknrt9-gw-gIbgckIpkqJaDcjunPokWHQ6RtUKxfrLbeBDihRW5AjJ9pDVXMLBgZpiKhLyNGshkZohAF37bQ5MvPhc/s1920/fred-vanvleet_qz7t9swjp2m51taybvc166oj3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1920" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtdNZ_97gaTc-U4pD_dO2DUAAni91W2E8BPY__ViXaG3rK3ZtyMGVPszpQ9_L7K4Xw5D-TvWOoXrR_4H6xODolx5zKur7a_eHoYQknrt9-gw-gIbgckIpkqJaDcjunPokWHQ6RtUKxfrLbeBDihRW5AjJ9pDVXMLBgZpiKhLyNGshkZohAF37bQ5MvPhc/w400-h225/fred-vanvleet_qz7t9swjp2m51taybvc166oj3.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>As the summer rite of NBA free agency unfolded, one of the bigger surprises was Fred VanVleet’s departure from Toronto to join the Houston Rockets. After a few days of rumours about the Rockets offering VanVleet a two-year contract that the Toronto Raptors might have still been able to compete with by offering more term, the Rockets upped the ante and ended up signing VanVleet to a three-year deal close to double what he opted out of with the Raptors for the 2023-24 season.<br /><br />Given the possibilities of using their cap space for a reunion with James Harden or the pursuit of <a href="https://www.si.com/nba/rockets/news/houston-rockets-free-agency-profile-kyrie-irving-jalen-green-james-harden">Kyrie Irving</a>, the Rockets went a different route in securing VanVleet's services and may have caught the Raptors off-guard. The Raptors may have anticipated getting the most competition from capped-out playoff contenders teams like either of the Los Angeles teams, the Phoenix Suns or someone else who would have likely given the Raptors a chance to cobble together a sign and trade similar to the one that got them Precious Achiuwa in exchange for (what may turn out to be only two years of) Kyle Lowry’s services.<br /><br />The loss of VanVleet will be a significant blow for Toronto, and Houston took a key step toward toward putting a more competitive team on the floor after a <a href="https://www.chron.com/sports/rockets/article/houston-rockets-predictions-17880661.php">season where they did not meet expectations</a> and needs to find a way to create some coherence among the stockpile of lottery picks that has averaged less than 20 wins a season over the last three years. The very strengths that Fred VanVleet brings on and, more importantly in this instance, <i>off</i> the floor are assets that James Harden and Kyrie Irving would be less likely to bring to a young organization like this one.<br /><br />Throughout VanVleet’s time in Toronto, and that includes his time with their developmental team as well, his professionalism, basketball IQ and maturity have been evident and abundant. His contribution on defence and from beyond the arc during the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eu7Cj4SGt2c">Raptors' 2019 championship run</a> earned him a vote for Finals MVP. Harden's reel of clutch playoff moments is a short one and he has not demonstrated reliable leadership qualities to the extent that VanVleet has. In 2021-22, he recognized that it was his responsibility to step forward and assume the leadership role that was once Kyle Lowry’s. In the aftermath of that departure, VanVleet made a conscious effort to calibrate himself for that new role filling the leadership void that emerged after Lowry's departure. It has also been evident that VanVleet is coaching material thanks to his basketball smarts that he’s probably demonstrated since his four-year stint at Wichita State University. At this point, there is no need to belabour a comparison of Van Vleet’s leadership with Kyrie Irving’s. In short, VanVleet is the right fit, with the maturity, the presence and now the alpha-dog payroll to command respect in the Rockets’ locker room and lead these highly-pedigreed lottery youngsters to the level that they should be striving for.<br /><br />There were occasions throughout the 2022-23 season when it was not clear how accountable the young Rockets were. That was not entirely the responsibility of Steve Silas, but may have been a consequence of not having the collective maturity among all this recent draftees to desire anything more than to get to the end of the NBA season. With the Brooklyn Nets holding Houston’s 2024 first round pick, the Rockets have more motivation to keep themselves from surrendering too much in next year’s draft. With Ime Udoka at the helm and keen to introduce a stronger effort on defence in particular, VanVleet is a key piece. As a low maintenance, high character vet VanVleet’s contributions will not necessarily satisfy the most ardent of fantasy basketball players, but he will set an example for the organization that will go far to professionalize this young roster and help the coaching staff hold them accountable. His articulate, frank take on the game is engaging and honest, even when he is <a href="https://www.youtube.com/shorts/OX5wQzHPCZ4">calmly cursing out</a> issues with officiating and doing so in a manner that cites enough evidence to make a few people concede that he has a point. The Rockets will remain a work in progress and it will be interesting to see what Dillon Brooks brings to the table as another big name signee on the heels of his flame-out in the Lakers- Memphis series in the 2023 playoffs.<p></p><p>If the rest of the Rockets take their cue from VanVleet on defence and he can run the offence as effectively as he provides the leadership and example that Ime Udoka wants in his locker room, it will turn out to be a good deal for Houston.<br /></p>Pathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08326893120900106683noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8813231024930598590.post-79337461965190540402023-06-28T15:12:00.001-06:002023-06-28T15:13:47.803-06:00Envy, Rage and Illusion are Fueling the UCP and Fooling Albertans<p>With the United Conservative Party of Alberta mandated for a month now with a general election victory, there continues to be plenty of reason to snipe at the Premier and roll eyes at the gaffes and dodgy behaviour, which is all the harder to bear with her elected by the citizens of Alberta rather than merely the members of her party. For some reason, Premier Smith's D-Day <a href="https://twitter.com/ABDanielleSmith/status/1666180356637351936">tweet</a> remains an intact example of how to cause apoplexy. A humbler soul would have discarded the gaffe out of a sense of embarrassment or having the good sense to correct herself in favour of the facts or reality. Her violations of health codes to, again, tweet about herself in action in her <a href="https://twitter.com/ABDanielleSmith/status/1668058289601679361">restaurant kitchen</a> -- sans proper footwear and on and on -- may irk, but these are not the items that she needs to be assessed upon. She didn't get voted in for her chances to sustain a long stint as champion on <i>Jeopardy</i> nor tantalize Guy Fieri with her fare on the Food Network. <br /><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuvU67F7wkr3k-Tdz4OE4F7s6jiruNYLhMbJ8mYgPHdlZ8ySheQYvQ2HabD5BHQLYvIdwpP3Y71ZL7LeiiTWsZGXqIcs534As0szLEN-YQTccYMSifmZVHLhqS93GdxSozoI3Q5yjt1vEEAuJyw51Qte7ozGbeuya5pnXsofoJDOfA_siI26QwF6T9OMk/s1174/Screen%20Shot%202023-06-28%20at%203.12.57%20PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1124" data-original-width="1174" height="383" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuvU67F7wkr3k-Tdz4OE4F7s6jiruNYLhMbJ8mYgPHdlZ8ySheQYvQ2HabD5BHQLYvIdwpP3Y71ZL7LeiiTWsZGXqIcs534As0szLEN-YQTccYMSifmZVHLhqS93GdxSozoI3Q5yjt1vEEAuJyw51Qte7ozGbeuya5pnXsofoJDOfA_siI26QwF6T9OMk/w400-h383/Screen%20Shot%202023-06-28%20at%203.12.57%20PM.png" width="400" /></a></div>It is pretty easy to get glum about the suggestion that Smith does not grasp the responsibility that she has or the impact that she could actually have if she knuckled down and implemented policies and directed the province's resources toward the well-being of its citizens. That likely will not be the plan, however. Determining whether the UCP's anticipated shortcomings will be the result of incompetence, malice or strategy may lead to the conclusion that each of these theories will be partly right.<p></p><p>As Alberta conservatives have disbanded and formed parties and discarded premiers with a regularity that merely punctuated the ongoing shift further and further to the right, the main signposts on the campaign hustings and around the cabinet table have been envy, rage and illusion. Alberta's envy of Quebec is bountiful and has been stoked by Alberta conservatives at the federal and provincial level for generations. Despite the realities and demographics that have tilted federal politics in favour of Quebec even when an Alberta Conservative has been Prime Minister and another Alberta Conservative calculated the equalization formula, Albertans and the representatives they have elected have failed to shed the envy in favour of a more strategic approach to the demographics of the country. The theme has remained unchanged when it comes to the umbrage that Albertans feel toward Quebec and central Canada, if not the entire country. While conservative politicians have been able to make that envy an asset on the campaign trail, they have not been able to do anything constructive with it. Again the question emerges about whether it is malice, incompetence or strategy. Albertans, however, would find it hard to argue that they have not been duped out of voting more strategically on the federal level and exercising the power that could come if their block of seats were clearly up for grabs rather than assigned to the blue column before the writ is even dropped. <br /></p><p>The rage that the UCP has fed or thrived on has manifested itself in policies that are exclusionary in ways that undermine the well being of countless individuals. A previous and discarded iteration of upstart further-right party, the Wild Rose Party was saddled with a candidate declaring during 2012 campaign that there was a lake of fire in hell waiting for the LGTBQ+ community. Echoes of that sounded out during the 2023 campaign when UCP candidate <a href="https://r.search.yahoo.com/_ylt=AwrOox6aPpxkxbwOJhwXFwx.;_ylu=Y29sbwNncTEEcG9zAzIEdnRpZAMEc2VjA3Ny/RV=2/RE=1687990042/RO=10/RU=https%3a%2f%2fcalgary.citynews.ca%2f2023%2f05%2f29%2falberta-ucp-controversial-wins%2f/RK=2/RS=3LBV.Nj2ZfsuFiOj0ZUmfRQO3rM-">Jennifer Johnson compared trans-children to fecal</a> matter. That candidate won her seat and will sit as an independent but the UCP has proven itself the political tent that best houses the intolerant. Another candidate had made uninformed comments accusing teachers of <a href="https://r.search.yahoo.com/_ylt=AwrjZg8aQJxkEOIOAh8XFwx.;_ylu=Y29sbwNncTEEcG9zAzEEdnRpZAMEc2VjA3Ny/RV=2/RE=1687990426/RO=10/RU=https%3a%2f%2fcalgary.ctvnews.ca%2flethbridge-ucp-candidate-torry-tanner-s-claims-against-teachers-disputed-1.6335277/RK=2/RS=7ZjeK_ySu61BIL8MwJXfbtTD1DM-">exposing children to pornography</a> but did so early enough in the campaign to be removed from the ballot. As the UCP moves further to the right, it is apparent that this intolerance is taking root and it has aligned them with groups and individuals who have sown unrest and disorder in the name a malignant collectivist version of freedom. The convoys and blockades of winter 2022 have their roots in Alberta and have had the favour of the Premier as well. One of Premier Smith's most problematic moments surrounded her attempts to pressure the Attorney General and the Department of Justice to <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/alberta-premier-danielle-smith-leaked-call-artur-pawlowski-1.6743685">overturn charges against</a> Artur Pawlowski and others who were charged with offences during the COVID pandemic.</p><p>Given the preoccupations of successive UCP governments with doing battle, whether out of envy with central Canada or rage against minorities who have individual rights that are protected constitutionally, there does not seem to be much interest on the part of the Alberta provincial government to do much that is particularly constructive or aimed at the long-term best interests of the province. An education that was among the best in the world is being transformed into something that threatens to become incoherent and counter-productive rather than merely regress from its esteemed standards. The party and the premier are guided and motivated primarily by these forces and perhaps a quixotic effort to turn back time or fend off the change that is inevitable. In the meantime, the mandate given to the UCP in the May 2023 election has further motivated hateful fringe elements to become more active and public with the hatred that they espouse. This goes beyond the anti-Trudeau rhetoric and bumper stickers that spangle the Alberta streetscape more than anywhere else in this country. Minorities feel threatened because of these expressions of hatred and clear minded thinkers are likely inclined not to entangle themselves with the demonstrations of hatred or their public declarations of victimhood for the compliance that was asked of them to abide by COVID protocols and beyond that, not to abuse health care workers at their place of work. The UCP has sought to advocate for these people and their rights rather than acting to support and even in some cases defend health care workers in the province.<br /></p><p>The assumptions that change can be fended off (efficiently), that there is such a concrete thing as a true Albertan and that they can firewall the province off from the rest of the country or the world are the illusions driving this government. Like the Brexiteers and the MAGA crowd, these conservatives have succeeded in selling an unobtainable nostalgia for a bygone era that was not the best-of-times that it is portrayed as. I will forego the best-of-times debate in favour of the reality that our currently realities are what governments need to cite in their policy-making. Just as you can legislate morality, you can not legislate a return to a revisionist past, even if that's what you feel mandated to do. Instead of dealing with the realities that Albertans need to confront, the UCP resorts to illusions or delusions about enemies and conspiracies. </p><p>The strategy of exaggerating perceived enemies to cartoonish proportions seems more sustainable with everyone esconced in a social media suite of the echoes and bots that confirm what one wants to believe and a government can get a bit of traction pursuing a line of policy that is ideological and you can start patting yourself on the back celebrating these faux victories. However, when real challenges emerge, such as the wildfires that choked much of the province throughout May 2023, a real meaningful response is required. When houses are burning down, things as tangible as fires need to be acknowledged, fought and prompt a serious reconsideration of contingencies for future responses. In the midst of the fires in May, the <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/alberta-ends-program-for-firefighters-rappelling-from-helicopters-1.5350694#:~:text=The%20Alberta%20government%20is%20ending%20a%20program%20for,less%20than%20two%20per%20cent%20of%20Alberta%20wildfires.">UCP government was cited for its disbanding of the rappel fire-fighting unit</a> because of its expense. In the aftermath of the fires, Smith refused to acknowledge even the possible impact of climate change, instead choosing to cite <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/alberta-premier-danielle-smith-wildfires-climate-change-1.6870875">arson</a> as the cause and announcing she would be bringing arson investigators into the province to investigate. Such deflection beggars belief when cause and effect can be closely related. In more complex matters, such deflection and evasion of reality will be deployed more effectively given a bit more benefit of the doubt when responding to issues related to health care, addictions and human services. The UCP will continue to make their calls from the everyone is out to get us playbook.</p><p>Continuing to make what advantage they can from envy, rage and illusion is only going to last so long. The churn the political brands and party leaders in conservative Alberta is ample evidence of that. There is, however, even with the attention deficit that has been fostered by conservatives no chance that policies that are motivated by these three impulses can be beneficial to the electorate. It has fostered a great deal of the very things that it has campaigned and governed with during the last four years and it is becoming more evident in the streets and the communities of the province. It will escalate further within the party and the turmoil behind the scenes that lead to the ouster of Premier Jason Kenney in 2022 seems likely to surface again as the party lurches further to the right, toward more envy, rage and illusion in the name of convincing Albertans or at least the party membership that the past was ideal and that the province's limited resources ought to be devoted to doubling down on the promise that more conservativism will protect the price of oil, restore esteem to the province by redesigning confederation in Alberta's favour or even more unilateral efforts, and put those pesky frontline educators and health care workers in their place. All very simplistic responses to a world that is not complex and nuanced, but simply out to get the province at every turn.</p><p>The fact that a government that suggests it has a libertarian rationale at heart is going through such exertions to recast reality and fend off all the leaks springing in its vaunted firewall until it hits us like a tsunami rather than in the smaller more manageable pieces that would allow us the time to develop more meaningful responses to the social, economic, and dare I say, environmental challenges that we face. For all the meme-ish conduct that the Premier is infuriating people with, the essential failings at the root of it need to be brought into the light of day and examined for the damage they are causing the province.<br /></p>Pathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08326893120900106683noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8813231024930598590.post-7139853900766495422023-05-29T11:21:00.005-06:002023-05-29T11:25:02.484-06:00The Baffler<p style="text-align: left;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWd5MALqeAHLXKj9CBxYHTU59dC6I3S_2Ot8g-efKldVmwF2ikPsKCLvGtADzoFAPhJQiSgb8v8LbE-Crw6gONtQM3Ot57H1kfLuP8sQkHNjYS38lfqisqktaSpEcdOZZFSGKvj1ER66MPGuQr2eAQPPtPWk6NfFGCapwvyjA8QumcCzA-vhe6q10o/s4032/IMG_7624.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWd5MALqeAHLXKj9CBxYHTU59dC6I3S_2Ot8g-efKldVmwF2ikPsKCLvGtADzoFAPhJQiSgb8v8LbE-Crw6gONtQM3Ot57H1kfLuP8sQkHNjYS38lfqisqktaSpEcdOZZFSGKvj1ER66MPGuQr2eAQPPtPWk6NfFGCapwvyjA8QumcCzA-vhe6q10o/w400-h300/IMG_7624.jpeg" width="400" /></a>The morning after my 15th marathon, I had a lingering daze that is more like jetlag than the first stages of unkinking of knotted legs. Even in the pre-dawn, I suspected that I wasn't going to get back to sleep so I got out of bed to walk in the morning quiet. I ended up walking about 10K, stopping for a tea on the way home. Stair climbing and getting up from a seat are still chores but otherwise the body is fine. Just need to snap into a familiar sleep pattern once again.</div><p></p><p>Ten years ago I made the decision to attempt a marathon upon assuring myself that I would be able to do one in under 4 hours. Finishing yesterday in over 4 hours was a disappointment but more of a puzzle than anything. Five weeks ago in training I ran 36K in 3 hours 15 minutes and was exceptionally content and comfortable throughout the run, singing to myself (maybe not just myself) for stretches of the run, even as I neared the end of that run. Without the attention to detail regarding food, water and other details that would go into a race I had one of my favorite runs ever even though I was on my own and on a very familiar route. It reminded me of a harbinger run I had a few days before I ran my Boston Qualifying race in August 2017. That afternoon run remains highlighted by a lightness and bounce to my stride that was quite reassuring and remains a guidepost when looking at my training and running.<br /></p><p>Last August I had a frustrating attempt at a marathon that I dropped out of after doing half and upon the end of that I decide to rededicate myself to my training and redouble my efforts to run a great time here in Calgary rather than seeking out a flatter race at lower altitude and, in essence, buying a good result. I was going to work for it and I did just that, restoring the hill work that I so dreaded and made a point of avoiding during lockdown when the runs were more about clearing my mind and shaking off the sedentary requirements of work from home. I'd increased mileage as well compared to last year. On race day though, I did not add up. Around 2/3 of the way through the race, despite a decent pace I'd lost the will to continue and managed only a few hundred metres at a time rather than a sustained slower jog to keep moving. While other racers prod me a little bit to keep up or pass, this time around they did not registered as colleagues or competitors. The odd familiar face from past races caught my eye and it was good to see them out there again but I kept to myself, wishing my name wasn't on my bib, as my slog to the finish merited "You've got its" or "Keep it ups" from the bystanders. The last third of the marathon reminds me of a run nearly 20 years ago where I went out too hard, promptly ran out of gas and did that walk-jog slog for about 75% of the race rather than the last third.<br /></p><p>With 24 hours in the books after getting that race under my belt, I am still puzzled by the outcome and trying to sort through the factors along with the reality that fell short of a standard that I had set for myself and had consistently achieved up until yesterday. The first two thirds were quite satisfying and promising, but it is that training run 5 weeks ago that stands as the sign of hope and the indicator that I still have "it" in me. Perhaps. There are things to consider and routines to training, diet, sleep and countless other variables to dump into the calculator -- perhaps into an AI bot -- for a tweak or five to optimize things rather than leave me puzzled and gassed at the finish. For now, it is time to look at my the list of to-dos that don't require shorts, sunscreen and my runners and get on top of those.<br /></p><p><br /></p>Pathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08326893120900106683noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8813231024930598590.post-63503590352715005582023-02-04T14:21:00.002-07:002023-02-04T16:34:56.889-07:00Uncertainty or Doubt?<p>Reality, as we maybe inclined to define it or attempt to come to terms with, is something that becomes more of an exercise to grasp. The layers of social media, traditional media and the amateur anthropology of characterizing other generations as if beings still learning the local ropes after their arrival from another planet all get in the way of determining what is going on anymore. Further to the fences that we put up between ourselves and perception of what is going on, there is the sheer inundation of happenings that are a challenge to prioritize, let alone grasp and process. The narcissistic behaviour of celebrities, their salaries and credibility preoccupy us as much as whether or not a pandemic has ceased to be an emergency and what Russia's invasion of Ukraine could possibly escalate to. And I'm looking at a single shard of ice at the very tip of the iceberg. Even the choice of metaphor is fraught. What mental detours would I trigger if I referred to a snowflake on the top of the iceberg rather than a shard of ice?</p><p>What are we really perceiving about our surroundings and our experiences at this time? Are we qualified to weigh in on topics or concerns that impact us or do we need to be abreast of everything and able to opine or give a knee-jerk reaction just to be in the conversation and, in turn, included and accepted.</p><p>It is sometimes best to take the time to walk alone through your chosen path in the world and see the pink-purple aura of dawn through a morning mist and get the suggestion that a Saturday stroll is a sacred, promising thing. The day's headline is about a Chinese balloon or two being shot down and the speculation about whether it was an errant weather balloon or something deployed for espionage. Run the facts and conjecture through the online data sieve and add a dash of AI and online, algorithmic bot behaviour to twist into something tailored to your version of how the world works and you end up on your side of the fence among an array of digressions from reality that intersects and divides that from space (if I may play with perceptions of reality again) looks like an anarchy symbol.</p><p>As we try to get a grasp of what is going on in this day and age, we are each dealing with our own personalized anarchies. It is what we are beginning to perceive as the state of the world and perhaps the minefields that we land ourselves in when we encounter different perspectives. It is all too common now to acknowledge the discourse, in all of its forms, whether the canned TV shitstorms that are more adrenaline rush that rational quest for understanding, a chat over lunch among acquaintances, or anything in between has been denigrated whenever there is the risk of encountering a different perspective.</p><p>None of us has a handle on this. We cannot grasp everything that is going on. Anyone trying to reinforce that our believes are any more sacrosanct and accurate than anyone else's is selling us something. There is so much more going on.</p><p>The reality of our times, if they haven't been the case throughout history is uncertainty. We ought to be continually challenged to figure things out on a quest for understanding and truth. Coming to a conclusion where we can wipe our hands and declare our quest done and completed denies the possibility that we and likely every aspect of our lives is subject to gravity, time and change, constants that remain indomitable and relentless. We need to arrive at and strive for understanding again and again rather than arrive at a destination where it is discovered like the booty under the X of a pirate's map for us to mark out as ours and, in turn, declare ourselves sated with truth and understanding.</p><p>We live in uncertainty. Full stop. You're not going to overcome this. There will always be new perspectives and information to force reconsideration and recommitment to the processes of thinking, listening and striving to understand the illusive entirety of reality.</p><p>It is common to regard doubt and uncertainty as synonyms and interchangeable terms, but it has become clear as discussions and discourse decay into terse arguments and the stopping of ears that doubt is something that is often deployed strategically. In an instance where a discussion heads on course for argument and dissension, it is common that points of view, takes on reality or actual experience or fact are regarded with doubt. This occurs when the things we want to be certain about, the things that give our take on the world the structure and meaning that provides us comfort and assures us that our worldview and the accompanying ethic are justified. Over the course of the last two or three years the pandemic and wavering consciousness about the environment have generated more frequent occasion for belief systems to be challenged. Time and again, the notions of individual and collective responsibility have been held up for examination. In the face of this, the definition of "freedom" has been challenged and abused by those who wish to refine the definition to serve themselves or accuse others of looking for a free ride. Again, all of the white noise that gets generated over these things is troubling, not in small part because very fundamental beliefs are being challenged.</p><p>In the face of this, it is time to commit and recommit to a quest for understanding and truth rather than continuing to deploy doubt to suggest that other data -- be it facts, realities or the opinions and experiences of others -- need not be considered. Suggesting that the communications that can contribute to an enhanced understanding of one another, the world we share, the history and future that we need to acknowledge ought to be doubted and discarded because the reasoning is uncomfortable and challenging, or that a weird herd morality is steering us toward doom or a false anarchy because it makes us uncomfortable is wrong. Doubt has its place, but there is a tendency to weaponize it rather than set thresholds that set an expectation for clarity and convincing. It is most commonly used to buttress flimsy all-stakes certitudes that we are uncomfortable to have challenged by reality. </p><p>Uncertainty, however, despite the dangers or the anxiety it prompts, is the better habit or mindset, for it is what keeps us on a quest for understanding of our world, our neighbours, ourselves.<br /></p>Pathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08326893120900106683noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8813231024930598590.post-85142940801627376722022-12-17T09:13:00.003-07:002022-12-17T09:30:51.398-07:00Fusion and Our Impulse to Waste<p>With cause, there has been a <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-63957085">great deal of optimism</a> this week about a success experiment in nuclear fusion that generated more energy than was invested in the effort. Heralded with headlines such as "<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/science/audio/2022/dec/15/nothing-is-impossible-the-major-breakthrough-in-nuclear-fusion">Nothing is impossible</a>" there is the promise of a breakthrough that could be an answer to our challenges with global warming and climate change. The possibilities and the fantasies that this promises when it can be scaled to larger models and commercialized have yet to be encompassed by our imaginations at this point.</p><p>This is a long-sought for breakthrough in an era where countless achievements have been unexpected "nice-to-haves" or Frankenstein threats that has cursed society rather than clearly benefited. All in all, our technological and scientific progress has gifted us an abundance and an affluence that has offered the opportunity to live in greater detachment from one another rather than as collectively as we did years and centuries before.</p><p>Those breakthroughs, along with the energy breakthroughs, have expanded our mobility and encouraged independence at the expense of interdependence and social synergy. Despite the benefits and the cost efficiencies of initiatives that are intended for groups rather than individuals, the orientation of our transportation systems, city planning and other infrastructures that we have built our societies around, we have favoured more individualistic modes of housing and transportation despite the expense to the environment, to one another and to the collective future of our children.</p><p>Our assumptions have been that technology will come through again and again to bail us out and to accommodate our avarice and our indifference to one another and the notions of community that are more likely to ensure our well-being. With the discovery of sustainable nuclear fusion, there is the technology coming in again as the white knight but there is still reason for concern and a significant change in perspective on the part of humans.</p><p>Over the course of the COVID pandemic, there has been clear opposition to sheltering-in-place, vaccines and other strategies that have been used to mitigate the spread of the virus. The opposition to these things have been fed by social media, but of greater influence on this virulent opposition is a predisposition to selfishness. It is in our individual make-up, it is a human impulse that we have to acknowledge as part of our nature. We wrestle with it and we hope that there is still an altruistic instinct amongst humans but the century of affluence that passed between the 1919 pandemic and the 2020 one has deepened that desire for independence and a diminished concern for others, our societies or the planet. Too many of us want our sustained pursuit of <i>more</i> regardless of how little it has actually done for us.</p><p>With the dawn of sustainable nuclear fusion closer to reality, how likely is it that we will actually adapt our ways in a manner to truly benefit from it. We are, after all, talking about literal power. We have read reports for years about how the internet technology firms have harvested massive, massive profits from, in essence, our desire for distraction or for the construction of personalized echo chambers to tell each of us that, indeed, our most delusional take on reality is true and there really fine people who share that unhinged take on the world as well. Two points with this discovery. One, there will be financial and political benefits to be reaped from the commercialization of nuclear fusion. Two, more power is not going to prompt us to reconsider the ways we live, communicate and interact.</p><p>Despite the catastrophe that looms, we remain obstinately resistant to the need to adapt our lifestyles in ways that apart from improving the fate of the planet, would also help us build stronger communities and more meaningful relationships. </p><p>When gifted the opportunity to extend the life of the planet with this energy source, we will not change our behaviour. We are more likely to intensify our levels of consumption, our solipsism and our detachment from one another. There has been ample evidence with the consequences in the breakthroughs in efficiency that we have seen. Improvements in fuel efficiency in cars have not been directed toward the construction of cars that sip judiciously from the Big Gulp of available fossil fuels. Instead, car manufacturers have packed more weight or more power onto the four-wheel platform and instead of achieving the goal of improved fuel efficiency we have taken that gift of technology to fill the roads with SUVs that more commonly act as mobile storage units that never get quite get emptied. This is a common phenomenon, known as <a href="https://www.oecd-forum.org/posts/the-jevons-paradox-and-rebound-effect-are-we-implementing-the-right-energy-and-climate-change-policies">Jevon's Paradox</a>, which states that an increase in efficiency leads to an increase in consumption rather than a decrease.</p><p>Whatever the benefits we may anticipate from the leap toward nuclear fusion, there is still a need to be conscious about how we have been inclined past windfalls from technology or nature. We need to be recommit to the efforts to look after one another and ensure that this benefits all of us rather than resorting to the application of a failed trickle down. If this is true abundance, there should not be a desire to determine who does and does not benefit from it.<br /><br />For this discovery to truly benefit us, there needs to be an accompanying change in our way of thinking and a recognition that there are other ways of interacting with one another and with our environment that would complement this achievement with a mindset that would ensure our survival. In reality, that change of thinking would be of greater benefit that discovering the means to have and consume more.<br /></p>Pathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08326893120900106683noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8813231024930598590.post-3386327169103356622022-12-02T22:16:00.006-07:002022-12-02T22:16:39.902-07:00Selecting and Creativity<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgglAiWu1G5ixTLXT3lk0lnFn6T62S_7PFK9jVVOhCeR1zkTRHjsr8-DskcBI3nTgHlGt-cVFaP7MiZFQGW3FjESPNMQo6ehvByCx_IwLB6ts4wf25XLd75nc3h_vXTAOCu-o2DoXrBmVVRd4IQcg88OjSHeg2t_Ffhi1U8vtM1Y7THp5EnwU107Lm_/s4190/IMG_7516.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4190" data-original-width="2793" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgglAiWu1G5ixTLXT3lk0lnFn6T62S_7PFK9jVVOhCeR1zkTRHjsr8-DskcBI3nTgHlGt-cVFaP7MiZFQGW3FjESPNMQo6ehvByCx_IwLB6ts4wf25XLd75nc3h_vXTAOCu-o2DoXrBmVVRd4IQcg88OjSHeg2t_Ffhi1U8vtM1Y7THp5EnwU107Lm_/w266-h400/IMG_7516.jpeg" width="266" /></a></div>Whether as a a step toward wellness, an asset to leverage for business success or any other benefit on a continuum between intrinsic and extrinsic benefits, creativity and innovation have become buzzwords of late. We may have even reached a saturation point where tolerance for the two terms was going to wane, but the pandemic has left us in a holding pattern where we are in less of a rush to rule either of these passé or unwelcome. There is enough other stuff to tilt at currently: ignorance in all its forms, hatred and despair are far more troubling <i>bêtes noires</i> to rail against.<br /><br />Throughout the pandemic there was an opportunity to make use less-structured time to scratch our creative itch. People streamed in-home concerts. Others filled their time with photography and journalling to document their revised perspectives. We took a more reflective consideration of the music and movies that our filled our days and became more conscious of their workings. We callused our fingers with a commitment to challenging chords or bass lines. We did much of this to fill the time, to break monotonies with something other than that Amazon order that sent us into canine impatience as delivery trucks passed by without attending to us as quickly as we desired. In the creative process, however, the first thing we do, without fanfare, is <i>select</i>.<br /><br />For all of the elements that go into creating -- time, discipline, technical skills, vision, tone, process, practice, and flow to name a few -- selection may not get its due.<br /><br />It is a challenge to know where to begin or what to select out of the infinite options available. It may even feel so indulgent that you don't feel justified to create when there are demands to do something else. Overthink what to focus on, how to capture it, the tone you want to take and you will be paralyzed.<br /><br />Selection embodies the experience with the blank page or canvas but it also is the decision to commit to creating over the paralysis of doubt or the false relief of checking out. No matter what you could be working on, it is worth doing. The first line or word weighs heavy with its likelihood to define and confine everything that follows, limiting what follows with each decision. In music, the first note or chord played could define the key that you are playing in, unless you are John Coltrane and you just decide to blast through eight or nine keys at your behest rather than adhering to “The Rules.” Creativity does not, however, have to be <i>avant-garde</i>. It is much, much more about expressing yourself and simultaneously expanding your perceptions of the world and, in turn, your sense of your own potential. Those early selections lead to others that contribute to the completed work.<br /><br />The challenge of selecting in response to blankness gets reconsidered in photography, where the task of selecting becomes more explicit and holistic. With page or canvas, the first selection may have much more internal mediation prior to acting, but with photography there is a clearer decision of framing to include X but not Y in the frame and beyond that perhaps and determination of scale and placement to enhance the impact of the image. The amount of information you include in the frame of a photograph is the result of one's selections and attentiveness. With the camera, the spontaneity of process gives one greater opportunity to get familiar with the nuances of selection in the creative process.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjitSoVR-0nOAS5snYWKJWMYFgs8lk7wkDid6nZwspgQBxc8ot27GhGZet6d95krtg-yYGeAzm-yU3NAKD3ssWr8rJWQIPkmakY-PoLb93MR5tB_DMV0f_RO3B-EVI3BddGBlsbcBjOcRCwXK7GKuGZTMfoPIFQIVCQtzHkbeO5Dxy2y92emnIiXLNb/s3107/IMG_7443.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2797" data-original-width="3107" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjitSoVR-0nOAS5snYWKJWMYFgs8lk7wkDid6nZwspgQBxc8ot27GhGZet6d95krtg-yYGeAzm-yU3NAKD3ssWr8rJWQIPkmakY-PoLb93MR5tB_DMV0f_RO3B-EVI3BddGBlsbcBjOcRCwXK7GKuGZTMfoPIFQIVCQtzHkbeO5Dxy2y92emnIiXLNb/w400-h360/IMG_7443.jpeg" width="400" /></a></div>As a photographer, I like how the medium is such an outlier compared to composition or sculpting, where each selection is a more discrete and more painstaking step toward the finished product. The spontaneity of the photographic process (as it can be conceived) precludes the significance of the first draft in the process as it is compared to other media and forms. In lieu of the careful construction and conception of a final work, there is more emphasis on the conception that is formulated and the selection that results from it. Instead of drafting and correcting on an individual work, it is the process and perception that are refined with each selection made through the viewfinder.<br /><br />That relative spontaneity of photography deepens one's need to engage in selection more consciously, but it also allows more opportunities to practice selection. No matter how indiscriminately you might think you are with the camera, you are still going through the process of selection and still leaving an infinity of things out of the frame. Even in the most intuitive moments with the camera, you are still making decisions and selections that express your perspective and your aesthetic. In reality during those most intuitive moments you may also be achieving the goal of connecting on a deep level with your subject, a fascinating and rewarding experience. Selecting is about the risks and processes involved and assessing the outcomes of it. The camera is a tool that allows you that large number of opportunities to select and to weigh the consequences of those choices. It will generate a body of work that will allow you to identify and assess your tendencies.<p></p><p>Above all, though selecting can give you the opportunity to reflect more deeply on those choices and their consequences, something that will familiarize you with the significance of selection in other creative pursuits. One advantage with photography that sets it apart from writing a novel, for instance, is that the time investment is much smaller and less consequential. Getting familiar enough with the process of selection and its impact could foster a greater sense of conception when pursuing less spontaneous pursuits and facilitate quicker selecting on other occasions when doubt and overthinking have a better chance of stilling the creative impulse. Whatever the case, one thing to keep in mind is the benefit of selecting to do the work.<br /></p>Pathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08326893120900106683noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8813231024930598590.post-65009363213050992892022-12-01T22:44:00.001-07:002022-12-01T22:44:14.119-07:00Not Eeyore, As Melancholic but Authentic<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKTp0MRraGH4hy3lzEthSskNdd2VNIZxdc72roaXTpaGPpdV7MzK09jfEKVxBX9uWo_Lg8Cx5ntELMDsdqPMy0tVodsy4smRImVDUF8aVcw4Ccq7Nct9lRyolp5BIGh2TPElsIdSTbdscYFcG0s9Mtz7L_qdVCqk0k3d7jbXIm3Do2oBkdySMe00Yb/s942/eo-165824.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="942" data-original-width="660" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKTp0MRraGH4hy3lzEthSskNdd2VNIZxdc72roaXTpaGPpdV7MzK09jfEKVxBX9uWo_Lg8Cx5ntELMDsdqPMy0tVodsy4smRImVDUF8aVcw4Ccq7Nct9lRyolp5BIGh2TPElsIdSTbdscYFcG0s9Mtz7L_qdVCqk0k3d7jbXIm3Do2oBkdySMe00Yb/w280-h400/eo-165824.jpg" width="280" /></a></div>This year, I've reacquainted myself with a nearby cinema that, after flirting with permanent closure, has climbed off the pandemic mat and doubled-down on its eclectic programming. One of the more recent rolls of film to spool across its screen is <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrBeSQbdXmw"><i>EO</i></a>, a Polish movie about a donkey's fate after it is "freed" from the circus it was condemned to work in.<br /><br />Ironically enough, one of the other punters who lined up for tickets erred and asked for movie to see Eeyore, misnaming the film for the character from <i>Winnie the Pooh</i>. That mix-up evokes old positions that animal characters are never really animals but have been anthropomorphized by their creators to serve their thematic or dramatic means. There is a debate to be had there or perhaps a continuum to be acknowledged ranging from Bugs Bunny's unadulterated street savvy to the realities of animals that appear in nature documentaries. In <i>EO</i>, named after the main character donkey, the story steers clear of the more Disneyfied notions of animal characters in favour of a more symbolic approach. EO brays and bumbles around on its spindly legs on its journey and earns the audience's affection with its expressive brown eyes. Pluckiness and resilience only extends the journey rather than elevates this beast from its station in the world.<br /><br />Our hero begins in the spotlight of the circus ring, doted upon by his human partner, Kasandra, whose affection for him is undeniable in the ring and beyond. However, as animal rights protesters win their cause and the circus is bankrupted, EO's future is left to the hands of fate. The animal rights advocacy ends without consideration of its consequences, and the ragtag band of circus freaks and outcasts are dispersed to the winds. The small, forlorn beast of burden is set out on its own on a sad picaresque subjected to the more often than not to the brutality of people. There are moments of refuge and the possibility of a safe arrival, but there is always the reality that this sterile hybrid is intended to remain an outcast without a legacy or an impact. In its first post-circus gig, it is hauling a scrap metal cart, hardly a step up from the mistreatment at the circus. From there, however, there is progress: a stint in a stable with thoroughbred horses that gives a suggestion of unfulfilled longing before EO prompts exile once again after a moment of slapstick panic.<p></p><p>The next stop on the journey is to the company of other donkeys in a rural petting zoo. Time spent with special needs children, however, suggests that EO and its brethren are going to remain outcasts and their appreciation left to others who are themselves fated to exclusion. Still, there is the promise of a permanent place with plenty of comforts and an ample wreath of carrots to gnaw on whenever hunger strikes. Despite that bucolic peace, the reappearance of Kasandra sets EO on a different path. She finds her old companion as dusk is passing into night for a poignant reunion until Kasandra's biker boyfriend gives her the ultimatum to choose between him and the donkey. She relents and disappears from the night.</p><p>EO then abandons the security of the farm to track Kasandra down again. This journey begins with a harrowing wander through the night as hunters with laser sights hunt wolves with the staccato of gun shots and the menace of flickering sight lights. At dawn, the menace of a world more abundant in technology than compassion becomes all too apparent and it is clear that refuge will be a hard place for Eo to find. Though an animal, EO is clearly displaced in the domain of wolves and rabbits and becomes unclear where home could possibly be. While there are wide open spaces, there is also a menace that suggests the animal still needs stewardship and care. But it is, at best, flawed and intermittent. When dawn arrives and EO discovers a quiet town that hasn't awakened yet animal control workers advance to capture the donkey. They are conscious of the animal's timidity but less than diligent about its care. The gently tighten their noose to begin what ought to be the lacking guardianship but, in the trust of people, EO becomes increasingly isolated and confined until fleeing again, but only to smaller confines and funnelled to its destiny.<br /><br />EO's fate is that of many who are ostracized and, like our hero, defined by a hybridity that can make them lesser, other or unacceptable. As the fate close in on EO, it is then subjected to a sequence of episodes in which man's venality is laid bare. After happening upon a recreational soccer game, the donkey is regarded as both talisman and villain by the respective sides on the pitch. In their celebration, the winning side brings EO as their mascot into their bar and tries to intoxicate him. Later, when the losing side attacks the bar and chance upon EO on its own, the consequences for the perceived scapegoat are wrenching. All this the result of nothing more than what either side attributed to the poor beast. Like anyone consigned to the fringes of society the more threat of censure or attack is heartrendingly unjustified.</p><p>The film could have been a shallow, plucky commentary on animal rights and that theme is evident throughout. However, it succeeds as a much, much deeper account of humanity at this point in time with its flaws and shortcomings held up to the mirror for an honest examination. There are moments when it is flattering and suggests that we are capable of good, but the film leaves viewers with questions about our humanity and compassion when we treat one another the ways we do. EO is not a cartoon version of an animal molded for our amusement but vibrant, innocent soul showing us a world that holds a mirror up to our conscience.<br /></p>Pathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08326893120900106683noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8813231024930598590.post-64375453734377285462022-11-21T20:21:00.002-07:002022-11-21T20:21:57.727-07:00Conservatives and the Deceipt of Bootstrapism<p>As more right wing, conservative parties -- whether iterations of the Republican Party in the United States or the various brands of Conservative Party in Canada and the United Kingdom -- drift further and further to the right one of the core principles of conservatism seems to have be obscured in the trumpeting of other rally cries. The conservative belief that individuals are primarily responsible for their own success and well-being has been voiced less frequently as the decades have passed since Ronald Reagan's fairy tales about trickle down economics became policy and gospel.</p><p>Today, however, as artificial intelligence and other means of automation penetrate more aspects of our everyday lives and the economy, the old conservative stand about self-reliance and self-determination become less and less convincing. When AI is disrupting the employment of long haul truckers, cashiers <i>and</i> <a href="https://icona.ca/blog/technology-changes-in-the-legal-profession/">lawyers</a> because it can perform these roles more effectively, accurately and cheaply than people can, it gets harder to fault individuals for not doing enough to assure their individual success and well-being. A university graduate who has done all that is necessary to complete a law degree cannot be faulted for not doing enough with the gifts and opportunities given to them.</p><p>Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, there was a <a href="https://thehub.ca/2022-11-14/janet-bufton-the-pandemic-shows-we-expect-too-much-of-governments-and-too-little-of-ourselves/" target="_blank">rallying cry to pull together and support one another</a> as much as possible to get through it. Governments initiated supports to get those whose employment was impacted by the pandemic through it by providing emergency financial relief to ensure people were not economically jeopardized by the pandemic. The programs may not have been perfect, but they helped keep some people above water rather than leaving them on their own to cobble together a way of surviving when there was a dearth of opportunities or private resources to accommodate this.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8kQkox3npRxKH3hR1cJoOW1xkQC1qSDlkdOhYEXWdB_E-zM978jQB7Bl44-2eOneHKFKFhqyA3Mzl0kJia_LCrk3bqnHeo4_We7N1fXInEyN6XFfVAoTE9lLsxRDO7pUy65AQFKfsHfujaIv89wuniBnIi4njK_5ZPnyAMuMchwcAyXIGqjtrG_7M/s900/0809-NIXON-EXIT-sized.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="900" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8kQkox3npRxKH3hR1cJoOW1xkQC1qSDlkdOhYEXWdB_E-zM978jQB7Bl44-2eOneHKFKFhqyA3Mzl0kJia_LCrk3bqnHeo4_We7N1fXInEyN6XFfVAoTE9lLsxRDO7pUy65AQFKfsHfujaIv89wuniBnIi4njK_5ZPnyAMuMchwcAyXIGqjtrG_7M/w400-h266/0809-NIXON-EXIT-sized.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><p></p><p>Apart from the pandemic, there has been more and more evidence that despite the Conservatives assertion that we will all get by thanks to a little more of the bootstrapism they promote as a pillar of their belief system, despite continuing to indulge in trickle-down fundamentalism, financial incentives to make private enterprise work in a given jurisdiction, and other forms of corporate welfare. The reality that they deny in increasingly creative or delusional manners is that we are interdependent. We are reliant on the largesse of a global ecosystem that needs to be maintained, protected, and preserved rather than plundered by an exclusive few who believe that an uneven distribution of wealth is such an accurate measure of their competence and skill that it is worth jeopardizing geopolitical stability, the environment and the survival of impoverished individuals and nations.</p><p>In his book <i>Utopia for Realists</i>, Rutger Bregman describes <a href="https://thecorrespondent.com/4503/the-bizarre-tale-of-president-nixon-and-his-basic-income-bill/173117835-c34d6145" target="_blank">Richard Nixon's flirtation with a Universal Basic Income</a> (UBI) during his first term as president. At the time it was called the Family Assistance Plan and it held promise as a means of eliminating poverty. Libertarians, obsessed with a small government, a less government outlook, would have a hard time making a case against it. There would be far fewer bureaucrats going through the tedium of paperwork and the unspooling of red tape that would vet people seeking one of the various forms of government programming that Libertarians so despise. Sadly, even though there was abundant proof that the minimum basic income worked positively and that it did not prompt people to work less, the initiative was never approved and poverty was given new life. Not to suggest that this was an either/or scenario, but Nixon found it more palatable to rig an election in his favour than implement progressive policies that would have reduced or even eliminated poverty. Ironically enough, his endeavour to implement a UBI was undone one <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Anderson_(economist)" target="_blank">Martin Anderson</a>, a Nixon advisor who had an allergy to sound data and a hard-on for Ayn Rand. He got to do more of the same work during the Reagan administration.<br /></p><p>Nixon pivoted toward a familiar and abused position among conservatives: that the disadvantaged are actually lazy. Variations on this abound among conservative leaders. Reagan created the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2019/05/21/she-was-stereotyped-welfare-queen-truth-was-more-disturbing-new-book-says/" target="_blank">welfare queen</a> trope to not only point the finger at the purportedly lazy but doubled down on racializing the stereotype as well. As conservatives make their arguments against each thread of the social safety net Alberta Premier Danielle Smith went as far as to <a href="https://edmonton.citynews.ca/2022/07/29/danielle-smiths-cancer-claims-anger-alberta-cancer-patients/">blame cancer patients</a> for their diagnoses and insisting that it was curable prior to Stage 4. Regardless of Smith's absent grasp of science, she went out of her way to stigmatize those in need and continues to push forward a small government rationale that overlooks the abundance of natural resources that the province has benefited from having within its borders.<br /><br />Instead of heeding the evolution that is occurring in the employment market due to the impact of technology and acknowledging the ways that the COVID-19 pandemic impacted people but also provided a reasonably-sized sample of how provided a universal basic income could work, Conservative are more intent on a shift from their focus on individual self-reliance to a more exclusionary and prejudicial position. Conservatives are rallying to causes that deny the reality of interdependence and necessity of stewardship as we look after our planet and one another. Instead of acknowledging and supporting these things they continue to conflate irresponsibility as freedom and insist that market impulses and greed ought to be heeded and accommodated rather than assessed in a more critical manner conscious of the challenges we collectively face. Conservative governments continue to look for ways to stigmatize or incarcerate people at greater expense to the government than the programs and supports they sniff their constant disapproval at. Whether innovative programs that support newcomers, disadvantaged youth and other marginalized groups, support programs such as the Canadian Emergency Relief Benefit (CERB) or vaccinations, conservatives have shown a distaste for programs that support the well-being of the collective.<br /></p><p>There was a time when the liberal and conservative positions on collective and individual responsibility were balanced in a manner that accommodated meaningful dialogue. At a time when our interdependence has become more evident than ever and the challenges to the conservative belief in one's ability to determine their destiny by the strength of their talents, character and effort is growing dubious. Instead of situating their principles about individual responsibility to be relevant in the face of the societal, technological and environmental changes that have been occurring, they have instead moved toward extremism and, like Nixon, sought to rig the system to favour their cause. The restoration of credible conservatism needs to begin with a recommitment to that individual self-reliance. Integrity is a start. Beyond that there is a need to engage in uncomfortable, adult debates about the issues that we must address. Insisting that problems related to the environment and the impact that technology is having on society do not exist. In the face of their own existential challenges, conservatives must meet the rest of society on moderate territory because the majority are aware of the threat their tendency toward denial and refusal to actually <i>serve</i> when they are in government.<br /></p>Pathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08326893120900106683noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8813231024930598590.post-29200998285323154322022-08-22T22:13:00.013-06:002022-08-23T09:51:20.664-06:00The DNF<p>After three plus years since my last face-to-face marathon, I toed the line with a gang of fellow runners, shortly after dawn on Sunday. I had run the distance two years earlier, doing a <a href="https://closedrighteye.blogspot.com/2020/09/the-uncertain-sunday-long.html">virtual version of a marathon</a> alone on the pathways of Calgary without any competition to goad me on, and while I covered that distance easily enough that day, completion ended in anonymity. That day it amused me to immediately come to a stop, hit the timer on my watch and blend into the crowds, no one the wiser about me just finishing that distance.</p><p>Throughout the pandemic, running had (has?) been an outlet that brought a bit of balance to my daily routine, but racing has long been out of the picture. I raced face-to-face for the first time since 2019 only a month ago -- a half marathon that I did in a reasonable amount of time. The legs didn't quite have the power that I would have liked, but I came away confident that a bit of a push through the balance of July would help that leg strength and I'd be able to give the marathon a go. Edmonton had always favoured me and it even gave me my <a href="https://closedrighteye.blogspot.com/2017/08/attaining-unicorn.html">lone Boston Qualifier</a>. I wasn't gunning for that, but if there was a good kick in me and I was on a good pace, maybe I'd get close.</p><p>Not to be. From about the 5K mark on I was having a rather involved inner dialogue about whether I wanted to go on with it. One doesn't normally contend with the wall until you've got a least 30 to 32K under your belt and the body is starting to wilt under the demands. To have that mental battle start after 25 minutes is another matter entirely. I ground it out and got to the halfway mark, but the battle continued -- mentally. The legs could have been a little more robust for the occasion but they would have been ready to obey the mind if I was in it. After running half, I concluded I'd done enough and brought the run to a halt.<br /></p><p>A day afterward, there's an abundance of low-hanging excuses that I could pluck and the mention of just one out of that bushel has evoked cringes of discomfort. As those excuses congregated right up until the night before the race, one explanation for the outcome remains clear. I have to conclude that for all the excuses that could be made, I just wasn't ready. I could have finished, but I suspect it would have taken a significant toll, and I'm not sure if it would have been physical or mental. I tried to push myself along with the promise that there would be a catharsis in racing through all of those excuses and perhaps shedding the slowly accumulated stress of COVID and sundry other things that comes with living in 2022. Pushing on for another two hours of that inner debate would not have been very charitable to myself and may not have proved much either. It was simply time to acknowledge that I owed myself more than I owed the race or that particular distance.<br /></p><p>Two years earlier, when I seamlessly blended into the Sunday morning cityscape after the virtual marathon -- without the cheering observers or the aid stations -- one of the things that facilitated my relative anonymity was that I didn't look like I'd just run 42K. (Amusing admission. I skipped the last 200 metres because my watch beeped at the completion of the kilometre and I'd come to a halt and stopped my watch only to realize... I had a little bit left.) While I would be hard pressed to deny I was out for a run in my shorts and T-shirt, I did not look like I'd gone through the grind of a full marathon. I looked and felt relatively fresh. </p><p>I have trained with the credo that I put my pain in during training not during the race. That has held true throughout all my races, regardless of distance. After a marathon <a href="https://closedrighteye.blogspot.com/2019/05/the-test-run.html">a few years back</a>, I was heading home with my medal around my neck, banana and water in hand and my bib declaring the distance I'd just run and people still disputed the reality that I had just finished a <i>marathon</i>. In other words, I'm usually well prepared for a race and I value and deeply respect that preparation. There is a meritocracy to the marathon and to put it simply, you run the time you prepared for and your training provides the foundation for what you achieve there.<br /></p><p>It is quite evident now that running for sanity for the last two plus years is not quite the same as training for the marathon. That much is evident today. I also have to admit that there were days throughout the winter when the slightest hint of inclement weather was enough to keep me indoors rather than out on the trails. There were once winters where it was no issue for me to embrace a run in -20 or colder and be exhilarated when I got home. I managed to get over my aversion to difficult weather for the summer, but the quality of those sane miles versus the exertion for better conditioning became apparent.</p><p>At the same time, the question has emerged about whether running is the part of my life that it was when I was striving for faster speeds that may be less attainable five years after running my personal best in the marathon and half marathon. I come away from yesterday's experience with the realization that running may not have the place in my life that it did a few years ago. There is a place for running in my life still and there is still a sense of community that I appreciate when with other runners. During the marathon yesterday one of the things that may have undermined my commitment to the race was the sense that I was very much alone during the race. In most races there is another runner that I fall into conversation with for a distance and the bonding helps eat up a few miles of the asphalt without it taxing much mental energy. During this race, however, that seemed not to happen and there were times when I felt like was 10-20 metres away from anyone else in the race.</p><p>The only bonding occurred hours later waiting for the bus home and seeing a fellow runner waiting for the same bus south to Calgary. Toenails blackened and legs KT taped in the hope that the taut fabric would speed recovery or spare him some of the hardship of walking on the tied-up muscles of his shot legs. I asked him if he'd done the full and the conversation went from there as we shared our experiences and I my knowledge of the marathon after my efforts over the last eight years. The race was his second marathon and his admission that he'd raced in a brand new pair of shoes before he'd broken them in, indicated he still had a lot to learn. As do I. If I want to. </p><p>My thoughts have gone in a couple of directions over the last day and while there is a thought to retreat from racing, I still recall the last time I conked out of a race the way I did yesterday. It was a half marathon that I abandoned in frustration after running about 10K. Four weeks later, I ran my personal best in the marathon, nearly five minutes faster than my previous best. Other priorities are drawing me away from running, but I'll simply need to find away to strike the balance required to stay in the race next time.<br /></p>Pathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08326893120900106683noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8813231024930598590.post-30966542881134242932022-07-24T13:56:00.003-06:002022-07-24T18:45:07.468-06:00Burn Your Boats!! Or Maybe Just...<p>In recent years, the metaphor of <a href="https://timdenning.medium.com/a-burn-the-boats-moment-can-alter-the-course-of-your-life-b59cab8b062f">burning your boats</a> has been exhaustively cited to illustrate or heighten motivation. The story goes that when the Spanish were coming ashore in the western hemisphere, that on one occasion, the conquistador Hernan Cortes told his men to burn their boats rather than have them as a fail safe or a fall back as they headed into battle. The intent then, in 1519, was to get the Spaniards to fight more desperately -- as they only would if they did not have the option of retreat. </p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEKhNiWyUJ9qJ7HjcNZ8M6AOZ8m5NIWM9_l4Y3XXnOsy7CJsVfz9--UHC7ywFsdVG-Xp2SKRZR2S11-LbdFFc7quNpKggkoyBbv8ymeLFC7khDVbz3gUVB1275nkmQqwr-w3q0zuUUYTDqm9Bl_32gs1W7cqshJdPs3GRlVi0LS8kFk2fcFj_AyiXJ/s300/gettyimages-112363519-copy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="300" data-original-width="300" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEKhNiWyUJ9qJ7HjcNZ8M6AOZ8m5NIWM9_l4Y3XXnOsy7CJsVfz9--UHC7ywFsdVG-Xp2SKRZR2S11-LbdFFc7quNpKggkoyBbv8ymeLFC7khDVbz3gUVB1275nkmQqwr-w3q0zuUUYTDqm9Bl_32gs1W7cqshJdPs3GRlVi0LS8kFk2fcFj_AyiXJ/s1600/gettyimages-112363519-copy.jpg" width="300" /></a></div>The message is simple: <i>don't</i> give yourself something to fall back on. If you're serious about something, put everything into it rather than compromising or playing it safe in a manner that keeps us from keep the flame of creativity alive. Think exactly about where the world would be if Robin Williams obeyed his father's advise to ensure he had welding to fall back on. Williams' gifts were probably too much for him to rationalize into dormancy. His need for the adrenaline and joy he got (and spread) when performing was too vital to pass up in favour of the "security" of a steady job welding.<br /><p></p><p></p>Many of us compromise on our ambitions and end up having (an perhaps channelling our untapped creative impulses into) a compelling range of inner dialogues about the uneasy intersection of our talent, desires and responsibilities. <p></p><p>For some reason, many of us are reluctant to put time into our creativity or our aspirations, insisting that we need the right conditions or the substantial block of time to get to it. We could look ahead to retirement, when the kids leave home, or when the lottery win finally comes through and sets us up to not only put more of our time into that novel or that pot of paints that awaits. That rationalization of "Once I" or "After" is not going to end with you seizing the wheel to navigate that transition in life when you start putting the abundant time into the thing you keep putting off. What you do in that moment when the time meets your definition of abundant, is essentially going to be what you do now.</p><p>The habits that you form around your creative pursuits will pay off in results of some sort, but only after those habits are established and deeply ingrained into your everyday life. If those habits are not in place now, retirement, empty nesting and lottery largesse are not going to prompt that transition. If you want to develop skills and habits around creativity, do it now. If those things that you have to fall back on are in place, then take the time now to get familiar with the creative habits you wish to cultivate now, while the stakes are small and while there is less pressure.</p><p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilETPoR79n1tKsdu5JEgxoS-d72L9G49s7h-dVhcmoyc1dnhAGXQPcYeBoUJpHnG__wfZjGlze183g7g5HdDlhGdFwe94joaXi3jXCClA7EpQRF_IU_V0XTyc3egmEv7eW5S_J4cw2WouDUj_Z-d0CI1wQREGfJBsvxobwkaPExoO2fauPmrjabt63/s5310/IMG_7428.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="5310" data-original-width="3497" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilETPoR79n1tKsdu5JEgxoS-d72L9G49s7h-dVhcmoyc1dnhAGXQPcYeBoUJpHnG__wfZjGlze183g7g5HdDlhGdFwe94joaXi3jXCClA7EpQRF_IU_V0XTyc3egmEv7eW5S_J4cw2WouDUj_Z-d0CI1wQREGfJBsvxobwkaPExoO2fauPmrjabt63/w264-h400/IMG_7428.jpeg" title="One of the author's "incomplete" photographs, April 2022." width="264" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">One of the author's "incomplete" photos, April 2022.<br /></td></tr></tbody></table>It is probably not ideal for you to set out on a creative path at a moment when, on top of all of the other anxieties that accompany creative pursuits, you have the pressure or aspiration of making money at it ASAP. At this point, if you are not in a regular habit of doing something creative, focus on getting familiar with the creative process and familiarize yourself with the battles that are central to it. There needs to be an appetite for risk and a tolerance for failure that will ultimately proving freeing as you take the steps toward doing something that is truly personal and individual and distinct in ways that speak to audiences (if you aspire to have them) in ways that only <i>you</i> can speak to people. There is also the need to get familiar with the sound of your own voice and learn to live with that.<br /><br />If you choose to wait until the conditions are just right for you to start wrestling with all of those creative hurdles, you may find that those particular challenges turn out to be enough to keep you from getting into the creative trenches and striving to actually create rather than just talking about your aspirations in this area. You also need to learn to live with the fact that you never entirely get over those hurdles. In my own case, I find that there is an incompleteness with my photography that still inhibits me despite having had a camera in my hand or around my neck for much of the last 40 years. I've learned to live with that and as I grapple with it, I learn that there is a different appreciation of my work if I take a significant amount of time off between the time that I take a picture and the time I look at it to edit it or even determine if it is time to keep it or delete it.</p><p>The thing is that with many creative pursuits that cycle of procrastination and the "As soon as I" kick of the rock down the road guarantees inaction. In my own case I often reach a point where I know the work is within me and within my capabilities. That realization, however, is enough to comfort me into a stretch of idleness and assurance that it will get done because I'm capable of it. At this point of my life, however, I am conscious of a certain meritocracy that comes with putting the time in to complete repetitions as a step toward achieving a goal I have targeted. As a runner, I know that the reps are necessary. I cannot achieve a goal in the marathon merely by announcing it and aligning my declaration with a confidence in my abilities. If I intend to run a marathon in 3:40 and I limp in at 4:10, I would be generating a lot of excuses to explain why I didn't meet my goal but anyone who knows better would tune out that litany of rationalization and give a look that says "didn't do the work."<br /><br />The reps are necessary, especially in creativity. While there are occasions when a photographer can take a great picture or a small, quick work in poetry or art can be an achievement, there is the likelihood that, in the instance of someone who has not done their reps, this is not something that can be achieved with consistency. If one is aspiring to do something bigger, whether more ambitious or with more frequency, the reps are required to build the foundation that will lead to success, whether that is financial success or, more significantly, the sense of well being that comes from having an inner voice tell you, "You're crushing this!"</p><p>Conscious of this, it is best to stop the rationalizing and procrastinating and start making creative pursuits a consistent and routine part of your weekly or even daily life. This will help establish this as the habit that will help you start carving out that part of your day, your space and your self to make creativity the more significant part of your life that you wish it to be. So while it may not be necessary for you to burn your boats and quit your day job, it might be time to stop buying the lottery tickets to the refrain of "If I win..." Start now. That might be small enough a switch in routine and mindset to take you out of that dreamy procrastination and nudge you into the work you want to be doing.<br /></p>Pathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08326893120900106683noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8813231024930598590.post-9820038589844289062022-07-13T13:47:00.004-06:002023-05-29T17:20:58.764-06:00The Mystic Gifts of Coach Beard<p><i>Author's Note: This piece has been updated to include events from Season Three of the Apple+ TV series </i>Ted Lasso<i>. Please be conscious that there may be some unintentional spoilers, especially with reference to episodes from the second season. <br /></i></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqQZfvbkYgyORSi-D-hsdRGLS7ApFlTO48HOAnLwjsrhh1RqTH4ecAFkKmUdURggNIPQOVj3yS3tSCs0-hHaq0ro_xjPxPhH5hQMcRKMxDCHgqRpdT_KGFHVkuWmxQOIw0t9sIPsjX-AycLOt-YAJ6LajivgqvkU8Cvu4fZbjTj7MvRniG0UgawCE2/s1200/Beard.jpeg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="675" data-original-width="1200" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqQZfvbkYgyORSi-D-hsdRGLS7ApFlTO48HOAnLwjsrhh1RqTH4ecAFkKmUdURggNIPQOVj3yS3tSCs0-hHaq0ro_xjPxPhH5hQMcRKMxDCHgqRpdT_KGFHVkuWmxQOIw0t9sIPsjX-AycLOt-YAJ6LajivgqvkU8Cvu4fZbjTj7MvRniG0UgawCE2/w400-h225/Beard.jpeg" width="400" /></a></div><p>Throughout <i>Ted Lasso</i> and even in the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6KeG_i8CWE8">early commercials</a> for <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRqypM7jb5Y">NBC Sports Network</a>, where Ted first appeared as a more two-dimensional version of the eponymous lead, Brendan Hunt's Coach Beard has been the laconic, mysterious, mischievous (yet centring) companion to Jason Sudeikis' lead. Brendan Hunt has been involved in the development of the concept, scripts and ultimately the series from the seeds of those first <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRqypM7jb5Y&t=44s">commercials</a> that were made to promote Premier League football on NBC Sports Network prior to the development of the TV series. <br /><br />While layers of the Coach Beard onion, have been gradually peeled back, he has remained a mysterious figure and has had moments that have confounded other characters and audiences as well. It is a mystery that he has made significant efforts to guard closely. In Episode 3.10 International Break, Beard fires back "None of your business" in response to Trent Crimm's inquiry about his hometown before finally conceding a less-than-specific "Peoria" (of which there are 14.) Further to what has occurred onscreen, the production team and cast have taken ample delight remaining vague about even Beard's full name, another signal that there are aspects of Beard that will remain under wraps as long as necessary. My theory is that Beard's talents and gifts will only come to light as he fulfills his role in Ted's life and ensures that Ted and is able to go on with the rest of his life with the perspective and mindset needed to achieve the peace of mind that has eluded him.<br /><br />From the outset, when Beard is riding shotgun with Ted on their Dubai Air flight to Heathrow, it is clear that Beard is the steady, calming influence that counterbalances the quixotic optimism that makes Ted accept the invitation to coach "the other football" despite his lack of familiarity with it. Beard's presence as guardian or guardian angel is evident in the stranger-in-a-strange-land sight-gag of saving Ted from left-lane traffic when crossing London's streets, feeding Ted's enthusiasm as they riff on cultural references from home, providing timely sage insight and, most poignantly, comfort. His appearance at Ted's side to share a silent glass at the end of Episode 1.5 "Tan Lines" is the most evident hint of their deep bond, but perhaps a hint at gifts or powers that exceed the intuitive connection of close friendship.<br /></p><p></p><p>Reeling from the reality that he and Michelle have conceded the end of their marriage, Ted leans for a clear angle into the cab window for one last smiling wave at her and their son Henry. As the cab disappears into the night for Heathrow and the trans-Atlantic haul to Kansas, Ted is stranded with little sense of where to place his next step. The impact of the loss is hitting hard, whether inevitable or not. Beard is there, suddenly, for comfort and calm solace. It is one of the emotional highlights of a series that his taken a clear-eyed look at male stereotypes and opted to discard them and offer alternatives.<br /><br />Beard's grounding presence is what the audience has come to expect of him, but Ted reacts to him with a double-take before accepting the beer. Ted's faint expression of surprise might be rationalized in the moment, but in light of what else Beard does throughout the series, there is reason to believe that the Beard has not only a deep empathy for Ted but an ability to not just put himself in the right place at the right time but more likely where he wants when he wants.<br /><br />The mystery surrounding Beard mounts throughout the series and his unplumbed gifts become more apparent throughout season two, especially in Episode 2.9, "Beard After Hours." It was an "extra" episode, generated upon Apple's request for a 12-episode season instead of the anticipated and planned for 10. The episode is a seized opportunity to flesh out Beard's bacchanalia and his hang ups as well. Amid the crepuscular shifts of reality that occur during this episode Beard's mystique is expanded upon and, curiously or not, his gifts are most evident and intriguing. It hints at the extent of a unique set of abilities as well. His calm, jaunty and informed conversation with the Oxford alumni he meets at Bones and Honey convinced them that he is a retired member of the Oxford faculty is amusing. Beard's explanation to Greyhound die-hard fans Paul, Baz and Jeremy that he gleaned all that information from an old girlfriend may be sufficient for them, but it is far too thorough to be from that source, especially in light of Beard's aversion to romance. Later in that same episode, his successful boarding of a London double-decker bus, which did not appear to stop for him deepens the mystery, especially as he revelled in his achievement, declaring, "I've still got it!!" upon escaping peril. He is even accused of being a trickster (rather than a con artist) when a hotel clerk rebuffs his request to call a taxi.<br /></p><p>Two episodes earlier in 2.7, Headspace, Beard's terse "Do better" maxim to Nate when addressing his treatment of Colin panics Nate and causes him to retreat from his office in deference to Beard's forceful order. After the briefest step away, Nate returns to claim his office and is baffled by Beard's inconceivable disappearance. </p><p>There are references to Beards interest in axes in both the second and third seasons and that preoccupation along with his passionate revolving door relationship with Jane lends him some of the characteristics of that ultimate party animal, <a href="https://mythology.net/greek/greek-creatures/satyr/">the satyr</a>. As season three unfolds, audiences will be able look back throughout the series for other a-ha recollections of instances where the mystery of Beard comes into focus. Those hints have been evident from the outset. In Episode 1.1, why didn't Beard get a cookie during the flight to London? The flight attendants would have known who sat where on the flight and even if he were asleep or in the loo, they would have still provided him one. Seemingly, a throwaway moment on first glance, but Ted Heads know there are no throwaway moments in this series. Even Ted's reference to Beard as a "man with many masters" suggests a long, complex past.<br /><br />Beard reinforces his position as satyr during the Episode 3.6 "Sunflowers" when he introduces Ted to psychedelics and then disappears into the Amsterdam night only to return with evidence of the wildest night of the Richmond entourage. His eagerness to unleash his passions whether in his affections for Jane, his role as locker room DJ, opener of doors of perception or something even more occultish remains a significant element of the Lasso universe.<br /><br />It may be that Beard turns out to be merely the yin to Ted's yang, but there have been enough incidents through the series to suggest there is something other-worldly about him, even though he is grounded in ways that Ted is not. His shifting through space may be explained away by some but his characteristics and his behaviour lend themselves very much to the classic figure.<br /></p>Pathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08326893120900106683noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8813231024930598590.post-20081581782237617752022-07-05T15:19:00.002-06:002022-07-05T20:17:46.850-06:00KD and Leadership Questions<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6Fnj7HZbGaj9oJTpRKI6_L1LePhe5LT_DYcRxOAevVc_OPyXguCyS44MRkuspzWUNMs0YeNFj3GUJAM_TCiC3QtvJcq2FVBre_GT28-28wgSH_Tgv1uJDqVrqrIa90L10RcFi3LQJKKKhDcQdP7lYWTeUSCdvVtKDF3Q_95bCDr3n_kx7ofhp5CHz/s1600/draymond-green-kevin-durant-GETTY.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="1600" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6Fnj7HZbGaj9oJTpRKI6_L1LePhe5LT_DYcRxOAevVc_OPyXguCyS44MRkuspzWUNMs0YeNFj3GUJAM_TCiC3QtvJcq2FVBre_GT28-28wgSH_Tgv1uJDqVrqrIa90L10RcFi3LQJKKKhDcQdP7lYWTeUSCdvVtKDF3Q_95bCDr3n_kx7ofhp5CHz/w640-h360/draymond-green-kevin-durant-GETTY.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br />In the aftermath of Kevin Durant's trade request on the cusp of the 2022 NBA free agency, it is difficult to distinguish the speculation, opining and acts of
what has been contributing to the white noise and the occasional
cacophonous punditry that has unfolded. It will prove to be an understatement that Durant has proven to be a complex figure among the pantheon of NBA greats and well after his career it may be that he is still deemed an enigma.<br /><br />On the court, his talent his remained unquestioned, irrefutable and over the last two years, his recovery and return to form following his Achilles injury in June 2019 will be an achievement that may end up overlooked in any assessment of his mettle, commitment and his resilience as an athlete. The partnerships, given a loose definition of the term, that he formed in free agency with the Golden State Warriors and then the Brooklyn Nets may do more to blemish his legacy despite his extensive list of accomplishments.<br /><br />Each of these free agency decisions were his own. The decision to go to Golden State in summer 2016 was marked by <a href="https://nba.nbcsports.com/2017/06/09/kevin-durant-hounded-by-criticism-for-joining-warriors-imposing-his-will-on-nba-finals/">significant criticism</a> for joining a team that was already historically exceptional instead choosing other options or remaining in Oklahoma City. The assessment at the time was that Durant was making a "can't beat 'em join 'em" move rather than persevering through the challenges that OKC was encountering in their attempt to climb the ranks of the NBA Western Conference after Harden's departure. The result of Durant's move was three consecutive trips to the NBA finals, 2 championships, and 2 Finals MVPs, which likely provides evidence of not only his greatness, but also accommodates those critics who want to make the accusation that Durant took the easy route to championships and other bonafides with the Warriors. Alternatively, one could cite that the 2017 and 2018 Warriors had fewer wins than their record 73 during the 2015-16 season. Critics might seize the opportunity to abuse Durant for his shortcomings contributing to those respective superteams and overlook the reality that building a exceptional team is more than a matter of accumulating an inordinate amount of talent and setting it loose. Integrating the breadth of skills that Durant added to an already dynamic and successful team took some fine-tuning.<br /><br />It goes without saying that interpersonal dynamics of a team need to be carefully negotiated and integrated throughout a season and beyond to achieve and maintain success. There are cases where teams have succeeded despite this, namely the 1977-1978 Yankees who turmoiled their way to their World Series Championships, but it is far less likely in basketball, where the unity and cohesion of the team are a more significant component of their success. NBA teams, with smaller rosters and a greater reliance on cohesion over the outsized influence of a pitcher, goaltender or quarterback to determine a game's outcome, need to work together. If the tension and conflict within a basketball teams prompts one player to take a play or two to burnish his stat line rather than maintain that synchronized whole, it will have a negative impact. It may not always be a glaring moment that everyone immediately recognizes during the game, but it will make the difference between a win or a loss on any given night or a playoff series going 5 games instead of 7.<br /><br />Reexamining Durant's options in 2017 and adding in the hindsight glance at the careers of Russell Westbrook and James Harden while with Oklahoma and beyond, there are question about whether any of the three of them had the make-up to transform into the leaders the Thunder needed to be pushed over the top during their early 2010s halcyon before Harden's departure in 2012. As each of the three has pursued their careers apart from one another and with occasional reunions, none of the three has explicitly demonstrated leadership similar to players such as Tim Duncan, Kevin Garnett or Lebron James, to cite their contemporaries. <a href="https://www.sportingnews.com/ca/nba/news/james-harden-76ers-nba-playoff-history-rockets-nets/nngcbjxmh7rhcrcsgepqdln9">Harden's struggles in the post-season</a> will forever dog his legacy. Westbrook seems cursed by a high motor and an <a href="https://bleacherreport.com/articles/2802812-russell-westbrooks-ex-teammate-it-wasnt-always-fun-to-play-with-thunder-pg">impulse to take care of things himself</a>. On the court, he seems possessed to dominate and has had trouble integrating his teammates into a coherent whole or <a href="https://www.silverscreenandroll.com/2022/3/5/22963121/lakers-rumors-russell-westbrook-clashed-teammates-coaches-doesnt-want-changed-role-adjust">integrating himself into new settings</a>. It may very well be that Durant was conscious of the chemistry or leadership issues in Oklahoma City, especially without Harden and on the heels of giving up a 3-1 series lead against Golden State in the 2016 Western Conference Finals. During free agency in the summer of 2016, Golden State had more of the leadership on the bench and the roster that would facilitate the success Kevin Durant sought. That leadership remains evident six years after Durant joined.<br /><br />Durant's decision to opt for his adventures with Kyrie Irving in 2019 seems wildly out of synch with my theory about his quest for the leadership and structure to facilitate championships when joining the Golden State. While in the Bay Area, though, there was friction, <a href="https://hoopshype.com/rumor/draymond-green-opens-up-about-issues-with-kevin-durant/">especially between him and Draymond Green</a>, whose mix of candour, intelligence and tenacity rubbed Durant the wrong way at times. Also, Durant's fondness for and documented use of <a href="https://www.nbcsports.com/bayarea/warriors/kevin-durant-defends-burner-twitter-account-during-warriors-career">burner accounts</a> on social media is a hint of the complexity of the man. Durant is outspoken at times, but often seems guarded in certain contexts and less willing to be open and vulnerable with others, perhaps including teammates, than he could be if he were more willing to let that guard down. Throughout the speculation about <a href="https://nypost.com/2022/06/28/kyrie-irving-nets-soap-opera-far-from-over-despite-opt-in/">Kyrie Irving opting in or out of his contract with the Brooklyn Nets</a> in June 2022, Durant having ceased communications with the Nets upon the early conclusion of their playoff run did not indicate his <a href="https://www.si.com/college/texas/longhorns-in-the-pros/longhorns-kevin-durant-brooklyn-nets-playoffs-front-office-kyrie-irving">mindset</a> to them until he made his trade request.<br /><p></p><p>From the outset, the Irving-Durant alliance seemed an uneasy one, mainly because of Irving's history of <a href="https://www.slamonline.com/archives/report-kyrie-irving-unhappy-in-cleveland/">wreaking upheaval</a> on every <a href="https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/26702069/kyrie-irving-failed-leadership-tells-story-celtics-failed-season">team</a> he has played for before heading to Brooklyn. Perhaps Durant was keen to play a bigger leadership role in Brooklyn, but it seem to suggest that Durant had become accustomed to having leadership deferred to him based on his physical skills and his work ethic rather than earning or exerting it by means other than his on-court performance -- that expectation may have been a factor that contributed to the tension that was experienced in Golden State. In Brooklyn, his on-court performance exceeded expectations, especially in light of his recovery and rehabilitation from injury, but the intangible aspects of <a href="https://larrybrownsports.com/basketball/kevin-durant-interesting-leadership-response/598747">leadership</a> may have been found wanting due to that reluctance to communicate more openly and vulnerably with those around him. As outspoken as Durant can be, there is a terseness that makes it hard to determine how accepting he is. It remains difficult to read between the lines. There are also occasions when Durant has opted for the off-key response rather than the more constructive one. Durant's decision to <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/sports/nets-kevin-durant-calls-out-stupid-vaxx-policy-nyc-mayor-eric-adams">criticize New York </a>Mayor Eric Adams for COVID policies rather than privately talk to Irving about his decision not to vaccinate is a huge blemish on Durant's tenure with the Nets, especially in light of his expressed goals in Brooklyn and Nets owner Joe Tsai's stand on <a href="https://www.cbssports.com/nba/news/nets-owner-joe-tsai-says-he-wants-kyrie-irving-to-get-covid-19-vaccine-as-soon-as-possible/">vaccine</a> policies as well.<br /><br />The Nets chapter seems closed and it is not a flattering part of Durant's career. The suitors for his services have dipped their toe in the waters to gauge the trade package that would be required to secure Durant's services for the next 4 years as he ages past his peak and looks to collect a salary that will surpass the $50 million mark as twilight looms. Durant may once again desire the ready-made leadership and structure that he enjoyed in Golden State. Given his voiced preference for a trade to either Miami or Phoenix, the presence of Kyle Lowry, Jimmy Butler and Erik Spoelstra in Miami or Chris Paul and Monte Williams in Phoenix are evidence of in-place leadership that will provide the stability that remained lacking despite Durant's presence in Brooklyn. The challenge for Durant at his next stop is to decide whether he will strive to <i>earn</i> an expanded and more authentic and open leadership role of his own or, once again expect it to be deferred to him.<br /></p>Pathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08326893120900106683noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8813231024930598590.post-74391908818363960962022-06-27T20:20:00.004-06:002022-06-27T20:21:22.826-06:00Individualism and Clarifying Freedom<p><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwY0QvqGVC0pnObbHqQwnW03z8nHroE7crsvzHpaLgxmZU6TWWOKXgNfrr7u9Js9NDad8rTEkKfwunajQhzruJqDp_MB_jzQ7-Hu29mqEW8K6hF0ceNIj-CUXBMAd0bZK1jyk9I_jiuwf4GbuJHWOReWsYkGOtI6r5LXsga6G493sEnQxtvoLwNI28/s3024/IMG_7214.jpeg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2275" data-original-width="3024" height="301" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwY0QvqGVC0pnObbHqQwnW03z8nHroE7crsvzHpaLgxmZU6TWWOKXgNfrr7u9Js9NDad8rTEkKfwunajQhzruJqDp_MB_jzQ7-Hu29mqEW8K6hF0ceNIj-CUXBMAd0bZK1jyk9I_jiuwf4GbuJHWOReWsYkGOtI6r5LXsga6G493sEnQxtvoLwNI28/w400-h301/IMG_7214.jpeg" width="400" /></a></span><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><span style="font-size: small;">With the abuse of the definition of "freedom" that has
occurred over the last few years and has intensified in the response to
the COVID pandemic, I have become curious about the dynamics of individualism and collectivism that can prevail
from one culture to the next. A common shorthand of the dichotomy between individualism and collectivism is to presume that the liberal democracies of the West tend to be more individualistic and, in turn, more accommodating
of difference, diversity and unpredictability. </span></span></div><p></p><p><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">The contrast to these Western, individualist cultures would be the
collectivist notions that are attributed to Asian countries.
Japan and China, despite their political differences,would be the embodiment of that collectivism, whether it is because of the vagaries of
communist rule in China or the population density that has such a strong influence on culture in
Japan. The notions of that tight social bond, with
less tolerance for difference and adages about the nail that sticks out
getting hammered down, driving the notions about a tighter, less
tolerant or flexible social dynamic. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">In the aftermath of COVID, one can look at the extensive, strict
lockdowns that occurred in Wuhan and, more recently in Shanghai, as
indicators of how a collectivist mindset engenders a stronger degree of compliance
than has occurred in the west, where protests continue to take place long
after the pandemic has ebbed (for the moment) and restrictions have been
eased to facilitate a progression toward normalcy. The ability of the
Chinese government to implement such a stark
response to the pandemic and to meet with relative compliance is astounding and
horrifying.</span></span> <br /></span></span></p><div class="ydpdfdc4f9eyahoo_quoted" id="ydpdfdc4f9eyahoo_quoted_6646749507"><div style="color: #26282a;"><div><div id="ydpdfdc4f9eyiv8950978962"><div dir="ltr"><div><span style="font-size: small;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXi6-Oc7f1229hbx4U5xrgAtpvjZeCgBMfcxyZBT_wbGgEyzH9EO3GPtAIhZYrWe61bc3KFJvAEWiF5_6ov7GlVTT_AVQVlUlYwzEJxAnobF4aVUpKdusl_AyhTXRCa4Ede0XjJi7JwI5VB3aUN8Mkb5rjruHTyQyS04xJJGhpQCRGqsOmTycF9yh6/s784/Screen%20Shot%202022-06-27%20at%206.47.16%20PM.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="598" data-original-width="784" height="305" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXi6-Oc7f1229hbx4U5xrgAtpvjZeCgBMfcxyZBT_wbGgEyzH9EO3GPtAIhZYrWe61bc3KFJvAEWiF5_6ov7GlVTT_AVQVlUlYwzEJxAnobF4aVUpKdusl_AyhTXRCa4Ede0XjJi7JwI5VB3aUN8Mkb5rjruHTyQyS04xJJGhpQCRGqsOmTycF9yh6/w400-h305/Screen%20Shot%202022-06-27%20at%206.47.16%20PM.png" width="400" /></a></div><span style="font-family: helvetica;"></span></span></div><div><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">The protests occurring throughout the global west have been occurring purportedly in the name of freedom. One thing to question when examining the insistence that these protests are in the name of freedom is whether or not the beliefs of these protesters actually aligns with individualist beliefs, which I would argue includes the embrace of freedom along with its complexities and responsibilities or a fox-in-sheep's clothing insistence upon, in short, having one's own way regardless of the consequences for others. </span></span></div><div><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"> </span></span></div><div><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Freedom, despite what the clamour in the streets may assert, does not align with isolation, exclusion, denial and intolerance.<br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"> </span></span></div><div><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Given the magnitude of the global challenges we have been facing, it is delusional to continue a misplaced
reliance on the invisible hand of market forces to resolve the challenges we face at the leisurely pace that, experience over the last four decades
has shown, amounts to procrastination rather than clued-in urgency. The responses to the COVID
pandemic clearly showed that
governments which saw the need to use the levers at their disposal, even the
extraordinary and rarely chosen ones, were the most effective in responding in a manner that reduced death tolls, and hospitalizations. The governments that favoured a
more laissez-faire approach and proved skittish about using the authority available to them risked inflicting
a prolonged and even more deadly battle with the virus on their citizens. The “response”
to the pandemic by those governments that were, in essence more
libertarian, may prove to be more expensive as well, though the
government books may be a bit cleaner for pushing so much
of the expense of survival away from the community coffers and onto individuals,
regardless of their individual capacity to get themselves through the
pandemic. </span></span></div><div><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"> </span></span></div><div><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Despite the way these governments may wish to brand
themselves, there is probably more desire for conformity than
people might assume or admit. The US can look back on the Salem Witch Trials or
its distinct 1950s echo in the form of the
McCarthy hearings as examples of deeply expressed intolerance for unpopular thought. The American conflation of the terms socialism, liberalism and, perhaps more recently, moderate, or democracy into terms to deride or fear has been a harrowing rewrite of vocabulary for the sake of deception. Beyond those two responses to the emergence of actions, gatherings and
expressions that governments have found unsettling, there is the glaring
history of institutionalized sexism and racism that have
been reality in the liberal democratic west as well.<br /></span></span></div>
<div><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><br /></span></span>
</div>
<div><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">In the aftermath of COVID, those people who had the most virulent protests against government responses are primarily those who have held beliefs
that align against individual rights despite their reliance on the word "freedom." Those who have been most inclined
to criticize masking, vaccination and shelter-in-place
measures as interventionist and controlling are the cohorts of society who would
favour being more homogenous, controlled and ultimately,
exclusionary. In Canada during the leadership campaign for the Conservative Party of Canada, many of the candidates for the leadership of the party have put forward proposals for greater gatekeeping aimed at individuals, institutions or groups they consider elite. Far from the platform of a government that has long favoured less government and greater economic freedom, not to mention a flimsy grasp of science and reality when it has come to policies in response to the environment or the pandemic.<br /></span></span></div>
<div><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><br /></span></span>
</div>
<div><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Further to that, these groups have shown little tolerance for the paradoxes that exist, whether
they are long-standing contradictions about essentials of human nature or more recent
ones that have emerged as the world has become more complex for a
variety of reasons as fewer and fewer of the challenges we face can be addressed in isolation from one another. <br /><br />The gnarliest of paradoxes lays in the definitions
of “freedom.” During protests in recent
months this group of “freedom fighters” have threatened front line
health care workers, impeded the access to health care by blocking ambulances and deeply
compromised the quality of life of people who are trying to exercise
their right to live and work in peace, safety and
comfort. At the core of this expression of freedom is a brutal
selfishness and a disregard for the anarchy that would result if everyone lived according to
their definition of “freedom.”</span></span></div>
<div><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><br /></span></span>
</div>
<div><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">There is some merit to concerns about the government’s use of the
mechanisms at their disposal over the last two years. However,
responding to a challenge as substantial as that presented by COVID is
not far removed from the challenges posed by other natural disasters
or in the face of war. When dealing with the aftermath a hurricane or an earthquake,
governments would take similarly decisive and exceptional action to ensure order and our
collective wellbeing and they would not encounter protests in the face of this. Perhaps a
pandemic imposes a different challenge to the imagination
because the damage is being inflicted on <i>people</i> rather than on
buildings, cars or other more tangible or visually powerful
expressions of “this shit is serious” in order for us to get on board
and cooperate. That should not have been the case with the pandemic, but there
were still plenty of people who opted to deny the severity of the pandemic until it became tangible or more vivid to them. The post-infection conversions of these deniers was of no solace and failed to sway the public away from their beliefs that governments were embarking on a campaign to target them in a ploy to compromise their individual rights.<br /></span></span></div>
<div><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><br /></span></span>
</div>
<div><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Throughout the life of the pandemic, people of all walks of life,
ranging from the man-in-the-street, to the historian, those who’ve lived
through similar challenges before and politicians who have had these
responsibilities suddenly thrust upon them, not to mention those in opposition
who ought to have been expressing the need for a more conscious,
conscientious and moderate use of these powers have been aware of
the precedents that have been set during the pandemic. With other challenges facing us, what
other occasions would prompt governments to assert
powers as broadly and widely as they have over the last two years and
to what ends? Are we looking at a near future where governments would
initiate approaches to policy and control of behaviour that would
further shift societies away from the individual freedom
that has long defined the west in favour of a more strict and collectivism?<br /><br />No. At least not for a worthwhile cause.<br /> </span></span></div>
<div><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><br /></span></span>
</div>
<div><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">It is tempting to argue that we are at a point where two
competing versions of collectivism are striving to prevail in the
west: one where governments are striving to be as interventionist or big
as possible in the face of the collective challenges that require a broadly coordinated response and another where the people of the streets
and others who have been oppressed by current government policy are
rising up against the apparent overreach. <br /><br />On the surface, it is easy to presume
that there is no reason for debate here, that the government is overstepping
its powers and that the opposition is just. What
the opposition, whether elected officials or those who are taking to
the streets, have overlooked not only recently but over the long term, is the need for inclusion and cooperation. The version of government that they, the right wing,
envision is not one of equality and freedom,
but one that steps away from a government’s responsibilities to ensure
equality and inclusion for all people in favour of a version that
entrenches and accelerates the creep of economic and social inequality. We see that in the Roe Vs Wade overturn in the United States. It is also apparent in the efforts throughout the United States to rewrite election laws to limit voting rights to minorities.<br /><br />The calls for “freedom” over the last two years have come from groups that all too often find themselves the mouthpiece for racism, misogyny and
homophobia, all clear indications of intolerance, exclusion
and social homogeneity that will strive to disrespect and undermine individual rights. While protesters in the streets hope the
populist politicians who currently express allegiance and support for
them will commit to a long-standing partnership, the reality
will see the protesters discarded in favour
imbalances that deepen their sense of alienation. </span></span></div><div><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"> </span></span></div><div><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">There are not two competing versions of collectivism striving to undermine individual rights. The current slate of liberal democratic
governments are not striving to oppress and undo the well being of their
societies. Think carefully about that claim’s ability to withstand any
scrutiny. There is too strong a recognition for consensus-building and our sustainability as societies to forego that.<br /></span></span></div>
<div><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><br /></span></span>
</div><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">
The environment would certainly be one challenge where there could be
initiatives and policy changes by governments that would assert more
control over behaviour, but environmental policies continue to amount to nothing more than too little too late. However,
the policies to address our environmental challenges get greater
klaxons of reaction than the emergencies we seem to flirt with rather than respond to. Consider
Fox News' unhinged overreaction to Canada’s plans to phase out single-use plastics. Any concerns about a government actually
compromising one’s rights in the name of fending off global
environmental catastrophe are entirely misplaced. The greatest push for
social tightness, greater homogeneity (or oppression of freedoms) is
coming from the same group that have marched through the
streets over the last two years with the insistence that the paradoxes
and uncertainties be wiped away with one fell swoop to undermine
whatever notions of diversity, inclusion and freedom we have built
western societies upon. Instead, the most significant
changes of policy or law that we are seeing have tended to express the
same racism, misogyny and homophobia that the fringe wishes to see
restored in the name of giving them a greater sense of security and
clarity regardless of the injustices inflicted
on women, children, people of colour and others who deserve the full
right of inclusion, safety, freedom and human rights in our society.<br /></span></span>
</div>
</div></div>
</div>
</div>Pathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08326893120900106683noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8813231024930598590.post-60841503988904032902022-06-23T13:20:00.002-06:002022-06-23T13:20:41.137-06:00Unreasonable Expectations<p>The contempt for national leaders seems palpable at the moment and a survey of approval ratings would likely trend low, but they would not necessarily be revealing of job performance. When Joe Biden's approval ratings take a hit because he fell of a bicycle it is hard to tell if it is the workings of the gotcha media (if that is still a thing) or our collective fragility. A litany of current issues that national leaders are expected not only to be conscious of but to have solved yesterday would probably prompt a despairing quest for cat videos if I assailed readers with them so I will spare you. It is 2022 and shit is still coming down even though we hoped to consign it all to memory and bliss with the turn of the calendar a year, make that two years ago.<br /><br />Collectively, the problems that contemporary presidents, prime ministers and chancellors have to grapple with are increasingly complex and demand a great deal of analysis and consideration to come up with a solution that is coherent. The leaders who have the least concern with all of the factors and stakeholders that need to be considered are those who are hell-bent on the mischief and disorder that accompany invading a sovereign neighbour or sowing instability and opposition in nations considered a threat because of the liberal, democratic values that they espouse and embody. The immediate needs that have emerged this year alone such as the invasion of Ukraine and inflation require attention, intelligence, integrity and fortitude, but there are the greater existential questions, namely the environment and climate change, that are marked with the daily harbingers of water shortages, record highs and extinctions that once had the indignity of getting buried in the backpages of a newspaper but wallow today in some esoteric corner of the internet while we are collectively preoccupied with the entirely counterproductive Depp-Heard spat or whatever <i>cause celebre</i> has been pushed to the forefront to fill the void after that lawsuit was "resolved."<br /><br />There needs to be a collective will to address the problems that we collectively face and it is delusional to assume that a national leader can resolve the challenges that we are facing -- take your pick -- with a snap-of-the-fingers policy move that will get Putin out of Ukraine, resolve the issues with inflation, addresses the injustices against visible minorities, sort us through the aftermath of COVID, and the significant stuff that remains out of sight and out of mind as we grapple with that substantial shard of iceberg that is bearing down on us.<br /><br />Our leaders are grappling with the most difficult decisions that politicians have grappled with in some time and big part of the reason why our current leaders most deal with them is not merely due to a perfect storm that is converging but because generations of predecessors have kicked the can down the road rather than making the decisions that, in retrospect, did not require that much sacrifice. Given a consciousness about global warming and climate change that dates back 40 years, Ronald Reagan's decision to remove solar panels from the roof of the White House because he was afraid it made America "look weak" is petulant and immature. Time and again leaders to this point have defaulted to the popular or expedient decision rather than the wise ones that ensured better long-term outcomes.<br /><br />As those deferred responsibilities and consequences fall on the shoulders of citizens and leaders today, our collective agitation is palpable and it is fissuring our society in ways that, ultimately, could have been anticipated. Forecasters and historians have acknowledged occasions where scarcities, pandemics, and other forces have pushed us societies toward division and strife. We know this, we can look it up if any of us care to read anything longer than a tweet created by a malignant bot to stoke us and divide us further in the name of deepening our despair, our selfishness and get us to forget the fact that we are all we've got, that the sacrifices of looking out for one another are abundantly worthwhile and that whatever aspirations we have for starting anew on Mars are neither sustainable, feasible nor likely to even include the barest fraction of the 1% who are confident that they've got the coin to get themselves a ticket out of here. Beyond that, a Mars adventure will not break us of our most human habits and foibles. Selfishness will find new ground to deepen its roots into and the compassion and empathy that are required for us to survive will be discarded because of our delusions about the largesse of affluence and that free pass it gives to disrespect others.<br /><br />Our leaders today are flawed -- they always have been -- but for the most part they are well-intentioned. The challenges that we are facing as a planet are not to be left to such a small cohort of individuals while the rest of us disengage from reality and indulge in the distractions, and the false assurance of narratives that suggest that these leaders are able to resolve <i>all</i> of this with ease and that their inability to do so is an indicator of malice and incompetence rather than a recognition of the complexity of the issues that we face. As more and more of us choose to insulate ourselves from the complexity of read a full account of just one of the issues that we are grappling with, rather than opting for and recycling sound-bites of dubious verity. This allergy to facts aligns with an expectation that our leaders not merely solve all of the problems we are encountering but restore a version of society that is free of the changes that have occurred, save the technological conveniences that have allowed each of us to retreat to our custom caves to view a version of the world far removed from the common one which we must renew a commitment to tending.<br /><br />While we feel it is within our right to pass judgment on a leader for his or her ability to ride a bike or banish the ill of <i>our </i>choice with the wave of a hand, it is more incumbent than ever to acknowledge that there is a lot going on and that the consensus and well being of billions is not going to confer more privilege and comfort to the most privileged. The realities that we are collectively facing are best met head on rather than with a denial borne of fear and distrust.<br /></p>Pathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08326893120900106683noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8813231024930598590.post-39759313408984187552022-04-27T11:29:00.003-06:002022-04-27T14:36:10.865-06:00The Dilemma of Feeling Good<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnyHLFJmM2vAOQyFDDGa26l_uZgjtlekhLc-T0jCSpPS5GnzVAbCPXkMZoESCmexDxziwKqCHWQWJG44wCK9ZUBi6H-8K3KOkT6lvBuclw-w5g9OiyBbdPtGQJLFwrtJPjtwyo7oDszglyqoeoO1kFbFbnaa14yNQ9O-QE53Sbj64_ySfyb3LNFEQN/s450/finished-charlie-snoopy-dancing.webp" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="450" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnyHLFJmM2vAOQyFDDGa26l_uZgjtlekhLc-T0jCSpPS5GnzVAbCPXkMZoESCmexDxziwKqCHWQWJG44wCK9ZUBi6H-8K3KOkT6lvBuclw-w5g9OiyBbdPtGQJLFwrtJPjtwyo7oDszglyqoeoO1kFbFbnaa14yNQ9O-QE53Sbj64_ySfyb3LNFEQN/w400-h400/finished-charlie-snoopy-dancing.webp" width="400" /></a></div>As the decade proceeds and we look back on 2020 as a year distinctly bereft of the vision and perhaps the optimism that we once hoped it would we arrive at 2022, the Catch-22 member of this roiling, young decade. Things have gone in a manner that even the term "topsy-turvy," if it were sentient, would signal exhaustion and ask for a break to catch its breath, survey the upside-downness of it all, sigh audibly and ask "what the eff?!" Apart from wars - yes, plural - our unsteady first steps through the fragile, new equilibrium (perhaps?) of this shoulder season of the pandemic, and climate concerns, a survey of the streets leaves us wondering what the words free, fact, and truth mean anymore. We have our own assumptions of their meaning and valuable, but there is a sense that there is an opposition that has claimed the words as their own, with a set of beliefs that are distinctly detached from reality. Even our flags are ambiguous now. The only flag that may unify us features the simple azure and gold of Ukraine.<p>It has been stress and it seems that the world is veering hard toward madness and chaos even though we have long-standing reminders and deeply held belief systems that at their very core -- far beyond the tenets too many of us stop at for the validation they provide to exclude and denigrate one another -- encourage us to look out for one another, be considerate and generous. After two years of heeding the call and mission to be considerate and generous toward one another, we seem to have tapped out or abbreviated our horizons to those who are most like us in mindset.<br /></p><p>It is reasonable to acknowledge that we have wearied under the demands that have been placed upon us. Apart from the more prescriptive demands to mask, shelter in place, to mask ourselves, to vaccinate and more there has remained that greater calling of looking out for one another, of caring, of communicating and reaching out. Those deeper directives have been contracted. We avoid those who pose the faintest possibility of disagreeing with us and posing the challenge of having to communicate, which inevitably includes listening to an opposing point of view. I'm not above that. I still roll my eyes when I see "my" flag these days and I stay on the path I'm walking rather than walking toward that flag and those who clutch it as a symbol of things I believe in. But, right now, how many of us would listen to one another rather than expect to be the only one listened to?<br /></p><p>We remain apart. When I hear news of someone reacting adversely to our reality, I empathize with it, regard it as an apt reaction to the current reality. Other, more measured responses, such as simply proceeding with life as well as we can, go unnoticed. It may be tempting to suggest there is a degree of denial facilitating that calm perseverance and that there is something to appreciate in the reactions that express an awareness and a reaction against the pressures we are facing. In all the looking glass madness inundating us in with alternative facts, the ongoing proselytizing to the delusional conspiracies about the intentions of our leaders, and the impact of COVID and/or vaccines, it is easy and tempting to succumb to the siren song of reactivity.<br /></p><p>A strong case can be made for reacting. It is an alternative to bottling things up; it expresses an appropriate recognition of the inconvenience and imposition of things detrimental to us as a society in the long-term; it is also an expression of how aware you are of what's going on and how wrong it is. It is easy to heed the motivation to flip over the buffet of madness that is being served to us right now. Twinned with that temptation to react is also a denial or an asceticism to enjoy our lives as well. We are still conscious about venturing out and gathering, such is our consciousness about exposing ourselves to a variant of the virus. Beyond that there is the feeling that it just wouldn't be right with everything that's going on. Again, it would seem a little mad or a little detached to, in essence, look after our mental well-being by actually doing something to make ourselves feel good.<br /></p><p>If we treat -- and I use the word in a more clinical sense than an indulgent one -- ourselves to the cheerier alternative of trying to feel good, it seems wrong and it may even be more demanding than giving in to the dissension of these times. Striving to enjoy ourselves and be seems not only draining but may also be subject us to ridicule, especially if it leads to the perception that you are out of touch, too much of a Pollyanna to be tolerated. We must, however, strive to make ourselves enjoy our lives once again, in even the smallest ways, by revisiting the rituals of connection care and creativity that were such a gift during the early days of the pandemic when we were just beginning to grapple with lockdown two years ago. Those rituals are not intended to be patchwork of distractions to fill the idle time that would otherwise be filled with commuting. Those things are supposed to be a part of our lives and they always were. At a time when notions of harmony are dismissed with the pejorative use of <i>kumbayah</i>, we need to acknowledge the synergy and interdependence has always been a discreet part of our existence and our societies and restore the mindset and gestures that contribute to our individual well-being our connection with one another and the other small habits that are necessary rather than merely allowed. Despite the guilt that make come with being positive, optimistic, okay or downright happy at a time when bat-shit-crazy seems the most accurate adjective for just about any given day, it is more likely necessary for us to muster what good feeling we can, hold onto it tightly and share it, even if timidly, with those around us. <br /><br />Anyone have a better idea?<br /></p>Pathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08326893120900106683noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8813231024930598590.post-50489135160319341992022-03-14T19:22:00.001-06:002022-03-14T19:22:13.378-06:00Probing the Roots of the Truckers' Protests<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEheIZVfnAAvABq9tSb80mA8Mzb7BxhBo0w3Ix_y7Xi7o69deK6GANVACez3AS_w5Izqh0a9Tgsj-8MzLNaq5JjQ43yDiwvgtpGYHYv1LXXC_fQNb4PRn0OvPxftyPGPP5BFYhT5RN8Qjcea8Td-uOzgWdm50ZxMn6ubYy6w-piwcFyF5xkMOCxG1kR7=s976" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="549" data-original-width="976" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEheIZVfnAAvABq9tSb80mA8Mzb7BxhBo0w3Ix_y7Xi7o69deK6GANVACez3AS_w5Izqh0a9Tgsj-8MzLNaq5JjQ43yDiwvgtpGYHYv1LXXC_fQNb4PRn0OvPxftyPGPP5BFYhT5RN8Qjcea8Td-uOzgWdm50ZxMn6ubYy6w-piwcFyF5xkMOCxG1kR7=w400-h225" width="400" /></a></div>As our attention has been redirected from the truckers convoys that snarled border crossings, Ottawa and other cities through late January and February 2022, the consequences for the protesters will move through the courts in the coming months. The leaders of the convoy and the protests have been jailed, the question of bail for the leaders of the protest has been settled and the wheels of justice will move at whatever pace they will proceed at. Specific charges will be selected and accumulated and from there things will proceed toward the binary of guilty/not-guilty and the federal courts and courts of public opinion will go through their paces. There will be spectacle and news coverage leading to convictions or acquittals.<p></p><p>What remains in doubt is whether that determination of guilt leads to a better understanding of what caused this movement to emerge and become, in terms that are too-often reserved for racialized groups, "radicalized." <br /></p><p>While court trials will be an orderly progression toward the conclusion of what escalated over the last two years as anti-maskers evolved into anti-vaxxers and then into the truckers' convoy, it remains insufficient. While the movement appears to have a grassroots quality, it has been a movement that has been bolstered by misinformation and conspiracy theories circulated by social media and organizes who have been unabashed in displaying a preference for their biases rather than journalistic integrity. The interests of fringe groups whose motivations includes -- but is not exclusive to, white supremacy -- and more established, <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/poilievre-conservative-otoole-convoy-vaccine-mandate-1.6335286">mainstream political parties</a> which have strived to curry favour with the far-right throughout the pandemic rather than provide a <a href="https://cmajnews.com/2021/09/02/elxn44-platforms-1095962/">credible and substantive alternative</a> to the government's policies over the last two years and seems to overlook that fact that, in a nation with a single-payer health care system, the federal government is well within its rights to establish health care policies and a COVID-19 response that looks at the sustainability of the health care system if we overlooked the strongest interventions against the virus possible: a public health response that relied on vaccinations, masking and other widespread responses.<br /></p><p>At the moment, it appears that any trials of protest leaders here in Canada will focus on the guilt or innocence of the convoy leaders rather than analyze or pull back the curtain the infrastructure that lead them to take the roles that they played. By now we are familiar with the purportedly legitimate and the shadier organizations that sought to sow this dissension and promote their causes and interests rather than target flaws in our governments' response to the pandemic. The courts, however, will settle the judicial questions and stop there. The groups that have lurked in the background throughout and remain active despite the lifting of restrictions continue to disseminate and weaponize misinformation and disturb the peace with actually protesting in favour of a legitimate cause.<br /></p><p>A disturbing aspect of these protests, that was exposed when reporter <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPuNdtdx6FI">Evan Solomon took to the streets of Ottawa</a> during the truckers' siege of the city, is that these most active protesters are unable to express why they have resorted to these actions. When asked to merely explain why they were there, why they were compromising the freedoms and well-being of Ottawa residents in the name of their own freedoms and enlisting with a mob which has threatened and impeded the efforts of EMTs and other first line responders to do their jobs, they could not explain themselves. They were not challenged to articulate an air-tight debate resolution that needed to withstand intensity public scrutiny. They were presented with the low bar of explaining why. They fell mute or walked away. The people and organizations who have whipped up these ongoing protests, will likely remain in the background and their motivations remain unexposed.<br /><br />If trials only expose the figureheads of the movement, we will see the movement reappear under different guises but bleating the same off-key, specious refrains in the face of new challenges and issues. They are still crying for their freedom now as the lexicon of tyranny gets redefined during Vladimir Putin's assault on the Ukraine. These protesters are losing their legitimacy not only as new issues and concerns emerge but also as the pandemic restrictions are eased. Trials of protest leaders Chris Barber, Pat King and Tamara Lich may merely result in a show trial rather than the reflection and inquiry into their motives and the experiences that contributed to them taking their positions and adopting measures that undermined the legitimacy of their cause because of the consequences that it had for the citizens of Ottawa.<br /></p><p>Throughout the truckers' convoy there was evidence that funds were coming from outside of Canada and that the interpretation of events and the motivations of the protesters as presented internationally by Fox News Network indicate that these people were influenced by the same forces that fed the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol. The persecution complex amongst these protesters needs to be called out and challenged, <i>repeatedly</i>. Those who have encouraged rather than challenged their flimsy rationale for rejecting vaccination, masking and other collective efforts throughout the pandemic are exploiting these people's well-founded vulnerability and uncertainty about what the future holds. These people and organizations, however, will remain unexposed during a trial. It would not be a surprise if these organization abandoned their front line champions in favour of avoiding the scrutiny that would expose their workings, funding and the hatred that they espouse.<br /></p><p>With the decline of public discourse factoring into much of the division we are experiencing, it would be valuable to identify those who have exploited the truckers convoy members and others. It would be valuable to identify these organizations for their mindset and also their tendency to exploit and discard the people whose fears they have played upon. Such exposure might reveal supposedly benign elements of society as less than forthright. Steering discourse away from the bleating that occurs in the street might, and I suspect this is one of my more quixotic notions, might make explicit that subverting discourse with these travesties is not tolerable. During the Canadian federal election in fall 2021, the Conservative Party of Canada failed to articulate a clear policy alternatives to respond to the pandemic or climate change. Instead, leaders of that party expressed their support and approval of the truckers' mob tactics. Exposing the fringe groups that have stoked these protests and maintained them, may not declaw these groups, but it will indicate that they are not as representative as they would like us to presume. That may be enough to prompt Conservative politicians at the provincial and and federal levels to acknowledge that the hard swing to the right is as beneficial to the country or to their well-being as they might insist.<br /></p><p>Trials alone will merely provide an occasion to vent and pass judgment. Trials, will likely not expose the roots of these protests and identify the agents and forces that contributed to the convoys and the broad conflation of freedom into a more toxic evasion of personal responsibility. The organizations that funded and exploited the truckers convoy will likely not come to the full defense of Carter, King and Lich and will strive for a defense that limits the scrutiny that the larger players in the protest will be exposed to. Those entities will discard these patsies and look for new ones as they continue to spread conspiracy theories about the actions of responsible leaders. We are in the face of a complexity that defies easy solutions and will elude our pursuit of easy solutions. Those who promise us easy answers and certainty are the last that we can trust. These individuals and organizations ought to be held to account for the roles they have played and trials ambitious enough to expose these puppet masters would be the ideal.<br /></p>Pathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08326893120900106683noreply@blogger.com0