Pamela Mordecai @ Jahworld

Calabash, oh Calabash! How we mourn your passing!

2011-01-19T07:58:00.000-08:00

So Calabash done! For now, anyway. Don't know if the organizers (note the source I'd like to hear from!) will ever tell us the whole story, but money seems to have been a part of it, as also Colin Channer's departure from the core team. Whatever the causes, it's a big loss. I never made it to read or to visit, though I was asked more than once, and I now feel that as a big and probably irreparable loss – in this world, anyway. Never mind. I believe all kinda amazing things await me after I die, and some retrospective Calabash visits will I hope be among them.

So the first thing is to say thanks for the vision and energy of Colin Channer, Kwame Dawes and Justine Henzell, and all those who supported the Calabash effort over time. Here isn't the place to say why it was so important, because it was very important. It never make no argument but simply went about its business demonstrating truths like if you build it right, they will indeed come and keep coming, and the 'they' will be a most comprehensive and inclusive and various 'they,' a motley crew who will enjoy kulcha not as that, but as the simple thing kulcha is, which is song, music, story, skits, drawings and paintings and the like...

Anyhow, that account is not for me to write. Calabash was superb while it lasted, no doubt about that, and one is glad for the respects in which it is promised to continue. Its demise should make us think, though, about what we need to do to keep good things going, about how we approach building 'institutions' so they continue. And it ought to make us address hard truths, like that we should perhaps spend a little less money on frivolities (I have been alarmed to see such a one as Vera Wang feature as a designer worn by the well-heeled in the Observer's glamour pages!) and invest a bit more into, say, the Calabsh kitty. One-one cocoa fill basket...

Ridiculous? True, until Barack Obama used the Internet to capitalize on donations by the poorest American to help finance his way into the White House. Don't bother bring no facts and figures to show that the contributions of wealthy financiers and unions far outweighed these in size! The likl-likl donations added up, and with every donation came a commitment to the Obama cause. What's wrong with a Calabash Foundation that issues tax receipts for donations? Come to think of it, what's wrong with tax receipts for donations to worthy causes as a way to encourage grass roots mobilization?

Sadly I fear that we will prefer our expensive frocks and fancy parties, even the most educated and most thoughtful of us, who ought to know better. Why? Could it be that we are still the bruised, insecure, unresurrected children of the enslaved (new PC term!) who have decried 'white' people's ways and values as we have rushed to ape them, and who have stalwartly resisted putting our money and efforts where our mouths are?

Well, whoever that may be true of, it does not apply to Colin Channer, Kwame Dawes, Justine Henzell and the Calabash Crew. For that, let us give thanks!

Selah!

Linguistic Preserves or How to Use Language to be Powerful

2010-12-23T13:15:00.000-08:00

Okay. So I am always having this problem. It has to do with how much we use language to isolate people rather than bring them together, to construct divisions among groups rather than promote community, to confuse rather than clarify – all in the interests of power. This is something complicated enough to merit yet another book, for many books have been written about it, I'm sure. But I don't have the time, nor in all likelihood the competence, to write any such book. So I will try to tell a story, my story, instead.

Years ago, when New World, a sort of unstructured radical movement that arose in and around UWI, Mona, Jamaica, in the seventies, began to publish New World Quarterly, in an earnest effort to persuade the editors to make the writing in the journal available to anybody who could read, I found myself at Lloyd Best's house on the UWI Mona campus, attempting to 'translate' the academic-speak of one article into plain English. I can recall vividly tackling a footnote that referred to an observation by Alister McIntyre about the ingenuity of peasant farmers in the Caribbean who rotated crops on their small acreages so as to get the best yields, despite constraints of size.

Nothing ever came of the initiative to simplify, of course. New World spoke its erudite way to its untimely end.

The truth is that the powerful reserve languages to and for themselves. If you don't believe me, try getting an explanation of what happened to make the world economy collapse. Financial operatives, in plain speak (PS after this – BS is Bull Speak), those who run things in the money world, keep their affairs to themselves. It is, in BS, obfuscation twice over, or, in PS, secrets on top of secrets. Those money folks are as often as not up to no good, and where regulators insist on transparency (BS for keeping things out in the open and above board), a good way to hide them anyway is to talk about them using names and terms ordinary people cannot understand: sub-prime mortgages, derivatives, toxic loans, eurozone, etc. etc.

It’s not a habit confined to the worlds of finance, or law, or medicine, or science. My friend Jennifer broke my heart when she told me she had tried to read but couldn't understand Walcott's poetry. I love Walcott, and Brathwaite, and Brodber, and Brand, and Wilson Harris. They all take hard reading, sometimes, as do heaps of other writer folks. And that's okay. Writers are free to write as they see fit.

But writers need also to have vision, to be savvy, to make informed political choices. And if people read fiction and poetry, story and song, less and less, even as they listen to popular music more and more, it may have something to do with the fact of how as well as what writers have chosen to write about.

It takes me five years or so to produce a book of poetry or fiction, so I don't have a lot of writing to which to refer as I try to illustrate this point, but I’ll try nonetheless.

In 1995, Sister Vision Press published de man: a performance poem. I've talked about it up here before. It's the crucifixion story in Jamaican Creole. It's been performed many, many times in Canada, the Caribbean and who knows where else, and it's been taught (as I've recently discovered) in several universities in the US and Canada. George Elliott Clarke calls it a 'revolutionary work', though it's largely been ignored by critics in the Caribbean and doesn't even figure in Canadian Hugh Hodges’ survey on religion in Jamaican poetry, Soon Come, published by U. of Virginia Press.

The important point about de man, for this argument, is that it's in ordinary people's language. Anybody can understand it. I think, at first half-knowing and then more consciously, I took my cue from that book about how I would write, probably till Jesus comes. My next book of poetry, Certifiable (2001), contains many story poems and many poems in plain Jamaican English, as does The True Blue of Islands (2005), the poetry collection after that. My first collection of short fiction, Pink Icing (2006) has many stories seen through the eyes of children and told in their voices. It too uses Jamaican English. And the collection of sonnets that I have just completed, never mind that they are sonnets, is also as plain as can be. You’ve seen a couple of those sonnets here.

Lest anyone think I am suggesting that plain English or Jamaican Creole dumbs things down, dilutes them or condemns them not to eschew (BS for ‘stay clear of’) complexity, I refer them to the writings of Jean D’Costa and Dennis Craig on creole as a literary medium.

Mark you, I think I can confuse and confound with the best of us. I love big words, and like every good Jamaican, I thrive on confusion. But I understand that the Tower of Babel was punishment. That breakdown in communication is something to be struggled against.

Thus, creole-speaking children, wherever in the world they are, should learn the standard languages whose lexicons their creoles employ. They need to be able to make themselves understood outside the small community of creole-speakers. Dutch and Danish people learn languages other than their own for exactly the same reason. There are not that many people who speak Dutch and Danish in the world. If they want to talk to a wider audience, they need to know other languages.

There are more urgent reasons: not every creole-speaking person hauled before the law in a foreign country, for example, will get the benefit of a translator. Jail time because you cannot truly have your day in court, on account of nobodi kyaan unustan yu, an yu kyaan unerstan dem is very far from justice done. Similarly, a creole speaker who cannot fluently describe to, say, a paramedic or an emergency-room doctor what symptoms she is experiencing might well be at serious risk.

In fact, creole speakers and non-creole speakers should learn Mandarin and Hakka and Russian and Swahili and Greek and Krio – as many languages as they can grasp. Look at Eminem and Sinéad O'Connor as they besi dung into our languages, and take example!

The powerful preserve their power by using language as a tool when they make language policy as well, as, for example, those persons in the Caribbean who are versatile in standard and creole languages and fail to encourage creole speakers to learn standard languages. Indeed, there should be a requirement that all creole speakers achieve a solid competence in a standard language since, as I’ve tried to show, it may prove a matter of life and death. The policymakers are the powerful. They are equipped. They well know that every new language is an arsenal. So how come they don’t want everyone to have more linguistic guns?

When finally we beat our swords into ploughshares, I suspect that peace will be a great silence in which we listen to the music of praise and rejoicing and speak not a word. “Peace on earth,” the angels sang at the baby’s birth. Peace to the benevolent, those of good will – from the Latin, bene volantem, well-wishing.

Have a Happy Christmas, a Holy Channukah! Learn a new language in 2011!

Wikileaks, the G20 and Common Dreams

2010-12-20T19:08:00.000-08:00

Do you know that Bradley Manning, the former US intelligence analyst who is suspected of leaking the diplomatic cables at the heart of the Wikileaks storm is being held in solitary confinement at a military base in Virginia where he faces court martial and a possible sentence of 52 years in prison for his alleged role in copying the cables?

David House, who visits Manning a couple times a month, says he has noticed a decline in his physical and emotional well being over the past few weeks. Read the full story here:

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/12/17-4

No, no. I did not say Manning was being held at a gulag in Siberia. Nor is he accused of killing anyone, engineering a Ponzi scheme that defrauded people of billions of dollars, stealing or helping to steal an election, threatening anyone with harm, raping children who reposed confidence in him as their teacher or priest, sending harmful substances through the mail, bombing any buildings, inciting anyone to riot or damage property or harm their neighbour. No. No. Not any of those things. He is supposed to have copied and leaked cables that include information about actions being taken on behalf of a nation, to the people of that nation. That is his crime.

If you want some idea of the runnings in the world as they concern Wikileaks, the goings on in Washington or, indeed, in your neck of the woods, chances are you’ll find it on this website:

http://www.commondreams.org/

Away from home in Toronto, I was able to read a piece in the Toronto Star by Linda McQuaig.entitled “Vindication for G20 Protesters”. You can read it here.

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/12/14-4

In it, McQuaig says: “What is now unmistakably clear — with the release of a searing report by Ontario Ombudsman André Marin and startling new video evidence of police beatings obtained by the Star’s Rosie DiManno — is that the vast powers of the state were unjustifiably used against thousands of innocent protesters, as well as against others doing nothing more subversive than riding a bike or picking up groceries.”

I know it’s Christmas, but as you do your shopping, or help out at a soup kitchen, or visit the sick with a word of Christmas cheer, it might be worth chewing over the propects for “Peace on earth” of which the angels sang, when those entrusted with upholding the law act, not to secure the citizens’ rights but to vitiate them. There is a name for states that use organized violence against their citizens. It starts with an F.

And it is not just silly but downright stupid to be fooled by baby blue sweaters, jam sessions with Yo-Yo Ma and ostensible ‘Christian’ positions on issues like abortion. Violence is violence, whether it’s used against a foetus or a citizen exercising his or her right to peaceful protest. When it costs those same citizens a billion dollars to have their rights trampled on, there’s no need to wonder about 2012 and the possible advent of Apocalypse. Ask 57-year-old Revenue Canada employee John Pruyn, who had his the prosthetic leg yanked off by police after he was unable to move quickly enough from where he was peacably sitting with his daughter.

Today his artificial leg was pulled off from his body. Tomorrow your real leg and mine might well be at risk. Pull your fingers out of your noses and smell the brimstone.

What I'm reading; what I'm thinking...

2010-12-08T13:29:00.000-08:00

This is a device so that I don't fall off the blogging bandwagon again. As folks who stop by know, I don't do this kind of 'personal post' – not much anyway. But since I am reading, all together, several books that exercise me, I thought it would be okay to share with you. I'll take them in no particular order.

Derek Walcott was just in Toronto to read and discuss his life and work, and so I dived into the Walcott books I'd not caught up with. I'm reading Tiepolo's Hound (not for the first time, but I'd not got too far in on the previous reading...), a gorgeous book illustrated with Walcott's paintings and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in 2000. Having just finished a MS of sonnets, I am keen on what Walcott is doing with couplets in this book, running with alternately rhyming lines, AB AB BC BC DE DE FG FG, and so on. There are only one or two poems in my MS where I hold tight to any rhyme scheme, and one of the things I think I found out is that it works to run the unit of meaning, the 'sentence,' past the rhyme at the end of the line over into the next line. Not always, but often. Otherwise, especially if one is working with iambics, there's the danger of doggerel, sing-song, however highfalutin the sentiments. I'm watching for that here, as the poem trails about Europe and Camille Pissaro's little Caribbean island.

I'm also wondering in and out of two books by Professor Emeritus of Comparative Literature at NYU, Timothy Reiss, a polymath if ever there was one. My pursuit is not academic. Interested in ideas of self (see sonnet, "Who loves not self, loves not..." in a recent post), I had started with Mirages of the Self, but realized that for a handle on Reiss's term, "analytico-referential," I'd need to go back to a previous work, The Discourse of Modernism. Maybe I'll keep you posted.

And I'm making my way steadily through Thomas Cahill's popular biography of Pope John XXIII, published in the Penguin Lives Series, and called just that. Pope John XXIII. Cahill, who is comfortable to read, begins with the long reach back to Peter the Apostle and the beginnings of the church, some of which makes for horrific reading. His strategy works because he eases the reader through the history, in an effort to provide Pope John XXII (and Vatican II, of course) with a broad, meaningful context. Which he manages to do. No easy task.

And finally, the inevitable detective-story-mystery thing, most recently Thomas H. Cook's Peril. Peril, especially as something which confronts small children, is something of which I have written (see title story of Pink Icing: Stories) with feeling, but I don't think that's why I remember Cook's story. (Often I forget stories in this genre within hours of closing the book.) He writes some good characters (except for the heavy-heavy, Old Man Labriola, who is unrelieved evil) and his approach to telling the story, short sections marked with the name of the character whose POV is explored therein, succeeds in moving the story forward quickly.

Gotta go. Next time around, DV, the state-sanctioned abrogation of citizen's rights at the recent G20 in Toronto. Walk good.

Caribbean Examination Council, regional ministries of education, and the ‘that-which’ rule

2010-12-02T13:29:00.000-08:00

This will be an exercise in the usefulness of the internet.

I am curious about the position of regional ministries of education, as (presumably) expressed in the Caribbean Examinations Council syllabi, on the ‘which-that’ rule.

A few more folks now visit this site than did before (thanks, bredren and sistren, guys and dolls) but I am also shouting out those whose sites carry a lot more traffic with the request that they circulate our dilemma because it is an important question and one for which we need an urgent answer. I’ll say why in a minute, but first a little story.

Not long ago, I had a phone call from an academic from the region, distressed because the American publisher to whom this person had submitted a MS was insisting that a host of ‘which’s’ in the MS be converted to ‘that’s’. Of course I had, sadly, to say the publisher was right, and to invoke the ‘which that rule’.

Consider!

You are working in MSWord, grammar function on. You type this sentence. The pot which had a hole in the bottom had to be thrown out… Behold! The wriggly green line appears under “pot which had a hole in the bottom” and you are advised that this is in need of correction, and you are told what your options are: insert comma after ‘pot’ so clause becomes a descriptive clause, or use ‘that’. This will always happen with sentences in which the word ‘which’ introduces a definitive clause.

If you check the style books, or the newspaper guides, they will say either that the word ‘that’ must introduce such a clause, or, more gently, as does the London Times style guide below, that ‘that’ is usually better that ‘which’ for introducing definitive clauses. (A definitive clause says what the thing being identified is. A descriptive clause merely ascribes a characteristic to it.)

According to the Times, then:

that ... That is almost always better than which in a defining clause, eg, “the train that I take stops at Slough”. As a general rule, use which for descriptive clauses and place it between commas, eg, “the night train, which used to carry newspapers, stops at Crewe”.

And indeed, if you say the sentence, it will indeed roll more pleasingly off the tongue, be more sensible-sounding with ‘that’.

But, by sweet serendipity, this is not the way we learned it in the Caribbean as children. And old habits die hard, especially if you are not in the daily grip (came out as ‘drip’ – Kamau would like that!) of authoritarian software – hence the dilemma of my academic friend.

I’m assessing a book which… oops, no, a book that has been in use in the region and that is replete with infractions of this rule. So I need to know, and would be glad of any help in discovering what the judgment of regional expertise in this matter is.

Thank you, then, on behalf of children and new learners of English in the Caribbean!

On the matter of the Wikileaks, and further to yesterday’s post: Here’s Haroon Siddiqui in today’s Toronto Star on the Wikileaks. His position is not unlike that of the Canadian ex-diplomat whom I quoted yesterday (well, he’s a Canadian, but not a Canadian ex-diplomat)…

http://www.thestar.com/opinion/article/900100--siddiqui-what-the-wikileaks-documents-fail-to-tell

Till soon.

Wikileaks...

2010-12-01T16:31:00.000-08:00

It's amazing the variety of responses to the Wikileaks. There's one from a former Canadian diplomat who thinks they are mighty dangerous. If diplomatic information gatherers are to be of use, he feels, then they must be able to pass on in a forthright fashion, any information, however ugly and compromising, that they may discover. They must be free to communicate, as he once did, things that "would make your hair stand on end." (I think that's how it went.)

And this communication has to be privileged and private, and so secret.

Further, he argues that to compromise this information flow by subverting its secrecy is only one aspect of the danger. Worse is the fact that the leaks lead not to a freer but a more repressive world, by means of the retribution that will follow and be visited on local populations. Local people, activists or not, who supply info-gatherers from foreign embassies and covert agencies with information about human rights abuses will be at risk because oppressive regimes will round them up and there will be repercussions – presumably, threats, torture, maiming, imprisonment and maybe even death.

An ex-diplomat I know (not Canadian) pooh-poohs that. "Oppressive regimes always know who the informers are," he says. Presumably they have also already jailed or killed or otherwise dealt with the ones they consider truly dangerous. (One thinks of Aung San Suu Kyi, who makes a good case for that argument.)

He also repeats some sound coaching he received many years ago, from a senior civil servant, about writing memos and advices for senior politicos and government decision-makers.

"Draft everything as though you are going to see it next day on the front page of the newspaper!"

Is it possible to do this? Be cogent, comprehensive, bald and – well, I guess, diplomatic?

On the one hand, code names, and codes and hieroglyphs are the order of the day. Texting and the net have manufactured their own lingo. HTML, anyone? On the other hand, there is all of literature and fable and song to draw analogies from, a host of languages to forge into pastiche and bricolage, a panoply of imaginative stuff to creatively deploy to send messages across.

A good example (sourced from the other Wiki, Wikipedia) is the apocryphal story of General Sir Charles James Napier's terse (one-word) communication of his fall from grace

In 1842, Napier was appointed Major General to the command of the Indian army in the Bombay Presidency. Here Lord Ellenborourgh's policy led him to Sindh Province in order to subdue the insurrection of Muslim rulers. Napier's campaign against these chieftains led to victories in the Battle of Meanee and the Battle of Hyderabad, and then to the subjugation of Sindh Province and its annexation by its eastern neighbors. Having conquered Sindh, Napier was supposed to have dispatched to his superiors the short, notable message, Peccavi, the Latin for "I have sinned" – a pun of course, on "I have Sindh."

Any good English or civics teacher would already have taken the problem for discussion and action to her class! What would you, if you were a diplomat, communicating sensitive, even explosive information, do?

All that said, is it safe, let alone wise for everyone to know everything about everything?

Here's counsel for all seasons and servants and souls from Bernard of Clairvaux:

Peace within the cell: fierce warfare without.

Hear all; believe a few: honour all.
Don't believe everything you hear;
Don't judge everything you see;
Don't do everything you can;
Don't give everything you have;
Don't say everything you know…

Selah!

Litany on the Line: subversive sonnets

2010-11-27T16:10:00.000-08:00

Litany on the line: subversive sonnets in thirty-three suites, a manuscript I've been working on for five years, is finally at the point where I've decided to stop working on the poems – at least until someone agrees to publish it.

I don't know that any poet ever feels completely satisfied with a poem, so I'm not saying the MS is finished. Taking a leaf out of the books of Kamau Brathwaite, who has always felt free to revise and has done so extensively in, say, Ancestors, and of Mervyn Morris, whose 1997 edition of The Pond contains revisions of several poems, I had included in Certifiable (2001) three poems from my first collection, Journey Poem (1989), all of them revised in varying degrees. I've been repeating one or two poems from collection to collection, with the exception of my crucifixion poem de man: a performance poem (1995). So Certifiable contains those three poems from Journey Poem, and The True Blue of Islands contains an excerpt from one poem in Certifiable.

Continuing that tradition, Litany on the Line contains one long poem from The True Blue of Islands, slightly revised and re-lineated, and a poem from Journey Poem that's been substantially rewritten. The remaining thirty-one poems are new. They are collected in suites, mainly of two or three, though a few are longer and there is one suite that contains only one sonnet. I'll end this post with that one, called "Who loves not self, loves not..."

Three of them, "Counting the Ways and Marrying True Minds," "Jamboree – Darfur maybe," and "Yarn Spinner" have been featured on Geoffrey Philp's blogspot. Many thanks again, Geoff, for that, and for the blogspot's continuing great work..

The first can be found here:

http://geoffreyphilp.blogspot.com/search/label/Pam%20Mordecai

and the other two here:

http://geoffreyphilp.blogspot.com/search/label/Pamela%20Mordecai

I've just said that I've been working on this MS for five years, and that's both true and not true. The oldest notebook for writing drafts of poems that I have to hand contains some "Endsongs" with drafts dated 1984 and 1985. The idea for Litany on the Line begins with those poems. In fact, I think I recently came across grant proposals for this collection that used Endsongs as a working title.

In the beginning, the poems were conceived of as being about various kinds of endings: former lives, old worlds, old friendships, life itself, the world.... That idea composed and recomposed itself several times in the course of the writing, and the collection as it now stands is as much about the (often comic) desperations of living as those of dying. So there are indeed endsongs, poems like “From Everlasting to Everlasting,” Our Lady of Good Voyage,” "Poor execution," and the title poem, “Litany on the Line,” and there are endings of other kinds sneaking around under poems like "Zambesi 1995,” "Wade in the Water," and “Remembering nothing", and there are poems about beginnings and the triumph of just being like "Temitope," "Zoey stands up to Schrodinger's Cat" and "Blooming in Barcelona."

So, as promised:

Suite thirty-one: Who loves not self, loves not…

If Robert Southwell made a hymn for a soulful boy child

‘whose heart no thought, whose tongue no word, whose hand

no deed defiled;’ if Hopkins sprung new rhythms for

his falcon spry on wing, wind hovering bird,

up full, fiercely flaming on Spirit’s swing, is it not Lord

that these are saints who have selves that they love,

and loving self so, and so loved by self, can others love?

You Self have said that we must love others

as we love self. But what if we despise

that craft, sweet purling that your Father set

about as he wove every self each in

his mother’s womb? What if inside us, animus

flares furious, eating all air, prayer? What then, most valorous

when we say no to God’s grandeur in us?

Temitope!

Can a good poem be political?

2010-11-25T15:44:00.000-08:00

Years ago, when I was doing my first degree, we were told that the best critics and literary theorists held that good poetry could not be political. It couldn’t advocate any ideology, couldn’t be Republican or Democratic, socialist or communist. In fact, overall, a poem shouldn’t get too worked up – Wordsworth’s old “recollection in tranquility” bit.

The injunction prompted me to write my own poem, published in what would now be a very old issue of that venerable Barbadian journal, BIM. I remember the words, but the lineation here is probably revised.

Poets

good poets

have no tears

they taught me.

Hopes, fears

intensities

are all distilled

into a necessary distance.

The poem is

the sweet mouth water

of a slightly-passioned kiss –

no phlegm, and non-infectious.

Clearly, I was not persuaded.

Of course, things are now much changed, and we are in a literary world in which we all acknowledge, poets and readers and critics alike, that, as Jamaican poet Edward Baugh puts it, “Every line commits you.” There’s no question about whether testimonial and political poetry belong in the fold.

It’s complicated, though, because we also all agree that good literature, whether it be story or poem or play, has no message. Message is a dreadful word that we avoid. And this is probably what the people who originally put the embargo on political poetry wanted to save us from, messaging in poems and plays and stories as ordered, say, by the Third Reich, or the cultural arm of the Politburo, or the architects of China’s Cultural Revolution.

So, even though every act, thought, statement, presence-or-absence is political, because we live in a polis, a body of citizens, and willy-nilly cannot speak or act outside of that context, when an author writes merely and mostly and pointedly in order just to persuade people to think a particular way, then we are veering away from writing literature and moving towards writing tracts – religious, political, or otherwise.

But there’s a lot of qualifying in that last sentence: “merely and mostly and pointedly;” “in order just to persuade;” “veering away”. That careful treading is a far cry from the earlier bald proscription: "Good poetry can’t be political."

Plain and simple can be good and helpful, but that absolute is difficult to defend, because surely all literature intends to persuade the reader in some way? Even when writers adopt a naturalistic, slice-of-life approach, the very act of choosing this scene to expose in its ordinary, actual aspect, rather than that one, involves a choice, based on a value, that embodies a point of view. Assuming that the scene has an impact and that it hits the reader as it ought, then that POV will get across.

And aren’t ideology and politics just heightened points of view?

So might it be a matter of degree? In other words, how hard the writer is working his words in his bid to haul the reader over to thinking as he does?

There may be a way out of this, which has to do less with whether the work presents an ideological, religious or other position, less with how hard the writer is working at co-opting us, and more with whether the work invites the reader into a larger or narrower arena, constricts or expands her response. Does the work engage the reader’s imagination? If it sets that maverick faculty in motion, then it is an artistic creation. If it doesn’t, then it’s a dud.

All literature, all art, is the actual transformed into the imagined. It is that transformation that makes the new creation. And the artist’s imaginings, knit into the created thing, summon the imagination of the respondent, so that the act of appreciation is unfettered, complex, multifarious, wild. That is the still point of art’s turning world. The tract, the catechism, the tablets of the law say “Thou shalt” and “Thou shalt not”. But the story or the poem says, “Get on the back of my bike, or climb on my shoulder, or hold my hand, and come with me down this road. Look at the colours of these flowers. Look at those shifting blades of grass. See that worm. Or is it a snake? Look at that man with an axe in his hand! See what I see, but not as I see. See what I see, but see it as you see!”

So one can write political poetry, and indeed, poetry of the kind that wants to rouse real people to real concern and real action about real situations because even when he summons his readers to overthrow a tyrant, the poet has no message except wonder, and his call to action is a summons to our hearts and our senses and our faculty of whimsy. It's an appeal to our imaginative and not our conative faculty.Of course, the one can serve as a powerful prompt to the other!

I've written a couple of political poems myself. I'm thinking of "Protest Poem" and "Last Lines," in my first collection, Journey Poem, both overtly political. Many, many years after it was published, I received a letter from someone in West Africa who said how important it had been for him to come across "Protest Poem," how much it had meant to him in the trying political times in his country.

I leave you with "Last Lines". More soon.

This is the last line I draw.

Alright. Draw the last line.

But I tell you, yonder

is a next. No line ever last,

no death not forever.

You see this place? You see it?

All of it? Watch it good.

Not a jot nor a tittle

going last. Every old

twist-up man you see,

every hang-breast woman,

every bang-belly pickney,

every young warrior

with a head wrench

with weed, white powder,

black powder, or indeed

the very vile persuasion

of the devil – for him not

bedridden you know –

every small gal-turn-woman

that you crucify on the

cross of your sex

before her little naseberry

start sweeten,

I swear to you

every last one shall live.

Draw therefore, O governor,

prime minister, parson,

teacher, shopkeeper,

politician, lecturer,

resounding revolutionaries,

draw carefully

that last fine line

of your responsibility.

from Journey Poem (Kingston, Jamaica: Sandberry Press), 1989, p. 53

Mourning Ken Brown, the resurgence of the Republicans and Toronto's new mayor, Rob Ford

2010-11-19T07:10:00.000-08:00

I've been away, watching and praying and lighting candles for the sick and dying, and mourning the dead. That 'away' refers not just to the blog, but actually being away from home in the case of one person, my daughter's father-in-law, a distinguished, inspired, remarkable, funny, devoted, tireless father, mentor, teacher, philosopher and peacemaker named Ken Brown. He taught at Manchester College, a Brethren institution in North Manchester, Indiana, USA, for some three decades, and, as was evident in the memorial service held there for him on November 13th that we attended, influenced the lives of many people and motivated numberless students to work for peace, social justice and a better, more equitable, more decent, peaceful world.

We saw family and friends we hadn't seen for a while, met some of Ken's students and colleagues, and spoke to one or two at length. Here's a shout out to Matt Guynn, Laura Dell and Dillon Haro. Hail, and well met, and many thanks for great conversation.

Also mourning Barry Chevannes whom we have known for many years, and a classmate, Cenia (McGrath) Abrahams, a lovely woman whom I don't think I've seen since leaving high school, who died on 17th November. Condolences to the Chevannes family, and to Cenia's family and her sister, another good human being, also an Alpha Alumna,. Melba Moses.

May Cenia and Barry rest in peace.

Of course, perhaps God is calling these good people because they deserve better than to live in a world that's slipping further and further into greed, malevolence, spite, dishonesty, meanness of spirit and – well, pure hate. It's an open secret that many politicians make a habit of lying about facts, twisting the truth to suit their 'message,' and that, even when corrected, they persist in repeating the lie. It's an oft used Republican tactic and one also employed by the new mayor elect of Toronto, Rob Ford, in his recent campaign.

Nor do these folk care! Imagine my horror as I sat in the car driving back to the city from one of our recent visits to the US, and listened (Ha! Some welcome!) not to covert recordings, or su-su and hearsay, but to Rob Ford's campaign staff as they outlined on CBC RADIO the 'dirty tactics' they had used to dissuade John Tory from entering the mayoral campaign. They reported with great smugness that they had posted a video on YouTube impugning his integrity, and that one of their staff had made a phone call to Tory's radio program to do the same thing.

John Tory maintained it had made no difference to his decision about running for mayor, but the dirty-tricks Ford boys were gloating, and honestly, what else could Tory say? He probably convinced himself that it made no difference, but how could it not have affected his decision? Of course, he'd have been an excellent candidate, never mind his Conservative politics, and may very well have won.

Here's the rub: people who lie are liars, and liars are not bound by their word. so we'll look with interest at what eventuates, here in Toronto and in the great United States...

Saints, ancestors and people of good will, ora pro nobis!

El Numero Uno; adventures in the West

2010-05-12T20:52:00.000-07:00

EL NUMERO UNO played from 31 January to 21 February, closing a week early because box office sales were so sparse. I'm still trying to figure it out. The reviews were good, and all the folks, the children especially, who came to see it absolutely enjoyed it, as Walter Borden, who played Chef, recently said. I went to 5 or 6 performances and that was certainly true on each occasion. But only half of the seats were filled, all told.

It doesn't happen that often in the diasporic community: a play for young people, with Caribbean content, a black playwright, black director, black cast, black stage management, slated for a month long run (some 35 performances), and in Black History Month, to boot. I think the last one was more than ten years ago.

Bad mind people will say keh-keh, but in many ways, the person this concerns least of all is me, a ole lady who soon dead. El NUMERO UNO is a good play, a funny play, hilariously funny in parts. It will be staged again – if only because there aren't many plays for young people in the Caribbean or the diaspora. But the implications aren't encouraging. Professional theatre survives on its box office after all, and if investment of time and effort in plays like this won't garner support...

But maybe I oughtn't to be surprised. I just read an online interview in which Owen Percy, a PhD student at the University of Calgary, in a discussion with with Griffin prizewinner, Christian Bok, says to the poet, "You sell more copies of Eunoia than there are theoretically people who read poetry in Canada..." Eunoia at the time had sold more than 17,000 copies.

This may well be the seminal comment in an interview well worth the read. If you haven't seen it, look for it at:

http://zachariahwells.blogspot.com/2008/12/online-exclusive-interview-with.html

Its context is Canadian but it raises issues about juries and prizes and poetry itself that we've considered before and I'd promised to get back to again.

I'm making a wild leap here, but if, in a population of 33 million people, fewer than 17,000 read poetry, then perhaps in a population of 2.5 million (Toronto), it's silly to think that twelve thousand people would want to see a Caribbean play for young people... Seems to me though that something is rotten in the state of – English-teaching? Education in general in schools, college, universities?

What am I going on about? THE GUARDIAN newspaper in the UK is to be reduced to 'Twitter-sized' bits! I tell you it's the end of the world.

We visited the grandchild at the end of February, and then I took off for the Canadian West in March, to revisit Emily Carr University and read there in its great On Edge series, with Salimah Valiani. Rita Wong is a wonderful hostess, and it was a treat to meet for a pre-reading dinner with Salimah, her aunt, the fabulous couple, Fabiola Nabil Nagib, artist, poet and activist, and her husband, philosopher Rajdeep Singh Gill. The reading went well, and I was off shortly after that to Calgary, where Jamaican-Calgerian, Howard Gallimore and I read DE MAN, my two-hander poem/verse play about the crucifixion for the third time in that city and the second time at St Stephen's Church, an amazing congregation in downtown Calgary.

I preached the Easter Sunday Service at St Stephen's as well. I'll tell you more about DE MAN, and our visit to St Stephen's, and a second reading in Vancouver tomorrow, if God spare life. Walk good meantime.

Happy Birthday, Kamau Brathwaite!

2010-05-11T19:39:00.000-07:00

A great day to be back – Kamau Brathwaite’s birthday. Happy eightieth birthday, Kamau! And many, many more happy birthdays to come.

We tried to squeeze what Kamau has meant to us, husband Martin and me, into a few words, which we submitted for an upcoming issue of POUI, a new journal forthcoming from UWI’s Cave Hill campus. The submission was late, mea culpa, and we haven’t heard back from them, so in case it doesn’t make the issue, here’s what we said:

Early sixties. Kamau and Doris came. After that nothing was the same. Pam and Martin were in Noel Vaz's production of RITES OF PASSAGE at the Creative Arts Centre. Mortimo on the big drum, Archie Hudson-Phillips the fucking negro man. Nothing like that before. We still have the marked copy of the book. Martin took Kamau's course, "History, Society and Ideas". After that he wasn't the same. Now we join in the Missa Solemnis to celebrate fifty amazing years. Ave, Kamau. Vere, rara avis, sui generis! Happy Birthday!

Over the years, I’ve written poems for Kamau. The first, called simply, ‘Poem,’ appeared in my first collection, Journey Poem, in 1989. It’s reproduced here as it appeared on page 41.

POEM

It grows inside you
like a child
its meanings secret
like the peal of bells
heard
and their music
long after

The rubric scratches
on the retina
the drums sound
but no spirit starts

Until
the fingers of the blood
assort the images
the wind remembers
sifting the long grass
the womb impulses
summoning
the beast

In
a new testament
the Word

for Edward Kamau Brathwaite

In 2000, there was a wonderful celebration of his 70th birthday at NYU facilitated in part by Tim Reiss, Professor Emeritus in Comparative Literature, in which I was privileged to take part. Poets, scholars in many disciplines, singers, artists, philosophers and admirers gathered to celebrate Kamau’s 70th birthday. On that occasion, I read a much longer poem dedicated to Kamau called "Caliban Calypso". It appears in my third book of poetry, Certifiable, published in 2001 by Goose Lane Editions, Fredericton, B.C. There’s a link to "Caliban Calypso" here:

http://www.nyu.edu/calabash/vol2no1/

And finally, a suite of sonnets for Kamau called “Remembering Nothing.” The suite is one of thirty or so that constitute the book of poems on which I am currently working. It's tentatively titled, Litany on the Line: subversive sonnets to remember the abolition of the slave trade in 1807. The first two sonnets in “Remembering Nothing” appeared in an issue of BIM: Arts for the 21st century, a recent revival of the original BIM, but the entire suite is composed of three poems and I reproduce it here, as we wish Kamau once more, Happy Birtday! Happy Birtday! Happy Birtday, Kamau, from everybody! Happy Birtday!

Suite Six: Remembering Nothing
For Kamau Brathwaite

Minnesota: Dakota word meaning 'water stained with sky'

There is a continuing candlelight vigil for peace on a bridge across the Mississippi in Minnesota, once a week, every week.

Let me remember nothing, not recall
this watchful bridge of fireflies that spans
a torrent with a name we schoolers spelled
a pride of little cats unfettered from
the cages of our elementary zoo who screeched
"M-I, crooked letter crooked letter I, crooked
letter crooked letter I, hunch back hunch
back I — that's how you spell Mi/ssi/ssipp/i!"
The vigil fires watch one night every week,
week after week a humming loop of light
bright chant against the Babylon of war.
Dakota people join the elements
to make a name for water stained with sky.
So Minnesota writes its liquid prayer.

Let me forget the brethren and their queens,
jacketed men and their fat bougie wives,
students war torn from skirmishes inside
the muddy trenches of the minibus,
beggars, vendors, workers in the health trade,
the tourist trade, the education trade,
the trades of politics and government,
joined with sweat-pasted fingers to declare
before the Mighty Eagle's embassy:
"You people better stop this war." These tilt
the forces: Arab men tortured in Abu Graib,
Sioux warriors cut off at Wounded Knee,
Darfurian women raped, numberless slaves
wave after wave corralled in this green sea.

Let me not recollect you ached to fight
sharpies manipulating war machines
who conned the credulous with WMDs
to raise crusades against the infidel –
and there are those who don’t believe in hell?
Those silver pieces changing, changing hands
for guns, grenades, tanks, rockets, missiles, bombs,
the miscellaneous tambourines of war…
All you with palms crossed by those pretty coins?
Beware the anthem rising in your throats
beware your fingers plucking at those strings
beware your feet tap-tapping to the notes.
What if the show you staged and took to play
abroad opened upon the Great White Way?

© Pamela Claire Mordecai 2010

Stephen Colella, LKTYP Dramaturg and dramaturg for EL NUMERO UNO

2010-01-31T18:20:00.000-08:00

Today was the first preview of El Numero Uno. The villagers in Lopinot are out in the world, fabulously costumed, gorgeously lit, making their own music and telling the story of their town's predicament and how they deal with it... Big thanks to everyone, actors, creative team, administrative team, front of house, production, sales, marketing, volunteers, sponsors, the remarkable thespians, ahrdi zina mandiela, the director, and the artistic director, Allen MacIniss, who took a chance on a teenage pig. So many people have worked together to make El Numero Uno happen, one of them being LKTYP's dramaturg, Stephen Collela, whom we feature today.

Stephen, who hails from south of the border, down Philly way, is a graduate of the Masters of Philosophy (MPhil) Dramaturgy program at the University of Glasgow and has a BA in English with Minors in Theatre and German from Loyola College in Baltimore. Among his past projects at LKTYP: Co-adapter of Love You Forever…And More Munsch (Dora Award, Outstanding TYA Production/Canada Council Theatre for Young Audiences Prize), Dramaturgy for The Princess & the Handmaiden, Hana’s Suitcase, i think i can (Dora Award, Outstanding New Musical), and Touch the Sky.

Stephen kindly agreed to answer some of my questions. Here's our little chat.

Dramaturgs seem to do all kinds of things, according to which country or which theatre tradition, or indeed which company they work with. What is your job at LKTYP?

Well, as you said, dramaturgs do all kinds of things and that holds true not just for the position in general but for my work at LKTYP as well. The primary focus of my work is our new play development. For our purposes, this means not only working directly with the playwrights, in the workshops and on the scripts, but also casting and organizing the workshops, managing the play development budget, managing our unsolicited script submissions, reading previously produced scripts and working with Allen, our Artistic Director, on our long-term planning. In addition to this work, I also coordinate our auditions, see productions that we could potentially present at our theatre, occasionally work with Educational Services on the study guides and proof all of our external documents. I also get involved with mundane things like tech support and fixing photocopiers, but that's more by happenstance than design. I have probably left a few things out, but one of the best things about my job is that the requirements are diverse and that helps to keep things fresh and interesting.

Dramaturgs are sometimes playwrights. Have you written plays?

I, along with Sue Miner, adapted five short stories of Robert Munsch that were staged at LKTYP. The play was called Love You Forever...And More Munsch. It won the Dora Award for Outstanding TYA production that year and was produced at Carousel Theatre this past fall. It will also be running for a week at the Stirling Festival this summer. But, other than that one piece, no other playwriting for me yet.

Does dramaturgy differ from play to play?

Dramaturgy is always different play to play, even working with the same playwright. There isn't really a set process. It depends on the individual needs of the play as well as the individual needs of the playwright. There are similar features in that each dramaturgical relationship requires good communication and a healthy amount of respect for who you are working with and what you are working on, but every instance needs to be tailored to the project's needs.

You were involved with developing El Numero Uno over a number of years. Is this usually the case?

I think it's normal to expect a script to take at least a couple of years to develop. Plays come to us in very different states. Sometimes they are a kernel of an idea and other times they have already had a few drafts and been through a workshop process. Frequently they end up somewhere in between. What is important is not to allow a schedule to dictate the development of the play, but to work to the needs of the play and allow the development to run its course before deciding to program it. Giving the play (and the playwright) that time to breathe and take the proper amount of time with the development as they require is what leads me to say that normally a couple of years is to be expected.

Was there anything particular or peculiar about El Numero Uno?

Can I say the playwright and not have her upbraid me? Of course I am teasing, except to say that she was particularly lovely and peculiar in her indulgence of my occasional brattiness. I would say that the particularness of El Numero Uno is, as Allen has said previously, the Shakespearian nature of the language. And I take that not just to mean the poetry of it, but also that it uses an English that is at once both familiar and strange to the majority of North American speakers. That character and richness is what made the play both fascinating and challenging. For me it required extra special care to be sure that I understood everything I was responding to. Fortunately I had a lovely group comprised of the playwright, director and workshop actors to help illuminate that process for me and make that task as easy as possible.

Any final comments?

When all is said and done I'll miss being able to work with Pam, but I'm glad that her little wiggly pig has finally made it to the stage.

Many thanks for answering my questions, and for helping to make El Numero Uno happen, Stephen!

Making music in EL NUMERO UNO

2010-01-25T20:01:00.000-08:00

Here's Cathy Nosaty, our brilliant composer, conductor, sound designer and music maker, who featured in Jahworld's post of January 22.

Here's a great quote from Frank Zappa.

"Information is not knowledge. Knowledge is not wisdom. Wisdom is not truth. Truth is not beauty. Beauty is not love. Love is not music. Music is the best."

Zappa was an American composer, electric guitarist, record producer, and film director who died in 1993 at the age of fifty three. A versatile self-taught composer and perfomer, he wrote rock, jazz, electronic, and classical works. He penned the lyrics to all his songs and was an iconoclast who frequently used humour to criticize the status quo.

As a person for whom words are life and livelihood, this capitulating to music isn't easy, but there's a certain inexorability about Zappa's logic. I'm not entirely sure how songs found their way into EL NUMERO UNO, nor what prompted me to think I could write both lyrics and music for Uno's signature tune. But willy-nilly the songs came and melodies insinuated themselves, some traditional, some that would need to be written for the purpose. The play that has emerged would not be what it is without them.

Watching and listening to Cathy work with the cast of EL NUMERO UNO to make the music happen is riveting. She weaves instruments and voices, separately and together, lays bedtracks, discovers sound trails, conjures with these elements – because it is conjuring, it is magic, this thing that cements words and actions, marries players and audience and moves them into an other space, beyond conflict and contention, that is at once full of sound and joyfully quiet.

Music is indeed the best and Cathy is indeed a consummate music maker.

How to survive during earthquakes: Doug Copp's "TRIANGLE OF LIFE" with links to comments/advice from the Amer Red Cross, Snopes, the UWI Seismic Unit

2010-01-24T12:07:00.000-08:00

This post ends with ten recommendations for earthquake safety from a man named Doug Copp, who is the Rescue Chief and Disaster Manager of American Rescue Team International. (The American Red Cross points out that this is "a private company not affiliated with the U.S. Government or other agency".) Copp's recommendations came to me from a friend in Fort Lauderdale who had been sent them by a classmate of ours who lives and works in Bel Air, near Port au Prince, Haiti.

Go to http://www.bpaonline.org/Emergencyprep/arc-on-doug-copp.html for the 'American Red Cross response to "Triangle of Life" by Doug Copp.' The ARC takes issue with some of Doug Copp's recommendations (nos 1, 4, 6 and 8 below, as far as I can gather) and defends its "Drop, Cover and Hold On" advice as being appropriate for structures built according to US codes and specifications.

The American Red Cross article (I recommend that readers look at it themselves) ends like this: 'The American Red Cross, being a US-based organization, does not extend its recommendations to apply in other countries. What works here [i.e., in the US] may not work elsewhere, so there is no dispute that the "void identification method" or the "Triangle of Life" may indeed be the best thing to teach in other countries where the risk of building collapse, even in moderate earthquakes, is great.

Readers should also check Snopes

http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/household/triangle.asp

which publishes Copp's article in its entirety as well as reservations about his advice. (Many of these are quarrels with Copp's professional behaviour.)

Caribbean readers may wish to consult advice from the UWI seismic unit at
http://www.uwiseismic.com/General.aspx?id=15

Interestingly enough, The American Red Cross and Doug Copp agree that standing in doorways is NOT RECOMMENDED. The UWI Seismic Unit continues to give that advice.

Here are Doug Copp's recommendations. I pass them on for your consideration, (a) aware that (1) is obviously an exaggeration – his syntax is dicey as well – and (b) with my own warning that jumping from windows, balconies and openings that are high off the ground can result in injury and death.

TEN TIPS FOR EARTHQUAKE SAFETY

1) Most everyone who simply "ducks and covers" WHEN BUILDINGS COLLAPSE are crushed to death. People who get under objects, like desks or cars, are crushed.

2) Cats, dogs and babies often naturally curl up in the fetal position. You should too in an earthquake. It is a natural safety/survival instinct. You can survive in a smaller void. Get next to an object, next to a sofa, next to a large bulky object that will compress slightly but leave a void next to it.

3) Wooden buildings are the safest type of construction to be in during an earthquake. Wood is flexible and moves with the force of the earthquake. If the wooden building does collapse, large survival voids are created. Also, the wooden building has less concentrated, crushing weight. Brick buildings will break into individual bricks. Bricks will cause many injuries but less squashed bodies than concrete slabs.

4) If you are in bed during the night and an earthquake occurs, simply roll off the bed. A safe void will exist around the bed. Hotels can achieve a much greater survival rate in earthquakes, simply by posting a sign on the back of the door of every room telling occupants to lie down on the floor, next to the bottom of the bed during an earthquake.

5) If an earthquake happens and you cannot easily escape by getting out the door or window, then lie down and curl up in the fetal position next to a sofa, or large chair.

6) Most everyone who gets under a doorway when buildings collapse is killed. How? If you stand under a doorway and the doorjamb falls forward or backward you will be crushed by the ceiling above. If the door jam falls sideways you will be cut in half by the doorway. In either case, you will be killed!

7) Never go to the stairs. The stairs have a different "moment of frequency" (they swing separately from the main part of the building). The stairs and remainder of the building continuously bump into each other until structural failure of the stairs takes place. The people who get on stairs before they fail are chopped up by the stair treads - horribly mutilated. Even if the building doesn't collapse, stay away from the stairs. The stairs are a likely part of the building to be damaged. Even if the stairs are not collapsed by the earthquake, they may collapse later when overloaded by fleeing people. They should always be checked for safety, even when the rest of the building is not damaged.

8) Get near the Outer Walls of Buildings or Outside Of Them If Possible – It is much better to be near the outside of the building rather than the interior. The farther inside you are from the outside perimeter of the building the greater the probability that your escape route will be blocked.

9) People inside of their vehicles are crushed when the road above falls in an earthquake and crushes their vehicles; which is exactly what happened with the slabs between the decks of the Nimitz Freeway. The victims of the San Francisco earthquake all stayed inside of their vehicles. They were all killed. They could have easily survived by getting out and sitting or lying next to their vehicles. Everyone killed would have survived if they had been able to get out of their cars and sit or lie next to them. All the crushed cars had voids 3 feet high next to them, except for the cars that had columns fall directly across them.

10) I discovered, while crawling inside of collapsed newspaper offices and other offices with a lot of paper, that paper does not compact. Large voids are found surrounding stacks of paper.

More on Catastrophes

2010-01-23T13:44:00.000-08:00

Funny, the extent to which we're brainwashed, the extent to which we are, most of us, committed to being part of the herd, to looking to someone else, some supposedly expert person, to tell us how to think and what to do. (You’ve heard my views on experts before.)

When I was a young woman, I started opening taps in public bathrooms with my elbow. I'd seen how poor people's habits of hygiene were, and epidemics of this and that were beginning to move fiercely here and there. I thought it was a good idea, but was also secretly ashamed, having been made to feel foolish about my obsession with cleanliness when I was a child. I'd hardly have imagined that years later, I'd see this elbow routine recommended in pamphlets and books on hygiene, that, along with pushing doors open with your back and not putting your handbag on the bathroom floor, etc, etc. All of these were old habits for me but it would take the threat of vicious, swiftly speading viruses before their basic good sense would be evident.

We all believe there's nothing to be done about earthquakes. They arrive of their own volition and in their own intensities, and we can’t tell when they will come. I don't believe that. I've already said on this blog that if we keep pumping massive amounts of viscous matter (as in, oil and pitch) and natural gases out of the earth, we're removing cushions that the earth's mantle needs. It stands to reason – otherwise they wouldn't be there. It's the equivalent of saying we can take air out of our lungs, or water out of our bodies, and have it make no difference. But the earth isn't alive, is it? Or is it?

I've seen one article that suggests that the earthquake was caused (perhaps accidentally) by the massive manipulation of waves in the ionosphere, but I'm not going there till I find out whether it's from loonies, mischief makers or serious people. I think it's within the realm of possibility, and I'm as far from New Age as anybody could get. A bit of a conspiracy theorist maybe, but that's just because I believe Donne and "doubt wisely". I don't see why I should bow down and worship science and expertise that is demonstrably less scientific and expert as the days go by. Makes a lot more sense to me to worship an inscrutable God. At least he’s up front and says his ways are higher than mine and I’ll only start to figure him out after long study.

But we've been programmed remarkably well. We trust our banks and insurers to be reliable, our doctors to be skilled, and our levees to hold, until something disastrous happens. Consider, after all, how we've behaved since the economic collapse. Have people changed their banking habits, switched their business away from the Big Banks? Not that I've heard. Those very banks are making enormous profits once again. We know those experts are greedy robber barons who ruined – wait for it – the world economy, but we trust them with our hard earned pence anyway.

Consider that in 1975, E.B. White wrote an essay about how vulnerable the city of New York was to precisely the kind of attack that arrived in 2001. But E.B. White was a literary man, not an expert on war. What would he know?

So even if no one else is interested, I'll try to find out what the Chinese, and anyone else studying the matter, have discovered in their efforts to predict earthquakes. The devastation in Haiti would have occurred to no purpose if we, in Haiti and elsewhere, don't try to learn all the lessons it can teach us. There are obvious ones about helping one another, building homes and offices better, the importance of re-forestation, and so on, and there are less obvious ones about, say, how to move with dispatch when catastrophes happen. Why, for instance, is aid getting to Haitians so slowly? There was an interesting sermon at mass this week about how good Jesus was at crowd control. The people were pressing in on him, so he got in a boat and put out to sea and preached from there. No danger then, of people crushing one another in their rush to get close to him. Similarly, he sat people down before he fed them and distributed the food so they all got. Maybe we should check with him?

We’ve learned from recent tsunami events and there’s now a warning system that’s been proved to work. I think there are efforts we can make to at least foresee when earthquakes might happen, and so prevent the kind of massive loss of life and wholesale devastation that's occurred in Haiti. Selah!

EL NUMERO UNO takes musical shape with Cathy Nosaty

2010-01-22T20:28:00.000-08:00

Friday, January 22 2:00 p.m.

I sat in on readings of EL NUMERO UNO last week. Our director, ahdri zina mandiela, lets me visit as the play takes shape. Thanks, ahdri! I appreciate it.

Long time since I’ve been this side of a stage.

This week the cast is on its feet, Astrid Janson’s dazzling costumes are being fitted, Kimberly Purtell is working on lighting design, and Cathy Nosaty is busy with the music. And that’s just a little bit of what’s going on.

A while back, I promised more about some of the people who are part of the creative team. It won’t be everybody because so many amazing folks are working to make UNO happen, but I’ll do my best. I thought I’d focus on the behind-the scenes folks, whom the public don’t usually pay attention to quite as much as they pay attention to the actors.

I’m going to the theatre a bit later to listen in as Cathy, our sound designer, works with the cast, and serendipitously – well, sort of – today we feature Cathy, whose talents are multifarious. An award-winning musician, composer, conductor and music educator, Cathy was one of the first recipients of The Banff Centre's Paul D. Fleck fellowships. Like another friend of mine who hails from Winnipeg, she’s also a poet-of-the-moment, an e-mail rhymester who lets no time stir before she delivers a message in verse!

So here’s Cathy’s bio-note, a missive in the meticulous manner of Chef Trenton of Cochonville, punctiliously penned by Cathy herself.

Thanks Cathy! Especially for transforming my likl Uno tune!

“Cathy is delighted to be part of the creative team for EL NUMERO UNO! She has created scores for theatre productions for regional and independent theatres across Canada and her work has been heard on international stages with Ronnie Burkett’s Theatre Of Marionettes. At LKTYP: GHOSTS AND LADDERS (Dynamo Theatre), THERE’S A MOUSE IN MY HOUSE (Carousel Players), COMET IN MOOMINLAND (Manitoba Theatre For Young People) and the LKTYP productions I THINK I CAN, THE MAN WHOSE MOTHER WAS A PIRATE and THE NUTMEG PRINCESS. Documentary film scores include BIODAD, BELOVED: THE DOMINICAN SISTERS OF ST. CECILIA, and the animated series DARK YEARS co-composed with her partner Mark Korven. Last year she was Assistant Conductor/Keyboardist for the Canadian company of JERSEY BOYS and has been nominated for four Dora Awards for original music, sound design and musical direction. “

Can we avoid catastrophes like the earthquake in Haiti?

2010-01-18T21:38:00.000-08:00

First, manners. Best wishes for 2010! Hope you were fortified in body and spirit over Christmas, Kwanzaa and/or Hanukkah, and that you are warm and well and anticipating a peaceful, productive year.

So hard to say that with Haiti on my mind. There’s something apocalyptic about the devastation caused by the earthquake on January 12, which occurred at 4:53 pm and was also felt in Jamaica, in the parishes of Portland and Kingston and St Andrew. The terrible ruin and the rising death toll urge us to consider what can be done, if anything, to avoid its ever happening again, in Haiti or anywhere else.

Haiti is on the Gonave Microplate, a narrow sliver of the earth's crust at the edge of the larger Caribbean Plate which is south of it and extends over most of the Caribbean Sea. Chris Rowan has an explanation of the event at

http://scienceblogs.com/highlyallochthonous/2010/01/tectonics_of_the_haiti_earthqu.php

The earthquake occurred along the Enriquillo Fault, part of a ‘strike-slip feature’ that joins the Yallahs-Plantain Garden Fault and separates the Gonave plate from the Caribbean Plate. (For non-geographers, think of a fault as a fracture or break running along at a certain point in the earth’s crust. Rock on one side of the break can move sideways with respect to rock on the other side, or rock on one side can move up and the other side, down. Sideways movements are called strike-slip; up-down movements are called dip-slip. The earth can do a combination movement as well.)

Rowan says, “There is nothing particularly unusual about this earthquake given the tectonic context. … however, Haiti is a very poor country... so ...its government was not in a position to really do much to prepare for the inevitable large earthquake, leaving tens of thousands to suffer the consequences.”

(One hopes things are being done about the inevitable super quake that is predicted for the San Andreas Fault.)

What is deeply distressing is that, according to a briefing on naturenews

‘…a team led by Paul Mann at the University of Texas at Austin has been monitoring this fault for some years. In a presentation to the 18th Caribbean Geological Conference in 2008, the team pointed out that their models showed a slip rate of around 8 millimetres per year on the fault. ...they warned that this, combined with the fact that the last known major earthquake near Haiti was in 1751, could add up to yield "~2 meters of accumulated strain deficit, or a Mw=7.2 earthquake if all is released in a single event today".

One of the team members, geophysicist Eric Calais of Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, said in an e-mail to Nature: "Unfortunately we were pretty much right on."’

So there was some advance warning. The truth is of course that all the countries on the edge of the plate – which includes a big chunk of the northern coastline of South America as well as central America and most of the islands in the Caribbean – ought to be on continuous earthquake watch.

But what does the state of watchfulness entail? What can people who live in earthquake-prone zones do? We know some of the things: have adequate building codes that are rigorously enforced; conduct regular earthquake drills in schools and workplaces so people know what to do when they feel the first tremors; have medical kits widely available and encourage people to get basic training in first aid; maintain emergency services that have protocols in which they are well versed and the resources to execute them. Perhaps, adapt some of the building styles of the Japanese who have endured this kind of seismic activity for ages...

The ideal thing, though, would be to know when the earthquake is coming.

There is one famous case where the successful forecasting of a quake led to the saving of many lives. In 1975 Chinese officials ordered the evacuation of the city of Haicheng (population one million) mere days before a quake that had a 7.3 magnitude. Only a small portion of the population was hurt or killed. If the city had not been evacuated, fatalities and injuries could have been in the hundreds of thousands.

The observation of animal behaviour was in part what led to the prediction of that earthquake. Geologists tend to dismiss strange animal behaviour as a reliable predictor of earthquakes, but biologist Rupert Sheldrake disagrees. He admits that odd animal behaviour doesn't occur before all quakes, but his research on major quakes such as those in California (1994) and Greece and Turkey (1999) identifies peculiar activity in caged birds, dogs and cats preceding the tremors. The Chinese continue to study animal behaviour as a predictor – snakes, horses, cows and pigs all behaved oddly prior to the Haicheng event.

Sheldrake, who feels that more research into this predictor should be done, proposes a hotline or web site where people could report any strange behaviour in their animals. The incoming messages could be analyzed by computer to determine where they originated and pinpoint any areas from which there were sudden surges in incoming calls or e-mails, since these might indicate that a quake was imminent. Checks would have to be made to ensure that the behaviour couldn't be attributed to other sources and, so as to avoid issuing false warnings, the animal data would be used in conjunction with other monitors such as seismological measurements.

Sheldrake feels that "Such a project would capture the imagination of millions of people, encourage large-scale public participation and research... What is holding this research back is not money but dogmatism and narrow-mindedness."

All this, according to National Geographic http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/11/1111_031111_earthquakeanimals_2.html

There are now many amateur weather watchers worldwide. Perhaps bloggers, tweeters and other internet users could take on the project. Surely there are scientists who would collate the data, and surely it would be better (and less costly) to evacuate and find that an alarm was false, than fail to follow the animal cues and face devastation. The world is full of towns and cities that are not earthquake proof. Haiti is by no means alone in that respect. And increasingly we are being taught that we should listen to the planet. It can speak eloquently to us if we don't decide that we are determined not to hear.

It's hard to imagine that listening to the dogs and cats might have spared Haiti. For sure, our thoughts and prayers are with the people of Haiti.

EL NUMERO UNO opens 4 Feb 2010 at the Lorraine Kimsa Theatre for Young People in Toronto

2009-12-09T21:16:00.001-08:00

Ras Onelove, El Numero Uno and Compere Lapin, three characters from El Numero Uno

computer glitch... please forgive absence of accents in text

My children's play, El Numero Uno, is an original Caribbean tale about a little pig captured by greedy twin monsters who threaten his island with starvation. If he is to save the day, the Number One Pig will need big-big help from his neighbours – and a magical soup! Directed by b current's ahdri zina mandiela, with design and music in the hands of Astrid Janson and Cathy Nosaty respectively, and featuring a cast of Canadian/Caribbean actors, the play opens on Thursday February 4, with previews on Jan 31 (2:00 p.m.), February 1 (10:15 a.m.), February 2 (10:15 a.m.) and February 3 (1:00 p.m.). There's a Teacher Preview at 7:00 p.m. on February 3 as well.

The play has been some time gestating! The story was first hatched for the 25th IBBY Conference, held in Groningen, Netherlands, in August 1995. Dutch author and illustrator, Max Velthuijs, created a series of illustrations and four storytellers from various parts of the world were invited to create tales to go along with Max's images. These were projected on screen when the stories were being told to the audience at the conference. Thus was El Numero Uno, aka Le Premier Cochon, aka the Number One Pig, born.

I'm pleased to say that the original story about El Numero Uno was a big hit in Holland. (Max Velthuijs, I only just learned, died in 2005. RIP, Max.) In his comments at the conference, he said he was surprised that, though the story took place at Christmastime (it was originally set at that time, and the first song was a Christmas lullaby that I'll append to this post), Uno was frolicking outside, enjoying sunshine and seasonal flowers, red poinsettias and white euphorbia. I think he was quite serious too...

Uno went underground for the next few years, re-emerging in or around 2001 in answer to a call for treatments from LKTYP. The play was chosen for funding and by 2002, a script was in LKTYP's artistic director's hands. (Pierre Tetrault was the AD at the time.) It had a reading not long after the incoming artistic director, Allen MacInnis, came to LKTYP, and has been in workshop over the years since, intensively so in the last three years. It's been shaped and reshaped in that time under the nurturing eyes of dramaturg Stephen Colella, as well as those of the artistic director.

Some amazing people have taken part in the readings, and I thank them all, enormously. The development process was constructive, instructive, and on occasion hilariously disruptive – all in all, immensely satisfying in itself. I'll have more to say about LKTYP's wonderful staff, the play's director, designer, music director, and the cast members in my posts between now and the opening. And of course, there will be more about the play itself.

Meantime, please encourage everyone you know, especially folks in Toronto, especially teachers with classes in the 8 to 18 age group, to come to see Uno. (It's really suitable for anyone from eight to eighty!) Teachers should make their bookings now, for February fast approaches! The play is enormously funny, and though it's a fantasy, it addresses issues faced not only by children and adolescents, but by communities everywhere that are put to the test by forces over which they have no control. So though it's amusing, it's serious too. It's got songs, raps, and is a great mashup of creoles and French and Spanish and Dread Talk. It has a band of Jonkanoo masqueraders, original and traditional music, and great costumes.

El Numero Uno isn't entirely why I've been absent here on Jahworld. I was away visiting the marvelous Zoey, spent some time in Orlando collecting some sun, and was on retreat at Eastern Point Retreat House in Gloucester-on-Sea, MA, for a week, where one morning I watched mesmerized as huge gray green waves were herded ashore under the lash of Hurricane Ida – not fifty yards from where I was sitting eating lunch. (One wall of the lunchroom is a long, uninterrupted glass window.) Earlier in the week, we'd had great weather, and enjoyed birdwatching and seal gazing. The seals drape themselves over the rocks and take sun, vanishing with the incoming tide, re-emerging when it's out.

Back in Toronto, I've been catching up, or trying to, and I've been giving the Number One Pig some attention. More on him in due course, as I've promised. And now, also as I've promised, two verses of the Christmas song, "Little Brown Jesus".

"Little Brown Jesus"

Little brown Jesus
Born in the cold
Quick Jesus’ Mommy –
Cover up him mole.

Cover up him mole quick
Before him start to sneeze
Cover him quick from
The chilly Christmas breeze.

© Pamela Mordecai 2002

Stephen Harper's ecology; Stephen Harper's prison housing

2009-10-17T18:20:00.000-07:00

Well, once again I managed to miss Blog Action Day, this time about climate change. I forgive myself by saying that it's one of this blog's ongoing concerns. It's like Christmas and Easter being every day of the year, rather than December 25th and whenever the calendar dictates. What I did do on that day was try to figure out MY carbon footprint, which anyone can go to Zerofootprint (link provided on this blog) and do. Some things that I/we are already doing (medium size car – looking for smaller, no air conditioning, drive or train rather than fly) come up looking good, but we still have a far way to go. The Danes and the British are good at this. Canada, I'm ashamed to say, can only be described as disgraceful, the government for its total lack of perspicacity on this matter, and us Canadians for being wanton consumers of energy.

But of course, without leaders who can 'vision' for them, the people perish. We can take that quite literally in the case of climate change. I always feel pretty bad about the climate change thing, because I'm not looking at living another 50 years. In other words, I don't think it's climate change that's going to kill me. Stephen Harper's children have many, many years before them, which is why I cannot understand the dimwitted-ness of the man on this particular matter. Surely he should wish to act out of enlightened self-interest?

But some people refuse to learn and Mr Harper is dedicated to not learning on other matters as well. One of these 'other matters' is affordable housing. It appears, as some wag in the Globe and Mail's letter-writing column has pointed out, that his notion of providing affordable housing is building prisons, for which purpose his government has just voted millions of dollars, in anticipation of an increase in the prison population as a result of "new, tough laws". For crying out loud! Doesn't he know that homelessness is a direct and indirect cause of crime? It seems to me that even a nitwit would understand that it's smarter and wiser to spend $200,000 on building one unit of housing for a family of 4, 5 or 6 (he'll only have to do it once) than to spend it to house 10 prisoners for ONE year? (A rough estimate of the cost of keeping an inmate in jail for a year is $20,000.00.) Is that so hard to grasp?

But then being 'tough on crime' plays so well to the voting fans, doesn't it? Just like banging out a Beatles song with Yo-Yo Ma! I couldn't believe that Harper's ratings climbed in the next couple days after that (SARCASM HERE, IN CASE IT'S MISSED) signal event. Have we turned into a nation of blockheads? We don't need prisons, Mr Harper. We need housing, clean water, an improved social safety net, improved health care, child care, decent schools. When we don't have these things, crime ensues. As a good fundamentalist, you know that God isn't sitting up there, making criminals and sending them down to be born. He makes babies; we turn them into criminals.

Michelle Obama's – and most black people's? – white ancestry

2009-10-14T17:44:00.000-07:00

"Everybody have their white grandmother!" including the wife of the President of the United States. Well, it's a white male progenitor, in her case. Many of us have always assumed it to be true of black people and white ancestors, grandma or grandpa. There's an apocryphal tale of Kamau Brathwaite stopping the presses at Oxford as they were about to print The Development of Creole Society 1770-1820 because he had found enough evidence of racial intermarriage in church registries to suggest that it had been more extensive than previously thought. So he had rewriting to do, for which the venerable presses at Oxford waited.

If we accept the notion of more pervasive white ancestries than supposed, there are implications as well for all those persons who insist that people who are phenotypically black are the only true blacks in the diaspora. In other words, if your genes haven't cooperated to produce very dark skin, tings tuff wit yu. But I guess it may be a case of, "My white grandmother is okay, for she kept her genes to herself. Too bad about yours!"

There are several academics and an author (Ishmael Reed) offering comments on the matter of Mrs Obama's white ancestry in the New York Times, including one biology prof who reminds us that human beings are far more similar than they are different. According to Mark Shriver, "on the molecular level... 85-95 percent of human genetic variation is shared across all populations." This could suggest that race is only skin deep, but Shriver doesn't rush to say that. I'm not prepared to agree, since I think the history of a people finds its way into their molecular structure, so, in a sense, race may be a people's history. And there's a remark that Prof Shriver makes that is consonant with this notion: "The genome is not singular and different genes have independent evolutionary histories." Now there's an interesting discussion to pursue at another time...

And we now know that humankind began in Africa, with homo sapiens heading out from there, not north, but rather south and then across to India, the Far East and Australia, so that – presumably black skinned – folks were 'down under' before we humans made our way to Europe in a much later migration. In sum, what we really ought to be saying is, "Everybody have their black grandmother!"

Two interesting by-the-way things. As I understand it (always ready to be corrected!) studies of mitochondrial DNA in fossils have established that all human beings link back to a single female placenta, and therefore, progenitor – the original, black Eve! Why the fundamentalists haven't galloped off with this, I can't imagine. (Maybe skin colour getting in the way again?) Also, human beings are more differentiated in Africa than anywhere else on earth because humankind has been on that continent the longest.

Anyway, all of that is a long preamble to my own imagined account of forced racial intermixing, as related in the story of Great-Granny Mac. The whole poem (I've included only a part here) is to be found in The True Blue of Islands, available on amazon. It's a long narrative poem that tells the tale of Madeleine Lazare Mungo, a young girl whose family is broken up and sent to owners on different estates. Missing her sisters and brothers and mother, she's enslaved on the plantation of a black slave owner named Bellmartin. So it's not the traditional white-master-rapes-black-slave story, but it witnesses to the fact that there was coercion of all sorts in slavery times, and so plenty blood mixing. Here then begins the story of Madeleine Lazare Mungo:

Great Granny Mac

1
Before Bellmartin buy Great Gran
she working in the pikni gang
on a plantation that belong
to Mr Serle, a backra man.

That white man own her family –
mother, two brother, two sister
and she, Madeleine. “He was
a cruel man,” my Great-gran say.

“He love a whip. The cat’ o’nine
was like a flask of wine
to him. He could get drunk
with lashing slaves. When his

“arm hoist is like you see
inebriation rise inside
his veins his muscles brain
his whole entire flesh on fire.

“He lash man, woman, pikni
too. Even his friends advise,
‘Don’t be a fool. You spoiling
your own property! You pay

good money for those blacks!’
He answer: “So – I flog them
as I please.’ One day
sudden the man take in

“with belly workings.
Doctor come but cannot
find no remedy. ‘I’d change
the cook,’ he recommend.

“ ‘Some nigger trying to poison
me? I’ll rid me of the lot
of them.’ Backra break up
our family. Sell us all bout.

“I bawling watch my brothers go
two different ways. I see one bigger sis
leave for Green Island; t’other one
they take to Annotto Bay.

“They haul my mother to the far
north shore. Me, smallest, stay
on a modest estate in town.
Mr. Bellmartin purchase me.

ii
“The day I see him little most
I drop down from the sight. Top hat
and ruffles riding crop barouche –
this man as black as night!

“When he buy me, I was seven
years old. For days I suffer fever
in my head. Don’t rise, don’t eat,
don’t sleep. Make up my mind

“to dead. Then Ma come in
a dream and say, ‘ Best you
let go of us, Madeleine.
Put us away – inside.’

“I do as Ma say. Rise
next day. I still can hear
her whispering
my name, ‘Madeleine’.”

iii
“At Bellmartin’s plantation
I turn cunning. More times
they catching me with book, paper
and pen. I well know if they find me

“with them things is plenty lashes
else is starve they starving me
for days. But chile, my navel string
cut on deceit, dissembly, lies.

“Tricky like Brer Anansi I
maintain ‘I only have such things
because Miss Meggie cannot bear
to play with any foolish

“darky girl.’ The little girl
is black as me but my excuse
don’t fall askew on any ear.
I go on with my tale.

“ “She say that I best learn
to read and write – and cipher too.
I try to learn, sir, though
it’s hard. I always likes to oblige.’

“Dropping a curtsy I open
my big eyes bold make four
with his — and I make sure
I learn to read like a machine.

“Poor Meggie struggling
with words dark like her own
black skin. I eat those words
like they is food.

iv
“Time I become fourteen
I cipher well enough to help
keep books for the estate.
‘This is my smartest nigger.’

“So say Bellmartin, and he rent
me out to some small-holding
folks too poor themselves
to employ help full-time

“to render their accounts.
I never like it from the first.
I know one of them small-hold
man was going grab hold of me

and take his dim-wit purple
pen and write his seed
inside my abdomen...

Anancy; Anancyism; ways of discovering and passing on stories

2009-09-18T09:43:00.000-07:00

This post grew like Topsy out of a response to a comment of Geoffrey Philp's. Thanks to Geoff, my friend, Ruth Minott Egglestone, FSJL, Martin, Nalo and all the folks who listen in to our conversations...

Geoff:

In general: I don't think we are ever 'just writers', in all the ways that signifies! Our interests and operations can never be just as writers because it's impossible for any of us to be just that. I also worry now, in my old age, about the dangers of arrogance, my own especially.

As for the case in point: I am now, as a result of our conversation, concerned not merely with the Anancy phenomenon itself, but with the procedural example it offers, the opportunity for finding out HOW TO FIND OUT about cultural tings, especially in an oral society. So for me, there IS a problem of being right, in the sense of accurate. My particular concerns are inevitably also as an old teacher, an editor, a compiler of textbooks, one who seeks to understand the culture, and especially one who is worried by those with power and access to the means of overhauling things and serving them up differently – whether on purpose or by mistake.

Those powerful people include us, you and me, and we need to care enough about our stories, our his/tories and her/stories, our myths, our conundrums, our ring games, etc., etc., to try to pass them on intact – for there will always be changes, willy-nilly, no matter how hard we try. Ruth Egglestone, for example, was correct, meticulous, scholarly, when she told us her source for that particular understanding of Anancyism, and gave us, therefore, the opportunity of asking, “Well, who is this person? What does he know?”

The stories and understandings will come in many forms, and that multiplicity, that variety, is also precious. Some of the stories will have changed over time, and we want to know about those changes and, if possible, when and why they occurred. And contemporary writers and storytellers will themselves make changes (as you, Geoff, have done in respect of Anancy, say) and that's good, too.

But I'd like to know when and who and why changes occurred, whether by accident, and, in that case, what was the nature of the accident, or whether on purpose, and in that case, what was the nature of the purpose. That's all part of the story, the history, belonging to it in the way an etymology (Cicero calls etymology the veriloquium) enriches the significance of a word. It pleases me, for example, that we can know how the word ‘chortle’ came about, that it was a conflation of chuckle and snort, coined by Lewis Carroll in THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS (1871). Knowing dat likl tory is part of my pleasure in the word.

For now, that's how I'm seeing our stories, including this Anancy one.

I do know that Anancy, before the Atlantic crossing, was Creator God, and that he survives in our Anancy Stories in a diminished state, as the Trickster-Spiderman, a version of, inter alia, the Signifying Monkey, and of the orisha variously known as Exú, Esu Eleggua, Esu Elegbara, Eshu Elegbara, Elegba, Legba, Legba-Petro, Maitre Carrefour and Eleda. (For one thing, he figures prominently in my PhD dissertation!) But I’d venture to say that Legba is NOT diminished, certainly not as Anancy is, and thereby hangs a tale in which I’m interested.

Nor have I ever thought of Anancy as weak, even in his diminished state on this side... But that’s perhaps best kept for another post, for hopefully did likl chat don't done yet. Selah!

Wayne Brown and Trevor Rhone

2009-09-18T00:12:00.000-07:00

I wrote this to a friend today about Wayne Brown and Trevor Rhone. I know she won't mind my repeating it here. There are tributes aplenty and richly deserved in the media to them both, but I wanted to say a little about what they meant to me, these men with strong personalities and views but without malice or guile – more than can be said for most of us!

"One mourns both men mostly because one will miss them. They are, after all, trite as it may be to say so, past pain, worry and distress at this point. I felt I knew Wayne well, perhaps more than our interaction justified, but he was always warm when one did see him, most recently here for Rachel[Manley]'s launch of HORSES IN HER HAIR... I was very disappointed that the online journal didn't work out. I think it would have given him such satisfaction if it had. Trevor I have known these last 50 years, though I've not seen much of him the last two-three decades! But I was part of the original Theatre 77 group, and we have always liked each other well, and I have always admired how absolutely confident he was from the beginning that he would make a big difference to theatre in Jamaica.

(I'm listening to an interview bet. Peter Nazareth and Wayne at http://digital.lib.uiowa.edu/cdm4/item_viewer.php?CISOROOT=/vwu&CISOPTR=57&CISOBOX=1&REC=7
as I write...)"

The excerpt from my e-mail ends here, but Brown-Nazareth interview connects nicely with a piece by Nicholas Laughlin in CRB's blog from a while back which celebrates crônicas, Wayne among them. http://www.meppublishers.com/online/crb/issues/index.php?pid=1036

An excerpt:

...it’s occurred to me that some of the most interesting work by contemporary Trinidadian writers does not come in conventional fictional or poetic forms at all, but rather in the form of fragmentary, discontinuous, first-person non-fiction narratives in the periodical press — i.e., newspaper columns — which we may have some difficulty identifying as “literary” — or even identifying as “narratives” — because of the format of their publication. I’d certainly include... Wayne Brown’s “In Our Time” columns, which began appearing in the Trinidad Guardian in 1984, moved around from one Trinidadian newspaper to another, and now appear in Jamaica, where Brown has settled, in the Observer. (Many of these columns — with their supple, acrobatic prose that can swoop from high to low, exalted to demotic, in a single paragraph — were collected in The Child of the Sea in 1989 and Landscape with Heron in 2000, where Brown describes them as “stories and remembrances”; it’s clear he’s thought of these pieces as literary from the start.)

Rest in peace, bredren. We all of us would be happy to have lived lives as worthwhile and as fulfilling as yours.

Is Anancyism the philosophy of taking serious ting make joke?

2009-09-15T20:31:00.000-07:00

In note ten of a paper entitled "Anancyism in Jamaican Pantomime," scholar Ruth Minott Egglestone says:

"Anancyism is significantly more than a pattern of anti-social behaviour... it is a philosophy which enables an individual to laugh in the midst of adversity and thereby survive."

Dr Egglestone credits Carlos de la Motta of Kingston, Jamaica with this explanation, and it is the one about which I was curious. We all agree that Anancy is a survivor and his ingenuity is the means by which he survives, often in the face of great adversity. But mightn't we be undoing Anancyism when we regard it as a philosophy, with all that that implies, when we contain it, package it, give it the pretended respectability of attitude, proceeding presumably from a principle, of determinedly standing up to the oppressor and laughing defiantly in his face?

That seems so serious, whereas the essence of Anancyism, from another perspective, is the absolute avoidance of any such seriousness. Instead, Anancyism is a modus operandi, a stylee, a mode of profiling as cording to which, by means of wiles, ruses and general trickify, Anansi approaches every bad situation as an opportunity for wukking him brain and gaining advantage, often unfair advantage, over not just his opponents, but pretty much anyone in his way, ef him is in dat kinda mood. In other words, Anancyism is indeed a pattern of behaviour, though I wouldn't necessarily call it anti-social since it's often directed against downpressors who would therefore not be part of a social group to which our Sneaky Spider could reasonably be asked or be considered obliged to show allegiance.

The other thing about Anancy is of course that he is not to be tied down - and so, perhaps, certainly not to anything so predictable as a philosophy? He is a man of surprises with something forever new up his sleeve. No Cogito ergo sum for him. He doesn't think to be. Rather Cogito ergo ago. He works his brain, and then he acts, and by his willful, whimsical, me-no-care behaviour, his dedication to rambunctiousness, he not only succeeds in being, he thrives at it.

They mystics tell us that in rare moments of pure being, moments of awe, we touch eternity and glimpse God. Perhaps that is what Anancy is after? Working his way back to his original role of Creator Deity, in which all his thought was action, and all his action was creating, and every act of creation was an occasion for laughter?

Anancyism... and sluggish systems

2009-09-10T18:34:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Geoffrey Philp for a great story in response to the last post, as well as the observation that: "There is something quintessentially Jamaican in this joke -- tragi-comedy, that Walcott says must be earned. It runs through our culture. We recognize the hard blows of life, yet affirm our dignity through humor."

I agree that 'taking serious tings make joke' is characteristic of our culture and should certainly (in some degree) be part of the stories that come out of it. Anancyism, as articulated and operated by our folk hero, Anancy, the original Spider Man, is perhaps another marker.

That brings me to a question. I'd like to know what folks understand the term "Anancyism" to mean. I've encountered some definitions that disagree (I'll come back to them in due course) and I know how I've always understood the term. Because there's lack of consensus, I'd be glad for wider feedback.

So to another, and quite different matter. There are some who say that one of the signs of impending apocalypse is the collapse of world communication systems. Seems that in some parts of the world, broadband, touted as the solution to 'super-fast' delivery of data, is failing to live up to its big promise. According to today's BBC World News:

"... in South Africa it seems the web is still no faster than a humble pigeon.

A Durban IT company pitted an 11-month-old bird armed with a 4GB memory stick against the ADSL service from the country's biggest web firm, Telkom.

Winston the pigeon took two hours to carry the data 60 miles - in the same time the ADSL had sent 4% of the data.

Telkom said it was not responsible for the firm's slow internet speeds."

Not entirely sure why Winston should be characterized as 'humble'... Seems the epithet in this case might better apply to the web firm's lackadaisical service; certainly it would not be inappropriate for the firm's attitude, in the face of its poor performance. (Vain hope!) But it's worth bearing in mind that old ways are worth preserving. After all, birds flew before planes and messages crossed distances before there were fibre-optic cables. Selah.

Writing Out of the Culture…

2009-09-06T20:00:00.000-07:00

It’s Martin’s proposition. Some Caribbean and Latin American authors write 'out of the culture.' So yesterday we spend a chunk of driving time (between South Hadley, MA and Toronto) batting this around. He clarifies: what he means is that they write from within the culture. ‘How can a reader recognize that kind of writing,’ I ask him. ‘What are its features? Does it perhaps have to do with language? Do those writers prefer vernacular languages? Is the extent to which they use those languages indicative of how deep into the culture they are, how far down they are dipping for the story?’

We agree that language would certainly be a marker. In colonized countries or countries where there has been an imperial presence, even if there’s been no formal ownership, the writer would privilege the vernacular, not the imperial 'standard' code. The local dialect would occur in dialogue as well as in the narrative, the reportage. We mention Samuel Selvon – someone who quintessentially wrote from inside Trini culture. In addition to language, the characters, the humour, the bad behave, the liming, mamaguying, masquerading, mauvais langue are all from this Caribbean root.

So we know the story must also have history, characters and mores, ways of ‘carrying on’ that are recognizably indigenous. Earl Lovelace is the first Caribbean author he names as an example. Right away I think that it’s not only writing from within the culture that he’s noticing. I don’t tell him yet, but I know that’s not all there is to it.

I talk about fable-like qualities in story, a particular style of narrative, one different from the customary ways, so that if, say, Anansi stories are the original Jamaican way of telling tales, the writer departs from them but still devises a mode that’s recognizably local. I know this native-but-something-more-than is what occasioned the mention of Earl at the start; I’m more sure when he mentions Gisele Pineau. I suspect this is in fact going beyond the cultural root to an artistic signature, something more mannered, author-pinned, though I'm just now saying so.

We talk about the ‘tale of the telling’ and the ‘telling of the tale’. If any one knows the source of these terms, I’d be glad to hear it. I’ve forgotten and haven’t succeeded in finding them on the Internet so far. We agree that there may be something about how the tale is told that can also mark its birth inside the culture, even when the approach to storytelling is innovative. So we’re not just talking language now: this is something else, of which language is a part, but isn’t it itself.

I think there is room for debate here, as to where the author starts observably, in a calling-attention way, to mould the matter from the cultural mud.

I tell him that some of the great Latin American male writers irritate me on this score. I feel rebellious, I suppose, because the manner of the narrative is so often macho, and, never mind they woo so well, I fight to resist their mighty pens. 'Get away from me!' I say. 'Go stick them into someone else… Invade some other mind; capture some other imagination.’

That makes him laugh.

We don’t really finish the conversation.

Certainly there are many writers, men and women, that fit the ‘culture-based’ bill, some more than others, but the women that come to my mind first, as I come back now to the subject, are Erna Brodber, Olive Senior and Nalo Hopkinson. Nalo is of course a special case and does something remarkable as she spins new, fantastic language complexes and cultural forms out of the regional warp and woof. Brodber and Senior pull from their deep down acquaintance with rural Jamaica – its city life as well. What we probably need to do is study Caribbean works under this lens, maybe devise a matrix that will help us talk with greater specificity about the manifestation of the cultural wellspring in literary works.

Any and all thoughts are most welcome. It’s just a little start on a big, intractable subject.

Catholic Bishops and Obama's Health Plan

2009-09-04T21:46:00.000-07:00

Comments in this post refer to the article, “Despite Church’s Push on Issue, Some Bishops Assail Health Plan” in the New York Times, Friday August 28, 2009, pages A1 and A12

I begin at the end of the article, with a quote from Bishop Nickless (oh, that divine sense of humour!) of Sioux City who wrote "The Catholic Church does not teach that government should provide health care..." adding that "Any legislation that undermines the vitality of the private sector is suspect."

I will talk about each of these statements in turn, but his Lordship should know up front that, Jamaican ginnal that I am, I long time spot what him up to.

If it is true that “The Catholic Church does not teach that government should provide health care..." then equally, “The Church does not teach that the government should not provide health care.” B cancels A. As I say, a likl Anansi business there. As for the second statement, his Lordship (I bet you he’s known among his friends as “tricky Nicky”) puts it beside the first to make us think that it too has the force of Church teaching (or Church not-teaching). I know, just as he knows, and just as you know: that is merely his Lordship’s opinion, nothing more or less!

But let's presume for a moment that the Bishop is correct and that "The Catholic Church does not teach that government should provide health care..." then all I can say is that the Church should check the Gospel. What has Jesus to say about health care? As I was at pains in my last post to point out, Jesus not only led by example but his teaching on this matter is unequivocal. He carried his hospital in his healing hands and his prayerful faith in the power and purpose of his father: "I have come that you might have life and have it more abundantly." I can't think of a better description of a health program -- "Life more abundant"!

Jesus always fed and healed people first, and then he taught them. And among the things he taught them was their responsibility for one another’s physical, economic, social and spiritual welfare. [Please see my last post, and my exchange there with FSJL.] So I don't know which Catholic Church Bishop Nickless is talking about, but if any such Church exists, it needs to go back to reading the Gospel as well as revisit Catechism class.

As for his Lordship’s comment about legislation and the private sector, surely he jests? If he doesn't, then I can only say the good Bishop has a lot of nerve, given a world economy callously, carelessly and utterly shattered by the very private sector that he's concerned that legislation shouldn't undermine! Who's been doing the undermining here? I remind his Lordship too of a furious Jesus chasing the buyers and sellers (the ‘private sector’ of the day) out of his house of prayer, accusing them of making it into a den of thieves. It’s the only time Jesus is portrayed as angry in the Gospels, isn’t it?

The New York Times article also reports that Cardinal Rigali of Philadelphia calls the proposed division of government funds (according to which funds are segregated to ensure that federal money does not finance abortions) "an illusion," insisting that taxpayers' money would still indirectly help cover abortions. I respectfully submit, Your Eminence, that there is lots of evidence that taxpayers' money has gone and still goes to cover sins every bit as heinous as abortion. What kinds of sins? What about unjust war that takes the lives of innocent non-combatants as well as of those young men and women in the army who are ordered to do that dirty work? [Please see, for example, my post of April 28 2009.] What about all those secret service activities designated as 'covert operations'? Does the Cardinal imagine for one moment that they do not include murder from time to time?

My Granny, that wise lady, would say that, in this case, the Church "making argument to suit itself". How well I remember being told as a child that we could give donations to 'non-Catholic' churches (after all, they supported our raffles and church fairs and festivals, so we had to do our bit for them in return), if we made the intention that the money we donated was to go to any 'tearing down' that those churches did, so that we could not be said to be supporting their misguided non-Catholic efforts.

Why don't we just make the intention that any money that goes to abortions is not from taxpayers?

It's specious, really, and has to do with the letter of the Law and not the spirit. Kudos then to Bishop Murphy of Rockville Centre who went on record as opposing inclusion of abortion as part of the national health care plan but emphasized the priority that the church placed on coverage for the poor and called health care, “not a privilege but a right”. Plaudits too for Catholic Charities and the Catholic Health Association who endorsed the President’s plan without reservation.

I come now, finally, to FSJL’s remarks in the post before this one. This health care plan benefits two groups of American people: those who have no health care and those whose health care is inadequate. (I don’t think the President and his family are underprovided in this regard.) Whatever people’s qualms – and the concern about abortion is an important issue – a solution can be found if well-meaning, serious people work together to find one. President Obama has hit a serious roadblock on a matter upon which all Americans with conscience should be agreed. It saddens me to think that the so-called ‘religious right’, waving the flag of Christianity and Jesus’s concerns, may at heart be motivated by the fact that this is the proposal of an uppity black man, already far too big for his britches, and that he needs to be put in his place.

Is prejudice still the engine that drives America, never mind the Black Man in the White House?

Americans need to examine their consciences and their motivations on this issue. It is almost autumn. There are resistant strains of H1N1 and we have no idea of what they may bring, nor of what else awaits us in North America and the world. Jesus’s teachings on this matter are clear. It would be wise not to provoke him and his father, for God is merciful but he can also be very severe. Selah!

Christianity and Racism... comments by FSJL

2009-09-04T11:18:00.000-07:00

On 4 August FSJL posted the comments below in response to my blog post on July 30th entitled "Nervous (in one case) notes". I publish them (very lightly edited, first paragraph omitted) here with thanks, and of course, his permission, since they seem as good a lead in as any to my promised reflections on the remarks of conservative Catholic bishops cited in last week Friday's front page article in the New York Times. Anyone interested in his complete comments need only go to my post of July 30th.

North American racism has traditionally been deeply associated with Christianity, and relied on the Bible for justification. No surprise there, the Bible, after all, endorsed slavery and commanded slaves to obey their masters. In the aftermath of slavery in the United States, organisations which emerged to sustain white supremacy did so in the context of the prevailing ideological system, which was Christian.

Thus, every Klan Klavern in the US had a chaplain called a Kludd, who would lead the sheetheads in prayer. This was a requirement of the Klan Klonstitution. That's what it was klalled, er, called. The heartland of the Klan in its heyday was not where it was founded, down here in Georgia, but Indiana, by the way.

There have, not at all by the bye, been a couple of studies on the role of Klan women in promoting the cause of women and raising issues germane to (white) women back in the 1920s.

More germane to the link you cite. I've seen this argument for the past fifteen years or so. It's a reflection of a deep-seated fear by a significant segment of white working class and middle class and middle class men as they face competition for opportunities that had in previous decades been reserved only for them. That's seen as the fault of threatening women/Jews/blacks/Asians/Latinos who are taking away jobs/manhood. The solution is to go back to the good old days when [white] men had everything their own way [or so they thought].

As my father once said, "I'm not going to talk about 'the good old days' -- dem was neva good".

The Obama Health Plan

2009-08-31T10:57:00.001-07:00

It's such a very small world now. You get on a plane in Miami and by the time you land in Toronto, you've ingested the germs of every passenger on board. Ditto for the subway, the city bus, country bus, the school bus. Go to church, or to the movies, the supermarket, the store or indeed the hospital (often the worst offender!) and you are in intimate contact with a world of germs. There is no homeland security, army, navy, air force or marine corps that can protect you from them. Either you hide in a sterile bubble, or you are at risk.

Your best recourse in this hazardous world of lethal microbes? A community that is in good physical and mental shape, a society whose citizens are cared for by diligent and committed professionals who continually remind it about how best to preserve its health. Folks with good health and good sanitary habits won't get sick so easily and will know how to avoid spreading their sicknesses if they do.

I am glad to be a Canadian for this reason. That is not to say that health care in Canada is perfect, but at its best it is as good as health care anywhere. Also, all of us who live in Canada have access to it, the poorest pay nothing at all for it, and what the rest of us pay is not very much and is directly related to what we earn. It is time intelligent, thoughtful citizens of the USA recognize that it's not a good thing that all Americans don't have decent health care. In fact, in these times, it is a very dangerous thing.

Seems some religious folks, some bishops of my own (Catholic) church included, have reservations about the plan Mr Obama has put forward. So let's clear up one thing. There's no dispute as to where Jesus stood on this issue. He spent the three years of his ministry feeding people, healing the sick, performing miracles to restore deformed, dysfunctional bodies, driving out demons that disturbed the mental wholeness of many. He even raised the dead. His health care policy is in the Gospels and the Acts for anyone who cares to read it.

I'm proceeding slowly on this one, taking thought before addressing what some bishops in the Catholic Church had to say, as quoted in a front page article in Friday's New York Times. Their statements had one member of our family threatening never to set foot into a Catholic Church again! So it's a matter about which people have very strong, not just opinions, but convictions.

As for abortion, which appears to be a sticking point for some - do we cut off people's hands so that they don't steal? As I've said before, I don't believe in abortion, but I understand that it is a complex issue and that if it touched me, I might find my attitude affected. Very few women take this step lightly, witness the many teenagers who continue to have babies, a choice that's easy for me to understand and one I use to help make the present argument. If we truly want women not to have abortions, what we must do is create a social, economic, and moral context that will encourage them to keep their babies. By moral I mean the morality of Jesus, he who enjoined us, in the Great Commandment of the New Law, to love our neighbours as ourselves - not threaten those whom we perceive as sinners with damnation.

My sister recently told me the story of a woman who was read out of the Seventh Day Adventist Church, to which she was devoted, when she went to live with a man to whom she was not married. She had been married prior to that time, and had two children for her husband whom she was now raising alone. She was not afraid to confront the church elders. "Are you helping me with my children?" she asked them. "Are you concerned about their welfare, or about mine?"

Do we really want women not to have abortions? What if we tried supporting the women of childbearing age in our communities? Insisting that all jobs make generous provision for maternity and paternity leave? Ensuring the availability of affordable child care, good schools, free school meals? What about providing these women with quality health care? Might it make a difference? Or could it be that it's easier to condemn, to shake our fists and call down fire and brimstone? To feel righteous, better than our neighbours?

More on the statements from those Catholic bishops shortly. Meanwhile, remember those microbes!

Where's the lake? Lindsay, Ontario, and Bob Dylan and the cops

2009-08-19T06:43:00.000-07:00

Didn't make it with a post on the weekend, and off to a likl cruise up the Trent-Severn waterway this afternoon. I don't normally do this, since pretty much everything I hang up here is drafted, edited, and so on, but time's more and more precious, so today I shall be daring.

We've had a few days' break in the country, courtesy of our good friend, Steph, and have been doing a little driving about, getting to know our province better. Day before yesterday we set out, map in hand, to drive around Clear Lake and Stony Lake. Routes 6 and 56 seemed, from the map, to rim the lakes and we looked forward to some great lake views. Imagine our distress to find that, apart from a couple of glimpses (at Burleigh Falls, for instance), there was precious little lake to be seen. Vacation properties of various sizes occupy much of the perimeter, and though in many places we were separated from the water by not much distance, lake views were hidden by buildings or forest.

Nothing to be gained by complaining, but we did feel cheated. For the car-touring visitor, this is no drive to take!

Yesterday we did a short tour of a pretty city - Lindsay, Ontario. We drove through, looking at houses, enjoying the main street. It's quite flat, unlike Peterborough, which we like for its hills and valleys, and its waterways. We were in Lindsay for two hours or so - during which time we saw no more than three persons of mixed race! That was a surprise. Demographics tell all kinds of stories, don't they? Lindsay is less than two hours' drive from Toronto, a city that's now as brown as it is white, to put it crudely. But us brown folks seem to have stayed away from Lindsay. I look forward to learning more about a charming small city that has, in this respect, wittingly or no, preserved, shall we say, a certain distance.

Finally a lovely story about Bob Dylan, who managed to get himself questioned by a couple of young cops in the environs of Long Branch, New Jersey. He was, God help him, walking around looking at houses, and someone called the authorities. (Doesn't seem to have been an upscale neighbourhood either.) He identified himself, but Dylan is an old fellow, now, and so the youngsters weren't to be satisfied till they drove him along to where he said the tour buses were, and where he could be vouched for. (Dylan was waiting to perform with Willie Nelson and John Mellencamp in a gig later that day.) Bob was cool and went along with the cops, who, once satisfied that he was who he said he was, were happy to let him go.

Of course, there have been the inevitable comparisons with the incident with Prof Gates, and the inevitable comments about the 'correct way' to deal with cops. It would be lovely to get Dylan's view on both incidents, and I shall in due course put in my piece on this, but what certainly deserves noticing is how terrified Americans now are of their fellow citizens, even when they are old, distinguished (true in both cases) and unarmed - well, I guess Prof Gates had his cane!

Now I wonder what the reasons might be for that?

Three Rhymes for Skipping Rope

2009-08-13T20:43:00.000-07:00

Right. So we're two weeks into August, I've put nothing up since the end of July, and I've folks to reply to that I've left hanging! Wai-oh! The thing is I've been working on a big project and whenever I do that, everything else goes by the board. This is not a good thing. I can multi-task, I tell myself.

To no avail.

So, to make up for my delinquency and buy myself a little more time, here are three rhymes for skipping rope. Summer is skipping rope time, so maybe you know some young people who’ll have fun with them. All three are riffs on rhymes we skipped to as children.

(For those who don't know, the rope went faster as the condiments in "Salt, Vinegar..." got hotter.)

So, beg you hol dat fe now! With luck (plenty luck) more on the weekend.

Room for rent

Room for rent
Apply within.
When you come out
I come in.

Look how bad
you leave this place!
Trash everywhere!
It is a disgrace!

Room for rent
Apply within.
When I come out
You come in.

I don’t leave no dirt!
Not even a trace...
The floor so shine
You can see your face.

So if you want
To rent my room
You best arrive
With your mop and broom.

© Pamela Mordecai 2009

Hurricane housing

I need to find
a room to rent.
I tired to live
in this hurricane tent.

I living here since
the last breeze-blow
and I long to leave
but the government slow.

If things keep on
at this drag-foot pace
I going to die
in this very same place!

So I need to find
a room to rent.
before I drop down dead
in this leaky tent.

© Pamela Mordecai 2009

Salt Vinegar Mustard Pepper

Salt vinegar
mustard pepper
spin the rope
for this high stepper.

Pepper mustard
vinegar salt
slow him down
till him come to a halt.

© Pamela Mordecai 2009

Nervous (in one case) notes

2009-07-30T21:50:00.000-07:00

Okay, following my own advice about keeping the blog going, voilà!

Concerning poetry, a couple of websites to check out, if you haven’t before.

http://international.poetryinternationalweb.org

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/index.html

I saw on facebook that “Rock Steady: the Roots of Reggae” has been held over at the Carlton Cinema. It was on yesterday but I don’t know if it’s on today. Klive Walker, author of Dubwise: Reasoning from the reggae underground, published by Insomniac Press http://www.insomniacpress.com/title.php?id=1-894663-96-9 recently sent me a review of the film. Perhaps he’ll agree to let me publish it or perhaps I'll be able to make the film myself.

Go to the website, anyway. That alone is worth the visit.
http://www.rocksteadyrootsofreggae.com/rocksteady.html

Finally (the scariest for the last), on a website advertising itself as “Christian Assemblies International,” I commenced reading an article called “Multiculturalism – The Canadian Experience”. Nazi, Proto-Nazi and race hate websites I know about, but this took me aback. Have a read for yourself. These people speak about "the White World!" No! They do not mean the Arctic and Antarctic! No! Their tongues are not in their cheeks! I really think Jesus had better come soon, and set things straight himself. For one thing, they may stunned to learn that he's a Jew. Meanwhile, I’m thinking of saying that I’m a follower of Jesus in future. No wonder so many people despise “Christians”! Here's the website. Keep your righteous cool! Selah!

http://www.cai.org/bible-studies/multiculturalism-canadian-experience

Perhaps a note about the garbage strike tomorrow, when we hope and pray it will truly have come to an end.

More on the Arrest of Professor Gates

2009-07-29T09:09:00.000-07:00

There’s been lots of comment about Professor Gates's arrest in the media, which, as far as I'm concerned, is all to the good. I can't think why anyone would want to dampen down the discussion. It's fine to have a black man in the White House, an important positive development, as I've said, but that doesn't change the facts, one, for instance, being that black and Hispanic men make up almost 60% of the jail population in the USA. And it's not because they are born wicked. I’m not suggesting that some of them don't deserve to be there (though some of them don't), but that disproportionate presence is one symptom of a lot that's amiss where matters of race in North America are concerned, especially matters that impact black men.

And not talking about it, or ratcheting down the discussion isn't going to make that set of problems go away, by any means.

It's interesting to note, in the comments that have been made on many of the articles online, that ordinary folks repeatedly say that they need to be deferential with the police, a deference that clearly arises out of fear. I learned too that a great many police officers “demand respect”, especially when they are in uniform. More on that in a bit.

A couple points have emerged to fill out our picture of the incident. Seems Sergeant James Crowley, the arresting officer, felt threatened. He mentioned being aware of having to protect himself because his wife and children needed him. I can absolutely appreciate that. But it's fair to point out that Professor Gates is an older man who uses a cane, and that he had just come back, ill, from a long and tiring trip. So, a strong, armed young man was facing an older, sick man, who uses a cane and has done for a long time. Hmmmn. There’s a picture online of Professor Gates in hand cuffs. Worth a thousand words!

Where respect is concerned, I have two observations.

I was a teacher in another life. It's my experience that respect is not to be demanded, it's to be deserved. It was my business to earn my students' respect: by my own demeanour, by how I treated them, by my insisting that the circumstance in which we all learned reflected the fact of this mutual respect – a clean classroom, no rowdy behaviour, everyone having a chance to speak and be heard, etc., etc. The person with the authority is the one who sets the tone, calibrates the nature of the interactions.

True, my life may not have been on the line (not at that time, anyway), but a cop is like a soldier, and threats to life and limb are part of the territory. It's a hazardous job, and those who take it on know that up front. That defusing of bad situations is a cop skill as much as a teacher skill. (Malcolm Gladwell has written insightfully about this.)

Secondly, those who are likely to confront the police with “disrespectful” behaviour are often the people who most need their protection. They are people who are old folks with dementia; they are people who are mentally or physically ill, or temporarily off-balance, or inebriated, or high on dope. (Yes, drunks and dope heads are citizens too, and deserve protection.) Nor are the police without recourse. They have Mylar vests, guns, billies, tasers – the latter having, in too many cases, turned out to be lethal weapons in their hands.

Sadly, the instances of police shootings of innocent people are far too many. FSJL mentions a truly alarming one in his comments on our last post. Here in Toronto, the Asian man who was mentally ill and who was shot to death on a trolley downtown, his weapon a small hammer in his hand, comes to mind. So also does the case of the African-Canadian man, clad in colourful regalia and brandishing a wooden sword, who was shot to death by police on St Clair Avenue. Both were non compos mentis; neither posed a credible threat to anyone, least of all the police, at any time. And, more recently, there is the case of Polish immigrant Robert Dziekanski tasered to death just 24 seconds after being confronted by police in Vancouver International Airport.

It’s not that I’m without sympathy for the job that policemen do. As a young man, my father worked in Tower Street Prison. But there’s a reason that policemen carry guns, and we trust them to do so. And that’s precisely why it’s fair to expect them to be the ones who always keep their cool: if they lose it, the results may be irreversible. Nor does respect inhere in “Yes, officer. No, officer.” That respect is transient and superficial. The real respect is a community’s continuing trust in and support of their law officers.

Unless of course we are to degenerate into a Wild West in which we are all armed and dangerous…

Henry Louis Gates Jr and Nightmare America

2009-07-24T20:34:00.000-07:00

You’ve got to be grateful for the young Americans in Grant Park. You’ve got to believe in their upturned, eager faces. You’ve got to engage with their hope. Why? Because they are hitching their wagon to a faltering star – and I’m not talking about Barack Obama. It’s a star of longing that an America will emerge at some time in the not too distant future in which presidents, police, politicians, monarchs of the marketplace, all those who wield power will behave with basic human decency. I don’t say ‘common’ for it ain’t common no more, as the matter I am about to raise will amply demonstrate.

Michael Mechanic, a senior editor at MOTHER JONES magazine, offers this comment on the arrest of black American intellectual, Henry Louis Gates Jr, in an opinion piece carried in today’s GLOBE AND MAIL entitled “Why you never, ever get righteous on a street cop.”

You don't talk back to the police. You don't question them. And you certainly don't call them racist, even if you think they're profiling you. (And they most likely are.)

Because you will lose. It doesn't matter whether you're a prominent black Harvard prof, a white kid on his way to attend graduate school or a Hispanic high-school dropout.

True it is that Mr Mechanic bases his opinion on his own encounters with police, white though he is. What alarms me is that he should feel free to offer such an opinion, and that the GLOBE AND MAIL should elect to retail it. That, in many respects, is more shocking than the incident of Professor Gates’s arrest itself.

Let’s face it. We live – have been living for quite a while – in an age in which people with guns and knives and other lethal instruments can wreak havoc on anyone at any time they choose. We are very equal in that respect – or lack of it. John Kennedy and Emmett Till, equally dead: one was a filthy rich white President of the most powerful country on earth, the other a poor black teenager, a citizen of the same country. They were both mortal and somebody decided to let them know it.

But when anything of this kind happens we are normally outraged. We mourn the deaths, not only of the murdered but of the values, courtesies and right behaviours that would have secured the lives of the victims, had they been observed. We affirm the most basic value: that human life is precious, that each human person is unique and irreplaceable and that every one of us deserves to be treated by every other one of us in a way that demonstrates that understanding.

The police in a country that purports to be democratic aren’t supposed to be arbitrary wielders of power. They aren’t a militia. They aren’t armed thugs. They aren’t guerillas waging war in support of any cause they privately support. They are, like the Pope, servants of the servants of God, in other words, us common folks. Paid with our tax dollars, they are meant to work for us and protect us. We are not supposed to be deadly afraid of tangling with them on account of what they might choose to do to us.

That is what is chilling about Mr Mechanic’s opinion piece. It tells me – I’d be very happy to be reading him wrong – that I need to adopt just such a cowering attitude when I encounter a cop, because otherwise I “am going to lose”. I infer that what I will lose is my intactness of person or my freedom or my life, or in the worst case, all of the above. This is the wisdom, gleaned from his own experience, that he offers his readers. This is the wisdom that he chastens Professor Gates for not having. (Poor soul: the Professor thought he was a free man in a free state.)

Mr Mechanic doesn’t say this is a terrible state of affairs. He doesn’t rant and rave about things gone awry. He does not complain that it’s a sign that the country is going to hell in a hand-basket when ostensible keepers of the peace can’t find a smooth way through an incident like this one and arrive at a win-win conclusion. I put it this way because, never mind how Professor Gates may or may not have behaved, I agree with Mr Mechanic in one regard: in a situation like this one, it is the police who have the upper hand. I conclude from this that the greater onus is therefore on them.

It does not seem to upset Mr Mechanic that, as he offers us counsel, he characterizes citizen and police as combatants, fighting on opposing sides.

All of which suggests to me that he might as well have been describing any old totalitarian country, any old banana republic, any old Cold War Communist state.

Let Mr Mechanic not therefore, in future, speak of the United States of America in the same breath as he speaks of democracy, or rights, or freedoms, or the pursuit of any kind of happiness. Let him always keep his feet firmly on the ground, and tell it like it is. This is an America in which the citizen who has his wits about him had better be scared of the very people who are supposed to protect him. This is bizarre, ghoulish, monstrous, Nightmare America.

"Everybody get flat – a dub"

2009-07-22T21:12:00.000-07:00

In 2005, THE TRUE BLUE OF ISLANDS, a book dedicated to my brother Richard, murdered in Jamaica in 2004, appeared. Not long ago (on April 28), I posted the title poem, which is an account of his death. Today's post is a dub, another version of that death, to remember him because he recently had a birthday. The book of poems, never mind its subject (violence in its several manifestations) witnesses to his life. It celebrates an ordinary man. It mourns, not him alone, but all those who die brutally, as well as all those who suffer abuse in the course of their lives.

We who are left, pursuing our ambitions, hopping on planes and boats and trains about our business, have failed miserably to guard our kin – our relatives by blood, by six degrees of separation, by simple living on this planet together. I beat my breast and confess that failure. Had I invested more, and earlier, had a larger heart, been more generous with my time, more earnest in my prayers, more ready to share what I have, he might not be dead, and the person who killed him might not have been impelled to murder. The same applies to all of us, with respect to all those who have died arbitrarily and to all those who have done murder.

Mea maxima culpa.

So here is "Everybody Get Flat."

Happy Belated Birthday and Rest in Peace, my brother.

Everybody get flat – a dub

Where is the poem
that explains
what happens
to you when
they shoot your brother
and you hear
that his brains
spilled over the seat
to the back of the car
and you have to tell folks,

“No it wasn’t a war.
No, he wasn’t
caught in crossfire
No it wasn’t a fight.
Yes it happened at night
but no, not in town
out in the country
not a God soul around.

No, he didn’t launder money.
No he wasn’t into dope.
Just a man with a plan
and a fervent hope.

What was the motive?
The police can’t find
not a rhyme not a reason
why they kill the man.
Just a random execution –

So, no, we don’t have a clue
why he might have been killed.
Yes I guess you could say
God must have willed
it. What? God willed it?

No the priest said.
God don’t will
no slaughtered dead.
God allow us our own way.

So we turn into a place
with a theme song that say
“Everybody get flat –
dog coming through!”

And dog mean gun
and is all in fun
don’t mind people
have to run
down in the ghetto
every God-sent day
from the teeth of the dog.

But I guess we have a way
to grit our teeth
and carry on through.

Till a bullet come
and you pray
it’s not for you.

© Copyright Pamela Mordecai, author of THE TRUE BLUE OF ISLANDS and PINK ICING: STORIES.

All rights reserved.

No part of this blog may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations.

Strategies for keeping on blogging

2009-07-12T14:39:00.000-07:00

I have to arrive at some strategies that will enable me to avoid these hiatuses. This one's not as long as it may have seemed. I was blogging all through May (I did mention it in a previous post) at Open Book Toronto. It was a very enjoyable gig. Many thanks again, to Amy, Clelia, and OBT! And also to my inimitable, generous, joy of an editor, Gillian Rodgerson.

But I've not been here for all of June and a big chunk of July. Too long! I'm thinking that if I can't find the time to write something coherent, I'll post a poem or a part of a story, or maybe a whole story. On the subject of whole stories online, I visited Neil Gaiman's site recently. If you've never been, go have a look. Amazing!

That brings me to another strategy. I'll post interesting people and events I've come across, actually or virtually - worthwhile stuff, hopefully, as this blog won't ever be about whether or not I've been having a headache or bought a new toothbrush or had a fight with my best beloved. Not that those things are unimportant, but I'm not called to write about them, not here anyway.

So, because this has to be a quick one, here are some recent encounters.

Saw Kate Story, author of the novel BLASTED, this week. Am reading the novel, at the minute. She's funny, and funny ain't easy to write!

Saw JAMAICA FOR SALE http://www.jamaicaforsale.net/ a documentary by Esther Figueroa and Diana McCaulay at the Caribbean Tales Film Festival today. (Plaudits to Frances-Anne Solomon for the Fest, in its fourth year!) It's overwhelming. It's heartbreaking. It's how to ruin a small island with ostensible 'tourism development'! It's a formidable piece of work. And it has a ten second clip of yours truly, doing an interview for JIS-TV too long ago to even remember when. See it if you can. Support the effort to save a collapsing environment and the livelihoods of the 'small people' who depend on it.

Also if you haven't been here http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/ just GO! Listen to poets reading their work, Guillaume Apollinaire (yup!), Kamau Brathwaite and Christian Bok and endless other. No Walcott, though. Wonder why?

Heard from Rethabile Masilo, who is about to travel from Paris to this side with his family. Travel safe, and have a great time, Rethabile.

Liz Hearne, wife of the late Jamaican author, John Hearne and mother of super editor at UWI Press, Shivaun, died recently. Our condolences to her family and loved ones. We'll miss Liz.

One more big piece of news, but it'll keep till next time. Walk good meantime.

Visit to Calgary: Part Three

2009-05-13T12:11:00.000-07:00

My last engagement in Calgary on this winter 2009 visit was at St Stephen’s Church downtown http://www.ststephenscalgary.org/ where, on Friday March 6, Howard Gallimore, Jamaican-Calgarian who had read with me on my previous visit, joined me, reprising his role of Samuel, as we read my Good Friday poem, De Man. I read Naomi. I am a Roman Catholic, as is Howard, but, as the Lord would have it, the readings of this poem in Calgary have, on both occasions, taken place in Anglican churches. We are grateful to our Anglican brethren for hosting us on both occasions.

The story of the reading was a Jamaican pumpkin vine story, running off in different directions as it put out its blossoms and then bore fruit. Dr Cecille DePass, a Professor at U of C, and a good friend and supporter, had, when she heard I was coming back this year to visit the University once more, offered to put me up once I’d fulfilled my obligations to the University. In addition, since the visit would again be in Lent, she had proposed that I do a reading of De Man, as I had done in 2007. Professor DePass is that rara avis, that endangered species, an enabler. So she undertook to find a church that would host the reading. Enter Dr Jean Springer, Rector’s Warden at St Stephen’s and a good friend of Cecille’s – and, unknown to me, an old friend of my husband’s family. In fact, his father was married in her parents’ house, the Barretts and the Mordecais having known one another from Columbus came over. Jean agreed to approach Rev. Brian Pearson, the rector at St Stephen’s, and we were delighted when we heard that he had agreed. Jean and I spoke on the phone, I discovered the family connection – I knew Jean’s sister, concert pianist, Nerine Barrett – and when I came to Calgary, Jean took to me to lunch and we got to know each other a bit better.

Which was how, on the evening of Friday March 6th, Rev. Pearson came to be welcoming Howard and me and introducing us to a small but welcoming audience at St Stephen’s. We could not have been more received more thoughtfully. We had met the associate priest, Rev. Cathy Fulton, and also Brian’s wife, Jean, beforehand. There were microphones and lecterns at the ready, the church was lit, and there was water to hand. We were promised refreshments in the Canterbury Room afterwards.

A little bit about the poem: De Man: a performance poem is my second book of poetry, and is really a verse play. A two-hander written entirely in Jamaican Creole, it is the story of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ as reported by two imagined characters, Naomi, a maid in the court of Pilate’s wife, and Samuel, a disabled carpenter of Nazareth to whom Joseph taught the trade. It has been performed many times in Canada and in Jamaica.

But it is always a challenge, especially in Canada, where we, the performers, are aware that we are reading in a language that is not familiar to many in the audience. We make adjustments for this, but even then, one is never sure. It helps when, as has been the case on both occasions, there are Caribbean people in the audience. Naomi and Samuel have their own story, which unfolds as they watch Jesus on his way to Calvary. Naomi is a bit of a busybody, and a forthright speaker of her opinions, and, never mind that this is a terrible tale, there are light moments, as there must have been when the true history happened.

After the performance, we gathered in the Canterbury Room for refreshments, graciously provided by parishioners and well-wishers. Everyone I spoke to said that that it had been deeply moving, and that those who hadn’t come had missed something. English speakers found that they could understand once they became accustomed to the rhythms of the Creole. People generously purchased books, a portion of the sales having been promised to support the church’s ministry.

The reading was memorable for another reason. We discovered later that, unbeknown to us, Howard’s grandmother in Toronto had died while we were performing the poem.

Someone in the audience asked me, as we spoke afterwards, if I had seen the movie, The Passion of the Christ. I told him that I hadn’t and wondered why he had asked. He recalled Samuel’s description, as he observed the clothes being torn off of Jesus:

Dem tearing off him clothes
And scab and blood and skin
And flesh hold onto dem.
Him is a open wound.
A walking sore.

He had never seen or heard those details before – not until he’d seen the movie. I explained that I’d imagined what would have happened if a man had been whipped till he was bleeding, then had clothes put on him, then had them torn off when the blood had dried. When I returned to Toronto, my husband pointed out that the poem had been published in 1995, while the movie had been released in 2004.

I was very surprised and pleased at the invitation to have us back to repeat the performance on Good Friday! We are both – indeed all – extremely grateful to the clergy, staff and parishioners at St Stephen’s for hosting us, and in particular, to Dr Jean Springer for trusting, sight unseen, in the story of De Man. It was a great experience for both Howard and myself, I know. The plan is that we will come back for Easter next year, since it was not have possible to accept the invitation to return this Easter.

I think we all look forward to that time.

Visit to Calgary Part Two

2009-05-12T15:48:00.000-07:00

A note on my last post. It was written before I saw Nik Korpon’s review of Pink Icing, which is why I was pleased that Nik said what he did about my narrative disappearing act.

It’s my second day in Calgary. Tuesday, March 3rd.

From Aruna Srivastiva’s office, to which Robert Majzels has so kindly brought me through ice and snow and melt, I can glimpse a strange, bare landscape. It’s not just the emptiness of winter. It maybe looks as if someone has skinned the earth, as they would skin an animal, and what I’m looking at is what’s underneath. The mountains ringing the city on the low horizon are like folds of skin, pulled back from the exposed torso and piled up at the sides of the excoriated body of the beast.

I’d heard about Aruna before I met her – we had friends in common. We talked a bit before going off to her class and she told me some more about the course being done by the students with whom I’d be visiting. She’d already said via e-mail that English 492 is a course on postcolonial and globalization studies in which students look at literature in the context of cultural and political issues. They worked in groups, and so did not often meet as one large group, and they were mostly well motivated, and got on with what they had to do. I was interested, especially in the fact that they were assessed in non-traditional ways (one being that they blogged) rather than by means of tests and papers. I told Aruna that it seemed like it would be a lot of work to mark, more harassing than correcting papers, and she admitted it was.

But it would obviously be challenging for the students and would offer insights into their progress, a grasp of how well they were acquiring skills and knowledge and navigating concepts. Also, she would quickly have a handle on any problems they might encounter.

Aruna had been concerned about the student turnout and lured them with the promise of food after the class, which I subsequently told her was a lunatic thing to do, because I think every man-Jack was there! I enjoyed the session. Via an Internet hook-up, Tracy, an admin assistant, if I remember right, who would normally have been present except that she was ill, could participate. We all waved to her on camera and she waved back at us. The students were alert and interested and clearly very bright.

I was a bit angry with myself, though, for getting distracted. I found myself talking about getting published, what constituted a bestseller in Canadian and American terms, etc., etc. I wish that I’d just stayed with reading stories and poems.

Aruna treated us to dinner in the grad lounge, good food and vivid cocktails. There was lively chatter, somewhat constrained by the fact that we were at a long, thin table. Across the table from me was an Asian woman who diverted us with a tale of being thrown out of a bar by a bouncer. She never went to bars, she said, and this one time had all been a crazy mix-up. Beside me a white Canadian woman spoke of spending summers picking mushrooms that grew wild. She loved it. She told me which mushrooms – it might have been morels, which grow wild in British Columbia, but I can’t remember now.

It wasn’t a very mixed group, racially, and the evening ended with an interesting conversation – by that time everyone had left and there were only the five of us – between three white young men, one of Finnish heritage, one Danish and one of Bosnian background. They discussed racial purity, which I got the impression they all thought they had. Aruna is East Indian. I am a child of so many admixtures that they are lost in the mists of generations of miscegenation.

I would see Aruna again before the end of the week, to share a cup of tea and a slice of Jamaican plum pudding at the house of my friend and hostess, Cecille DePass, a Prof in Education and another innovative teacher. Cecille was why I was in Calgary to begin with. She had approached the Department of English in 2007 about having me do a reading at U. of C., to wind up my mini tour of Winnipeg, Vancouver and Edmonton, and that had led to the current invitation. Louise Saldhana came with Aruna. During tea, Louise and I hatched a project concerning children’s literature.

It was a privilege to be with these women, as it had been to meet Mutriba Din, Senior Financial Analyst at the University. Mutriba had us to dinner before my reading at Pages the day before. Cecille DePass, Aruna Srivastiva, Mutriba Din, Hiromi Goto, Louise Saldhana, Larissa Lai, Nadine Chambers, Noga Gayle, Yvonne Brown, Jean Springer, Julie Hendrickson – women, most of whom I met on these two trips to the west. Dionne Brand, on a visit to Vancouver in fall 2008, described a “world beneath the world,” meaning the world that would have existed if all the dire things that have snagged it, had not. In a recent blog post, Larissa Lai referred to Dionne’s affirmation of the existence of this under-world, and observed, “There are women… actively making that other world...”

These are some of those women.

Calgary Visit - Part One

2009-05-05T18:43:00.000-07:00

I flew to Calgary on 2 March 2009 at the invitation of the Department of English at the University of Calgary. It was a return visit. I had visited before in 2007 as part of a mini-tour of Western Canada to promote my first collection of short fiction, Pink Icing. That visit took place at just about the same time in early March, and involved a lunch time reading which went well, never mind the small audience. Christian Bok had said then that the Department would ask me back.
So I begin by saying thanks to him for making good his promise.

A bit of serendipity, though, before I go any further. Roaming the web last night I came across a review of Pink Icing posted at Outsider Writers’ Collective:
http://www.outsiderwriters.org/archives/2084#more-2084

It’s a nice review that includes these comments:

"One of Pamela Mordecai’s biggest strengths as a writer is her ability to disappear. So, you’re thinking, ‘Wow, that’s the most backhanded compliment I’ve read.’ But it’s true…Her words dissolve and leave you immersed in the world of story, occupying the same patch of grass or gravel road as the characters... Her restrained prose is economical and turns many a phrase without drawing attention to the writing itself, eschewing any chance of pulling you out of the story."

You’ll see in a bit why I was glad to read that, and be reassured that I put my money where my mouth is. Thanks, Nik Korpon!

So here I was, at the end of February, being optimistic. Courtesy of a chinook, it had been relatively warm in Calgary, and Robert Majzels, poet, playwright, novelist, prize-winning translator and associate professor of the Creative Writing group in the Department of English, had sounded as though, maybe, just maybe, the weather might be persuaded to hold. But Calgary weather is mercurial, a word I have on occasion used to describe myself, so by the time I touched down, it had exercised its right to do a volte face and welcome the visiting writer with an example of her very own changeable nature. "If not, why not?" as my Granny used to say...

I'd been reading the latest Robert Majzels (say May-zels) book. The Humbugs Diet, over the previous day or two, and indeed on the flight across. I am, I confess, severely under-read, a state I tell myself I share with most of the world, so not to worry. Given the opportunity of meeting a fellow-writer, however, I usually make it my business to read his or her work. It's as good a way as any to decide on what shall be the next book I choose as I struggle valiantly with the Sisyphean task of catching up.

The Humbugs Diet, billed as a detective story, is tasty. (I won't tell you anything about the story, except that it's about old people, is not really a whodunit, and is funny. To find out more, go buy the book.) As I've said before, I dislike writing that calls attention to itself: I don't like clever that makes sure that I notice it. I'm old-fashioned, believing firmly in the celebrated "seamless unity of form and content". Ergo, "The writing is so fine!" as a statement about any book makes my antennae quiver. However fine, it should be tucked away, like a respectable lady's petticoat, at the service of the story. In this novel, Majzels uses a manner of thought, and so of writing, to create a doppelganger, an own-way, own-mind second self for his ex-detective protagonist, Rotuf Mazal. Rotuf is on the one hand not much of anybody, diffident, indecisive, letting the days go by till he can't stand to do it any more. But quirky habits of phrase and deliberation conjure his second self for us, and much of the humour in the novel derives from the interplay between Rotuf's pedestrian first self and his sardonic second self.

I have a thing about numinous quality of names (Brutus starting a spirit, and all that) so, as I told Robert, I wasn't sure about his giving the protagonist a name so similar to his own. (I wasn't to know then that the Claire of the story is also named for his partner, Claire Huot.) And this isn't a flawless work. But it was experimenting - with language, with signifying on cultures and literatures, with pushing the boundaries of a genre in an amiable, unsnooty way. Above all, it diverted me, which is what good storytelling has always been about.

If his story was wry and endearing, never mind that it concerned a murder or two, Robert, in his role as host, was equally good natured. When I found I had to postpone the visit from October 2008 to March of this year, he said, No problem - these things happen. Once we confirmed dates, I had clear indications about things that I needed to do, and what my visit would involve. The refund of my plane fare and my honorarium arrived in advance of my departure for Calgary - very reassuring for a poor writer. And Robert was always accessible and helpful.

And now, here he was on the ground, meeting me with his trusty VW steed (veteran of two cross-Canada runs, I later learned), whisking me off to the Best Western near the University, helping me with my bags to the door of my room and promising a ride to U of C the next afternoon. The next day, he arrived exactly on time, delivered me safely to the English department, never mind the treacherous, iced-over terrain, and introduced me to Aruna Srivasteva whose class I was to visit that afternoon. More on Aruna’s class in my next dispatch.

His final kindness was to introduce me the next night at a reading at Pages, a great alternative bookstore in Kensington where the own-way traffic lights must have been made in Jamaica, for dem cyaan agree. There the chairs were all occupied, the audience receptive and the owner-manager, Simone Lee, her baby son, Theo, and Martin and the rest of the staff, both gracious as well as organized - smooth as Theo's bottom. Robert and Claire saw me off at the end of the reading with good wishes for the rest of the visit.

So I'm raising my glass of sorrel in a toast to Robert Majzels, and through him, the Department of English at the University of Calgary. Thanks, Robert. Good luck with finding the house! I look forward to seeing you next year, and between now and then, walk good.

Just some notes...

2009-04-29T21:50:00.000-07:00

I'm going to be blogging in two places in the month of May. I'll be here as much as I can, but I'll also be posting at http://www.openbooktoronto.com/ where I'll be Writer in Residence for the month of May. So stop by there too, if you can.

I've some good news – better than good. Spouse Martin's book, Blue Mountain Trouble, has been getting great reviews. See one here
http://www.quillandquire.com/books_young/review.cfm?review_id=6474

It's a crossover YA novel, about twins (a boy and a girl) who live high in the mountains of Jamaica and who encounter a magical goat. Published by Arthur A. Levine Books, an imprint of Scholastic Press, simultaneously in the USA ($16.99) and Canada (C$21.99). ISBN9780-0-545-04156-0.

See an interview with Martin at
http://www.yardedge.net

I haven't let go of the matter of my last post. I'm coming back to it soon, but it's time to give an account of my visit to Calgary, late though it may be. So that's what's coming up next. Traveling tomorrow, so see you on Friday – in both places. Till then enjoy the frolics of spring...

Should Andrew Buchanan send an angel with an avenging sword?

2009-04-28T15:16:00.000-07:00

Today’s post includes a poem of mine called “The True Blue of Islands.” It is the title poem of my last collection of poetry. According to the blurb on the back cover, “The True Blue of Islands is a collection of poems exploring violence, beginning with the brutal treatment of slaves, journeying through child abuse and self-mutilation and ending with the callous murder of the poet’s brother.” Though the poem was written to remember my brother Richard, who was murdered in Jamaica on 30 May 2004, I post it today as a requiem for Andrew Buchanan. For the circumstances surrounding his death, please see “A Lesson in Social Justice” by Yvonne McCalla Sobers at http://www.jamlink.com/

If the use of violence by the Israeli army against innocent Palestinians (see post of April 20) is despicable, so is the arbitrary use of force against the ordinary citizen by the forces, ostensibly of law and order, in Canada, the USA, Russia, China, Jamaica, or anywhere else. It seems increasingly that those who should protect us have become those whom we need to fear most.

But there is a larger question, a question about whether it is we who are conscripting young human beings and making killers of them.

At http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mary-mapes/looking-back-at-abu-ghrai_b_191531.html
MaryMapes considers, inter alia, the unfairness of political and military administrations who devise policy, impose it on ‘underlings’ and end up blameless, free as birds, while those who followed the orders (to which we now say they should have objected) are punished for their obedience. She mentions as an example Chip Frederick who, at 42 years old, having lost his wife, his military pension and his medals – and his pride – is out of prison and trying to restart his life.

“I do not think Chip Frederick – or any of the other inexperienced, poorly trained reservists at Abu Ghraib – went to Iraq full of original ideas about how to torment the locals that just happened to match the methods designed by the Pentagon…I believe he and others at the prison were fed a steady diet of these toxic tactics…And they paid dearly for their lack of protest.”

But those who do object, as Greg Mitchell reports,
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/greg-mitchell/us-soldier-killed-herself_b_190517.html
do so at great personal cost, for no one likes people who rock the boat. American soldier Alyssa Peterson refused to take part in torture, and shortly thereafter took her own life. Reporter Kevin Elston of the Flagstaff radio station, KNAU, unwilling to accept the official report of Peterson’s death as having been ‘from a "non-hostile weapons discharge”,’ was stonewalled by officialdom and finally had to file a Freedom of Information Act [FOIA] request that led to startling revelations about her death. According to Mitchell, the station reported:

"Peterson objected to the interrogation techniques used on prisoners. She refused to participate after only two nights working in the unit known as the cage. Army spokespersons for her unit have refused to describe the interrogation techniques Alyssa objected to. They say all records of those techniques have now been destroyed."

Mitchell goes on: “The official probe of her death would later note that earlier she had been ‘reprimanded’ for showing ‘empathy’ for the prisoners. One of the most moving parts of the report, in fact, is this: ‘She said that she did not know how to be two people; she ... could not be one person in the cage and another outside the wire.’”

So we are now in the business of manufacturing killers – you, me, all of us. We have seen the monster enemy; indeed, we have created him. We should think on it. Selah.

The True Blue of Islands
for Richard murdered 30 May 2004 RIP, and today, for Andrew Buchanan, RIP

So here’s my friend
writing of how poets
have named the blues
of these small islands.

I see him hold his brush
testing the tones
another poet
set to name them too.

Truth is those are
fake colours.
Counterfeit.
Watch and I’ll paint
the islands’ blues for you.

Just over from
the next door bar
my brother’s
napping in his car
too tired to drag
himself to a safe place.

(Besides, this
is his island —
every place
is safe.)

Blue is the hue
exhausted
of his face
starting awake.

It is the black
and bruise
of the dark hand
he wipes
across his brow
to try the truth
before his eye.

Must be a lie.

It seems he’s
looking at a gun.

Beyond his arm
the sea of night
is indigo. The wind
is warm. The stars
gleam cold as steel.

Smelt blue the shade
of this night’s
lesser lights
smelt blue this
snarling nozzle
set to bite.

His mind is fuzzy.

Didn’t he just
park his old
aquamarine
gas-guzzling car?
Say to his friend,

“You go on up.
I’m going to have
a smoke or two”?

He puffs.
Lavender clouds
halo his head.

He thinks of bed
yawning a grin.
That gun? He knows
it’s too much gin.

Pushes the door,
heaves out his gut
follows it with
a sandaled foot
stands up turns back
slams the door shut.

“Give me your gun.”

The voice treads air.

“Don’t have no gun.
And further to that, why
you need another one?”

My brother — fair
and reasonable
till the end.

“Too bad. No gun
mean man must dead.”

Three swift reports.

He stumbles.
Grabs his side.
Calls out
“Help me!
I’m shot…”
bleeds royally
then dies.

Electric planets
punctuate
a firmament
of navy skies
spill laser
points of flame-
blue light
drill purple
worm holes
in the forehead
of the night.

While lilac drafts
of incense rise
my brother slips
his dark blue skin.

The dog-grey sea
licks at his toes
noses his corpse
looking for clues.

Like that old poet
wrestling the wind
I study shades
of island blues.

Top 100 Jamaican songs. Get it right!

2009-04-25T20:31:00.000-07:00

I’ve got to thank Rethabile Masilo for pointing me to Reuters’ report
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090422/music_nm/us_jamaica_1)
announcing a list of Jamaica’s top 100 songs over the 50 years between 1957 and 2007.

A panel of seven made the selections, assisted by members of the public attending a symposium at the University of the West Indies, Mona, on April 16th. The audience helped to shape the criteria for the selection, as well as vote on the compositions to be included in the top 100. Former Finance and Planning Minister Omar Davies headed the panel, which included businessman Wayne Chen, musicologist Vaughn "Bunny" Goodison, founder of the Soul Shack Disco and creator and host of the popular radio show, "Rhythms," Frankie Campbell of the Fab Five band, broadcaster Francois St. Juste, journalist Basil Walters, and musician Sly Dunbar of Sly and Robbie fame.

Bob Marley's "One Love" topped the list with "Simmer Down" coming in at No. 9. "No Woman No Cry" was picked No. 12 and "Redemption Song" No. 14. "One Love" garnered 726 points. The second placed song, "O Carolina," originally recorded by the Folkes Brothers, scored 540 points.

Reuters reported the list as follows:

The Top 10 songs and the singers were:

1. "One Love" - Bob Marley & the Wailers

2. "Oh Carolina" - The Folkes Brothers

3. "54-45" - The Maytals

4. "Got to Go Back Home" - Bob Andy

5. "My Boy Lollipop" - Millie Small

6. "Many Rivers To Cross" - Jimmy Cliff

7. "Israelites" - Desmond Dekker and the Aces

8. "Cherry Oh Baby" - Eric Donaldson

9. "Simmer Down" - Bob Marley & the Wailers

10. "Carry Go Bring Come" - Justin Hinds & the Dominos

I’m not a fan of top 10s, top 100s, Grammys, Oscars, etc., for reasons that I think are good ones, and that I won’t go into in this post. However, it’s nothing but good when people come together to weigh, discuss and celebrate their culture – in this case, their music. Give thanks and praises for that.

Three things struck me.

First, Horace Helps, the Reuters reporter, and Bob Tourtellotte, the editor, have managed to distort the title of the song in the No. 3 spot. "54-46 – That's My Number" is a song by Fred "Toots" Hibbert about the 18 months he spent in jail on a ganja charge. (Toots claimed he was arrested while helping to bail someone.) It’s not “54-45,” though there are sites on the Internet misnaming it that way.

Folks know I get upset by inaccuracies, sloppy dealing with facts, figures, events, history, the truth. This is a simple story, and the reporter and editor have easy access to media where the correct information is available. Further, it’s as if some people are perversely dedicated to getting it wrong. For example, anyone listening to the recording at
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x8950_54-45-was-my-number_music
a site where the song is incorrectly advertised as “54-45 WAS MY NUMBER," will hear the musicians singing the right thing.

There was no place for comment or feedback on the Reuters site, so no chance to set the record straight.

Secondly, the fifth place song is of interest for a couple of reasons. It's the only one where the recording artiste is a woman. Also, whatever the criteria used for “Jamaican” were, “My Boy Lollipop”, unlike the other nine songs, was not written by Jamaicans. Singer Robert Spencer of The Cadillacs, a doo wop group from Harlem, and the group's manager, Johnny Roberts, are usually ascribed the writing credits. The song's first recording was by teenager Barbie Gaye in 1956. Millie Small's 1964 cover, rearranged by Ernie Ranglin and distinctive for its ska/bluebeat-style, became a huge hit in Britain, reaching the No. 2 spot. It went to No. 1 in Ireland and No. 2 in the USA, topped the charts in Australia and was the first record to help Chris Blackwell's Jamaican label, Island Records, make millions. With over seven million copies sold, it still is one of the best-selling reggae/ska hits. So it’s an important song in the history of the development and export of Jamaican music, but it’s not as completely Jamaican as the others in the top ten are.

Finally, the fact that the Department of Government at UWI are the ones who organized the symposium is either a very good or a very bad thing... One hopes it's a good thing. One worries though, when, in a release from the aforesaid department, one reads sentences like: "Its [the music's] impact on the aesthetic and ontological development and expression of global popular music is phenomenal". I have argued in a long document elsewhere that the social sciences aren't really sciences at all. Forgive the bellicose metaphors, but is this fodder for my cannon, or ammunition for my gun?

As ever, all comments, corrections, and new information are welcome.

Jewish Canadians for Decency and Righteousness

2009-04-20T20:22:00.000-07:00

I get behind here because there’s so much to write about and many issues that deserve comment require a moral and spiritual stamina, and also a forbearance of the trivial, that I can’t always summon. So, for example, Prime Minister Harper, through his Finance Minister, Jim Flaherty, erodes pay equity for women (in this case, women in the federal public service in Canada) by saying it’s a matter to be referred to the unions. Who would have thought in this day and age any government could get away with that? As for the trivial – for I cannot forbear – the media twist themselves into pretzels about Michelle Obama touching the Queen and concoct a fashion ‘war’ between herself and Carla Bruni. Good grief! Give the terrified jobless a break!

Something happened in March that, never mind it’s late, needs to be noticed. Over 160 Jewish Canadians, including persons such as Ursula Franklin O.C., Anton Kuerti O.C., and Naomi Klein, made public a signed statement voicing their concern about the campaign to suppress criticism of Israel currently being carried on in Canada. They are, they say, “concerned about all expressions of racism, anti-Semitism, and social injustice.” But they see the “Never again” for the Holocaust, as applying to all peoples. Thus, “It is a tragic turn of history that the State of Israel, with its ideals of democracy and its dream of being a safe haven for Jewish people, causes immeasurable suffering and injustice to the Palestinian people.”

It’s an extraordinary document, the full text of which is available at several internet sites, including: http://www.straight.com/article-206239/jewish-canadians-concerned-about-suppression-criticism-israel:

The statement concludes:

'It is crucial that forums for discussion of Israel's accountability to the international community for what many have called war crimes be allowed to proceed unrestricted by specious claims of anti-Semitism.'

'We recognize that anti-Semitism is a reality in Canada as elsewhere, and we are fully committed to resisting any act of hatred against Jews. At the same time, we condemn false charges of anti-Semitism against student organizations, unions, and other groups and people exercising their democratic right to freedom of speech and association regarding legitimate criticism of the State of Israel.'

The courage of these persons must be applauded. There are, no doubt, many other Jewish Canadians, and Israelis, who feel this way, and who will be reassured to know that these persons saw fit to make public their distress over behaviour on the part of the state of Israel towards its Palestinian neighbours.

Seems the mainstream media in Canada weren’t helpful in making the statement public.

As Massa God would have it, for as we keep saying here, him don’t sleep, at much the same time, news media were reporting that Israeli troops admitted that they had killed innocent Palestinian civilians in the Gaza war. The reports are hair-raising. Here is one soldier’s account: ‘When we entered a house, we were supposed to bust down the door and start shooting inside and just go up storey by storey – I call that murder. If we identify a person, we shoot them. How is this reasonable?’

He also told of an old woman who was crossing a road when she was shot by soldiers.

‘I don’t know whether she was suspicious or not. I do know that my officer sent people to the roof to take her out. It was cold-blooded murder.’

The accounts come from Israeli soldiers at a recruits’ training course at the Rabin Academy. Danny Mazir, head of the Academy, said: ‘We expected to hold a discussion about the war. We did not expect the testimonies we heard. We were in total shock.’

Palestinians say over half of the more than 1,300 Gazans who were killed were civilians. Israel disputes the figure.

Among other things, it is evil to require men and women to slaughter their fellow human beings in a way that they themselves can recognize as evil. No civilized state abuses its citizens in this way. As for the slaughtered Palestinians, the crying out of the blood of innocents is a continuing theme in the Holy Books. Those who murder unarmed women and children flaunt not only the conventions of men, but, far more seriously, the laws of God.

The converse applies equally to the Palestinians, but it would seem, in the immediate circumstances, that they are more sinned against than sinning.

Idolatry is a convoluted sin, and all manner of worldly things may become idols, including putting the worship of the state before the worship of God. Whatever else there may be dispute about, the first commandment on the tablets Moses brought down from Sinai, as recorded in Exodus and Deuteronomy (in Hebrew, the Devarim), is indisputable: “You shall have no other gods before me.” It would be imprudent of those who lead the state of Israel to set themselves against the God who called the Jewish people His. Indeed, that is to put it very mildly.

Is this a religious blog?

2009-04-08T19:13:00.000-07:00

A friend asked me a while back if this was a religious blog. No, I told her, it wasn't. Not that I don't talk from time to time about things that people refer to as "religious," but religion (I'm a practising Roman Catholic, and already I'm feeling the need to explain what I mean by that) is no longer a very nice word, bringing to mind, inter alia, physical and sexual abuse of children, forcing of young women into polygamous relationships, frittering away of tithes on la dolce vita lifestyles, support of unjust wars, vilification and violence towards those with opposing views, etc. And that’s just the religious folks of my faith! There are warriors, oppressors of women and children, dealers out of arbitrary and extreme punishment in other religious traditions as well.

So religion is an increasingly fraught word, having less and less to do with reverence for and love of God, however one conceives of that Great Spirit.

Another thing about this ‘religion’ word is that it can be reductive, shrinking a way of life into mere ritual and observance. I’m all for rituals: morning cup of coffee as you read the paper, bedtime stories with your children, Friday evening movie with your friends, once-a week dinner with the extended family. Rituals are the stuff of our lives, investing them with rhythm, marking them by repeated affirmation of what is good, comforting, worthy of being cherished. So it’s fine if religious people worship once, or twice or three times, a week, offer daily prayers, perform regular acts of charity like feeding the hungry, housing the homeless, visiting the sick and imprisoned. I just find myself nowadays preferring to think of these things as decent, good, spiritual, rather than religious. Maybe it’s a phase, but it’s certainly where I am at, these days.

I want my spiritual life to be ongoing, unremitting, and pervasive – to be my whole life, not a small, separate piece of it. That’s my ideal, what I’m working towards. I want God to be part of all my business, a God I recognize as Jah, Elohim, Allah, the Almighty, the Great Spirit and Olodumare, if it comes to that. I hope the discernment of the Spirit informs what I write here, whether it’s a poem or a rant against whatever social, educational, ecological, or political issue is currently exercising me. Hope, I said, hope. I’m not a mystic, nor a great poet, not yet (right Geoff? Donna?), and this is a matter of striving, an essential part of which is conversation with the online community whose responses, corrections and information all contribute to the process of enlightenment.

At midday mass today, the priest spoke of the 'economics' of Jesus, He who ran the merchants out of the temple, accusing them of turning his Father’s house into a den of thieves. Economics, the priest explained, is a word whose roots refer to home management. (I looked it up: oikos "house" + nomos "managing.") Jesus’ economics conceived of all of us as part of his Father’s household. Judas put himself out of the household by becoming a thief, not only when he dipped into the community’s purse, but also by treating Jesus, a person in the household, as if He were mere chattel, when he sold Him to the chief priests for thirty pieces of silver. It was a fresh take on the old story, and relevant, and I thank the preacher (a new one, whose name I don't know) for it.

The wily young clergyman never made it explicit (I’ve always appreciated Jesus’ embracing serpentine wisdom) but I’m sure he was talking about sub-prime mortgages and CEOs who pocket millions, never mind that they have destroyed the lives of countless human beings, treating them not as people but as things, much as Judas did Jesus, and ruining the world’s economy into the bargain. Small wonder some people expect Jesus to land anytime now, bent on hustling the moneychangers and hawkers out of a temple that they have made a den of thieves with their carbon emissions, depleted ozone layer and acres of oceanic plastic soup!

So back to whether this is a religious blog or not. If religious means concerned with God and matters of the spirit, and the great commandments Love-God! and Love-your-neighbour-as-you-love-yourself! the answer is, I hope, yes. But if it's all that other stuff tied up in rules and regulations, license for the law-giving shepherds and blind obedience for the flock, well, no, I really don't think so.

Selah!

"Will's Flowers" – another poem for spring

2009-04-07T18:23:00.000-07:00

Will’s Flowers
For David

I never yearned for snow
though brand new clothes from fat
Sears-Roebuck catalogues
committed to the U. S. post
by Uncle Lannie’s faithful hand
in Cincinnati’s never never land –
those made me glad enough.
He stayed away for years
writing Aunt V long letters
casting box after box onto
the dead slow sea-mail waters
hoarding expiring pennies
for a car a house storing
for ever after the best time
of his life. Adult and old
I never thought, “Is how
him manage foreign? Not
a wife. No family, no kin.”
And so of course I follow him…

Now when spring reach T.O.
and the wild blonde from up
the street that tend to endless
cats and her small garden
with fierce care come forth
with spade in hand to set
again this year pot upon
pot of yellow daffodils
I think how we ex-slaves
enfranchised manumitted
free of snow white queens
Britannic motherland
I think we still don’t
understand the bard’s
peregrinations and sake
of that we dis poor Will
mightily do him wrong.

Niggers still coming North
lured by the siren song
of work and decent pay
the chance to quarry out
a little life. Meanwhile
as dog nyam dog cold
carving up your carcass
vampire cops hunt you
for your dark blood this skip
of light this skemps of flower
that God promote from grass
rooted in blackness bent
on breaching ice just
pushing pushing up to
celebrate sun summer
unrepentant livity…

To rass! What a misguided fuss.
The blasted daffodils is just like us.

from Certifiable (Fredericton, NB: Goose Lane Editions) 2001.

Cancerning John Ibbitson's front page commentary, “Obama Turns Left,” in the Globe and Mail

2009-04-07T15:41:00.000-07:00

This is a re-posting of something I originally hung up yesterday, in which I suggested that there might have been racism at play in the matter under discussion. I have not repeated those comments because that’s not the issue of immediate concern. Besides, we can return to that aspect of things, and perhaps will, another time. My observations otherwise remain much the same. What I have added is more of what John Ibbitson said, and a link to the front page feature in the Globe and Mail. What have been lost are some asides, comments on the original post, and my responses. My apologies, FSJL.

I’ve blogged before about people who claim expertise but who really aren’t expert because they lack the attention to detail, the commitment to finding out what’s true, the bothering to check and double-check that identifies persons who care about their work, care about not misinforming those who repose confidence in what they say. Being expert isn’t easy and I’m glad that I make small claim in that direction. But if you say you are, then deliver the goods! If not, the price for those who believe you may end up being very high!

One presumes a considerable degree of expertise on the part of someone writing on politics for a major newspaper. I’m referring to John Ibbitson’s front-page piece, “Obama Turns Left” in the Globe and Mail of April 4. Before I make any comments, though, I have a story. It happened a while back, pre-election and just pre-Global Devastation, if I recall rightly. I’m watching a discussion on the Wall Street Journal’s website. I’m pretty sure that’s the source, but it doesn’t matter much if it isn’t. Can’t remember their names, but two men are discussing Barack Obama’s economic policies and one is describing European economies. He says they grow at about three percent annually, people are accustomed to taking four weeks or so of vacation time, workers are pretty laid back. These economies, the way of life, might be characterized by the word ‘equality'. While he’s talking, I’m thinking, “Good. Someone who sees the virtue of an economic engine with the goal of enabling producers to stop and sniff the flowers, enjoy their families, read, travel, have time to share stories with their children.”

Imagine my surprise when I discover this is not what’s being approved of at all. The European ‘equality’ approach is not such a good thing, it turns out, because it’s not the kind that allows for risk-taking, for the enterprise that has always been the engine of American industry and commerce, and underwrites the American way of life. It seems the American economy can be described by the word ‘liberty,’ its virtue being that people can take risks and become wildly successful entrepreneurs and concomitantly, production can grow, not by modest three percents but by leaps and bounds.

I’m relying on memory here but I’m pretty sure I’m reporting the essence of what was said. Certainly I was knocked over by the discussants not even admitting that the European approach had, as seemed obvious from their own descriptions, much to recommend it. Naaaah! I gathered that I was supposed to think that these economies might be ‘equal’ but were somehow less ‘free,’ and to be watchful lest Barack’s policies lead Americans down the backward paths to socialist unfreedom.

So now to John Ibbitson’s comments on Obama’s turning left. I quote Mr Ibbitson’s first two paragraphs:

“In the space of a few months, the United States of America has been transformed from the most entrepreneurial society on Earth to one so state-directed that even the Europeans are raising their eyebrows.

The government has become deeply enmeshed in the banking and insurance sectors, a chunk of which it now owns. It holds or guarantees $5-trillion worth of mortgages. It is directing the future of the automotive industry.”

Mr Ibbitson then refers to the [American] conservatives’ accusation that President Obama is a socialist and, in doing so, employs a courtroom device that we are all familiar with from crime shows on the TV. He proceeds to quote one conservative, thus…

' “The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics may be dead," Mike Huckabee, former candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, said recently, "but the Union of American Socialist Republics is being born." '

Ibbitson follows with the comment, “It's a wild claim.” But as in the case of the lawyer who asks and then withdraws a question when the judge rules it objectionable, the damage has been done. Obama’s policies have been tainted by the Russian connection (made by Huckabee, true, but effective nonetheless), and people have been frightened by the comparison between the USA and the USSR – an unthinkable one, prior to this!

There’s no space here to properly analyze the article and the accompanying graphics, and, thanks to the Internet, readers may see for themselves – sort of. The graphics were pretty grand! Suffice it to say that, were I still teaching English, this would be an excellent piece to take into the classroom for students learning about bias and subtle manipulation in journalism.

So those reading this post can see the feature themselves, here is the url: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20090403.wobama03/BNStory/International/home

One buys the Globe and Mail because of some good news reporting and some good columnists, and because one can almost invariably count on fine letters to the editor. The readers were quick to pounce. Ian and Angela Trowell asked, “What on earth were you thinking when you blazed across your front page a red striped text and a blue cluster of hammer and sickles? To inflame Americans, who are inherently fearful of socialism in any form, is utterly irresponsible.” Janis Svipilis rebuked: “The parody of the U.S. flag may have seemed clever, but it's a deadly insult to the democracy south of us… As the son of refugees from Stalinism, I find your front page offensive and, worse, morally incoherent.” There were no letters published that supported Ibitson's analysis.

I suppose one can argue that policy can be interpreted at will, and so John Ibbitson is within his right – ha-ha – to paint Obama pink. Ha-ha some more – a doubly ironic guffaw this time. It would be an occasion for loud cackling except that this (Canada) is a nation presently being governed by ill-advised conservatives, voted in by a too-small percentage of the enfranchised. Many Canadians don’t vote. One must conclude that they don’t grasp what will happen if they fail to exercise the franchise. In such a context, the importance of responsible journalism cannot be overemphasized.

There’s no doubt that Ibbitson got one thing very wrong. Early on he remarks: “Mr. Obama is the most activist president since Lyndon Johnson. Mr. Johnson's presidency failed.” Reader Kurt D Lynn to the rescue, this time, to point out that Lyndon Johnson’s presidency cannot be deemed ‘failed’ by any stretch of the imagination. “Mr. Johnson's legacy includes the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Higher Education Act of 1965, Medicare (health care for the elderly) and Medicaid (health care for the poor). Moreover, with his focus on cleaning up America, it's not a stretch to say his presidency marked the start of true environmental concern.” Lynn allows that Johnson “expanded the war in Vietnam and that his public persona… left a lot to be desired,” but he concludes that Johnson’s “footprint changed the course of America's social consciousness.” All true. There’s evidence too that, but for some conniving on the part of Richard Nixon, the Vietnam War would have concluded on Johnson’s watch. Instead, Nixon’s intermediaries persuaded the South Vietnamese government to wreck all-party peace initiatives and kept the war alive so that it might be an election issue.

So, for those who know the runnings, i.e., how it really go, Ibbitson's comparing Obama to Johnson turns out to be flattering. If Obama lives up to anything like Johnson's legacy, he'd have done a great deal. Finally, one wonders how much John Ibbitson knows about Obama's chief economic adviser, Lawrence Summers. I do believe a recent Globe and Mail carried an article from the New York Times that should lay his fears to rest.

John Ibbitson and the Globe and Mail need to do much better next time.

"To No Music"

2009-04-06T13:34:00.000-07:00

So it snowed, as it always does, in April, which is supposed to be spring. Here is my poem on the matter... Called "To No Music," it is taken from by third collection of poetry, Certifiable, which was published by Goose Lane Editions in 2001. (See details on this page.) I post it here as promised. Thanks to whoever asked for it!

To No Music

That is my quarrel with this country.
You hear them say: “April?
April? Spring’s on its way, come April.”
And, poor things, believe it too.
See them outside, toes blue
in some skemps little cotton skirt
well set on making what don’t go so, go so.
And think: this big April morning
it make as if to snow.
Serious!

That is something that must
make a body consider: if you can’t
trust the way the world turn –
winter, spring, summer, autumn –
what you can trust?

When it reach April
and you been bussing your shirt
for eight straight month just
to keep warm, you in no mood
to wait one dege-dege day more.
Not when you poor
and cold in the subway
cold in the street
cold where you work
where you eat
where you sleep.

But you don’t get a peep
of protest from these
people. “Well, it’s late
this year,” they say, toes blue
peeping out the open-toe shoe,
and hug the meagre little skirt
tight round them, shivering
for all they worth.

They don’t agree with the coldness
and they don’t disagree;
they walk to no music
and that is misery.

More on whether there is one literature, or there are many...

2009-03-29T20:41:00.000-07:00

In this post, I'm using a comment from Geoffrey Philp (as ever, thanks Geoff) to further think through the matter of whether there is one literature or there are many literatures, and, as an example, whether there is room in Canadian literature for a Caribbean voice.

Geoff says:

"... a literature has to do with community and memory, so to the extent that a poem/short story or novel captures something that is important for that community to remember, then it becomes something cherished. SNIP (New paragraph) This does not, however, take into consideration community politics, etc. where a writer's work may be ignored for reasons that have nothing to do with the quality of the work. This is along way of saying yes, there may be room in Canadian literature for a Caribbean voice, but it will depend upon the Canadian community to decide whether that voice will become part of their collective memory."

I keep saying that twenty men in the world now decide much of what the rest of us get to read. (Okay. It may be a few more than twenty, but not that many more.) It is they who decide what gets into books, and books are the modern collective memory. Thus, in many cases, the community may never get to hear the poem, short story or novel of a particular writer, and so may never get to choose to remember or to forget it.

American poet, Emily Dickinson helps to make the case: Fewer than a dozen of nearly eighteen hundred poems that she wrote were published during her lifetime. Had her sister Vinnie not found the poems and been determined that they should be published, the community might never have known of Dickinson's poetry. Furthermore, according to Wikipedia, "The work that was published during her lifetime was usually altered significantly by the publishers to fit the conventional poetic rules of the time..." Indeed! And, "Until the 1955 publication of Dickinson's Complete Poems by Thomas H. Johnson, her poetry was considerably edited and altered from their manuscript versions..." Ha! Those twenty men at work...

Out of her story, some points to be made. (1) Many writers are recluses. (2) The community needs to value those who make songs and stories, support them, and seek them out, if necessary, or else it is they who will lose the prize of the work. (3) Scholars, when they function well, do what Johnson did. They find the work, respect it, make it available. (4) Good presses are needed to complete the process of delivering the work to the world.

A community is not twenty men. That's why the small press movement is such an important one. It gives people other than those twenty men the power to make the choice about whose stories and poems get sent out into the world, whose songs have a chance to be heard so that the community may make its choice about what to remember and what to forget. That's why the Internet is so important as well. Indeed, the more I think about it, the more it seems that it's the Internet that will cut through this Gordian knot by making everything available to everybody.

There has been a fuss recently here in Canada about literary prizes, and who gets them, and who decides on who shall get them. It has been noted that only one of the three judges for this year's Griffin prize is Canadian. And that that is good. It's certainly to the point of our present discussion, for it's a way of working us towards that big fat global notion of what is song and story. The fact that the Griffin is awarded not just to a Canadian but also to an international poet of distinction is also a step in that direction. Nor does that international poet need to be a poet who writes in English! We should note that in 2006, Barbadian poet Kamau Brathwaite was the Griffin international prizewinner, thus demonstrating at least that Canadian ideas of the very best poetry certainly do include Caribbean voices.

This discussion isn't done, by any means. For instance, here in Canada we need to talk about why Québec does so much more publishing than the rest of Canada. It's not a matter of size, so it must be something about how the community values song and story, how it arranges for the discovery of singers and storytellers, and enables their works to reach the people who will choose to remember — or not. For sure we can't ignore that it so happens that the community is French.

So. Canadian literature. French Canadian literature. English Canadian literature. French Canadian literature that includes Caribbean voices. English Canadian literature that includes Caribbean voices. French Canadian literature that includes Caribbean voices in English. English Canadian literature that includes Caribbean voices in French. And, good people, we've only just begun to look at the songs and stories of Canada...

Is there room in Canadian literature for a Caribbean voice?

2009-03-26T18:54:00.000-07:00

As you will know if you visit here, I’ve been thinking recently about whether there are many literatures. The differences in people’s languages, histories, contemporary experiences and worldviews, in the very fact that some people sing and recite their songs and stories while others write them down, seemed to make a strong argument for separate literatures. In the last few days, however, someone wrote me with questions that put these considerations into a precise context and I was driven beyond pondering, to try for answers. In today’s post I reproduce, with some alterations, the questions and my response.

The Questions

Where does culture specific literature fit in, in a setting such as Canada, where many attempts are made at creating a ‘Canadian’ identity that presupposes various cultures, but (for the most part) merges them together? Is the Caribbean-Canadian poet speaking with a different voice from the Caribbean poet?

The Response

If it is true that “many attempts are made at creating a ‘Canadian’ identity that presupposes various cultures, but (for the most part) merges them together,” then one must question the extent to which such attempts have been successful.

We have lived for 15 years in a neighbourhood in Toronto where, for the most part, Italian and Portuguese people have made their homes, some for close to four decades. We have neighbours who still can't speak more than a few words of English, never mind that they have lived here for so long, worked here, and raised their children here. It's true that their children learn English and many forget or never learn their parents' languages. It's true that their children learn new behaviours and so ‘acculturate’ to more or less extents. In that case, we have to ask: Are these new, adopted mores and behaviours, Canadian? Or do they derive from American TV and Hollywood movies? If they are Canadian, how would one describe this ‘Canadianness’? Maple syrup, hockey and curling?

Further, concerning a ‘Canadian’ identity: Is it English or French? And aren't both those groups of long-ago imperialist invaders merely earlier ‘immigrants’ of a nastier sort? Aren't First Nations the only people who have a true claim to a Canadian identity?

In Toronto there are clearly demarcated ‘towns’ and ‘settlements’ of Chinese, Koreans, Italians, East Indians, Portuguese, Maltese, Ethiopians, Senegalese, etc., etc. Immigrant communities, cultures and religions in many cases remain intact, even after having been here for very long periods of time. Sikh communities in Western Canada are a good example. Indeed, Canadian multicultural legislation in some respects nurtures and preserves these differences. Some languages in the former Russian satellite states, superseded by Russian in their own communities, survive in Canada.

Perhaps Canada could better be described as a mosaic society, one in which many different cultures live side my side, within their own contained sub-communities?

So many questions...

All that having been said, my task as a Jamaican born Canadian citizen who earns a living from writing is straightforward: it is to write, honestly and truly, about the things that I know best, in the languages that I know best. I lived more than half of my life in the Caribbean, emigrating when I was over 50 years old. Jamaica is my home by virtue of an extensive investment in time and experience. Jamaican Creole is one of my two first languages. It is a language of extraordinary literary power and I often choose to use it for poetry, prose fiction and for the theatre, though I write in English as well, and with equal ease, and occasionally use other languages for my purposes.

I have never ever found the fact that I write out of my Caribbean history and experience, in the languages of that region, to be a problem with any Canadian audience. Quite the contrary. I recently read DE MAN, a book-length performance poem about the crucifixion of Jesus Christ written entirely in Jamaican Creole, in a church in Calgary. It went so well they wanted to bring me back to repeat the reading on Good Friday. On each occasion that DE MAN has been read in Canada, the response has been the same – overwhelming. It’s a good poem.

So literature might well be culture-and-language specific, but it's equally human-and-earth specific. It's the same – and it's different. It is this difference-in-sameness and sameness-in-difference that empowers it. And now, something else is happening – perhaps akin to the phenomenon in music called ‘mashup’? The languages are interpenetrating (Chinglish, Spanglish) and the literature is using the linguistic admixtures, as well as traipsing across national and cultural boundaries, roping in everybody’s histories, refusing to respect traditional separations.

The business of scholars and critics and publishers is to keep up with where literature is going, and perhaps it is fair to do a little quarreling here. Is it that scholars have become less assiduous? (We’ve talked a bit about that on this blog.) Might there be a problem with the way publishers decide on the works they publish? With the people they choose to collect anthologies? (I’ve had a bit to say about this too.) Should we reconsider the basis on which the judges of literary prizes are chosen? Overhaul the criteria those judges apply in selecting prizewinners? Do something about the very fact that the literary marketplace is so prize-driven?

Now that we are faced with literatures that are crossing borders and languages and ethnicities, sometimes carrying over a particular ethnic and linguistic burden, sometimes setting the burden down before the crossing to take up a new one, or half-abandoning it, a Caribbean/Canadian writer may be doing any – or all – of these things! So might a Caribbean writer, looking north to the Canadian diaspora, or to Euro-Canada... Chances are that a Caribbean-Canadian poet might be more attracted to write about Canadian life and society and landscape and experiences, but as for a difference in voice? I’d be very careful about making hard and fast judgments about differences there. Individual circumstances would dictate particular cases. Man would jus haffe look an see!

The Eye of God and the A.I.G. Bonuses

2009-03-17T21:06:00.000-07:00

Iz ow sum peepl cyaan si wat clock a straik?

Choosing at random: the bee colonies are breaking down and (so?) the food supplies are dwindling; the polar ice is melting; the permafrost is damaged beyond mending; the weather has turned wild and unpredictable, so we have impossibly powerful hurricanes and tornadoes creating unprecedented devastation; the jet streams from aircraft and sundry other carbon exhalations have over-heated the atmosphere; and, to top it all, the world economy has been plunged into ruin by a very small group of enormously greedy people, so that individuals have lost their spouses, families, homes, jobs, businesses, savings, indeed, their lives, in some cases. Meanwhile, the folks at AIG are proceeding as if it’s business as usual, paying out, and accepting, large bonuses, and that from public monies?

To repeat: how is it that some people can’t see [or hear] what [hour the] clock is striking, can’t wake up and smell the excrement, can’t grasp that we are inter Scylla Charibdysque, or, in English, between the Devil and the deep blue sea? (We are way, way out of rock and hard place territory, here! The high frights of myth and the base horrors of slavery can probably, however, serve our purposes.)

There have been some pictures, recently circulating on the internet, of God’s Eye. Go here: http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/bl_eye_of_god.htm
According to Urban Legends, the photo, or composite of photos, taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and at the Kitt Peak National Observatory in Arizona, actually depicts the so-called Helix Nebula. Astronomers describe the Nebula as "a trillion-mile-long tunnel of glowing gases." At its center is a dying star that has ejected masses of dust and gas to form tentacle-like filaments stretching toward an outer rim composed of the same material. Our own sun may look like this in several billion years. (It matters not to me that it’s a blue eye. The colour may well change in due course. It’s just a pretty amazing image floating out there.)

Also, interestingly enough, in a book called The World’s Eye (University of Kentucky Press, 1982), Albert Potts informs us that the Huichol Indians in a remote spot in the southern Sierra Madre Occidental of Mexico have for centuries been making sikuli or eyes, ritual objects made of thread. It was believed that the eyes of the gods looked out through the middle of the woven ‘cross’ of an eye. You make sikuli by winding a web of ever expanding threads around two crossed sticks. The objects express a prayer that the eye of god or the gods would rest, benignly, one supposes, upon the supplicant. Anthropologist Carl Lumholz encountered these artifacts on a visit between 1895 and 1898. In time, the sikuli, as ojo de dios, spread throughout Latin America and into North America and the Caribbean. The Aymara in Bolivia and the Hopi and Dineh (Navajo) in North America, among others, now share the tradition. Craftspeople create elaborate ojos de dios. Kids make them in art class. I can remember making ojos de dios myself, ages ago.

Potts tells us, though, that the sikuli phenomenon is not limited to Latin America; rather, it is a worldwide one. Anthropologists elsewhere know the eye as a thread cross or Fadenkreuz. There are also variations known as Fadenstern or thread stars. And they have been around for a long time. There is evidence that they existed in Latin America before A.D. 500; eyes of a similar rhomboid shape appear on pottery in Troy and the Middle East thousands of years before Christ.

So what do the ojo de dios, the Fadenkreuz and the God’s Eye image as depicted in the Hubble polyglot photo have to do with big bonuses being paid out by AIG to already super rich people? Probably nothing at all. Or maybe, just maybe, in the spirit of re-associating sensibilities, or, as Lauryn Hill put it, because “everything is everything,” if primitive peoples have known for millennia that the Eye of God is watching them, wouldn’t you think that these super-technocrats who rule in the cyberage ought to have got the message?

As everybody and him granny have a way to say, “God is not bedridden and him not asleep.” (Note: ojos de dios do not depict closed eyes.)

Iz jus dat fe Im taim langa dan roup.

Pam Mordecai reads in Calgary on March 4 and March 6

2009-02-24T20:03:00.000-08:00

On Wednesday, March 4 at 7:00 p.m. at Pages Bookstore, 1135 Kensington Road NW, I read at an event sponsored by the Canada Council and the Creative Writing Research Group at the University of Calgary. The reading is free and open to the public.

On Friday, March 6 at 7:30 pm at St Stephen’s Anglican Church, 1121 14 Avenue SW, Calgary, Calgary resident, Howard Gallimore will join me in a reading of my Good Friday performance poem, de Man. Howard reads the part of Samuel and I read Naomi. Naomi (maid to Pilate’s wife) and Samuel meet on the road to Calgary for the first time in a long time and report on the crucifixion event as it takes place. The reading is free and open to the public. Books on sale, part proceeds in aid of the Church.

Elizabeth Alexander's Inauguration Poem

2009-02-24T10:25:00.000-08:00

Well, not a big response to our poll on the inauguration poem — perhaps because so many websites have been carrying people’s responses. Just one person voted who said the poem was good, rather than middling or great.

Occasional poems aren’t easy to write. Add to that the formal demands of a praise song, and compound the matter further with the expectations of a vast and varied audience on an unprecedented occasion… Clearly Elizabeth Alexander had her work cut out for her.

Setting aside for now how good or bad the poem was, a great many people commented that Professor Alexander’s reading didn’t transmit the poem’s music, didn’t make the best use of its natural rhythms. And the audience did have a right to expect music, for the poem had named itself that way — it was, after all, a praise song. Perhaps the poet read slowly because she wanted people to understand; perhaps she was awed by the occasion. Whatever it was, the truth is, even if not all poets are performers, this poet on this occasion needed to be one, needed to steep herself in the imagined moment, so that when she opened her mouth before the great congregation, the poem would emerge powerfully, as Rev Lowery’s prayer did. (In fact, some people have compared the poem, unfavourably, to Rev Lowery’s benediction.)

Quraysh Ali Lansana, director of the Gwendolyn Brooks Center for Black Literature and Creative Writing and associate professor of English and creative writing at Chicago State University had this to say: “Elizabeth is a poet who renders her work very much in the way that many poets have been schooled or trained, certainly many academics, which is to read the poem and sort of let the words live on their own, without the emotional emphasis placed in certain areas… It is a school of thought for many poets and academics, and I am an academic, but I don’t ascribe to this approach to reading work.”

Might there be, lurking under his comment about the manner of ‘reading work,’ a similar observation about writing it?

Why did so many people not like the poem? Is it perhaps because their poetic expectations derive from the diet of rhyme (straight or slant), rhythm, and ‘deep emotion,’ that still characterize many popular songs? Such expectations might account for a comment like, “This is poetry? Gosh, if I'd turned in this kind of crap in elementary school, I'd have failed on the spot… Dr Suess (sic) did a better job!” or one like, “The dull and somewhat monotonous reading style improved very little the bland and repetitious verses of a confusing poem…”

Wordsworth, in that famous long-time definition, saw a “spontaneous overflow of powerful feeling” as being at the root of the poetry-making activity, and rhyme and rhythm are ancient, worthy tools of poetic craft. Indeed, rhyme or no rhyme — there’s no issue about rhythm, for if it’s words, they will have rhythm — an occasional poem needs to rise to the occasion, and if the event is as big as this one was, then there needs must be a mighty rising.

So what did I think of the poem? I think the poet did a good, work-woman-like job, but not a great one, which I suppose amounts to saying that she didn’t quite manage to meet the demands of the moment. Some people say she was trying to fit in with Obama’s low-key, practical, we-have-lots-of-work-to-set-about-doing speech. I don’t agree. I think she saw her job right. It was to sing a praise song, and, as David Ulin of the Los Angeles Times observed, in the stanza in which she recalled the stories of the many whose struggles made the day possible, her poem did make music.

But I think we must at least consider the possibility that some persons have hijacked poetry and run off with it to a distant hill, where they have been cooking and reheating the poetic corpse so that it’s now a weary, wary, prosy poetry. That might explain the poet letting out the string so that the kite of her poem (in the verse Ulin refers to) lifts with, “Say it plain, that many have died for this day. Sing the names of the dead who brought us here, who laid the train tracks, raised the bridges, picked the cotton and the lettuce, built brick by brick the glittering edifices…” only to fetch it up in some prosy brambles by proceeding to describe the edifices as ones “they would then keep clean and work inside of…” Oh dear!

All of which brings me back to the question in my previous post about whether there are many different poetries…

What Makes a Good Poem?

2009-02-08T10:11:00.000-08:00

A lot of talk about Elizabeth Alexander’s inauguration poem, “Praisesong for the Day.” Some people liked it, some didn’t. If you pass by over the next few days, do participate in our poll! I’ll save my comments until the results are available. I’ve been thinking about poetry, though, and my ruminations benefited yesterday from a conversation with Dan Varrette, one of the editors at Insomniac Press (thanks, Dan), as well as some eavesdropping online today.

I’ve often found myself remarking, in discussions about poetry, that soldiers in WWI took books of poetry with them into the trenches. Poetry was that important. So, like, maybe that would be a good criterion to apply to a poem? Would you take this poem with you into a war? Would you have wanted to take Elizabeth Alexander’s poem, or a piece of that poem, with you into a war? That’s kind of a tough test but, since some poems at a previous time have passed it, maybe it’s not an unfair measure. How high? That high!

(Worth noting that a lasting body of work emerged from the pens of soldiers in both World Wars…)

There are actually poems that I remember, and am glad to recollect, some from when I was at school, and other poems or bits of poems encountered since. So maybe that could be another criterion. Is this poem, or a part of a poem, something I want to remember? We do remember songs, after all, the truth being that some songs are fine poems: think Bob Marley, the Beatles, Leonard Cohen.

What I’m wondering is whether it’s inevitable that people’s taste in poetry, their expectations of a poem and their ideas about the good-and-bad-of-it, be determined by where they are from, their history, their language(s) and their culture. For some people, poetry is a way of finding out who they are (Césaire’s "Qui et quel nous sommes?"), and thinking through their history. There’s the famous Walcott quote from “A Far Cry from Africa” that puts the matter up front and personal:

I who am poisoned with the blood of both,
Where shall I turn, divided to the vein?
I who have cursed
The drunken officer of British rule, how choose
Between this Africa, and the English tongue I love?
Betray them both, or give back what they give?
How can I face such slaughter and be cool?
How can I turn from Africa and live?

Brother Bob’s “Redemption song” reports that never mind our history of being stolen and forcibly relocated…

Old pirates, yes, they rob I;
Sold I to the merchant ships,
Minutes after they took I
From the bottomless pit.

…because of the strong, uplifting hand of the Almighty, triumph is ours and so “We forward in this generation.”

Should all poets address concerns like these? Or is it only people whose history includes oppression and the horrors of slavery, deracination and forced relocation across oceans and continents — and if not those precise subjects, versions thereof?

Is England’s Philip Larkin looking, albeit with a much tighter lens, and from a somewhat different angle, at who we are and how our history informs us in his bad-behave poem, “This Be the Verse”?

This Be The Verse

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another's throats.

Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don't have any kids yourself.

These and similar questions beg to be asked. Does white people’s poetry have to be different from the poetry of black people? Does the poetry of black and white people have to be different from the poetry of native people? What about gay people? Women? Men? Do they all write separate poetries?

Are some poets preoccupied with ‘new and different’ because for them poems need no longer bear any serious burdens? If, after all, poems struggle with issues of justice, of unequal relations within and between nations, of racism, classism, gender relations, it would seem that they hardly need to set out to be different. Must they not get there under the terrible strain? And if they don’t, what does it matter? Isn’t the issue whether the words make your hair stand on end, or fail to?

It’s interesting to compare the excerpts from these three poets. Derek Walcott sounds almost histrionic, set against Bob Marley’s laconic recounting of rapine and Larkin’s mischievous — and deadly — counsel to us to abandon the reproductive enterprise. But the anguish that wrenches Walcott’s questions from his gut emanates from a history of capture, abduction, and plantation slavery that more than supports it. The shrieks are warranted. If Bob’s tempo is different, he’s singing the same tune. And Larkin’s little nursery rhyme delivers the most terrifying verdict of all: misery is our inheritance, and so we should just stop. Period.

Interestingly enough, all three use rhyme (Bob’s rhyme of ‘Almighty’ and ‘triumphantly’ is missing here), and three better practitioners of the Muses’ art it would be hard to pick. More on poetry soon.

EL NUMERO UNO; runnings in Toronto and Calgary

2009-02-05T17:21:00.000-08:00

El Numero Uno or the Pig from Lopinot is a play (for children, sort of, I guess) that I’ve been working on for the last few years, during which time it’s been through several workshops at the Lorraine Kimsa Theatre for Young People. LKTYP commissioned the script when Pierre Tétrault was Artistic Director, and current AD, Allen MacInnes and his crew have nurtured it since. The most recent workshop was in January when Lisa Codrington, Sham Downer, Jujube Mandiela, Billy Merasty, Karim Morgan, Karen Robinson and Rhoma Spencer gave it a workout, under the direction of ahdri zina mandiela and with dramaturg (that’s with a hard ‘g’), Stephen Colella keeping tabs, and apprentice director Joan Kivanda looking in and on. Allen MacInnis, LKTYP’s Artistic Director, visited with us from time to time. Allen has enriched the offerings at LKTYP, the current production, The Forbidden Phoenix, being a good example of the diverse fare that LKTYP now has on the boards. (See below for further info on The Forbidden Phoenix.)

So this here is a big, public thank-you to all these folks! Merçi, gracias, tanx, thank-you. I can’t say it often enough because it’s a real privilege to have something you’ve written taken through its paces in this rigorous, attentive, whole-hearted way. It’s also enormously useful. The script has evolved over time, and, what with changes from the last workshop, we may now have something with which to go forward to production. Whether we do get that far or not, I couldn’t have hoped for a better experience than I’ve had working on the play with these, as well as other actors like d’bi young and Alison Sealey-Smith. So nuff respec and big ups, all! “Irie, amen, and seen!” as Ras Onelove, one of the characters in the play, would say.

The Forbidden Phoenix
The current production at LKTYP, The Forbidden Phoenix, has its world première tonight. A musical, the play is loosely based on the experience of Chinese immigrants brought to Canada to work on the railroad in the 1800s, and explores themes of freedom, diversity, family, community and environmentalism. It fuses martial arts, acrobatics, stunning costumes, and contemporary musical theatre and cleverly weaves the comic antics of traditional Monkey King stories with the powerful tale of a father’s sacrifice to provide for his family. Check http://www.lktyp.ca/en/current/forbidden.cfm

Pamela Mordecai Reads in Calgary
I go to Calgary on 2 March at the invitation of the University of Calgary for a class visit with Aruna Srivastava’s class on 3 March and a public reading on 4 March. Details for these events forthcoming, but just wanted to give you an early heads up.

There will also be a reading of my Good Friday performance poem, de Man, at St Stephen’s Anglican Church, 1121 14th Avenue SW, Calgary. Calgary resident, Howard Gallimore will join me in the reading. Howard reads the part of Samuel and I read Naomi.

Toronto Launch of Half World by Hiromi Goto
On Friday February 13th at 7:00 p.m., Canadian author, Hiromi Goto, launches her novel, Half World, at the Toronto Women’s Bookstore at 7:00 p.m. For more n this crossover/YA novel, visit http://www.halfworld.ca/

Willful blindness? Justice in the United States of America

2009-02-04T08:18:00.000-08:00

Justitia, godess of justice, is always depicted as blind. She holds scales in one hand and a sword in the other. Somewhere along the line my knowledge of the symbolic meaning of this blindness (that justice is rendered without fair or favour) translated itself into a quite opposite interpretation (that justice, being blind, would be unable to see the true nature of things and apply the law with equity). How this happened and when it happened I don’t know, but I recently found myself telling one of my children that the blindness of Justitia meant that she could not be fair, and hence was intended as a caution about what one should expect from legal systems. It wasn’t a wry comment. It was straight — and necessitated his correcting me.

Jason Vassell’s story may help to explain how my understanding was unwittingly transformed.

Jason Vassell is a young Jamaican American man, formerly a student at UMass, Amherst. Early in the morning of 3 February 2009, that is a year and a day ago, he was attacked in his dorm by two drunk, young white men who hurled insults at him, broke his window, entered the dorm (though not through the broken window) and physically attacked him. (Unable to secure help from the campus police in time, he called a friend. When he opened the door to the dorm to let in the friend, the two white men forced their way in at the same time.) He tried to defend himself with a pocketknife. He did stab both men, but their injuries were not serious. One of the men broke Jason’s nose.

Jason Vassell has no prior criminal record. The attackers have prior records of disorderly and violent conduct, including (in the case of one in particular) racially motivated violence. Jason Vassell has a good academic record and was working full-time and performing community service when the attack took place. Numerous students, faculty and others have come forward eager to testify to his exemplary character.

Jason Vasell explains that he thought, while the attacks were in progress, that the men were going to lynch him. This would explain his use of the pocketknife. We remind that they had broken his window, and that they came, uninvited, into the place where he was living (his ‘home’ at the time) and attacked him, and he has a broken nose to prove it.

The upshot of all of this? As a result of defending himself against this unprovoked assault, Jason Vassell, the victim of the attack, has been charged with two counts of aggravated assault with a dangerous weapon and now faces charges carrying a possible sentence of up to 30 years. One of his attackers faces no charge at all; the other faces a maximum of five years. Members of the UMass community (excepting the university administration) have rallied around Jason and attempted to lobby the state to drop the charges against him, so far without success.

“The Memorandum of Law in Support of the Motion to Dismiss” Jason Vassell argues that there is compelling evidence of racial discrimination both in the actions and attitudes of some members of the police department and in decisions made by prosecutors of how to proceed — or not to proceed — against all three men. There are eyewitnesses to the incident and video tape of the encounter between Vassell and the men. One of the police officers involved in the incident noted that “[both white males] smelled strongly of an alcoholic beverage and were slurring their speech when trying to give statements.”

Further information on the matter is available at http://www.justiceforjason.org/

Barack Obama may be in the White House but American jails remain full of young black males in horribly disproportionate numbers. Perhaps a story like Jason’s helps to explain why. Perhaps too, if sufficient persons in, what we hope is a new America, rally to Jason’s cause, Justitia will begin lifting a hand to peel off the blindfold. When a symbol comes to mean the opposite of itself, then perhaps we need to dispose of it.

A thank you, and maybe a glimpse of Big Brother?

2009-01-29T07:25:00.000-08:00

The next visitor to the site is the 1000th, so I thought I'd mark the moment. Thanks so much folks. Appreciate the support and hope to keep going in 2009, Inshallah.

Here's how I find the blog. I type my name into google, and the urls come up, Jahworld is near the top and I click on it, and I usually see that little number there on the right hand side in the corner that tells me how many sites mention "Pamela Mordecai". (That's what it indicates, yes?) Well, it's nice — and important for an author — that the number has kept going up, but it's a useful bit of data for other reasons too. Here's a recent coincidence. All of a sudden a few days ago the number jumps from near eight thousand to twelve thousand seven hundred. That's weird, I think. Suddenly the world is very interested in me. It's also an oddly round number and I wonder why. It stays that way for a couple of days, two, maybe three, then reverts to where it was before.

I check the comments on my last post in the interim, a post that cheers Barack Obama, the new American president on, and suggests we pray for him, and wish him and the American people well, etc., etc. It's there for anyone to read. But guess what? We've had a visit at Jahworld from Afghan Citizen. (Many thanks Baktash, for visiting! Come again!)

I make no comment. Those are the facts. I know Geoffrey Philp, who has had blog adventures too, will smile.

Perhaps not a bad time to note that the press is not just reporting, but showing us that we suddenly have a clear online aerial view of the residence of Vice President Joe Biden and Mrs Biden. It was veiled in blurred pixels while the previous resident was in office... Semioticians might find a lot to talk about in that. Us ordinary folk just wonder what on earth Dick Cheney might have wished to hide.

Bon chance, President Obama! Here's hoping!

2009-01-22T19:13:00.000-08:00

But you see my dying trial! In an age of three card sharkism, celluloid, animation, videotape, holograms, all kinds of Anansi webs and nets, smoke and mirrors, in other words lie and 'tory raised to de infinite power, the man wants transparency! Barack, dost though know where thou sittest down to sup? Hast thou thy long spoon?

I can’t hold a watching brief where the 44th president is concerned. I have to believe that the fact that 50 million people voted for this man means that a creature, Decent America, evolving by some unearthly grace, has stirred and is struggling to its feet. I must trust that it will get up, must will it up, and even if it’s wobbly at first, hope that it will find firm feet, then walk, and perhaps even in due course, trot along. I’m refusing to be detached, distant, world weary. It's not my style, and it's such a tired pose.

What Americans do, how they and their government behave, materially affects us all. This Earth, which North Americans (Canadians especially) pollute with their abuse of energy resources, is my planet, our planet. This World, which Americans have felt is theirs to mess with as they wish, is my world, our world. And Jah (who has a sense of humour, BTW — how else to explain a man named Hussein being president of the USA at this hour?) occasionally puts his foot down. S/he has just done exactly that.

If you mess where you please, when you want, because you feel like it, eventually you will foul your own backyard. If you are greedy and nyam up everything in sight, then your bowels will be full, and the excrement you deposit will be (1) trillions of mounds high, (2) stink to heaven and (3) require a large number of backs and buckets to move it. I will resist obvious remarks about who have been history’s hewers of wood, drawers of water and movers of night soil. What's the point at this point? As Obama says, Americans had all better “pick themselves up, dust themselves off, and start remaking America”. Much the same applies to the rest of the world!

The Toronto Star published a feature http://www.thestar.com/news/uselection/article/572960 about Barack Obama when he was elected the first black president of the Harvard Law Review in 1990. Read it and you’ll see that he isn’t a product of the last three years, a media artifact, a 'spun' fiction. Who he is now is pretty much who he was then. I find that encouraging. Cool is not something he learned last year. Nor is entertaining other people's opinions, especially those that diverge from his. There is, after all, very little point in ideology that works our undoing. We don't need the help of ideology – we're managing our undoing quite well otherwise!

I cannot think what madness has possessed this man to want to do this thing, for the job of President of the USA is not one anybody in their right mind should want at this moment. Let it be said, though, that God is good, and makes provision. History, blood, sunsum, intellect, temperament and character (for they are different) and broughtupcy have uniquely equipped Obama. He says ‘Thank you’ constantly; he and Michelle applaud other people all the time.

And he uses "we" a lot, so when he says "I," you listen up.

So here's to all of us. Here’s to good will. Here’s hoping! Perhaps we should all pause at midday, or midnight, or just every now and then, and wish Barack Obama and his administration well, wish one another well, wish all earthlings well, and bless the planet itself. It wouldn’t hurt and it might just make a difference. Selah!

A New Day, A Great Day...

2009-01-20T20:06:00.000-08:00

A great day, this, to be back online, and a new day, hopefully, for American politics. I'm wishing that the Force be with Barack Obama, 44th President of the USA, whose inauguration day it is. He's going to need a seriously Superior Force in the days ahead, not a fighting force, but a moral force – a committed, courageous, bold and decent force of men and women of good will. A sober inaugural speech, and the hallmark Obama graciousness on the part of him, Michelle and his daughters. Such a treat to look at a presidential family of real people (not dumb people, Sarah, real people!), whose faces occasionally show tiredness, who touch each other and other people in a natural way, whose children are confident and self aware but not cocky or rude. And Joe Biden and his wife and family cut of the same jib, smiling real smiles, looking truly rejoiced. I'm celebrating with our neighbours to the South, and struggling not to entertain a Nunc dimittis feeling... Such a pleasure, too, to see so many black people, indeed to see the faces of so many races on the screen. Where were they all this time, I wonder? I have to confess that Rev. Lowery has found himself a fan! Worn pebbles of cliché transform in his mouth to pearls of great price! He prayed for an America in which "...black won't have to stand back, brown can stick around, yellow will be mellow, the red man can get ahead man, and white will choose right..." Got away with that, I tell you! And a final signifying on that lovely verse in Micah: "Let those who do justice and love kindness say 'Amen'!" And the people said a resounding amen. Maybe we finally have something with which to face the mageddons that assail us.

I've been away working on a play, among other things. EL NUMERO UNO OR THE PIG FROM LOPINOT had a great 3-day workshop at the Lorraine Kimsa Young People's Theatre in Toronto last week. Amazing actors, a wonderful director in ahdri zina mandiela, a stalwart, indulgent dramaturg in Stephen Colella, and great support all round. Allen MacInnes runs such a fine establishment. Thanks so much, señors y señoras. Go visit LKYPT soon! And I promise to keep you updated on progess with UNO, and maybe post a scene or two.

Also been revising my novel, CIPHER, or perhaps WRITING HOME. More on that in due course too. Put the revision one side because I got snared by a discussion started by Nalo Hopkinson on Facebook, about reverie and the advisibality of its use in fiction. I read all the posts in a pretty long discussion and am standing in my shoes and wondering.

So what's reverie?

The reverie is the moment when the protagonist (or on occasion another character) meditates on his own character, usually in terms of a flashback, to achieve a "profound dialogic and polemical nature of self-awareness and self affirmation" (Bakhtin). ... What should already be known to us, the context of the world, is delivered as memory, and more specifically, as story. ... Reverie and self-contemplation, far from creating depth, break the sense of immersion in a society, and are fundamentally antithetical to either character development or an immersive structure. It is a false mimesis that reminds us that we are in a narrated text and that the protagonist's version must be true." Dr. Farah Mendlesohn in THE RHETORICS OF FANTASY.

Them's fighting words to a poet, being as poetry must have that essential, "recollection in tranquillity", ergo reverie, element. But maybe that's poetry, and so, different. Let's try to infer, working with the quote we have: our critic says that reverie is a "false mimesis", for it reminds us we are in a narrated text. That means, I guess, that it interrupts our suspension of disbelief. So a true mimesis is a text in which reverie is omitted, our credence is uninterrupted and we remain immersed? I'd have thought that reverie, as dream, or self-reflection, or merely mulling over things, is what makes us homo sapiens and if we are faithfully reported, we must indulge in reverie. After all, homo ludens needs to take a break from just doing fun stuff or tragic stuff or war stuff! Nor does the protagonist's version in a reverie necessarily have to be true. Surely you can write it slant, so the character can be undone by his own reverie? And there have been texts in which several protagonists explore the same events in reverie, and what is described acquires depth and density just so. But it is a useful matter to think about. Might it be an issue of writing reverie well, a matter of craft? Does this dictum apply to the fantasy genre alone, and preclude other fiction? Do the discourse devices of the linguistic code have any bearing? Suppose the language of the text is uninflected for the past, would that make a difference? What of the proposition that all literature is reverie?

Your thoughts welcome, bredren and sistren. Blessings and peace and warmth and plenty be upon you in 2009!

Concerning Canadian politrical (sic) runnings: desperate commentary (1)

2008-12-15T16:21:00.000-08:00

Man, I'm not sure how many peeps know what a democracy is. Guys who vote for a party that has no platform, i.e., a party that has not told voters what they will do if they are elected, do not know what a democracy is. Dolls who rush to the polls and cast their ballots for the same politrical party, all the time, regardless, do not know what it is. Guys and dolls who stay away from the polls at election time (as was the case in the last federal election in Canada) do not know what it is. The bright sparks who say that it was the will of Canadians that the Conservatives form the government last time around do not know what it is. Any dude, even if he's a Prime Minister, who's not hip to the fact that elected representatives are free to advance radical political points of views (in this case separatist or secessionist views) emphatically does not know what it is.

Ah, but surely I jest! Every jitterbugger knows that a democracy is a country in which people freely choose their leaders.

Well, okay. So what if there's only one party or person to vote for? What if the votes are deliberately miscounted or some of them get tossed (as many people believe to have been the case in the US both times that George Bush was elected)? What if voting machines don't work properly? What if more peeps in a riding vote than are registered to vote? What if some Anansi voters mark their X more than once? What if the country is divided up, for voting purposes, so that a thousand peeps in one riding (constituency, electoral district) get to elect one representative while ten thousand peeps in another riding also get to elect just one representative? And in this last case, what if the party that wins in most ridings wins with fewer than half the number of peeps who marked their Xs? Where is democracy in all of that?

Man, de ting can seriously twist up your brain!

Which is why it helps to know a little math and to be wary of politrical types, and to bear in mind a few basic things. For example, though a dude or dudess may think so, he or she doesn't in fact choose a Liberal, or a Conservative, or a member of the Bloq, or the Green Party. You, my friend, and I, choose a person to represent us. We choose her based on the party she says she belongs to or the fact that he says he owes no allegiance to any party. But the person of our choice is free to have a change of heart and switch to another party. It's known as crossing the floor, and a sitting member (that is a dude or dudess who's been elected) may so do. And indeed may cross back. Selah!

Wherefore it is wise to choose with care…

There are also various ways of arranging how the chosen representatives of the people govern. In Canada, which is one of sixteen "Commonwealth realms," we've got a "parliamentary democracy" in which – listen for it – the Head of State is not the Prime Minister but the Queen (of England, chickens). The Queen's representative on our salubrious shores is the Governor General, whom Her Britannic Majesty selects, on the advice of the Prime Minister. At the present, Canada bids to have the hottest – or coolest, if you prefer – head of state in the world. Approchez, s'il vous plaît, Madame Jean! But lest you think the GG is merely another pretty figurehead face, there do arise occasions when the GG can send the Prime Minister packing. Indeed such a time just recently arose…

But we shall save that for our desperate commentary 2.

For now, this hip minute, let's check out just how the voting chips fell in the last Canadian federal elections. Stephen's Conservatives won 143 of 308 seats, Stéphane's Liberals won 76 seats, Gilles' Bloc Québécois won 50 seats and Jack's NDP 37. There were also 2 independents elected, that is, dudes who don't take tea with any party. We can describe those results in several ways, one way being that more ridings (165) did not want the Conservatives to form the government than wanted them to, because, dudes and dudesses, as we've pointed out before, only 22.22 % of eligible voters voted for the Conservatives: 77.88% of Canadians eligible to vote did not choose Harper's party.

So what in the good queen's name have we ended up with in our parliament? The truth is we've ended up with a Motley Crew who are free, according to our Constitution, to play political musical chairs, form coalitions, bring votes of confidence, and bring down the government on any financial or other important bill. This is all perfectly legal, and guards our freedoms. Though the Conservatives want us to believe the opposite, it ensures that nobody can hijack the government when there is no clear majority in parliament. And that is well. Selah!

Looked at in that way, statements about a 'mandate' appear a little different, and the statement that, "Canadians gave the Conservatives an increased mandate..." is – right, but not so right... Get it?

The Little Row House that eats up lots of energy...

2008-12-15T10:39:00.000-08:00

Okay. This is my fourth try. Let’s hope I don’t lose the file yet again!

I know, jdid, there’s politics here and south of the border to talk about. Actually, these days my conversations about North American politics end up being diatribes about education. How can anyone be said to participate in a democracy without having a clear idea about how one's country is governed and the nature of the inputs one can make into that process? More on this in a bit.

This post is about old Toronto houses – or an old Toronto house. It’s one of a block of row houses, and similar to many such blocks all over Toronto. It’s a lovely little house, with a deck that looks out on a long skinny backyard garden, and a parking pad at the end that connects with a lane way so a car can park inside the premises. (Hate that word!) It’s got three bedrooms, one bathroom, modest living and dining areas and a nice big kitchen. The basement is partially finished. We own it, though sadly, given the economic climate, for how much longer, I don't know.

Row houses are clever. Joined at the front, living room to living room, they tuck in on alternate sides at the back so all the rooms can have windows on at least one side. But old row houses have one big minus. They are massive consumers of energy, and that’s the real burden of my present post. I’m hoping Al Gore, or David Suzuki, or David Miller, or Jack Layton, or Oprah or Michael Lee Chin or Raymond Chang or Robert Kennedy or the TD Green Mortgage CEO, or any green fan with funding will share my concern about making these hundreds of houses more energy efficient. They need insulation for the exterior walls and roofs. They need energy efficient windows and doors. They need energy star appliances. They need solar panels (those innocent of NF3, aka nitrogen trifloride – thanks to fsjl for the note below), barrels for collecting rainwater runoff, etc., etc.

The challenge is to make them into sustainable units, even if they can’t achieve zero footprint rating. I’d love to be involved in the effort. They could be rehabilitated a block at a time, and it would be a great way to educate neighbourhoods about greening.

So this is a shout out to any person or institution who may be interested in greening the row houses of Toronto. It would be great to hear from you.

Here’s the (lightly edited) note on NF3 from http://www.foreignpolicy.com

Nitrogen trifluoride, or NF3, is used for cleaning microcircuits during the manufacture of... modern electronics, including … thin-film solar panels, the latest (and cheapest) generation of solar photovoltaics. … Because industry estimates suggested that only about 2 percent of NF3 ever made it into the atmosphere, the chemical has been marketed as a cleaner alternative to other higher-emitting options. For the past decade, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has actively encouraged its use. NF3 also wasn’t deemed dangerous enough to be covered by the Kyoto Protocol, making it an attractive substitute for companies and signatory countries eager to lower their emissions footprints.

It turns out that NF3 might not be so green after all. “NF3 has a potential greenhouse impact larger than … even that of the world’s largest coal-fired power plants,” according to a June 2008 study by researchers at the University of California, Irvine.

President Obama: the Long View and the Periphrastic Moment

2008-11-08T09:59:00.000-08:00

I listened to Barack Obama's acceptance speech – twice. Live on air, and again last night. One of the pundits commenting right afterward thought it was long. It was longer than might have been expected, at the end taking a historical view, using the story of the life of African American voter, Anne Nixon Cooper of Atlanta, aged one hundred and six, who cast her vote by "touching her finger to a screen," to trace the arc of history (as I think Senator Obama referred to it at one point) and so to show how far the USA had come in the course of her life: to demonstrate in living – as in Miss Cooper's life – historical colour the mantra of his campaign, "Yes we can!"

What I want to talk about in this post is the difference between the pundit's point of view, that a presidential acceptance speech needs to be brief, hit the high points, be done with it, and Mr Obama's choice to extend his comments, and in doing so, to look back over the previous hundred years by way of a story. (I have no doubt the gigantic crowd, hanging on his every word, would have listened to him go on all night.)

The difference turns on several things. One is that we who have had to fight our way forward are continually aware that we live in and by accretion; that today is indissolubly connected to yesterday and tomorrow; that, as I put it in one of my poems, "is hand holding hand that see we/survive these many historical years." (See “Blessed Assurance” in CERTIFIABLE, page 82, ad on this page.) That hand-holding is another image of which I am fond, a cruciform image of community: hands joined together, at present (synchronically), and hands extending backwards – and forwards – through time (diachronically), the two sets of joined hands intersecting at this moment, now. I think we in the African diaspora see ourselves living within that arc of history, forever at the periphrastic moment, always aware of what is about to happen, as we are aware of what has gone before. We cannot have an investment only in the present because it is impossible to understand ourselves that way. (I don't think we are the only people who view ourselves so, but it's us with whom I am presently concerned.)

Some people seem to have difficulty with this idea. I'll give an example. When my husband, Martin, and I were writing CULTURE & CUSTOMS OF JAMAICA (see ad), there came a point at which we had to explain that we could not usefully say anything about the culture or customs, literature, music, arts, language or indeed, geography of the island, without taking a historical view. The editors balked. They wanted us to describe the country as it is, at present – no going back into history. We held firm and they eventually gave in.

A little diversion that may provide some help. My niece, Sweet Caroline, sent me an e-mail yesterday: a photo of a black man in an all black T-shirt with the inscription in bold white caps on the back: "BLACK MAN RUNNING AND IT AIN'T FROM THE POLICE." God’s truth – that picture, colours and all, worth a thousand words! Black man running and he get where he going. And ain’t no black man never get there befo’. So the black man, he get to say his say and he get to talk as long as he want.

No doubt, too, that Mr Obama realized it was a teaching moment. (Black people see their leaders as teachers, perhaps another difference?) He knew, as I'm certain all of the Americans in Grant Park knew, that the night of November 4, 2008 was a time that had not been before and wouldn't be again; that it wasn't just itself, but it stood for far, far more than itself. (I explored this idea in a post on his speech in Berlin that I've just hung up again.) The moment was ephiphanic, and he seized it.

And there is the matter of ritual, which some people appreciate and others less so. A look at the faces of the crowd showed that people understood that they were witnesses, and that what was happening before them said something about themselves and their country, something crucial and good. It was a moment, an event, a circumstance that spoke about the fact of them, as a people, moving to close the gap between a great ideal – "liberty and justice for all" – and a reality that at times in their country’s history could not have been more terrible. They understood the Behold! factor: that what was being shown to them was themselves, made new. And they affirmed it.

It wasn't a moment for a short speech.

And the truth is Barack Obama can make a speech, the tradition out of which he comes being one of, as Roger Abrahams calls it, "the Man of Words and Talking Sweet". It is a tradition of proverbs and stories, aphorisms and memory gems, exhortation and warning. And however much some spoke of it with scorn, sneering as they allowed that Mr Obama could inspire with his words, people's faces plainly said they had been waiting a long time for someone who would talk to them just so – about goodness, and truth, and ideals, and justice, and unity and possibility. About hope.

Their faces said so, and their votes.

I add now my blessings on President-elect Obama and his family, blessings "...pressed down, shaken together, running over,” the blessings of the gospel chronicler, Luke, encapsulating richness in an image straight from the markets and roadsides where people measure out those staffs of life – rice, wheat, corn – and pass them on to their fellowmen so that they too might live. I pray for the Obamas' safety. I pray especially that the Senator's bold hope for his country will prevail and out of it will come new possibilities for all of us. Selah!

Barack Obama in Berlin (Originally posted July 28, 2008)

2008-11-07T22:43:00.000-08:00

So the Democratic candidate for President of the USA, Senator Barack Obama, attracts a crowd of 200,000 people in Berlin, the largest one so far in his campaign. There is so much to say about the Senator, the manner and message of the man, the mere fact that he is the Democratic candidate – so much to say about the deep irony of his drawing his biggest crowd in Germany, of all countries. So just a couple of comments here. To begin with, having been in the USA during Civil Rights, I honestly never thought I would live to see the day. That it has indeed come says a great deal for the American people, in particular for young people in the United States. Among many other things, it says that far from being turned off, disillusioned, blasé, consumed only with celebrating themselves on Facebook and MySpace, they are alert, aware and prepared to respond to an inclusive message, a message that empowers them and advances nation building as a common cause. Whatever one's political persuasion, Senator Obama must be given credit for articulating such a view and persuading people that he means what he says. Of course, what lends credibility to his message is the fact of who he is, the fact that his life is witness to the "Yes-We-Can-ability" to which he now calls his country. Anyone who was there back then is bound to appreciate the awesomeness, the enormity of the now. What Barack Obama stands for is a great deal more than can be communicated by the simple statement that he is the first black man to run for president of the USA – as astounding a fact as that may be – even as the crowd in Berlin listening to him speak is a great deal more than a large gathering of white people in a European city listening to a black man who may well be the next leader of the most powerful country in the world. The bleakest moments in human history and our power to transform them are alive inside this man, and brood inside that crowd. And lastly – for now, for there's a great deal more to be said – the World, the one that begged America not to go to war in Iraq, the one that is frightened about whether we have so ruined the planet that it's about to heave us off its back the way a dog shakes off water, the World that's scared that it may shortly be ravaged by disease at the same time that it is bereft of resources, that World is desperate to find someone who is prepared to give it hope, to tell it that there's a way out. So mock the Senator, call him the Messiah, if you will, but know the times are critical, and admire him for having the courage to want to step into the breach.

President Obama?

2008-11-04T22:51:00.000-08:00

I was touched by the fact that Senator Obama's grandma voted – voted, then died. There's a woman who knows about being a good citizen! It's a lesson, really, about what we are called to do. Couldn't she hang on one more day? Maybe it wasn't so important. Maybe when she saw her grandson about the present business of his life, she felt she could give herself a pat on the back, say to herself, "I tried my best, and he hasn't let me down!" and, having made sure to vote, pushed on to some real R&R.

I've had a Joe the Plumber Day! Like him, I'm unlicensed to do the things I've been doing, but, as my Ma would say, "Necessity is the mother of invention." I'm about to go look how things are coming in the land beneath us on the map, but I wanted to share some things I've found in my little campaign to help Catholics and Evangelicals (strange bedfellows, what?) see that it's perfectly alright to vote for Obama. I found some eye-openers.

Here's a quote from a Catholic man planning to vote for Barack Obama: "Before abortion was an issue for people, the plight of the african-american was an issue. That issue has never totally been resolved, largely because radical reconstruction in the post civil war era was highjacked by scared white people who didn't like the fact that African-americans were threatening to take the majority away from the whites in southern states... The civil right's movement brought us a little bit closer to equal rights, but not quite all the way. As this issue has been one for longer than the woe v. wade issue has been in existence, I'm voting to settle the problem which has been in longer need of correction." (I've quoted him verbatim...)

I find "Woe vs Wade" a poignant slip of the fingers. ('Roe' had been raped. One needs real courage to carry a baby conceived after a rape, though I have known one woman who did it. She has a fine daughter, who now has a daughter of her own.)

I find it revealing that the voter sees casting his vote for Obama as a way of settling "the problem which has been in longer need of correction." I'm very interested in any comments on his point of view.

And now to see the future...

How can a pro-life person vote for Barack Obama?

2008-10-30T19:52:00.000-07:00

I have had lengthy e-mail exchanges with two persons, one my Evangelical Christian niece, the other a Roman Catholic acquaintance, who are concerned that they can't vote for Obama in the US election because he is pro-choice. Because it's an important issue, I thought I'd share a slightly altered version of the letter I sent to my Roman Catholic friend. (Perhaps I'll share my notes to my niece too, in due course. We'll see.)

Before I do that, however, I'll mention an article by Connie Brook in THE NEW YORKER (November 3rd) called "Odd Man Out", about Republican Senator Chuck Hagel, who is described as "a graduate of a Catholic high school, who is pro-life and supports school prayer". Brook quotes Hagel (who enjoys a good relationship with Obama and has indicated that he would serve in his cabinet if asked) thus: “There was a political party in this country called the Know-Nothings. And we’re getting on the fringe of that, with these one-issue voters—pro-choice or pro-life. Important issue, I know that. But, my goodness. The world is blowing up everywhere, and I just don’t think that is a responsible way to see the world, on that one issue." I'd like to emphasize that the 'blowing up' to which Senator Hagel refers entails loss of life as well.

Thus spake a pro-life Republican.

Here now is my [amended] response to Jennifer, whose letter to me had cited Christifideles Laici, Pope John Paul II's 1988 "Post Synodal Apostolic Exhortation," as well as observations made by Mother Theresa.

Dear Jennifer:

Neither the Pope nor Mother Theresa has had a child, or lost a child, or had to face the cruel choice of terminating an ectopic pregnancy, or had a child who has been raped and is pregnant come to them, devastated. I respectfully submit that we who bear and have borne and raised children have something to say on these matters.

I don’t believe in abortion. I do believe that those who don’t "play the game” ought to be a little less arrogant, a little more respectful, a little more like Jesus when they spout the rules.

These are important issues, complex ones, that we need to talk more, and more intelligently, and more honestly, about. Take ectopic pregnancies. Up until roughly the middle of the last century, the Catholic Church forbad the termination of these pregnancies, never mind that the foetus was unquestionably doomed. Then in the 1940s the Church reinterpreted the teaching to allow the foetus to be aborted. (One wonders how many women died carrying those doomed babies before that reinterpretation?) I think the principle applied here is called the principle of double effect, according to which, in order to save the mother's life, the taking of the life of a foetus that without question will not survive is permitted. The decision admits a value that seems not to have been recognized before, which is that the mother's life is a life that counts as well.

Here's something else that is pertinent: we don’t know when conception occurs. We do know about some things that bear on the matter. We know that the zygote that forms identical twins often doesn’t split till days after the egg is fertilized. Does that mean that one human being exists when the sperm enters the ovum and that that single human person splits into two people when the fertilized egg splits at three or four or five days old? These things have ethical implications. The Catholic Church is aware of them; I certainly didn’t dream them up – it’s the rumination of (at least some) Catholic thinkers, scientists and ethicists, that I’m repeating here.

We also need to remember that if a woman does not feel that she has done wrong in having a pregnancy terminated, she has done no wrong. Sin is in the will: it occurs when a person commits an act that is evil, in the full knowledge that it is gravely wrong. It is therefore true that many of those who abort babies are not guilty of any sin. Nor are these babies shut out of heaven – also a teaching of the Catholic Church, albeit, if I'm not mistaken, a recent one.

I believe that we arrive at wisdom and discernment in our decisions by prayer, meditation, contemplation of the Word of God, and fasting, in deep humility and with a great reluctance to judge. That is what I, at any rate, feel that I am called to – a journey far more difficult than mere observation of The Law. That Old Law is, after all, fulfilled in a New One, and according to that New Law – "Thou shalt love the Lord the God with thy whole heart and thy whole soul and thy whole mind and all thy strength; and thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself..." – I am very hard put to see Sarah Palin and John McCain as loving their neighbours.

And I know there’s no guarantee that what they say they will do about Roe vs Wade, they will in fact do, or be able to do. Nor is there any guarantee that, the law having been changed, women will keep their babies. People know how to get abortions, and doctors will always be found to perform them.

One needs to decide, then, what one wishes: the ‘righteous’ satisfaction of having a law enacted, or the real triumph of building a society in which men and women revere sex for the happy gift it is and have babies that they want and keep.

So I would rather pray for courage on the part of women who carry babies in these last days. I would rather pray for a media that stops reducing the relationships of men and women to mere rutting, a mating that is without context or grandeur or grace. I would rather pray for an America that does not exploit parents who wish homes of their own in which to raise their children, an America that works to supply jobs that can support families, an America that provides parents and children with adequate medical care, and the opportunity for a sound education.

I would prefer to pray for an America that doesn’t incarcerate young black men in disproportionate numbers, depriving so many children of their fathers.

And I remember Jesus who knew when he was here that invoking laws never drew anyone to holiness. He rarely threatened people with the law – most markedly the merchants in the temple and the Pharisees. He told stories instead, and called people that way to the great challenges of virtue.

Prayerfully and pro-Obama,

Pam

If you don’t laugh you will cry: two 'jokes' about the upcoming American election

2008-10-22T20:47:00.000-07:00

In a comment on my last post, “Why imagination is necessary for governance,” jdid said, referring to the recent Canadian election: “lol, all I can do is laugh.” When I remarked that he must be “a man of extraordinary courage for [he was] clearly… laughing in the face of enormous adversity…” his response was “Clarabella, if I don’t laugh I would cry.” I owe him an apology. I should have recognized the backdrop of sobriety, the typical Caribbean modus operandi of “taking serious ting make joke”. I should have twigged to it because it’s the MO I employ in my own writing, whether prose or poetry. I've more than once explained that it’s not just possible but necessary for me to infuse humour into serious subjects because this is what we do in the Caribbean. “If we doan laff, we haffi bawl!” Since Whappy was a bwoy, laughter has been our strategy of survival in the midst of grief, pain, devastation, ruin.

That brings me to two ‘jokes’. I owe the first to fsjl, who passed it on:

So a canvasser goes to a woman's door in Washington, Pennsylvania. Knocks. Woman answers. Knocker asks who she's planning to vote for. She isn't sure, has to ask her husband who she's voting for. Husband is off in another room watching some game. Canvasser hears him yell back, "We're votin' for the nigger!" Woman turns back to canvasser, and says brightly and matter of factly: "We're voting for the nigger."

I can’t remember where I saw the second, and so reproduce it from memory.

Obama is at the pearly gates, and St Peter says to him, “What makes you think you deserve to enter here? What did you do on earth to distinguish yourself?” Obama replies: “Well, I was the first black President of the United States.” “Oh!” replies St Peter. “And when did this take place?” Obama replies, “About twenty minutes ago.”

I have to admit that these are ‘jokes’ in the tradition of – what? Black humour? Dark comedy? (The ironies here are so numerous that I’m finding it hard to breathe.) “Black humour” according to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, “often uses farce and low comedy to make clear that individuals are helpless victims of fate and character.” [In the case of joke number one, character, and joke number two, fate?] We should remember that it was traditionally the clown in the king’s court, the one playing the ‘fool’, whose job it was to “speak truth to power,” as the popular lingo now puts it, and that clowns and their comedian progeny have always been serious folk, tellers of unpalatable truths – witness, in modern times, Pryor, Gregory, Goldberg, Carlin, among many others.

The Democratic presidential candidate and those who surround and advise him, and see to his security, are obviously well aware of these truths.

Consider the second matter first. Senator Obama was given a heavy security detail very early in the campaign and Christian prayer warriors – another kind of security detail, if you will – ‘cover him with the blood of Jesus,’ both groups acting out of the recognition that what he is doing is something that puts his person at risk. Coming to terms with this must require a deep, continued and abiding courage on the part of himself and his family, knowing as they do that throughout American history, harbingers of change, both white and black, have paid the ultimate price.

And consider the first tale, a slice of life so convincing, I think it’s precious – a promise of willy-nilly perception so madly possible, it’s exhilarating! If those who conceive of black people as niggers will nevertheless vote for a nigger as president, then there must be a means by which understanding can well up in people, never mind that their attitudes are confused and conflicted and wrong-headed and deeply offensive. Believers would say it’s the Spirit Wind, blowing “where it listeth.”

So I do not find either 'joke' offensive. They present boldly and baldly contemporary realities that the American public ignores at their peril. By having them presented as jokes, people are jolted into facing what is, terrible as that prospect may be. And Americans, many of them, perhaps most of them, either won’t be able to laugh, or won’t be able to stop laughing, for fear of being overwhelmed by tears that leave them beyond being comforted.

Why imagination is necessary for governance

2008-10-16T06:58:00.000-07:00

It seems that disenchanted Canadian voters could not even bother to go to the polls on Tuesday. A mere 59.1 percent of voters cast their votes – the smallest number of electors to vote in any election in Canada, ever. (There is a letter from someone who did not go to the polls in today's Toronto Star. It explains that, in the absence of any clearly articulated platform for which to vote – as distinct from a host of reasons as to why an opponent did not deserve to be elected – the writer's abstaining was a deliberate, considered choice.) Of the people who went to the polls, only 37.63% voted for Stephen Harper's Conservative Party. Using the figures on the net, that means that just over five million out of almost twenty-three million voters elected the Conservatives – in other words, not even a quarter of eligible Canadian voters. Thus Mr Harper broke his own fixed-date-for-voting legislation and spent some $300 million dollars of taxpayers' money on an election that has left us, effectively (never mind the Conservative 'gains') exactly where we were in the first place, with a minority government with which, according to the Prime Minister, it is impossible to run the country. It ought to keep the Conservatives humble. We'll see. The good news is that many first time voters turned up at the polls! Good for you, first time voters! You will have a vested interest in the country for longer than any of the rest of us, so BIG UPS for turning up to have your say! As I contemplate the distressing fact that our system of (mis)representation makes it possible for a government to take office when so few of those who voted actually chose it, it occurs to me that a little Bible might not be amiss. According to Proverbs 29:18, "Without vision, the people perish." In this context, "vision" probably refers to the gift of prophecy, at least according to the notes in my copy of The Jerusalem Bible – for information (especially fsjl's), a text in large part translated from the original Hebrew and Greek. We'll come back some other time to the matter of just what prophecy is. Suffice it to say that it is part of Jewish, Islamic and Christian traditions. Let's for the moment agree that a country (read 'people' in the phrase from Proverbs) needs wise leadership ('vision'). Despite a lot of recent talk about leadership based on experience, the truth is, in this highly complex, swift-moving modern world, no politician can have all the experience necessary to deal with the social, political, economic, industrial, agricultural, environmental, fiscal, health, educational, immigration, security, defense, etc., etc., issues. And in the absence of experience, one faculty and only one will serve, and it's the faculty of imagination, the seat of understandings based on empathy, analogy, the ability to conjure the evidence of "things not seen," to quote some more scripture. It is for this reason that I shudder at our prospects under the Conservatives, a party who have by their actions demonstrated that they are against the arts, against the life of the imagination. In that respect I would have been glad to have Stéphane Dion as head of the ship of state, or Bloc Québécois leader, Gilles Duceppe, or Elizabeth May. (I am not so sure of Jack Layton in his new Car Salesman guise.) They strike me as people who can envision things. Perhaps they will see the virtue of imagining the rapid downfall of this new minority Conservative government and of engineering an election that will address the real issues – and they are many, and formidable.

More notes on spin...

2008-10-09T19:41:00.000-07:00

It’s said that there are youngsters who think that you can shoot somebody dead and the person will be able to get up and walk away. This apparently explains some incidents of shooting by kids. They don't really understand what guns do. If, after all, a movie star dies in a movie, and is very much alive on TV or in the newspapers the next day or the next week, then obviously shooting doesn't make the person dead. Alarming, to say the least!

We really do not know enough (never mind that there have been so many studies) about what TV, movies and electronic media do to the way people perceive, to how they mediate what they see and hear on film and television. (Might this explain why people in Jamaica, despite being constantly warned, still drive their vehicles into overflowing gullies and get swept away and drowned?) Nevertheless, what we do know makes it clear that the combination of images and the spoken word has an enormous and immediate effect on people and certainly provides a sufficient basis for the spin doctors to spin things very effectively, so that, as jdid says, “…it’s not even about the real message anymore; its about who spins it better.” When jdid expresses concern about people still being convinced that Barack Obama is a Muslim despite the brouhaha about his going to the church pastored by Rev Jeremiah Wright, a Christian minister of religion, he's pointing to an example of how people can – what? Uncomprehend? Perskewceive?

The first 'academic' article I ever published discussed strategies for English teachers who were trying to teach students to mediate TV and film. (It's less of a problem with radio, since images, which are very powerful things, aren't part of the message there.) This discernment skill has to be taught, especially as media become more and more pervasive. Determining bias in written material is hard enough! Never mind how bright we are, we will have difficulty construing what's in the newspapers, what's on TV, what's on the net, what's in the movies, unless we have somehow learned how to deconstruct these things. And I don't mean that word in any highfalutin sense. I mean literally pull these things apart so that we can see how they are made, and so understand how they work.

Stephen Harper's baby blue sweater may have persuaded many people that he is a warm family man. However, many others have been made aware – by all the talk about the blue sweater and what it was intended to do – of how images are used in the attempt to sway their opinions. Two days ago, Mr Harper (having finally, one week before the election, deigned to present the Conservative platform) suggested that the devastated stock markets were an opportunity for people to snap up good investments! So much for the warm fuzzy family man!

So it’s a problem that’s serious and needs to be addressed. I suspect that there hasn't been enough of an attempt at teaching these – as Neil Postman and Charles Weingartner called them – 'crap detection' skills to students in junior and high schools. Because that's where it has to begin – indeed, starting earlier wouldn't be a bad idea. So, yes, fsjl, Caribou Barbie and her "Hiya solja!" and "Drill, baby, drill!" acts represent a real threat. God bless us with a spirit of discernment – in Canada over the next week, in the US over the next month!

PINK ICING on amazon.ca's list of 100 top African-American titles!

2008-10-09T12:19:00.000-07:00

Just thought I'd share some news with you. My first book of short fiction, Pink Icing: stories (see ad on this page) published by Insomniac Press in 2006, was enthusiastically reviewed in US journals like Callaloo and The Literary Review, in the Caribbean Review of Books, as well as in newspapers like the Globe and Mail, the Toronto Star, the Observer and the Jamaica Gleaner. Reviews don't necessarily translate into sales, so it's with much delight that I discovered today that it's on amazon.ca's list of the top 100 titles in the category "African-American Studies"! (It may well not stay there, but it is there as of now!) I'm hoping that means it's got onto courses in high school, college, and university. That's not just because it will mean improved book sales, though I won't deny this is important since I earn my living exclusively from writing. It's because I think it's a book anyone can enjoy, in particular anyone from the Caribbean. It's a book of simple (deceptively simple, some reviews said) stories about old people and youngsters and all the ages in between. One of the most satisfying reports about it came from an alumna of my high school, a Chinese Jamaican who told me how much her mother, who was ill, and so in bed, was enjoying having it keep her company. That was a review that pleased me for true.

Is the Pope Catholic? Some notes on 'spin'

2008-10-07T13:33:00.000-07:00

You know that joke, "Is the Pope Catholic?" It's a phrase used to archly refer to something that's self-evident. Except that what's self-evident to me, is often not self-evident to the next person. I'd have thought, for example, that there was no question about whether a Catholic is a Christian. Catholics, after all, think that they are members of the "one true" Church: they believe that the heads (those same popes) of that Church descend in a straight line from Saint Peter. However, fsjl informs me that, for black folk where he lives, a Christian is a Baptist or an Evangelical, and most certainly not a Catholic. (I hope I'm not misrepresenting what you said, fragano!) I don't know what that makes of all the churches, other than the Baptists and Evangelicals, that believe in Jesus Christ as the Son of God and Redeemer of humankind, but there you have it. In Jamaica, it was once held by some that a woman who was a Christian would not straighten her hair – another, and very interesting, definition of 'Christian'! This isn't really a post about religion. It's a post about packaging, propaganda – what's nowadays called 'spin'. 'Spin' is by its nature invidious, that is, meant to cause resentment and hatred. It’s a good word for the activity it describes. It means that admen, political handlers, biased journalists and packagers turn us round and round so fast with their false or carefully slanted information and carefully concocted images that we believe what they say because we’re so dizzy with being turned round and round! As they do their jobs, spinners are having a laugh at those for whose consumption they are 'spinning' things. They know that the purpose of spin is to set us at one another's throats, Democrats against Republicans, blues against reds, Left against Right, meat eaters against vegetarians, creationists against evolutionists, free marketers against regulators, capitalists against – well, once it was communists, but that one has kind of broken down, hasn't it? We really should not allow our intelligences to be violated in this way. Here’s an example: the admen for the Conservatives in Canada put Stephen Harper in a blue sweater and film him sitting comfortably in a homey place and the public for whom he is being 'spun' are supposed to think he is a warm and fuzzy family man. Well, he may well be, but I, for one, am insulted to think that I could be persuaded to this point of view by a picture of him in a baby blue sweater! Stéphane Dion, the Liberal leader, is less easily spun. I don't know if he is a hockey player, but that picture of him wouldn't convince me about anything other than what I already believe: that he's a decent man who likes kids and with whom I'd leave mine, confident that they'd be safe. Spin isn't anything new either. Down through history, it's been used, perhaps most devastatingly in the arena of religion, to whip up one set of human beings so they'd go out and do injury, sometimes mortal injury, to others: crusaders against infidels, Jews against Christians, Muslims against Christians, Catholics against Protestants, Muslims against Hindus, and so on, and so on. Nowadays, we're packaging war in much the same way: "Support our troops!" doesn't mean that we should be anxious that the men and women injured in war should have adequate care for their bodies and their minds. It doesn't mean that we should agitate for veterans to get education and other benefits. It doesn't mean that we should be concerned that armored carriers for the troops are the safest they can be, nor about the psychological health of pilots who are fed uppers and downers so that they can fly as many missions as required and as often as the army requires them. It doesn't mean that we should take any interest in their welfare at all. What it means is, "Don't you dare suggest that these brave young men and women aren't fighting for God and their country!" What it means is, "Don't you dare protest against the battles they are sent into in defense of freedom and democracy!" And what do the words 'freedom' and 'democracy' mean? They are probably the words that have been spun to humankind's greatest detriment. I've already gone on too long, and so cannot tackle that ‘spin’ now. Suffice it to say that if we are free in the supposed “First World," then some are clearly much more free than others, as the present fiscal crisis in the US so amply demonstrates. Some people were 'free' to manage other people's money, were 'free' to do so without regulations or controls, and so were ‘free' to plunge an entire country's economy into ruin. We need to get out from under the spin and start to examine what words, images, information really mean – that is if we are to preserve what really is ‘democracy' and ‘freedom’.

http://www.voteforenvironment.ca/ A pro-environment website to help Canadians make their votes count...

2008-10-06T17:35:00.000-07:00

People have to make choices, and making good choices takes courage – sometimes a lot of courage. There's an argument being pushed by Conservatives in North America that we can't afford to go green, subscribe to Kyoto, etc., because it would upset the economy, deprive people of jobs, alter our quality of life, etc. etc.. (I'm tempted to go into the implications of the current economic situation in the US for that argument, but I won't right now.) In Canada, Stéphane Dion has tried hard to reassure people that this is a false argument, that there are thousands of jobs to be created if we do go green, and that the economy will benefit when we change our dependence on increasingly expensive fossil fuels. What we need to understand, however, is that this isn't a Liberal Party matter. It has to do with all of us, every Canadian who wants Canada to be a healthy place for its citizens – now, and for the next generation, and the one after that. The great news is that there's a website where people who care about the environment can make their votes count, whether they vote Liberal, Green Party or NDP. The url: http://www.voteforenvironment.ca/ I won't try to explain how it works here, but the idea is to garner votes to defeat Conservative candidates in close ridings and at the same time enable NDP, Liberal and Green candidates to vote their party by arranging a switching of votes. A note for Bible believers like myself. There's a lot of talk about the don't care attitude of Evangelical Christians who believe these are the last days. I think the Bible makes it clear that Christians continue to have a responsibility to take care of the Earth, right up until Jesus comes, whenever that is. The New Testament is full of parables that talk about good stewardship. I don't see anywhere that we're excused from doing this. It bothers me that Stephen Harper can claim to espouse family values and not see that if he loves his children, he needs to choose well for them. That sacrifice may have to include having less now so that they can have much more later, like clean water and clean air, and food that they can safely eat when they are grown up and when they have children themselves. I've been saying again and again that it's important for voters here and in the US to make their votes count. Here's a really good way to do it. Go to http://www.voteforenvironment.ca/ Tell your friends about it. Vote for your children and your grandchildren. Vote wisely. Above all, vote! Selah.

The American Public

2008-10-04T19:08:00.000-07:00

I have for a long time had a theory about the role of media in the way the worst kind of capitalism works – all capitalism not being by any means bad. I'm not an economist, nor a political scientist, nor a sociologist, but I have my own little theories. jdid says I overestimate the intelligence of the American public. I've known the American public since I went to college in the US, at age seventeen, and I respectfully submit that the Democratic Party would not have a black man named Barack Obama running for president in the upcoming US election if the American public of now, this day and time in October 2008, were stupid people. I've already written about this. As I’ve said, I never thought I would live to see a black person as a viable candidate for president of the US. That it has happened in my lifetime says a lot of very positive things about our neighbours to the south and I rejoice in that. But being a victim of Bad Capitalism can leave a person open to manipulation. Here’s how it works. Bad Capitalism is rapacious. It has no conscience and its greed is limitless. Bad Capitalism wants to control not just the economy, but also the political system, the educational and health care systems, the transport system, the media, the entertainment systems, and so on, and so on. Once it controls all those systems, it ensures that they work together to achieve one purpose: making Bad Capitalists richer and more powerful. The Bad Capitalist system makes everything really hard for all but the privileged few: hard for a person to get a good education unless they have parents who can afford private schools or afford to live in areas where there are good public schools, so many middle and lower income folk have to make do with schools that aren't so good, and getting from those to college or university isn’t easy. It’s hard to find a job anyhow, and a not-so-well-qualified person must fight to get one, and must often work two or three jobs to make ends meet. The two- or three-job person gets caught up in a daily grind where work dominates and takes up all their time, and stress affects their health. Because this person is working so many hours, it’s hard to find time to spend with family, much less find time for reading books and newspapers to keep abreast with what is going on. Now, here's where some of the Bad Capitalist owned media come in on behalf of the greedy Bad Capitalists: they offer the public, not serious analysis and solid facts, but sound bits-and-bites and biased packaging of information. (jdid, you are absolutely right in this regard.) Television becomes a place where an exhausted person can sit and be diverted – by almost any foolishness. (I'm telling you. I know. I've been diverted in this way more hours than I care to count, especially if I'm depressed and frightened about how to meet the next month's mortgage payment.) And there is mostly foolishness on the Boob Tube. So the tired overworked person ends up picking up information where and when he can, and doing the best with it that he can, with two consequences. (1) He or she can end up reading and trusting only some kinds of programs, newspapers and magazines, and end up under-informed or misinformed. (For example, there’s an article on John McCain in Rolling Stone by Tim Dickinson (online, posted October 19th) that’s worth reading, whatever your politics. But it’s long, and though it’s well worth reading, many people will just not stick it out.) (2) People can end up thinking that such a person is stupid, because they are pressed and stressed by a difficult life. The amazing thing is, this overworked average Joe or Jemima in America really has not been fooled in recent elections. Let’s ignore for a moment that George Bush may well not have been elected President in either of the last two elections. (Lots of evidence for this, for anyone who is interested.) But if one takes the number of voters who voted for George W. Bush in 2004 and calculates it as a percentage of voters eligible to vote (estimates say between 55 and 60% of voters actually did vote in the 2004 election) then President Bush was most certainly NOT elected by the majority of the American people. Gallup polls distinguish between eligible voters and likely voters in their polls. Give thanks, that never mind things are so hard for so many people, never mind that their lives may be squeezed into very narrow spaces, they manage to find the truth. which means, for me, that the Spirit is alive and well and blows where it wishes. I have one plea this fall. Say your prayers, if you pray, fast if you fast, and for the sake of God and good citizenship – be a likely voter! Go out and vote. Once more, your life may depend on it… Selah!

Lying politicians, and elections...

2008-09-30T18:28:00.000-07:00

An update... I'm behind on responses to the folk who've dropped by to visit here and who've said things to me in conversations elsewhere, and I apologize. I've been snagged by that nemesis of those of us who are keyboard-bound, stalled in tunnels of the carpel kind, so both hands are now in splints. At a terrible time too: the goings on in the world are shrieking for comment. Unbridled capitalism has finally had its comeuppance, throwing the US into chaos and crashing stock markets... Don't get me wrong. I'm not crowing. Too many ordinary folks are in real trouble, not just in the USA, but here in Canada, and no doubt elsewhere as well. As usual, the people who can least afford it are hurting while the chaps on Wall Street who caused the trouble will walk away unscathed. Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the rest will be bailed out (however that is arranged) by monies that come , one way or the other, from the taxpayer's pocket. Comments on two matters, for now. First! When it was reported that mortgage giant Freddie Mac had paid an advocacy group run by Rick Davis, John McCain's campaign manager, $30,000 a month until the end of 2005, the McCain campaign denied that Davis still had ties to Freddie Mac. Davis himself told reporters that "it's been over three years since ... I had any contact with those folks." Newsweek's Mike Isikoff reports, however, that Freddie Mac paid Rick Davis's consulting and lobbying firm a consulting fee of $15,000 a month starting in 2005 and ending only last month, when the U.S. government acquired the firm. This is scandalous, and makes liars of the two Republican candidates, a big part of whose platform is that they are against those nasty lobbyists. Fact checkers (found easily online) report that Sarah Palin, the Republican candidate for Vice-President, has used lobbyists as well. We all make fun of politicians – the only people who tell bigger lies than statisticians – but this barefaced lying is an insult to the intelligence of the American people and they should not put up with it. (Bible believers should also remember who Jesus ran out of his Father's temple – the moneylenders!) Second. Anyone who is thinking of voting for Stephen Harper in Canada's coming election ought to bear the American situation in mind and recognize how dangerous it is that he's emptied our coffers with his ill-advised tax cuts leaving us with no surplus, nothing to tide us over bad times. We now know clearly that hurricanes, out of whose paths God has kindly kept us, are not the only things that shatter economies and upend countries. Disease in humans or animals, collapsed infrastructure, crop failure, drought, floods, a nuclear meltdown in one of those old reactors, underhand dealing in our fiscal sector, any of these can suddenly arrive, and if they come now we have no nest egg to dip into, thanks to Mr Harper. Quite apart from the environment, quite apart from the divisive tactics according to which he's encouraging people who do needlepoint, sew, quilt and make handcrafted canoes to think they are somehow different from people who write and paint and carve, if you are thinking of voting Conservative in the upcoming Canadian election, remember America, a nation with empty coffers. These are critical times, requiring good government, and Conservatives aren't big on government: they think, the less of it, the better. But when the skies fall, as in times of war, disaster and famine, good government can make all the difference. So put you vote where it counts this election... Your life may depend on it.

How can it be that it is good for Bristol Palin's baby to live and good for Troy Davis to die?

2008-09-23T13:21:00.000-07:00

rethabile has asked us to write an American sentence for Troy Davis. This is my American sentence.

To kill Troy Davis is to kill a foetus that has been fulfilled.

America applauds Bristol Palin for keeping her baby then its courts turn around and kill a man, indeed a man about whom there is doubt as to his guilt for the crime for which he has been sentenced. How come it's immoral to kill a foetus, but moral to kill a foetus that has grown and become the person it was meant to be? That seems somehow perverse, having less to do with ethics and more to do with some kind of ethereal, romantic notion about the helplessness of babes in the womb. If to kill in cold blood is wrong, then it matters not whom we kill. (We won't get into the issues of war and self-defense here.) Or does "pro-life" mean pro-foetal life? How can the same morality that is served when a foetus is preserved, also be served when a full-grown human person is killed? Isn't the argument made that it is wrong to kill a foetus because it is human life? And even if we were to agree that capital punishment is an appropriate verdict for a capital crime, must the state not pause when there is uncertainty that the person convicted is guilty? Or is there more going on here? Is this an issue that concerns race? Class? Both? It's impossible to pursue at this time all the relevant issues in this case, and we will hopefully return to at least some of them, one less obvious one being that idolatry is a subtle sin, one we commit when we purport to value "the sanctity of human life" when it is prettily wrapped up in a developing baby but regard it as disposable in grown human beings. We say, where I come from, "What go round, come round." Also, "Time longer than rope." They are interesting encapsulations of the idea of the inexorability of justice, elsewhere expressed in aphorisms like "Sow the wind and reap the whirlwind." Outside, beyond, over and above all our behaviours, individual and collective, as citizens, communities and states, the same inherent order (or Order) that sees to the rising and setting of the sun governs human behaviour. We should perhaps look to it.

Everyday matters...

2008-09-17T19:13:00.000-07:00

Never mind the gorgeous weather, I spent the day tiling a bathroom – believe me, a challenging activity for someone who has osteoarthritis! It's not really by choice. In a city short of tradespeople, it's hard to find someone who will do a small job – which this one had to be, since it's a small bathroom, or washroom, as they say here. (I hate the term, talk truth.) Even when you find someone who agrees to take the job, chances are you'll get that fatal call a day or two before the big day that tells you, "Sorry. No longer possible." An intricate job too, since the tiles (they were already there: I was replacing maybe half of them) are small white octogons interspersed with much smaller black squares. They come set out in pre-set, one foot mosaics that are attached to netting, and that helps in putting them down, but only if you are working in those large dimensions. Patching tile by tile is something else! But what to do? One does what one must, so I'm pressing on. Hopefully I'll be done tomorrow. Then we'll return to painting, and after that, cleaning. I sometimes think I might have been happier living in a cave or in a tent as a nomad – though I suppose having and raising a family in the wild or on the move would not have been any easier, or simpler. Ah well! BTW, if you need to clean carpets, ordinary soda (the white chaser that you use for drinks) works. By the same token, baking soda works too, especially for carpets with pile. There are lots of safe, environmentally friendly alternatives to chemicals. And they're easy to find online and worth trying. On a bookish note, I've just finished reading Olive Schreiner's The Story of an African Farm. Has anyone read it? I'd love to hear what people think. And Nalo Hopkinson's New Moons Arms has won the Sunburst Award! Congrats, Nalo! Keep them coming, and keep them winning! rethabile, thanks for visiting and for the translation. "Sunflowers" now exists in French and Spanish translations. Going to go. Retiring early tonight, as I've more tiling to do tomorrow. Stay focused – and pray! They're doing crazy things with the atom in a 27 km tunnel that runs across the French-Swiss border. A (very, they say) few critics think the experiment, due in late October, might precipitate a black hole that will drag in earth and everything on the planet. Maybe more on this soon...

"Sunflowers" – "Tournesols"

2008-09-16T20:46:00.000-07:00

Something a little different this time, folks. Here's a poem from my last collection, The True Blue of Islands (Sandberry Press, 2005 – available from amazon.com). I've tried to translate it into French; I knew some French once, but I've forgotten much of what I knew. I'm putting both the poem and the translation up, in the hope that someone whose French and kwéyol is better than mine will make a comment. I'm especially interested in whether there's a way to 'translate' the pun (English "guest" and creole "guess") in the last word. All comments welcome

Sunflowers

Vincent Van Gogh the sunflower man
cut off his ear when Paul Gauguin
wouldn’t stay to paint with him
in southern France.

I burnt my veil and wedding dress
scarred both my cheeks
tattooed rosettes
along my arms with cigarettes.

We both needed a man to stay.

You think that it was
loneliness? I don’t
think so. Madness
has always been my guess.

© Pamela Mordecai 2005

Tournesols

Vincent Van Gogh, l’homme des tournesols
s’est coupé l’oreille quand Paul Gauguin
ne voulut rester avec lui pour peindre
au sud de la France.

J’ai brulé ma voile et ma robe de mariée
je m’ai marqué des cicatrices les joues
j’ai tatué rosettes
au long de mes bras avec des cigarettes.

Nous deux avions besoin qu’un homme restât.

Tu crois que c’était
la solitude? Je ne
le crois pas. Toujours
j’avais pensé qu’il doit être la folie.

Are they ‘Christian’? Are they ‘right’?

2008-09-15T15:45:00.000-07:00

Who are these people who have claimed the words "Christian" and "Right" as if they have some Divine entitlement to them? And why on earth have the rest of us allowed this foolishness? It’s bizarre that they’ve been able to license themselves in this way, making “Christian Right” into a label for a group of people who are no more Christian and no more right than any of the rest of us, and some of whom are very scary indeed. Yeah, yeah. I know Conservatives are right and Liberals are left, and hence the term (i.e., to refer to the Christian bloc among conservatives) but that is also a bit of folly that we've paid dearly for. The words have a powerful subtext. They’ve facilitated these folks arrogating unto themselves the moral high ground, so that the message is not merely that they are conservative but that they are discerning, wise, enlightened. (I suspect that most people hearing ‘right’ in “Christian Right” think not ‘conservative, but ‘correct’.) Perhaps the most frightening thing is that they’ve been allowed to get away with behaving in decidedly un-Christian, not-right ways. While they insist on holding the rest of us accountable, they don’t seem to have to live according to their beliefs. As a Christian, I try to nurture my relationship with the Holy Spirit, and to listen to his guidance as I deal with what I see around me. The Holy Spirit cautions me not to judge anyone but he also reminds me that Jesus gave me a yardstick in the Sermon on the Mount: "By their fruits shall ye know them." So perhaps we should look at some fruits. For example, when it comes to staying married, these folks don’t seem to do so well. I'm quoting from a 2004 article in the New York Times (See http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/14/weekinreview/14pamb.html): "As researchers have noted, the areas of the country where divorce rates are highest are also frequently the areas where many conservative Christians live." Mmmn. Not such a good fruit crop there… Perhaps we should look for some other telling statistics for the "Bible belt" states. Assuredly, they do not do well in the matter of peace. Peace is paramount in the preaching of Jesus. That teaching began with the angels at his birth, when they sang, “Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace among men.” (Luke 2: 14) He himself exemplified it throughout his life – with perhaps a couple exceptions, one being when he lost his cool and drove the traders out of his father’s house (Luke 19:46), another being when he condemned the Pharisees and Scribes – at some length, it’s worth noting. (Matthew 23). Jesus extols peace making in the Beatitudes: “Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called the children of God.” (Matthew 5: 9) and, himself faced with weapons in the garden of Gethsemane, warned his disciples against the use of force, against making aggression a way of life: “He who lives by the sword shall perish by it.” (Matthew 26:52) Indisputably the modern version of the sword is the gun. Nonetheless we have ostensible Christians (many being members of the NRA) somehow managing to square their gun toting behaviour with that caution. (I’d especially like to hear Sarah Palin on this.) Worse (for us poor members of the human race, fodder for cannon), how come these claim-to-be-Christians get to support war and take pride in their store of troops, weapons, missiles, and their vast nuclear arsenal? The trouble is that for a lot of people the Holy Spirit is a dead God locked up tight in a book rather than a Live Person who sustains, counsels, guides and comforts. I believe in the Bible as a living Word, one that I contemplate with the Holy Spirit’s guidance. I know that God speaks to me, and that if I listen, I can hear him. Aha! Perhaps that's the explanation. Is it that we have not so much "pretend Christians" in the so-called "Christian Right" but deaf ones?

Is Stephen Harper's government to be trusted?

2008-09-13T18:31:00.000-07:00

We're having an election in Canada on October 14th. In 2006 the Canadian government headed by Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, passed a law establishing a fixed date for elections. Mr Harper has now seen fit to disobey, ignore, circumvent that law – take your pick. It is beyond question that his government passed the law. It's also beyond question that he has chosen to break it. Some say it's because the polls were running in his favour, and there is indeed an Angus Reid poll in this morning's paper that has his party way ahead. I don't know about anyone else, but it makes me very nervous when a government uses the country's parliament in this whimsical kind of way. Either fixed election dates are a good idea or they aren't. If a government goes to the trouble of passing a law that says they are, I don't expect the same government to ignore the law two years later. None of the political commentary that I have read suggests that the country is in a state of crisis such that the government cannot function, which might be a circumstance in which breaking the law that fixes the election date could arguably be allowable, indeed, wise. If the election isn't being held because it's the best thing for the country at this time, then one must conclude that it must be the best thing for the governing party – in other words Mr Harper has chosen to break his own law because it suits his purposes. I don't care what the pundits say, I, plain old ordinary citizen, don't expect those entrusted with the running of my country to give me a six for a nine. Three card sharks, used car salesmen and vendors of snake oil behave in this way. Responsible governments don't. It makes me want to go find out what else he’s said that he's changed his mind about. It makes me think that when Mr Harper says he'll bring our troops home in 2011, he may well find a reason at some future time to change his mind. Makes me wonder whether I can trust anything he says. Makes me think about where I'll put my vote...