Archives for 2017

Some kind neighbours of ours left two tickets to the National Gallery in our mailbox over Christmas. They were to be travelling to the Caribbean and were unable to use them before their 2017 expiry date and they’d hoped we could make good use of them.

Going to the gallery today would not have been high on my list of things to do. We’re in the middle of a deep freeze and I would have been quite content to get our groceries and other miscellaneous supplies for the upcoming New Year’s closures and then spend the rest of the day with my wife reading our books in the living room by the fire. But when someone gives me a gift that compels me to action, well sometimes that’s what it takes to get me to do something I wouldn’t normally consider. It’s an act of duty spurred on by a feeling of gratitude. So out into the cold we went.

I am grateful we did.

Let me state from the outset that I’m not a particularly cultured man. I know a little bit about art but not that much. I’ve been to a few ballets and three or four operas but I’m no sophisticate in that world. I like what I like in classical music but I couldn’t expound with any authority about the different periods or about who influenced whom and some times I might be off by a century with regard to when a particular composer was composing. I’m not bad with jazz but I haven’t dived deep into the Bebop era and some of the fusion/acid stuff makes my ears bleed.

With this in mind, we headed off to the gallery. My wife is much better at this stuff than I am. She took art history courses in university and her parents were always art-aware. She just knows so much more about these things than I do. If I recognize the names of the most famous painters, she knows the specific paintings and can tell you what movement they came from. I know the basic stuff like Impressionism, Cubism, Pointillism, Surrealism…but if I know some of the alphabet, she knows a lot of the words.

There was an exhibit by a Canadian turn-of-the-century painter named Morrice. He’s someone I’d never heard of and I’m not sure why. I very much liked his work. It was a discovery I didn’t know I was looking for or had been missing.

I saw some famous Impressionist stuff, which is generally my favourite. When my wife and I got separated in the gallery and I was on my own, I discovered that I really liked Sisley. When I told my wife this, she said that Sisley had been one of her dad’s favourite.

I still don’t get a lot of the modern stuff. It doesn’t bother me that I don’t get it. If everyone liked everything then in essence no one would like anything any more than anything else. The friction of art appreciation  and aesthetic debate would be muted.

More than anything in my experience today I was impressed that over the last five hundred years the core of humanity hasn’t changed all that much. The art has changed, the mediums have changed, the perspectives have changed and our appreciations have changed. But there’s one thing that remains consistent.

Artists have always tried and will continue to try to figure it all out and then attempt to explain it to us. To find truth in our experience. To decode what it is to be human, to be in love, to show humility before God or nature or anything else that continues to mystify us.

As someone who has attempted creative endeavours, however modestly, I can’t help but try to imagine these artists in their studios, on a Tuesday afternoon, with a cup of coffee or a glass of wine or a cigarette. I try to picture them doing what they were born to do, doing what keeps them up at night or gets them up in the morning. People who may be geniuses in their art but all too human in their lives. People who ate and drank and laughed and cried and felt confident and felt insecure just like the rest of us.

Like anyone else, I’m amazed that I may be privileged enough to be in the same room as a Monet or a Van Gogh or a Picasso or a Matisse. But as I looked at these paintings that were hundreds of years old, I wondered what the artists themselves might think of their day’s work being displayed in a museum eight generations after they took their last breathe. I’d like to think it would be humbling.

Some times when I’m in a museum, I’m less concerned about what I’m looking at than I am awed by when I’m looking at it.

No one lives forever. But the art can. It’s the closest thing to immortality any of us can achieve. It’s genuinely inspiring.

 

14 Characteristics of Fascism by Dr. Lawrence Britt:

1. Powerful and Continuing Nationalism
2. Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights
3. Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause
4. Supremacy of the Military
5. Rampant Sexism
6. Controlled Mass Media
7. Obsession with National Security
8. Religion and Government are Intertwined
9. Corporate Power is Protected
10. Labor Power is Suppressed
11. Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts
12. Obsession with Crime and Punishment
13. Rampant Cronyism and Corruption
14. Fraudulent Elections

“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists, and will persist.” Dwight D. Eisenhower

“If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.” Lyndon B. Johnson

“When fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.” Attribution disputed.

“America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.” Abraham Lincoln

“The American fascists are most easily recognized by their deliberate perversion of truth and fact. Their newspapers and propaganda carefully cultivate every fissure of disunity, every crack in the common front against fascism.” Henry A. Wallace

“I wouldn’t call it fascism exactly, but a political system nominally controlled by an irresponsible, dumbed down electorate who are manipulated by dishonest, cynical, controlled mass media that dispense the propaganda of a corrupt political establishment can hardly be described as democracy either.” Edward Zehr

“The first step in a fascist movement is the combination under an energetic leader of a number of men who possess more than the average share of leisure, brutality, and stupidity. The next step is to fascinate fools and muzzle the intelligent, by emotional excitement on the one hand and terrorism on the other.” Bertrand Russell

“With a fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public but how best to use the news to deceive the public into giving the fascist and his group more money or more power.” Henry Wallace

“The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerated the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than the democratic state itself. That in its essence is fascism: ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or any controlling private power.” Franklin D. Roosevelt

“Naturally, the common people don’t want war … but after all it is the leaders of a country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country.” Hermann Goering

“I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. As a result of the war, corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavour to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed.” Abraham Lincoln

“The real truth of the matter is, as you and I know, that a financial element in the large centers has owned the government of the U.S. since the days of Andrew Jackson.” Franklin D. Roosevelt

It’s only been a year.

 

 

 

The calendar year is just about over. Every one of us has a genuinely unique perspective on the previous twelve months. Some of us share these experiences with others and some of us keep it to ourselves. But we’ve all lived a year since the calendar last flipped.

By just about any measure, I didn’t enjoy this last year. The details aren’t particularly important to anyone but me or my closest family and friends but it is important to remember that each of us has our own set of details that few others, if any, can fully understand.

Friends and family and pets die. Jobs are lost and jobs are gained. Babies are born. Relationships begin and relationships end. We get sick and we get well. I think I have 277 facebook friends and I’ll be damned if I could tell you anything genuinely important about 250 of them and their lives this year.

I can’t tell you about those who hurt in ways that are invisible to me. I can’t tell you about who was proud of losing ten pounds. Or about who fell in love for the first time in years. I can’t tell you about who finally admitted they’d fallen out of love and didn’t know what to do about it.

I think I must have been about nineteen before I acknowledged I’d had a bad year. Before that, they were just years that contained the odd bad day here and there. But when the bad days start to catch up with the good ones, it’s time to consider things differently in the final assessment.

But here’s the thing. I don’t think we can really tell what the good years and bad years are until we leave them behind. And sometimes it takes looking back at them from a considerable distance.

There were times I could have sworn were the best years of my life and in retrospect I was pretty miserable. I just didn’t know it at the time. And then there were times when I didn’t feel so happy or all that good about myself but decades later it seems to me that I was doing alright. That I was pretty darn content with the way things were going.

I read this recently. An old fish is swimming along and in the opposite direction come two young fish. As they cross paths, the old fish says, “how’s the water?” One young fish looks at the other and says, “what’s water?”

We don’t know what water we’re swimming in until we swim through it. It’s possible we really don’t even know how our year went until we can compare it to years we haven’t experienced yet.

I didn’t make any money this year. My fantasy baseball teams fell a little short. I sold thirty-five copies of my record. My much-anticipated debut record, I joked. But I was grateful that I could make that record, a record that was ultimately a very generous gift from my family and friends. That more people wanted to fund it than listen to it is telling. In the big picture though, I’d much prefer to be loved and valued for who I am rather than for what I can do.

I’ve had health issues and have spent more time in hospitals than I would choose but I’m still above ground and still fit and able.

I started a blog with no forethought and absolutely no expectation but I’ve come to enjoy an endeavour I couldn’t have envisioned a year ago.

In this past year, I’ve had friends and family show themselves to be the good and caring people that they are. It was an invaluable reminder.

I don’t know which seeds cast to the wind this year will flower and which ones will die. I may not know this for years. So while I think of 2017 as a real kick in the guts right now, I may be one day away from entering a renaissance. Maybe great days are in the near future. Perhaps I’ll be able to look back upon this year, if not with sentimental affection, but with a wiser comprehension.

Maybe the years of our lives are like music. Sometimes we know they’re great right away and sometimes we know they’re bad right away. And sometimes we just don’t know at all. At least not yet.

Some years and some songs age better than others. I hope this year is like a record I don’t quite understand yet but some day it will all make sense. And perhaps in some future moment of reflection, I’ll want to put this year back on the turntable, close my eyes, and listen. And then wonder why I didn’t love it all along.

It’s hard to be aware of what we’ve forgotten. It’s a paradox. How do we remember that which eludes our memory?

I’m not talking about old phone numbers or forgotten birthdays or the names of peripheral characters who have lived at the edges of our lives. Those are trivialities. But there must be things that were at one time important to us that we just can’t recall. Lessons we’ve unlearned, mistakes we’ve re-made, significant relationships we’ve trivialized.

I remember details more than most. I get it wrong some times, like we all do, but I get it right a lot. The specifics are really only the finishing touches on the painting that is our memory, our past. They aren’t the form, the shape, or the essence.

But sometimes the details count a great deal because it is in the details that we understand the bigger picture.

For instance, I’m not sure of the timeline of the end of my parents’ marriage. And my younger brother certainly has no idea, and now it’s pretty much lost to history. But, I have to remember that my father was probably 28 and my mother 26 when it was mostly over. Half my age. In my life, they were always my parents but in retrospect, they were practically children. I know what I was like at that age. It’s in the details where I can find some perspective.

I had a grandfather and a few uncles who died when they weren’t much older than I am now. They never looked anything but old to me when I was a child and maybe fifty in 1970 or 1980 was different than it is now but still. We haven’t changed that much.

I talk to relatives and ask them questions about what they may remember and sometimes they remember very little and sometimes there seems to be pain in recalling the past that won’t allow them to remember. Or at least not to share those memories with me.

It only takes a few generations for so much of the colour of the past to be entirely gone.

I guess I’m considered middle-aged but I’m not expecting to live to be a hundred. I may have a good chunk of the track left to run but I’ve turned left a few times already and if I’m not on the back stretch, I can at least see it. I don’t know where the finish line is but I know it’s never been closer.

We have some close friends who have young children. Kids my wife buys Christmas gifts for. Two under four and one under ten. I try to imagine what they might remember of their lives now or when their memories might really begin. If I were to die tomorrow, two wouldn’t remember me at all and the nine year-old would only vaguely remember me. I would be more of an impression, almost a shadow, that would eventually fade as she grew into adulthood. My name would evoke memories for her parents but it wouldn’t remind her of anything important. And I’ve known her for her whole life.

I do my best to imagine what world these children might live in twenty years from now. But I can’t. No one can. There’s nothing in our present that can allow us to see clearly into the future. The distant future. There’s barely a shape or form we can envision. The essence of things may not change all that much but a river delta has innumerable ways to the sea, each with its own distinct scenery and current, and we can’t always know which branch we’re riding.

Yesterday is becoming more and more elusive. Today continues to be an enigmatic puzzle with any number of possible solutions. And tomorrow is as distant as the stars. Beautiful to look at but rarely willing to show itself clearly.

We wish upon those stars and sometimes that’s really the best we can do.

If I were to impart anything to those three little kids it would be this: Remember your uncle Joe if you can. Live for the moment because that’s the only place you’ll ever live. And don’t worry too much about the future.

It may be bright but it’s always a little further away than you might think.

 

 

December 24th was my wife’s mother’s birthday. Traditionally, it was the first celebration of the season. We would always make sure to focus on Diane on Christmas Eve because throughout her childhood, her birthday tended to get lost in the maelstrom of other Christmas celebrations. This was the first year Diane wasn’t with us on her birthday but we made sure to celebrate it in her honour anyway.

My wife Valerie and my late father’s wife Dawn, and I sat down to dinner on Christmas Eve. It was the first year that all four of our parents were gone and the first time in years we weren’t thinking about hospitals and sickness. It was just the three of us at her house. And like with any holiday dinner, if we’re lucky enough to have a holiday dinner, there was too much food,  too much wine (it felt just right at the time), candle light, and music. It felt the way I remember it’s supposed to feel.

I sat in my father’s place at the dining room table and Dawn sat in his chair in the living room. And when we finished our meal, before we moved to the sitting area in front of the fire place, Dawn said it should become our new Christmas Eve tradition.

Valerie and I did most of our visiting in Toronto in the days preceding Christmas, knowing full-well that everyone is stretched thin at this time of year. Family commitments are in place for everybody and we didn’t want to impose ourselves upon anyone so we left Toronto on Christmas Day.

Forty-five minutes on the 401, half an hour north on the 35 and then the rest of the way home on highway 7. Highway 7, a road I’ve known all my life and a road we’ve travelled hundreds of times over the last few years. But never on Christmas Day before. And so here is a word of advice. Don’t travel it hungry or without a full tank of gas. For two hundred and eighty kilometres, the only food to be had was from a McDonald’s in Perth. I had the McChicken sandwich for my Christmas lunch and I tried to elevate the experience by having a root beer with it instead of a coke. It didn’t work.

When we got home, we unpacked our suitcases and threw our laundry in the hamper. I took the garbage out and emptied the dishwasher. Then we had to decide what to do for our Christmas dinner. Little was open and there wasn’t much in the fridge so we piled into the car again and headed to Chinatown. Just like Ralphie and his family in the movie A Christmas Story.

When we arrived, the place was packed. But there was a jovial vibrancy that was unmistakable. The staff were very friendly and the food was great and we’ll be eating Chinese for days. I couldn’t have felt more comfortable. Valerie said to me, Maybe this should be our new tradition. And I thought, Why not?

Every old tradition once occurred for the very first time. And any traditions that last only last because they continue to be not only observed but embraced by those who practice them. I think of it as being like a social language. It is living and breathing and it changes and it adapts. And if a practice does become a cherished tradition, it’s probably because it helps us communicate with each other a little better than with what came before.

I’d eat dinner with Dawn and Valerie every Christmas Eve and be happy. I don’t mind travelling on a clear highway for a few hours on Christmas Day as long as I’m with my wife and there’s something good on the radio.

And Chinese food on Christmas Day is delicious. We’re lucky for the privilege to be so well-fed.

And while it’s not like the Christmas of my youth, it may become the Christmas of my future. And somewhat strangely, these unusual experiences, these new traditions, can almost feel like coming home.

I’m pretty old but not that old, in the big scheme of things.

I was at a grocery store today and I watched some older folks shopping for Christmas. Before everything shuts down for a few days. I would like to imagine that every seventy-five or eighty year old man or woman is buying supplies for their grandchildren or even their grown children but I’m not naive. Some older people are preparing for Christmas by buying their food for the next few days because they can’t get out that much in the cold or want to navigate the winter ice as infrequently as possible.

Some of them will be alone on Christmas Day. They will have their store-bought tortiere or their favourite hearty soup, which they will enjoy as they watch curling or the Sound of Music.

Most of us think of Christmas Day as being a day for children. It’s where our memory gravitates to and if we’re lucky enough to be around children or grandchildren now, it’s where our focus lies.

But I think someone who has experienced seventy or eighty Christmases deserves a little more attention. Every old person you see in the store once believed in Santa Claus. But maybe it was in 1935 and it was the depression era and something so frivolous as a new sled was unthinkable. New shoes were to cry about. Perhaps an orange in your stocking really was a great treat.

Perhaps they were in Europe or even here in Canada during the war and all they wanted for Christmas was for their father or brother to come home.

My father’s family threw antique furniture into the fire place to keep warm during the winter because they had no other choice. I can’t imagine what their Christmas wishlist may have looked like.

But all of them were once kids who wanted things in the same way we have all wanted things. Something that was a treat, something that was special, something we would never dream of asking for at any other time of the year.

This is what I think about when I see old people in the grocery line at Christmas. Even the rich ones. They all suffered at some point.

I wonder how it might be a little different if we thought of Christmas as an important day, the most important day, not for our children or our grandchildren but for our parents and grandparents. The ones that made it this far. The ones who are the furthest removed from wonder. The ones who have given of themselves, who have sacrificed for each of us for decades or even generations.

I don’t have too many older close family members anymore. But when one of my nieces or nephews is tearing through his or her wrapping paper to get to a new toy truck or a designer craft set this Christmas, I’m going to take a moment to think of my parents, my aunts and uncles and most of all, my grandparents, who waited for the same Santa we did and who were happy for the most modest of gifts. Gifts that they remembered for years.

If Christmas really is the season of giving, perhaps we would be better off focusing on those of us who have given so much. Because after all, in a small way, we’re all still waiting for Santa to bring us something special. Something we’ll always remember.

And if there’s anything more special than a joyful look on a three year-old’s face, it might be a grateful look on his grandmother’s face.

So a belated Merry Christmas to my parents, my uncles, my aunts and my grandparents.

I hope you enjoyed the oranges and I hope you believed in Santa Claus for as long as possible. You deserved the sweetness and you deserved the hope.