Image: Negative Space

Grandview 31st January 1920

 

“Vancouver World”, 19200131, p.18

Night Music: Wonderful Tonight

Councillor Colleen Hardwick at GWAC

The next meeting of the Grandview Woodland Area Council is on Monday 3rd February at 7:00pm.   The speaker this month is Vancouver City Councillor Colleen Hardwick.

The only urban planner on City Council, Colleen has been an active opponent of the City’s planning policies and processes.  Moreover, against vigorous opposition from City staff and their minions, she recently managed to get Council to approve the establishment of an independent Auditor General’s office to ensure that, over time, that Vancouver tax payers get good value for the decisions made by Council.

Colleen is a keen proponent of a City Plan to rationalise development in our growing metropolis.  However, she wants to make sure that the people of Vancouver have more say in the future than the tenured staff at City Hall. In furtherance of this,

“Colleen plans to visit every neighbourhood within the boundaries of the City.  In each case, she will meet with organizations within neighbourhood boundaries including but not limited to residents’ associations, BIAs, community centers, heritage, and faith-based groups to take a detailed look at where to best accommodate growth of approximately 1,000 new dwelling units per neighbourhood over the next decade.”

Note that this meeting is scheduled to take place in the Activity Room above the Britannia Ice Rink.

Grandview 30th January 1920

 

“Vancouver World”, 19200130, p.15

Richard Brautigan

 

Today would have been the 85th birthday of Richard Brautigan.

There were entire decades during which I read and re-read the complete Brautigan canon every single year. After Dylan Thomas, Richard Brautigan was my most important influence.  He was especially valuable to me in giving inspiration and value to my flash fictions and poems.

I read and re-read the koans that are the stories in “Trout Fishing In America“, the utter tripiness of “In Watermelon Sugar,” the essential genre pastiches such as “The Hawkline Monster,” “Sombrero Fallout,” and “Dreaming of Babylon“, the straightforward vulnerability of “The Abortion.”  And the poetry.  Every year I read them, for decades.

He is sorely missed.

Vinyl Sounds Better But Kills The Planet

I know quite a few people who collect vinyl records.  Some, at least, consider themselves on the green end of the ecological spectrum, I am sure.  I wonder if they’ll continue their hobby after reading this disturbing article about the manufacture of PVC and the pollution that production causes.

“The process of producing PVC compound is complicated. There are numerous phases, a campus of buildings, tall silos, deep vats, busy machines, as well as many workers in hardhats, hairnets and safety glasses.

 

“PVC contains carcinogenic chemicals, and the operation produces toxic wastewater that the [world’s primary PVC production] company has been known to pour into the Chao Phraya River according to Greenpeace, which says TPC has “a history of environmental abuses” going back to the early 1990s.”

As in Thailand, the US has a bad history of PVC production:

“In the 70s, the Keysor-Century Corporation, located north of Los Angeles, supplied about 20m kilos of PVC a year to the US record industry. That amounts to about one-third of the total annual amount used in the country at the time.  Keysor-Century was an illegal polluter. The corporation had been under investigation by the Environmental Protection Agency since 1977. It was revisited by the EPA in the early 2000s, this time with the FBI, which resulted in a $4m fine and public apology for lying about exposing workers to toxic fumes, releasing toxic chemicals into the air and dumping toxic wastewater down the drain …

“During the US sales peaks of the LP, cassette and CD, the US recording industry was using almost 60m kilos of plastic a year. Using contemporary averages on greenhouse gas equivalent releases per pound of plastic production, as well as standard weight figures for each of the formats, that is equivalent to more than 140m kilos of greenhouse gas emissions each year, in the US alone. Music, like pretty much everything else, is caught up in petro-capitalism.”

So, environmentally speaking, streaming seems the better choice.

 

Wither Punctuation?

There is a very good article in History Today by Florence Hazrat on the history (and possible future) of punctuation.  She notes that:

“In classical times there were no punctuation marks or spaces between words. Since punctuation determines sense (‘Let’s eat, Grandpa’ versus ‘Let’s eat Grandpa’), scriptio continua allowed scribes to offer their masters a clean text, waiting to be interpreted by those higher up the social ladder. Writing was merely a recording of, or preparation for, speech: any punctuation that was inserted had oratorical, rather than grammatical, functions, indicating the degree of pauses upon delivery only.”

When classical texts were being rediscovered and copied in the early Middle Ages, scribes added various pauses to assist comprehension and these eventually developed into the comma, the colon, and the full stop.

“The 15th century saw a boom of inventive punctuation, including the exclamation mark, the semicolon and brackets (or parentheses). New marks arise when a lack of clarity needs to be redressed, communication controlled and sense disambiguated, an emergency perhaps stemming from greater reliance on written diplomacy as well as the newly fashionable art of letter writing.”

The semi-colon made an appearance first in 1494; while the dash and the ellipsis had to wait until the 18th century.

She concludes with a warning and a suggestion:

“When constant availability makes us minimise the effort and time we devote to messages, one may assume that punctuation is doomed. After all, December 2019 saw the demise of the Apostrophe Protection Society, because the ‘ignorance and laziness present in modern times have won’, according to its former president. Yet studies on the use of the full stop in text messaging have shown that we do care about punctuation, even in a medium that promises endless continuation. When is it time to not send another text back? A full stop, the study suggests, comes across as aggressive and cuts conversation short. Perhaps a new mark is necessary?

 

Travel Photographer of the Year

Forbes online magazine has a good selection of the winners of the International Travel Photographer of the Year.  The two I like most are these:

Brian Hodges: Gula, Uganda

 

Paul Sansome, Ouarzazate

 

Image: Good Lie

Grandview 29th January 1920

 

“Province” 19200129, p.15

Night Music: One O’Clock Jump

Milkman

Continuing through my reading of the Best Novels of the 2010s, I have managed to get through Milkman, by Anna Burns.  This is an extraordinarily intense work, shot through with wry black humour.

It is narrated by an 18 year old woman who lives in a nationalist “no go” area somewhere in Northern Ireland deep in the violent troubles of the late 1970s.  She is considered “beyond the pale” by some locals — and some family members — because of her habit of reading while walking, and her disdain for the 20th century, preferring instead the world of 19th century literature.  One of her brothers has been killed by the state forces and another is on the run. The narrative thrust of the piece comes from the fact that she is stalked by a much older man — the Milkman of the title — who is considered a heavyweight member of the paramilitary renouncers who control the district.

The novel is written in a style that I can only describe as being like the constant dialogues one has with one’s own thoughts.  It is like a stream of consciousness though with more clarity.  It does, however, mean that it is composed of long complex sentences, often in a shorthand, embedded within very long (sometimes pages long) paragraphs. Once you get used to it, it is a perfect form for this novel though it did  mean it took a while to digest.  It is replete with a raft of beautifully crafted minor players.

One of the shorthand forms is that there are no names in the book; characters are called what they are — “second sister”, “maybe-boyfriend”, “first-brother-in-law”, “longest friend”, “tablet girl’s sister” etc.  The warring factions are also discussed by description rather than names — “renouncers-of-the-state”, “foreign soldiers”, “from over the water”, and the troubles are known as “the border issue” or the “political problem”.

The novel tells of many things. It is the story of a slow and unwanted seduction, of an unrecognised withdrawal from the rest of the community, of family dynamics in a dangerous era, of a failing relationship,  More, it is a devastating portrait of a highly toxic masculinity and the ways in which women, both traditional and modern, deal with that.  It is also helps explain some of the deep-seated tensions that living within a Troubled environment can bring with it.  For example, residents of the neighbourhood would not call an ambulance or got to hospital if they were sick or wounded:

“Of course, she didn’t go to hospital because as with calling the police here – meaning you didn’t call them — involving yourself with medical authorities could be considered imprudent as well.  One set of authorities, pronounced the community, always brought on another set of authorities, and should it be that you were shot, or poisoned, or knifed, or damaged in any way you didn’t feel like talking about, the police … would show up from their barracks right away” and try to turn you into an informer.

Perhaps most of all, Milkman shows the fatally destructive power of gossip within a closed society.

Well worth the read.

Free Speech Is Key To Freedom

In view of the latest fuss about “controversial” speakers at VPL, I thought it worthwhile to republish this piece I wrote about five years ago:

* * * * *

Regular readers will be well aware of my absolute antipathy to censorship. And I mean absolute. I can conceive of nothing that anyone could think or say that should be disallowed simply because someone else thinks it somehow “wrong” or “dangerous.” Even Nazis, pedophiles, and Rupert Murdoch should have the right to peddle their ghastly trash.

Given my position on this, it is more than disappointing to read that so many students at Oxford and Cambridge have decided that censorship is no big thing and should even be encouraged to protect, they say, the weak or different (their definition) from being distressed. A debate between abortion legalists and pro-life activists was cancelled:

“Christ Church’s student committee, aka the Junior Common Room, voted to ‘inform College Censors about the mental and physical security issues surrounding the debate’. And it seems the College Censors agreed, stating that they were keen to ensure ‘students’ emotional wellbeing’ by ‘avoiding unnecessary distress, particularly for any residents who may have had an abortion’ …

“Here’s the president of the Cambridge Union Debating Society, Tim Squirrell, explaining in the Tab why free speech isn’t very important: ‘I’m proud that we’ve started to consider the social impact of debates on those that they concern, rather than believing them to be academic exercises which happen in an intellectual vacuum… It’s about time we recognised that and started thinking responsibly and considerately about freedom of speech.’ Here’s McIntyre making a similar free speech-qualifying point: ‘The idea that in a free society absolutely everything should be open to debate has a detrimental effect on marginalised groups.’

What he is saying, of course, is that these “marginalised” groups are too stupid to understand the point of debate and therefore we should keep them in the dark because “we know best” and have to protect them. This is just another version of the Trotskyite vanguard mentality — “we know best what the working class needs and so we will rule and control them.”   Very dangerous bullshit, especially when it comes from what are considered to be the cream of the next generation.

My grandfather lived at a time when socialists had to set up their own newspapers because they were banned from writing about their “pernicious and devilish” ideas. And even then their presses were attacked and destroyed. In my own lifetime, LGBTQ folk were not allowed to spread their “perversions” and “filth” through mass media or through the mails. It took us a long time and much pain and effort to overcome those two censorships.

Now these effete so-called intellectuals want to throw us back into the dark ages of barbarism and elite control. Well “fuck them!” I say.

Grandview 28th January 1920

 

Vancouver World”, 19200128, p.7

Wise Words

Gibran’s The Prophet on Work

You work that you may keep pace with the earth and the soul of the earth.

For to be idle is to become a stranger unto the seasons, and to step out of life’s procession, that marches in majesty and proud submission towards the infinite.

When you work you are a flute through whose heart the whispering of the hours turns to music.

Which of you would be a reed, dumb and silent, when all else sings together in unison? Always you have been told that work is a curse and labour a misfortune.

But I say to you that when you work you fulfil a part of earth’s furthest dream, assigned to you when that dream was born,

And in keeping yourself with labour you are in truth loving life,

And to love life through labour is to be intimate with life’s inmost secret.

But if you in your pain call birth an affliction and the support of the flesh a curse written upon your brow, then I answer that naught but the sweat of your brow shall wash away that which is written.

You have been told also life is darkness, and in your weariness you echo what was said by the weary.

And I say that life is indeed darkness save when there is urge,

And all urge is blind save when there is knowledge,

And all knowledge is vain save when there is work,

And all work is empty save when there is love;

And when you work with love you bind yourself to yourself, and to one another …

And what is it to work with love?

It is to weave the cloth with threads drawn from your heart, even as if your beloved were to wear that cloth.

It is to build a house with affection, even as if your beloved were to dwell in that house.

It is to sow seeds with tenderness and reap the harvest with joy, even as if your beloved were to eat the fruit.

It is to charge all things you fashion with a breath of your own spirit,

And to know that all the blessed dead are standing about you and watching.

Often have I heard you say, as if speaking in sleep, “he who works in marble, and finds the shape of his own soul in the stone, is a nobler than he who ploughs the soil.

And he who seizes the rainbow to lay it on a cloth in the likeness of man, is more than he who makes the sandals for our feet.”

But I say, not in sleep but in the over-wakefulness of noontide, that the wind speaks not more sweetly to the giant oaks than to the least of all the blades of grass;

And he alone is great who turns the voice of the wind into a song made sweeter by his own loving.

Work is love made visible.

 

Image: Lifelines

Grandview 27th January 1920

 

Vancouver Sun, 19200127, p.5

Poem: Birth

 

 

We begin our passage

by passing

through a passage,

the passing through of which

seems like a lifetime

to both passenger

and bearer