This life, and the next

One of the signs of passing youth is the birth of a sense of fellowship with other human beings as we take our place among them.
- Virginia Woolf

I have a legion of humble music jobs.  They are not glamorous concerts with "production values."  I do not exude technical ease at the piano and yet I am grateful for what it teaches me, and the joy it can bring to others.  It's a far sight better than the passivity induced by television, or even the ad nauseum complaining that we all tend to do in our spare time. 

I play a lot of funerals, church services, the occasional background gig, sometimes larger concerts with bands (as keyboardist or conductor), and a few times each year our church is responsible for the service at the Carleton Manor.  When I first started going there, I was very uncomfortable.

The residents there are obviously in their last days, some limping towards the finish line and others present in body only.  It is very difficult to see other people suffer, especially other people who belong to a generation for which I happen to have a tremendous amount of respect.

Yesterday we went and we were asked to provide a longer service than normal.  There was some debate in meetings about whether this was actually necessary or even appropriate, since many of the congregation are asleep within 20 minutes of the service beginning.  But we did our best to oblige the request, and the choir sang a couple of numbers.  At the end, we sang the Irish Blessing:

May the road rise up to meet you.

May the wind always be at your back.

May the sun shine warm upon your face,

and rains fall soft upon your fields.

And until we meet again,

May God hold you in the palm of His hand.

 

To my right was a man all curled up, his wheelchair tilted back so he was cradled in it.  He was obviously a church-goer because, although his words were staggered, he managed to get out parts of the 23rd Psalm.  After we finished our song, he managed to look up briefly and I heard him say ". . . nice! " in a small but clear voice. 

I dare say I have encountered few things in life as humbling as the residents recite the Lord's Prayer together.  Their halting tones are about half the normal speed and due to the miracle of long-term memory, many of them who are normally mute suddenly chime in - remembering parts and omitting others.  But inevitably, they get to the end together, and when they are done I can sense that they have somehow managed to transcend the reality of their suffering for a short minute, and have returned to some snapshot of normalcy they knew long ago.  

As quickly as it comes it is gone again.  But I am thankful for having witnessed it, because it reminds me that "time and chance befalls us all," no matter how rich, beautiful, talented, charming or well-connected we may or may not be.  Although my jobs are humble in many ways they make me rich.

We interrupt the regularly scheduled post for a New Brunswick Literacy Minute

Not quite a heritage moment, but the post below is the first in a series by my friend Julie, who is very passionate about books, learning and literacy in New Brunswick. Here's the standard disclaimer: her opinions do not reflect the opinions of her employer etc. etc.  If you're not careful you might change your mind about something!

Hello readers!
Now that we have that out of the way….

I am passionate about a lot of things (for better or for worse!). Two of my biggest hot button topics are my love of my home province of New Brunswick, and literacy. This mostly works out for me because I work as a library manager in the town Florenceville-Bristol,  and I get to connect with other people who are passionate about these topics.

I recently attended a workshop that was put on by the Literacy Coalition of New Brunswick with Anne Hunt and Lynda Homer facilitating. There were people from all areas of the province who work with families of children ages 0-5.

In her opening remarks, Anne said something that really resonated with me when she was talking about different kinds of literacy. Commonly the term ‘literacy’ is defined as “the ability to read and write”. Amongst scholars, the term is expanded by adding qualifiers such as “prose literacy” or “information literacy”.

The International Adult Literacy and Skills Survey (IALSS) looks at four separate domains

•  prose literacy - continuous text, like what you are reading now
•  document literacy - written information that is discontinuous (ie. a pamphlet with charts/graphs)
•  numeracy - mathmatical concepts
•  problem solving - analytical reasoning

It seems to me that a lot of fuss has been made over the low literacy levels of New Brunswickers. And there should be!

When Statistics Canada released their report on the IALSS, they found that 56 per cent of adult New Brunswickers have unacceptable reading and writing skills.

The Survey rated the respondents’ proficiencies on a point scale they were assigned one of five levels, one being the lowest level of ability and 4/5 as the highest. Level 3 was selected as the “desired level of competence for coping with the increasing skill demands of the emerging knowledge and information economy”.

 The breakdown for New Brunswick was:

                                  Level 1     Level 2      Level 3      Level 4/5

Prose Literacy             22.7           33.3           31.6            12.4

It is important for the future of our province that we produce citizens who are able to function in society.

However, I think that we also need to assign value to traditional forms of literacy. I’m thinking of the way a fisherman can “read” the sea and know when it is time to haul in the nets and head for shore, or how a gardener can “read” the conditions and know when to plant and when to harvest. After all, the people of our province will all still need to eat, and reading about a garden alone won’t make it grow.

Wouldn’t it be cool to have every adult in NB reading text at the “acceptable” level? Of course it would.

Is it realistic? That is up for debate.

Perhaps some of these low scores can be attributed to the “use it or lose it” principle. What happens to prose literacy skills once the student has graduated if they choose not to read? There are excellent programs out there that are staffed by wonderful volunteers, like Laubach Literacy, who work with adult learners to improve their prose literacy skills. The catch is that the learners have to WANT to do the work.

There are many people out there who simply are not readers. For example, my Grandfather can pick out most words, but I remember pretty clearly the day that as an elementary student I climbed up on his knee and took over the reading duties. Just because he isn’t much of a reader does not mean that he doesn’t have a wealth of knowledge to pass on.

If we as New Brunswickers really want to improve our literacy situation, we need to have a dual focus:

1) Value and appreciate the transmission of ‘traditional’ knowledge – what I mean by this is to not discount our elders, and to take the time to learn what they have to teach. When the nukes hit, we might not be able to stock up on everything we need at the Superstore…then you’ll be glad you learned to plant a garden or sew a quilt!

2) Focus on the future – it is a great a noble goal to teach everyone to read…but I think that if we spend for time and energy on making sure our kids have strong literacy and numeracy skills before they leave elementary school then we will be helping to improve the future of our province. I’m not saying that adults aren’t worth the time, only that our return on investment will be greater if we get at the young ‘uns!

While statistics are merely numbers and can’t tell the whole story themselves, I would encourage you to look at the Statistics Canada report, it is really eye opening. And once you’ve done that I would challenge you to come up with some ideas of how we can help make our community a more “literate” one.

Contempt of Parliament is Contempt for Canadians

con·tempt (kn-tmpt)
n. 1. The feeling or attitude of regarding someone or something as inferior, base, or worthless; scorn.

2. The state of being despised or dishonored; disgrace.

3. Open disrespect or willful disobedience of the authority of a court of law or legislative body.

I know it's very quaint of me to care that our current government has been found in "contempt of Parliament."  But I hope everyone understands that this is the first time in CANADIAN HISTORY this has happened, and that it has happened twice in a month.
 
When I look at Stephen Harper and his mean band of merry men, I see people who intend to maintain a grip on power by dragging Canada (and Canadians) into the gutter.  As it's probable we move into an election, consider that Harper & co. have:
 

 lied about documents presented in the House of Commons

 

 refused to acknowledge that the government did nothing to prevent the torture ofAfghan detainees

 

 interfered at an aid organization known for its even-handed judgements

 

 shut down Parliament twice to avoid non-confidence votes

 

 defended ministers accused of influence peddling

 

 broken Canada's electoral laws

 

 ignored a Supreme Court ruling that Omar Khadr be removed from Guantanamo and returned to Canada

 

 removed the phrases "international humanitarian law" and "child soldiers" from our foreign policy

 

 removed the mandate for "equality" from the agency responsible for the Status of Women

 

 decided to put forward a budget whose big ticket items are corporate tax cuts, fighter jets and prisons.

 

Welcome to Harperland - where a "law and order" government acts as if it were above the law.  How demoralizing for Canadians.  Wake me up when it's over.

Exhibit A: the Irish

For a long time I have been mildly obsessed with this little mystery I like to call New Brunswick.  As in, New Brunswick, who the heck are we, anyway?

New Brunswick is a lot like Canada in miniature.  We like to talk about "Canadians" but it's really more of a term of convenience in many ways.  What makes a Canadian?  Love of beer?  Compulsive small talk about the weather?  Nobody is entirely sure what a Canadian is supposed to look like, or what language they are supposed to speak etc.  So it is with New Brunswick, too.

One thing is for sure - New Brunswickers have a serious deficit, and I'm not talking about money.  I'm talking about our lack of self-knowledge and cultural identity.  Name me one New Brunswick song, story or painting.  Name five New Brunswickers who have made a significant contribution to modern politics, business and culture.  I bet you are struggling right now. If you're not, please leave your list in the comments. We don't teach it in school so most people have no idea.

So . . . for a long time I've been contemplating the idea of a series of posts about New Brunswick, and all the different groups and their respective legacies.  Seeing as how tomorrow is Saint Patrick's day, I thought I would provide you with some interesting factoids about the Irish who passed through NB and settled.

• Historians estimate that, between 1815 and 1865, the majority of immigrants to NB were Irish (60%) 
•  In the period between 1827 and 1835, alone, some 65,000 Irish migrants landed.

We had different Irish here, as opposed to Halifax or Newfoundland.

• The sources of Irish migration to New Brunswick were not primarily from the port of Waterford.
• New Brunswick’s Irish generally came from either Munster or Ulster, provinces whose port cities had strong ties to timber ports and merchant centres in New Brunswick.

Irish Protestants settled in different places than Irish Catholics.

• While Protestant Irish tended to settle the Saint John River valley, Irish Catholics could be found in great numbers along the Gulf of St Lawrence, in the entrepôt of Saint John, or in the timber-rich valley of the Miramichi River, in the northeast.

I have Irish Protestants in the family, so it's not surprising we're here in the valley.  At some point in the future I will present a snapshot of the Scottish, the Acadiens and the original peoples who were here before "Crown Land." 

Here's a bit of Irish humour to go with your beer.

An American lawyer asked, "Paddy, why is it that whenever you ask an Irishman a question, he answers with another question? "Who told you that?" asked Paddy.
-----------------------
An Irishman, an Englishman and a beautiful girl are riding together in a train, with the beautiful girl in the middle.The train goes through a tunnel and it gets completely dark. Suddenly there is a kissing sound and then a slap!


The train comes out of the tunnel. The woman and the Irishman are sitting there looking perplexed. The Englishman is bent over holding his face which is red from an apparent slap.

The Englishman is thinking "Damn it, that Mick must have tried to kiss the girl, she thought it was me and slapped me."

The girl is thinking, "That Englishman must have moved to kiss me, and kissed the Irishman instead and got slapped."

The Irishman is thinking, "If this train goes through another tunnel, I could make another kissing sound and slap that Englishman again!!

Sabbatical: month 1

Back in November, I realized it's been seven years since university and I want to take a year off.  Now obviously I need to make a living so it doesn't mean quitting my job.  But I have a lot of projects on the go - some of which pay, some of which don't, and starting April 1st I am re-organizing my life.

When I first came up with the idea, which is based on an instruction in the Old Testament (yes, the Bible) that after seven years of cultivation the Jews should let their fields rest for a year, I was very nervous but excited.  I couldn't even imagine what I would do for a whole year without endless meetings and rehearsals to fill my time.  I am a work-a-holic and even two or three days off can be very unsettling for me.  But I decided this was yet another reason to try to slow down, not plan, and see what happens.

Now I am starting to see small ideas taking root - mostly I am remembering that before I did so much volunteering and community organizing, I was a musician.  A person who loved music, listened to music, went to concerts, wrote music and practiced music for her own improvement.  I have started taking a few organ lessons and combined with visits from musicians from away (thanks guys!) and working with Tracy on "Squirrel On a Wire" I can see that music continues to inform and inspire how I work and why I work.

I am excited at the prospect of having a "happiness project" and having time in the day (most days, anyway) to do what brings me joy and helps me improve my life.  It's my hope that in a year I will be able to take this energy and bring it back to the community.

Here's a great TED video about work-life balance and what it means.

I'm not the best ___________, but . . .

Over the past week I have been very inspired by my sister Tracy's debut recording project,  "Squirrel On a Wire."  Watching these songs take shape has been a slow process - words were conjured and later changed, melodies revised, chords substituted, keys changed, arrangements devised.  Hundreds of hours of work, for six songs.

The sound world is so hard to pin down - it can't be seen or touched and how something is played is just as important as what the note or word happens to be.  Each note is scrutinized - first when it is written, later when it is revised, and again when it is recorded.  It will be reviewed yet again before it is pressed closer to permanence.

This project has been especially interesting because of the number of instruments and musical styles involved: guitars, trumpet, accordion, harmonica, multiple vocal layers, electric bass, percussion, and even a string quartet. 

The players came and went over five days, while slowly, painstakingly, the recording was assembled like a patchwork quilt.  Little scraps were stitched together into a sum far greater than their parts. 

Art is amazing.  Humans are amazing.  Recording technology, which makes sound waves into little digital bits that then turn back into soundwaves, is like a miracle from another world. 

When musicians who have never even met play in perfect recorded harmony, I am at a complete loss for words.

Sometimes when I work on a project, I notice little sub-themes that appear and re-appear.  Often they are not the main focus - ie. "now I am going to make a cd containing 6 songs I have written" - they are slightly "off topic" but interesting nonetheless.

In the case of "Squirrel On a Wire," one of those emerging themes was "I'm not the best _________, but . . . ". Usually it was a musician commenting on their own lack of technical perfection.  We all have holes in our musicianship with which we are unhappy.  It's part of being human. 

But what I find very interesting is that musicians who say "I'm not the best __________, but . . ." are really saying that they find music-making so inescapably compelling that playing is not a choice.  It is a vocation, and although they are keenly aware of their own imperfections, the joy of making music remains.  It's not about perfection, it's about the joy.

And I think that really came through for me this week:  musicians can be a lonely breed.  We spend so many hours alone, practicing our instruments and chasing the sounds around in our heads.  And often we are quite self-critical.  But even if you're not the best _____________, you still have the capacity to play, for your own joy and hopefully to share a bit of it with others.

A list, with pictures

THINGS MY PARENTS TAUGHT ME ABOUT FOOD

Preamble: Growing up, my family did not have much money.  But my parents are smart and resilent.  Looking back on what we ate and how we ate it, here are some of the implicit things they taught me about food.

  10.  Raw veggies are delicious.

 9. Plant a garden. It's cheaper and tastes delicious.

8. There's lots of free food to be had: maple syrup, fiddleheads, rhubarb, berries, potatoes etc.

7. Buy direct from the farmer, it's cheaper.

6. When you go to the grocery store, try to get the best nutritional bang for your buck.

5. Eat at home. Preferably with your family. At the table.

4. Treats are okay, but save them for the weekend.

 3. No junk food before noon.

2.  Breakfast is the most important meal of the day.

1.  Food is fuel for your body, and your body needs good food.

Thanks Mom & Dad!

Please raise your hand

Don't you hate having a cut on your hands?  Maybe it's the piano player in me, but the worst thing about having a cut somewhere on your hand is that it is gets in the way of using your hands.  Which we humans do, all the time.  I love to work with my hands, whether it's piano or organ playing, writing, cooking, gardening, whatever.  Even when I read books it gives them something to do.

As a piano teacher, I see lots of people (young and old), whose hands are not educated.  They have trouble moving fingers independently of one another, they can't get one hand to go left while the other goes right, and they can't get one finger to hold still while the others all move. 

Our education system does not do a good job educating people's hands. Which is a toublesome because people's motor skills and manual dexterity are crucial to their well-being, both psychologically and financially.

Anybody who has ever seen a master hand-worker (potter, painter, carpenter, mason, floor installer, flower arranger, hairstylist, massage therapist, pastry decorator, musician, mechanic) has likely noticed how fluidly the hands of these people move as they work.  I never realized how much intelligence hands can have until I watched my father fix the old dryer in our basement.

He couldn't see the part he was fixing, so he felt it with this hands, figured out what was wrong, unscrewed part of it, felt around and moved the things that were in the way, and reconnected it.  I watched and then I understood that he can think with his hands.

In school we are taught to hold our hands very still so our brains can get smart.  At risk of sounding like a zombie, the most education in our society has to do with brains, brains, brains! We have largely divided humans into two classes: people who think, and people who work. Brains, and hands. 

So sad, isn't it, because brains and hands are such a great combination - they built the great dome at Saint Paul's Cathedral.

Together, brains and hands devised the most efficient form of human transportation, the bicycle.

 

                                               

                  Brains and hands create beautiful works of art.

But best of all, a person with an educated brain and educated hands can be independent.  They do not need to work too much on other people's terms, because they can be productive and make a living on their own.  They can make a contribution to the community when they choose, in they way they are best able.

So I guess, if I could sum up my educational philosophy in one sentence, it would be "I believe we need an education system that educates people's brains and their hands." To do otherwise is to deny people the opportunity to reach their full potential.

If we were smart, New Brunswick would focus their educational efforts on brains and hands - developing the best skilled, most intelligent practioners in every discipline.  Notice I didn't say the best skilled workers.  This is because I believe in a small province, we should focus on small businesses where people don't just mindlessly work.

We need more people to be productive, to create employment for themselves via their skills.  And the best way to develop the skills and bring out the hidden capacities of every child is to educate their brains and their hands.



A journey in sound and words

When I was young, I liked music but I really didn't know why.  Maybe it was the sounds: the physical density of certain waves together, or maybe it was the attention being musical afforded me, or maybe the mysterious feeling of resonance inside my body.  Looking back, I still can't quite put my finger on it.  But it stuck.

As a teenager, I become more studious and started to really listen.  Focus hard, and listen.

My musical adolescence was exciting.  I learned to play Chopin, Bach, Haydn - large and challenging pieces of sophisticated music. It sounded impressive, and it was fun. I've always loved working with my hands. Plus, my skills improved to the point where I could earn a little cash and some work experience.

But even then, in many ways I was musically ignorant. I could not replicate sounds I heard, I could 'read' music, but actually I had very little rhythmic understanding of what was going on in the musical notation. And I could not for the life of me, despite hours of trying,  make the sounds I heard in my head come out of my instrument.

Although I had some technical skill, I did not have the fluency necessary for complete self-expression in musical terms. It was frustrating, but I could create music by improvising.  Occasionally a really good idea would come out the ends of my fingers and I would hang on to it.

That said, the phrase "self-expression" sometimes makes me cringe. The idea that "self-expression"  is the be-all and end-all has led to lots of bad artwork. It conjures visions of self-important psycho-babble, people "full of sound and fury, signifying nothing," to quote the Bard.

But when I started listening to jazz, I realized that people really can speak through their instruments. I was too immature to be able to follow the entire conversation (let alone contribute), but I could hear musicians commenting, lamenting, or throwing in the occasional one-liner.

The more I listen, the more I realize that music is a conversation.  In several ways - between the listeners and musicians, each of whom brings their own experiences and level of musical proficiency to the table, but also between musicians themselves, who "speak the language," and who have the ability to narrate and interpret sounds. 

Music can be very rhetorical, and a heartfelt player will relate sounds in a way that can change our perspective - seems ridiculous, I know.  But narrative is such a powerful force in the human psyche: it frames details and presents events, illuminates images and casts shadows.

And somehow, a precise combination of sounds can intervene in the atmosphere and speak in an expressive way analogous to the human voice. 

We all tell stories about ourselves, and those stories shape who we are - who we really are, and who we pretend to be.  And musical storytelling can be the same - facts and fiction, details omitted, truths disguised as real life.

When we listen to someone tell a story, we hear the words, and those words impact us.  They meet us where we are and they take us somewhere else.  And they make us reflect on who is speaking,and how we relate to them. 

Narratives and conversations, whether spoken with words or musical instruments, have to potential to transform us into somebody new. When the story is over and we come back from the transient world they have created, we are not always who we used to be, or even who we expect to be. 

Maybe that's why I like music.

Woodstock Heritage Moment

Remember those lovely "Heritage Minute" commercials the government used to air?  As in, "Doctor, I smell burnt toast!" or "Johnson, sir, Molly Johnson!"  Well, I've started reading a great book about Dalton Camp, formerly a resident of Woodstock, and the "best prime minister Canada never had."  It's a fascinating book that re-tells Camp's life in the context of 20th century politics. 

Here's what he says about Woodstock during the onset of World War II:

War was coming.  You could sense the coming from beyond the earth's curve, not a distant thunder, but an eerily silent wind, a light wind that turned the leaves over, their soft white undersides showing in the sun.   People always said it was a sign of coming rain...

Walking down Lower Broadway, on a still, airless afternoon, I recall hearing Adolf Hitler's voice on radio, coming out from behind a screen door.  I heard the sounds of a crowd, and an American voice talking over it, explaining what Hitler was saying and why the crowd was cheering.  People were beginning to talk about the possibility of war now, the way people might talk about being struck by lightening - something possible, yet unlikely.

It was a summer of heightened sensation, as though the ice cream were colder, the choke cherry bushes heavier with their berries, the sun higher, the shade darker, the nights longer.  The music seemed more haunting, though we laughed longer, as if the laughter were a treasure that might soon be spent.  It was a season of small pleasures; life was anecdotal, time measured by the length of an embrace, a kiss, an early morning round of golf, by swimming naked under the railway bridge at Bull Creek, the water lit by a burning fire under a steaming kettle of fresh corn harvested from an unknown farmer's field. Seamless, sensuous, seemingly endless, one summer day folded into the next while Italy invaded Albania and the Germans marched into Danzig and Vienna.

Hard to imagine, isn't it, and yet I can imagine just what it would feel like to walk down Broadway and hear that radio.  There's a reason some things make the history books: not just because they change the world in the political sense, but because they alter the million mundane little actions that make up "life" for so many people.  We are "at war" in Afghanistan but I don't think we really feel it at home like this.

Three word recipe for a balanced budget

1. Cancel
2. Point
3. Lepreau

Since the Conservatives came to power in September, we've been told repeatedly to get ready for cuts to government spending.  If we don't get tough on the deficit, it could reach a billion dollars soon, in a province of 750 000 people.  Fair enough.

But no MLA or official accountant wants to point out that the Point Lepreau "refurbishment" is already 1.4 billion dollars over budget, and more than a year behind.  The lights have remained on across NB while Lepreau has been the site of, in my opinion, one giant research and development project. 

So I guess the common sense part of me wants to know: why do we need it, and why isn't cancelling Lepreau a viable option to eliminate our deficit?  Let's see, fund health and education or nuclear power generation destined for US export?  Hmmm, which one is really benefitting New Brunswickers?  I'm not normally this sarcastic but seeing as how it's partly my money being flushed into the Bay of Fundy, I just can't see how that's good public policy.

I realize things are rarely this simple and I would love to see a well reasoned and financially responsible argument for why we ought to keep Lepreau and slash everything from legal aid to nursing homes. 

A Civil Conversation

A good conversation goes a long way.  Here's an excerpt from David Brooks' excellent column in the New York Times.  You really should read it all. He says:

But every sensible person in public life also feels redeemed by others. You may write a mediocre column or make a mediocre speech or propose a mediocre piece of legislation, but others argue with you, correct you and introduce elements you never thought of. Each of these efforts may also be flawed, but together, if the system is working well, they move things gradually forward.

Each individual step may be imbalanced, but in succession they make the social organism better.

As a result, every sensible person feels a sense of gratitude for this process. We all get to live lives better than we deserve because our individual shortcomings are transmuted into communal improvement. We find meaning — and can only find meaning — in the role we play in that larger social enterprise.


So this is where civility comes from — from a sense of personal modesty and from the ensuing gratitude for the political process. Civility is the natural state for people who know how limited their own individual powers are and know, too, that they need the conversation. They are useless without the conversation.
 
This sums up much of how I feel about society, politics and people.  I do want to live in a community where my shortcomings are mitigated by the strengths of people around me, and vice-versa.

When We Mourn

I'm not one for vacuous public statements - you know, those ones politicians tend to make when they can't risk taking sides. I find all of that verbal bet-hedging very tiresome.  No comment is fine, maybe there's nothing more to be said, it happens.  But to be "all sound and fury, signifying nothing" is regrettable.

Tonight I was watching the memorial service for the Arizona shooting victims.  I've been to a lot of funerals: when I was younger, family funerals; in my teens and early twenties, funerals for friends (sad but true); now, mainly churchfolk and often strangers.  As bizarre as it sounds, I think memorials (or funerals, take your pick) are very moving and sincere, in a way almost no other modern ceremonies are.

Maybe this is because, as my friend remarked to me, "death is a form of justice."  I think she is right - seeing as how the rich and the poor, the famous and the obscure, death comes to us all.  I'm not sure.

But one thing that strikes me about funerals and memorials is the necessity of including music or art.  Even people who have never been involved in the arts, who probably couldn't name you more than three pieces of music, will have music at their funeral or the funeral of their loved ones.  Many people love to ridicule or ignore poetry in their day-to-day lives, but will have poems read or printed after a loss.

We live in a society which values the empirical and the measurable - money, status, studies, statistics, 'demonstrated track records.'  And yet, when a human life ceases, we find comfort in the unquantifiable (and often intangible) aspects of life: sound, figurative language, poetry, movement, the embraces of fellow human beings.  Maybe this is because grief calls us to be 'outside ourselves' for a time; I'm not sure why.

But as I watched the singers give their "Simple Gifts" during the live broadcast tonight, the swaying of their bodies and the sweetness in their voices reminded me that human beings will (almost always) use beauty as a means of self-defense when faced with tragedy or mortality.  I know that "time and chance" befalls us all, but I am grateful that at least a little beauty, and hence a little hope for the human race, can be called forward in times of great doubt and senseless destruction.

Warm Keys to Success

Here's a re-post of a link from a certain local reporter's blog.  Love what Seinfeld has to say about productivity, I'm thinking a lot about day-by-day, little-engine-that-could type discipline.   As a musician, I know it works.  It's just a matter of doing it.

Show Me The Money - Budget 2.0

My mind on my money and my money on my mind.
                                                              - Snoop Dogg

Here's the disclaimer:  I can't stand Snoop Dogg, and I have never wilfully listened to his music.  That said, the man has a point: it's a new year and we're thinking a lot about money.  So is New Brunswick's finance minister, and the Alward government. Rightfully so.

New Brunswick has huge financial problems, and our aging population (not to mention the looming diabetes epidemic) will make it basically impossible for the status quo to continue.  We have problems, and the government is telling us all that we need to help solve it.  Which is true, we need to face the facts.

Since the money received by the government comes from New Brunswickers, I think the government should lay out every single place that money went in 2009 - every car rental, every can of office coffee, every piece of monogrammed stationary, all the legal aid, all the textbooks, all the gauze, MLA pensions, business development loans and salaries and everything. 

Data-obsessed people should have access to this open-source budget so we can see where our money is actually going.  Then we could have a really informed debate about how our money is being put to use and what our priorities really are as New Brunswickers.

Some wards in the city of Toronto have participatory budgets, as does the city of Porto Alegre, Brazil.  Residents in these places work one year in advance to determine priority spending and allocate amounts for various city departments.  Remember, Toronto has more people than all of New Brunswick put together.

We always say our priorities are"health and education"  but when we say health, what do we actually mean?  When we say education do we mean consultants and standardized testing, or putting meaningful skills training back in high schools?  It's not hard to see what someone's (or a government's) priorities are, if you "follow the money."  And I don't mean departmental, ball-park numbers, you could bury anything in there.  I mean dollars and cents for everything.

Most New Brunswickers are not rich people.  They make choices every day about whether to spend, save, go without, or find a better solution.  If the government needs to reduce programs and services, it should be determined by the people who pay the taxes and will suffer the consequences. 

Eating in the New Year

One of my goals for 2011 is to eat more local food, as much as I can manage.  Our household has several adults coming and going, and we cook lots from scratch.  Food is important to us, we are lucky to be self-employed and we make time to eat well most days.  Good food is the fuel for good work and a good life. 

Over the summer I started buying garden produce from George Peabody.  He delivered it right to my door every Friday and I could choose what we wanted to order.  Delicious and no more griping about ending up with the "slow" cashier uptown.  In August I purchased 20 beautiful 'braids' of organic garlic at the Dooryard Market. We've always bought our grains and cereals direct from Speerville, as well as local eggs from the Lawson family farm and local maple syrup from peddlars on the roadside.

Then in the fall, our tomato bounty harvest came due, and that kept us going for at least five weeks.  Our  friends planted oodles of tomatoes in May and then promptly moved to PEI in August, leaving us with the delicious spoils of their labour.  I also started ordering food from Buckwheat Flats food delivery service in Knowlesville - mostly meat for the carnivores in the house but also some tasty Indian treats, pitas and delicious organic cider.  They also deliver, which seems like such a luxury in the era of self-scan check outs.
Stu & Nancy in Speerville (call 277-6301) have a wonderful organic food /farm delivery service too.

I happened across these blogs about local food, complete with recipes.  Here's a directory to help you find more good stuff grown in our neighbourhood.  Real food tastes better, make me feel great, and helps me support the local economy.  Here's a great little article about how three recipes can get you off the fast-food spiral and into healthy and cheap eating. So, just to recap, here are your standard excuses for not eating locally:

1.  No time
(for home deliveries?!)

2.  Only available in summer
(not anymore!)

3.  Too expensive
(How often do you pay $$$ to eat out? You are voting with your food dollars)

4.  Need meat not just veggies
(lots of local cows, chickens and pigs . . .)

5.  Want prepared items, not just raw food 
(they have this too!)

I am telling you, eating locally will improve your life.  And it will change the world.  So what are you waiting for?

7, 32, 85, 103, 299, 300, 2011

I am a number person.  I count things, I see quantities as multiples (ie. this box is twice a big as that box).  It just so happens that the year is finishing, and this is my 300th post to this blog.  In 2007 I posted a paltry seven times.  In 2008, it was 32 and in 2009, 85.  Since then I have barely stopped jabbering but now, A Moment of Reflection:

This blog is one of my quiet joys, a place where I can record some thoughts and share them with people thoughtful enough to stop by my corner of the virtual neighbourhood.  What a wonderful way to overcome the inherent isolation of living here in NB.  And this little blog is so faithful and undemanding.  It will sit neglected for weeks and still be waiting when a loud thought pops into my brain and is later forced out my fingers and into your neurons.  Pretty wild when you really think about it, isn't it?

Believe it or not, I have rules about writing this blog.  Such as:

1.  Don't write in ridiculous over-thought prose.
One might consider asking oneself: did the word choice matter or was all choice merely an illusion?  She digressed.
Ever since I read Orwell's "Politics and the English Language," the importance of plain speaking, and the uncessary pretence of too many Latin-based words have hit me like a lightning bolt.  Just say it simply, and mean it.  I try not to write if I don't have anything worth saying.
 
2. Personal blogs are not for me.
Discussing ideas and experiences in public with acquaintences rather than intimates is a very valuable and underrated process.  I wish we lived in a world with more engaging conversations.  I do enjoy some personal blogs but the thought of putting my life out there is actually pretty nauseating.

3.  Keep it positive where possible and avoid overgeneralizing everything.
There are enough stereotypes, shallow news stories and shoddy thinking without me adding to the heap! People will never change their lives and our society if they aren't given a better alternative.  How's that for a stereotyped, generalized statement? 

4. Less is more

5.  Proofread. And then proofread again.  Try to mean exactly what you say, and nothing more.

I hope 2011 will bring you growth, joy, laughter, rest, work, love, and peace.  Thanks for reading.

MIT, for free

Some of us are learning junkies.  I would count myself firmly in that category - I get so bored and restless if my neurons are not getting their proper workout.  So I've heard about the MIT open-source courses, but until today I had never actually checked them out.

Basically, you can choose from a HUGE list of courses, their syllabi, reading materials, and in some cases, assignments, exams and solutions.  And in many courses you can download all the things you need onsite.  For free.  That's right, no student loan, so 8:30am deadline, no excuses.  It's all there for the taking, topics from Music and Theatre Arts to Theoretical Physics, Urban Studies and Special Projects.

Wouldn't it be incredible for Carleton County and New Brunswick to have groups of people working together on these courses? To have our leaders and teachers and citizens educated MIT-style while enriching life here with their knowledge and capacities?

Oftentimes, I think there is no 'payoff' for getting formally educated around here.  You certainly won't find an experimental laboratory to pay your salary, nor is a master's degree particularly lucrative for most self-employed people.  As someone counting the months until my student loan is history, I can say that debt is a tremendous deterrant to getting an education. However, being self-educated is of tremendous value in allowing a person to understand the world in which they live, and being able to shape it in a responsible and inspiring way for future generations.

I look back on the history of Woodstock and Carleton County and I see the things that our citizens accomplished: F.P. Sharp and his (successful) experiments in adapting apples to the short Eastern growing season, Tappan Adney and the preservation of the birchbark canoe, the people who built the beautiful and enduring Victorian houses.

What kind of culture will we pass on? A culture of learning, now at our finger tips for free; an insistence that feeding one's curiosity is a worthwhile pursuit?  A legacy of quality work and craftsmanship, of practical innovations ?  I hope so, because I think we deserve to live in a place which asks for, and values, the contributions of people who live here. 

It's tempting to play the victim and pretend we're second class citizens, when actually, the problems are ours and so are the solutions. So get busy learning.  We need you to educate yourself, we need to enrich each other,  whether with MIT courses or by any means available.

P.S. Watch this link to the wonderful Sir Ken Robinson's commentary on the pitfalls of our industrial education system.  Thanks Gill!

It's a Man's World

If you're interested in places outside of North America, you've probably read some of Stephanie Nolen's excellent journalism.  Listen to this excellent podcast - Nolen is a journalist who discovers the truth in large part by talking to women.

Your Hurtin' Heart

Many of you know my sister Tracy, the musical chameleon.  She sings jazz, she plays the keys, she studied opera, she teaches many wonderful students 'round these parts.  But before all of that, she was - wait for it -a country singer! 

That's right folks, twang and slang and all those other things your English teacher tried to talk you out of.

As kids, we grew up with Dad singing "Hey, Good Lookin'," and we knew all the words to "Coat of Many Colours" before we left elementary school.  Now Tracy is preparing to release her first ever CD recording - a project she has been dreaming of for years now.  We like to joke that Tracy's having her first "baby" - and it will probably involve a similar amount of love, sweat and tears!

Yours truly has been accorded the golden opportunity to sing back-up and I am pretty tickled to step away from the keys and do my backwoods holler. 

Look for the Hurtin' Hearts coming to a town near you soon. Check out the website to pre-order the CD and support the Heartin' Heart cause.  The CD will be a mix of country/alt-country, jazz and blues, and will feature many fine Maritime musicians and artists.

Pre-order yours, make a donation and help Tracy take her country blues coast to coast!

And then there were men

I remember a lot of things from the evening news I watched with dad when I was a kid.  I was born in '82 and some of the things I saw as a youngster must have had quite an impact, because I still remember seeing them on the screen.  The piles of bodies during the Rwandan genocide, countless elections, the Rio earth summit, the Quebec referendum, the Westray coal mine disaster - the nightly news was (and is) my father's lullaby.

Today is the 21st anniversary of the Montreal Massacre, which means I would've been seven when it happened. It feels strange to me that I can't remember seeing it on news, but for some reason there's a hole in my brain where those horrendous images could've been. 

Last night I was thinking about all of this - the horrible reality of what those women faced on that day,  and the subsequent battles over gun control (yes, the long gun registry goes way back to Ecole Polytechnique).  It seemed, and still seems, so unbelievable to me that a man could be so enraged by female engineers that he would gun them down in cold blood.  How could a seven year old make sense of that?

Growing up I was lucky enough to have parents who were both capable of cooking, cleaning, caring for people, piling wood and doing all the other things life required.  For a time, my mother was very sick with cancer, and when she was, dad did it all, with the help of Grandmother and Grammie.   Grandmother being such a feminist, and Mom being a natural tomboy, the gender roles were pretty fuzzy at home, and without any brothers we learned to do whatever was necessary to keep the fire going, feed ourselves, do our homework, and present ourselves in public.

In my late teens I became an ardent feminist because I didn't think most women were equal to men, and I didn't think most men treated most women as equals.  The exception to all of this, of course, remained my parents, and even when I became interested in the idea that "the personal is political" in university, I did not feel it was fair to tar all men with the label of "oppressors."  My father did not 'oppress' my mother, he cared for her when she was sick.

I've always found the 'feminist' discussion prickly - you know, that moment at a party when someone drops the 'f-bomb.'  Inevitably, some eyes roll, others suddenly have to visit the bathroom, one or two people start raving, and the other people watch silently, waiting for it to be over.  I've seen it many many times, and it doesn't seem to change whether the people are 15 or 50 years old.  The arguments are so counter-productive, all it does it make people take sides. Nobody is thinking or really listening.

Now that I'm a little older, I have married into a family that is the mirror image of mine - all sons and no daughters, but where the boys were taught to take care of themselves so they wouldn't be dependent on a woman for their well being.  I see them out shoveling my driveway, lifting heavy things repeatedly without resentment, being sensitive about things and having hurt feelings just like people in my own family. 

And I also see them struggling with the idea of what it means to be a man, to win people's respect with work and money, but to do it in a way that engages women as equal partners and makes a positive contribution.  It is not any easier on them than it is for women. 

And I wonder when people will realize that patriarchy is a problem for men too - that it marginalizes their feelings the way it marginalizes women's work, that it invites miltarism and violence as the solution to all the world's problems, that only a few 'alpha dogs' will get the payoff while a room full of good men secretly wonder what's 'wrong' with them.

I think we could do a much better job as men and women to envision what kinds of families, workplaces and communities we really want to have.  Worldwide, many women are still treated like cattle and it is the moral responsibility of women and men in privileged countries to stand up for them, and help with projects they have already started to improve their own lives.

Here at home, where women are legally equal, the lines are a bit blurrier.  We certainly have a problem with missing Aboriginal and poor women - they are still disposable in our society.  If the Montreal massacre had been the Moosonee Massacre and the victims 14 aboriginal women in Northern Ontario, would we still be remembering 21 years later?  I'm not convinced.

I think we have a tremendously anti-woman government at the moment.  Which I find so wierd, if for the sole reason that Stephen Harper's wife Laureen seems so worldly, educated and intelligent.  While Harper was doing economic analysis, she was riding a motorcycle across Africa.  And yet, they have removed 'equality' from the mandate of the Council for the Status of Women, and eliminated Supreme Court challenges under equality provisions.  Not pro-woman policies, not in the least.

And Canada has a dismal, dismal, dismal, record on women participating in the political process.  Rwanda is recovering from a genocide and now has more than 50% female parliamentarians.  Here in Canada and in NB it's consistently less than 20%.  When is the last time you saw a women premier or leader of the opposition anywhere? 

So, twenty one years later, the Montreal Massacre still raises a lot of questions, and holds a mirror up to our society.  I think individual Canadians do have a lot of respect for each other as women and men.  My own experiences of sexism have been limited, thankfully, although I can tell you lots of second-hand stories.  But I don't think individual respect can trump a system where some women are disposable, some men are marginal, and decisions about power and resources are still made in the 'interest' of men who don't exhibit a lot of caring for the world. 

Although dates like this one do make good men feel bad, those good men feel bad because they would never do to their spouses, sisters and mothers what the killer did all those years ago. 

But it can happen in Canada, and it did. To remember the women is to dignify the memory of those who have passed. It reminds each one of us that peace starts at home and at work and will only come from our own committment and dedication.  It will never be legislated, it will never be financed and that is precisely what makes it valuable.



 

Every Seven Years

The number seven is surrounded by myths - I've heard that every seven years, we replace all the cells in our bodies, and become entirely new people.  In the Bible, the seventh year was the "shabbat" or "ceasing" for the Jewish people, as God decreed:

The Lord spoke to Moses on Mount Sinai, saying: ²Speak to the people of Israel and say to them: When you enter the land that I am giving you, the land shall observe a sabbath for the Lord. ³For six years you shall sow your field, and for six years you shall prune your vineyard, and gather in their yield; ⁴but in the seventh year there shall be a sabbath of complete rest for the land, a sabbath for the Lord: you shall not sow your field or prune your vineyard.

In May, it will be seven years since I graduated from university.  Since then, I bought a house, worked 5 jobs simultaneously, founded a concert series, a non-profit, an arts festival and assisted with more volunteer projects than I can count (or remember!!).  I have loved them all, but I feel tired in my bones.

Lately I have been thinking a lot about the wisdom of Earth's self-sustaining systems.  When something gets out of whack, the Earth's feedback loops put it back into balance. Without human intervention, living things have everything they need, and are connected in a web that doesn't 'waste' anything.  This is beautiful, and what could be a more fitting model for our own lives?

Hence, in May I will be on Sabbatical from volunteer projects - one year to rest, let myself recharge, not expect anything other than what grows without cultivation.  I am not quitting, I'm invested in community for the long haul.  However, I would like to arrive at the finish line knowing that I took the time I needed to do my best work.