One Onion

delicious smoothie recipe

2011-10-30T10:43:00.001-04:00

We randomly made this one day and found it worthy of writing down. I
now share it with you. In Ontario at some point in the summer, these
were localish ingredients, I think. Enjoy!

1 celery stalk
1 beet
1 ripe peach
1 ripe pear
1 kale stalk
unsweetened soy milk

Re: Fw: THE GREEN THING!!!!

2011-07-06T15:07:00.001-04:00

Listen, anonymous author, the current generation doesn't lament anything. It's hard to define the group, let alone claim they/we all think the same way about anything, same as "the old generation," which was hoodwinked by the real wasters the same as the old generation. I agree with many of the points of this e-mail, but to conclude with a divisive tone isn't helpful in my opinion--I think all generations have more in common than this forward's author would imply, and this just suggests that older folks ought to resent younger folks, instead of uniting with them against the greedy machine that is and has been accelerating the ruin of the planet since before any now-living person was born.

On Sat, May 28, 2011 at 7:42 AM, ... wrote:

SO TRUE!!!!!

> THE GREEN THING

> In the line at the store, the young cashier told the older woman that she
> should
> bring her own grocery bag because plastic bags weren't good for the
> environment.
> The woman apologized to him and explained,
> "We didn't have the green thing back in my day."
>
> The clerk responded, "That's our problem today.
> The former generation did not care enough to save our environment."
>
> He was right, that generation didn't have the green thing in its day.
> Back then, they returned their milk bottles,
> soda bottles and beer bottles to the store.
> The store sent them back to the plant to be washed
> and sterilized and refilled,
> so it could use the same bottles over and over.
> So they really were recycled.
>
> But they didn't have the green thing back in that customer's day.
>
> In her day, they walked up stairs,
> because they didn't have an escalator in every store and office building.
> They walked to the grocery store and
> didn't climb into a 300-horsepower machine
> every time they had to go two blocks.
>
> But she was right. They didn't have the green thing in her day.
>
> Back then, they washed the baby's diapers
> because they didn't have the throw-away kind.
> They dried clothes on a line,
> not in an energy gobbling machine burning up 220 volts -
> wind and solar power really did dry the clothes.
> Kids got hand-me-down clothes from their brothers or sisters,
> not always brand-new clothing.
>
> But that old lady is right, they didn't have the green thing back in her
> day.
>
> Back then, they had one TV, or radio, in the house -
> not a TV in every room.
> And the TV had a small screen the size of a handkerchief,
> not a screen the size of the state of Montana.
> In the kitchen, they blended and stirred by hand because
> they didn't have electric machines to do everything for you.
> When they packaged a fragile item to send in the mail,
> they used a wadded up old newspaper to cushion it,
> not styrofoam or plastic bubble wrap.
>
> Back then, they didn't fire up an engine and burn gasoline
> just to cut the lawn. They used a push mower that ran on human power.
> They exercised by working so they didn't need to go to a health club
> to run on treadmills that operate on electricity.
>
> But she's right, they didn't have the green thing back then.
>
> They drank from a fountain when they were thirsty
> instead of using a cup or a plastic bottle every time
> they had a drink of water.
> They refilled their writing pens with ink instead of buying a new pen,
> and they replaced the razor blades in a razor
> instead of throwing away the whole razor just because the blade got dull.
>
> But they didn't have the green thing back then.
>
> Back then, people took the streetcar or a bus
> and kids rode their bikes to school or walked
> instead of turning their moms into a 24-hour taxi service.
> They had one electrical outlet in a room,
> not an entire bank of sockets to power a dozen appliances.
> And they didn't need a computerized gadget
> to receive a signal beamed from satellites 2,000 miles out in space
> in order to find the nearest pizza joint.
>
> But isn't it sad the current generation laments how wasteful the old folks
> were just because they didn't have the green thing back then?
> WOW!!!!!!!!!!!
>

Re: an open letter re: GMO foods[00048E9A-1031-00000000] file 924579

2011-03-09T08:27:00.001-05:00

Hello Julie,

Thank you for taking the time to respond. If you could copy your
supervisor on your reply, I'd appreciate that. It feels to me as if I
received a form letter response, which did very little to address my
concerns, and other parts of the content seem to have ignored things
that I already acknowledged.

If Loblaw Companies has such a responsibility as you mention, then why
did the Globe and Mail report in 2001 that Nature's Path Foods, Inc.
had it demanded of them to remove their GMO/GE labeling or risk losing
its suppliership with Loblaw Companies? This voluntary standard your
company helped develop and publish in 2004 is just that: voluntary.
So your company can be completely in compliance with said standard (by
not labeling) and still pressure companies not to label, like in 2001.
Is this correct?

If Loblaw Companies is so interested in providing choices, then why is
this voluntary standard never voluntarily followed? The *only* way I
can tell if something happens to have GE'd food in it or not is if
it's certified organic. For those who can't afford certified organic
but want to be part of the segment of the market that's non-GE but not
completely certified, what choice have you left them? You might argue
that this has been done in the interest of a level playing field, but
instead it has polarized it into rich and poor.

What of people who care enough to learn about what they're eating, and
are not okay with some GE food but fine with others? Without
mentioning which ingredients are GE, they are unable to purchase these
things at your stores. Since your stores make up the vast majority of
the Canadian market, I'd say that the power that that brings also
brings the responsibility to let people decide. You might say,
everyone can choose to be your customer or not. Well, sort of. If
you're rich enough, you can have your food brought to you from
wherever you want. Otherwise, you may be stuck with the nearest
supermarket, which is almost always one of yours. This maybe doesn't
feel as super as it once did, when the previous generation decided to
spend their dollars at supermarkets instead of local stores until the
local stores went out of business.

Personally I am willing to go out of my way to go to stores that
actually offer me more choice. I have to admit, when things get busy
in my life, that choice often is very difficult, or even impossible,
to make, depending on where I live and my access to transportation.
Nonetheless, until I see some actual responsibility being taken in
this regard by my local Loblaw-owned supermarket, I will increasingly
be trying my hardest to shop at other stores. I'm already making
trips there just to be able to find food actually or produced
relatively near by, namely produce and dairy products. The thing is,
the economic pressure you have put on your suppliers affects even what
I'm able to buy at stores that you don't own, because they supply to
them as well. What should your suppliers do, run two separate product
lines, one for Loblaws and one for everyone else? Sure, they could,
and then of course their costs and prices go up to cover this expense,
and their products are less competitive. So even if they try not to
let you bully them, you are still bullying them. Could you explain to
me how this lines up with your "shar[ing of my] concern about this
issue"?

Sincerely,
Kevin Field

On Mon, Mar 7, 2011 at 2:14 PM, customerservice@loblaws.ca
<customerservice@loblaws.ca> wrote:
> Dear Mr. Field,
>
> Thank you for taking the time to write to us.
>
> Loblaw Companies has the responsibility to deliver reliable and meaningful information to consumers. We place great importance on the integrity of products sold in our stores. Our responsibility is to guarantee freshness, quality, and accuracy of labeling of all products on our shelves.
>
> In 2004 the Canadian General Standards Board (CGSB) published the "Voluntary Labeling and Advertising of Foods that are and are not products of genetic engineering" standard. This standard was developed as a joint initiative of CGSB and the Canadian Council of Grocery Distributors of which Loblaw Companies is a member. Accordingly, we ensure that all products on our shelves comply with this standard.
>
> We share your concern about this issue. However, I am sure you can also appreciate that as a retailer, it is important to act responsibly according to well-defined government standards, and to offer consumers a variety of choices. Loblaw Companies recognizes the diverse needs and preferences of our customers and we strive to offer many choices to meet those needs. That's why we are proud to carry a wide variety of Organic products that are offered throughout all Loblaw Companies affiliated stores; and many stores have Natural Value departments dedicated to providing customers with both organic and naturally produced products. As you may know, each organic product adheres strictly to Canadian and International organic production standards, which include a prohibition on using genetically engineered material. Each organic product is also certified by independent third-parties to provide additional assurance that the organic standards are met.
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Julie Dunham
> Sr. Coordinator, Communications I LCL Customer Relations
>
> 1 President's Choice Circle | Brampton | Ontario | L6Y 5S5
> (905) 459-2500 Ext. 613293 | F: (905) 861-2387| julie.dunham@loblaw.ca
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Kevin Field [mailto:kevinjamesfield@gmail.com]
> Sent: March 2, 2011 7:55 PM
> To: CR Email Agent 10
> Subject: an open letter re: GMO foods[00048E9A-1031-00077EE0]
>
> Dear Loblaws,
>
> I'm an old customer of your products, particularly in Zehrs and valu
> mart stores. I heard that you have pressured your suppliers not to
> include claims of being GMO-free. While I understand there's no
> Canadian government standard for labeling at this time, I do not agree
> with this strategy. I want to know more about the food that I'm
> buying, and in my opinion, some labels are better than none at all.
> At least then independent researchers can investigate claims of being
> GMO-free, as they currently do with green products. I find it
> irresponsible to blame the government for lack of a standard, while
> simultaneously stymieing your supplier's efforts. It simply takes
> control, or the possibility of it, away from the public.
>
> Especially now that I have a small child in my care, and given that
> the long-term effects of GMOs are currently unknown, I have been
> lately buying, and will continue to buy, less and less PC and no name
> products while this issue continues. I appreciate the emergence of PC
> Organics brands, but bullying your suppliers for advertising the fact
> that their products are GMO-free I feel reveals different intentions.
> So if you're only catering to the market, and not necessarily to the
> well-being of your customers, well, you're losing this individual's
> business, at least.
>
> I will voice to the government the opinion of the vast majority of
> Canadian consumers that we want GMO products to be labeled as such,
> but until then I'm also voicing it to you in the hopes that you start
> encouraging your suppliers to include such information, or better yet,
> discourage your suppliers from using GMO ingredients until more is
> known about the effects of their consumption, like similar chains in
> the US and EU have already done. Don't keep Canada in the Dark Ages
> just because you have the power to do so.
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Kevin Field
> Ontario resident
>
>
>
> This email message is confidential, may be legally privileged and is intended for the exclusive use of the addressee. If you received this message in error or are not the intended recipient, you should destroy the email message and any attachments or copies, and you are prohibited from retaining, distributing, disclosing or using any information contained. Please inform us of the delivery error by return email. Thank you for your cooperation.
>
> Le présent message électronique est confidentiel et peut être couvert par le secret professionnel. Il est à l'usage exclusif du destinataire. Si vous recevez ce message par erreur ou si vous n'en êtes pas le destinataire prévu, vous devez détruire le message et toute pièce jointe ou copie et vous êtes tenu de ne pas conserver, distribuer, divulguer ni utiliser tout renseignement qu'il contient. Veuillez nous informer de toute erreur d'envoi en répondant à ce message. Merci de votre collaboration
>

an open letter re: GMO foods

2011-03-02T19:55:00.001-05:00

Dear Loblaws,

I'm an old customer of your products, particularly in Zehrs and valu
mart stores. I heard that you have pressured your suppliers not to
include claims of being GMO-free. While I understand there's no
Canadian government standard for labeling at this time, I do not agree
with this strategy. I want to know more about the food that I'm
buying, and in my opinion, some labels are better than none at all.
At least then independent researchers can investigate claims of being
GMO-free, as they currently do with green products. I find it
irresponsible to blame the government for lack of a standard, while
simultaneously stymieing your supplier's efforts. It simply takes
control, or the possibility of it, away from the public.

Especially now that I have a small child in my care, and given that
the long-term effects of GMOs are currently unknown, I have been
lately buying, and will continue to buy, less and less PC and no name
products while this issue continues. I appreciate the emergence of PC
Organics brands, but bullying your suppliers for advertising the fact
that their products are GMO-free I feel reveals different intentions.
So if you're only catering to the market, and not necessarily to the
well-being of your customers, well, you're losing this individual's
business, at least.

I will voice to the government the opinion of the vast majority of
Canadian consumers that we want GMO products to be labeled as such,
but until then I'm also voicing it to you in the hopes that you start
encouraging your suppliers to include such information, or better yet,
discourage your suppliers from using GMO ingredients until more is
known about the effects of their consumption, like similar chains in
the US and EU have already done. Don't keep Canada in the Dark Ages
just because you have the power to do so.

Sincerely,

Kevin Field
Ontario resident

sesame snaps

2011-03-02T13:31:00.001-05:00

I stole this from somewhere in the hintersnet and paraphrased it.

2 c sesame seeds
.5 c brown sugar
.5 c honey
.5 tsp (or whatever) cinnamon, ginger powder, powdered nutmeg, and/or
clove powder

Get out about 1m of parchment paper and a rolling pin, a large mixing
bowl, a spatula, and a large frying pan on medium heat.

Put the seeds into the frying pan, then get the sugar+spice and honey
ready. Then stir the seeds constantly so they don't burn. Pretty
soon after you can smell them, they should be turning golden. Empty
them into the mixing bowl (I'd use a spatula to get every last seed,
so they don't end up under your stove element) and leave the heat on.
Put the rest of the ingredients in the pan, mixing constantly. Cook a
minute after it boils, then empty the pan into the mixing bowl and
quickly mix everything thoroughly and put it out onto half the
parchment, then fold the other half of the parchment paper over top
and use the rolling pin (hurry hard! like curling...) to flatten it
as much as possible.

Let sit for 10-20 minutes, then the paper should just peel off and you
can break the snaps into pieces. I would peel it off the bottom too
before breaking, that way you can do a second batch (of course you'll
want to do a second batch...), having hopefully not broken your
parchment paper. :-) Sugary remnants come off the pan much easier if
you soak it in water. Alternatively, if you're doing many batches,
you could use two pans, one for seeds, one for sugary stuff. The seed
one will barely need washing anyway, because nothing should stick.

If you have one of those silicon ice-cube trays (like we have one with
heart shapes) you can make these into special shape cookies instead of
bark-style pieces if you want.

I hear these keep a long time, but so far their deliciousness factor
has prevented me from confirming this first-hand.

Recap:

0. get parchment and rolling pin ready
1. toast seeds, set aside
2. boil everything else 1 minute
3. quickly mix all
4. quickly pour
5. quickly roll flat
6. let cool
7. break into pieces of awesome
7b. yay no plastic packaging! look at you go!

Love,
Kev

CBC News - Canada - Ont. farm accused of not paying migrant workers

2010-11-24T08:02:00.000-05:00

From CBC News - Canada - Ont. farm accused of not paying migrant workers:

We were told there was a shortage of berry plants, but there is an abundance of plants, so there are not the sales the company had anticipated.

Always great to replay The Grapes of Wrath.

Why do governments seem to always believe that money is better in the hands of banks than in the hands of the people? Ten-letter word, starts with 'C'...

Spam with "error in original"

2010-11-12T11:10:00.003-05:00

I had to laugh. I'm not sure why I read this particular spam message this morning, maybe just to stay up on what they look like, but this was great:

We ask that you allow at least 72 hours for the case to be investigated and we strongly recommend to verefy (sic) your account in that time.

Best Regards,
Colette Nugent
Head of Customer Communications

I wonder which "original" they were taking this from...

in response

2010-07-26T19:04:00.003-04:00

(I tried to leave this as a comment at http://plaosmos.blogspot.com/2007_04_01_archive.html
but Google keeps giving me a Request URI Too Long error, both in
WebPositive and in Google Chrome.)

Hi Stuart,

First time reader, found your blog looking up a name, looks very interesting.

Since it provoked a response in me, and because I like what I've read of your other posts so far, I wanted to comment on #3. I'd say that this is what my theism looks like to some extent, but that the implications are not necessarily as you put them. While this view can often be an excuse for non-action, I think that's a common heresy of ours. I would say things will work out in the end regardless of what I do now in the same sense that I would say I will eventually die regardless of what I do now. I can make that reality come true sooner, or to some extent later, by my actions, but only it and taxes are guaranteed. Both the fact of death and the faith of can be acted upon in the vein of "nothing matters" or "everything matters," and possibly anywhere in between.

The way these things reconcile in my belief is with God being in favour of partnership with us, wanting us to live up to our full potential. Since we're already in Holocaust Example Land ("Godwin's Law"?), there are many instances of (particularly faith-based) non-violent opposition to the Nazi regime that ranged from pitiful to wild--I offer no guess as to what the factors were--in how successful they were. I believe God was involved in empowering the people involved in this who were willing to be empowered this way. Perhaps, then, a) we don't see, remember, or understand holy intervention as often as it occurs, and b) large-scale occurences of this are as rare as large-scale groups acting in faith coinciding with other possible factors, like oppressors that truly would not change their minds. If the whole thing is designed for our learning and growth into a non-oppressive humanity, who is to say what the best path is, besides an omniscient God?

I think God allows our oppression and its natural effects, but that it weighs heavily on God's heart during this time in between creation and the day when we will have learned to overcome the fears that cause us to oppress one another by asking God to heal and empower (read: "save") us individually and as the human race.

Anyway, these are just my thoughts. All the best to you, I hope I have more time to read your backblog later.

Cheers,

Kev

Bible Cloud

2010-04-03T10:23:00.000-04:00

Repentence (That's Just Wishing)

2010-01-19T10:10:00.001-05:00

Why choose between the idols
  of anger and shame?
That's just wishing
  there's one of us to blame.
That's just wishing
  for us to be the same.
Why do I want that?

I know to love, and my heart
  needs and wants it,
but some parasite or poison I host
  would rather hate hate with hate.
It doesn't add up,
                   and I know it,
  but it sure as hell multiplies,
                   and I feel it.

Yorkshire Puddings for Phil

2009-12-24T02:16:00.002-05:00

My mom's somehow-not-yet-world-famous--but fairly magical--recipe:

Needs 2 hours for batter in fridge.

To serve 8-10.

Use a dark metal muffin pan. [There's more magic in dark metal -K] Measure exactly.

3/4 C + 2 Tbsps all-purpose flour
3/4 - 1 tsp salt
3 extra large eggs
1 1/2 C milk
canola oil (not olive!!)

sift flour and salt together
beat eggs with whisk in a medium-sized [I'd say medium-large] bowl until thick
add 1/4 of the milk (about 1/3 cup) and all of the flour mix
beat 1/2 minute, making sure it's well combined
add the remaining milk
beat another minute (or less!)
refrigerate for 1-2 hours

and then

heat oven to 450° F, put exactly 1 Tbsp of oil in the bottom of each muffin hole, and place the muffin tin in the oven as it is heating to 450°--don't worry if oil smokes (good sign it's getting hot enough!)
when oven is 450°, take tin out and evenly distribute batter into each hole (should make 10-12)--if you can, avoid adding to an already-poured amount (will not rise)
bake 15-17 min or until puffed/brown

To true freedom and family

2009-09-27T04:20:00.002-04:00

Something like:

Well, it's been smooth sailing
On the world's high-
                    in-vitamin-C's

But it's high time I sunk my
   Canadian psittacine-ship
                           teeth
Into something more

Un-American, unnational
Like a local apple
                   (unspoiled by the bunch?)
And some shared money
And less commuting and committees
And more time on my hands
For more communing and commitment
 To true freedom and family

sustainable aid versus? until? kingdom come

2009-05-03T12:55:00.001-04:00

I was telling some friends at Out of the Cold that I hoped the program
would starting running year-round some day soon, but that some day soon
after that, it wouldn't need to run at all.

I finally got around to reading a handout from Street Level today, in
which Dave Diewert seems to be saying that targetting the former, even
on the way to the latter, can be dangerous in how it reinforces the
power inequality that prompts it in the first place.

"Well-stocked and smoothly operating foodbanks or safe and secure
overnight shelter programs are usually touted as signs of a caring
society rather than as clear signifiers of our failure to establish
true justice."

What if a mere two hundred of the thousands of our region's rich or
even middle-class households had a highways-and-biways banquet
experience like in Luke 14, but instead of many people for a one-time
party, welcomed one or two people into their families for a whole
season?

manual focus management woes

2009-04-01T14:14:00.001-04:00

Context: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/702585/simulating-a-tab-keypress-using-javascript

Gosh, what year is this? I have to do manual focus management for
anything remotely outside the box?

Even if I do, then I have to keep track of everything OUTSIDE my form,
because that's what Tab and Shift+Tab would normally focus on after the
edge elements. Worse yet, I can't even completely emulate the natural
behaviour, because the tab-stops normally include browser UI elements
as well.

Is there seriously no way of having the browser think the user pressed
Tab?

(It's situations like this that I find extremely frustrating when it
comes to web development. I'm trying to make a UI that's as smooth as
possible, nicer to use than the average UI, and I end up re-
implementing everything, or not even being able to if I wanted. All
for something relatively subtle...)

untitled poem

2009-03-29T20:32:00.003-04:00

At the request of Neugeski One, here's something from around Dec 22, 2007. IIRC I had been reading Ishmael Beah's A Long Way Gone around then. Definitely more visual than spoken, and could use some work.

watching children die
and then kill
maybe now I understand my parents
even less
is this the road home
?

like feathers
falling to the floor
we flit away when hands draw near
then resume our dreary fear-laced
descent;

hands
might oil
care, about
or might care only

surrender, stupid or beautiful,
lies or lies naked

before shame

Easter poem

2009-03-28T18:53:00.002-04:00

Hi, everyone. This is a poem-prayer of thanksgiving that came to me
one sleepless night this week. This is a bit out of the ordinary for
me. Hopefully it's worth the reading time for you. It's called, "Our
brokenness is precious, then where are you?"

You knew us.

You became like us, hoping the same,
  from the smelly, slobbery, toddling beginning:
    "Whoever receives a child like this in my name receives me,"
  through the harsh canyon of uncomprehending, utterly hopeless despair:
    "My God, my own Father, why have you abandoned me?"
  to the ever-untimely ending.

Your broken body...breathed anew!
  so that hundreds would live, and die
  so that ten-thousands would live, and...

Your blood,
  the richest mixture of dirt and life,
  transfusing into the story of your bride,
  whose body knows
    the most fantastic, ridiculous redemptions, and
    the most filthy, gangrenous hypocrisies.

You know us.
Our story.
You're with us.
We're in it.
"It's not done."

Amen.

Month of Jubilee

2008-10-17T10:30:00.001-04:00

What if we did this every year, where we gave away all of our CDs and
books and other things we have in excess, and then had a big party to
celebrate the freedom this brings?

Reading Journal 10

2007-11-17T15:51:00.000-05:00

(On the Canadian Woman Studies journal on soviet women and Baranskaya's A Week Like Any Other.)

If one reads the short biography at the beginning of the book, and notices the almost extreme attention to practical details, one might suspect A Week Like Any Other to be almost autobiographical. Without reading the biography, one might instead (or also?) suspect it was written by a Canadian mother: the overall pattern of relationship is very familiar to my generation, not directly, but from watching each other's parents as we grew up. Among my friends' families, those with both parents as full-time professionals, having been in love at one point and mostly maintaining that through waves of wrinkles and the occasional larger doubts, the father doing more to help the mother than the previous generation, but the mother still struggling under the weight of the majority of domestic responsibility combined with a confusing mix of pressures at work. Not only are there the "normal" stresses of work: looming deadlines and the thought of not being able to make them, fierce competition for shared resources, being unprepared for meetings, the extra stress of slip-ups like being late or misplacing important things, etc.; but also the questionnaire has Olya's female coworkers up-in-arms about whether the state would have them have more children while at the same time she almost aborted Gulka (the second of her two children) and is always worried about accidentally becoming pregnant again. Like the Canadian mothers I've seen, she bears this all as well as possible without complaining, and it drives her to two breakdowns. Not massive ones in a medical sense, perhaps, but still ones she is not able to control: she laughs maniacally to the point of tears at Lusya's finding of the graph Olya had lost, and the next day--the first of two supposed days of rest she looks forward to--she breaks down crying in front of her children and husband (when he decides he has done his share of the day's myriad chores) and cannot figure out how she could have let herself make such a scene.

It's what Kollontai had feared for the Soviet woman, and sought to remedy. What happened?

There are the children's crèche and kindergarten for Gulka and Kotka, respectively, but Dima and Olya are both aware of their lower-than-desirable quality, and for what reason: the norm is set at twenty-eight children for one supervisor and assistant. (Baranskaya's assertion here through Olya's narration that whoever set the norm obviously had never had children, or could pay for better care of them, seems to set the tone for the story as an expositive one, to some extent showing life as it is and asking for a critical look at it, hoping the state might help in some way: Lusya's comments during the questionnaire debate reflect the latter; the questionnaire itself, the former.) But the ideas of household chores, particularly mending, cooking, and cleaning, being outsourced to specialized labourers is not played out here, at least not positively. The only one of those we see is Dima's eating from a canteen, and this is always portrayed negatively: the food is never as good as Olya's.

So what's the solution? Baranskaya seems to suggest the need for a general slowdown--Muscovites are always rude and in a hurry in the few portrayals we get of them--but the question of how family life ought to work seems to be left unanswerable to some degree: the only people who have the right to come up with an answer, the working parents themselves, have very little time to think about it. Dima has a little more than Olya, and his suggestion is to throw out her career and beef up his, so that they can live better and she can spend more time with the children. After a little bit of rebuttal from Olya he admits, "Maybe I'm being selfish, I don't know. Let's drop it." (p. 60) But in the end, Olya's belt hook is still not sown back on--a recurring to-do item mentioned usually twice a day in the novella: she must finally do it today, then right before falling asleep, dammit, she has forgotten again and is much too tired to get out of bed to do it now--and the unanswered/unanswerable question, "What is the matter with me?" (p. 62) reverberates with the reader as the story comes to an end.

While the Canadian Woman Studies journal was good to read after writing the above for its inclusion of the purpose of Baranskaya's short story (in the article "Contemporary Soviet Women Writers"), it was more interesting as a divergence from our normal readings in that it included Western feminists trying to grapple with Russian culture. The articles "Soviet Women - A Canadian View" and "Sex Role Education in the USSR" were especially demonstrative of this. The former article seemed to be something of a cornerstone passage, outlining the basic conundrum of free-yet-doubly-burdened women in Russia, and that Western feminism and Russian feminism are two very different things. Broadly, at first interaction, the former cannot fathom the oversight of the sex-gender separation and total-equality discussions in the latter, and the latter sees these topics as much less relevant in the context of socialism and anyone pushing them to be radicals who are not actually looking out for women's best interests.
I think the two do have something to offer each other, however, given the journal issue's existence, but also on some specifics within the issues mentioned above.

For me, these points of possible learning occur at certain statements that seem to pop out of an otherwise levelly written essay. Reiter and Luxton stick to description with some helpful analysis for the first few paragraphs, and then seemingly out of nowhere insert this: "At the same time, the concept of women and men having different natures fosters a celebration of femininity as pretty and weak." (p. 27) First of all, "natures" here and earlier on the page seems to be too strong a word, carrying connotations of being on the same level as "human nature." Secondly, their quote of Kaidash contradicts this: "the indispensability of each sex" (Ibid., emphasis mine) hardly makes sense if one assumes a framework of dominance a la Kollontai's Thirty-Two Pages. Finally, while I agree that it's important to emphasize similarities between the sexes in the context of broken gender relations (i.e., when needed), I believe that God created two different genders to show different aspects of the divine nature in a way that is humbling to both men and women as they observe one another. And far be it from me to take this to mean we should celebrate "femininity as pretty and weak"! On the absolute contrary, anyone who attended the Global Citizenship Conference at Laurier last year and was present at the mock beauty pageant had it laid out for them if they didn't realize it before: "every day" women are strong--they have to be to survive--even or especially in the contexts wherein we might consider them powerless. For a woman to have any other supposedly contradictory quality amidst this--be it prettiness, or caring, understanding, wisdom, ...--ought to amaze us, and this strength alone, never mind "strength, plus...," is the femininity that was celebrated at the GCC. Indeed, this is exactly what is painted for the reader in detail in Baranskaya's story. So I think the Western framework would be enriched here. The examples given are true, no doubt (the letters from Russian women on p. 15 attest to this) but the cause and effect link is assumed rather than demonstrated--count me as a counterexample in that I loathe the beauty contests too. But it's all moot unless we can learn to celebrate positive human qualities in a person regardless of their gender, because despite the existence of two sexes (not to mention the sexuality of more complicated persons) neither creating boxes based on tendencies nor pretending that all tendencies are socially constructed will help us help each other become what we were meant to be. And we certainly can't predetermine what that is based on gender or anything else--this is the joy of life's journey.

"Over-emancipation" is quoted multiple times as the common Russian analysis of the Soviet women's problem. To me it feels almost like a tongue-in-cheek way of describing it: since "emancipation" has meant the freedom to become overburdened, rather than the freedom to have a balance of burden, it's facetiously accurate language to use. But Canadian criticism of it would seem to follow from the view that a woman with children who stays at home is in chains: "The measures proposed [to ease the double burden]...are all designed to keep women in harness--married and primarily responsible for the children." (p. 29) Perhaps that's somewhat valid: admittedly maternity leave wins out over paternity leave almost always. (p. 28) My question for both paradigms, then, is: why can't the family, and the role of both mother and father, be valued in such a way that joint leave is considered the best option and the norm? (I can probably answer that: Because it's too expensive.) But socially speaking, I would love to live in a world where whether you were a man, woman, single, married, had many children, were childless, were dedicated to a career, or worked part time (at a "paid" job or at home), or not at all (if circumstances prevented you from working), you would be valued and considered worth talking to, sharing food with, listening to, supporting, and spending time with in general; that you would be given respect. Why should stay-at-home dads be applauded but "traditional" moms be considered weak and trampled-upon, or those who try to do it all be considered stupid and undeserving? The social structures do need to be in place to allow this choice to actually be free, but I think this just brings us to the problem of general economic inequality (cf. the woman who wrote in on p. 15 again).

The Russian feminist voice could also learn from this. The household work imbalance in a marriage (well illustrated by Baranskaya) needs to be more seriously questioned. Also, and relatedly, it feels like in some cases they have taken the gender role separation too far: the rhetoric behind "How can she play football, and still expect a man to help her?" seems to have created some artificial division. There are countless things that both men and women can do, and do well, but they fall to one or the other rather than being negotiated on an individual basis or being tackled jointly. But individual choices are still based on socialization to an extent--which is where Pearson's article comes in.

The author presents a much fuller picture than the previous article of gender stereotype socialization and its practical effects, and the resulting argument is much more robust and productive in the end. To me both halves of the article seem to lend support to two statements: "If playing a supportive role is only honoured when it is done by a woman, then no amount of legal and economic equality will make any difference," (p. 94) and "there must be more women at the highest levels of Soviet power where they can impose some of those human qualities of compassion and understanding, of which they have learned to be proud." (p. 95, emphasis in original) But perhaps it would be easiest to start by replacing the notions of "the 'ideal' man and the 'ideal' woman" (p. 95) with something more helpful, like specific roles that men and women both step into: why not discuss the ideal coworker, teammate, friend, parent, sibling, housemate, child, babysitter, student, civic leader, project supervisor, spouse, lover, stranger, teacher, research assistant, etc., if ideals are a good way of framing a classroom discussion? Maybe then Russian men and women would be able to appreciate other and become better equipped to help shape one another towards becoming "ideal" human beings.

Reading Journal 9

2007-11-17T15:50:00.000-05:00

(On the Russian dating service photocopies.)

Radzinsky's article, after reading the past few hopeful novels that we have, revealed a fairly tragic but predictable reality: Russian women almost seem to be where North American women were, from the narrow depiction I've absorbed from the media, in the 1970's: they are "winning," in some sense, the beginning of a fierce battle for independence from men in the workplace and gender relations. Middle-class women are somewhat economically empowered but still unequally so, open sexual expression long repressed by Soviet morality has begun to saturate the media, and men are becoming divided into either the "whipped" category or the "traditional" category, and there is no room at the moment for Glebs, let alone Pavels, in cross-gender relationships. His final lines are telling: "The Russian girls are coming. They don't want to change the world. They want to conquer it." Will there be a modern-day Kollontai that does want to change the world? Would the culture allow her to be heard? I suppose that's where the Vice photo-article comes in.

One theme amongst the brief Q&A captions was that local Russian men do not treat women well or otherwise would not make suitable partners, so they seek men from other countries, some of which hold more promise than others. Americans, Muslims, and Arabs in particular, just in this small selection, are not preferred, but Dutch, English, and German men are. There's some sense to the logic given: the Natasha of p. 73 cite the practical statistic of the latter group wanting to be with women closer to their age, which is more likely to work due to similarities in life stage; others cite more respect being given from them.

In my brief encounter with liberation theology a few years ago, I heard of three ways of responding to systematic problems: temporary aid, sustainable aid, and restructuring the system in question. Within this framework, it's obviously preferable in the long term to engage the last option, albeit much more difficult. But if we apply this to the situation above, the moral prescription is clear: Russians, Americans, Muslims, Arabs, Dutch, English, and Germans are all likely in need of varying degrees of cultural transformation. This is not to prejudge every relationship that comes about through an international dating service as unworthy, doomed to failure, etc., but rather to recognize that if Tver are often drunk or high and don't have respect for women, the outsourcing of relationships with men to other countries does not seem likely to be a path to the coming about of a generation of sober Tver men that have in mind the best interests and humanity of their female counterparts and of themselves. Tver women, as well, are in a sense training themselves to run from possible transformational roles as mothers and sisters, and instead embrace a preference for the unknown rather than a redemption of the known in situations of conflict. This is a harsh criticism, absolutely, and I'm not saying I would do any better in their situation; indeed, I have my own history of abandoning situations wherein I feel overwhelmed by a systematic problem. But I do know that sometimes the unknown turns out to be much worse; meanwhile, whether it turns out well for her or not, what good there was in a local Tver woman has left with her and is in both cases unlikely to return. Furthermore, if the facts in these short captions are what they appear to be, I believe Tver culture has plenty sufficient intelligence, practical skills, and creativity needed to become what its women are dismayed that it isn't.

Reading Journal 8

2007-11-09T17:22:00.001-05:00

(On Gladkov's Cement.)

Considering all of the negative references I had heard directed at socialist realism in passing during research on Sofia Gubaidulina, I had expected Gladkov's writing to be one-dimensional and biased-feeling. It may still have a pinch of the latter, but compared with Gorky, the scene painted is so much more realistic and fault-admitting. As Dr. Volynska remarked in class, it's a wonder that it was published when it was, and even more so that it more than survived in the coming years. It was notably contradictory to what was expected of socialist realism, just from the list given in class:

reality is not as it should be
focus on individual stereotypes
tragedies abound--rape, Nurka's death, and Serge's family being torn apart, to name a few
not all is known (just by the fact that it takes an entire book of conflicts to get one factory restarted)
dogma is not truth: Nurka dies from lack of love (Soviet dogma fails)
hero and heroine both have major flaws
outcome not at all inevitable, or even expected; constant conflict throughout
human beings change and are not class-determined (Serge's father hates his possessions, the Cossack leader shows mercy, and the working class members often do not live up to their assumed great humanity)
while the overall style is clear and rational, Gleb's words sometimes aren't, particularly as he comes to grips with the new Dasha
the evolution of Gleb comes post-indoctrination, not parallel to it

While the other approximate half of the list does seem to apply, it was much more interesting to notice these, because, especially if one is expecting something highly propagandistic, such deviations actually lend the story much more 'true' realism and credibility; trust in the author's honesty is much more feasible. This is especially so since Gladkov, by having Nurka die from her mother's own description, "lack of love," especially in the face of her absolute commitment to the Soviet cause and her work in the Women's Section, apparently disagrees with Kollontai's replacement of the nuclear family with communal child-rearing. Finally, the admission that some organs of the communist regime do not always make the best decisions--evidenced by corruption in Chapter 15 and the opposition within the state that Gleb must overcome to get the factory finally working again in the end--is strikingly realistic. Unfortunately, from reading Solzhenitsyn, we know that this warning message fell on deaf ears, only to be turned into an excuse for more waves of arrests under the accusation of sabotage and misuse of resources, while the higher-ups actually guilty of these things tended to survive much longer before being offed by Stalin.

In terms of gender relations, this book is both encouraging and tragic. I see it as good that Dasha is able to become more fully human, and eventually bring Gleb around to affirming this without giving up his own strengths, but actually thus giving up some of his weaknesses and becoming more fully human himself. What's disheartening is that the overwork and misguided trust in the commune that Dasha follows through to the end destroys her daughter literally and also puts an end to what had developed into something good between her and Gleb. On the trust in the commune I remarked in an earlier journal that I'm actually in favour in some respects, but the description given in the book of the lady in charge of raising Nurka makes Dasha's trust in her seem foolish. I guess this amounts to my disagreement with either implicit trust or implicit distrust in such a system: if you can build a relationship with someone such that you can trust them to help you raise your child--indeed, isn't this a large part of the traditional marital relationship?--then the world is better for it. But entrusting someone you actually believe is a scoundrel, or shying away from trusting anyone, I see as divergent from furthering the humanity of oneself and others in the world. This is also why I think the "open relationship" proposed by Kollontai complicates things: we see it play out here in Dasha's inexplicable sexual relationship with Badin after his unwanted advances and betrayal are so vividly juxtaposed with her courage in Chapter 8, in that Dasha's unrestricted sexuality makes it difficult for her to perceive accurately the truth of the situation: that she is not having sex with Badin, the man, but rather with his position, as symbolic of the revolution she is so passionate about.

Reading Journal 7

2007-10-26T19:09:00.000-04:00

(In response to the second set of materials on Kollontai.)

Make way for Winged Eros

This particular reading I didn't have much to say on, because it seemed Kollontai didn't have that much to say, either. How can this be, across sixteen pages? Well, after setting up the question of the place of love in the new proletarian ideology, and giving a relatively uncontroversial interpretation (especially within a communist framework) of love's various functions throughout history, the picture she gives is not at all well filled-out. Granted, it's adorned with a lot of positive language (e.g. "unprecedented beauty, strength and radiance", p. 291), but all the paragraphs seemed to say the same thing without going into very much detail. The basic message was that love ought to turn from something limited to being expressed fully only within monogamy to something directed toward the collective. Practically this means caring for others and not isolating "loving pairs", but also not being sexually exclusive. I'm not sure what I can say about that besides the former being a healthy idea, as I've learned in life, and the latter being curious given Kollontai's denunciation of loveless sex ("wingless Eros") on the basis that it can entail "the early exhaustion of the organism, venereal diseases, etc." (p. 287) aside from not being fulfilling or useful to the collective. Perhaps the latter is the primary basis, but nonetheless, Kollontai doesn't seem to bother answering the question of how exactly all of these new "sexual relations will probably be based on free, healthy and natural attraction (without distortions and excesses) and on 'transformed Eros'," without the above-mentioned dangers, and without superhuman abilities to make sense of one's emotional and sexual attractions. She seems instead to sidestep this, placing her bets on an unknown love-comradeship: "What will be the nature of this transformed Eros? Not even the boldest fantasy is capable of providing the answer to this question." (p. 290) Whereas Kollontai believes that "surely the complexity of the human psyche and the many-sidedness of emotional experience should assist in the growth of the emotional and intellectual bonds between people," (p. 288) I think human culture has a long way to go before that complexity can start working for our benefit in the context of free sexual relations. I see our complexity as a limit, one that makes it much wiser to commit to one person than to try to take on the world. For me, this is precisely the reason that non-isolation of a couple is essential: only then can others healthily promote their relationship and help each of them to grow in loving the other, and only then can their relationship likewise be about the good of others besides themselves. So in many ways I agree with her aims, and her model of a particular male-female relationship given in three points on p. 291 is absolutely something to strive for, but it would much more healthily and with emotional manageability be done within the maintenance of sexual relationships and deep friendships being in two categories with only a one-person overlap.

The Lady With the Pet Dog

I have little context within which to evaluate Chekhov's story here, besides Kollontai's Winged Eros, even though it was written a number of years later. Before we get into that, there were a few elements that stood out to me, elements of both Dmitry and Anna Sergeyevna's perspectives that I identify with fairly strongly. With Dmitry it's the haziness of his existence that I experience pretty often, or at least have for the past few years, and probably before it too, but the haze brings with it selective or faulty memory too, as Dmitry notices on p. 423. At times I also feel somewhat like Anna Sergeyevna when she says, "I wanted something better. 'There must be a different soft of life,' I said to myself. I wanted to live! To live, to live!" (p. 418) Although the rest of the context of that statement is where we differ, I still feel that element of her life in my own. It was odd to me to identify with both of them, since they're both very different characters. But other than this facet of engagement, the story was straightforward and only interrupted by the poetic prose on pp. 419f as highlighted by the handwritten note in our photocopy. The "movement towards perfection" mentioned therein, and the idea of such movement (or at least movement forward from what is) present in Kollontai's piece above, leave me to comment mostly just that the ending of Pet Dog seems to lament the hypocrisy of their relationship, or rather, everything but their relationship, and long with the two of them for some way that their "real" love might some how be able to be freely lived out. It feels tragic that movement towards this will "be most complicated and difficult" under these "intolerable fetters." (p. 433) Thus it would seem that Kollontai and Chekhov are aligned in wanting relationships to be more freely moved between, and allowing "love" (in its various meanings to the two of them) to be allowed to function well without being hindered by the social constructs of the time. Chekhov doesn't at all engage the economic motivation behind this as Kollontai does, just noting that Anna Sergeyevna's and Dmitry's estates both have money. Nor does it seem to mean anything similar to Kollontai's vision of being able to care deeply for the collective. In fact, how their relationship comes about suggests that it doesn't even end in line with Kollontai's three-point vision for male-female relationships: while he sincerely feels compassion towards her, her earlier repeated lament over losing his respect when they first begin their affair doesn't seem to resolve here. Perhaps, then, criticisms of Kollontai over her advocacy of "looseness," while not necessarily without legitimacy whatsoever, would be better lobbed at Chekhov; nonetheless, the general question of love remains.

Three Generations

Wow. Well, it seems I read these in a convenient order, with Kollontai's previous essay informing my interpretation of the story, and Chekhov in there for her reference to Chekhovian characters, although that was minor. Yet again I find it difficult to find much to say about the reading of any interest. On the surface, at least, it seems to just prove correct the objections in my interpretation of Winged Eros, that anything beyond monogamy is emotionally unmanageable, not to mention being necessarily complicated well beyond practicality. At the same time, though, Zhenya and Andrei's stance might seem to support Kollontai on this point, and confirm Olga's suspicions that she's just behind the times psychologically. Yet from my view the way all of the Eros relationships in the story end, and the grief they cause before they end, and the fact that they all come to an end, doesn't in my mind do much to promote the stable environment of mutual care among members of the collective for which Kollontai hopes. She might counter, however, that this ability, realized fully only by the third generation, of relationships to break more cleanly (Zhenya only hints at jealousy on the part of the man in the case of her breakups, but not as something she heeds) can at once allow sexual fulfillment as needed and yet allow for the movement of labour across the country as expediency dictates on behalf of the proletariat. It's the fundamental disagreement I have with Kollontai as described in the first part of my response above that seems to result in our differing interpretations of the same situation. Obviously she would not have written this story if she thought it flew in the face of what she believed about love's place in the world, so I think it's valid to interpret these three generations, as described, as a movement toward the aspirations found in her essay. But I still disagree with her; I don't think it helps women, or men, to relate to one another the way her characters do.

She does appear to honestly engage the more striking inconsistencies that arise in her characters' stories, but to me, even the explained conclusions are not viable. To do this, she has the narrator interject during Zhenya's story and has Zhenya reconcile the points in question. Why didn't she tell her mother immediately? "I didn't think it concerned her." (p. 207) This does make sense in her context, but how this is the type of sensitivity she wants people to have toward one another, I cannot see. To the question of how she could love her mother so much and yet put her through so much pain, she objects, "If I'd thought for one moment, if I'd known that Mother would take it this way . . . I would never have done it." (p. 209) To me, defining sensitivity in such a way as to exclude this thought from occurring to Zhenya--who loves her mother more than Lenin, who she would also die for--is to make it meaningless.

In a related thread about the nature of love, it may be that Kollontai has merely not fleshed this out in my mind, but it seems that her exclusion of the notion of self-sacrifice from love is the root of our disagreement. One might say, that's not true: the idea of dying for and of giving anything for the avoidance of pain for a loved one are both present even in Zhenya's talk. (p. 209) But the self-sacrifice I'm talking about it of one's life in the sense of its ongoing totality, a continuous renegotiation of oneself and subordination of one's interests and inclination for the true good of another. It feels as if she shies away from this kind of altruism because of how it has previously been an enabler of domination over the proletariat and especially over women; instead it must be channeled solely towards the collective. Fair enough, it has been abused; but so has any other form of trust of another human being, and communism certainly can't function without that. This isn't Kollontai's view; the narrator does wonder who is right. (p. 211) Yet, it still feels as if she tries to convey that everything does work out in this situation, that all she need do is convey to Olga that Zhenya really loves her and isn't coldly rational about everything. Hopefully our discussion in class will shed some light on all of this.

Reading Journal 6

2007-10-24T15:39:00.000-04:00

(In response to the readings packet on Aleksandra Kollontai.)

The text on Kollontai was pretty useful for me at this point, because from Gorky and from a couple stories I remember reading in The Gulag Archipelago, it's clear that at some point the Revolution included the idea of a massive shift in the position of women within Russian society and politics, but that, as with many currents that perhaps swept communism into being the reigning political paradigm, at some point it died fairly completely from the picture of reality the authorities were bringing into being. With Solzhenitsyn I have in mind a few stories involving female interrogators (i.e., in a position of relatively high power) and his remark about the equality promised ironically coming to fruition when, as the prisons came to be used at many times their intended capacity, men and women were crammed together into cells in which there was one latrine bucket to be shared amongst everyone. Gorky, with Mother being from a more formative period, as we saw last week, envisioned a world in which men and women treated each other with respect, and both were considered worthy revolutionaries, with no limit on the human fulfillment of either sex.

It's very interesting to read, then, that she had such close ties to Lenin (as Gorky did to Stalin, albeit with a much different relationship). What went wrong? It seems that, as problems arose, the men in power, in a sort of fear-inspired conservativism, reverted to previous models of socioeconomic gender relations with the NEP.

But I could be confusing the reading with the WTN spot we watched in class. There were a few points where I got a very different impression of history from the two sources. For example, in the text, it seemed as if Kollontai and Lenin remained aligned until his death, whereas the video exhibited a divergence at some point, with them defying each other in public over what was to be done about the nuclear family. Lenin apparently wanted it kept intact, unlike Kollontai, who wanted sexual freedom for women and communal childcare in crèches and the like. Another example was her appointment to the post of Ambassador to Norway: the video says she was relegated and then rose to the position by merit somewhat despite this (and stayed there, alive, under Stalin, because it made Russia look socially advanced to the international audience) but the text has her appointed as a graceful way of removing her from "actual" power. The documentary was good for showing the significance of the Women's Congress, but I appreciated the text's tracking of her development as an author, presenting her ideas non-statically, unlike many historical profiles.

I don't actually have all that much to say about Thirty-Two Pages--it fits the description given in the biography snugly. The only thing that struck me was the incredible and unexpected tragedy of the last two pages, wherein the man is utterly unsympathetic and insulting to her ("I'll be holding you by the bridle, the way a woman should be kept") and somehow she decides to declare, "You are good." It's gracious of her to say that "he loved in his own way," but awful that she sees no vision of a way out or hopes not for something better for herself. This actually brings up something personal for me, having come from a mixed religious background propounding and sometimes promoting the idea of women as to be loved and respected but still only as subordinate to men, but seeing a more equal relationship actually play out between my parents and my then-girlfriend's parents. As our relationship disintegrated near the end, with as much conviction as I could muster I swung from one extreme to another in various aspects of life philosophy in an attempt to keep our relationship alive and somehow moving forward, but as last-ditch effort, I came to her with a similar proposition as the man in the story, and thankfully for her sake she didn't even bother to engage the discussion, but finally rejected our relationship outright. Juxtaposing my story with Thirty-Two Pages, I favour what happened to us, but I'm left with the question of whether, if the man's heart and mind had been more open, and the woman had had more vision and a dash of bravery, the relationship could have been redeemed in that moment, and taken a decisive turn toward something lastingly healthy. Not to be pessimistic, but I'm guessing it's not all that likely, and that sometimes we as human beings (to be a bit more general than the story above) need pain to bring us enough distance to see life clearly. But a solid alternative social model to look up to in the first place seems much more promising.

Communism and the Family was quite interesting to me. Kollontai makes very good arguments relevant to the state of the family at the time, wherein women had joined the workforce and only been relieved of parts of their duties within a nuclear family. I'm not sure what to think of the set of her recommendations as a whole, as far as ideals go. I'm quite in favour of her prescription on p. 251 to take an honest look at our situation, discard what doesn't make sense, and embrace that which does. Her recommendations of what falls under each category make perfect sense if one takes the division of labour to its logical extreme. Unfortunately, as one of my professors at Laurier, Dr. Friesen, once pointed out, this is actually where communism and capitalism parallel exactly: in both, "economics is trump." Since I feel this to be the downfall of both models, I can't wholly agree with Kollontai, and yet I find many of her ideas to be ones I've thought of as well. In our socioeconomic context, parents hire babysitters and thus rely on a sort of paid communal childrearing, or increasingly, day-care centres wherein a larger organization that the parents don't necessarily have a stake in is given a share of the duty. As always, except for those who can afford otherwise, the state is largely responsible for influencing children after a certain age through public schools. Only in a few contexts that I know of, such as homeschooling networks (again, a privilege of those who can afford it) and some native reserves in Canada, are communities given both the set of materials and tools by the state but also the freedom to use their own wisdom, communally, in reinterpreting them for children. I've only witnessed two communities so far wherein unrelated couples trusted one another enough to be on board with communal childrearing from birth. In both of these contexts it does seem to be giving women more freedom than in a nuclear model, while maintaining the family unit as a kind of underlying structure. But in Kollontai's description, there are a few flaws. As the character Michael points out in the movie Office Space, "If everyone [acted on this], there would be no janitors, because nobody would clean shit up if they had a million dollars." While not precisely true, the point is made that there's no guarantee that sexually unconstrained women and women who wish to raise (or would be good at raising) children as their specialty in the division of labour will be in the proper proportion, or for that matter, that there will be enough people whose best development would occur in custodial occupations. She almost seems to be aware of this on some level, but doesn't engage it beyond this: "Even if the products sold in the store are of an inferior quality and not prepared with the care of the home-made equivalent, the working woman has neither the time nor the energy needed to perform these domestic operations." (p. 254) She then advocates for the next step, rather than questioning this loss of care, and perhaps something more, in what is home-made.

To be sure, Kollontai is absolutely right that capitalism has doubled women's load. However, I'm not convinced that the complete division of labour produces well-rounded, healthy, or even free individuals, in at least the sense of having the opportunity to explore different occupations and hobbies. In this sense the working woman's life under Kollontai's model may even be less fulfilling than in a nuclear family model. To me, there's an important element of humanity lost, despite the hopefulness found in the male-female relationship she describes, if a couple can get pregnant, give birth, and then have someone else raise their child while they return to work. I much rather favour paternal and maternal leave, where a couple's respect for each other is solidified by their having to work together to raise a child well.

As a final point, recalling the "economics is trump" line of thinking, Kollontai reassures women that, "The woman in communist society no longer depends upon her husband but on her work. It is not in her husband but in her capacity for work that she will find support." (p. 258) And although she has outlined provision for all children, including orphans, she has left out the disabled, developmentally challenged, and the retired. (The latter she even brought up in the context of the old way of capitalism, wherein money had to be made for the children to one day support their parents in their old age, but support for them in her new model is conspicuously absent.) People who are less productive, in her model, are not valued, since their wisdom and other gifts that might be offered to the rest of society are not economically quantifiable. Children are valued, sure, because they're the future workers. What about a woman who loses her arms? Does Kollontai's communism still save her from prostitution, if she's ambitious, or neglect unto death, if she isn't? These are some subtle points at which her otherwise intelligent vision seems unravel, unfortunately. Hopefully in next week's discussion of the video in the context of further readings on Kollontai we'll be able to see how women of the time engaged with this vision, before their position to effect any of it was apparently swept aside as the political climate grew increasingly ruthless.

Reading Journal 5

2007-10-13T15:27:00.001-04:00

(In response to the first half of Gorky's Mother, first my initial thoughts, and then, as requested, answers to two questions from the problem sheet.)

The first half of Mother was very interesting for me to read, given the background about Gorky that I had read about in Nadezhda Mandelstam's book for the research paper (i.e., how he becomes the leader of the writer's union under Stalin, etc.), and given my long-standing interest in the kind of communism found in the early church as described in Acts 2 in the New Testament, as railed against by Ayn Rand in the novel or two of hers that I've read. At first I started looking for fairly glaring similarities between the two, in the vein of viewing Rand's writings as "capitalist propaganda" and Gorky's as "communist propaganda." It soon became clear, however, that Gorky's characters are much more believable, and although they are strongly archetypal despite their basis upon specific, historical individuals, the relational dynamics of the protagonist group in Gorky's novel allow for a much more true-feeling view of human nature in all its blacks, whites, and grays compared with Rand's striking caricatures. For instance, Rand's protagonists all have angular physical features, while her antagonists are blob-like. Gorky's description of the general of the gendarmes reads: "He was a round, well-fed creature, and somehow reminded her of a ripe plum...," (p. 81) contrasts with such descriptions of such figures as Andrey, "In the entire angular, stooping figure, with its thin legs, there was something comical, yet winning." (p. 16) It's the "comical" and similar descriptions that set Gorky apart, in that all of his characters, hero or enemy, feel more human, thanks to their imperfections. It's the hopeful development of individuals, though, and the negotiation of values within their community that rings most true to life for me. I committed to a community for a reason similar to why the mother ends up being on-board enough to smuggle leaflets into the factory: seeing healthy interactions between people, "life being carried out fully, as it should be," in some senses, such as how men and women are treated with dignity, is a good reason to join them and look forward to the same things that they do.

In the communities I've been in, particularly a religious one and the sort of loose social justice community at large within the universities, there tend to be a similar range of voices amongst people who are actively engaging a cause with their lives. There are some like Vesovshchikov, ready to burn things down (literally or otherwise) in order to expedite the downfall of massive systems of oppression being witnessed; others, like Rybin, have been simmering patiently for long enough, and go "on tour" by themselves trying to save the world, even at the expense of the locals in the places they go to; there are the self-denying types like Pavel, bringing wisdom to the movement but arguably at the price of living their own lives to the fullest; finally, I know some like Andrey who disagree on that point, but sometimes their passions can lead to regrets. At an anti-war protest at a munitions factor I was at a couple weeks ago, it was interesting watching these very dynamics play out: some voices among us hated the factory workers openly, condemning them as active parts of the system; others ignored them, seeing them as instruments of the state war machine not exactly acting of their own accord; still others bestowed human dignity on protester, factory worker, police, bystander, and factory owner alike, mourning the implication of all in the war machine, and gently but energetically engaging anyone open to dialogue. Anyway, it was interesting to see these types develop in the book and compare them with real-life experiences, all this in light of where, historically, so many of these paths (ardent capitalism, communism, religiosity, anti-religiosity, tolerance, intolerance, and all combinations and their gray areas) have lead people.

But before I go too far without direction, to the problem sheet:

3) The mother's role seems to have at least three key elements to it. Although she doesn't initially seed the worker's movement, it's her very disposition, incompatible with it at first, that bears witness in hindsight to the contrast between her life as a women under the system she was born into and the one her son is helping to bring about. This very much helps develop the idea of a better life, or a best life, in extreme contrast to the hopeless-feeling beginnings that most of the Russian population (women in particular) would find themselves in in life. At the same time, she becomes crucial in enabling both her son's alibi-protection and release from prison, and the movement coming to a head with May Day at the end of the first half. Both of these happen because she gains courage and creativity, smuggling propaganda booklets into the factory. Thirdly, her religious piousness and the privileged narrative view allow the mother's Christian faith and the movement's atheism to struggle with one another, and come to different syntheses. We see her religion soften but then become more ardent, and she takes what she sees in her son as come from God if not in so many words in his opinion, and continues to take part in this new life with ever-fuller faith in Jesus being at work amongst them. Contrary-wise but eventually not to the detriment of any relationships, Pavel sees God as a humanly constructed concept, usually used by the state to oppress, but in his mother's case, used by her as a source of courage, perseverance, and care. In this fascinating contrast the two can hold tightly to their belief in the actual existence or non-existence of God while still loving each other and graciously (tactfully?) interpreting each other's belief.

Thus her perspectives as religious and as girl/woman/wife/mother/old-mother earn either the reader's sympathy or respect, and so either way allow her to be an effective vehicle for Gorky's message. It's extremely difficult to discount her honestly-obtained viewpoint. Perhaps Rand enthusiasts are an exception, but in terms of turn-of-the-last-century Russian peasant culture, even bourgeois culture, this remains true.

As discussed in class, some of the broader mother-child relationship meanings include casting her as a Virgin Mary type, having to come to terms with her son's sacrifice for the good of many, and thus in some sense sacrificing herself in the same way; the reversal of her role in how her son leads her development being a reflection of Mother Russia's "backwardness" internationally (although, I would add, a better fit might be the proletariat, normally beneath or seen as a child in the care of the bourgeoisie, becomes the class that will teach rather than being taught); and finally her adoption of Andrey as a projection onto the future as a model for the kind of "international brotherhood" where all workers, worldwide, can treat each other fairly literally as family, insofar as that connotes a caring and developmental relationship, and the proletariat-group itself as a mother figure (Mother Russia, in contrast to the father's state-like oppressive dominance over her.)

10) Gorky's heroes are at first a little hard to define because of the dynamic perspective of the mother. She distrusts everyone (generally, minus Pavel) at first, but then almost instantly after meeting them grows to like characters that we're supposed to, such as Andrey, Natasha, Somov, and Alexey Ivanovich. So once she knows a bit more of the "good life" they enjoy in their community, we trust her judgment of them because it's the same as ours. What then do we do with the more violent characters that she has an intuitive dislike of, even after she begins to know it's good to trust the above heroes? Shashenka, Nikolay, Rybin, and others we might think of as fallen angels, misguided heroes that may become villainous, but then all of the sudden she cares for Nikolay (p. 120)--what do we make of this redemption? In the end, I suppose we take as the heroes all of the revolutionaries, and just bestow varying levels of pity or admiration on them depending on their stage of development towards what the reader regards as the true ideal, rather than marking a "hero threshold" along such lines that might not even include the mother.

That said, the virtues common to this larger group is necessarily more limited. I would put forth that the key virtues they share are a capacity for self-sacrificing leadership, a disciplined and patient love for one another that allows sharp disagreements about even life-or-death matters without leading to violence within the group, a rejection of the current political system and prevalent culture as a whole, and a hopeful vision of that with which they endeavor to replace it.

It's interesting that in class, though I hadn't thought of this question except in the Ayn Rand context above and so agreed at the time, some of these virtues--such as love--were taken as weaknesses, and some things I am about to discuss as weaknesses--such as being able to put a cause above people--were taken as virtues, if disagreeable ones. Perhaps it depends on how it's emphasized.

Pavel at times loses favour in his mother's eyes to Andrey because he, in some way, writes her off where they differ. He moves on to more important things, whereas Andrey takes the time to engage her in conversation and help her understand things. On the subject of love as a weakness, Andrey actually calls out (p. 100) Pavel's partiality toward Sashenka (p. 99) in more gently disagreeing with her feelings of angst over his upcoming self-sacrifice compared with his mother (pp. 99f). What I see as Pavel's weakness in this case is actually the opposite, that he won't perhaps let himself get closer to Sashenka despite his sacrifice, or carry the banner jointly, maybe even with her. These possibilities aren't explored. In any case, though there are probably more, the chief weakness, in my opinion, of all the characters, is their hopelessness about the rich. For all their patience with their own class, they still ultimately draw a line and declare hopeless another group. At one point, one of them seems close to excepting this, but only goes so far as to extend mercy toward the police and other instruments of the state, but in the end, there are human beings that the heroes consider to be unredeemable. I see this as a weakness even from within that very perspective--I believe that their disconnect from their masters and oppressors as human beings is what leads to the violence inherent in taking something back, rather than working towards a place where it might be given back not only willing but joyfully and with conviction. What I mean is, the more hasty they are (compare Pavel with Nikolay, for example) in attempting to bring about their utopia, the more they taint the very reality they do affect.

I mentioned the mercy towards instruments of the state, and being brought up by Gorky via one of the heroes it seems that the redeeming feature given to them as villains is some kind of inherent goodness. They act a certain way because they know no better, and this implies that if they knew better they would not be villains, so that there's hope for their characters. The prison guard, for instance, seems to oppress Pavel not out of hatred for his personal character, but just because that's his job, and that it keeps him able to live is all he knows in life. That seems to be the extent of it, for if Gorky went too far in redeeming his villains, the type of revolution he believed in would be less justifiable.

Reading Journal 4

2007-10-08T17:50:00.000-04:00

(In response to Nikolai Chernyshevsky's What is to Be Done?. Since I was unclear on the photocopy situation, I accidentally picked up and read Chapter 1 before realizing it was actually more or less the same as in the book I had borrowed, and from which I had been assigned Chapter 5 to read. So I'm only posting notes from Chapter 5.)

Chapter 1

The book begins with story that soon turns focus to Vera Pavlovna and her life in a domostroj-style household run by the brutal hand of her mother, Marya.

Chapter 5

Chernyshevsky here suddenly fills out an entire back-story (hence the title, "New People, and the Finale") for most of the chapter before connecting it up with Vera Pavlovna's situation, now much evolved from what we read about it in the first chapter. Pólozof, a self-made millionaire, and his only child, Kátya, have a very good relationship, but she is withering away despite her youth, and no doctor can figure out why. Then Kirsánof, an upstart doctor that "the Big Wigs of the Petersburg medical world" have started inviting to their consultations, is asked to examine her, and he intuitively determines that she is dying of forbidden love. He cannot, by his principles, act on this knowledge either towards her or her father, without earning her trust and having her agree without coercion. He manages to get her to trust him enough to speak to Pólozof about it, but in the process there's an interesting repetition of the sentence, "The sick girl said not a word," which I take to represent her voicelessness in her state of oppression, especially given that her not-saying-a-word is so constantly true as to be leading to her own physical death.

In any case, he then faces a similar situation, in which he must earn Pólozof's trust, with the goal of giving Kátya the freedom to find out for herself that the man she has fallen in love with is actually a scoundrel not worthy of her. Kirsánof is a puzzle to Pólozof, since he seems to be taking both his and his daughter's "side" at the same time. In reality, Kirsánof has hopes for the freedom of both of them, and so is for their good and does indeed believe and sympathize with them both. He sees that Kátya is dying for lack of freedom, despite her youth and her absolute love and respect for her father. He also sees that Pólozof really does love her, and is restricting her relationship with Sólovtsof (who has wooed her by letter since being given the cold shoulder by Kátya, acting on her father's words) because he really would be terrible for her in marriage. By earning the trust of them both, he asks Pólozof to refrain from interfering and trust that Kátya will come to a reasonable conclusion in time. While at first vehemently opposed to it, just like with Kátya he eventually comes around to accepting the proposal. Sólovtsof and Kátya are quickly engaged, and Kátya is elated at first, but eventually asks Kirsánof his opinion of Sólovtsof, to which he replies that he doesn't want to taint her opinion, and that she must have free choice, just as her father has faithfully been giving her. She sets out to prove to herself that there are no flaws in Sólovtsof, but with Kirsánof's help in steering the conversation to family life, money, and other key topics, she realizes that Sólovtsof could not actually love her well, and calls off the engagement. Sólovtsof reacts by accusing her father of interfering, which because of his disciplined faithfulness to Kirsánof's proposal, she knows is the furthest from the truth, and she completely ends all relations with Sólovtsof, and her health is additionally restored. Chernyshevsky uses this conclusion to demonstrate both that free choice is the only way to arrive at the truth, and that women can reason thusly on par with men, and therefore must be allowed to do so.

The freedom of mind he gives to Katerina then allows her to consider the world in much more profound and broad ways. She gradually comes to question the meaning of her wealth, and why her "helping the poor" doesn't achieve true social justice, but is only temporary aid. It is this that allows her to truly be a human being of good character, able to console her father when he loses his millions, and actually be happy about it since it means both she and Pólozof will be treated honestly and not in view of their estate. She is now free of the falsehood of high society, but because this gives her particular hope for true love, Chernyshevsky leaves her in some sense at a level below Vera in development, having an imagination but not for things beyond what is presented to her.

Enter Charles Beaumont ("Charlie Beemont"), a Canadian who grew up in Russia and has spent enough time in the United States to be somewhat revered. Charles, working for a London company interested in buying the last factory remaining of Pólozof's, appears to want to get to know Vera, who is now married to Kirsánof, and has become good friends with Katerina. I never quite did get the purpose of all this--he does not, in the end, go after Vera (even though she may be in an open relationship, although that's not clear, since Kirsánof himself remarked earlier in the chapter that he loved somebody and could never tell her), but ends up good friends with Kátya, and then they get married. Perhaps it was an excuse to come over and chat with her at first. In any case, their marriage is one that's freely chosen--in the context of a "surprisingly cool" friendship between Kátya and Charlie, wherein even once it's clear near the end that they're talking about themselves, they still talk in the third person to give their conversation a feeling of distanced objectivity--and it seems significant that even though he asks for her hand in a roundabout sort of way, his words, "I do," are those that conclude the conversation. In any case, their marriage is prompt and then the final part of the story is a description of the utopia that Kátya, Vera, Charlie, and Kirsánof enjoy together living in adjacent apartments. Their parties are of such gaiety and their life of such health and happiness (and shalom, in a grander sense) that one can only hope one's own relationships would go as well as theirs.

All this, Chernyshevsky is saying, is the product of freedom for men and women, even in the context of love that was restrictive by default (as in the case between Kátya and her father) and especially of hatred (as with Vera and her mother.) This is so entirely revolutionary amidst domostroj culture that I'm surprised it wasn't more risky to publish. Even in our own, supposedly "free" culture, many of my friends' parenting styles had either a much more restrictive feel about them, or went off the other end of the spectrum, never having any restrictions even when situations might have necessitated them. Kirsánof and Vera's level-headed guidance through free choice seems a much better environment in which to learn for oneself about the world. This raises some interesting questions for me personally, since I have seen a range of these tactics play out in different people's lives, and recognize that sometimes barriers are actually needed, but that they should be seen only as tools to create an environment in which one can learn a lesson. In some sense it's ironic that this is exactly what Kirsánof even does with the freedom he arranges for Kátya: it doesn't work at first, she becomes engaged to a man who will not treat her well. It's his careful tact that guides her, although still in her freedom, to see the truth before it's too late. Just freedom or just barriers alone will never lead to the healthy, fulfilled image Chernyshevsky hopes for his readers. It's actually the continual attention, the staying-with and actively engaging care that will make use of either barriers or freedom to the advantage of the person for whom one cares--and it will be an advantage they are fully aware of and appreciate, since they will have had to help construct it themselves.

Reading Journal 3

2007-10-08T14:42:00.000-04:00

(From Nikolai Leskov's novella, Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk District)

Rather than go chapter-by-chapter (I just finished doing that by writing the plot summary for the story over at Wikipedia to refresh myself on various points of the book before responding) I think I'll just respond to the novella as a whole.

The basic story has Katerina have an affair with Sergei and murder (only sometimes with Sergei's help) anyone who threatens either their relationship or their inheritance of her husband's estate. Victims include a range of characters her father-in-law Boris, husband Zinovy, child-nephew Fyodor, who isn't even old enough to realize that he might be in the way, and Sergei's later lover in the convoy, Sonya. The motivation for all of these killings, although with Boris seeming to be a reaction to oppression at first, eventually through Katerina and Sergei's dialogue appears to actually be due to a sort of overpowering romanticism. Sergei convinces her that he's a true romantic, and that the highest moral good is for them to be together. This seems to be the thing to which Katerina is existentially committed, even long after Sergei has discarded it in repenting of the murders to which it led: The first three murders happen on account of things threatening Sergei and thus their relationship, but the last is solely on account of the threat to Katerina's involvement with him. Leskov even paints "loose" characters (men and women) in a much better light than romance-blinded Katerina: Sergei as the first we hear of, and Aksinya the peasant cook, and finally Fiona in the prison convoy all feel much more human than she does (at least at times--admittedly Sergei is a mixed story all his own), despite their sexual immorality. Aksinya and Fiona in particular seem to be, respectively, a source of wisdom and comfort, respectively, to her in a way that no other characters are, yet none of the women, romantic or not, approach being Tatyanas to be sure. Katerina is particularly damnable when we find that she actually was acting caring towards Fyodor before deciding to kill him, and when her own son is born, reacts with a sharp, "Don't bother me with it!" and never sees him again.

Some themes from the course that recur here are that of romanticism (as already mentioned), virginity, the forbidden love between social classes (minorly--Katerina was originally not well off and had no choice but to marry; Sergei is a hired farm-hand under her authority in some sense), and the sublimation of egos within a relationship. Virginity in the case of all of the characters is not physically a reality from the beginning of the story, but Katerina seems to lose a kind of alternate virginity in the sense that there's no going back from murder, but also in the sense of a kind of awakening that occurs within her due to her affair with Sergei: in chapter four Leskov describes to us that "suddenly her expansive nature made itself fully apparent," and this is what lets her both ask for Boris to release Sergei and to kill her father-in-law when he refuses.

The sublimation of egos is probably the most striking theme, given the time period. Sergei waits with extreme patience outside on the roof upon Zinovy's return, given that Katerina doesn't tell him what's going on (contrast this with Prince Ivan in Maria Morevna), and with vigorous watch, solely because she tells him to do so. But if that's extreme, it's almost not even noteworthy compared to what Katerina does with the perception that it's "for Sergei". Even her decision to off young Fyodor occurs long after Sergei had stopped bringing up the topic of their lost inheritance with her. Her outstanding self-abasement and Sergei-worship is so extreme that, even when Sergei has repented of their murders and rejected Katerina, she still wanders around dazed: "She did not understand anything, or love anybody, not even herself," but continued her pursuit of her ex-lover despite his growing disgust for her person and return to his womanizing persona. When she finally sees herself as equals with the "easy" Fiona she had only been able to be tolerate at first by condemning in her mind, she "turns to stone" in Leskov's words and her homicide-suicide are not far in the future; at this point her ego-sublimation is over, she has gone insane, and now acts out of jealousy and in line with the unrepentant murderer she has become. In the end she mimics Sergei's mocking-reminiscing words, mumbling to herself, "How we sat out the long autumn nights together and sent people out of this world with violent death," and in one last violent act takes Sonya and herself out of the picture.

All of this violence and sexual betrayal was seemingly born from just one foray from Katerina's sanctuary within the house while her husband was gone. The first chapters' focus on her plight, though, turn this from "women should stay in the terem" to women having a sort of general catch-22 to deal with in their lives. Katerina is damned if she does and damned if she doesn't, but she isn't the one who has placed her self in this position at the beginning of the story. Rather, the rules of society are called into question.

Reading Journal 2

2007-09-26T10:30:00.001-04:00

(On Karolina Pavlova's A Double Life, with a focus on chapter six.)

Preface

I found it interesting that I had already started forming swaying opinions of Pavlova based on the snippets found in the preface. I can see where some of her critics are coming from in saying that she was too much devoted to her art; however, I would say the same thing of a man acting the same way, whereas I believe their angle was that only men could devote themselves so wholeheartedly to art-for-art's-sake. This is just my view on healthy balances. I sense a kind of brokenness in her from the descriptions of her conduct, damage taken from her having to forge ahead in constant struggle and some measure of insecurity that would mostly come from her cultural situation but perhaps somewhat from the fact that she has no normalized, rarely-shaken female model to look to in her life. Instead, all around her are her "mute sisters" not yet free. So it seems to make sense that when even praise for her poetry comes with mockery of her own character, and she and her poetry are at once one and the same (in how fully she's thrown her life into being a poet) and conflicting (in the woman-poet struggle and other dualities described) that she would have some need of seeking approval and promotion of her art all the time. All of this makes me pretty curious to read her only book.

Chapter 1

It would seem at first that Pavlova alternates between rather straightforward dialogue and either romantic or at least very sense-based descriptions (as in the atmosphere of the drawing room and the rest of the party, and the magic of the night outdoors) and practical explanations or interpretations of culture (like with the Englishwoman/maid.) But in the dialogue are details and hints just as rich, such as Cecily's preference of a man's appearance, and the blonde girl's sudden question and Cecily's reaction implying that Dmitry Ivachinsky might fit such a description. His "almost feminine shyness" then seems to reappear during the dream poem: "And from his lips there came a word\ Sadder than the song of far-off strings;\ It seemed as if a quiet kiss\ Had touched her youthful brow." It's pretty striking how Pavlova is able to convey almost whatever amount of depth she chooses by combining prose with poetry the way she has. The dream seems to bring life ("the midnight radiance of all the worlds,\ And all the sighs...Melt into a single harmony") to the happens of her day that are otherwise dreary (the young man "fed up with conversations," the amusement of the "terrible man") or even subduedly vicious (the one circle speaking ill of the dead, the tall lady's condescending comments about country neighbours, and the blonde girl's cutting comments).

Chapter 2

Already she's late because dreaming and sleep are more appealing than the real world in which Cecily walks. Apparently I was wrong to assume the man in the dream was Dmitry; Cecily reveals to Olga that it was the dead man the one circle had discussed at the party in the previous chapter. That gives much more sense to the part of the poem mentioning that it was a phantom and someone she had never met who was being described. We learn some background about high society and how it is able to forgive Madame Valitsky's past, and about how her and Vera Vladimirovna shape their daughters with such terrible precision. To me it seems counterintuitive to try to "keep them safe in all their childlike innocence" while also trying to arrange marriages for them. The probably lengthly transition from innocence into whatever we might want to call the state in which Vera and Natalia Afanasevna operate (perhaps live is too positive a word?) seems almost bound to be tragic. The dead man returns and laments this in Cecily's dream and claims that whatever of God's spirit that's still alive in her is only able to move amongst the "world amidst the world" of her dreaming. He promises not to ruin her life during the day by "lifting the veil" and exposing high society's lies for what they are.

Chapter 3

Perhaps the poor poet's role as almost a pawn (and his unvoiced thoughts that perhaps to feel, reason, love, and pray might be important to humanity (p. 58)) are reflective of Pavlova's experience of how poets are treated, but the language she uses seems to cut down critics of the art. "Prince Somebody" being "inflamed by his own eloquence" rather than hearing Vera Vladimirovna's humble rebuke seems to be an effective satire in defense of such poor poets' purity, as is the revelation of the meaninglessness of the whole conversation to at least one of the youth there ("What a pleasant evening!" being met with "Especially since it's over," in passing). But after this scene Pavlova returns to painting Vera much more monstrously, as having destroyed so many natural and beautiful aspects of Cecily. Even her talents are crammed into vases for decoration (not exactly her words, p. 60) rather than being allowed to spread and come to fruition as she pleases. The dream in this chapter seems to break from the dead man and come out of the poetry Cecily heard read that day. It describes hope for the world as perhaps it ought to be, not in an original or innocent sense, but in a redeemed sense, with poet-prophets heard and heeded, and the holy gifts of nature recognized as blessing and being blessed in return by human beings. This seems to be a fleshing out, maybe a daylit version, of the mysterious depth of the stars Cecily has been drawn in by in the past few chapters.

Chapter 4

Continuing the theme of what has been done by her mother to Cecily, we find in Petrovsky Park too the dripping irony, "...nature made herself unnatural. In a word, everything was as it should be." A few things mentioned in the preface, the "violent female daring" quote and the part about Pavlova using horseback riding as a sexual metaphor, show up in this chapter, but it seems like a more careful analysis might be needed to draw out what the author is saying by these. Not that the preface author was wrong, quite the opposite. These and other seeming "iceberg tips" are sprinkled all throughout the book, but without such interpretive hints as the preface gave I'm not sure I would've picked up on much of their meaning even after a second reading. In any case, the metaphor in particular seems to fit, but it's difficult to say how that colours her conversation with the prince--does it extend to include his/their fright at her flight? It would seem to fuel Dmitry's later jealousy as the one who didn't "tame" the situation.

The inevitable-transition-tragedy thread continues here with Madame Valitsky's further meddling and Pavlova's comment to Vera Vladimirovna, "Where was your sharp eye, watchful mother?"

The preface again helps us interpret, as the dream sequence seems to revert to the dead man and the pattern of inverse relationship to the day's events in the eyes of Cecily. She is becoming drunk with love, but her dream is getting darker and simultaneously more truthful, at least, that is, if you read it not as prescription, but as rebuke. "You are a woman!" is repeated to her, preceding the implications of that that high society via Vera has hammered into her from a young age. The world as it ought to be as described in the previous chapter is in stark contrast here: "Light of ecstasy, holy revelations,\ Gifts of heaven--you are useless to us." Sharing any of this pain with men is impossible: "Do not call the slaves of need, the blind sons of care\ Into your secret world, the world of your heart," and reconciliation with the Lord who since Cecily's birth has been inextricable tied with the rules of propriety (back on p. 59) seems even less likely this side of Heaven, with the final verses rhetorical exhortation to, at the end of the oppressive journey\ Ask...why the creator's orders are so stern\ And why the lot of the powerless still harder." Is this Pavlova's own question, wrestling with God? Or is 'creator' uncapitalized in order to redirect the question to high society, constantly (re)creating itself? In any case, the weight of all this is fairly unfathomable, but the next chapter comes around nonetheless without delay.

Chapter 5

Pavlova's sardonic wit continues in the un-nature theme with Cecily and her mother "enjoying what they imagined was nature and the morning." Then she outright lays into Vera (and any like her) for what she's done to Cecily:

Her soul was so highly polished, her understanding so confused, her natural talents so over-organized and mutilated by the unsparing way she had been brought up that every problem of life embarrassed and terrified her. Her mother's lessons and moral teachings were about as useful to her in relation to life as are the endless commentaries of zealous scholars to Shakespeare and Dante. Once you have read them through, you won't understand even th clearest and simplest idea in the poet's creation any more.

Ouch! And how true. But Pavlova can't decide for certain whether such traditions carry on intentionally or not: "...mothers like Vera...most likely understand something of the possible consequences of their method," (emphasis mine) yet what will happen to the benefit of the doubt she extends to Cecily if or when Cecily inevitably follows her mother's molding? For all the simple-minded innocence Pavlova assumes "probably" on the part of Nadezhda Ivanova (p. 66), perhaps Vera Vladimirovna actually just feels a primal sense of relief (from the responsibility that weighs her down, p. 75) finally getting rid of the perfect copy of herself she's followed through to the end in shaping in her daughter. As the author herself asks about Nadezhda, "how can we know?"

Another lesson in Valitsky/Vladimirovna's vision of a woman's role comes in the latter's comment in front of Cecily about the woman who has just died, "the wife is guilty. Her duty is to know how to bind him to her and make him love virtue." Interesting coming from one whose husband is "always at the club," (p. 50), unless perhaps the club is considered a place of virtue--we're not really told.

The sexual metaphor from Cecily and Victor's previous interaction seems to continue at the next social gathering, Pavlova giving the summary of the prince being "one who can give in exchange for a flower he has taken a half million in yearly income." It seems plausible that a flower here could represent Cecily's virginity, although obviously only in the hypothetical sense within the narrative.

As an aside, it's really interesting how Pavlova at times seems almost bound to reinforce the very system she's fighting against. What I'm looking at is the part when the prince leaves, and Dmitry, humiliated, has remained next to Nadezhda. What about Nadezhda's perspective? It seems unimportant given her role (as "this living piece of furniture", p. 78) in the story, and yet Pavlova hints (as mentioned on p. 50 earlier as well as on p. 78 with the prince's surprise at her) that there may be more depth than we'll know. Perhaps Pavlova wasn't able to get inside such people in her own life, and so focused on the experiences she did know better; but it does seem to reinforce, somewhat, that the important people are those with money (cf. the opening line of the book, "But are they rich?" as well as the way in which this section is sandwiched between two gossip-discussions of the estates of dead and living people.) These latter references might actually lead us to believe that this is just another exposition within itself, not unintended irony in real life for us as readers.

To be honest, I couldn't really follow what was going on in this chapter's dream sequence with the two voices, and I didn't have time to go back and read it more carefully, so hopefully whoever was on chapter five will lay it out for me more simply in class.

Chapter 6

Cecily's birthday is immediately described with an underlying ridiculousness about it, from the expensiveness of the gaiety to the meaninglessness in the exchange of birthday notes and responses. Then when Olga arrives we return to the part about a woman's role mentioned last chapter. Saving a man from himself is fleshed out as the allure that will draw a woman to him: "The greater the danger, the deeper the abyss ready to swallow him, the more glorious is the triumph, the more tempting the success, the greater the pleasure in stretching out to the one who is perishing a saving hand, fragile and yet all-powerful." This theme reminds me of the protagonist in The Stone Angel, and makes me wonder whether the same lack of success will befall anyone (any woman?) similarly motivated toward marriage. Within the context of this high society, however, it seems that the allure described above would be doubled by the fact that in all other ways society women are creatively constrained (from Cecily's natural talents to the barbs Pavlova inserts about how women-poets in particular are something ugly.) Though sad in a sense, and implicitly labeled as pathetic by Pavlova ("In society's lexicon, this sort of move [going along with her mother's plan (in order) to get the Prince for herself] is called 'adroit' or 'clever,'") it seems to make sense that Olga would act in accordance with the system. Even more so, the possibility of control isn't limited to increasing a man's virtue, but "she was capable of bringing Dmitry to desperation," seemingly confirmed by Cecily's own graceful image in the mirror. Not that she would wish to use this control for evil--indeed, the next thing she does in the context of her relationship with Dmitry is to have him promise not to gamble any more (p. 90)--but rather this adds all the more weight of responsibility for her to save him since it's within the realm of possibility for her. Ironically this comes at perhaps the larger cost of her independence: again (in the continuing metaphor), there's an exchange involving a flower of hers, and Dmitry has replaced Prince Victor as the victor.

But back to the chronological story...

Chapters 7-10

Pavlova uses some comic relief in the next chapter by setting up Vera and the Princess to scheme with one another one Madame Valitsky's behalf, with Vera's plans to marry her daughter to the Prince completely undermined by her method of "tactful" communication, in which she unwittingly blesses a marriage to Dmitry instead. Some well-chosen words for Cecily's feelings, "She could touch her dream come true," (p. 106) and "Weary with happiness..." (p. 106). As the wedding plans envelop her life with busyness, there's yet another ironic smirk using Nadezhda as one to be pitied more than those in threadbare poverty, even though she is perhaps the most internally peaceful-happy character in the book, if not free in every sense. She's free because nobody really cares what happens with her, so there are no power politics of which she is the object. Meanwhile at the pre-wedding celebrations Dmitry has, egged on by his compatriots, bet them that he won't settle down, but will rather party all the more wildly:

"Of course," one of them added, "who would want to get married if the blessed state of matrimony made it necessary to give up wine and good times." (p. 124)

Worse yet, on the wedding day, irony is in full swing, with Dimtry's friends' conversation, "'These nervous wives are a punishment from God! He'll be unhappy with her for life.' 'He'll cure her,' Ilichev said cold-bloodedly." (p. 130) The weather reflects the situation that Cecily is now stuck with: the "menacing clouds ... were carried no one knows where." (p. 131) And the fall into the abyss is complete: she has been so entirely programmed to reject that which might have freed her, that all she can do is continue into self-destruction.

Reading Journal 1

2007-09-26T10:05:00.000-04:00

So these are for REES/WS 281. These beginning ones were more just bullet-pointed first impressions with a focus on how women are represented.

Maria Morevna

Maria at the beginning: fierce, independent, and secretive but not maliciously so. In the repeating part of the story, she's concerned for her safety but willing to risk death (brave, and for love).
Prince's sisters: allowed free will in marriage choice.
Baba Yaga: civil enough (even about her evil points: "do not hold it against me!"), but secretly tricky; "sweeping her traces with a broom"

Valilisa the Beautiful

There's a theme of truth versus image for the stepsisters ("thin from spite...sat with folded hands, like ladies")
Vasilisa relies on maternal blessing/external help for all of what's remarkable about her; righteousness wins; curious magic/Christian theology combination going on (even the doll tells her to pray, p. 443)
Baba Yaga is strict, cruel, and impossibly wicked (with the chores); yet also seems to have some wisdom (even to share: "don't ask too much" for it makes you grow old too soon), and sticks to her word (gives the light Vasilisa needed)

Igor's Death and Olga's Revenge

Olga as cunning, almost monstrous in her backstabbing/trickery, but it was out of revenge for her husband (thus okay somehow?--maybe not the point)

Poor Liza

Liza and her mother honourable: "never took extra" for both; Liza even after her innocence is lost and she's given way to her passions remembers, "I have a mother!" (to take care of)
Anyuta continues the theme of reliance on others (the villagers)
Liza's mother's eyes close forever: a kind of reverse metaphor of Liza's eyes being opened/innocence lost: the costs of the 'romantic'/cross-class relationship that seemingly can't actually work (return to realism)

Eugene Onegin

Tatyana's introversion and fixation on romantic heroes and heroines seems to, at least in my mind, all the more prepare her for the kind of speech she gives in her letters in a way that she actually means, which makes it all the more remarkable for her to stay true to the husband she does not love at the end when Eugene returns.

Funny how the narration switches between perspectives within the story and even to meta-story and meta-society from the author directly to the reader. Odd that the title is Eugene and not Tatyana when it seems she, not he, is the 'landfall' of the final verses, and indeed the model of womanhood to be held to in Russian society even today. It could just be that only this section exposited Tatyana's character and the rest was actually about Eugene.

help those with AIDS get treatment...

2006-09-04T07:59:00.000-04:00

Just noticed this handy code at bikeacrosscanada.ca...you should go check out Kylie and Jason's site and help them out. They've donated their summers to bike across Canada trying to raise awareness and money for bicycle ambulances for AIDS patients in Africa...if you find this admirable, you should donate too, if at all possible. Work an extra hour overtime if you have to, and give it to them. You know you can do it. Come on.

This summer, Jason Shim and Kylie Hicklenton are biking across Canada to raise $50,000 for AIDS. You can help them reach their goal! Read their blog at www.bikeacrosscanada.ca/blog/ and donate! Please help spread the word!

nope. still no atomic-block-respecting cursor goodness.

2006-09-01T14:20:00.000-04:00

Hmm, I just thought, why not simulate shift-left and shift-right
keyboard events? That would solve the problem of the cursor ending up
in the wrong spot. Almost wonderful (besides the slight
seizure-inducing flicker that would surely result while using the mouse
to make a selection), except that then you hit the
keypress/not-knowing-where-the-cursor-will-be problem again. No dice.
A killer bug combination.

Kev

DOM frustrations

2006-09-01T13:48:00.000-04:00

My first tech post. Here we go.

I spent this morning trying to add a feature to a web app I'm working on, with no success. Here's what I'm trying to do: I have a form with a textarea where the user can type plain text that will later be interpreted by a preprocessor for a special trick and then treated as Markdown to produce HTML.

The special trick is that you can put a number reference--for example, [123]--into the text using a special add function that lets you look up the object you want to refer to, and then my preprocessor will turn it into a link to a document on our intranet. (One reason for this is that if the document's location changes--which it easily can due to our documentation system setup--whenever the preprocessor serves up the page, all of the links will still be correct, because the preprocessor looks up the reference in a table.)

The database backend for this is down pat. The feature I'm trying to implement on the client-side is to treat any block inserted with the special add function as an atomic unit, like a single character. That is, you shouldn't be able to put the text cursor to the right of the '[' or to the left of the ']' in any bona fide number reference, nor should they be able to select or delete /part/ of the block: it should always be all or nothing.

(I know, there would be issues with pasting text containing a bona fide block, where it would have to use AJAX to verify anything looking like a reference if the user pastes text. I'm okay with that, if I could get past these other hurdles first.)

I'm coding for Firefox only at this point.

The problem is, the DOM, AFAICT, provides no way to find out a) where the keyboard cursor currently is, nor b) what the current text selection is. IE and Firefox both did things their own way, as sometimes happens. The Firefox way is to provide textarea.selectionStart and textarea.selectionEnd, as read/write properties. Super! Should be straightforward to do what I want to do, right?

Not exactly. As it turns out, impossible, at least as far as I can see. If you have a solution, I would love to hear it, because the basic functionality crap I'm going to have to fall back on is sub-par. Here's why: If you're selecting text from left to right, everything is fine: start stays where it is, and end moves left or right depending on whether you are decreasing or increasing the selection. From right to left, end stays where it is, and start moves left or right, vice versa from before. Okay, so I just ensure the function examines both start and end and bumps them if either of them is in a block. After all, the user could make an arbitrary selection with the mouse that begins in the middle of one block and ends in the middle of another.

So I did that. It works, selection-wise. The thing is, the cursor itself *always* jumps to the end point when the end point is set. This is a problem because if you start at point B and select backwards--which is something I often do, if it's handy to do so based on where the cursor is already when I decide to select something--and you hit a block, it jumps the *beginning* of the selection over the block, but now all of the sudden your cursor is at the *end*. (That is, it's impossible to manufacture a reverse selection.) If you're holding down shift and left arrow to do this, a moment ago you were expanding your selection to the left, and now the left end (start) is stopped dead, and you're suddenly shrinking the selection from the right. Gaah!

How can this be? The reason is, as implied two paragraphs previous, a selection from A to B is stored the same way as one from B to A. This was a smart choice in that it maintains consistency: "length" properties are always positive. However, the *only* way to tell the difference is to know where the cursor is, which, even with Firefox's extension to the DOM, is not something you can do from JavaScript. Google for it and you'll find a million pages telling you how to find the cursor, but they're all assuming there's no selection, so they're just looking at selectionStart and selectionEnd. Useless!

Not quite, you might say. We can keep track of previous starts and ends and thus know which end of the selection has moved. Okay, so I do that. Now have a look at the event model. Bubbling or capturing, either way, the selection doesn't change until *after* the keydown and keypress events fire, so looking at the selection properties at that point is useless--you're always a step behind the user! Okay, so we'll use keyup, which works correctly. Brilliant, except that if the user is holding a key down, they don't get the visual jump outside the block, because block checking only happens when they let go.

If you think you could just take into account the arrow key direction to know where the cursor will end up if you're using the keydown or keypress events, consider trying to predict its location if you press the up or down arrows. Welcome to the world of calculations dependent on font size and trying to match the browser's rendering engine...

And anyway, that still doesn't solve the earlier part about the cursor always being at the end.

Golly. All for the lack of being able to get and set the cursor position! Maybe I should've just bitten the bullet and written my own textarea. Some day I suppose that's what I'll have to do.

</rant>

Kev

I'm a moron

2006-06-09T06:50:00.000-04:00

That's all* I have to say.

Kev

* Actually, I have some swear words, too, but I'll spare the audience until the Nicholi story.

Vancouver

2006-06-06T07:30:00.000-04:00

I guess it's something about being self-, other-, and world-aware. Being all of these at once and acting redemptively in three dimensions is a possibility I had never considered, and find intriguing, though elusive, at least for now.

It was not so easy as I thought to refuse to buy shorts until I went home and checked out the label. My family was pissed. I found it hard but possible to not be pissed back. Now what?

http://www.marks.com/ctwnew/mwwhcorp.nsf/SupplierCodeOfConduct?Openpage

How far do I go to verify this?

Sorry this is so short for now. This is just what happened today after battling Microsoft at work just to be able to use software to which we already had the rights.

Kev

Half-response

2005-03-01T13:43:00.000-05:00

Apparently my other one did finally go through, so I just took down the duplicate. Anyway, I wrote this up on March 1st, so I'm backdating this to then; I'm just posting it (in-progress) in case anything else happens to my computer. Turns out the crashed harddrive didn't destroy this (it did eat some other GS310 project files, but thankfully I was done with them, more or less...)

Elshtain, though of course arguing with her own style, is essentially in agreement with the likes of Richard Deem, Dallas Willard, and other Christian critics of our contemporary culture, and so also pushing in the same direction I attempted to in my paper. She is at odds with the hollow consumer-individualist scheme of our day right from the outset of her introduction (p. 4). Elshtain is hopeful, but not within a continuation on our present course; rather, hopeful in the possibility of changing course even in the bleakness of our plight, i.e., what I labelled "[o]ur terrible world," and what she began chapter one looking back from: "the end of this bloodiest of centuries" (p. 7).

Bonhoeffer's framing of freedom as a relationship (p. 15) is interestingly put and accurate, but, I would say, he is not talking about free will as such (neither is Elshtain when she fleshes it out later on p. 86) in the way that I did: In a strictly experiential sense, we appear to be able to make our own choices. Bonhoeffer is operating on a higher definition of freedom as something intrinsically good, and in that way, his statement, "No substantial or individualistic concept of freedom can conceive of freedom," actually fits well with what I wrote about the ludicrousness of being one's own god (defined as the object of one's devotion, or, in other words, the one to whom one gives one's freedom--but this giving is still apparently an individual act of free will, otherwise Bonhoeffer would not have bothered writing to try to change people's lives.)

He continues, and Elshtain picks out his contrasting picture of sexuality in the fallen world, which smacks remarkably of Rand's description of sex as a primal, almost hateful act of domination (as opposed to the mutual celebration suggested by Wojtyla's Genesis exegesis) in Atlas Shrugged, which coincides with Elshtain's later point about our culture normalizing sin. Although I did disagree with certain interpretations of Genesis throughout the rest of the chapter, none were too consequential; having said that, I tended to warm more to Wojtyla's interpretations, precisely because they were more hopeful.

Elshtain makes an interesting link that I neglected to emphasize. I outlined self-deification as a problem and economic systems, being things of utility, as non-solutions, but she probes their combined effects on our ethical constructions, such as undermining the intrinsic value of human life and inverting many of the saving graces yet sanctioned by society (p. 51).
Her chapter on sloth, which seems to have a Heideggerian ring to it insofar as sloth is something akin to falling prey, goes much deeper and beyond the scope of my essay, but I liked what she did with it nonetheless. Thereafter Elshtain also laments the monsters our self-deifying society seems poised to create, and the loss of integrity that has lead us and been circularly magnified by our following it to this point.

That's all for now. Off to discrete math class not-so-discretely for me.

Kev

Near the end of JBE...

2005-02-04T14:15:00.000-05:00

Apparently posting by e-mail doesn't work, but it doesn't bounce, either. Anyway, here was one I sent on February 4th and tried resending today to no avail.

I'm in the final chapter of Who Are We?, and, quite frankly, I agree with many of her criticisms of Northern/American society--at least of those I could understand. I only recently hit a few points at which I would bother to put up a counterargument: she is too harsh towards online communities. On the other hand, I acknowledge that growing up, I was much too much of an enthusiast of them. While I accept now that they are no substitute for real, flesh and blood, local communities, they still play a vital role alongside them in connecting the otherwise
alone-in-their-fields from around the world and creating other important bridges that otherwise simply could not exist.

Other bits along the way I disagreed with in the underlying assumptions (surrounding feminism, evolution, and others I've forgotten by now) but
could respect what was being done via them.

It's taking me longer to get through Jonathan's book, Bad Samaritans, because it's my "when nobody's watching TV" book downstairs at the moment, and apparently this means it gets less time than JBE's, being my "bussing to school" book.

Kev

-----------------------------------
Kevin Field, Ridiculous Man�
"Give us this day our daily bread."
-----------------------------------
Food for thought:

"No one gets too old to learn a new way of being stupid."

Tack-on...

2005-01-12T01:30:00.000-05:00

One more thing I jotted that I forgot to mention: the point discussed
at our meeting about Jesus--coming not for political revolution but
effecting it anyway--that tied in more with the overall theme of my
paper than I remembered to point out. It was actually a perfect
example of what I was trying to say: if you seek political change, or
economic change, or religious reform, or societal change, or whatever
else, as an end--*the* end--in itself, and neglect the heart, it is
bound not to work all that well. On the other hand, if you do as Jesus
did and go straight for the heart from the outset, you get political,
religious, societal, and where they intersect with it, economic change,
all as free sides. Not only that, but they will align with the purpose
behind the change of heart all the better.

Kev

Who Are We? Critical Reflections and Hopeful Possibilities

2005-01-12T01:10:00.000-05:00

So I've only re-read the introduction so far, and it was good. But
while I was doodling in class last week, a thought came to me about the
themes of the original paper, so I just wanted to sketch it out here
before I forgot what it was about: Theocracy within a democracy runs
parallel to communism within a system of capitalism, which runs
parallel to servitude to Christ within a system of free will (i.e.,
reality, at least as it appears to us, etc.) In each case the dominant
/outer system allows freedoms which can be used for good or for evil,
and the inner system is one that is chosen, involving an abdication of
certain rights in return for the fulfillment of a higher good, which,
in most cases, tends to turn the pleasures one has a right to pursue
until one is sick of them into true blessings worthy of all thanks.

More to come.

Kev

The journey continues

2005-01-03T16:46:00.000-05:00

I'm going to try posting by e-mail so I don't have to log in. Isn't
technology wonderous?

First off, some apologies. I started reading "Who Are We?" waiting for
my ride home as the holidays began, and after that, the whole thing
fell by the wayside. I guess not thinking about things doesn't make
them go away after all! I knew that.

Sometimes I can think on my feet. It seems to always be about two
hours after I needed to, and such was the case with my meeting with
Len. Unfortunately, I didn't take notes, but here's what I remember of
the things I needed to deal with:

the individual-centric nature of my paper recommending against
individualism
some people disagree that we have free will
the distinction I raised between communism and capitalism despite
GS101 lectures seemingly to the contrary
what happened to the group in Acts
responses ("I think") along individualistic lines
something about Soto and Guatemala

Starting with that last one, I was thrown off by that at the beginning.
Soto wrote about Peru (his homeland) in the book I read, and our group
went to Mexico. If that was a test, merely raising my eyebrows
probably didn't convey the right answer.

Working backwards up the list, I think the question had been, how do I
know that all native North Americans didn't go or aren't going to Hell
for lack of belief in God's Son, to which I responded with something
like "I think that wouldn't be fair, given that they didn't have the
opportunity to know about Him at the time." When I said, "I think," I
was actually plagiarising. I don't have many truly and uniquely
original thoughts. This was actually something that can be confirmed
in the Bible, had I thought about it a bit longer. To those who are
given much, much will be expected (parable of the talents), and in
general, God being fair is certainly a repeating theme. That said, I'm
not judging the natives, but in the same way, I don't think the
Europeans should have, either, for the same reason. Paul talks about
judging only within the church anyway. I can't remember how this whole
issue related to the main discussion unfortunately. :|

The early church in Acts doesn't survive in the form it was in, not
because the way they shared all their possessions was unsustainable,
but because God had other plans. He scattered and strengthened the
church via persecution so it would take hold over a wider area and
spread the Word to more people.

I took the wisdom of GS101 into account on the last page in
acknowledging the very point that was brought up. A system where
economics is God looks like the capitalism and communism of the
twentieth century. But a system that doesn't exist, because God alone
is God, is the system seen in Acts. Everyone gave up their possessions
and shared with everyone else as they had need. This I called
"communism" and tried to say so in a footnote. That is, it's a
framework in which the idea of possession is given little value,
whereas in capitalism, the idea of possession is an inalienable right.
What makes the distinction between the two disappear in either case is
that the twentieth century versions see the effects of evil desires
played out. In the USSR, the communism looked like American capitalism
because it was. Possession was still what counted, otherwise there
could be no notion of or reality to giving museumfulls of gifts to
Stalin, for example, or public servants being better off than peasants.
True communism, as I said, can work within legal capitalism, because it
involves giving up rights--but it all depends on the heart.

Free will has been the subject of many debates, so I suppose I should
not have stated it as a fact and used it as a premise without some
argument for it. I simply have never heard a very convincing argument
against it, especially given a Christian framework. Even without one,
though, no system of law, good and evil, reform, or meaningful life can
make sense without some notion of choice, which implies free will. I
know that good and evil I argued from the other direction, so that
would be circular by itself, but I have yet to meet someone who
believes that we have absolutely no free will and acts with absolute
consistency with that belief (never disciplines his/her children or
pets, has hope, thanks anyone, curses anyone, nor attempt to improve
his/her surroundings). At the very least, that we have the illusion of
free will is indisputable, otherwise no language would have the word
"choose" in its dictionary, and for the reason of the other
contradictions given above. Within a Christian framework, then, there
are many examples to support free will, such as God being just in
punishing the Israelites for their poor choices. I think CS Lewis
explained it well when he pointed out that God must logically have
existed outside of space-time to have created it, and although he
created it knowing exactly what kind of world it would be all along
(including all of our choices), so that in the overall, mind-bogglingly
enormous "big picture" of all of Creation He in some sense made our
choices for us, but that in any fair sense, we are still the ones
making our own choices at each moment while God looks on, seeing all
time at once. He said, to watch a man commit a crime is not to make
him commit it. In other words, as far as we, in our limited
perspectives, are concerned, we have free will, and that is enough for
the purpose of theology.

As for the individualism, I should explain in more depth than I had
room for in my paper, but much of it hinges upon what was said in the
previous paragraph. I certainly believe in community and wish our
society was more like those of the ancient world and various societies
around the world today (such as most mediterranean and oriental
cultures); however, people are still autonomous even while they are
members of communities. They choose to stay alive and act within the
boundaries and framework of the communities they are in. Groups work
because they strengthen and are strengthened by their individual
members. It's Paul's familiar body analogy again. However, that was
beyond the scope of my paper in my opinion, which was just to redirect
attention to God where it belonged, rather than trying to save the
world through means that ignore God or are God-optional for the sake of
the paradoxical religious tolerance pushed from so many paths in our
popular and academic culture.

I hope this clarifies my meaning a little bit.

Kev

-----------------------------------
Kevin Field
"In all your ways acknowledge Him."
-----------------------------------
Food for thought:

When in doubt, do what the President does -- guess.

When in doubt, tell the truth.
-- Mark Twain

When in doubt, use brute force.
-- Ken Thompson

Liberation theology conclusion

2004-09-10T13:08:00.000-04:00

Well, I went to read the last remnants I hadn't gotten around to in the Boff brothers' Introducing Liberation Theology, when I found my answer (kind of). It's along the lines of what I had called Stance #2, but apparently more refined. Details can be found on pages 82-83, at least in my 1987 edition.

Kev

Today's Golden Duh Award

2004-09-10T13:06:00.000-04:00

I may have a lot of stupid moments of my own--I hope people call me on them for my own good--but this was pretty bad:

Given the fact that protests such as
Quebec City draw a disproportionate
number of relatively privileged white,
educated, middle-class protesters, Fox
and others also seriously questioned
how representative they are of the
masses they claim to represent: "It's
very easy to come and protest in Que-
bec City when you have a full belly."

Exactly! Hello! Are you expecting the starving masses to buy international plane tickets?

Thanks to CanadaWatch. If my rant is even dumber than what I'm ranting about, please leave a comment.

Kev

I liked Soto's interview better than his book

2004-08-10T07:44:00.000-04:00

Neither Mexico nor faith appear in the index of Soto's The Other Path, yet both managed to be baked into the conclusion (p. 233f), except they're not in any context that I'd find useful. Ha! Bummer.

Anyway, the book was pretty interesting, and it does have relevance in Mexico, but we didn't explore red tape and informals that much during our stay, so I have no concrete idea to what extent. I can use his conclusion that governments should get out of the way unless they're doing something useful. I guess I'm going semi-capitalist for now. :) (I still think Acts-like communism is the ideal, but probably also the hardest to hold up for the world for now.)

Kev

Liberation Theology Continued

2004-07-10T17:17:00.000-04:00

I'll give you a few quotes so you can understand where I was coming
from.

Pages 24f says:

Obviously, the prime object of theology is God.

Okay, sounds good so far, right in line with #3.

Nevertheless, before asking what oppression means in God's eyes,
theologians have to ask more basic questions about the nature of actual
oppression and its causes.

The terms "more basic" and "actual" seem to contradict the rest of what
they've been proposing that I could accept along the lines of #3: that
spiritual reality is more real, if anything, than physical
reality (though I believe them to both be equally real--perhaps
relevant is a better word.)

Then this statement:

The fact is that understanding God is not a substitute for or
alternative to knowledge of the real world.

Which sounds like the kind of thing that would lead me to take Stance
#1, because I hear that line of thinking often from people who don't
believe in "all this spiritual BS", to whom the physical world is all
there is. Furthermore, the statement given to back it up:

As Thomas Aquinas said: "An error about the world redounds in error
about God" (Summa contra Gentiles, II, 3).

...says nothing at all about understanding God affecting or not
affecting one's understanding of the world. On the contrary, I'd say,
as one who is born again outside of the world, that understanding God
is absolutely key to understand the world for what it really is.

The Boffs' next statements, however...

Furthermore, if faith is to be efficacious, in the same way as
Christian love, it must have its eyes open to the historical reality on
which it seeks to work.

...I would agree with wholeheartedly.

Overall, it seems, I could go with #2 or #3. Some statements stand out
and make me wonder, though, where they're really coming from. Perhaps
these are all just translation issues and I'm nitpicking. Or maybe
they really are "temptations" slipping in from the authors, as their
later words might indicate on pages 64f (emphasis in original, aside
from my selective quoting):

Let us not pass over the temptations to which liberation theologians
can be liable, temptations pointed out some time ago by critics and--at
least in part--repeated by the magisterium. But at the same time it
should be noted that most liberation theologians take account of these
in their own work. Some of them are:

...overemphasis of political action. It is in prayer and
contemplation, and intimate and communitarian contact with God, that
the motivations for a faith-inspired commitment to the oppressed and
all humankind spring and are renewed.

Overstressing the political aspect of questions relating to
oppression and liberation...

Subordinating considerations of faith to considerations of society in one-sided constructs paying too much attention to class struggle
and too little to what is specifically religious and Christian. This
temptation affects exegesis and liturgy above all.

That would make the most sense to me.

It just so happens that a few more points from the same section point
more to #2 than to #3, so while we're at it:

Absolutization of liberation theology, downgrading the value of
other theologies...

Lack of concern for deepening dialogue with other Christian
churches or with other contemporary theologies...

The way to overcome all these temptations is for liberation theologians
to become ever more strongly imbued with a sense of Christ, being
"those who have the mind of Christ" (1 Cor. 2:16). They also need to
be firmly linked to the ecclesial community and deeply nourished by the
vigorous mystical sustenance of popular religion and faith.

Well, aside from the connotations of "mystical", amen to that last
paragraph.

One unrelated quote comes from page 60, in apparent contrast to the
story of the Christian base community of Cuernavaca we had met with:

Despite the tensions attendant upon any living body, there is generally
a good spirit of convergence between the institutional church and this
wide network of base communities.

I say "apparent contrast" because they're easily reconciled by the word
"generally" in the quote, but that leaves a new question: What makes
Cuernavaca different from the generally true?

I think I'll leave the Boffs at this stage for now and turn to de Soto.
More on that to come...

Kev

Boff Bros.

2004-07-08T07:47:00.000-04:00

I read a bit more of "Introducing Liberation Theology" today. I'm unsure what to think so far. I think I could have three possible stances:

1) Liberation theology is not really Christian. Though some liberation theologists may be doing the right thing, most of them are using Christianity as an excuse to incite people to political action.

2) Liberation theology is basically Christian, meaning I should support it as another part of the body of the church, even if I am not to get involved in it much further than that, having another function to perform to which I've been called.

3) Liberation theology is the only/the best application of Christianity relevant to our age, or at least better than the one I have now. I should "convert" and get involved much more with it.

In a parallel thread, another vein of Christian teaching, which in recent memory has struck me as truth actually a bit more than the Christian Base Communities in Mexico did (although the language barrier and setting may have been important factors), tends to dismiss liberation theology as in Stance #1.

I myself would default to Stance #2.

As I read the Boffs' work, though, I mainly get the impression of Stance #2, but occasional statements and passages urge me to Stance #3, while other points seem to counter that, leading me to take Stance #1.

Aside from all of this, an argument could probably be made for taking Stance #2 even if Stance #1 is closer to the truth. In the spirit of tolerance and reasonability, this would be taking something fairly decent in the absence of something perfect. Of course, if Stance #3 is the most truthful, then that last statement is pretty insulting, and anybody could rightfully dismiss me as an armchair philosopher. Forgive me while I explore. In the meanwhile, I'm learning to live well with the few people I live closely with.

More soon, hopefully; otherwise, these books will be overdue before I get through them even once.

Salient Polymaths R Us

2004-06-12T17:18:00.000-04:00

Well, not really--I thought this article was going to touch on Illich and de Soto more, but it expounded a strikingly different point of view:

http://www.libertyhaven.com/regulationandpropertyrights/tradeandinternationaleconomics/newliberation.shtml

A few comments. Firstly:

The tragedy of the old liberation theology is not only that it penalizes individual enterprise, but that it requires sweeping away all traditional religious structures in Latin America.

This doesn't take into account the liberated reformers we met with.

Here's a neat lead:

...true to Schumpeter's prophecy that capitalism would create many idle critics of the very system that enriched them.

Better yet:

...quoting John Wesley: "Make as much money as you can. Save as much money as you can. Give away as much money as you can."

And best so far:

We live at a time when all respectable churchmen are supposed to be exercising a "preferential option for the poor" and hostility towards the rich. But I submit that the proper Christian attitude is to show a preferential option for human beings, rich or poor, East or West, South or North, without regard for class or condition. And, like Wesley and Schuller, we need to encourage all people to discover the possibilities within them, to become everything God means for them to be. They must start where they find themselves, or where God finds them.

This is over ten years old, yet sounds quite fresh.

Comments to come later hopefully. Gotta leave work now.

Bonnie Whitlow and Norma General

2004-06-07T19:28:00.000-04:00

March 20th, the next "Mexico Day" on my list, I found to be one of the most interesting days of all the trip, but it wasn't located any further away than a little spot on the Six Nations reserve just outside my hometown that I had never been to before.

Most of the day was a presentation by and dialogue with Bonnie and Norma, which was a fascinating reversal for me. Not that I ever evangelise as much as I could or even should, but I'm not usually actively evangelised either, and this definitely was different from discussing things with door-to-door Jehovah's Witnesses. Also, I had remembered reading about how evangelists going way out of their own culture usually only had a breakthrough when they could find a parallel to some Biblical theme in the culture in which they were working.

I think I already came up with adequate words in an e-mail to Bonnie about a week after our meeting:

It was an interesting afternoon last Saturday, because you were evangelising us in the same way some of us seek to evangelise you. I think we can both use each other's evangelism, because you are closer to the truth in some matters and we in others, and it's been God's pleasure to make it this way so that neither of us becomes arrogant thinking that we have all the answers (as your ancestors and my ancestors both thought.) That's not to say that truth is relative, or that parts of the Bible are invalidated by what you say--it's just that you have a better grasp of the spirit behind the letter (again, in some areas more than others) than we do, because we are clouded by our cultural lense.

(About the parallels, she later gave me a book lead that turns out to be available online too: http://www.sacred-texts.com/nam/iro/parker/.)

Anyway, it definitely makes sense that the majority of we who call ourselves Christian would in no way be able to evangelise Six Nations peoples as they were presented to us that day, because they act more Christian than we do. In an interesting twist, I think Western-minded truth-seekers would migrate to Six Nations spirituality (as many do in the vague popular movement toward nature and such), but they would unfortunately probably stop there before coming to the full realisation of the reality of Jesus Christ in the world, because Christians who really are a light in the world are spread, and once one is comfortable in a worldview (even a new one), one usually stops searching. This is how I've spent nineteen years beside a better example of how to live without ever noticing, and could've easily spent nineteen, thirty-eight, or fifty-seven more if not for the inclusion of a meeting with our Aboriginal friends as part of the pre-trip days.

For all we cry about freedom of religion in order to generally supress it in schools, we've done powerfully well at caging it within an aura of irrelevance. The very fact that it's not mandatory where, say, English and math are within our K-12 school system implies to any student that it's not worth studying in order to live more successfully in the "real world." Sure, we were taken on a trip to the reserve in sixth grade or so, and the general sentiment was "that's nice," but we were more interested in whether we'd be back in time to play wall ball before hometime. Contrast that with our three or four trips to App's Mill for ecological education/games once every two or three years, continuing into high school.

Our collective lack of seeking to understand where people are really coming from is why September 11th was hardly more of a shock to me than the second season finale of 24. Unfortunately, of the few who really are seeking to understand, some still are only doing it in order to control. While you can't mandate a good heart, you can stamp out many misunderstandings without too much effort. (This is while we're still within the K-12. After that you have to expend much more effort un-learning first, go on campaigns, buy media attention, and so on. Watch strategies on getting people to stop smoking, and see if it isn't more effective to quit before you start.)

In later entries I'll get to Mexican indigenous peoples. There are many differences, but hopefully this time around I'll see some similarities and balance it out when I write here.

Another book lead

2004-06-05T16:29:00.000-04:00

I was just reading through this to refresh my memory, and besides the ending revealing the possibly (once again) dangerous assumptions (i.e., about economics and about spirituality) behind the view presented, I did find this intriguing quote and book lead:

My other book, The Other Path, was written for Peruvians, but I was amazed when it spread beyond Peru to all of Latin America and became a Latin American best seller. And then it started going to other developing countries, and one of the other countries it went to was Indonesia. And I was also thrilled because my publishers in Indonesia were the extreme left-wing press, which I thought was interesting.

I'll have to get a hold of that and some Illich or other liberation theology and see how the two reconcile. (Everything reconciles in the end.)

I'm still at a loss for deciding in which direction to present in September.

Poverty

2004-06-02T21:54:00.000-04:00

"To be continued." Proof positive you shouldn't stop for dinner when you're on a roll. But I knew that already from the red-haired inmate with the beard in The First Circle.

Just in case I go way off the philosophy bent and more into the poverty end of economics: I was tossing most of my long-term todos today that had expired, and I came across the Fraser Institute's student essay contest (topic: free trade's relation to poverty), and thought I'd take a look at their suggested bibliography:

http://www.google.ca/search?q=cache:wwCB5vqxSaEJ:www.fraserinstitute.ca/studentcentre/files/Resource_Guide03.pdf+&hl=en&ie=UTF-8

(In HTML to make it easy to copy and paste to check out addresses.)

Weighing these articles against what I learned in GS102 last term and read in that Canada Watch special was interesting, to say the least. I think that I have a few leads:

a) I need to continue in mathematics, otherwise I cannot have an opinion either way on some of what the WTO says. Some of the stats calculations they do look familiar, but some I've never heard of. On the other hand, you need not have passed grade twelve mathematics to see that their newer "more comprehensive" development index is heavily flawed when there are negative changes for a number of countries in every area besides technology (the heavyweight champion of categories), yet every country's overall index comes out with positive change. If technological prowess isn't leading to improved education, health care, GDP, etc. for a particular country, how could it possibly outweigh those categories in a so-called Human Development Index on "its own merits"?

b) I need to keep in mind the power of primacy and recency, and be more objective. Both sides of the globalization issue have fun with the stats to some degree, both sides ignore some key issues of the other, and both sides seem to ignore the spiritual side of the equation (at least when talking about the "real" issues) altogether.

c) It might be worth exploring the idea that free trade might actually be the best way to go (for everyone), provided that social considerations are put first, and that it's not selectively applied as it is now, with Northern states bullying the South into "one-way free trade" by allowing just enough of the particular protectionist element to have it both ways.

d) Mexico is way more important in all of this than my old dim thought debris might've had me guess.

I'll have to get back to you on those some day.

Post-trip trip-up

2004-05-29T18:24:00.000-04:00

The post-trip meeting was something like I might've expected--a couple people missing, an atmosphere of a sad semi-goodbye mixed with celebration and fond memories--but there were two surprises: Jonathan gave a good exercise and a book lead for learning about liberation theology, and we discussed utopias. The latter threw me for a loop, because I was unprepared to deal with the preconception that utopias are obtainable. The exercise we did was based upon that, and I had no concise way to challenge it for everyone--interestingly, much in the way (which I happened to have not experienced yet) people were telling that telling others about the trip was met without reception. That is, you'd go to tell about the meat of the trip (which I'm still trying to define), and people's eyes would glaze over. They would rather hear about how the weather and the water was. Well, I did feel that, but surprisingly, it was trying to explain to my group-mates that none of the things they were listing under Utopia were causes--even circular ones--but merely effects or symptoms.

The "true" utopia (juxtaposed against our Western consumerist-bent "false" utopia) was based on the Jon Sobrino quote we were given: "[T]hat everyone have the basics of life, enough to eat, have a home, have health, to not be despised." You may ask what the harm is in working for such an ideal. As I'll get to, the last ten years of my life have been a discovery of the fact that and reason behind why such utopias aren't meant to be.

The next part of the quote leads in well: "The only thing that stands in the way of this true utopia is the false utopia." I disagree.

Please sit back down while I explain. There's no doubt that the false utopia stands in the way of those characteristics Sobrino and our groups gathered under the heading of the "true utopia". The contention lies in the word "only". If that crucial part of his statement was true, then by all means, I would wholeheartedly agree with the entire scheme of working towards such a utopia.

The two utopias here can be distilled much further than a North-versus-South or individualistic-versus-communal matchup, but I should warn you that when we do, we're getting to the real heart of the problem, which changes those boundaries somewhat: sin.

When I tried to explain to our sub-group that a true change of heart--that is, seeking communion with God constantly--is what a real utopia is, and that all the other pure things we imagine about utopias would flow naturally from this state, I got some blank stares, and one person told me that you can only say that if you're really spiritual.

I hate to interrupt with a pair of quotes from the disappointing Matrix: Reloaded, but it was the only part of the movie that I liked, and it applies directly:

"[Gosh darn] it, Morpheus! Not everyone believes what you believe!"

"My beliefs do not require them to."

This is why I do not expect to have to secularize my thinking in order to have a discussion, especially about things such as utopias and what it means to truly live. All too often people see having faith in faith (to paraphrase Willard) as acceptable--even a cultural positive--but actual faith in God as something religious that must be kept private.

It's dangerous to ignore the spiritual reality behind the world, writing off belief as Mere Christianity, as one of the wiser of our twentieth-century writers put it.

Better yet, as it was put to me more recently, working towards a secular humanistic utopia such as this is like stapling fresh fruit on a rotting tree. (Oh, if I were a political cartoonist...)

...

To be continued.

York U Link

2004-05-27T20:24:00.000-04:00

Just so I can read tidbits on break, I thought I'd throw this up here. I've been meaning to read it for a long while now:

CanadaWatch issue on Mexico

Frontierishness

2004-05-27T20:02:00.000-04:00

Maybe I wasn't thinking of the frontier thesis after all, but I might've been. I was flipping through my journal today, and noticed the first spot besides downtown K-W that I thought it might've applied to: the Tepotzlán social activists who were the only ones in Latin America to successfully prevent a golf course from moving into their neighbourhood. After the battle, though, she had told us, the unity of the city's people waned due to the lack of a common enemy, despite the fact that during the battle, their tactics had been "80% fiesta, 20% politics," with many a spontaneous city-wide celebration to keep spirits up and united.

I'm not sure which direction I'll be heading in for the GS310 research paper--I guess I'm right on schedule, then. It might be nice if I can somehow combine the two areas I've been exploring so far--real change only coming from the inside and thriving only under pressure--into some coherent and interesting topic to explore, but it's possible I'll do something else entirely.

I'd better look up this Illich fellow's writings too.

Suerte ser fuerte

2004-05-24T17:56:00.000-04:00

Yes, we're lucky to be strong, and it rhymes in Spanish. Some day I may title a poem that.

Anyway, aside from these handy post-trip reflections, I'm thinking of doing just highlights (in terms of ideas, etc.) of each day, rather than the whole thing, and then cleaning up and reflecting on the actual journal entries I made as I'm typing them in here.

For today, though, here's my "impact statement" as Jonathan requested:

I can't say that this trip has helped me discover myself, or the world, so much as that it has confirmed and highlighted truths that were being revealed to me elsewhere, filled in some details where before there were none, and allowed me the privelege of becoming part of a new group of friends. To me, the overall shape of the world, for better or for worse, has remained the same: Mexico and Canada, like any two countries, truly are a part of "one world." This trip has helped an old truth sink in and start to well up: Problems start to dissolve only when there's a change of heart. And once something wells up, it starts to overflow through every medium possible.

I really had to cut that down to fit it into a short paragraph.

It's good to read a lot. Everyday life helps confirm the truths you learn. Such was the case with Lee Strobel's "A Case For Christ" during the trip, and Dallas Willard's "The Divine Conspiracy" is going much deeper to that end as I relive the trip through each book's lens.

Skepticism

2004-05-22T17:48:00.000-04:00

I'm starting to wonder whether this trip was worth it. This type of feeling may be part of those phases that we go through reacting to our own culture when we return to it, but maybe not. You see, I've never really felt like I was a part of Canadian culture. I could identify at times with the anti-American aspects of it, until I realized that, much like the smallest-scale psychologies that make it up, a culture tends to hate in other cultures that reality which it hates most in itself. Hypocricy and the hatred of it pervade the human race from what I've seen so far.

What does this have to do with Mexico? Well, if anything significant was to be gleaned from it, from my perspective, it would only be confirmation of things already known. The thing I'm talking about in this instance is the wisdom that problems "over there" (be that across an ocean, across the US, or across our backyard fences), are rarely caused or solved entirely over there. The interconnections of our world, even before the recent acceleration in the direction of globalism, are more significant that our individualistic Western minds tend to suspect. We, and especially our corrupted ideas of the ideal or realistic way of life, reach out: at first to a known and controllable distance, but soon to a never-to-be-known and uncontrollable area do they spread, like slick gossip. Good ideas, in contrast, almost always must be consciously fought for. With that in mind, the objects of our daily fights speak volumes to our priorities. Generally, we go to work, and if our fight is anywhere, it's there--for accomplishment, efficiency, and monetary profit. When we get home, we relax, and let the media fill us with apathy (if we fought well at work) or depression (if work is fruitless, and no longer a battle). When I would hear "Affect or be affected," I used to think, "Try learning with humility instead," which should easily exceed your recommended daily intake of irony for today. Affect or be affected is an attitude that doesn't have to do with asserting oneself or being generally rebellious, but with protecting oneself from the demons of this world, and rebelling against our patterened ways of absorbing their will into ours.

"Two Countries, One World" is a pretty accurate description, I would say.

P.S. Thanks for putting up with my skeptical (looking back, pretty nonsensical) intro. It was easier to start exploring that way.

Skip it

2004-05-20T07:09:00.000-04:00

You know, looking back at two posts ago, I think maybe I shouldn't be bothering to expand my notes so much, when I have two weeks' worth of them to go through. Instead I'll just read them over again and focus more on the analysis and what I wrote about in journal entries at the time, like that frontier theory interjection.

Actually, I went and looked at my HCNOA1 notes, and there was nothing on the frontier thesis, but I do distinctly remember reading about it in that course's textbook. Google me:

http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/1112/38501

It seems that frontier theory is alive and well after all. Yet Winn's conclusion is much the same as denouncers' were a hundred years ago, with an added twist:

"[I]t is clear that no place on this planet qualifies as a frontier anymore. If there is to be a chance for the future, then we must find it above the sky. Up is where hope lives."

Here he's talking about space programs. I would like to explore the idea of a Christian frontier--which could last until the end of time--and whether it fits his criteria or not, but it's time to go to work.

Older journal entries

2004-05-15T17:56:00.000-04:00

Here's another piece of the puzzle. It may be damaged and incomplete, but I thought it would be better to post than to hold back.

2004/03/05 - Interestingly enough, de Soto was mentioned in yesterday's Toronto Star, which I only got around to reading today. He apparently is advising Prime Minister Martin to step outside the norm of Western commitment to world poverty (i.e., hardly any), in the form of encouraging the formalization of property rights in developing countries and the availability of capital to small businesses and would-be investors. Apparently 90% of the economy in some countries is underground, because of a lack of laws surrounding most economic transactions and methods of business. This makes sense enough, but what about the merits of group-based ownership and the limits of the consumerist/capitalist system when it spreads to the world? Already the West is getting worried as it becomes cheaper and more effective to outsource tech jobs (such as Web programming) to the Third World than it is to employ locally. If we really think we're on top because we're better, we wouldn't be scared of such a thing. If all 6 billion of us were university-educated professionals, would there be enough room? How long would the environment survive?

2004/03/04 - Researched Latin American economic situations, and found an interview with Hernando de Soto, the author of a book describing how Latin America's current problems were America's 150 years ago. An interesting quote that contrasts the Lubicon Cree stories from GS102 was this: "We know that when you started organizing territory on lines of sovereignty and giving away to your Indians, it doesn't work. People eat other people's sovereignty. Property rights, those are more respected." On the other hand, he is also of the view that Western democracies are "good" and that that's why the West is wealthy. That's a bit off the deep end if you ask me. Maybe our democracies are better than the Latin American democracies he describes, but we're wealthy because we historically got lucky and, wanting to stay on top, crushed those below.

2004/02/23 - Picked up a book written in 1976 by an American University student as a PhD dissertation. I wish I had the same material from a Mexican or Canadian perspective--the author very much sees our two countries as "dependent" upon the US, which is as arrogantly oversimplified as the common belief that "immigrants take up all the jobs".

2004/02/22 - Left

2004/02/21 - Dinner at Carioca to celebrate Dad's birthday (early).

2004/02/20 - Spanish cartoons, stomach weirdness

2004/02/19 - Went to further mall (saw Alain again)

2004/02/18 - Met Alain

2004/02/17 - Second city tour, bartered and got ripped off at Barra de Navidad, tried coconuts, etc., fancy dinner, daquiri; went over the Sierra Madre hills to Colima (pop. 500k); Gabriel guide: VW car plant now Nissan & Chevy; VW hubcaps embedded in road as speedbumps; volcano active; coconut shack: bought banana chips and tobasco sauce, and drank some coconut water (kinda bland, not bad); saw magé (silver cactus the roots from which tequila is made) plantation (guard siesta-ando!); watermelon stands; same products here as Hawaii (same lat.): coconut (green or yellow), fresas, papayas, limes (limónes), mangos, peppers, bananas, pineapple, coffee, sugar cane, grapefruit, manzanas, y naranjas; Colima Liberty Square (w/old prison)--cathedral in service in middle of weekday; went to an UNAM-lead archaeological dig La Campana: sacrifice pits (to volcano gods), low pyramids, walls, stands; museum of Alejandro Ranjel Hidalgo w/paintings (stippled, very detailed and colourful), "Jake" statues (fat dog), and other artifacts from the dig; lunch with mariachis, lime-salt heat solution, excellent tortillas and quesadillas and tacos and enchiladas, G's point about putting the glass down silently (unlike Ciudad M.); real estate guys gave us their card on the street; "magnetic hill";

2004/02/16 - City tour #1, no good books, Hectours' Roberto (BA in geography; hectours.com): drove around rich people's houses; up to summit of peninsula; many new five-star resorts and world-class golf courses popping up for a half-Am, half-Mex audience (Mex esp. on weekends as a break from work in other cities); many mansions for famous actors of Western nations; up to port; downtown shopping; trains; VW;

2004/02/15 - Today, Mary, my sister Jenn, her boyfriend Dan, my mom and dad, and my aunt, uncle, and I left for Manzanillo, one of the largest trading ports in Mexico.

2004/02/09 - I actually bumped into Abe at another event, this time visiting UW with a friend who was in town, but I didn't get to talk to him much, because it was really loud. Hopefully I'll get to connect with him at some point.

2004/02/06 - We had our first study tour meeting today, which was somewhat interesting, mostly because I got to meet everyone who's going on the trip. There's quite a variety of backgrounds and motivations involved, which is excellent, but I also noticed that only one person admitted to be going on it "for a vacation". I say "admitted" because even though we are there to learn and to have our lives changed, anything that gets us away from our mundane daily existence over here, even if it's hard work, is still a vacation in my opinion. As Mary would tell me (contrary to what my parents might), vacations are not synonymous with relaxation. Anyway, the level of knowledge about Mexico in the group seemed to be mostly based on media stereotypes and tourist views, with only a few people having experienced it outside those realms. It sounds like the group will be an excellent one with which to experience this trip.

2004/02/05 - Unfortunately, Abe wasn't at Feeding Frenzi. The event is actually being cancelled for now due to a lack of funding, so if I see him again, it won't be there for at least a few weeks. I did meet some interesting people in the kitchen, though--a woman who used to have a management position at Ten Thousand Villages, which I have still yet to check out, and a man who was raised in Thailand by his missionary parents. I also talked with Matt, whom I had met the week before also, over dinner about the problem of homelessness, which I had recently become directly entangled with. I know there are many cynics and many whose hearts seem to outweight their wisdom when it comes to helping out the homeless, and I know that there are reasons for both. This makes me wonder about what the proportion of non-poor cynics to (maybe not-so-)poor scam-artists/actors/untrustworthies is. (I doubt it's possible for mere humans to get an accurate statistic on that.) All of this also lead me to the question many ask--why worry about "over there" when are problems here are so bad? If we attacked spiritual problems here rather than physical ones, wouldn't it start to solve physical problems here and over there? What do we do in the meanwhile? On the other hand, thinking that way will never allow for more of the kind of healthy bilateral links Lappé and Lappé have found all around the globe. Aside from goods and physical resources, what do Canada and Mexico have to offer each other?

2004/02/04 - Today I poked around for another hour and a bit looking at the various Mexico-Canada connections written about on the Internet. Much of it is very economy-centred, and at least half of it mentioned or focused on NAFTA in some way. I remember from when we went to Manzanillo last year how our boat tour guide said that there's hardly any poverty or crime in the city, not because it feeds on tourism, but because primarily it is Mexico's second largest trading port (or perhaps the second largest on the west coast--I can't remember at the moment), so everyone has a job, be it menial or managerial. On the other hand, Mexico, from the typical Canadian perspective, is synonymous with a hot climate, very high poverty, and cheaply-made goods. What made and makes Manzanillo succeed where, for instance, other Mexican coastal cities or even Newfoundland--in some ways--have failed? Would it be feasible to apply the same "success formula" to many other cities, or does the model necesitate a rich/poorish/impoverished divide?

2004/01/29 - Tonight at a church-meal gathering for students ("Feeding Frenzi"), I met a guy named Abe, whose family moved up here from Mexico when he was little to escape the extreme poverty. I can't remember the city he came from, but it wasn't one I had heard of before. He was student-age, but was looking for a job (to get by, it seemed) rather than an education and a climb up a corporate ladder. I hope to talk to him more next week to get to know him (and his story) better.

2004/01/20 - During a lull in copyediting at The Cord, I was finally able to dig around on the Internet for more information on the Summit and Canadian-Mexican ties. I found that Canadian news sites tended not to care, whereas L.A.-based and other southern area news sources had some information, but the main focus was still on how Fox and Martin were at least perceived in their own countries as Bush puppets. One name came up that was worth looking into--Señor Gaëtan Lavertu, Canada's ambassador to Mexico. Sites in Spanish and English that mentioned him also mentioned general trade relations between the countries that sounded much like those between Canada and Jamaica.

2004/01/13 - I picked up a newspaper today, as my new schedule allows me to do three days a week without inconvenience, and there were many stories about the featured Summiit of the Americas. Other than Mexico being mentioned as the host country, the only mention I found about anything Mexican was that President Fox and his wife had a nice dinner with our Prime Minister earlier in the week, and this was buried in a tiny article at the bottom of page 6. All of the feature articles talked about Martin and Bush and how there was a lot of hoopla and no real changes. What happened with Mexico? Hopefully I'll get some time to research this this week online. I'm sure I'll find something in an unknown independent journal (or certainly at least a Mexican source) somewhere.

The Wild Wild... Downtown Kitchener

2004-05-12T18:24:00.000-04:00

You can follow along if you'd like.

Okay, I've got a half hour. Let's see how well I can recount good old February 6th.

Hmm... I didn't even write anything down that day. It was just the introduction. We also learned a new pedagogy called the Circle of Praxis, which I later found (via Google) is used in various schools about the globe. We also found out that we knew very little about Mexico, probably along the lines of Talking to Americans but in a different direction.

On to March 6th, then, the day we walked around downtown Kitchener and met with some organizations there to examine the issues of the core. Here's what we were told by Mr. Schreiter, through my lense, of course:

There are crises in downtowns all over Canada. They are the threshold of change. 60% of downtown workers are professionals, 20% work in entertainment, and 20% work in the service industry. Normally the service industry has a much larger slice of the pie, and the solution seems to be to get more people living downtown to attract more services.

Hold on--St. George, just north of Brantford, has tons of people, and very few services. They have to come into Brantford for everything. Back to you, Kev.

As a city experiences urban sprawl, downtowns diminish. The private sector doesn't usually help prevent this, but libraries, schools (of any level), and public markets do.

Here is where the idea first clicked to me that perhaps this is something like the frontier theory I learned about in OAC North American history. I'll have to look up my old notes (what the heck, I may even try <awestruck voice>the Internet</voice>), but by the end of the trip, I again recalled this idea, and it seemed to have recurred in enough places to be worth exploring in an academic paper. I see urban sprawl as the frontier, with the downtown being left behind to decay in its ruts, except where fresh academic thinking is keeping it closer to the cutting edge in a decreasingly physical sense. How the public market bit fits in is unclear at the moment.

The Kitcher Downtown Business Association's independent, non-profit role, like that of most similar organizations in other downtowns, is to promote safety and rejuvination of the downtown. It approves or denies liquor licences and such, juggling the night club scene with senior care facilites and homeless support. It co-ordinates with a group of forty businesses that employ the homeless. This may seem to attract problems, but the group is ready to meet the challenges head-on, using an outreach profile out of Vermont. (Did I write that down right?)

This kind of program being in place removes the dilemma of choosing between being heartless by not giving to panhandlers (or otherwise helping them out) and giving them money that they're more likely than not to spend even more irresponsibly than oneself. We're told to tell them that panhandling is illegal, but that they can find something much more fulfilling at The Working Centre just down the street.

To be continued...

In the Beginning\Was the Hype

2004-05-12T15:03:00.000-04:00

Hi.

This post probably won't be of interest to anyone. I'm just scoping things out, looking for a way to starting finishing the journal of my recent study tour of Mexico in an accessible electronic format. I've got paper notes and a few journal entries, but it's time to flesh them out and do some analysis on the way, while things are still fresh, and before I get even more bogged down with my summer job and bajillion (well, half dozen or so) projects I thought I'd commit to before September.

Before I get to that, I think I'll spend the rest of my break outside, because it's quite nice out right now.

Chau.

From the depths of my scrappy notepad

2004-05-09T12:00:00.000-04:00

These are the journal entries I made during the trip. I'm posting them here so that all facets of my journaling of the trip will be available in one spot. Here they are:

2004/05/09 - Streets empty at breakfast; forces impacting Mexico: church and social revolutions (slow), political repitition and corruption, incoming MNCs and the struggle to maintain tradition and culture; Museum restaurant "green juice" ingredients: celery, pi�a, cactus, parsley, xoconoztle, orange, lemon

2004/05/08 - Mexico City -> 60 km across, UNAM with 350,000 students; museum->pre-hispanic Mexico City an island (no details as to reconstruction, but reused in centre); church shifting seismically; poor mothers send kids to beg; flying kits in square, traditional dances, organ grinders->all for money;

2004/05/07 - Im' thinking that the nuifying theme of the pre-trip and the trip itself is frontier theory. From the problem of revitalizing the KW downtown, to the abandon-ment of the Ceceto (sp?) women's centre for lack of an enemy to struggle against, to the happiness of the children and the hope of their struggling parents in the Bronca, to...

2004/05/06 - Nadine's birthday and song much longer, great cake, flowers, gifts;

Don Felix: GO's leader of farmers, had to flee

CED: resourceful, uses new technology to bring affordable water management to people;

Artisan: immigration/migration: moved from poorer state after father died, to make money; is single mom with five kids; works 9 AM through 2/3 AM; persecuted/humiliated on arrival: pays 1000 pesos per year for booth, plus utils, security, etc. (100 pesos/week); most sold to international tourists, but nationals used to buy;

2004/05/05 - Dreamt again (personal). Went to church early this morning with Ian, following the bellringer in. The front people sang, and the back people were silent (and many of them late; some carrying shopping bags.) It's Cinco de Mayo, they day Mexico beat France in Puebla state.

Artisans (Fabina and Mario de la Rosa): 1 million nahwatl (language, has 4 dialects) speakers in Mexico; each painting is a unique representation of ideas, etc.; history of papela: kind used by Aztecs, learned from father (who himself learned from communal elders) around age 12, puts a lot of passion in and forms his own style; family has 6 brothers; Fabian started at age 5, able to do a good job by age 8; 4 hours to water source in his home town, though, so lots of overhead;

Florentino Agular del Frente Zapatista del Liberacion Nacional (FZLN, not to be confused with the Zapatista army, the EZLN): grassroots movement in different areas of the world; all about human rights and feeling the value of human beings; process will inevitably be good for all; looking at other ideas in struggle; some in government feel need to be closer to people, others want to be close to MNCs, businesses, etc.; since 1994, FZLN has tried to be the peaceful counterpart to the EZLN; exchanges ideas with other INGOs/NGOs; notheing new, same struggle; hard to sort out struggle because cultures are all different; they're against MNCs because of pollution, destruction, etc.; only 25 years of water left: desalination is an expensive operation and unnatural; Peruvian-US guy claims to own moon, is selling land (?); (this is what ricos do); breaking borders, FZLN is about a way of looking at people not as foreigners, but as fellow humans; Internet is allowing advances; freedom costs a lot, money is not all; global movement would be better; Ghandian influence; CostCo comes to destroy economy, culture, etc.; protests (peaceful) saw some go to jail;

Parachuting community: created ~27 years ago in response to government land takeover attempt; women's centre started as sowing co-op;

Mercedes: worked here for 20 years; NGO for training and services; many problems and many happinesses; some work from home; baking centre also organized here; helps parents take care of kids; medicare and gym added; open to all communities who need it; charge very little, just enough to survive; all are volunteers; parents donate; subscription to breakfast and lunch is only 50 pesos per week; 3 permanent volunteers and a committee; 15-20 kids base, 70+ after school; allows women to feel comfortable working, knowing kids in good hands; they help with homework; difficult keeping space and paying utilities; no government support besides occassional vaccines; usually tries to appropriate space; looking to get libarry, community centre, but still remain debt free; now that the goverment has added things (paved streets, etc.) community is less united-by-struggle: battle's over, go home; utility bills are high

Christian base communities: Agus and Licha: Licha's a state member in the national assembly; CDD-> pro-choice Catholic organization; Agus said it's good to have us here because we stimulate the economy; Bible-readers-> look, think, act (sounds like Praxis); helped organize lab strikes in 1970's over working conditions; laycos (laypeople's groups) supported by bishop; Licha-> one formed based on the second Vatican doctrine of evangelism; they changed mass from Latin to Spanish around then-> the church allowing it gave the impression of acceptability to participate in church in community; looked for personal instruction in the Bible; helped organize solutions for problems faced; sense created that we're responsible for all going on around us; awareness of 10-20-70 (rich-middle-poor split) affirmed two other steps: evaluate and celebrate; Don Sergio (bishop) worked with Latin America in the 80's; "first" bishop to visit someone in jail, had political involvement; was conscientious and informed; got group participating with obligations to help one another; old style foundations; worried people in power, but gave the poor hope; new bishop rejects this, shuffles priests; now much smaller; less emphasis on bishop now, understanding that Jesus leads and that baptism made them church members; what's done: meetings, reading form Bible, make sure understood through skits, presentations, analysis, reflection, plan to act; visit sick, singing, prayer; newspapers sometimes brought and integrated into discussion; e.g., resurrection as topic->spent a week in a poorer community spreading the Word; preists didn't listen so much to new bishop; they also read documents of Vatican to back up their actions and to stick it to the Vatican; some priests speak out opnely against it, try to prohibit it, close down buildings; once arrived, Catholic scene dominated by threats, etc., which is tough to break from public consciousness; people are tired of work, so some bought new priests' aversion to excuse them from it; work done: nutrition, food distribution, co-op; new political party no better, but woke people up to voting power; they invite othe rchurches to Bible studies/social justice events, but they don't come (protestant churches, etc.); youth not interested in analysis; (can't read my writing) has been on Yugoslavian commission; marriage without courting is (was) common as were many divorces; many issues big; exploring "God's feminine side" (L);

2004/05/04 - Dreamt last night (personal). Still not sure what to take from the trip. Nothing too striking here. Protty comfortable. I _was_ looking forward to the meeting with the mayor (apparently cancelled), why?, possibly because I wanted to say I had. The trip to the poor neightbourhood today should be much more interesting. I still haven't experienced much (besides food and the market paradigm) that I couldn't have from a book just as well. Paul made an interesting point last night that it's unlikely we'll change Mexico if we still can't get along with people around us back home. This is the classic missionary paradox. On the other hand, without some political activism at home, all the ince community bulding we can do will never reach Mexico while those in power are unaffected by us. Also, I'm decidedly pessimistic about spreading our community's connectedness (should we ever obtain it) to the world, given that Mexicans appear to have a leg up, and that if the world was meant to be Paradise, Revelations would be false, which is something I'm finding few evidences to consider a possibility.

Alfredo Dominguez: organizer, university union consultant; some Mexicans in Canada, especially in Quebec, Ontario, and Alberta; only 42 million labourers (1/3 of population); problem: labour force not active; PEA (active, full-time labourers): 20 million; other 22 million: informal, part-time, etc.; poor lack access to federal social services; situation came about in 1950's, hence agreements with US, Canada, etc. to do seasonal work ("braseros"--work with arms)->20 million went to the US and just stayed; agreement over in 1962-> maquila (group of people working for outside owner); filiales (brands of MNCs)->accepted their settling near US border (3200 km long) on Mexican side; Rio Bravo goes from coast to gulf; Zona Franca (free zone): each country has one, 40km-wide; min wage is $5.75/hr is US, $5.00/8 hrs ($0.625/hr) in Mexico; 200 MNCs (strongest) control governments; money doesn't integrate in local/national economy; 1964-2000, 4,500 MNCs settled; 2000-2004 it's getting worse especially with the corruption and Mafia; problem: people who live close don't want to work there because wage is low; most products and resources exported; 1917-2000 dominated by PRI (supposedly revolutionary!); these lead to NAFTA/TLCAN (ALENA in French); few Mexican banks in Mexico (all US, Canadian, Japanese, British, etc.); G7 has to be in (indirectly or directly) Venezuela, Mexico, Iraq, etc. over oil; called Zapatistas "ignorant, shoeless"; Mexico negotiating to do its own oil refining; women have to prove they're not pregnant every 28 days (by medical certificate) or they lose their MNC job, yet they make up 40% of the MNC labour force; technical differences exist between workers' and human rights; Mexican women tolerate it, coming from rural communities, they don't know their rights and accept any payment; maquilas have unions, but they protect owners, not workers; most employees are youth; 365 women dead, raped, abducted, etc. but the UN didn't know for 10 years--police _are_ the criminals; social services only apply to 50 million people; pregnant women have health services, but afterword they're fired and lose rights; corrupt judge at labour tribunal unlikely to restore those rights; government doesn't allow unions for women, citing national security; HR code af conduct signed by Mexico since 1950; tribunals in US tough for poor to get to; ASARCOM, Frisco, Cananea (Pacific Northwest)-> mining companies in hands of US and British: sent marines to kill workers; gringo comes from "green--go!" (uniforms--move in) call from marines; companies don't give safe equipment to use (despite signing internation agreements); to protest, they came to work naked, carrying lunch; company rejected->national court->forced to provide safe tools; protestors in Germany even supporting Mexicans; government on May1 forgets and has no interest; workers afraid if rights are imposed, MNCs will go elsewhere; key to campaign: respect HR; mercado: "kill your idols" T-shirt; lights with tin pan shades; silant-o cactus/livevocartoon.com

Erika and Flor from Alta Vista: comedor (dining room): poor supporting poor; battle addiction, repair destroyed families, etc.-> getting kids off the street into church, or at least to discover values; poor cook for poor (program provides materials)->some activities (running on zero support besides communities giving food), values disappearing; every other Sunday: eat, play, do workshops; discovering dignity; support dysfunctional families and single mothers who have escaped domestic violence; have seen change in kids: they now help with housework, share with other kids, get closer and have more confidence; changing church admins less co-operative; rebuilds families-> parents join Christmas meal; work directly with parents too; government has housing, buti it's pay-for and only if you have a job;

La Baranca: gov't calls 'illegal' to avoid providing services, yet changes taxes; kids want (this is what they drew): flowers, a soccer field, and that sewage was hidden; Mexican flags were flying here.

2004/05/03 - Lalo Castillo: focus on democracy: resolve electoral process; working with farmers as cultural engineer; kids' rights big: focus on nutrition, etc.; they organize workshops and rock concerts focussing on youth and kids' rights, promote sports, exchange between adults and youth, and lack of drugs; 2000 pop stats: 2/3 under 20, 35% of total between 12 and 20; 60% have informal employment (** de Soto point?) street vending, etc.; 50% are professionals in Mexico City (compare Tepotzlan); many are construction workers; 40% are droupouts due to a lack of money, 12% due to marriage; school typically abandoned after high-school because many jobs require a high-school diploma; 68% want to keep studying because they want to get richer and have a higher standard of living; 4 million indigenous youth in 13179 towns: of that, 46% are illiterate and older than 15, 78% don't finish public school, 48% of illiterate are women; yet life expectancy is 69/71; leading causes of death: poor problems (stomach) and heart problems (especially in big cities, obesity); over 50,000 youth immigrate to the US every year; 2/3 of youth (15-24) live with parents; 26% of women are victims of domestic violence; 1/2 don't talk about sex or politics in their families (46% to mom, 57% to dad); fathers more likely to be conservative; thrice yearly vaccination campaigns (for all major diseases, like polio, etc.); 62.6% don't have a girlfriend or boyfriend; 37.5% have one before the age of 15; 95.3% have noviazgo (betrothal) by age 20; only 11% have sex by age 15, 44.4% never had by age 20, both mainly because of fear of STDs and pregnancy; 47.7% don't use contraceptives; tons of misinformation in circulation: learning from older ignorant youth; 74.7% had had only one sexual partner within the last year; 85.5% have had 3 or less partners before marriage; surprized because parents think youth very promiscuous, also link sex with drugs and violence; next surprize: youth not passive/apathetic: 93% have gotten their voting card; 78% do vote; 80% turnout (total) at 2000 federal election, but 2003 municipal election only had 40% turnout/60% abstain; youth prefer envirornmental, human, indigenous, and animal rights issues, but not through government; candidates are government-funded; On religion: 87.5% believe in the Virgin of Guatalupe; 89.1% believe in souls; 82.1% in miracles; 86.2% in sins; these government statistics are questioned just like in Canada (NGOs don't have the resources to conduct surveys, so they take what they can get); government has little money for research--fund raising occurs through food sales and so on; "los domingos": parents give allowance on Sunday; kids have constitiutional rights to school, but some can't afford (50-55 students per teacher) due to different filters: if you don't have a brother or sister in school, you may have to go to one further away, but the busses are public busses (pay per ride); even if you get to school, it's on the magatino/baspertino system, wherein the school system has the physical buildings change hands daily at noon (between elementary and high); many teachers go into other professions because of a lack of jobs and the low wage of 5000 pesos per month; graffiti appeared recently--gangs and delinquents aren't linked to it, though; young people have legal graffiti outlets; current graffiti is about indigenous, environmental, and labour issues; sometimes people feel like prisoners in their own country: lack of money; condoms--which are expensive to get or require a doctor's appointment--are the main contraceptive because women are embarrassed to ask about sexuality (taboo); two health systems: one for public workers and one for everyone else; provida (abortion issue) at play now; some indigenous and nun groups do forced sterilizations; many divorces occur (especially in the first three years of marriage) in the middle class (it's expensive, so some poor people wanting divorces live two married lives because they can't afford to break the old one); also, rising common law rate, but less rights as far as father having to provide, etc.; Daniel (at Poder Joven): part of government, promotes volunteering, is like Big Brothers of America in that it's youth working with youth, it pushes academics and arts and recreation, it works with the marginalized through food drives as well as nutritional workshops, and centres provide free Internet access for youth; they have a free youth art gallery; 88 government-sponsored youth centres exist in Mexico; they need more resources for youths starting their own small businesses and so on; only four paid positions exist at the centre; fundraising occurs through INGOs, NGOs, the UN, and other GO partnerships; by law they aren't allowed to receive money--only supplies, services, etc. directly as gifts-in-kind; they have eight-six volunteers in the three centres in Morelos; users come from all classes, but cluster depending on activity; family violence is common, yet seldom reported, and the centre can only act when something's reported; they have programs for people aged 12-29, but nobody is turned away (most are 15-22);

2004/05/02 - Xochicalco site: pinhole camera (on large scale): could observe stars on cave/tunnel floor without telescope; compare with Tenochtitlan (from Manzanillo trip), which was 500 years later according to museum timeline--very similar in many ways, but lacked The Game (ball game with key-shaped stone mounted 30 metres high);

2004/05/01 - Pool is nice even in the morning. Off to cathedral nearby: 1st in North America (1523, commisioned by Pope). Street marches: "tribunal concia y arbitraje �corruptos!" (the courts are corrupt) and "Ivan Arenas corrupto", chant: I could only make out the recurring "�la gente se preguntas!" (you ask the people!). Crushed glass on walltops at the Jardines (earlier along path up the mountain at Tepotzlan too)--barbed wire replacement or anti-birdpoop measure, we're not sure. Ads in the gardens: "naturmin@hotmail.com" on big banner. Mexicans on US: US is "father of Mexico" in sense that they have to ask permission about anything; Malinche: indigenous woman who got married into Spanish culture as merchandise->nickname for those who prefer American to Mexican culture; similar to Latin America (speaker had friends there); yet more trade with US; indigenous label had negative overtones; missing from our Mexican portrait (when we met with the Mexican youth): soccer, TV, and Coke; some reject indigenous culture; no Spanish link left: they reject Spain's treatment of indigenous, but still do similarly; prejudice against poor (less indigenous per se because each of blood and culture is so mixed); indigenous are 12-13% of 110 million Mexicans, found in 62 communities; Mexico City has international culture communities like Toronto; 10-20-70% rich-mid-poor split; most indigenous are poor; divorce kept secret from abuelos (grandparents/extended family) because of big stigma; pregnant and unmarried at age 28--dad disappointed yet supported in the end out of love; parents pay all (semi-independence) in many cases. Trip to mall: Sears logo black?; Dippin' Dots with English slogan; bus ride: cramped, saw English grafitti (F-word, etc.). Watched f�tbol game at local bar: much like watching hockey in Canada, except for addition of DJ-hype-accompanied strobe lights after goals and even favoured ref calls; English music videos played after game (not even subtitled or translated);

2004/04/30 - Excellent sleep. Breakfast was great. Saw many bugambilia on the bus ride. Mountain climb wasn't bad. Good to get solid exercise. Saw raccoon-like animals at top, and helium heart balloon somebody had released. Site had signs like Colima's. Noted woman making sign of cross when passing church. Arch made of beans/corn/grain tells different historical story each year; this year's: king at top the one who converted natives, others tried to kill him for it. Met with social activist after lunch: fights alongside indigenous people; they consider themselves part (in the way of descendants, etc.) of the indigenous culture (not mixed or outsider) in Tepotzlan; city's greatest movements in 1994/1995: prevented a golf course from going up (it was about greater things--the way it was presented was that indigenous people were ignorant; brochures falsified Tepotzlan: 70% of citizens are professionals or studying, yet golf course would require labourers, not managers; it also didn't consider environment nor culture)--was made of postly young people who learned from experienced older generations on how to resist; was started by se�oras; had strong, party atmosphere, connecting people in a way that small celebrations often spread city-wide; fiesta became the method of communication; movement was successful because it also connected to other cities and countries: two-way communication discovered similar things happening elsewhere in the world (Canada, Hawaii, Phillipines, lattermost with armed conflict and the course went up anyway, to the greater poverty of the region now; Mohawks also had a stand-off), encouraging solidarity; yet, this was the only successful resistence to neoliberal golf courses in Latin America, possibly because of mix: 80% fiesta, 20% politics. On the 10th anniversary (April 10th) of all this, they partied and had a march to another city dressed as revolutionaries (with fake gun belts, etc.), and the police repressed them, phoned death threats, etc., and even students were nervous. Overall, they succeeded by using their rich culture and history to fight. Meals were offered at the town hall, another community outlet; many marches had more women than men; three roles for women now: mother, lover, activist: many divorces, but many marriages too, because outsiders connecting had the same worldview; committee in town hall: 15 men, 5 women, but decisions were made by women outside pressuring the group; still a union, but less now, because there's no common enemy at the moment (taking a break). Tourism is strong here (75% of economy now) compared to other nearby places, but they still want to keep their identity; before the 1980's, wasn't a tourist dest: main economy was agriculture (now a luxury because owning property is so difficult: joke goes, "sure I own property: my nails"; land transfers almost prohibited, hence the flora and fauna still here ("few endangered" said museum)). Governments at local and national level "understand each other"--people would be upset if the government started changing things all over; now that Fox is in charge, there are more rich people (15 instead of 2 (e.g. "Slim") controlling 95% of the wealth); some ignorance in administration; common scene: mayors move up to state government if in cahoots. Tepotzlan prefers the image of being a stubborn, non-"advancing" town. Talked with Paul on bus ride back, found out Waterloo Band is conducted by my old music teacher from my Brantford high school; we said "small world" but not really, tying in with earlier statements about how it's only small for the single-digit percentage of the world's population who can afford to travel freely and often (and how they usually end up at tourist spots.) Dinner today was the same dish we ordered a number of times through room service at Manzanillo, but it had a more interesting texture here and was spicier. After, we hit the Internet caf�, which was very lax, having no timers. Wandering about the city, we walked by some dark alleys (downhill, narrow), but nothing too out-of-the-ordinary. We hit the grocery (local, but bought out by Wal-Mart, as receipt showed), bought some sorbet and chips. Sorbet choices: Yom-Yom (made in Mexico), Nestle (also made in Mexico). Yom-Yom was good, but we should've tried both to compare.

2004/04/29 - No expectations going in here, except for something life-changing in an undefined way. This morning our Air Transit van was only 500 yards away when a car on the side of the road exploded into flame--we could've been next to that! Somehow, though, I was desensitized so much that burning car and pavement barely provoked a twinggge in me to pray. After that, flights were uneventful. I did like the first part of the pre-trip readings, before it got into the history. Interestingly, there was more to be spoken on that by Jorge at the group intro than I expected (very little), and it was also of note that Labour Day for them is more celebrated (not just "get drunk") and is also based on events in Chicago. The city, as we drove through and when we stopped in to a few of the stores, was very similar to Manzanillo, and I recognized a few chains and brand names I had only seen there before. Manzanillo had very little poverty compared to the neighbourhood we ultimately arrived at, though.