Been wasting time (and procrastinating on creating new syllabus - ugh) by surfing randomly. It's this kind of random surfing, just following link after link till you end up in some really weird places that's the bane and attraction of the internet. I will go to the pool in a few minutes and soak up the last of the summer's rays (it's supposed to be cloudy for most of the rest of the weekend, and then the pool closes), but before then, I wanted to point to a page I randomly found. I wanted to respond to it, but my response was too big for the comments section, and it's also something that I've been thinking about lately too...amazing how much thinking you have time to do when you're not working!

The link to the byzantine calvinist for August 28th is interesting, particularly the part where the author argues that religious belief and economic 'belief' (a.k.a. theory) are identical and should be treated as such. [read the National Post article - this is one of the reasons I quit subscribing to them long before I left home]

One time, I decided that my sisters and I needed to get away for a weekend together, so we went hiking up to Glacier Lake, just the three of us. Things were going pretty well until the conversation turned to science & religion (if I remember right, the theory of evolution somehow worked it's way in there). They had a bit fight and I felt crappy 'cause I felt like I was stuck in between. I tried to express my view on religion then, but didn't do a very good job, and have thought about it since then. I think I have been able to summarize my thoughts since then and would like to respond to this blog in this way:

I would agree that secularism constitutes a belief system. There is, however, one primary difference between religious belief systems and secular ones, and that is the claim of the former to some form of ultimate truth. This claim requires one to assume that all other belief systems are wrong (because not based on this truth), and thus invalidates all other belief systems as valid beliefs. The secularist recognizes his/her belief as one of many, equally valid (including religious) belief systems. It is the judgement inherent in religious systems that creates a sense that the expression of religious belief is an unfair imposition on others by excluding the possibility that those others may in fact be the ones who are right, something secularists worth their salt are willing to accept.

My neighborhood: Watertown

Not quite how I'd describe it - there doesn't seem to be a category listed for "sweaty, rude blue collar men who think their masculinity is so overpowering that I will 1) make room for their god given right to take as much time and space as they'd like, or 2) swoon".

Maybe they just hang out here and go home to other neighborhoods at night....

Receiving this article from a friend was quite eerie since it brings up a few things I've been thinking about lately - coincidence? Perhaps...

Read it first....
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You live next door to a clean-cut, quiet guy. He never plays loud music or throws raucous parties. He doesn't gossip over the fence, just smiles politely and offers you some tomatoes. His lawn is cared-for, his house is neat as a pin and you get the feeling he doesn't always lock his front door.

He wears Dockers. You hardly know he's there. And then one day you discover that he has pot in his basement, spends his weekends at peace marches and that guy you've seen mowing the yard is his spouse. Allow me to introduce Canada.

The Canadians are so quiet that you may have forgotten they're up there, but they've been busy doing some surprising things. It's like discovering that the mice you are dimly aware of in your attic have been building an espresso machine.

Did you realize, for example, that our reliable little tag-along brother never joined the Coalition of the Willing? Canada wasn't willing, as it turns out, to join the fun in Iraq. I can only assume American diner menus weren't angrily changed to include "freedom bacon," because nobody here eats the stuff anyway.

And then there's the wild drug situation: Canadian doctors are authorized to dispense medical marijuana. Parliament is considering legislation that would not exactly legalize marijuana possession, as you may have heard, but would reduce the penalty for possession of under 15 grams to a fine, like a speeding ticket. This is to allow law enforcement to concentrate resources on traffickers; if your garden is full of wasps, it's smarter to go for the nest rather than trying to swat every individual bug. Or, in the United States, bong.

Now, here's the part that I, as an American, can't understand. These poor benighted pinkos are doing everything wrong. They have a drug problem: Marijuana offenses have doubled since 1991. And Canada has strict gun control laws, which means that the criminals must all be heavily armed, the law-abiding civilians helpless and the government on the verge of a massive confiscation campaign. (The laws have been in place since the '70s, but I'm sure the government will get around to the confiscation eventually.)

They don't even have a death penalty! And yet .. nationally, overall crime in Canada has been declining since 1991. Violent crimes fell 13 percent in 2002. Of course, there are still crimes committed with guns -- brought in from the United States, which has become the major illegal weapons supplier for all of North America -- but my theory is that the surge in pot-smoking has rendered most criminals too relaxed to commit violent crimes. They're probably more focused on shoplifting boxes of Ho-Hos from convenience stores. And then there's the most reckless move of all: Just last month, Canada decided to allow and recognize same-sex marriages. Merciful moose, what can they be thinking? Will there be married Mounties (they always get their man!)? Dudley Do-Right was sweet on Nell, not Mel! We must be the only ones who really care about families. Not enough to make sure they all have health insurance, of course, but more than those libertines up north.

This sort of behavior is a clear and present danger to all our stereotypes about Canada. It's supposed to be a cold, wholesome country of polite, beer-drinking hockey players, not founded by freedom-fighters in a bloody revolution but quietly assembled by loyalists and royalists more interested in order and good government than liberty and independence.

But if we are the rugged individualists, why do we spend so much of our time trying to get everyone to march in lockstep? And if Canadians are so reserved and moderate, why are they so progressive about letting people do what they want to?

Canadians are, as a nation, less religious than we are, according to polls. As a result, Canada's government isn't influenced by large, well-organized religious groups and thus has more in common with those of Scandinavia than those of the United States, or, say, Iran. Canada signed the Kyoto global warming treaty, lets 19-year-olds drink, has more of its population living in urban areas and accepts more immigrants per capita than the United States.

These are all things we've been told will wreck our society. But I guess Canadians are different, because theirs seems oddly sound. Like teenagers, we fiercely idolize individual freedom but really demand that everyone be the same. But the Canadians seem more adult -- more secure. They aren't afraid of foreigners. They aren't afraid of homosexuality. Most of all, they're not afraid of each other.

I wonder if America will ever be that cool.

Source: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (PA)
Author: Samantha Bennett
Published: Wednesday, July 30, 2003
Copyright: 2003 PG Publishing
Contact: letters@post-gazette
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I was just thinking the other day about the differences between Canadians and Americans (or at least New Englanders, since there are some distinct differences between the Northeast and the rest of the country). I was hypothesizing to myself that Canada will become more like the U.S. over the next few decades. This thought sprung from my observation that 1) there is no American equivalent of Canadian tire, 2) there are fewer winemaking suppliers here (even though you can actually grow your own grapes in this climate), 3) fabric stores of any kind are hard to find, and ones with a good selection even harder to find, 4) the closest Ikea is in the next state, and 5) there is only one Savers (Value Village) in the greater Boston area. What do these observations say to me? Well, it may be a generalization, but I think there is less of a do-it-yourself kind of attitude here. People seem to be far less interested in creating something themselves than in having someone else hand it to them already put together. The pioneering spirit that still seems to be alive (at least in Western Canada) no longer exists here. Now, I realize this may also be an east-west thing...I'll reserve judgement on the cause, but I think there is a distinct correlation between a fully developed capitalist mentality, and the lack of do-it-yourself, handywork kind of businesses in the area.

What this has to do with the article? Well, I was hypothesizing that this difference is a matter of age - in a younger area, more people do things themselves - in an older culture, there's more desire to let someone else do it, or buy it ready made. If Samantha Bennet is right, then this kind of 'maturity' is actually a regression (of the teenage variety - don't get me started on that one!). The aging of a society (not its population) might produce an attitude that to do it yourself is somehow inferior to paying someone else to do it. [Though of course I accept the very real possibility that the article and I are talking about two very different and unrelated phenomena]

The other thing I had been thinking about was stereotypes. Not a big thing, but I wonder if an article like this just caters to stereotypes on both sides of the border. But then again, I'm not sure that it matters much. I think stereotypes can be very localized phenomena - living just below Quebec, most New Englanders think that Quebecois culture is indicative of Canadian culture in general. Bit of a shock coming from people who live in an equally diverse country. Then again, I'm sure I have stereotypes of my own to dismantle...

I was thinking earlier today that I should blog about something (feeling the pressure to contribute since it's here - the same kind of pressure you feel when the grout grows around the sink or the bills pile up) but wondered what I could possibly blog about.

I've been reading lots lately - non-fiction and fiction - all stuff that isn't on a reading list and it occurred to me that my own internal critique of a book I just read is a bit more sophisticated than it has ever been for any other book before.

I generally produce different categories of non-academic criticism after reading a book: the one, which I share with others includes an overall analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of the book in addition to the general good/bad assessment. The other, my own internal critique, categorizes books simply as: excellent, good, bad. Excellent ones are ones I would read again - if borrowed, I will keep an eye out to buy my own copy; good, I'm glad I read it - it will stay on the bookshelf; and bad, well, sometimes they're salvageable because they've taught me things about bad writing, but mostly I try to forget the details of the story. Before, if I liked a book, I would say to myself, 'good book' and leave it at that, but this time I thought, 'good book, but the ending is disappointing'. And I realized that the qualifier at the end is something new that I felt compelled to add. Not because the book itself required it, but because my own rather simplistic categorization of the book was insufficient. And the sneaking, scary, weird feeling that went with that categorization was the thought 'the ending is disappointing...I could've done better.

It's scary because if I allow myself to start thinking that way, at some point I'm gonna have to belly up to the bar and put my money where my mouth is - I'll have to move from critic to producer. I don't know that I'm ready for that day.

Carl Sagan in The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark writes, "Baseball and soccer have Aztec antecedents. Football is a thinly disguised re-enactment of hunting; we played it before we were human. Lacrosse is an ancient Native American game, and hockey is related to it. But basketball is new. We've been making movies longer than we've been playing basketball...basketball has become - at its best - the paramount synthesis in sport of intelligence, precision, courage, audacity, anticipation, artifice, teamwork, elegance, and grace". He obviously never saw a bunch of English PhD students trying to play the game!

But we have a lot of fun, and we've actually gotten a bit better over the last month of playing. I suppose that isn't saying a whole lot since most of us had a lot of improving to do, but we have gotten a bit better. We keep picking up extras who are much better than most of us (one of our players is very good at the game - he's also tall - so his skill and height really dominate the rest of us, but he's also great at pulling up and giving those of us who aren't so good a chance to shoot, or pass etc.).

Intelligence? Off the court, sure...on, hmmm, I don't know about that. Precision? Those of us who can shoot, sure. Courage? Definitely! Just showing up and playing in public parks shows courage! Audacity? (See courage) Anticipation? See, there's another of those skills that we need to work on...some of us (myself included) still are a bit surprised when the ball ends up in our hands! Artifice? Nope, not good enough for that yet. Teamwork? Yeah, you bet! Best part of the game as far as I'm concerned. Elegance and grace? Nope, at least not for me...at this point, I've managed to fall and/or injure myself at almost every game - But I'm probably the least coordinated of those on the court. Of course Sagan was talking about NBA play, not the kind of game we play, but his point that the game is the most modern of the major games we play and that because of this, it is a game of skill and intelligence is well taken.

Massachusetts, or at least this part of it, has very loud crickets. Even with the windows shut, you can clearly hear them at night.

They certainly sound like crickets, though I'm thinking they might be some kind of cicada or something since they sound so much louder than I'm used to hearing (and I grew up on the prairies!)

I was going to blog about the fact that I hate August since - as a student - I never have any money left that month, but after talking to a friend, I realized what I really wanted to talk about was child custody and visitation rights.

For most of this year I've been able to get on with life and just concentrate on what I have to do and what the girls need from me. They've called their dad quite a few times, though since he and his girlfriend split in March, they have only been able to leave messages and hope he calls back when they're at home (since he doesn't have his own phone). The girls were frustrated many times by this system, but there wasn't much we could do about it and I always said to feel free to call whenever they wanted to - I seldom had to cut an excessively long call short because they seldom talked for very long. Aside from all the frustrations intendent in this, I think things went okay over the year. I know they missed him, but they also had the chance to get to know their stepdad a bit more, and I've been told by other adults who have talked to them about it, that they are feeling pretty comfortable with our new family arrangement.

When we left, I made it clear that I was willing to split the costs of transporting them to see him, but that I expected him to be the first to shell out money (since I'm usually the one doing it). He promised at Christmas, and then during their term break in February to fly them back, but didn't...hence some of the disappointment on the girls' part. What is so frustrating is trying to stay fair and keep my nose out of it, when all I feel like doing is ranting about how unfair it feels when I (with my parents helping for one child) spend money I really don't have (i.e. student loan money that accrues interest as I'm in school) to send them back for a visit to their grandparents, and he gets to waltz in and play daddy as if nothing has ever happened.

I've tried to say that it doesn't matter, that my kids are smart & they'll figure it out on their own, or that I don't need his money - I knew I wasn't going to get anything out of him and I've accepted that I'm the one who provides all. And I know that access and support are supposed to be two entirely separate things, but sometimes I just want to scream about how unfair it feels to be the one providing, and disciplining, and all the other hard things, while he does god knows what and waltzes in like a white knight on a horse.

DAMN!

The thing is, he'll always be their dad, even if they get angry and disappointed at his behaviour and it's really hard to be a grown-up and not care that you get the same level of consideration (and Dwayne of course gets less) as he does even though you do ten times the work. It's always been that way.

One of the most shocking things for me when he left was how little my relationship with the girls, and our lives, seemed to change. I really had been carrying most of the family work anyway, and I didn't feel like my work load (physical, emotional support, social convener etc.) in raising the girls increased. I was still doing the same things, not more, and maybe even less because I had less bs to deal with at the same time. I knew from the start that I wouldn't get much from him either - he paid support for a couple of months, but as soon as it was clear that I wasn't taking him back, it stopped pretty abruptly. And I don't expect to get anything from him in the future. He knows better than to tell me where he lives or works because he knows I can pass that on to MEP, so he trys to stay below their radar.

The whole rant started when I realized that I have a friend who is moving too, but visits will be much more frequent, and they have a much more collaborative arrangement. He cares for his children and it shows. My ex? I really do not understand what goes through his head.

Saw Freddy vs. Jason last night & it was worth it!

I was thoroughly amused by the movie and enjoyed it, even if there were plenty of places where the dialogue dragged a bit. They exploited every Nightmare and Friday movie, and the conjunction of the two provided us with an amusing night.

By far the best part of the experience was the opening night crowd! We went to one of the theatres downtown, so the audience was young (and largely non-caucasian). The audience was really into the movie, with cheers when Freddy & Jason first meet to applause at the end of the final fight scene. The hoots from the guys in the audience when the requisite half-naked co-ed gets axed set the stage, but one of the funniest moments was when the girls behind us said, "oooh, that girl gonna get killed" just when, of course, you knew she was gonna get killed.

Best line? I don't think it's a spoiler... Requisite stoner: "Man! That goalie was pissed!"

Of course, the movie went down much better since we had met friends for drinks before the movie! Not high class, but interesting and even provided some interesting points of analysis for us eggheads (questions of sexuality, politics etc.). If you aren't a fan of the movies or the genre, don't bother going, but if you liked all the previous movies and want to see Freddy go up against Jason, by all means go to it on a cheap night!

The paper is finally finished! Yeah! Nice not to have it hanging over my head. I am never requesting an incomplete mark again - I hate how last term just dragged all the way into the summer.

Now it feels like my summer is rapidly coming to a close.

Actually was able to stay awake till midnight last night after a bball game - usually it wipes me out & I go to bed early. Though we did only play two games yesterday.

The car quit working last week again. Now it is working. How long this will last will be up to the car gods.

Life moves on - I just try to get by.

Like the new look? Thanks Duncan!

Html is one language I certainly do NOT know...though I was wondering if I could make the case with the department that it is a language that would do me just as much good to know as say German, or Latin, or French and they should let me write my language test in it. Then I'd at least feel like I had learned a useful language for the PhD requirements!

I do think I finally figured out how to change the time to EST instead of MST though...not hard, but I'm pretty proud of being able to do it. Did you know that the list I chose from had Swift Current listed? Along with Antigua, Belize, Michigan etc. I thought it rather impressive - Speedy Creek makes the map!

Promised myself I wouldn't do anything enjoyable (including blogging) till I got to 14 pages in this paper, which is about 3/4 of the way through. I did however supervise the children at the pool (the sacrifices one makes as a mother!) before I got to this point, simply because it would've been dark if I'd waited! Sometimes I really am not at all interested in writing something intelligent and it's usually only the impending sense of time passing that motivates me...in other words, the end of the semester approaches. (Speaking of which, it will be fabulous to go back to the semester system - I'm sure the pace will feel much more like what I'm used to than this past year has!) Every time I sit down to write a paper, I do wonder what I'm going to do after I finish my degree, when the expectation is that I write to publish, but I don't have a deadline hanging over my head. What will motivate me then? I'll have to find something that will sufficiently excite me to get over the dread of beginning a project. Maybe the dissertation experience will help me find it...

Speaking of which - congratulations Shea on completing (except for that one paragraph!) your thesis! Yeah!
I think I have a good idea how relieved you feel! Congratuations!

I've been bothered over the last couple of days by something that I did, oh, probably about a month ago without thinking. I said something very off-hand - I didn't even recall saying it until I was told about it by a friend - that really was unthinkingly stereotypical and offensive. And I can't stop thinking about it. I was absolutely shocked to hear that I had done that, and what's more, it has led me to question whether my own self-view is really accurate.

I have always considered myself a unprejudiced and accepting person - I worked at VC and the CFB with all sorts of international students, and even on the one occasion where I didn't handle things too well, it was my temper and frustration, and not a prejudice that got me in trouble. Plus, I knew exactly what I had done wrong the moment I lost it and yelled and apologized to everyone who I had offended right away. And then at CIAS, I was very conscious of diversity and modified the interview questions we used as well as the way I evaluated a candidate's answers to take into account ethnic differences. After all, the way that we interview, and what is considered the appropriate answer to an interview question in North America is very different than the hiring process in other areas of the world. Here we rely heavily on the candidate's responses in the interview and expect them to toot their own horn. In other areas of the world, the recommendation of a former boss, or the employee's resume listing achievements are far more important, and candidates often do not put their best foot forward because what we call 'selling yourself' they see as bragging and bad form.

So what's happened? Why did I say something so horribly unthinking? I've always thought that I'm someone fairly sensitive to my use of language and respect for other people (okay, yes, I know I swear way too much for some people's comfort level, and it's something I've recognized and been trying to change - 'specially when I drive!), so why? I really respect these friends and consider them good friends, but if I am such a bonehead about something like this, how good a friend am I?

After apologizing I was told to forget it - but I can't.
And nothing I can do or say now can take the hurt I caused back.
All I can do is remember.
And know that I'm not as good as I think I am.
I guess that's what regret is for.
But I'm still having problems forgiving myself.

Played basketball again. Enjoyed myself very much, even if my team-mates weren't wowed by my (lack of) prowess. Am starting to wonder however if I am too old/out of shape to start doing this now. I can tell I am going to ache all over tomorrow...at one point I dived and rolled, and now my right hip feels like it belongs to an eighty year old. Maybe I should give it back - somewhere there's a grandmother who's missing a body part!

I do get out and run on a regular basis and I can leg press about 280 lbs., but I seem to get absolutely wiped out by playing basketball. I think I will give it a few more goes before I decide for sure whether I can cut this or not....but I may change my mind after I wake up tomorrow!

The children are home again... I breathe a contented sigh of happiness seeing them again. Didn't realize how much I had missed them till I was eagerly waiting for them to disembark off the plane!

You know you're children are home again when you have to fight for the telephone to make a call!

But it's all good.

I am desperately trying to finish off a paper from last term. I am now down to about ten days, and I've had over two months to do it - long live procrastination! I am just starting to pull myself out of that place where (if you've done this before yourself, you'll know what I mean) you are reading and reading and reading, justifying to yourself that you need to gather more research before beginning to write, but really all you are doing is avoiding sitting down and writing the damn thing. I have to stop reading and start writing. After all, if I write and then find I still need more, then that's the time to head off to the library, not now when I don't need more material, I just need to put that material down on paper.

At least I have finished the biggest part of the marking for class until the end of the term (which, conveniently, is three days after I have to hand my own paper in!) - thank goodness for that!

Saw Macbeth on Boston Common. There were about a dozen of us who met to watch the play. Overall it was an enjoyable experience, though it started getting coldly damp as the evening drew on, and I felt quite chilled by the end of the final act.

Such experiences invite comparison to similar experiences, and I was reminded of other Shakespeare's I've seen recently. Although Shakespeare on the Common was much more professional than the Shakespeare in the Park at Prince's Island, I actually enjoyed my experiences at the latter more. The size of the population here, and the fact that there is obviously much more money poured into the production here than in Calgary meant that the crowd was huge! We arrived in good time, but even then, we were quite far from the stage and missed many of the nuances of the play. I was much closer to the stage the last time I was at Prince's Island, and even though the acting was a bit more amateur (though one of the actor's in the last play I saw also worked for us at ATP), the performance was enjoyable because it was so intimate. When we were groundlings at the Globe (newly rebuilt and only reopened the year before we were there) watching King Lear, I also enjoyed it more because we were experiencing the play much the same way as it would have been enjoyed during its original producation. [Yes, I know there are many differences ranging from the lighting to the attitude of the crowd, but overall, it was faithful in its minimalization of sets, props and costuming]

The setting for this production was war-time, so Macbeth was in uniform as were the rest of the Scotsmen, and Lady Macbeth wore either short or long full skirts; the witches were characterized by long black shawls - to look like gypsies perhaps? The gunshot echoes (yes, some of the sword scenes were updated, though there was still plenty of sword play) made interesting echoes off the surrounding skyscrapers. Made me wonder if they could be confused for the real thing. And the strange man who wandered by sounding like the back-up sound of a large truck adding a sense of the surreal to the play - appropos, I think.

I have come to the conclusion that I like my Shakespeare either utterly groundbreaking (whether it works or not) like the Pericles we saw a few months ago, or intimate like the Mount Royal players in Prince's Island or the Globe in London (as a groundling, having to stand the whole time with actor's making their entrances from among the crowd).