Leap In The Dark

"Rid yourself of the feeling that Art has nothing to do with reality and is not sturdy enough to face it on it's own" Erwin Piscator

One of the things that has always made the arts so dangerous to people who would control the way populations think is it's inherent capability of promoting independent thought. The good piece of art, be it novel, music, painting, theatre, or any of the other varied means of expression at the disposal of human beings, will promote a highly individual reaction from each of its observers.

Not everybody is going to be touched in the same manner upon listening to a piece of music as powerful as Beethoven's Ninth symphony, or by looking at Andy Warhol's "Campbell Soup Cans". The mirror that art holds up to society will offer a reflection unique as the vision that our personal mirrors offer us when we look into them.

Our perceptions and personal experiences are the filter through which we see everything, including our interpretations and reactions to a piece of art. Those seeking to control artistic expression do so with the hopes of controlling the way in which the world is seen. For what other reason would the Vatican have a list of proscribed books? Or would religious and political zealots throughout history have for their tendency to burn books?

The last thing that people of a very narrow perspective want is those under their sway to be given the means to form thoughts that are in opposition to their orthodoxy. This autocratic curtailing of thought can occur under many guises, but the most insidious form is the utilization of moral outrage. Under this blanket objection, proponents of censorship are able to cloak themselves in the costume of protectors of the innocent, guardians of virtue, and upholders of societal values.

It used to be that these folk were satisfied with working at a local level by attacking the choices made by school boards of what to include in their curriculum. They reserved their attacks for what was being taught in t the English and Health departments.

Their objections have always mystified me; for example I've never been able to understand what's so insidious about a Health teacher instructing his or her students in the names and functions of bodily parts. Its stuff most kids see on themselves every day isn't it? It's not like their giving them instructions on how to use sex toys, or telling them to go forth and procreate.

In fact the way sex education is usually taught in schools, half the time I bet the students have no idea that what the teacher is talking about has anything to do with having sex. Most of the time it's such a clinical thing that chances are it's more liable to turn them off having sex than anything else.

Then there are some of the books they want banned, the old favourite of course is J.D. Salinger's Catcher In The Rye. Holden is a foul-mouthed cynic and failure who is the epitome of the angst filled teenager. Lost and confused he lashes out at everybody and blames everybone else for his failures. It's still considered to this day one of the finest books written that has dealt with the difficulties some people have in adolescence.

But all some people can see is the language, and they refuse to get past it. They say they don't want their children exposed to it. Which pretty much means they are going to have to lock them in the house, seal all the windows so that sound doesn't come in from the streets, and throw out any televisions, radios, or other means of broadcasting the outside world into their house.

Perhaps back in the days when Catcher In The Rye was written people would have more of an excuse for being shocked at the language, it wasn't as prevalent in society then as it's now. But I have to wonder what world people live in where they think that banning one book will prevent their children from hearing that type of language.

Maybe they think that by teaching it in school the language is being legitimatised, but I would think it's prevalence in everyday life would take care of that. If language is such a concern for parents, than they need to make it clear what they consider acceptable behaviour in their house, and offer their children explanations for their reasoning.

Unfortunately it's not only the legions of decency that are a threat to literature, there's also the misguided politically correct. These are the folk who try to pull works such as Mark Twain's Huckelberry Finn and William Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice from curriculum.

Their grounds for wanting these books removed are just as spurious as those who would have other "offensive" material removed. They want to re-write history and pretend that certain attitudes and beliefs never existed. In point of fact probably the best place for young people to read these books is in a school setting where the subject matter can be placed in its proper historical context and the behaviour of the characters can be seen in that light.

In their own ways each of these books are historically accurate in their depiction of the times they represent, and in the attitudes of the characters and society. We can't change what has happened in our past no matter how much it embarrasses us, but people will not learn from it if we pretend it never existed.

Now of course the reach of these groups has grown longer. Pop music has always been a target for the forces of decency, and they got their fifteen minutes of fame in the 1980's with hearings somehow made official even though a non-politician headed them. Who can forget that paragon of taste, Tipper Gore, justifying the suspension of the amendment to the United States Constitution guaranteeing freedom of speech in the name of moral decency?

All those hearings did was provide labels to tell kids which discs they should buy if they really wanted to piss off their parents. Putting a label on an album saying this contains mention of drug use and offensive language is like waving a red flag in front of a bull when it comes to adolescent males. No wonder the record companies had no objections to the hearings; they knew the notoriety could only increase sales.

Instead of viewing this as a set back the forces of moral decency have been on the upswing in recent years. The whole incident with Janet Jackson's nipple (can I even say that word) appearing for a micro second during the Supper Bowl halftime show a couple of years ago has resulted in the television networks in the United States being cowed into surrendering autonomy at the threat of depletion of their cash cow advertising contracts.

Arts Councils and federal funding agencies are being told what they can and can't fund based on moral standards that have nothing to do with artistic merit or talent. This type of control on creativity strikes to the very heart of artistic expression. Someone other than the individual artist making decisions on what is considered art.

Art is not supposed to be safe and docile at the command of one portion of the population. People misuse the term artistic temperament and believe it to be a mode of behaviour that can be turned on and off. In reality it means certain people are born with both sensitivity to the inner workings of the human psyche and the abilities to depict it.

Despite what the paragons of virtue would like us to believe there is a lot of darkness in this world and that will show up in any mirror that is pointing in the right direction. The prevalence and acceptance of violence in the mainstream, the continual objectification of humans, the xenophobia of mainstream society, and the very hypocrisy that drives the forces of decency are sufficient fodder for most artists to depict our world in less than glowing terms.

Art has everything to do with what is going on around us. If we lived in a world where tolerance and tranquility abounded you would see that looking back at you from the pages of a book, or the canvas on the wall. You would hear it in the music being composed and the songs being sung.

I don't know if the people who seek to control artistic expression are doing so because they understand that or not. It is more likely that they are doing it because they don't see the world they want to exist depicted. With their efforts to control expression they are trying to form a false picture of the world for their own peace of mind.

Unfortunately neither the world nor the artists are co-operating, and they never will. Perhaps there will come a time when people realize they can't enforce their vision of existence on either the world or the artist. Instead of trying to control art, they need to accept the fact that it tells them with, far more honesty than any newspaper, what is going on in the world.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 09:03 AM | Permalink

A friend of mine sent me an email the other day containing a series of letters to the editor that one of the English newspapers hadn't published. While some were sort of stupid, and others mildly amusing, one had me almost in tears. Like all good letters it was simple, direct, and to the point:

"Did anyone else feel that Mel Gibson's remake of the classic Life of Brian wasn't anywhere near as funny as the original?"

I'm at a loss as to understand why the newspaper in question refused to publish the letter. But than again I agree with the writer of the letter so maybe I'm not the perfect judge of community standards in these circumstances. There are others who would probably take offence to the tone of the letter.

Most likely they would be the same crowd who had taken offence to the original movie in the first place. When it was released, Monty Python's Life Of Brian was considered sacrilegious or blasphemous and any of the other nasty words that people like to throw at works that make fun of their belief systems. Of course Mel's film, The Passion, had its own detractors, and they called it things like anti-Semitic, and pornographic in it's display of violence, so maybe it had more in common with the original than we thought.

I never had any desire to go see Mel's film, not being a Christian the subject matter wasn't exactly appealing to me, and I figured I knew the story well enough already. Heck the whole world knows the story whether we want to or not so I couldn't see much point in retelling it. But, like I said I'm not a Christian so it's not for me to judge whether or not they want to make movies about their religion. (Please do me a favour and don't write in telling me all the reasons for the need to constantly tell this story over and over again or how well it did at the box office, E.T. did well at the box office and I couldn't see the point in it either.)

Every year some church group or another does a Passion play in the community where I live, or a stations of the cross retelling, or something along those lines. We get a live television feed of the Pope addressing the faithful in St. Peter's square for his Easter sermon, and we get images of pilgrims making their way through Jerusalem being shepherded by Israeli soldiers.

The irony of those visuals, Christian pilgrims being protected by the soldiers of the only Jewish state as they go to worship the person in whose name so many Jews have died seems to escape most people. Adding even more irony to the mix is the fact that at the same time Easter is being celebrated by Christians, Jewish people are celebrating Passover.

Passover of course is the celebration of Moses leading the Jewish people out of Egypt and bondage and into the promised land of Israel. That they had to smote a few thousand Canaanites who happened to be living there already seems to have been lost in the shuffle, but the Bible just sort of glosses over that little fact. That annoying little bit of history probably only merits a couple of versus in "Exodus".

Passover is a holiday that commemorates freedom, the birth of the laws of Judaism (the Ten Commandments) and the trials that had to be overcome to achieve that freedom. The first two nights of (Jewish holidays start at sundown of the day prior to what would be called the first day) of the holiday are marked with a serving of a meal, the Seder, in which the stages of the journey are ritually enacted through the foods eaten and the prayers and songs recited.

Now, according to what we are told, it was during Passover that Jesus was arrested, crucified, and resurrected. One could say the celebration of these events is the celebration of the birth of Christianity. As the corner stone of this religion is a belief in those events, and they are celebrated every year it only makes sense that it be considered the beginning of the belief system.

Unfortunately instead of thinking of Passover with respect and fondness, at many periods through out history Christians have sized on it to search for excuses to attack or abuse Jews. The whole Christ killer accusation has been so pervasive that in the 1960's Lenny Bruce, the American comic and satirist, was still utilizing it for material.

First of all he confesses that yes he and his uncles took Christ down to the basement and worked him over a little too much. Than he tells his audience they should be grateful that they (Jews) killed Christ when they did. How would they have felt if it happened in recent history, and they all had to walk around wearing electric chairs around their necks?

Having not seen Mr. Gibson's movie, I can't comment on the anti-Semitic nature, but I'm sure that accusation is based on the fact that Jewish people have a very real reason to be afraid of the Christ killer accusation. If, in any way, the movie depicted events that could leave that accusation as a conclusion, is it any wonder there would have been an outcry against it?

In the days of the Protestant Reformation, when the Catholic Church was lashing out at any "enemy" of Christianity, it was common for the ghettos that the Jews were confined in, to be invaded during Passover/Easter. Some bright spin doctor of his day seized upon the story of marking the door jams with the blood of a lamb so the Angel of death would know not to take Jewish first born children during the plagues, and turned it into Matzah (unleavened bread eaten during Passover) being made with the blood of gentile children.

With the Jews mysteriously escaping the worst of the effects of the plague (having personal hygiene as part of your religion staves off a lot of waste born diseases) and the unrest of the times due to the reformation, it was easy to take such lies and make Jews scapegoats for the ails of society.

Although this was common practice during the year, Easter and Passover provided a means for whipping up mob violence, making Jewish life even more precarious. During the centuries of the Diaspora and even today for Jews who do not live in Israel, the end of the Seder is marked with the toast of "Next year in Jerusalem". During dark times it was a ray of hope symbolizing freedom and a return tothe heart of their religion. As Moses led them out of slavery into the freedom of Israel, so they would hope to return to the city that was their icon of release from persecution.

The treatment of Jews over the years by followers of Christianity has not spoken well for the younger belief system's tolerance of others. When I hear the bells pealing for Easter mass I can't help but think of other springs in different lands where those bells would call the faithful to acts of violence and hatred against people who's only crime was to worship a different God.

We need far more movies like Life of Brian which laugh at the world, and far fewer movies like The Passion which remind us of the hatreds in the world. It doesn't matter what it's intent was, sometimes simply depicting the events is all that takes to fan the flames of old fears and old hatreds. I don't see the necessity of that in any circumstances.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 07:02 AM | Permalink

All good intentions aside, there is realistically only so much editing one can do in a day. Hell, there's only so much one can do in a week, but that would be pushing it back to being far too sporadic to count as a concentrated effort. Since I'm trying to made such an exertion, so I'm not let scrambling when the happy event of manuscript acceptance occurs, I've been trying to find something to do besides editing and posting to my blog each day to keep me focused.

A couple of months back I received the advice from a couple of sourses to try submitting some of my work to magazines. This is something that has crossed my mind from time to time in the past. I have all these articles that I've already written on a variety of subjects after all, so why not put them to use.

Now the first thing I had to do was to find out what was out there and what sort of potential market for my work existed. I pretty much figured I could discount most of my reviews, as most magazines have in house people to do reviews. I also realised that the majority of my op-ed would only be of interest to a limited market, for much the same reason as reviews.

Even before I had begun looking for magazines I began to realize the paucity of my marketable material. The whole experience was beginning to sound a little less like fun, and a little much like work. Oh well I had said I wanted to be distracted from editing and this looked it would be quite the distraction.

I decided to focus on a couple of specific articles and see if I could sell them to genre magazines. They weren’t actually articles, they were interviews, and I thought that might make them easier to sell. One was with an established author, Ashok Banker author of a modern retelling of the Indian epic tale The Ramayana, and the other Robert Scott whose Eldarn Sequence had just had its first of three books, The Hickory Staff, published.

My next step was one that seemingly thousands if not millions of people do each day, Google. It's amazing how many science fiction/fantasy magazines are in existence. I don't know what I expected, but the numbers were staggering. I decided to refine my search slightly and augmented it with the word submissions.

It may not have reduced the number of returns, but it at least meant I wouldn't have to search every site for their submissions page. I picked three for each author and set about fulfilling the requirements requested of the individual publications. Each submission would consist of a query letter, a word document I've prepared containing quotes about how wonderful I am, and most important of all, either an excerpt or the whole manuscript depending on their requirements.

One thing that most people offering you advice about making submissions tell you is to always make sure that the query letter you send is distinct for each publisher. The last thing they are going to be impressed with is a dear sir form letter. They will be much more interested if you can tell them why your article will sell them more magazines then they did last month without you.

Usually magazines will offer you the alternative of submitting by e-mail, especially if it's only a query letter, but most of them will even accept your story as well. One thing I did notice, and this is something that you have to be really careful of, is that some them accept items as attachments to their emails, while others want them included in the body. It really felt odd pasting seven or eight pages of text into a letter as a postscript to the signature.

I had figured on making those two interviews my trial balloons. I'd see how they went over and make a decision based on that whether or not to keep trying to sell existing pieces or to start writing for specific targets. I was still keeping my eyes open for other magazines to submit to as well.

Somehow or other, I can't remember how, I came across the submission guidelines to Addbusters so I sent them off some of my snarkier satire pieces, because that would be along the lines of what they'd like. I also came across a magazine based out of Oakland call Color Lines which publishes all manner of articles that deal with issues of race.

As I have written quite extensively on the subject or race, I thought it would be worth a shot to try and get one or two of my pieces included in their magazine. What was promising about Color Line was that they will hold on to submissions if they think they have merit and publish them in an appropriately themed issue. So if an article doesn't work right away, it could work three months from now.

I have since heard back from three of the magazines, one was an outright rejection, one was a we can't use this article, but please keep us in mind for the future, and the third was from Color Lines saying your article is in the hands of the appropriate editor for possible use in a future issue.

You know what they say about not encouraging people sometimes, because they won't shut up. Well that's me, give me an opening and I'll blasting away at with everything I've got. I immediately sent them off four more articles which they could hopefully make use of for some upcoming issue.

What's also nice about Color Lines (aside from the fact they don't spell the name of their magazine properly) is that they pay. Not just a pittance either but $250.00 (in American dollars which would be close to $300 in Canada) per article. Even one of those a month would make a huge difference in our lives let me tell you.

I have a nice fantasy that involves getting picked up as a stringer by a few magazines and starting to make enough money that way to be able to augment my disability checks through my work as a writer. Being paid and being able to make enough money a month to put a dent in our horrific debt load would be an astounding thing.

The only drawback is my slightly astringent tone. Not many popular magazines, the ones with money enough to pay real amounts, want stuff that's a little bit nasty, or even outspoken. They want stuff that a housewife will feel comfortable reading while she's waiting in a doctor's office.

Since one of my stated goals with my writing is to be a little unsettling, I don't think Good Housekeeping and Redbook are my ideal target market. But it seems there are enough magazines out there that are willing to look at work that isn't completely main stream so I can always hold out hope of earning a partial living from what I love doing, while awaiting the fame and fortune that will come my way when I'm a published novelist.

Speaking of which, the novel that is, I have finished editing up to the end of Chapter Eleven, and have surprised myself twice by laughing out loud at own my prose. (Not at typos, but in genuine amusement, thank you very much) I've also submitted it to another publisher, this one a little closer to home than the last one as it's based out of Toronto.

Kunati Inc. is a brand new publishing house that's looking for what it calls "Fresh Voices". I guess that means they are looking for different approaches and new ideas. Well I'm different, so I figured they were worth a shot.

They wanted a query letter, and a chapter pasted into the body of the email. So that went out a day or so ago, and we shall see what we shall see. It hasn't even been a month since I sent out the query and three chapters to the folk in India, so I don't suppose I'll be hearing from them for a while yet.

That's okay as I still have a ways to go to finish editing the rest of the book, and also have to figure out a way of breaking it to them that it's in two parts. Of course if they happen to be checking up on my web presence and me they might just end up reading this, and find out anyway.

Well so there you are, an interlude post as we await with baited breath anything exciting happening in a writer's life.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 08:42 AM | Permalink

I don't know whether to laugh or puke. Crying has nothing to do with the stink being given off by the justifications Jared Paul Stern is offering for his recent dealings with supermarket magnet Ron Burkle. For the measly sum of $100,000 up front, and a $10,000 per month retainer, he offered the California billionaire freedom from the abuse that Stern's employer, The New York Post, has been heaping on him via it's "Page Six" society column.

Stern has taken refuge in the classic contemporary two-part rebuttal when one is caught with their hand in the cookie jar. Part one, claim to be framed or entraped, and part two, justify it by saying, what does it matter, everyone does it anyway.

For part one he claims that it was Burkle who was continually trying to get him to use the word protection, that only selected bits of a three hour conversation was released, the $100,000 was for a proposed investment in his clothing line, "Skull and Bones", and the $10,000 per month for work as a media consultant. Besides which he claims to have told Mr. Burkle that he didn't need protection against lies being told him in "Page Six" stories because the column did not print them:

"If we do an item and we say, 'There's a rumour that so-and-so is doing something,' it's not inaccurate that there's a rumour of something," he said yesterday. "We report on what people are talking about." Jared Paul Stern "The Globe and Mail" 2006-04-12

Somehow the printing of hearsay and innuendo has become not lying about a person as long as you say somebody is saying its gossip or a rumour. Does it matter who says it? If for example Mr. Stern's editor says it to Mr. Stern, and Mr. Stern then runs a story saying, rumour has it that Mr. Burkle has sexual relations with farm animals, how is that not lying?

Anybody can say anything about anybody and preface it with I heard, or rumour has it, but that doesn't make it true. Why print it if you don't know whether or not you can substantiate what has been claimed? The only reason could be to damage the reputation of the person in question. There is no such thing as benign gossip or innuendo, so why do these people at "Page Six" think they are an exception?

Part two of the classic defence, the everybody else is doing it bit, is not only being wheeled out by Stern himself, but he actually has supporters who are rallying to his defence. Although I personally wonder who is going to take the words of a person who is referred to as a "gadabout" seriously anymore, (didn't they go out of style with Bernie Wooster and the "anybody for tennis" crowd) one Toby Young offered the following justification on his blog:

"Even if Stern is guilty as charged — and he maintains he's guilty of nothing more serious than 'an error of judgment' — this is surely exactly the behaviour you'd expect of a Page Six reporter," Young wrote. "In fact, it's precisely because columns like Page Six give off such a pungent whiff of old-fashioned corruption that they're read so avidly by media insiders." Ibid.

That sort of comment takes your breath away. What kind of world do these people live in where they get their thrills out of reading the writing of people they know are lying, and trying to cheat others for money? Why would newspapers devote a mm.of column space to this people, whose only claim to fame is they inherited money?

In response to reports that have surfaced of "Page Six" editor Richard Johnson and his staff having entered into arrangements of the kind proposed to Mr Burkle in the past Stern's comment cements his commitment to the everybody's doing it alibi with his claim of, "You'll see people on all levels and all kinds of publications doing that"… "It's just not really a huge issue."

Which is an interesting statement to be making when it goes against any ethical standards a newspaper needs to maintain if it wants to keep the trust of it's readership. How much would you trust a news source if you thought that it had entered into "a relationship" with certain parties that offered soft coverage in exchange for financial considerations?

Maybe some of you think, like Mr. Stern does, that the coverage this story is receiving "is completely insane", due to the fact that it's only a gossip column. But that's not the issue; the issue is the conduct of the people involved. Is this what we want from our journalists, people who think the truth is only another commodity to be bought and sold?

The people who inhabit the world that Jared Stern writes about are the leaders of industry and the wealthiest individuals on the face of the planet. Are they truly as morally bankrupt as he makes them out to be, or is he simply depicting them as such to defend his actions?

Mr. Burkle had written to Rupert Murdoch, owner of the New York Post expressing his concern over the repeated number of slurs on his character being expressed on "Page Six". The response, seemingly, was to send out Mr. Stern to negotiate a deal of some sort for representation of some kind.

Whether it's as Mr. Stern claims it was, an innocent conversation about a job and investments, or what the F.B.I. claim it was, extortion, pales next to his lack of contrition for potentially committing a felony. His plea of innocence is seriously undermined by his quickness to try and excuse the behaviour by claiming everybody does it. If he were truly innocent why would he have to resort to making those types of accusations?

Clouding the issues by tarring others with same brush hasn't even worked for politicians, so I don't see why he expects people to buy it from a journalist. Especially one who claims that something isn't a lie as long you preface it with the magic words, "was claimed", or "said to be".

If so-called legitimate news sources like the New York Post are stooping to reporting innuendo and rumour, and allowing it's staff to augment their salaries by reaching side deals with their subject matter, no matter what the situation or circumstances, it calls their credibility into question. Any claim to objectivity on the part of their staff and management is immediately made suspect by the behaviour and claims about policy made by Jared Stern.

It's one thing for a newspaper to have an editorial policy endorsing certain policies and slanting its coverage to reflect that, but it's another all together to sell coverage on demand. At the very least they have a responsibility to their readership to be clear as to their purpose.

Is their purpose to provide across the board, objective as possible news reporting? Or do they merely serve to function as a public relations vehicle for those who can afford their services? That is the point that really need clarification.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 03:19 AM | Permalink

It was the concept I liked, that's why I decided to review the CD. Give the audience access to the basic tracks so they can play around with the sound and make it more to their liking. It's a variation on a theme that's been starting to appear as people's home computers have become more sophisticated in their abilities to deal with music files and information.

Discs like IR2 have made individual tracks available online for people to either include in their own songs, or to remix into different forms. David Byrne and Brian Eno have released tracks from their early 1980's found sound experiment My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts online for people to play with and generate new music.

So when I read that a performer named Duncan Sheik was issuing a special DVD ROM with his latest CD, White Limousine that would allow his audience to remix some of the material, I thought what a good idea. I know from my own personal experiences that there is plenty of material out there I would love to get my hands on to do just that.

Either turning the bass track down, increasing the lead vocals, or putting a little more oomph in the guitar, something that would make the song sound better to my ears. At first blush it sounds like something very democratic that the performer is offering his audience: I know not everyone has the same tastes, so why don't you change it to suit your needs.

But after listening to White Limousine I've had second thoughts on the matter. How many composers would allow anyone to mess about with what they considered their final take on something as personal a piece of music? In the first two instances that I talked about what's being offered are tracks that have been previously recorded to be used as the basis for a song, any song. Chants from Southern Pacific Indigenous peoples, drums from the Amazon basin, radio broadcasts, and other third party creations.

In his release notes where he talks about the idea, Duncan Sheik says "there are countless other versions of these songs that one might attempt and I'm genuinely interested in what other people do with this material." The software that's shipped with the DVD ROM splits each song down to its component tracks, and allows you to remix them to your heart's content.

I guess it would be fun for people who are into playing with other people's music and not creating their own, but personally I can't see the point except as a marketing tool. When I've watched musicians mix down their songs, they've been in agony trying to ensure everything matches what they heard in their head when they composed it. They're usually more liable to let someone sleep with their partner than mess with the final mix of their music.

I personally wonder about a person's commitment to their music if they are willing to surrender control of it just to see "what other people do with this material". Can you see Van Gogh offering someone a brush to add some daubs of colour to "Starry Night"? He might do the "Lend my you ear bit" from Shakespeare first, literally; and with a dull palate knife.

Maybe I had all these thoughts because the music on White Limousine left me quite cold. Everything is very competently played and the mix is impeccable but the songs felt like they were trying too hard to be meaningful and emotional.

On a song like the title track "White Limousine" which is supposed to be an up-tempo, anthem style rock number, with the lyrics supplying an ironic counter point, the oomph of emotional commitment to the song isn't there to make it feel like an anthem. It feels like a middle of the road ballad singer trying to sing a rock song.

This album is plagued by "Sincerity" with a capital "S", and reminds me unfortunately far too much of the soft rock that was so popular in the early to mid 1970's, where genuine emotion was a commodity in short supply. It lacks the genuine simplicity of folk music, or the raw energy of rock, and falls into some intermediate void between the two.

Pseudo poetic lyrics are set against a backdrop of soft synthesized keyboards, muted guitars, bass, and the occasional string arrangement. Lyrics like "Here and there/Haunting my closets and drawers/My evermore, Now and then/Forgetting that everything's changed/I call her name" ("I Don't Believe In Ghosts") aren't about to make Leonard Cohen lose sleep in worry over the competition.

To be fair to Duncan Sheik, maybe its just his music doesn't appeal to my sensibilities, he's been given good press from loads of other media, but than again I've never been a People magazine person. Perhaps if that's the world you move in, these trite pieces of sophism will appeal to you and you can have fun remixing the material. But to me it would just be a waste of time.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 03:26 AM | Permalink

It's quite the task on most days to weed through all the "news" that's reported from various sources and try to glean the few nuggets of truth that might give you an idea of the state of the world. There is television, radio, newspapers, webblogs, newsmagazines, tabloids, and god knows what else offering a continual bombardment of opinions, facts, points of view, reports, documents, undisclosed sources and of course good old rumour.

Then there are the interpreters who will tell you that what you read meant something other than what it was you thought it meant. Or even if it does mean that it doesn't matter because it is irrelevant to the big picture, which they never bother to describe.

Of course the stuff that's reported as facts by those in all those various media are not based on the person writing the piece having actually seen or witnessed an event. No he or she has been told what's happened by someone who "officially" knows what happened.

Or it's based on documents that have no provenance, or witnesses who mysteriously appear for press conferences and then vanish off the face of the earth. Reporters are planted, sorry embedded, supposedly to allow them access, but access to what? Access to what someone wants them to see, or what's to be seen?

All of the above is referred to as the legitimate news, which brings us to its illegitimate offspring or siblings. Although on some days it's hard to tell the two apart there is still no doubting the gap separating the two in terms of credibility and believability. To me that raises the question of the necessity for "Social News" or "Celebrity News".

Those doing the writing and those being written about get their egos massaged, and we are led to believe that they are of some socially redeeming value because it's always to do with a party for this or a benefit for that. That the combined cost of the clothing worn by those in attendance is roughly equivalent to that of the GNP of a small country is neither here nor there.

Even without an event to bring them into focus as a group, we are told that because of their wealth that as individuals they are more important and more interesting than other segments of society. The diamonds they wear and the clothes they buy are more important than the life rescued by some paramedic on the sidewalk below their penthouse apartment.

What is the public fascination with these people? Does it stem from a form of envy, or is it simply a matter of living vicariously through them so that we may experience what we are told is the ultimate in achievements: the ability to inherit wealth successfully.

Of course there is some cross-pollination between those who are "Social News" and those who are "Celebrity News" For some socials have parlayed their stories of excess and stupidity into a type of dog and pony show celebrity status. They get on camera and perform some tricks for the audience and display themselves and their assets to the best of their advantage and for no purpose other than their own glorification.

Of course if nobody read about them or watched them on television all of this would be moot, but because there is a ever increasing appetite for this type of tripe, not only do the number of shows featuring ersatz celebrities increase almost daily, the number of media outlets obsessed with them multiplies correspondently.

There are some of these media outlets that have been deemed more powerful than others. There's the old warhorses of the West Coast, People Magazine and Entertainment Tonight, who pretty much handle the less sensational Celebrity news, figuring what they lack in sensationalism they make up for in access and quality of pictures.

On the East Coast, where there are less Hollywood types, but more blue blood aristocrats it's "Page Six" of The New York Post that rules the roost. "Page Six" seems to exist for no other reason than to be vindictive and catty about some people and loving about others.

One poor fellow was attacked on such a consistent basis for over a year, that he contacted the paper's owner, Rupert Murdoch to complain that the items were completely false. It made no difference. It's because of this gentleman, Ron Burkle that the good ship "Page Six" is foundering in rough waters, and it has made itself the topic of scandal sheets around the city.

One of the main contributors to "Page Six", Jared Paul Stern, is under investigation by the F.B.I. over allegations that he tried to extort $220,000 from the aforementioned Ron Burkle. It seems Mr. Stern was offering Mr. Burkle protection from negative stories. For $100,000 up front and a further $10,000 a month, he would be guaranteed that not a negative pronoun or adjective would appear in The New York Post for the next year in reference to him and his dealings.

Mr. Stern also claimed that various other industry heavies had come to an "arrangement" with "Page Six": Miramax head Harvey Weinstein, and Revlon's Ron Perelman being two very prominent New York figures purportedly amongst them. Both have denied any such allegations of course, but Steven Houpt points out in his article about "Page Six" (see above link) neither man has been attacked in the last year.

It of course has nothing to do with Miramax Books publishing an advice book by one of "Page Six's" contributors, Paula Froelich, or that Richard Johnson's (the editor in charge of "Page Six" since 1995) girlfriend was employed by Revlon for a while. Even more surprising was that when Rom Perelman and Ellen Barkin were splitting, "Page Six" virtually ignored the event.

Now of course columns of this type have little or no credibility to begin with, gossip is their stock in trade. They give innuendo, and hearsay the same credence as properly sourced material. To actively solicit funds as a guarantee of positive coverage is akin to selling fire insurance with a Zippo in one hand and a tank of gasoline in the other. Neither practice is looked on in a positive light by the authorities.

What I find incredible is that after a year of cutting a person to shreds in public the people at "Page Six" had the audacity to think that if they approached him like this he wouldn't report them to the police, and might actually go along with the scenario. It makes you wonder what planet they are really operating on.

Like the majority of the people they cover, the folk at "Page Six" seem to think that world revolves around them. But even for these people this is an all time low.

When I read about things like this it truly sets me wondering about the quality of anything I read, see, or hear anywhere now. I'm aware that neither New York City or Hollywood are indicators of mood as much as they'd like to believe they are, but to even think that sort of behaviour is acceptable for a newspaper is sickening.

We as consumers of the product of news have to start raising objections to the manner that it is both being gathered and presented if we want to see something close to what we used to have for news. Tell them we don't want our papers and television stations to be government mouthpieces, nor do we demand that they entertain us.

Unless the audience is willing to demand that changes be made to what we see, hear and read, it will only continue to get worse.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 04:53 AM | Permalink

Bravery is a funny word sometimes; you hear it bandied about by politician when they refer to soldiers en masse as in "our brave troops", people are sited for bravery for individual acts or deeds that are considered selfless to the point of putting yourself in harms way, and we use it to signify some ones fight to overcome personal hardship.

It's obvious that bravery and courage come in all shapes and sizes, and those who perform the deeds that we so admire are as diverse a group as the term itself. Usually our admiration is reserved for individuals and their actions in the face of adversity.

How do we measure bravery? How can we discern what is truly brave from the hyperbole that we are fed on a constant basis. To say, our brave troops, means absolutely nothing because you could be as easily referring to some staff officer who will never see action as a Marine or Infantryman in the front lines outside Kabul or Baghdad.

Too often when bravery is mentioned in terms of soldiering it's rare for it to be used in reference to the actions of one individual. It's usually just melodramatic manipulation of sentiment by politicians and or pundits who are trying to generate an emotional response to a circumstance instead of having to rationalize a position. To speak against dissent by saying it undermines our brave troops is not saying anything of substance, and thus diminishes the value of the word bravery.

I have devised a means that I find works for me in measuring the bravery of a person's actions. It usually comes down to asking myself the question, could I have done that? Whether I ask it of myself consciously or it just pops into my head in the form of, Holly Shit how did they do that, it amounts to the same thing.

Although all types of bravery are deserving of praise and recognition there is one form that has always meant more to me than others. Those who, at great risk to their own life, are willing to speak their minds about circumstances and situations when everyone else is remaining silent. It's one thing to voice dissent in our society where to a certain extent it is allowed, but it is another thing altogether to do the same thing under less liberal circumstances.

It would be safe to say that Germany of 1943 was not what one would call a free and open society where political and social dissent were encouraged. But it was from 1942 until February of 1943 that a group of young Germans published, printed, and distributed leaflets that condemned not only the actions of the ruling Nazis but the people of Germany for not objecting.

The White Rose Society was composed of five students and one professor at the Munich University in Germany between June 1942 and February 1943, the time of their arrest and execution. A sister and brother, named Sophie and Hans Scholl headed the group and were joined by three ex-soldiers turned students, Christopher Probst, Alexander Schmorell, Willi Graff, and professor Kurt Huber.

Sophie and Hans Scholl were just normal citizens of their country, in fact like their fellows they had been members of the Hitler Youth as children, and had been awarded with good citizen citations. It wasn't until they became aware of the Nazi policies regarding the euthanasia of the physically and mentally challenged that they began to speak out against the regime.

It was in fact their Bishop's, Bishop Galen, sermon on that topic that was the contents of the first of their six pamphlets that they handed out. The common theme of the leaflets was the evil nature of the regime and a call to arms for the people to oppose the activities of the ruling Nazis

It is not too late, however, to do away with this most reprehensible of all miscarriages of government, so as to avoid being burdened with even greater guilt. Now, when in recent years our eyes have been opened, when we know exactly who our adversary is, it is high time to root out this brown horde. Up until the outbreak of the war the larger part of the German people were blinded; the Nazis did not show themselves in their true aspect. But now, now that we have recognized them for what they are, it must be the sole and first duty, the holiest duty of every German to destroy these beasts. White Rose Society Second Pamphlet

One thing that becomes painfully clear from reading these pamphlets is that although it was forbidden to speak of these things, everybody was aware of the extermination policies regarding Jewish people. In one pamphlet they refer to the deaths of 300,000 Jews since the invasion of Poland. The six members of the group proclaim that if as a country they don't want to be remembered as the embodiment of evil they have to challenge this behaviour.

They did their best to remain secret, mailing the pamphlets to other cities for distribution, leaving the leaflets in deserted hallways of the university for students to find in breaks between classes, until one day, when they discovered they had some left over in their case and just dumped them out over an atrium from the top of a staircase, they were spotted and turned in.

They were arrested on February 18th 1943 and executed February 23rd 1943 by guillotine.

They must have known when they started that would have been their fate, how could they not have considering the knowledge they already possessed about the country. Yet they believed so much in the ideals they were expressing, and loved their county so much, that they were willing to take that risk. To me that is the ultimate in bravery, ordinary people following their conscience and doing extraordinary things, even though they know full well it could result in their death.

Soldiers, fire fighters, and police officers are all called upon to do acts of bravery at certain times in the course of fulfilling their duties, but ordinary citizens are not expected to run into the burning building to rescue someone. Occasionally you will read of a person reacting to a situation and reacting to circumstances impulsively, like racing into a burning building to rescue someone.

While there is a quality of heroism involved in that act, it differs from the activities of the members of the White Rose Society, in that they made a conscious, premeditated decision to act, and continued to do so until their inevitable death. To me that takes a type of courage beyond any other. One that forces me to ask myself, could I have done that?

Posted by Richard Marcus at 06:14 AM | Permalink

In the early 1990's I happened to come into contact with quite a few people who had spent a good portion of the 1980's as guests of the Canadian Government. All of them faced the same problems involved making the transition back into life on the "outside" that I'm sure former inmates have faced for decades. But the ones I knew were faced with the additional obstacle of the massive technological leaps that had occurred in that decade.

Things that I took for granted, like bar coded information on a library card, stunned them. For some of them CD players hadn't been invented when they had gone inside, digital technology was a complete mystery. They eventually adjusted, but for their first few months they were like tourists on their first visit to Manhattan gawking at all the big buildings.

Ten plus years is a long time to be cut off from the rest of the world, and the eighties was a period where technology advanced at a rate faster than any decade previous in the twentieth century. It made sense that they felt like the proverbial strangers in a strange land until they acclimatized.

I've lived and worked out in this society as an adult now for twenty-five plus years. Even before I left University in 1981, I had plenty of life experience through part time jobs and the like. But the fact remains for most of my adult life I've felt just like those men and women did during their first few months out of jail.

It's not the same thing of course. I haven't had to make any adjustments to major changes in technology except in the manner that all of us have, as it's impacted more and more on our lives. I haven't been cut off from what we consider normal interactions with other members of society. Yet in spite of all that most of them have been able to eventually figure out some way of fitting in while I'm still feeling alienated.

I walk down town and I look at people glued to their cell phones walking down the street and I wonder what 's so important that they can't wait to talk about it. Sometimes it's like being in the middle of countless one-sided telephone conversations. It truly amazes me what I hear people say. Maybe it's because they are talking on a phone, but they obviously think no one near them can hear what they are saying or they wouldn't be talking about the things they talk about as they walk down the street.

I think the cell phone is a truly marvellous invention; for people driving I can't image the feeling of security it must give you knowing that you have it at your disposal in case of some sort of emergency. But if I have to hear one more white boy with his baseball cap on backwards flip open his damned phone and say "Whazzup" I may just have to find out how thin those pieces of equipment really are by introducing it to a portion of their anatomy.

That's something that leaves me completely confused, young white males from suburbia trying to talk like poor black men from the ghetto. But instead of at least trying to find some of the rhythm behind the speech, they use it as an excuse to be homophobic, misogynist, and violent.

Instead of this behaviour being condemned by society for being offensive, major clothing manufactures, record companies and whoever else encourage it by offering a multitude of "gangsta rap" styles for sale.

Of course there are those who condemn these activities, but for all the wrong reasons. They're more concerned with the fact that their children might be having sex, than about them turning into mindless regurgitaters of hate.

Why is it that so few people have a problem watching somebody being tortured during an interrogation of a television show like 24 Hours but if a woman's nipple is accidentally revealed they bring the wrath of God to bear on the hapless television station which had no means of preventing the event from happening.

So what's the lesson we're being taught today children? It's all right to hate women, call them bitch or worse, and there's nothing wrong with watching good clean violence (even though it's now been proven that there's something about watching violence that triggers a person's reactions so that unconsciously they believe it is happening to them) but a woman's body is repugnant and must remain unseen at all times.

They call two adults having sex obscene, or pornography but those aren't the real obscenities these days, at least in my mind, or the true pornographers. What about the banks in Canada that make over a billion dollars in profits, and their C.E.O.S that make million dollar salaries without paying taxes, isn't that the slightest bit obscene?

Don't get me wrong; I understand the importance of profits in this society we have chosen to create. Without them companies wouldn't be able to create new jobs, improve their technology so they could compete against other companies in the same fields etc. What I don't get is when the profit margin is what is more important than the people who have contributed to earning the profits of a corporation for years.

It's almost a yearly ritual now for the banks in Canada to lay off a couple of thousand employees so they can maintain their high profits. The fees they charge when you have the audacity to want to make use of your money that they are holding onto increase every year for the same reason. But the guys who use the executive washroom never take a pay cut; they obviously need their disposable income more than the teller who has been with them for thirty years taking the shit and abuse from the customers over their policies.

I love how they refer to laying people off as rationalization, what does that mean? How can there be anything rational about taking away someone's livelihood? What gets me is that everyone just accepts this sort of behaviour as normal and legitimate. The media and the government never question the behaviour of the banks, or any corporation for that matter, that will willingly sacrifice thousands of jobs to increase profits that line the pockets of people who are already have more money than they know what to do with.

Of course these are the same governments who have no problem blaming the poor and less fortunate for what ails society. If it weren't for all those bums on Welfare, why our economy would be in great shape. But because of the poor we have to charge you high taxes and steal money out of your pockets.

People actually believe that stuff, and vote for the party that promises to cut taxes, and they're all happy when they receive a check for two hundred dollars in the mail. But they are also the loudest to complain when services start to disappear, or when they're job disappears because they were all paid for by taxes.

Maybe it's because I don't watch television, I don't have cable and we get one channel on our T.V. and use it for watching movies and nothing else. So I don't have the same frame of reference that so many other people have. I don't watch any of the popular shows, and only have a vague idea of what people are talking about half the time. The term reality television is still an oxy-moron to me along the lines of military intelligence, not a genre.

I remember the first time I heard of the show Survivor. I was at work and two people were talking about it. I asked them what it was, and they explained the premise to me. I think they were very affronted when I asked about the other six days and 23 hours the people were there each week without us watching, and how did one hour in a week's worth of living constitute reality?

It's all these thing that so many others except as normal, that I can't get my head around, that leaves me feeling like I'm some sort of alien creature. Like those guys who I used to know who had just been released from prison, I'm estranged from the world around me.

It's normal for people to have different priorities in life, not everyone is going to desire or want the same things or to have the same job as everybody else. But it feels very strange to not understand the way most people think or process information.

The only explanation I can come up with is that I was abducted by aliens as a baby, and returned here a few years ago as some sort of spy or mole, but my programming wasn't very good, so I don't fit in perfectly yet. That makes about as much sense as any other theory, don't you think?

Posted by Richard Marcus at 09:57 AM | Permalink

Comfort food. That's a pretty common expression that you hear people use to describe a food that makes them feel better. It might evoke memories of a time when you were sick and your mother would make you something special to cheer you up, or it might just be a favourite food.

But whatever the reason, comfort food makes you feel good. It's the food you eat when you're depressed, when you need a boost, or just for the sake of feeling good. There's just something about it that eases whatever troubles you might be experiencing.

I've never really had a comfort food, I don't know why but it's just not something that's ever eased my emotional state. I'm definitely not one of those men whose heart can be won via my stomach. Maybe it's because I'm the one who does most of the cooking in our house, and I appreciate someone doing the dishes more than any food that's made for me.

On the other hand it could also be because I have no warm fuzzy feelings about childhood, and nothing is going to evoke nurturing for me. When you have no memories of genuine nurturing, it's going to damn hard to be reminded of them.

Not surprising considering what I lived through as a child, and how I dealt with it for the next twenty years; running away aided and abetted by any substance that would alter my reality, that instead of searching for comfort in nurturing, I search for comfort in leaving things behind, in escaping.

Food is pretty here and now, and doesn't allow for much escapism, so I've looked to a different media to foster my comfort. Most of my life it's been books. There have been periods where I've stopped reading because I haven't be able to find an author to fulfill that criterion.

Fortunately for my peace of mind most of my life has coincided with the emergence of the Fantasy genre as a major player in the publishing world. Talk about the perfect escapist reading. Magic, dragons, different worlds, evil wizards, and all those attributes that go into making a fantasy novel are just the ticket for my comfort food of the mind.

In the past few years I have had more need than ever of comfort reading. Ever since the fall of 2001 when I first started going in and out of the emergency ward of the hospital on a regular basis I haven't really been very interested in reality. I was living it a little too much to want to read about it.

The first building block in my fantasy rotation ( I call the books that I read on a regular basis my rotation, because I will read through them all in order, and if nothing else is published by the time I get to the end of the rotation I will start over again) was that old standard Tolkien. I've probably read The Lord Of The Rings and The Hobbit twice a year every year for the last thirty some years.

But a person can't live on hobbits alone, and there are a couple of others that have been old favourites for quite some time. British author Susan Cooper wrote The Dark Is Rising sequence, a five part series about Will Stanton the youngest of the Old Ones whose part of the great battle between the Light and the Dark who fight the long battle that's been fought since the time of Arthur in the British Isles.

Not only are they well written intelligent books, but they are wonderful history lessons that date back to ancient times and bring to life many of the mythical creatures out of Great Britain's long forgotten history. How many other books can claim to have Herne the Hunter rubbing shoulders with Arthur Pendragon as characters.

Recent years have proven a bounty for people like me who are looking to escape out of their reality. Needless to say so much of it is dross, but there are also some clear winners: Steven Erikson and his Malazon Book Of The Fallen sequence, James Barclay and his books about the Raven, and his new sequence Ascendants of Esotrea, R. Scott Baker's Prince of Nothing trilogy, and Ashok Banker's retelling of the three thousand year old epic tale The Ramayana.

Each one of these authors has created a world where I can wander through and be amazed by the creatures, beings, and magic that inhabit their worlds. When your own world's boundaries are reduced by illness and pain living vicariously through the pen of an author is sometimes your only recourse and a wonderful relief.

The characters all feel like friends after a while, so that even though you end up reading the same stories over and over again, it doesn't matter because you are getting an opportunity to visit with close friends. You know their quirks and idiosyncrasies as well as your own after a while, which only serves to increase the feelings of comfort and familiarity.

There's a rather glaring omission from that list above, but that's not because I don't feel like it belongs in this category of comfort books, but with due respect to the above authors, they have become my standard for comfort books. Maybe because it was the timing in which they came into my life that I'm of this opinion, but to my mind J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series is without a doubt the finest comfort food my mind had ever found.

In May of 2002, in an attempt to solve my acute chronic pain condition, I had some fairly major surgery done, the lower right side of my colon, including the cecum and a good chunk of the ascending colon were removed. After a week in the hospital I was released on a Tuesday.

By Friday of that week I was in Emergency in so much pain that I couldn't straighten. I had developed an abscess and had to be kept in the hospital an additional three weeks being pumped full of antibiotics and morphine. Needless to say by the time I got out of the hospital I was feeling a little beat up.

On my first full day out of the hospital, my second day home, my older brother and sister in-law came down from Ottawa for a visit. They brought me the first book in the series Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (For some reason it was changed to Sorcerer's Stone in the United States and translated into American idioms) as a get well present. I read it three times in the first week I owned it.

It's not like its great literature, or even the best-written book in the world, but there is something about the series that appeals on a comfort level. Each time I open the books it feels like I'm visiting with old and dear friends. I'm always surprised that they're doing the same things they were doing the last time I read about them, because I'm almost not reading them as stories but visiting the people in the books.

Yesterday was turning into a bad day for my pain condition, and I just felt the urge to pick up the books and start reading them again. I had just finished reading Ashok Banker's Ramayana and was casting around for something else to read. I tried a few others and none of them were doing the trick

As soon as I had opened the first page of Philosopher's Stone I knew I had made the right choice. I was back among familiar faces listening to their voices as if I had known them all my life. Nothing lifts the spirits quite so much a visiting with friends you can count on.

I've never understood the saying "familiarity breeds contempt", or maybe it all depends on what you are being familiar with. For me, in the circumstances described in the article above, familiarity brings joy and relief. As others have comfort for the stomach I have comfort for my head.

No matter how you look at it, in this day and age anywhere any of us can draw comfort from is something to be treasured. For me it's my books because they free my mind to travel to places where I can find relief from my own reality. Sometimes they're better relief than any analgesic a doctor can prescribe.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 03:15 AM | Permalink

The big bad wolf is back. Maybe he never went away, but for a while there he seemed to have achieved a form of rehabilitation. There were programs to reintroduce him to Yellowstone Park in Wyoming, and ensuring that pack numbers in the wild were maintained.

So it was something of a shock for me to read about the government of Alberta's repeated culls of the wolf population. Wolves and ranchers out west have a long history of an adversarial relationship, with wolves being blamed for every single loss of live stock to predators.

Well of course there is truth to that complaint, but what do you expect is going to happen when you destroy the habitat of a major predator's prey, and offer it a smorgasbord that doesn't have the brains to run away? If you were a wolf what would you do? Go hungry or eat those stupid fluffy things that just bleat and don't even fight back? That's a real no brainer as far I'm concerned.

It was proven that culling the pack in the neighbourhood of where the attacks take place doesn't reduce the amount of live stock that fall victim to wild attacks anyway. First of all there are more than just wolves who are predators in this world, and secondly you get rid of one pack, another will move in to take its place.

Anyway that's not even their excuse this time for killing off wolves. Nope this time they're trying to protect one a herd of caribou that we've almost driven to extinction by our behaviour. The Alberta government is not satisfied with being able to boast a 4 billion dollar surplus, and continues trying to make more money through exploiting as much of the environment as they can to pump more natural gas.

As they push further out into the hinterlands and the tundra, they intrude more and more on the habitat of animals like the migratory herds of caribou. This was the main objection that environmental groups were raising to Bush's plan for drilling in Alaska, that they would disrupt the caribou herds.

In a balanced eco-system wolves play an important part in population control among prey animals. When you're dealing with an animal as large as a caribou or an elk, most wolf packs are only going to take down the sick or the lame or the elderly, who wouldn't survive anyway. A healthy adult caribou is not an easy take down even for a pack; somebody is going to end up with their head caved in by a hoof or gored on an antler.

The herd in question has had its number reduced by loss of its habitat. Roads built into their territory have resulted in fatalities. The same birth defects that plague domestic stock where ranches are too close to drill sites prevent the herds from repopulating at a normal rate, and just the presence of humans in an area cuts into a herd's potential grazing territory.

But instead of accepting that we could have had any role in the matter and cutting back on human intrusion into the situation, its been decided to blame it on our old enemy the wolf. He's such a handy villain, what would we do without him?

Somewhere down the years we humans have developed a mysterious, almost pathological fear of wolves. Maybe because they were the canines that told us to take a hike when we domesticated the species all those thousands of years ago, or maybe because we used to compete for the same prey, but whatever it is, no other predator has been more maligned through out the history of Europe. (The coyote is a relative new comer to that list, as Europeans didn't encounter him until we showed up in North America.)

Wolves have been pretty much wiped out in most places that they were native to in Europe, mainly due to the loss of habitat as man expanded and destroyed the living space for them and their prey. But there was also a deliberate attempt to destroy them out of superstition and fear.

Folklore and fairy tales have darkened the wolf's image in the eyes of Europeans. Most of these depictions have come about through our giving human attributes to animal behaviour. The National Wildlife Federation offers the examples of them being rarely seen in the wild being interpreted as secretive, hunting in packs as being sly, and howling as being evil.

Although the site doesn't say this, it's hard not to notice how the rise in fear and superstition about the wolf increased with the rise of Christianity. Prior to tenth century AD wolfs were not universally feared in fact they played prominent roles for good in mythology. Twin brothers, Romulus and Remus, who were saved from death by a mother wolf who suckled them as infants, founded the city of Rome according to Roman myth.

Other pre-Christian stories were also full of praise for the wolves, and the attributes that latter became evil, were held in high esteem. Perhaps the demonising of the wolf was a deliberate ploy on the part of a new religion feeling insecure of its place in society and that needed to remove the competition. At any rate the wolves' reputation went to hell, so to speak, in the middle ages.

The reputation of being devil spawn and eaters of little blond girls and their grandmothers doesn't do much for a creature's popularity. It's also something that travels well, especially when you come over to a new world, populated by savages living in deep mysterious forests. It was easy enough for settlers coming to North America to hold onto their beliefs of the wolf, if not being the devil incarnate, than at least a good buddy.

But you know what? In all the time Europeans have been in North America; there is not one verified account of a wild wolf attacking and killing a human. Cases which people accuse wolves of such attacks are the result of wild dogs, and hybrids of dogs and coyotes (coydogs) that lack the fear of humans that wolves have.

Years ago back in the 1950's, Canadian author Farley Mowat was working for the government in wildlife department up north. He was sent out into the field to gain evidence to support a proposed policy to cull wolf populations because they were decimating the Caribou herds and the large prey populations in general.

His discoveries, which were popularized in the book and movie Never Cry Wolf, did the opposite of what was wanted. He found, through observing the wolves, that their primary source of food were mice and other small prey animals. The only time that they would hunt the larger prey was when an animal was easy pickings, the sick and the elderly who the herds of deer, caribou or whatever were abandoning to their fate.

It just wasn't worth the effort to track down and hunt a healthier animal, and they would take the easier way of feeding themselves by going after the lesser creatures that we consider pests. This of course goes a long way to answering the age-old question of "What purpose do they serve?"

Humans have this wonderfully selfish attitude of only seeing the world from their own point of view. An animal is judged based on what it does for humans, not on the fact that it is a part of the mystery known as creation. We don't seem to want to accept that things haven't been created solely for our benefit, but have a role to play that in the world that doesn't take us into account.

The large predators of the world serve to keep prey populations in check so as to prevent the spread of disease and ensure the balance of a local ecosystem. Look at all the parts of North America where we have to have annual culls of the deer herds because they have no natural predators. Populations of deer in many states have become riddled with illness; like in Pennsylvania where the risk of Lime disease is so high that it is a crime to touch deer that are road kill.

It's become obvious that punishment of wolves is not a deterrent when it comes to protecting livestock and extermination is an unacceptable alternative. Not just on tree hugging moral grounds, but based on the key role they can play in keeping the population of pest animals under control. In fact farmers and ranchers could, if they work it right, put the wolves to use for them preserving their harvests and grain stores from rats and other so-called vermin.

What they need to do is develop systems of making their livestock less attractive as prey. Like in the case of the wolves observed by Farley Mowat make the effort involved not worth the pay off. In Ontario you can't drive by a flock of sheep anymore without seeing a donkey or two installed in the field with them. It turns out they make great guardians for the flocks. A couple of donkeys can fight off wolves and coyotes with ease.

It is important that we get over ourselves and learn how to co-exist with nature sooner rather than latter. So far we've been able to prove that our current idea of dominance is not working out so well. Maybe for those who have been able to line their pockets and who don't have any children it doesn't matter what shape the world is in when they leave, but the rest of us might like have some of the wild spaces preserved.

The most important lesson that we as a species need to learn is the one we can be taught by examining our relationship with the wolf. We can't look on animals and impose human values, characteristics or expectations. We can no longer continue to look upon any creature as separate, including ourselves.

The sooner we realize that all life is interconnected the better our chances of keeping the wild spaces alive and vibrant for all. What better place to start than with the wolf, which of all creatures in the West we owe the biggest apology. If after hundreds of years of animosity we can work out co-existence arrangements with them, it will be a huge step in the right direction.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 08:40 AM | Permalink

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Yesterday afternoon I had gone out with my wife to take her to a doctor's appointment, when we got home she checked our phone messages. She turned to me and said: " Go check your email it sounds like you've got an interview with Arlo Guthrie tomorrow morning"

There have been certain songwriters and singers who have been supplying me with a window on the world for as long as I can remember. They've told stories and jokes, sung songs, and helped bring some things into perspective; make what seems truly overwhelming almost manageable.

Well today I got to talk to one of the people who have been talking to me for more than thirty years. It was nominally supposed to be about the 40th anniversary of the song "Alice's Restaurant", but when I was preparing for the interview I had thought how often do you get to talk to a person who had sung about and lived through as much as he has?

As I'm about as subtle as a brick wall, I think he might have been a little taken aback at the suddenness of the conversation shift, but he was too nice to say anything about it. His answers to my stumbling questions about the mood of the world were thoughtful and as perceptive as any historians, for of course that's what he is.

Folk singers are our cultural historians. The songs they sing are the stories of our society at a certain point in time. You may not agree with the opinion that some of the songs express, but that doesn't stop them from being an accurate reflection of what was happening at the time.

I thought I was going to be nervous about this, but when the phone rang at 9:30 on Wednesday April 5th the familiar cheery voice at the other end of line put me right at my ease. After a few comments about the weather, I asked him if he minded if we began with a few questions about "Alice's Restaurant" and he said, " I'm yours for twenty minutes ask what you want"

"I'm a little confused about something ("There's nothing wrong with that" Arlo interjects laughing and I agree saying I enjoy it immensely) what exactly is this tour (The "Alice's Restaurant" Tour) the fortieth anniversary of?

It's the fortieth anniversary of writing the song. I started writing the song at the time of the incident in 1965- and finished writing it in 1966. We started this tour in June of 2005 and will finish it in 2006, so that's how it works out. (Laughs) Sorry about that, now you're not confused any more

Oh that's okay there's lots of stuff that confuses me….Do you remember why you wrote it Alice?

Nope, I can't really remember any specific reason as to why. We would turn everything into songs in those days. I remember we must have just come back from Officer Obie, and were sitting around, just discussing the events of the day, and started to sing about it.

Then part two, the part about the draft must have been written at a separate time.

I was out at college in Billings in 1965, and came home for Thanksgiving, and we were visiting our friends, and I decided not to go back to college. Well in those days that lost me my deferment for the draft. It took them a few months to catch up to me, so it wasn't until 66 that I had to go … It was actually they who made the connection between the two, bringing up the criminal record when I was up there… so after that it was just a natural connection to make and add it in to the song

When did it hit you that you might be stuck singing it for the rest of your life?

It was pretty soon after the song came out on record that I knew people were going to want to be hearing it all the time. When I first started performing, I've been performing since I was 13 you know, I was performing my dad's songs, and stuff like that from that era. So when I first started playing (Alice) people would say why's he talking why isn't he singing? Then after Alice became popular and all these people would show up wondering why I was singing and not talking…You're just not going to be able to please all the people…

Most of the time there's songs playing in the background on the radio and we don't really pay too much attention to them, but if it's like a day when you've fallen in love, and the song becomes part of your personal soundtrack than your going to pay attention to it. That's why I'm glad they're albums, cause you can't expect someone to play the same songs in concert all the time… I'll play it every ten years now for the anniversary tour, but that's it

So no waiting for the eightieth anniversary?

No every ten years is okay(laughs)

On the Live In Sydney disc, you dusted off another old song "Coming into Los Angeles" But you used the intro to talk about the current situation in America regarding the Patriot Act, and other increased security measures throughout your country. Having lived through one involvement, Viet Nam, before, how would you compare the feelings and mood of your country between those times and the events surrounding the War on Terror and Iraq etc?

There's a lot of questions in that…there are a lot of things that are familiar to people who lived through Viet Nam, and what happened then and things today. In those days, from the president on down the line, the authorities were looking for leaders. The thing was there weren't really leaders for the kids out on the street. It was more a natural groundswell against what was happening. Anybody who was claiming leadership was mainly being opportunistic, and looking to take advantage of the situation for their own gain.

That's the same sort of situation right now, we're looking to get rid of leaders like bin Laden and saying that will stop the unrest, but it won't. What's happening is a groundswell reaction based on the conditions these people are living in. Folk like bin Laden are just opportunists claiming leadership. Getting rid of them won’t stop what's happening. The conditions won't have changed that caused the groundswell in the first place.

Your Dad's song "Deportees" has always struck a chord for me, we were one of those families that never had grapes in the winter, my mom was very much into the boycotts, never shopping at the grocery stores that didn't tell you where the produce was grown. From an outside observer's point of view, it looks like things are actually getting worse, for people coming up from Mexico.

We live in an increasingly sophisticated world that makes it difficult to make simple comments on stuff. There are too many people on both sides of the border who are taking advantage of circumstances and the situation.

Arlo: For those of us in the sixties we had a couple of people who we're examples we could look too, like Martin Luther King Jr. As an alternative to what was around us. People in the Middle East don't have anyone like that right now who they can emulate along those lines. It's like they've never heard of him or (me: Gandhi) yeah or Gandhi.

You bought Alice's Church a while back and have made it a focal point for activities, what are some of the programs that are being run out of there.

There are a lot of crazy people in the world, and we spend billions of dollars a week, or whatever the figure is, on places where they can hang out, like battlefields and the like. And that's okay I guess for them, but what about the rest of the people, the regular people who just want to have a place where they can go.

That's what Alice's church is all about, a place where regular people can hang out. Have some food, a drink, whatever. It's one small building where people can just be, and maybe even one small step in the groundswell process.

That was it, all the time we had. In fact he went over with me, I got an extra eight minutes, which meant he wasn't going to get a break between his ten o clock interview and me. As soon as I got off the phone I set to work on transcribing the interview and what I quickly noticed happening was how flat it was sounding on page. It's the same words as what had been spoken with only a little editing, but it's missing Arlo's distinctive voice.

When I read over what's on these pages I can hear him in my head, because I was the one talking to him on the phone. I only hope I was able to capture some of the feeling and care that came through in his voice.

Folk music and folk musicians are our oral historians. They keep a record of the times they live through via their songs and stories. Arlo Guthrie has been telling us the stories of our times for forty plus years. Spending twenty plus minutes with him the other day gave me a little more insight into what it takes to be that type of person.

If nothing else, I hope that anyone reading this has the same experience.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 04:25 AM | Permalink

Periodically when you review a lot of CDs items come in for review that you've never heard of. To me that's part of the fun of being a reviewer that you get to discover and listen to new performers and either send up big warning signals for people not to buy, or hear someone truly wonderful for the first time and tell people all about it.

Sure, like anybody else, I like to review my old favourites, just because it's nice to see what they're doing with themselves this year. However, I don't think anything quite matches listening to someone for the first time and being blown away at your good fortune in finding something wonderful.

Such is the case with the CD Balancê by Sara Tavares. While eighty percent of the lyrics were incomprehensible, being sung in the language of Cape Verdeans living in Lisbon, Portugal, the spirit of the singer shines through unblemished and at least communicates the passion behind the music.

"We speak Portuguese slang, Angolan slang, some words in Cape Verdean Crioulo, and of course some English. In Crioulo there are already English and French words. This is because slaves from all over the world had to communicate and didn't speak the same languages. We are a metisse (mix blood) culture" Sara Tavares

So the songs are something only a polyglot could feel comfortable with in terms of language. The moment you think you hear a familiar sound, it vanishes into a swirl of seemingly incomprehensible unconnected words and phrases. Take the title track "Balancê" for example.

In Portuguese the word refers to the sensation of being in the groove when you're dancing to music, Lusophone (Portuguese speaker) Africans use it as a verb to describe good food that you are eating, and then of course there is the English word balance and all that it means.

The best thing to do in these types of situations is treat the voice as an additional instrument. Although each song comes with a two or three line English summation, they don't get near the emotional or spiritual heart of the material.

Ms. Tavares' voice is able to communicate emotions without utilizing words. Expressive and emotive it conveys humour, affection, strength, sadness, and joy. Working against a background of varying musical styles, she is by turn upbeat, than uncertain as she's buffeted by the situations that the world can inflict on a person.

She's had her share of the world's unpleasantness, having been abandoned by her parents when very young, and it was music that helped discover her cultural roots. Having been abandoned in Lisbon to be raised by a Portuguese woman, her sense of displacement must have been high. An obvious African looking child being raised by an European in and European country couldn't help but notice that she wasn't like the rest of the kids.

The different styles that are represented on this disc reflect her desire to understand herself and her background as much as possible. Whether it’s the Afro-Beat and semba (Angolan Music) of Poka Terra or the Reggae of Planeta Sukri (Sugar Planet) or one of her more introspective tunes, she imbues her work with the enthusiasm of some one discovering something for the first time.

That type of exhilaration is infectious, you can't help but be drawn into at least the emotional context of each piece of music. She refers to the songs on the disc as "little lullabies to myself", pieces of music that are helping to define herself within her new context: African – Portuguese.

All socio-political considerations aside this is simply great music. Fun and infectious on the up tempo numbers; melodic and haunting on the ballads, Sara Tavares proves that you can communicate via music without a common language. Her voice is full of personality and has intimate quality that makes it feel like each song is being sung just for you.

As the third generation of the post colonial times start to come of age we are starting to see a melding of two worlds musically, the traditional and the new. Sara Tavares is a great example of what a wonderful mixture this can be.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 01:27 AM | Permalink

The Blues can be extremely difficult to play without sounding derivative. There have been so many great performers that have come before, and because it is such a defined genre, it takes great strength of personality to leave a distinctive imprint on the music.

Virtuosity and talent notwithstanding, if you can't put your own distinct flavour into the blues you just become another one in a series of guitar players, singers or harmonica blowers. It's hard to describe what that quality is, but you know it when you hear it.

B.B. King, Eric Clapton, Billie Holiday, Muddy Waters, Bob Brozman, Ry Cooder, and Leon Redbone are musicians who reach out and grab you with their performances. But they are rarities, with most of today's contemporary blues players being highly skilled, technically sound, but missing that certain something that separates them from the pack.

Sue Foley has been playing blues music professionally for eighteen years, and will be releasing her tenth album, New Used Cars, on April 11 2006. There is no denying the woman can play the guitar, from the Led Zeppelin style blues-rock of the title track "New Used Cars", to the "Beast Of Burden" sounding "Do It Again".

But there in lies the her weakness, the material all sounds so familiar. I don't want to listen to a song by one person and immediately be reminded of another performer's work. I know that the blues are a tradition based music, a particular sound based around a progression of specific chords, but within that frame work there is still room for innovation.

Ms. Foley is to be credited for writing or collaborating on, all the tracks on this CD. Too many blues players are content with slavish imitations of versions of songs that have been done for years. However there has been no attempt to explore any of the avenues of blues expression that have been opened by some of her contemporaries.

There are only a finite number of songs that can be drawn from the sounds of the Mississippi Delta before all the songs start to run into one another as a blur. The same goes for modern interpretations. It's been a couple of years since Ry Cooder released his CD of music with the recently deceased Arabian blues specialist, Ali Farka Toure, long enough you’d think for people to start exploring new avenues of expression.

One only need look at the work of her fellow countryman Harry Manx and Australian Bob Brozman to see how the music can still be revered while at the same time pushing the boundaries of its definition. Both musicians have rooted themselves strongly in the mud of the Mississippi but haven't let the weight of tradition give them clay feet creatively.

I think what disappoints me the most is that Ms. Foley is a scholar of the Blues and has done extensive research on female blues musicians form all over the world. She co-produced and compiled the two disk set Blues Guitar Women released by Ruff Records last fall.

The research she used for that two disc set was drawn from the work she's been doing on her book Guitar Woman slated for release in 2007. She talks about the women who have influenced her and those she has interviewed, but somehow it doesn't feel like this knowledge has been translated into her playing.

New Used Car is a disc of technically sound blues music that covers the full spectrum of styles and genres. But like so many of her male counterparts Sue Foley's sound leaves me cold. She obviously has a great passion for the music, witness her dedication to researching the role of women in the blues, but somehow it doesn't come across in her playing on this disc.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 03:28 AM | Permalink

Do you remember going to museums when you were young? They were wonderful places for a kid. From the huge dinosaurs, the full suits of armour, the weapons, and the stuffed animals in the zoological section. Of course nothing could beat the ancient Mummies in the Egyptology sections; nothing like dead bodies to enthral groups of kids.

In Toronto where I spent a good chunk of my childhood we had The Royal Ontario Museum (R.O.M.). It was a treasure house for kids. Including the basement it was four stories of musty rooms filled with things from all over the world to excite the imagination and scare the willies out of you.

The R.O.M. of my memory is a lot different then the reality today. Back then it was still an old fashioned British styled Museum with row upon row of glass fronted display cases filled with bits and pieces of civilizations and animal life that had been collected and gathered by field workers for years.

It was where I was introduced to the fact that there were other cultures that existed in the world aside from ours. Giant statues of Buddha down one corridor, while up another flight of stairs stood the elephant head Ganesa, and around another corner Tyrannosaurus Rex stood with wide open jaws ready to rip and tear.

Standing in the main foyer you could see the magnificent totem polls that ran literally from the basement of the building to the top floor as the stair cases wrapped around them. Of course these were more innocent and naïve times back then, when the words cultural theft and appropriation hadn't even entered our vocabulary.

We could look at tribal masks from the Haida and Iroquois nations without feeling the regrets we do now. Although every time I would make it into the basement for the displays representing life in villages a palatable wave of sadness would hit me. The frozen mannequins of men and women locked forever into tableaux of planting corn, cleaning skins and sitting around fires were so forlorn that you almost wished you could wake them up.

But those moments were few and far between for ten year old children who were easily diverted by the twenty-five foot stuffed python on the third floor, or even better the actual live one that was brought in for a visit. Its real fifteen feet were easily as impressive as the stuffed one's twenty-five.

Planetariums were still new back than in the early seventies, and when the R.O.M. first opened the one attached to the museum it was as if another world was opened for us. None of us kids had ever experienced anything like it, laying back in chairs and watching the stars and planets sweep overhead; it was almost frightening in its immediacy and size. The universe was right there in front of your face and you couldn't ignore it or how small you were compared to just the size of our solar system.

Museums have changed in the thirty plus years since I first explored the R.O.M. No longer can they simply display history in glass-fronted cases and hope to be able to capture the imagination of children. They've been forced to integrate technology into their displays and make them "sexier" for kids.

Some of the technology is great because it enhances the experience by allowing for the recreation of events in ways that never could have been even thought of when I was a kid. But some of it seems to be mainly to prevent the kids from figuring out that they might be learning something. Bells and whistles that light up and go off for no apparent reason except to flash lights and make noise.

Even the architecture has changed. For the R.O.M. a lot of this involved the essential building of additions to bring more of its exhibits out of storage so the public could see it, or opening existing galleries to more natural light. Items that used to be hidden away in dark corners, almost invisible due to poor lighting, are now exposed and awaiting their public.

The museums themselves are becoming works of art and the R.O.M. is no exception. They are rebuilding and renovating on a massive scale in order to bring even more exhibitions into the public eye. They are claiming that Renaissance R.O.M. is one of the largest Museum renovation projects in the world today, but at what cost?

I don't even mean simply financial cost, but what is it doing to the experience of going to the museum. Will these grandiose buildings that are springing up to house collections of art and artefacts in major cities around the world serve the public they are designed for, or simply alienated them with their splendour?

Part of the attraction of museums was their comfort. Sure they were cramped in places but they felt homey, and places that you'd want to spend time in quiet contemplation of some interesting point of history. Or perhaps sit in a corner and sketch the designs inscribed on a sarcophagus in the Egyptology room.

According to a report in today Globe and Mail newspapers Canada's museums are in crises. The governments have no problems putting up huge amounts of money for massive renovation projects like that of the R.O.M., but are unwilling to do anything about maintaining them after they are up and running.

Museums like the R.O.M. should be all right, but it's the mid size museums across the country that are in serious trouble according to this article. In some ways these museums are almost more important than their glamorous big city cousins, because they concentrate on one areas or one topic's history. Without them the knowledge they preserve could be lost forever.

Our museums are vital links to our national past, and for some of us our first introduction to the wider world that lies beyond our doorstep. While it is important that they attempt to keep abreast of the times so as to be able to attract new audiences, it is also important that they maintain the ability to make its guests feel at home to study and learn.

These are not just for entertainment; they are for studying and learning. They don't need to tell the young people they are trying to attract that fact if they don't want to, but they shouldn't lose sight of it themselves

Posted by Richard Marcus at 05:18 AM | Permalink

I'm one of those people who have a hard time learning how to accept a compliment. It comes from years of self-doubt and inability to believe in my own worth. One of the thoughts that has made it easier for me to accept compliments, or to at least acknowledge the fact that one has been paid, is consideration for the person paying the compliment.

If someone has gone to the effort to offer you their sincere congratulations or praise, than the least you can do is graciously accept that compliment. What amazes me is how many people, who are not afflicted with my past, will seek to brush off compliments with vague generalizations or trite denials.

False modesty is in some ways far more egotistical than the most aggressive self-promotion. In some ways, dismissing someone else's opinion is the same as saying "What do you know?" When you think about it, there is actually more humility in accepting a compliment graciously, than pretending to not deserve it.

There's a big difference between humility and false modesty; with the former implying a sense of dignity and the latter simply self-serving. Sometimes I fear that the world we live in, or our society, which is the world I'm most familiar with, knows far too little about humility and far too much about the pride that goes with false modesty.

To me humility and being humble indicates an ability to show gratitude for the praise you are receiving and the ability you have been gifted with. Sure you've had to work hard to refine your skills to the point where you receive praise, but without some core ability that you were born with, unique to you, that hard work would be for nothing.

The ability to interpret inspiration as writing, whether fiction, non-fiction, or poetry, is a gift that I'm often at a loss to explain where it came from, but one I'm eternally grateful for. I only need look at the void left in my day when I'm unable to write, for whatever reason, to know how bleak and desperate my world would be without it.

I know that my circumstances are exceptional, in that due to health problems, I'm severely limited in my abilities. It even scares me to think about what would happen if I couldn't write, because after that is left only passive entertainment and depression.

I guess it's only natural that I'm so straight forward about this, considering my circumstances and how much it means to me, but shouldn't everyone who has that creative spark feel some gratitude for that gift. I know this isn't a subject matter most of us are comfortable with; it probably evokes thoughts of new age bull or other forms of religion.

But the type of gratitude I'm talking about has nothing to do with any specific belief system; it has to do with an individual's attitude towards what he or she is doing. If they feel like they are God's gift to the world because of their abilities than gratitude is going to be in short supply.

But if they have a certain amount of humility in what they do, a realization that they are only one voice among many, an inherent gratitude is expressed through that appreciation of others and knowing one's place in the world. The problem is that in North America we are taught that ours is the best way; or to put it bluntly the only way.

Television, newspapers, movies, politicians, and anyone you care to think of, offer a continual barrage of information proclaiming we are inherently superior to other societies. Our cars are better, our politics are better, and our religion is better.

What kind of humility does that foster in people? Instead of seeing ourselves as on equal footing with the rest of the world, we consider ourselves better and separate. If we think of ourselves as a superior society, what does that do to our ability to be humble?

Although it's easy to blame only North America because I live here and am exposed to it on a daily basis, most of what I've talked about can be applied to all societies. It is a very human thing to believe that one's way of life is superior to another. I'd hazard a guess that we wouldn't face half the difficulties we do as a species if we were all a little more accepting of each other's differences.

There is nothing wrong with feeling pride in what we do, or who we are, it's when we allow that pride to be translated into superiority that it becomes a problem. When we begin to believe everything is all our own doing, whether as a society or individually, we become arrogant and believe ourselves to be superior to others.

Some of us have more intelligence than others, some of us have better manual dexterity, some are faster, some are more compassionate, but none of those gifts translate into superiority anywhere except in our own minds. Remembering that they are gifts and it's only polite to be grateful for a gift might go a long way towards dispelling our arrogance as a species.

When someone compliments you on a job well done, say thank you; to both the compliment and to your gift that inspired the compliment. It really does make you feel good about yourself.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 09:54 AM | Permalink

I had fully intended on doing an April Fool's post this morning, I had even managed to get as far as writing a few paragraphs when I realized my heart wasn't in it. Perhaps it's because so many of the headlines in recent days have been such that nothing I could have written could compete with reality for surrealism and inanity.

If I had written as dialogue some of the things that have come out of people's mouths in recent days, I would have been laughed at for being so unrealistic, paranoid, or just plan crazy. Maybe these things aren't funny in that sidesplitting way we like to associate with April Fools, more like funny in the, holy, I can't believe this is happening kind of way.

Look at the Conservative Party of Canada for instance. They were elected on January 23rd 2006 and they haven't bothered to call parliament to deal with two fairly important issues having to do with international relations. It seems they have discovered the secret of dealing with a minority government's precarious position by the simple expedient of delaying a sitting of the House of Commons as long as possible.

One of the issue's that Canadian politicians are not being given a say in is our increased military presence in Afghanistan. When Prime Minister Harper was questioned about a debate on the issue in the House, he claimed that a debate would only risk the lives of soldiers.

The very strange thing is that he has full party support for the Canadian Army in Afghanistan, what some are worried about is our increasingly active role as aggressors instead of peacekeepers. Maybe what he is worried about is the fact that he doesn't have public support. A poll conducted last February found that 62% of Canadians were against sending troops to Afghanistan, and 73% were in favour of having Parliament voting on the issue.

While the prime minister wants people to believe this is a reaction to the increase in casualties that Canadian troops have experienced in the last month, the poll was taken in mid February, before our soldiers were repositioned onto the front lines. Even better was the pollster's remark, a former Conservative party advisor that the results show that Canadians obviously don't know enough to make an informed decision.

So on one hand you have the Prime Minister of Canada accusing his people of being cowardly, and on the other a Conservative party pundit saying the people are ignorant and don't know how to make decisions. Is this some new strategy they have developed for wooing voters? Some sort of reverse psychology trick where they heap abuse on the people whose support they want for their policies. I can see why they don't want to take the issue before parliament, with an attitude like that they could alienate the opposition parties and be out on their ear after the first vote.

Canadian troops have been in Afghanistan for a long time now, and the public have had a lot of information about the situation there, and the roll our troops are being asked to play. Canadians do not as rule feel comfortable with our troops in an aggressive role in a conflict. As the pole suggests we are much happier when our troops are doing the peacekeeping role that has earned them the respect of nations around the world.

It took us years to reclaim that respect after we agreed to be participants in the first Gulf War back in 1990. It was not until we made the choice not to join the Coalition in Iraq that people remembered we were more than just an extension of American foreign policy. No offence to any of my American friends reading this, but no country wants to be seen as someone who just apes their neighbour. (Anyway the only way we could have participated in Iraq was by withdrawing our commitment from somewhere else in the world. We simply didn't have the resources available; never mind that the majority of our population was against involvement)

If you're interested in a good source for information on Canada's role in Afghanistan, including a military assessment from our Chief of Staff General Rick Hillier, The Globe and Mail newspaper has put together their version of a master post that provides links to almost everything that has been written in the last month, in their paper, on the subject.

The second major foreign policy decision that the Conservative government made without consulting parliament was to cut aid to the Palestinian authority. This makes Canada the first country after Israel to cut aid to the new Hamas led government.

Even the American government knows better than to do that. Without that threat to dangle over the heads of Hamas what chance have any of the governments outside of the area of forcing Hamas' hand when it comes to peace talks. Cut off all aid to them, and they will just say screw it, and not even bother to negotiate peace.

Once they get over the initial euphoria of having won the election, they are going to realize that they need Israel far more than Israel needs them. Where else are their people going to get employment? Who else has the technological expertise to help them set up farming communities in the dessert?

Like Arafat before them, they will soon realize that angry rhetoric won't provide jobs for their people, or put food on anyone's table. It won't open universities, build hospitals, or even public schools. Without peaceful relations with their neighbour they will not survive long. They will also soon learn that no one has patience for suicide bombers anymore, and that retaliatory raids from Israel can't be used to generate sympathy except among the naïve and gullible.

Governments need to take a stick and carrot approach with Hamas, not just cut them off unilaterally in a vain attempt to woo the Jewish vote in the rich suburbs outside of Toronto who voted Liberal in the last election. This was an issue that should have been subject to an all-party debate.

When a government has a minority mandate, they should not be making unilateral moves in this manner on issues of importance. They didn't receive the endorsement of the country to act on their own in any matter. The people of Canada elected a minority government because they did not trust any one party to rule the country by themselves. They expect in those situations for the House of Commons to play an active role in the decision making process.

Finally, from this past week, comes an all time low from a Conservative member of parliament. As has been widely reported in the Canadian press, Prime Minister Stephen Harper has made it perfectly clear he doesn't want any members of his caucus talking to the press, or releasing statements to the press without getting them cleared by his office.

Much like in the election, he's trying to make sure that his lunatic fringe is muzzled and doesn't come out with any comments that might scare away moderate voters. Well with Mr. Harper out of the country in Mexico meeting Presidents Bush and Fox, somebody got past the protective cordon.

On Thursday of this week Colin Mayes sent an article to his community's newspaper which included this statement: "Maybe it is time that we hauled off in handcuffs reporters that fabricate stories, or twist information and even falsely accuse citizens.”

Interestingly enough this statement was in reaction to people complaining about Mr. Harper limiting access to his cabinet ministers, and comparing those actions to that of a totalitarian state. It's certainly the sign of a great thinker that he would counter such arguments with threatening to jail members of the press who say things like that. Nothing totalitarian about threatening to jail the press is there?

One could almost feel sorry for Mr. Harper. He's tried so hard to keep the kooks in his party under wraps to make him and his people look statesmen like, and not scary to the moderates who might be wavering between him and the Liberal party. I would suggest muzzles and duct tape from now on, but that might not look good.

Perhaps an electrical buzzer implanted in a sensitive spot that is connected to the nervous system, or at least the parts that control speech. Whenever one of them opens their mouth to talk they will receive an electrical jolt to remind them to keep their mouth's shut.

Like I said at the beginning of the post sometimes there is no need for April Fools' posts. The world, especially the world of Canadian politics, is a strange enough place on its own.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 09:20 AM | Permalink

Psstt, want to hear a secret? Tracie Morgan. Yep, Tracie Morgan, she's the best-kept secret in Kingston, Ontario, Canada. I've lived in Kingston now for almost sixteen years and I've seen her singing and playing her guitar ever since I've lived here.

Clubs, coffee houses, street corners, anywhere you can play a guitar and sing; Tracie has been there singing her heart out. Yet for some reason she's still a secret. While others of less dubious distinction have gone on to achieve recognition, she's continued to remain undiscovered.

Well she won’t be able to keep hiding her light under a bushel once people listen to her latest release Naked On Main Street currently on sale at CD Baby and reputable download sites, like I-tunes, near you. Once you hear this disc you're not going to forget the name Tracie Morgan in a hurry.

First of all there is her voice, it can challenge you with its strength, seduce you with its husky, sultriness, and pierce your heart with its sharpness. Whether through choice or economics she is the only vocalist (except for electric guitar on one track and harmonica on another, she's also the only musician) and this only serves to demonstrate the diversity and range of her voice as she harmonizes with herself on every track.

Then there's what this voice can sing. Driving rock and roll on "Orphans and Ghosts", teasing blues on "Black Cat, Blue", hard questioning on "Babel" and poetic resonance on one of the best covers of Leonard Cohen's "Lover, Lover, Lover" I've ever heard. Helen's face may have launched a thousand ships, but this siren's song would have diverted them from their task long enough to at least have bought copies of her CD.

Maybe I'm exaggerating, but can you blame me? Think of what passes for women vocalists these days; squeaky voiced sex toys that squirm around on stage, more interested in being provocative than singing. Or the other extreme who are oh so very serious when they sing about meaningful things like "love", "heart", and other equally important new age emotions that have no relationship to the world we live in.

Tracie Morgan's voice is real; when she sings about love it's with lines like "you say I will be with you forever except for all those times I can't be found". No great illusions t here, but no self-pitying whine either. We all make choices and have to live with the results, whether in love, work, or any aspect of life that you chose to dwell on, and Tracie's songs are real enough to live in that world.

But it's not a world devoid of humour either, because life would sure be boring if we were serious all the time. "Black Cat, Blue" is not only a great blues song but also an ode to bad luck and all the forms it comes in. It's not often that a songwriter can make fun of herself with such style and flair, but Tracie manages it here with great aplomb.

When it comes to Leonard Cohen songs I have to admit to a little bit of possessiveness in regards to other people doing his material. They either do pale imitations of his atonal delivery that only he can carry off, or they treat them like delicate little flowers, instead of the muscular poetry that they are.

Tracie doesn't shy away from any of the emotions in "Lover, Lover, Lover", whether real or implied. The guitar, percussion and vocals combined prove equal to the challenges faced when covering a song that's as identifiable with its writer as this one is, and allows her to come out the other side looking as good as she did going into it.

It's still Leonard's song when she's done with it, but Tracie makes it hers temporarily, and grabs our attention right from the start and holds it all the way through. Leonard may not be here right now, but listen to my version, she seems to say, and it's well worth the listen.

Naked On Main Street is more than well worth the listen, it's a great disc from a great performer, whose been hidden away in a backwater town in South Eastern Ontario for too long. Tracie Morgan is one secret that needs to be blabbed all over North America.

You can listen to mp3s of "Rain" in either broadband or if you're like me, primitive dial up at her web site, and you can also link to places to buy the disc from there as well. Do yourself a favour and get in on the secret before everyone knows all about it.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 06:23 AM | Permalink