Leap In The Dark

There is something about poetry and photography that seems to keep them both on the fringes of their respective areas of expression. While most writers and visual artists are considered as somewhat suspect by the mainstream of society, poets and photographers appear to occupy their own special niche even further removed.

While writing prose for a living is still considered a slightly freakish thing to do with your life, especially if your not the one in a million who makes a fortune from it, at least you write in plain English which most decent folk can understand. But poetry hardly ever makes sense and when it does its always about emotions and things that you're not supposed to talk about in public.

How can photography be an art? Everybody has a camera and take pictures of trees and people – what's so special about some guy taking photos that he can't even get in focus. At least with those painter types you can see that it might be difficult to pick up a brush and paint a nice picture of a flower or a bowl of fruit. But my Aunt Mavis has a camera and she doesn't get her pictures hung on a gallery wall even though she takes some pretty snaps of flowers and the kids.

In spite of those attitudes, and the fact that fewer and fewer people seem willing to make the effort to appreciate and/or see beyond what's in front of their faces, there are still men and women out there willingly laying bare their emotions on paper and offering glimpses of how they see the world via the viewfinders of their cameras.

Admittedly they are a much more difficult medium to appreciate than say television or the majority of movies. The instant gratification factor is noticeably thin on the ground in poetry and in photography, but with a little effort the rewards are significantly greater.

One need look no further than Viggo Mortensen's recent book of poems and photography, I Forget You For Ever for confirmation of that fact. On a purely visceral level alone the work in this collection has an immediate impact through the sense of urgency that pervades the whole collection.

This is how we pass the little time we have, what we do in our waking hours while we may or may not be dreaming, planning, rehashing, regretting, and occasionally feeling that we understand what in the world is happening. Mortensen, Viggo; "With These Hands While We Can"; I Forget You For Ever, Perceval Press 2006, pg. 6

In the paragraph directly before these lines is a listing of the numerous things we do to "pass the time". What little time we do have to accomplish anything, is being wasted by our willingness to fill it with trivia and inconsequential activities. We have lost sight of our own mortality and its significance in regards to our actions and therefore don't pay enough attention to what is important.

Open the book to any page, photograph or poem, and you'll either be given a moment stolen out of the while of time and frozen for you to look at and think about. Or there will be a presentation of time speeding by so fast as to be nothing more than a blurring of light or the flicker of images from an old super-eight-movie camera.

In "Leaves", the books opening poem, he uses missed opportunities to play with his son when a small boy as an example of a failure to realize that one day there won't be another day for you to do that thing you've been putting off. Sometimes the deadline on later comes due and we're not ready for it but it doesn't matter because clichés are right some of the time and time really doesn't wait for any man no matter how many regrets you have.

In the same poem Mr. Mortensen also reflects on how even when time is made, we are jealous of sharing ourselves, surrendering our valuable time, and parts of us are off somewhere else. In his case it's his imagination thinking about images for photos or ideas for poems. He says of himself that "I am what I imagine, not what I what I am". In other words he's living with his next creation somewhere in the future, not in the here and now with his son.

The photographs that stick out for me the most are the ones like "Toronto, 2004" where the lights of the city speed past and everything is a blur of visual noise. Toronto Canada isn't the only city to be depicted in this manner; Sao Paulo Brazil appears a few times as bright oranges and reds blurring past your eyes.

Time can vanish in cities on occasion and gets eaten up by distractions. It's very easy to lose track of where you are, where you're going, and even to an extent, who you are. Any time that I have ended up in a foreign environment it has taken me a certain amount of time to adjust to my new surroundings. When they are a city it's even harder for all the reasons listed above. Sometimes it really does feel like everything is a blur whizzing by you because you feel so out of your depth.

In contrast are those photos that Mr. Mortensen has taken of places he is familiar with, or comfortable with. The series known as "Winter Light", which depicts him and a group of other artists going out into the desert and each using his or her own media, recording the winter light. If one wanted to stretch a point you could say they are an example of an attempt to freeze a very specific moment; immobilize time so to speak. Why else call it "Winter Light" if not to immortalize that specific moment in time?

In the final long poem of I Forget You For Ever called "Forever". (You could make a real meal out the fact that poem uses one form of forever and the title of the book the two word format, but I figure why bother, just ask yourself what you feel is the difference, or if there even is a difference) Mr. Mortensen talks about feeling like he's on borrowed time, or has gone into extra time.

It's not that he feels his life is any imminent danger; it's just that perhaps if we stopped taking it so much for granted we would get more out of it. "Surely we could learn to look at our entire life spans that way…?" As a fluky bonus gift from creation we are given the opportunity to be on this planet, which quite frankly couldn't care less about us. Except perhaps it may wish that we didn't all hold on so tight. It's not like she is about to throw us off into space or anything so there is no need to cling to her like leeches.

I Forget You For Ever cements in my mind that Viggo Mortensen is a poet and photographer to be taken seriously. This isn't the idle passing fancy of a bored star; this is the work of a dedicated and thoughtful artist, who at a way station in his life, his child leaving home to go out on his own, reflects on his life and career.

It's probably a topic that quite a few people would be able to relate to if they would take the time to sit and read the pieces in this book and then look at the photographs keeping the words in mind. Poetry and photography really aren't what you think them to be; one is a lot more sophisticated then you think, and the other a lot simpler. Give them a try, especially the work of this man as he does speak to universal themes that we can all identify with.

I Forget You For Ever doesn't seem to be listed on Amazon.com yet so you'll have to pick it up from the publishers Perceval Press I think it's running for $38.00 US, but considering that its trade paper back size and full of colour and black and white photographs, plus the poetry, you're getting good value for your money.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 05:22 AM | Permalink

There is something about poetry readings that I've always found slightly off-putting. It's not the poets or the poems; I can usually be counted on to be quite civil to most of them. No what usually gets to me are the audiences.

Oh I'm sure that most people at a reading have come to listen to the poetry and I have no problem with that. No it's the ones who have come for the "event" that usually get up my nose. The two types that I find the most aggravating are the ones who feel that everyone has really come to see them so they have to be part of the show, and the ones who act like they're doing everyone a huge favour by showing up for the reading.

The former sit up close to wherever the poets are set up and have to make noises of some sort before, during or after the poem and sometimes if you're really unlucky all three. There's the murmur of agreement that shows they approve of the choice of poem or the subject matter, which is a close cousin to the exclamation of disbelief, and finally the strident laugh at something only they find funny.

The latter has either accompanied the first type or is sitting in close enough proximity that they can work in counter point to each other. When the first is silent the second can make small harrumphs of disquiet to show how much of a waste of their time this truly is, complain about the quality of the coffee being served, and whisper to whoever is unfortunate enough to be sitting beside them all about the really wonderful reading they went to the last time they were in San Francesco.

So I don't get to hear or see much poetry being, which is a shame, because good poetry can really be brought to life by being read by the person who wrote it. When you hear the writer's inflection, or see the expression on his or her face, and listen to the tone of their voice, so much that never makes it onto the page is revealed.

Which is why I sent inquiries about a review copy to the Perceval Press about a new release they are currently offering. 3 Fools 4 April is a CD/DVD set of a poetry reading given by Scott Wannberg, Hank Mortensen, and Viggo Mortensen in support of the Beyond Baroque Foundation in Venice California. I would be able to see and hear three poets performing their work and not have to deal with the usual drawbacks.

Of the three the only one who's poetry I'm familiar with is Viggo Mortensen's having reviewed an earlier work of his quite a number of years ago, Coincidence Of Memory, and been very impressed by both his poetry and his photography. He's also a fair hand at acting, so I was interested to see what he'd do with his poetry.

As the DVD, with a few alterations, pretty much duplicates the CD I decided to listen first, then watch and listen. I also hoped that by listening I would be able to obtain a level of impartiality toward the three men by creating the illusion of anonymity and be able to
judge their presentation on what they did not who they are.

One thing I appreciated right off the bat with both the CD and the DVD was the format that the three men decided to follow of informally following one after the other with no fanfare or build up. Each poet would introduce what he was going to read, offer a preamble if required, and start reading.

Listening to forty-one poems is a rather overwhelming prospect even when some are no longer then twenty-five to thirty seconds. If it had only been one poet reading that many pieces it could never have worked. But having three distinct voices to listen too meant there was sufficient variety in tone and style to keep you interested.

Scott Wannberg reads like a roller coaster ride, climbing and descending hills and valleys of emotion with us hanging on for dear life. Either you're laughing hysterically, screaming enthusiastically, or shivering silently dependant on what peaks he's had us scale and how deep he has plummeted us in the descent.

There are two of his poems that stick out in my memory from both the CD and the DVD. First was the short poem "Hunter's Anonymous" which is a beautiful joke at the expense of Dick Cheney's hunting skills, or lack there of. As this was only the second piece I had heard from Scott, and his second comedic piece of the disc, I wondered how his bruising delivery would sound with a more emotional work.

The answer came when he read a piece about making a mad dash across the state to be at the bedside of his mother before she died. It was only then that I heard the emotion that hid behind what some might call bluster, but is truly an over abundance of feeling that just can't be held within the confines of a normal sized voice, and that has to be let out in some form or another.

In contrast to Scott, Viggo's son Hank offers a nice respite from turbulence. His poems are intelligent and show signs of what must be a lighting quick humour. His first poem "Freedom Fighter" is a brilliant piece that makes use of the words freedom and fighter to create a meaning contrary to our normal interpretation and expectations.

The second piece of his that caught my attention was "second chance, give or take a few". It was a very witty and intelligent take on a typical utopian political conversation "let's get rid of all the borders and live in peace and harmony". His reading showed a fine ear for timing, and his handling of the subject matter showed intelligence and perception plus something I consider essential for a successful poet; an ability to laugh at himself.

While both Scott and Hank are gifted presenters and writers, it became quickly obvious when Viggo Mortensen read that he was in a league of his own. Not necessarily for anything spectacular he does with the readings of his poems, in fact he almost delivers them in a monotone, but in his ability to let the poem shine through him like a beacon.

He acts as a conduit for his poems so that we are free to make our own interpretations of his work, rather then him feeling it necessary to impose an emotional reaction on us.

Viggo's poems about relationships leave one guessing as to who is to blame for its end, or for its success. Even when they are highly personal, or have the appearance of being about himself, he won't take sides and play the broken hearted lover or the jilting asshole. Like a pathologist he offers up a full dissection and autopsy, but instead of vital organs it's emotions that are being laid out on the table as we inspectors of life probe them for clues about the human condition.

He can be funny too, and although it was only included on the CD, "Everything Is Really Water", shows that Hank came by his sense of humour honestly. Of course I wonder if he ever has trouble explaining to people that his dad wrote a poem extolling the virtues of peeing in sinks. Actually it's more about the joys of peeing all around, but it's just that sinks get special mention; proper etiquette and cleaning requirements are very important.

One thing that worried me before I put the DVD in was that I had noticed there was quite a bit of audience noise bleeding through on the CD, including a female version of, I'm the show not those guys on stage. Thankfully she didn't make the cut on the DVD or it would have ruined it.

What was nice about the DVD was that you were able to clarify some things that you weren't certain about on the CD. Scott really did break down into tears in the middle of reading the poem about his mom dying. Or you get to see Viggo giving his son encouragement, or looking at him with pride.

While the CD probably has slightly better sound quality then the DVD, I return to what I said at the beginning of the review about seeing a poet live, and what the advantages of that are. All the little clues that you normally get from watching a person come through on a DVD. Whether body language or eye movement it all helps to us to interoperate the poem all the better.

3 Fools 4 April is a wonderful opportunity to see and hear three great poets and support a fine arts centre in Los Angeles. 3 Fools 4 April is available for sale through Perceval Press and is well worth every penny of the twenty dollar asking price.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 01:56 AM | Permalink

In 1973 Israel faced the last real concentrated invasion by the armies of the Arab world. An attacking force spearheaded by Syrian and Egyptian tanks invaded on the holiest day of the Jewish calendar, Yom Kippur. On "The Day of Atonement" the majority of Jewish people spend the day fasting and in Synagogue.

If there was one day of the year where the Arab armies had a chance of taking the Israeli forces by surprise and perhaps ending the war before it could even get started, this was it. What made it even more of a shock to the Israelis was that the Arabs chose to attack during Ramadan, the holiest days on the Muslim calendar. Devout Muslims will fast from sunrise to sunset during Ramadan then break their fast with a feast in honour of Allah.

In the first two days of the war it looked like the Arab armies might succeed, but after sustaining significant losses of tanks and men, the Israelis regrouped and by the end of the fifth day were able to start pushing the attacking forces back. In Adjusting Sights Haim Sabato plunges us directly into the middle of those opening days of confusion as seen through the eyes of a gunner and the gun sights of a tank.

Adjusting Sights is the author's recounting of his own experiences as a tank gunner in an Israeli armoured division during that period, so this is no fictional recreation of events. Instead the author writes with unflinching honesty about the confusion, chaos, fear, and fatigue he felt during the initial onslaught.

He and his closest friend, Dov, had been together since the early years of school, studied for their Bar Mitzvahs together, so it was only natural that when it came time to do their National Service in the army that they should serve and train together. On manoeuvres and throughout basic training they had been loader and gunner together in a tank.

Naturally, they assumed, when the call up came for the war they would be assigned to the same tank, but it was not to be. When they arrived at the depot it was total chaos. They were standing with the rest of their crew when an officer came up and asked "who's a loader"? When Dov steped forward – he said, "Come with me, so and so needs a loader now". And Dov was gone to another tank, to another gunner; Dov was gone period.

Shortly after leaving the camp and heading out towards where they have been told the enemy might be – but that's impossible how can they be so close already, was everybody's thought, including the author. The ambush that they drove into almost killed them all. Haim and the rest of his crew had to abandon their tank and try to walk back to camp through the middle of a pitched battle.

Between the four of them they had two Uzi submachine guns, and one grenade so when the helicopter full of Syrian commandos landed almost on top of them they were sure they were done for. Then out of nowhere an Israeli troop career pulls up and out pours a brigade of soldiers who open fire and take down the Syrians.

Things like that happen throughout the author's whole ordeal – the timing of events is such that the engine of his tank starts just in time to reverse before a shell hits. Or at one point walking back to the camp they hid in a culvert for a few moments and then continued on. Another tank squad did the same thing a little later and a Syrian troop passing by tossed some grenades in and killed all but one, the one who told that story to Haim.

Adjusting Sights is not about patriots; it's not about glory; it is about survival. Individual soldiers trying to survive each moment they are under fire when they don't know where the enemy tanks are. How do you fire back when you can't see who's firing at you?

Only occasionally do they say to each other anything that sounds remotely patriotic, and it is more desperation than anything else. "We can't lose, because if we lose Israel loses", is not a speech guaranteed to make the blood boil with patriotic fervour. But it's what they felt as they fought in order to live so that their country could live.

I've read a fair number of stories and a fair number of histories about various wars and battles, and this book has to have the most genuine feel to it of any when it comes to recounting the fighting. The confusion, the panic, the moments of frustration, and the relief when it's over are all communicated without any embellishment.

Nobody cheers when they blow up another tank, or when the enemy retreats. They just are grateful to survive. Another day that they survive is another day that their country survives. But something about Sabato's matter of fact approach manages to transmit the state of shock that most of the men are in. When he describes them watching two comrades rolling on the ground to put out the flames that are threatening to engulf them in same manner as he describes trudging through the sand it's not hard to understand their state of mind.

Haim Sabato is a man who takes his faith seriously, and therefore faith plays a large part in this book. But it's not the way that I'm accustomed to seeing religion or faith employed during a book about war. There is no group prayer where they gather to hear someone tell them that God is on their side and that should go out and kill in his name.

Instead for the men who serve in the tanks their faith and their rituals are their tie to normalcy. Getting up every morning to recite the morning prayer, wrapping the Tefillin (prayer boxes worn by orthodox Jewish men for the morning prayers signifying the covenant between them and God) on to their forehead, arms and fingers, and facing the east to greet the day are something you all the time, not just in during a war.

After the fighting has ended Haim and his troop are stationed on the Golan Heights and they keep the Sabbath ritual every week. It becomes almost even more important here than it would be at home. Their faith is as much a part of their lives as breathing for some of them, so maintaining the practices and rituals makes them feel alive.

After the author was finished running to escape the ambush where his tank had been immobilized he and his fellow crewmembers were finally able to rest for a moment. As he was sitting there he remembered that he had been taught that no man may make a vow in the hopes of expecting assistance from heaven – except in moments of extreme distress.

He sits and wonders what it is he would vow and the only thing he is sure of is that the world will never be the same again. At the end of the book on Golan Heights he remembers that vow, that the world will never be the same again. He thinks about how he lived and his friend Dov din't, or how that one crewmember lived while the rest of his crew died from the grenade blast in the culvert.

That is a debt that needs to be repaid, but how do you change the world? You aim higher then you've aimed before, just as a gunner in a tank adjusts his sights to allow for the change in trajectory, so must we all adjust our sights and set higher goals if we want to change the world.

It is often said that soldiers are the ones who most apposed to war. They know on occasion that it becomes necessary to defend your homeland from invasion, but there should be no other reason for it. Haim Sabato is that type of soldier. This is a book about war which tells us we need to adjust our sights away from fighting and lift them up to a more worthy goal.

Who holds in His hand the souls of all that live
And the spirit of each mortal man
The soul is Yours and the body is Your handiwork
Spare the work of Your hands

Lord of all souls, the soul is Yours
But the body is also Your handiwork
For this it was made, to sanctify Your name in this world
Master of all worlds, spare the work of Your hands. Hebrew Prayer of penitence

Posted by Richard Marcus at 08:38 AM | Permalink

Stories in real life don't tend to follow a straight and true path like those that are written down in a book by an author for the entertainment of his contemporaries. Sometimes they wander off on digressions which have caught the attention of those involved in the story, other times it becomes necessary to backtrack a hundred years in search for a story's beginning.

Did it begin here when this happened or perhaps here when that happened, or did it like all stories begin with the beginning of all things and is just one more branch thrown out by the universe. It can be a delicate business extracting a story from all that surrounds it, like following on thin thread of one colour through a many hued woven shawl.

Here it snakes in front of the weft, here behind; see there how it quickly snakes around those five or six almost similar strands, maybe following on with them for a while but by looking closely you can see the point of divergence. No matter how unique or individual we believe it to be our own story or that of our family isn't usually that much different from other members of our community.

Of course with every rule there has to be an exception and in Aleppo Tales Haim Sabato relates, although one family's life is forever intertwined with the rest of the community, in this book detail three incidences of a family's thread glowing far brighter than their neighbours. Perhaps if he had the energy he could have detailed ways in which more than the just the people named in these stories had distinguished themselves.

First you need to know about the "Aleppo" of the title; this is the name given to the territory in Syria where Jews had lived for close to two thousand years, ever since the destruction of the second temple during Roman times. Among their number were also Jews who had come when the Spanish expelled them in 1492, Sephardic Jews coming to join a community who practiced in the same manner that they did.

Sometimes an action, or a word that is spoken, doesn't see its final fruition until years later, and when they do it is with results that no one could have predicted. So it was when the sage Raphael Sapporta sold an old Hanukkah lamp that he had inherited from his great-great grandfather who had come to Syria as one of those Spanish exiles in 1492.

As you know the tradition of Hanukkah, where Jewish people celebrate the miracle of the oil lamps staying light for eight days when there was only enough oil for one, that on the first night it is normal to light two candles, one of which is used to light the other, or the others for the nights of the festival. But this menorah that Raphael Sapporta sold to the trader, who had been approached by a middleman who had been approached by a dealer in antiquities in France to buy old Hanukkah lamps, was one of the ways in which some Jews of Aleppo were different from their other kin in exile.

Instead of the normal nine lights there was room for a tenth. It is said that when the boat carrying the exiles fleeing Spain was approaching Aleppo it was caught up in a terrible storm and it was only by a miracle that it made it to port with all its crew and passengers alive. The day the ship made port was in fact the first night of Hanukkah, and to commemorate this second miracle of the season, those families who had arrived on that ship had special menorah made with the means to light an extra light.

The two scrap dealers who had arranged the deal for selling the Hanukkah lamp soon found that their business dealings began to prosper and with that prosperity they decided that they in turn should do their bit and supported the sages of Aleppo by creating a perpetual fund that would permit them to study and not work more than they wanted at material matters.

Thus it was that the one lamp sold to Senor Franco and Senor Piciotto began to have an effect immediately for the family Sapporta as Raphael was one of the sages who received direct benefit from this endowment, as did his son Hacham Hiyyah a sage of renown in his own right. It was because of this endowment that Hacham's son Jacob was able to study from an early age, but education began to lead him away from the words and deeds of his fathers.

As it is for the father so it is even more so for the son, and Jacob who is the son of Hacham who first is led away from the study of the Torah had a son who they named Raphael in honour of his great-grandfather. But he took for himself the name of Max and left behind the Torah altogether. He went to Paris to continue his studies and for a time was happy. But on occasion he was reminded of the teachings of his forefathers and experienced disquiet.

As was his habit when he was in need to settle his mind he went to the Louvre Museum. It just so happened that there was a display of Jewish antiquities on exhibit and Max let himself be pulled into it. In one glass case he saw to his wonder an old, cracked Menorah with places for ten lights. Even more surprising was the fact that engraved faintly in the side of brass was the name Sapporta. The last name he no longer used.

In writing this review I have tried to emulate the style that Haim Sabato created in his telling of the stories in Aleppo Tales. Part of the joy of reading any of his books is the way in which the stories take their time in unfolding. Sabato thinks nothing of following an interesting thread off the main strand of the story to its natural conclusion, waiting for it to finish talking as it were, before he picks up the tale again.

In this manner he manages to not only tell an interesting tale about how many and varied are the distractions of the world that keep you from remembering who you are, but to also bring to life the atmosphere of an era that has long passed. The community of Aleppo Jews no longer exists except in pockets where their descendants might still practice in New York or Israel, but it is not the same as a whole district dedicated to a way of life.

What I found especially interesting was that the main language that they used for communication outside the synagogue was Arabic. In those days remember Hebrew was primarily a religious tongue. It's only been since the formation of Israel that Hebrew has been given a secular form, and that was for convenience when the country was formed because nobody could speak the same language. It makes sense for Jewish people living in Syria to speak Arabic fluently, just as those living in England would speak English. But in this day and age it seems strange to see and is also a reminder of a time when the children of Abraham weren't as divided.

It should make no difference to you whether you are a Jew, a Christian, a Muslim, or a Hindu when you read these stories because while they focus on a particular religion they are universal in their celebration of faith; the power it has to bring you joy, comfort, and peace. Faith does not have to be a burden, as so many people seem to belief it to be these days, it should be a blessing and something to bring you great joy.

Surrounding yourself with the sages and wise men and women of Aleppo reminds you of that, and if for no other reason makes it worth reading Aleppo Tales. That it is also beautifully written, with love and faith adorning every word like pearls is just an added bonus.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 07:27 AM | Permalink

The politicians in Canada have discovered a new game called " I Can Be Greener Than You"`. Everyday without fail you can open a newspaper or turn on the television news and you'll see either one of the four party leaders. If they happen to be tied up with actually governing, the environment minister and the official opposition party critics will be run out for commentary.

As Prime Minister, Steven Harper should have an advantage in the game of one-upmanship as he gets first crack at the press every day. But instead of making any great steps that would put the opposition on the defensive, he ends up responding to their proposals not the other war round.

The impression that this gives is that the Conservative Party of Canada, Harper's political party, doesn't care enough to come up with anything of real substance on the issue. The other problem that Steven Harper and the Conservative Party of Canada have is bridging their credibility gap when it comes to environmental issues.

They are the same government after all that after only a couple of months in power announced that they were going to renege on Canada's commitment to the Kyoto Accord. They offered up a Clean Air act instead, that was so ineffective it wouldn't even kick in until seven years from now, and even then it would be partially voluntary which meant there was no guarantee of any results.

In fact their biggest effort in this new game has been to discredit the new Liberal Party leader Stephane Dion. For all the Conservative Party posturing about how they don't worry about polls, this guy absolutely terrifies them. Ever since his election as leader in December of 2006, he's pulled the Liberal party up by the bootstraps and kept them ahead ever since. On top of that he was pushing the environment as a key issue even before he was elected leader.

Of course the other reason Dion worries the Conservatives so much is that he was Minister of The Environment for close to two years. While he didn't do anything spectacular at that time, he at least prevented the slashing and burning of programming that has occurred in the first year of the Conservative Government. Considering that both of his Prime Ministers were intent on cutting the budget that in of itself is an accomplishment.

Of course Mr. Dion is also in the position of being able to take the moral high ground when it comes to the environment. All he has to do is keep repeating I wasn't the one to scrap our participation in the Kyoto accord and drop hints about Stephen Harper being from Alberta where the most business opposition to Kyoto – the oil business – comes from and let people draw their own conclusions. If they come up with Stephen Harper is a lackey of the oil and gas industry it won't be any skin off his nose.

Now the New Democratic Party (NDP) under Jack Layton are trying to look like they have some influence over events but in reality what little power they might have had is gone. Sure the Conservatives need them if both the Liberals and the Bloc Quebecois vote against them, but if that happens can you see what passes for a left wing party supporting the most right wing federal government in Canada's history? Not bloody likely.

Jack has been one of the staunches supporters of the Kyoto Accord and other environmental initiatives with actual teeth in them that will make a difference. Of all the leaders he seems to be the only to understand that we can't put off taking action any longer. He also knows that the longer we wait to start, the harder and more expensive it will become.

The real problem is that none of them are seen to be offering any real viable ideas except the opposition wants us to sign back on again with the Kyoto Accord, which wasn't that great to begin with, but at least it was something

In the middle of all the politicians posturing, posing, and proclaiming, someone who relay knows what he's talking about when it comes to the environment is touring the country to push for people to force politicians to realize it's not just a fad but folk are genuinely scared.

David Suzuki has climbed on a bus and is touring the country like some latter day traveling evangelical show preaching the gospel of how we can save ourselves from Global warning. Since Suzuki is usually more popular than any of the politicians people are paying attention to him when he rolls into town.

Will that translate into any real increased pressure on the political types? Well Suzuki has set up an online letter writing campaign at his web site where you can get a letter in your name written to all the previously mentioned political leaders, as well as the leader of Bloc Quebecois.

I don't know how effective this will be except maybe to remind the politicians that the people of Canada believe that the issue of air quality is just as important as the budget and tax rebates. But of course that's the reason that all of them have for spending any time on the issue. If the Canadian public didn't care as much as they do now do you really think that any of these politicians would give a rat's ass?

Probably not, which is all the more reason to go over to David Suzuki's site and sign up to send a card to remind the political types what's important. Sometimes I don't think they'd remember their own names if the Speaker of the House Of Commons didn't call upon them when they stood up to speak in Parliament. Hoping they'll remember the environment without help when there are no cameras present is a little too much to ask

Right now they are playing their Green Game because they know it plays well with the Canadian Public. But until the House actually votes in legislation that curtails emissions from car and industrial smokestacks sufficient to meet even the bare minimum asked of by the Kyoto Accord, it won't be anything but a game.

The real losers in this game are going to be all of us; the planet, and anybody who is able to come after us without being born with an oxygen tent built in.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 03:49 AM | Permalink

Family histories are strange things some times. Just when you think you have a handle on where your people have come from, a spanner gets thrown in the works. In my family we've always known about my father's family to as far back as 16th century Portugal for his mother's family, and the days of Wallace and his gory bed for his father's family in Scotland.

But my mother's family has always been a little more mysterious in that although we know where in Europe they were living when they came to Canada, we don't know what path had taken them to that final destination but one. As Jews they had been on the move for generations. Always being afraid to settle in deep enough to put down roots of belonging because who knew when the winds of change would whisper in the ear of the King/Prince of the city telling him it's time for the Jews to leave.

My mother's maternal line had settled in Poland just outside the city of Crakow. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries Poland and Russia were in continual conflict over a piece of land that lay on the Eastern edge of Poland. That the Pale, which was the name of the area, also happened to the only place in Russia that Jews wee allowed to live meant that their poor Fiddler On The Roof type villages were right smack dab in the middle of a battle field.

I know my mother's maternal grandfather came to here to avoid being canon fodder for one side or the other for a fourth time. ("Enlistment" parties would ride through the Jewish settlements rounding up any male that could walk and conscript them for whichever army happened to hold control over the village at the time) In 1911 he brought over his wife and four kids to settle in Toronto.

Like most of their fellow immigrants they had lived in Eastern Europe for centuries prior to finally having had enough of the persecution and poverty and making good their escape. At the time it was an occasion for sorrow, of course twenty odd years later they would consider themselves fortunate to have got out when they did before the doors of the camps were thrown open.

On her father's side of the family is where the mystery begins about my mother's family tree. Although we know they were living in Romania prior to coming to Canada they were far more educated than would be normal for poor Jews (they spoke French on top of Yiddish, Biblical Hebrew, and Romanian) which has long made us wonder about where they had lived prior to landing in Romania.

My mother has long suspected that her father's family are descendants of the Jews who had thrived as part of the Ottoman Empire and even Christian Iberia (Spain and Portugal) up until Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand. The year 1492 not only marks the beginning of the end for the native peoples of North and South America; it was also the year that Jews were given the choice of leaving the Iberian Peninsula or converting to Christianity.

Jews who had seen the writing on the wall had retreated in front of the Christian armies as they had taken the land back from the Moorish empire that was based out of modern Turkey. After having enjoyed status as equals in parts of that empire they weren't interested in all of a sudden being subjected to limitations on their life and culture. As the retreat continued back through the Balkans and Eastern Europe people like the King of Romania would assure the Jews that they were welcome to stay in his country.

Unlike their cousins who spoke Yiddish, a hybrid language made up of German, Slavic, and Hebrew, they used Ladino as their common tongue. Ladino incorporated many elements of the Romance languages (Ones descended from Rome – Latin- like French, Italian, Spanish and Romanian) so it would not have been hard for them to acclimatize to Romania..

Most monarchs were always glad to welcome Jews into their countries because they were a source of money and they were the only people allowed by church law to lend out money. While their ability to be users would have made them popular among the wealthy and the aristocratic the common man would have easily resented their wealth and ability. This was one of the major reasons that the church was able of whip up hatred against the Jews so easily,

Without any accounts of how my mother's father's family got to Romania we can't know for sure whether they were part of the Sephardic people's (Jews who are from Spain and the Middle East, while the European Jews are the Ashkenazi) migration back through eastern Europe with the Ottoman Empire. Both my mother and I have done some cursory research on the matter, with few conclusive results.

The last name of Marcus is listed as a Sephardic name in the genealogy sites, but it also shows up in the Ashkenazi lists as well. For all we know it could just be a romantic notion on our part with nothing concrete to back it up. It even sometimes feels like an extension of typical Romanian Jew feelings of superiority over the peasant farmers from Poland, Russia, and the other Eastern Balkan states.

One of the stories in our family is that when my grandfather went to marry my grandmother, one of his family, (it's never been said who) took him aside and said, "Remember to hold your head high, you are a Romanian and they are only Polacks". My grandfather used to take great delight in repeating this story in front of my grandmother. As long as none of her family were around she didn't mind, even joining in by saying, "The only thing worse than a Polack was a Litvak (Lithuanian)"

So perhaps thinking our family is descended from a long line of intellectual mystics, who under the rule of the Moors in Spain were elevated to positions of authority so great that one even was senior advisor to the ruler of Cordova, is just another sign of our snobbishness. Who wouldn't prefer claiming them as ancestors to saying we've just been scrabbling around for the last two thousand years trying to survive wherever they will let us live?

But although there is no proof, I keep stumbling across little things that revive my belief in the theory. I was sent a couple books by the Israeli author Haim Sabato to review, and he is a Sephardic Jew. His family had lived in Syria for two thousand years until they moved to Egypt and then Israel. On the cover of the one book Aleppo Tales (Aleppo being the area where the Jews came from in Syria) is a picture of a family gathering. Staring up at me from the page are the faces of young women who are identical to my mother when she was their ages. I do mean ages, from toddler to it looks early twenties all the young women look identical to what my mother looked like at those times in her life.

Just to make sure it wasn't me making something out of nothing, I handed the book to my wife to see her reaction. Her first words were –"they look just like that picture of your mom as a young child, and also that one of her as a teenager".

So, it's not really proof about anything, but it did make my heart beat a little faster for a few moments and revive my hopes that maybe we are indeed descendants of the wise and the gifted on one side of the family. It's a nice fantasy family history that every so often looks very real.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 07:24 AM | Permalink

It's been an awfully long time since I've been so excited by a book that I wanted to finish it so I could write a review and tell everybody how amazing it is. Sacred Games by Vikram Chandra is one of those books. Its so good that you resent having to do anything else at all during your day except read it. Who wants to eat, go to the bathroom, sleep, go to work, or any number of other trivial matters when you could be reading Sacred Games?

You know some books are really strong on characterization, but weak on atmosphere and plot, or strong in one of the other areas but weak in others. Maybe, if you're lucky the author is good enough that he or she gets two out of three, but Vikram Chandra has done what I consider the ultimate in novel writing by bringing off all three of a novel writing's holy trinity to perfection.

Every single character is so fully drawn and real and you can visualize them so well that you'd recognize them walking along the street if you came across them. Not just by a physical description either, but by the look in their in eyes, the manner in which an emotion effects them, and by the energy they exude.

You'd swear that Chandra was looking over the midwives' shoulder on the day each character was born so intimate and detailed is the vision we have of each of them. But then again a good author is parent, midwife, teacher, spiritual advisor, matchmaker, mortician, as well as biographer to his or her characters. Chandra fulfills all his duties along those lines as he guides us through the lives of his people.

Heck he is so dedicated he even follows one into the afterlife in order for him to tell his story. But after the notorious gangster Ganesh Gaitonde, one of the most wanted men in Mumbai, takes his own life, he lingers to tell his story to the policeman who was there at his death. Technically he is not telling Inspector Sartaj Singh anything directly, but rather using him as a confessor figure in his mind's eye to tell his life's story from his side of the coin.

Chandra does such a magnificent job of relaying Gaitonde's rise from the street to the highest echelon of gangster hood, that there are times when I found myself getting anxious for him to succeed and believing all Gaitonde's justifications for killing somebody. To be able to generate such great empathy for a character who normally wouldn't be given the time of day in a book except to show up to kill the hero, or be a shadowy figure in the background is in itself an amazing feat.

Every single character is so fully drawn and real and you can visualize them so well that you'd recognize them walking along the street if you came across them. Not just by a physical description either, but by the look in their in eyes, the manner in which an emotion effects them, and by the energy they exude.

You'd swear that Chandra was looking over the midwives' shoulder on the day each character was born so intimate and detailed is the vision we have of each of them. But then again a good author is parent, midwife, teacher, spiritual advisor, matchmaker, mortician, as well as biographer to his or her characters. Chandra fulfills all his duties along those lines as he guides us through the lives of his people.

Heck he is so dedicated he even follows one into the afterlife in order for him to tell his story. But after the notorious gangster Ganesh Gaitonde, one of the most wanted men in Mumbai, takes his own life, he lingers to tell his story to the policeman who was there at his death. Technically he is not telling Inspector Sartaj Singh anything directly, but rather using him as a confessor figure in his mind's eye to tell his life's story from his side of the coin.

Chandra does such a magnificent job of relaying Gaitonde's rise from the street to the highest echelon of gangster hood, that there are times when I found myself getting anxious for him to succeed and believing all Gaitonde's justifications for killing somebody. To be able to generate such great empathy for a character who normally wouldn't be given the time of day in a book except to show up to kill the hero, or be a shadowy figure in the background is in itself an amazing feat.

Although it does make it easier to like him when one compares him to the moral ambiguity of Mumbai society in general, and the police force in specific. Things are so corrupt that Inspector Singh is looked upon as something odd because he only takes the bribes that are considered essential and necessary for police work to take place. The fact that very little actually ends up in his pockets and his bank account makes him a paragon of virtue, or a slight figure of ridicule, depending on your point of view.

The reality in Mumbai is that the state barely sends the police force enough money to pay the officer's wages. Everything else from uniforms to paying informants has to come out of somebody else's pocket. So the gangs all have their police officers and the police officers all have their gangs who they work for and with.

The gangs will use their police contacts to make trouble for their opponents, and pay the police for conducting an ambush of their enemies receiving a shipment of heroin. Maybe some of the heroin makes it way back to the gang that supplied the tip, but any monies found on scene are carefully divvied up among the police. A certain amount has to be handed in for the superior's to take their cut and ensure that they will allow you to use uniformed men when you need them to conduct raids, a certain amount goes into the station house, and the rest goes into the pockets of everyone in on the arrest.

There are plenty of opportunities for a policeman to get ahead and make good money in Mumbai if he or she is willing to compromise themselves. And it's not hard to go down that slope when all around you people are lining their pockets and building nest eggs in the Cayman Islands. The money launderers of Mumbai are on the best of terms with both the police and the gangsters, and will never be hassled by anyone.

Mumbai is more them just the city or the region most of the novel takes place in, she is also a character in the novel. She still wears remnants of her days as Bombay, the tattered lace of long gone imperialism, but those are being gradually overwhelmed by illegally built apartment blocks that tower over everything including height regulations.

Ramshackle collections of one room hovels huddle around the bases of these towers as if they hope they will be miraculously drawn up inside. Life is even cheaper here then anywhere else and you can be killed over anything. There is no sewage, or running water and negotiating passage through is fraught with difficulty.

The same of course can be said for anywhere in Mumbai, if you're not careful where you step you could end up in the shit if you are police officer. The corridors of power, the air conditioned splendour of offices and shops in the wealthy neighbourhoods, the film lots, where ever you go, a police officer's welcome is dependant on who knows who, and they must know when to kick a door down and when to knock gently.

But Mumbai has her beauty too; the sights and sounds of happy people, the smell of the ocean and watching the sun setting into the sea, the various sounds of prayer that come from any number of the multitude of temples and their gods and goddesses. The wafting of incense mixes with the smells of the outdoor cooking stalls and their curries, roties, naan bread, and other delights that help to offset less pleasant olfactory experiences.

Nothing is at it seems in Sacred Games, at the onset it all seems so corrupt to our eyes and ears, immoral and unjust even; how can a system that depends of bribery work? Well it doesn't seem to work any better or worse then our system of justice. How many blind eyes are turned here towards the activities of Corporations more intent on making money then anything else?

But as long as they donate to the right people and work for the right causes, there won't be any problems. How is that any different from what happens on the streets of India's largest city Mumbai?

Sacred Games is a magnificent book in all the meanings of that word. At nine hundred pages long it might seem intimidating, but don't be put off by that. You'll want it to be longer, you'll want to linger among its pages like you would linger over a meal in a great restaurant where the company has been interesting, and the tastes amazing.

From what I gather by reading the reviews of Indian writers, that his depictions of the Mumbai are dead on, so for those of us who don't travel this might be out best chance to experience the city in all of its splendour and darkness. You'll be denying yourself a real treat if you don't read this book and an education on a part of the world we should be learning more and more about in North America.

But aside from all that it's a great story, with amazing characters, and incredible atmosphere written by a superlative writer, what more could you ask for?

Posted by Richard Marcus at 07:00 AM | Permalink

Mathematics and I have never been the best of friends. The same mental block that causes me to invert the letters in a word or construct a sentence backwards can't make any sense whatsoever out of the way numeric formula work. While over the years I've gradually been able figure out some basic things like fractions (you just can't do any baking unless you can figure out how many times one eighth goes into six, thirty seconds) and can sort of find my way around the circumference of a circle anything more advanced than that and I'm lost.

On one hand it's not been any real great loss, I wasn't planning a career as an engineer or computer scientist anyway. But it's also cut me off from understanding things like the physics of light, sound, and time. I've always been fascinated by those three subjects and would have loved to have at least been able to understand what E=Mc2 means.

Oh I know the words are something like Energy equals mass times something squared, but that doesn't mean a thing to me. What does relativity mean anyway? What's relative to what? Did Einstein mean that time was relative to something and that something was represented by the famous formula? I've never known and no one has ever been able to explain it to me in terms that I can understand.

I know all sorts of theories about the relative nature of time but I doubt any of them have anything to do with what Albert was talking about. For example there's the time that moves at an ever-decreasing rate of speed relative to the boredom of a high school French class.

A double period that was the last class of the day in the end of May when the sun shone brilliantly bright and the sky was the colour blue you only see from inside a classroom was guaranteed to affect the speed of the clock in relation to the number of times that you looked at it. Then of course there was the amount of time that actually passed relative to the number of hours that it felt like you had been sitting in the aforementioned double period.

Of course all of us were familiar with those expressions of relativity as teenagers, and probably assumed once we had escaped the confines of school time would revert to behaving in its docile pattern of sixty seconds to a minute and sixty minutes to an hour. It just shows how naïve we were about its workings. If anything time became even more capricious.

There was the pause at the end of the phone after you worked up the courage to ask someone one out; the wait for a decision on whether you got the job or not could make one night last an eternity; and finally the way time stretched seconds into forever as your car spun off the road. As an adult you discovered that school was just time's training ground as much as it was your own, time was everywhere now, and not just a clock on the wall to be watched.

Now while most people have experienced those concepts of time in one form or another some of us have had the joy of experiencing the way in which time and memory can intermingle to bring the past to life. People who have suppressed memories of abuse will all of a sudden start vividly reliving an incident from the time of their abuse and swear it's happening in the present, even thought it's a memory. While that's an example of time slipping her moorings it's only a beginning when it comes to the tricks she can get up to especially with memory so ably attending her.

Past and present mean nothing anymore to a survivor with suppressed memories. Everything is in the present and there is nothing she or he can do about it except try to deal with the fact that the memories exist outside the confines of our traditional definition of time. How else would you explain the fact that a person is able to be an adult at the same time as they are living out their experiences as a child?

In order to break the cycle of being stuck in your childhood you have to be willing to walk into the past with your eyes open and rescue your self. Does all this sound a little New Age for you? Walking into the past sounds a little spacey I guess, but there is really no other way to describe what I'm talking about.

I've been working with a psychologist for the last year and a half in an attempt to clear some flashbacks that seemed to have lingered after more then twelve years. We've been using a technique called Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing, better known as E.M.D.R. to help me stop regressing back to childhood every so often.

With E.M.D.R. a client is first asked to bring the memory to mind, then the psychologist will induce a type of hypnotic trance either through rapid eye movement, a steady pulse of sound, or a pulse in the hands. The client then talks through what they are experiencing and responds to questions and suggestions offered by the councillor conducting the session.

The idea is that by bringing the present and the past together in a controlled manner, the client will begin to be able to exert their will over the situation and explain to themselves that the abuse existed only in the past. As silly as it sounds this sometimes involves talking to the child in the memory who is being traumatized to reassure him that his life is not without hope, and it will get better.

Then, dependent on your mood and the circumstances, you can confront your abuser and threaten them for a change if for no other reason then to make you feel good about yourself and to help reassure your memory self that things will get better.

This is an instance of how a person can become stuck in time and be forced to relive a specific moment over and over again. Unlike time in the other instances I've described which actually does move forward without active intervention from the present, time won't flow past this point ever without help.

Time is not always the linear thing that clocks describe as moving in a neat circle with seconds following seconds and minutes following minutes, turning into hours, days, months and years. Like I said at the beginning I wish I had the knowledge and know-how that would allow me to describe how that works so that I could offer you some scientific proof of what I'm talking about. But I'm afraid you'll just have to take my word for it when I tell you that I'm a time traveller. Perhaps not the way H. G. Wells visualised it in his book The Time Machine, but I am one just the same.

Although, I could think of places in time that I'd much rather have visited then where I do have to go sometimes and wish that I had some choice in the matter.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 05:58 AM | Permalink

Of all the words in the English language that have come in for a beating in the last decade or so only sharing has been more misused or abused than caring. It has gotten so bad that in some circles for it to be known that you care is considered an insult. What could have happened that such a decent word developed so many different ways of being construed and come to be looked on with something akin to scorn

Okay sure you've got all sorts of strange new age people and talk show hosts who have given the word a bad name. I'm just as ready as the next person with a cynical comment about upper middle class people crying over starving people in Africa while living in gated communities that proudly boast a less then 1% black population as a selling point.

But does that mean we have to give up on an idea or a concept just because some people have given it a bad name? That's one of the worst instances of cutting our noses off to spite our faces. We have to learn how to reclaim the concepts and words that were taken away from decency and made into the empty gestures of selfish people. Show that not everyone who uses the word care is trying to justify the cost of their house easily feeding the average refugee camp for a year.

It's hard though, not to feel cynical when you see the conspicuousness of consumption and waste in our society. Being on the lower end of the earning scale might make it sound like I'm spewing sour grapes and envy because I live in a poor neighbourhood and a rundown apartment. But maybe that's the point too.

If someone like me who enjoys so many of the benefits of this society, like free medical care and inexpensive prescription drugs because of being disabled is cynical about the motivations of the wealthier individuals in North America; what must be the reaction of people living in refugee camps?

How many people make comments about the ungratefulness of those who we send foreign aid to? Do the words, "We send them food and medical supplies only to have them come back and kill our boys overseas" sound familiar to you?

Let me ask you this; how would you feel if somebody sitting down to a seven course banquet saw you standing hungry on the sidewalk and offered you a crust of bread? They then go back inside their air conditioned/heated house where their cook has prepared them an elaborate supper while you stand out side broiling in the heat or freezing in the cold.

You'll chew that crust of bread down and it will choke you because of the shame you feel for wanting more, and the anger you feel towards that person who made you feel so ashamed of who you are and your situation. How can they care about you really if they can so easily dismiss you from their conscience by handing out a crust of bread?

Of course our affluence isn't as great as parts of the rest of the world perceive it to be. It's a case of us being hoisted on our petard; having claimed to be the best society in the world for long enough now that people believe it and can easily be swayed into making us the focal point of resentment and anger.

We have so much and they have so little is how they see it no matter that large portions of our population are in actual fact not much better off than they are. Our refugee camps just happen to be housing projects in inner cities or reservations in the north woods or the bad lands of the Dakotas.

Perhaps if we spent more energy on telling the truth about how big a failure our system is and how few people really enjoy the standard of living they seem to assume that most of us do, we wouldn't be as universally despised by poor people around the globe. They might be more willing to believe we are sharing as much as we can and not feel like they are being bought off with token after thoughts.

Caring is a relative thing, the less you have and yet still be willing to share the more it is appreciated. How often do we read about the kid who has raised money from events she's organized for victims of something or other? What makes the story remarkable is that it was a kid without any resources who managed to do that, not just another movie star with a smile and grafted on sincerity donating a tax right off.

Care seems to be these days as much about who is doing the caring as the cause that is being cared about. When George Bush says he cares, there are many people who question his motivations and what he cares about no matter what the cause is and no matter how much money he's prepared to ask Congress to throw at it.

But if a Inuit tribe from up North sell off a collection of sculptures to raise money for those hit by famine as happened during the first Ethiopia crises back in the 1980's, everyone rushes to be the first to say how amazing it is. Why?

Both George and the Inuit have used what resources they have to help out, to express their caring for someone else, but one is looked upon as heroic and the other with cynicism. Mainly it's because given Bush's track record no one can believe that he will do anything without there being something in it for him in return. On the other hand the Inuit give the appearance of dong what they did it with no expectations of anything in return.

Unlike George of course they also have very little to begin with, so anything that they do is even more greatly appreciated. When you swagger into town and throw dollar bills to the natives and hand out trinkets and beads as trade goods acting like you not only own the place, but are also better then the people who live there, there is bound to be a little cynicism around you telling them how much you care.

Care should not be about motives or reciprocity. It's about caring. If you look closely enough at care, you can see how easily it could become caress; an act of love. Did I just make you uncomfortable? But there it is when you care you do so with love for another not for love of yourself, your reputation, or your taxes at the end of the year.

For too long now people have been claiming or acting like they care through their appearances on talk shows either as guests or emotional audiences, or by throwing money at something. But how can you be considered caring when your life is selfish by definition like most North Americans.

Let's say a couple buy a five-bedroom house for themselves. Aside from depriving a family that might actually need the space, they are also having to needlessly heat or cool hundreds if not thousands of square feet selfishly using energy. Over a year who knows how much they'll have wasted heating and cooling empty space just because they "own" it.

It's hard to believe that anybody who lives like that, and there are plenty of them still out there, care about anything at all beyond their own personal comfort and pleasure. These are the people who care though, who send in donations, and watch the telethons and get all weepy over the images of starving babies in Africa being broadcast on their fifty-two inch surround sound home theatre systems.

If we truly cared about each other, I hate to tell you, nobody would be living like that, nobody would be driving an SUV, nobody would be planting trees in a desert, or building artificial environments anywhere. If we truly cared about each other oil companies like Exxon wouldn't be allowed to make a cent of profit while their mess is still being cleaned up in Alaska (Exxon just posted a 40 million dollar profit and they are still cleaning up after the Exxon Valdez in Alaska) If we truly cared …if I keep going I'll just get depressed and you either get the picture or you think I'm full of it so it doesn't matter anyway.

Let's face it, none of us really care except for those people who are aid workers on the spot spoon feeding broth into a starving child's mouth, if we did would the world be in the shape it's in now? I really don’t think so, do you?

Posted by Richard Marcus at 06:23 AM | Permalink

Save The Children is one of those remarkable agencies that operate without government help to alleviate suffering wherever they find it. Sometimes they are the first on the ground after a disaster strikes assessing the damage and seeing what needs to be done in order to fulfill the obligation of their name; Save The Children.

From New Orleans after Katrina, to Pakistan after the earthquake and of course all through the post Tsunami devastation countries, wherever they go you know people are in desperate need of assistance. So while their latest project is not surprising for people whose eyes are open, it may come as a big shock to some, and a nasty reality check for others. .

Save The Children International has just finished a two-week assessment on the quality of life in Native Canadian reservations in Northern Ontario preparatory to setting up a relief program/fundraising campaign in an effort to help the children of those communities. Webequie and Mishkeegogamang First Nation reserves aren't names that most of us call to mind on a regular basis, but they are two reserves among many facing familiar problems.

Foetal Alcohol Syndrome, teenage pregnancy, solvent abuse, sexual abuse, suicide, abject poverty, lack of housing, lack of affordable healthy food, and no fresh water or plumbing are always reported on but nothing has ever been done about it. Until now.

Three agencies that have been working with young people and children in Ontario; the provinces official child advocate Judy Finlay, Tikinagan, (a native run children's aid society in Northern Ontario) and The Friends of Tikinagan formed by one of it's former senior management people five years ago, founded the project. They started meeting with other humanitarian, aid groups, and charitable foundations to see what they could come up with to help the natives of Northern Ontario dig out from under years of neglect by governments of all stripes.

The people of the reserves while dealing with the grief of seeing their children destroying themselves one way or another, desperately want to do something about it. But when the government builds you a brand new school, but doesn't supply sufficient money to pay for the teaching of the students, and the kids don't have shoes on their feet that can keep the cold of the schools floors seeping up into their feet, the school just is one more waste of money.

Chief Connie Gray McKay of Mishkeegogamang doesn't want people thinking of them as "poor little Indians". She just wants the same opportunities for her people that everyone else gets down south – descent education and housing that’s safe. Her main objective now she feels is to teach the children who have become parents how to parent their children to give them a chance to break the cycle of endless poverty.

Aside from Save The Children International, other charitable foundations and relief organizations have joined in the effort to pick up the slack left by the governments. Canada Feed The Children, The Laidlaw Charitable Foundation, The Atkinson Charitable Foundation, Kinark Family and Child Services (Ontario's largest child mental-health agency), Ryerson University in Toronto Ontario, and Voices For Children, a child advocacy group are just a few of the thirty organizations that make up what's now known as theNorth-South Partnership For Children

It was through this group that the Save The Children organization became involved, and was taken on the two-week fact finding mission. Based on that trip they came up with a preliminary list of needs and programming that they figure would make a difference. They range from the practical like providing bus service to the nearest grocery store so families don't have to pay $175.00 in taxi fares to make the two and a half hour trip, to the long term of setting up recreational programming based on teaching young people traditional hunting and fishing skills so not only are they kept busy, but they learn about their cultural heritage.

For Nicolas Finney of Britain's Save The Children the whole experience has left him angry and eager to begin working on the assessment report. He says it's clearly a case of humanitarian action being essential. While in no way should the governments responsible be excused of their duties, there are things that can be done to make people's lives better on a daily basis.

The hardest thing for the aid workers to deal with in this situation is that they are used to circumstances where a disaster has suddenly caused havoc. Here Finney says " It's a gradual disaster that has emerged, unfolded, and been propagated, whether it's intentionally or by negligence, by people that should know better, by people in power, over a long period of time."

Instead of dealing with people who are recovering from the horror of a shock as is normal, they are seeing people who have had their will to live gradually sapped out of them generation after generation. To reverse that process is the real challenge for all these people.

They can send food, clothing, sporting equipment, build roads and houses, and supply bus service to the nearest city, but unless something is done to repair the emotional and spiritual havoc created by the years of neglect and abuse caused by successive governments they will only serve as more band-aids and not a permanent solution.

Already though some of their ideas, like the youth recreational program or the development of an eco-tourist industry are the type of innovative suggestions that are needed for this seemingly insoluble problem. They know their typical approach to a disaster is not appropriate in these circumstances but they are used to working under a variety of conditions and making use of available resources.

In the next little while the group, North-South Partnership will be starting a campaign as per advice given by the people from Save The Children. So maybe the next time you think about making a charitable donation why not stick close to home and help our your neighbour by donating to their campaign. It's time for us to show the governments we know how to help each other, and just maybe we can finally awaken them to their own responsibilities.

Posted by Ashok at 04:16 AM | Permalink

When James Joyce published his seminal work Ulysses the reactions were varied to say the least. Aside from being banned in Boston, and other ports of entry into the United States, Joyce's fellow writers were divided in their opinions. Although Hemingway is quoted as saying "One Hell of a book" or words to that effect, it's long been doubted he ever even opened the covers let alone read the thing.

But one of the most damning phrases came from the originator of the run on sentence herself, Virginian Wolfe, when she compared it to "the idle scratching of a stable boy at his pimples". Whether the words were generated by spite, anger, jealousy, or professional opinion is anyone's guess, but if there was ever a case of the kettle calling the pot something only fit for heating water, I don't think we'd have to look much further.

Of course I'm probably prejudiced in that I've always preferred the work of Joyce over Wolfe as I've found hers a little too out of touch with reality while, at least in the case of Portrait Of An Artist As A Young Man and Ulysses Joyce was writing about life among the majority. Wolfe lived a among the rarefied air of The Bloomsbury intellectual set, and was never lacking for funds, influence or blind eyes turned to her marriage of convenience.

Joyce on the other hand grew up poor from the time his father squandered the family wealth when he was young and never lived to see any great return from his work. He died poor, blind, and exiled in Switzerland where he fled to escape the Nazi invasion of France.

I'm sure by now everybody's wondering what any of this has to do with Thomas Pynchon's latest novel Against The Day which nominally this is supposed to be reviewing. Good question and the answer lies somewhere in amongst some theory of mine that Pynchon is heir to either one of Joyce or Wolfe, or perhaps even some weird bastard son of them both.

A kind of hybrid flower you'd get from the cross pollination of Joyce's earthiness and Wolfe's university intellectualism that's been spiced up with the cynicism of the last forty years of the twentieth century. Pynchon has the same reluctance to participate fully in the world that marked Wolfe's life and permeated her work. But he has no problem with writing enthusiastically, one could almost say with idealism, about the American Working Class and their earthier pursuits.

In his forward to Richard Farnina's Been Down So Long It Look's Like Up To Me Pynchon compares himself to the his schoolmate at Cornel University and seems to lament his inability to embrace life with the exuberance exemplified by Farina. Shy and bookish he was, and seems to still remain. Reading his work you get the feeling of a man hiding behind words instead of using them to express emotions.

In as much as you can ever say what a Thomas Pynchon novel is about or where it is set in time and place, regarding characters, locations and other extraneous story line like details, Against The Day is based in the years just preceding World War One and some of the years following. As the world we live in now is dealing with the wonders of digitalization, and the realisation that we've only scratched the surface of it's potential, so were the learned folk of science grappling with electricity, combustion engines, and the power and energy of light in that time.

Theories, both physical and metaphysical abound, which might sound like flights of imagination on the part of the author, but become less outlandish when you remember how seriously people of the late nineteenth century took things like séances and fairies. That's not to say all the theories postulated in Against The Day about light and it's qualities were actually put forth, but it does lend them an air of plausibility that might otherwise be lacking if set forth boldly out of context.

The Cast Of Characters is of quite some size, but as they are all particular to their own sets of circumstances, aside from periodic interconnection like motes of dust in light beams weaving in and amongst each other, it will be easier to describe bases of operation then individual characters.

Leading off the story are the crew of a rigid airship –or zeppelin as we have come to know them generically now- who upon first glance appear to be cut from the mould of the Hardy Boys and other wholesome "Characters" that have permeated the world of "Boys Own Fiction" since the days of the British Empire. Why The Chums Of Chance even have their own series of dime novels recounting their adventures around the world!

But they are not a solo crew we soon discover. The Chums Of Chance are an international organization with crews around the world and across North America looking out for the interests of, how shall we put this, certain interested parties. You see America is only recently recovered from it's near sundering in the Civil War, and the Captains of Industry are slowly beginning to take advantage of the open expanses and cheap labour to finally exploit natural resources in safety.

But where somebody is reaping profits, some many bodies are being broken to make that money. Out in the coal, gold, and silver mines of the West men, women and children are worked six days a week and up to fourteen hours a day, and when the unions start to form, war is declared in the office towers of the east. Anarchism is afoot in the wilds and in the streets of America in the form of the "eight hour day" and the "five day week".

How can a man grow sinfully rich under those conditions? But not to worry there are plenty of men who will gladly split open the heads of their fellows like melons for a quarter and a badge giving them the legal right to do it. Hell they even get to be patriots and heroes of the nation for conducting lynch mobs and burning women and children in their miserable shacks by the mines.

But the mine bosses have made a bad mistake in teaching their minions the means to fight back. Dynamite is a great tool for democracy in the right hands. It speaks louder than any speech and causes more disruption than a strike. In the right hands, or two pair of hands, because it takes less time to lay the charges and string the wire with two people, a trestle bridge can disappear during the Sunday morning church service when the miners gather to pray for the souls of their bosses in the far off eastern towns.

Against The Day is populated by bombers and their families, detectives out hunting the bombers, hired thugs taken on to kill bombers, bombers children looking to take vengeance on the hired thugs, Capitalists and their families, and all the assorted whores, gun fighters, school teachers, bar tenders, piano players, grifters, card sharks, and other assorted flotsam and jetsam of humanity that ends up in frontier towns.

But at the other end of the stick are the dreamers, thinkers, scientists, mystics, tarot readers, mediums, frauds, explorers, whores, gun fighters, bar tenders, piano players, and what ever else ends up being attracted to the academic environment of the times. Especially when the two sides meet and begin to intertwine over the need of a mined material. Specifically the new holy grail of alchemy "the Icelandic Spar"; a mineral with properties that changes perspective and maybe even lead to gold.

Now that's quite a mouthful right there isn't it, but in reality it's only scratching the surface of the activity in Against The Day. Remember the book checks in at just over 1000 pages, 1085 to be exact, so there's lots of room for detail. Plenty of time to be spent with each character, even ones that never show up again, but who may have an important cameo, are treated to a part that would guarantee a good actor a nod for the best supporting Oscar nomination if not actually taking the little gold fellow home.

Earlier, way back at the beginning when I talked about Pynchon being the heir to Joyce and Wolfe, I left out an even earlier influence, perhaps a literary grandfather if you like: Jules Verne. Like Verne he is concerned with the mythical and mystical properties of science. Pynchon also shares the Naturalist's predisposition to long descriptive passages that detail everything down to the last hair follicle.

The characters in Against The Day live in a dense world, layers upon layers can be seen with naked eye and thought about. When a character stands still for even a moment's rumination, his or her thoughts can end up filling pages if not chapters. While there is no doubt a beauty in all of this, and Pynchon has a relationship with the English language that should be the envy of every person who has ever attempted to put pen to paper or finger to keyboard, something began to nag at me after the first couple of hundred pages.

What is the purpose of writing if not to tell a story? Does there come a time when a writer's means of expression starts to compete with that purpose, and seems to be at odds with his or her attempt to impart information that is germane to the subject at hand. This review for example could have been half the length and still imparted the information I wanted, three quarters of the length I could have done that and still incorporated many of the elements I've used to give the review colour and depth.

Now I'm a lover of words, and had no trouble extending this review to the length it is, and have enjoyed every minute because I'm having fun. But I've also been very deliberate about it too in an effort to make a point that at some time it becomes tedious and the focus is more on me and my artistry, or lack there of, instead of on the subject matter, Against The Day.

Am I committing that heresy of heresies and suggesting that Thomas Pynchon needs an editor? No, I'm just saying that this book is a hard slog to get through, and sometimes it doesn't feel worth the while. At other times his insights into human nature, his knowledge of history, science, math and his imagination leave you so breathless you want the book to last forever.

I was very excited to see a new Thomas Pynchon book available, for the reason that I always hope for something special from him. Against The Day seems to still be cursed by an inconsistency that has plagued him over the last two novels that I read Vineland and Mason & Dixon.

While Against The Day has much more the feel of his earlier work, there are still moments where its intellectualism overwhelms, and left me not really giving a damn about anything to do with the novel; style or content. Somewhere, somehow he needs to discover what he so long ago noticed he was lacking that his friend Richard Farina had in plenty, a zest for living that translates into an involvement in your work.

Thomas Pynchon is probably the most skilled writer to be published in the English language since Joyce and Wolfe. But I can only wish that he would make more of an emotional commitment to what he creates. Then I think we would be seeing as close to perfection as possible.

Posted by Ashok at 02:17 AM | Permalink

It's always a risky thing when you come across a musician or author who you've not been familiar with before. I don't know about anybody else but I have a tendency to overindulge on their output if I like the first piece I hear. Sometimes this will lead to the inevitable; familiarity breeds contempt, or at the least tedium.

But in the case of exceptional performers and writers, those whose output can legitimately be called art, each piece is unique onto itself. Everything read or listened to is a new experience to be savoured for it's own merits and whatever feelings it stirs within you.

In the past week I've offered two reviews of Kevin Coyne's work, Sugar Candy Taxi and Room Full Of Fools, and have noted the amazing range that he demonstrated over the course of those two albums. I sat down and listened to the third of the albums he released through Ruf Records,( I believe it was the last album he went into the studio to record), Carnival and was once again drawn into the world of Kevin Coyne.

If you wanted you could say that Carnival has a theme to it, and you wouldn't be far off because all of the songs relate to love in some way or another. Love with a capital L for the love of the life love; the love we try and maintain with friends; and the insecurity that love and need for love brings out in all of us.

The whole mixed bag is here in fifteen songs that range musically from hard rock blues of "Stop Picking On Me", to the almost dance beats of "Party, party, party" and almost every other form of Blues, pop, and rock you can think of in between. As in his other discs the music is the vehicle he uses to drive the emotions of the songs.

Discordant blasts of harmonica over squawky guitars and broiling keyboards can do more to create an unsettled atmosphere than two lines of lyrics. His lyrics on the surface aren't apparently emotional; how emotional can it be repeating a simple phrase like "was it you?" five times over again without much change of inflection?

But those simple words, and the very fact that they are repeated with barely any change, in the context of the song gives them more emotional weight then the posturing of any of the supposedly sensitive pop stars of the day. There is something lurking just below the surface of Kevin's voice that can't be easily articulated. But this something creates a dynamic, coupled with whatever music is accompanying the lyric, either in contrast or harmony generates a tension that commands the listener's attention.

Part of it is the feeling that whatever Kevin is singing about he has lived through. In the song "All My Friends" you know that at some point in his life he was alone. Friends ask why don't you write, but the implication is that they don't write him unless he precipitates the conversation. He doesn't exist for them without constant reminders, so he might as well not have any friends.

There are certain people whose voices can't help but to express the lives they've lived through up to that point in their lives. Kevin was on such a person, and whether he knew it or not the sounds of his survival echoed like a ghost refrain behind his lyrics.

But of course he still has fun with at the same time or proves that he's not immune to sentimentality completely. "The Wobble" is just a funny little song where he tells a girlfriend who's shy about dancing that she just get up an wobble. She likes it so much that she wobbles everywhere she goes from then on and then the whole world wobbles because of her.

On "Sweet Melinda" he sings the praises of a girlfriend from when he was a teenager and love was so much less complicated. It's not so much Melinda he is yearning for, in spite of her picture in his wallet, it's what she represents. Innocence and fun are a far headier brew to drink a cup of then most nostalgia and are definitely far less sweet to the taste. No artificial substitutes sugar coat life in Kevin's songs but that doesn't make them all bitter to the taste either.

After listening to the disc Carnival and the previous two over the last few days it's hard not to admire the creative and imaginative mind that generated these pieces of art. The playful and slightly twisted cartoon figures that adorn the covers of these discs are Kevin's work as well. He also had three published books to his name before he died aside from the numerous discs that he and his bands over the years had produced.

If you have never listened to any of Kevin Coyne's music you owe it to yourself to do so without fail. But be warned, if you go into his world once, you may find yourself drawn back in again and again and opening up emotionally to the world around you just a little more then prior.

Posted by Ashok at 01:06 AM | Permalink

Is it just me or do we seem to be going backwards on the evolutionary ladder? Maybe not as a species but as a society; we sure seem to be sliding back to the primordial pool. If we use the way women are being treated today as opposed to about fifteen years ago as a bellwether you can see how what I'm talking about.

I'm sure you're wondering where I can possibly get off saying things like that. Especially living as I do in Canada where we have social programs that a lot people only dream about and a standard of living better then half the world. .

But it's all relative you know. Since the 1970's women had been gradually gaining rights that had been denied them by law since men started treating them like chattel and trade goods thousands of years ago. They managed to begin being treated like equal partners in a marriage instead of the property of the husband; they managed to gain legal control over what happened with their bodies; and they started to make advances in the work force through the availability of accessible daycare.

All this coincided with Western governments willingness to invest in the social safety net starting in the 1960's. In Canada we followed the Western European example of the Welfare State and sewed up a pretty tight safety net. It wasn't until 1980 that Brain Mulroney became Prime Minister that things began to unravel slightly but even he wasn't much for tampering with it. It was the Liberal government of Jean Chretian that began the dismantling of programming by cutting funding to all the social programs in search of the all mighty balanced budget.

The mantra of business, "balanced budget, balanced budget", was the death knell of social spending. Funding for dare care, hospitals, job training, life skills, and provincial disability and welfare programs was either frozen or cut. While this may seem not to directly affect women in all cases, single women with children are still the people most likely to draw upon the system for help.

If there is no day care, and a woman doesn't have parents she can leave her children with, how does she hold down a job? So she has to be on welfare, and try to raise her child with some dignity. Unfortunately just when the Liberals started to try and make up for their cruelty they lost the next election in Canada.

I've written extensively on how the Conservative Party of Canada under Prime Minister Stephen Harper has in a year turned back the clock on social programs in other places so I'll just cite and example.. A new day care program that works based on tax credits – so it's only helpful to those who have a taxable income and doesn't create any new spaces. In other words people who can afford to pay for day care out of their income are getting reimbursed , while those who can't afford it in the first place are out of luck..

But it's not just money that's the problem; it's the general increase in conservative attitudes towards women around the world that is the most frightening. From the Vatican to the Muslim world to the White House and back again steps are being take to revoke what few gains women have made in their struggle for recognition as equals in the eyes of society..

Women who are raped are still being threatened with death by their own families; women who refuse caesarean surgeries are being jailed in the United States; after a brief respite more and more men's magazines are appearing on the markets that treat women as objects not sexual beings; and even worse are the attitudes being expressed by even mainstream magazines.

A recent cover of the Canadian news magazine Maclean's used the word "Skanks" to describe a mode of dress employed by young girls. On the cover you can see a young woman wearing a tank top and mini-skirt. Why does the way someone dresses imply anything about their character? How could any supposed responsible magazine even even imply that no matter what the context?

Than of course there is the great catch phrase "Traditional Family Values". This has to be the biggest obstacle facing women today. Anybody who says the words traditional family values has visions of wife staying at home barefoot and pregnant making supper for Dad and being totally dependant on the man for everything.

What do you think they see in their narrow little brains when they say that expression? Two people working together in an equal, loving and sharing, partnership, or a husband dominant with a meek little wife staying at home with the kids and slowly going crazy?

That a show about every ten-year-old boy's fantasy concerning suburban housewives was a top show on network television in North America tells you something about where people expect to find the woman of the house. At home; the show wasn't called desperate corporate executives was it? Or even desperate garage mechanics would have been fine.

Of course for a woman to want to have sex with anyone she has to be desperate unlike a man who is just enjoying himself. If a woman displays any sort of normal sexual urges she is considered some sort of deviant. She's only supposed to be willing and compliant no have desires of her own in order to be normal.

How often do we have to hear somebody say that a woman "asked for it" walking around dressed like that as a response to her being raped? No she didn't – nobody asks to be raped and people are free to dress however they like. There is no excuse for rape – it's a crime remember.

When are people going to remember that the woman is not the one on trial in those situations? The man either attacked and raped the woman or he didn't. It doesn't matter if she was wearing a bikini or traditional Muslim garb and saying any different is saying it's okay to rape women in certain circumstances.

Sometimes I feel some hope, when I look around and see some young women who have it together and haven't bought into some sort of stereotype about roles in society. But then I see all the others who are starving themselves to death because they don't like who they are. Isn't that the biggest indication that there is something wrong with the way we treat women in our society? So many of them don't like who they are. Where did they get the idea from that there was anything wrong with them?

Sure sometimes it can be blamed on the parents for being emotionally or physically abusive, but a lot of the time it comes from whatever impression the young person has formed about what a women should be based on what she hears and sees in the media and from her peers. Augmented models with perfect waists, breasts, and buttocks who have no relationship to reality or gravity are not role models guaranteed to help someone establish their own self esteem.

Did you know that 1976 had been the United Nations International Year of the Women? Do you know or remember what the motto for that year was? It was a simple question Why Not? I'm afraid it needs to be amended to When? the way things are going these days.

Instead of things getting better for women the world over, they are getting worse in country after country. It doesn't matter whether it's the so-called developed or undeveloped world women are still second or, lower, class citizens.

Posted by Ashok at 01:34 AM | Permalink

Well I made a huge mistake; I thought I was on to Kevin Coyne. Which in retrospect was pretty stupid when you think about it, to assume you know anything about a musician of any stripe after only listening to one album. If they have streak of innovation or a creative bone in their body they're going to change things from disc to disc.

Kevin Coyne is more then just your average musician churning out discs due to an obligation to a studio, so I don't know why I was so surprised when I put on his year 2000 disc Roomful Of Fools. Unlike Sugar Candy Taxi which was more self-mockery and gentle irony then anything else.

So the aural assault that is "Turning Sugar Sour" didn't merely catch me by surprise, it took my breath away. First was the grinding guitars and driving beat catching me off guard, and then was the harsher tone to Kevin's voice. In a lot of ways this is an angry album, which has him reacting to the indignities that so many people face on a daily basis with only some sort of vague promise of eternal peace following as consolation.

This isn't a new idea, "Pie In The Sky" was a song by Joe Hill using the tune to "Sweet Bye &Bye" to protest what he saw as the exploitation of the workers by telling them not to worry about their lot in life on earth as they will get their eternal award in heaven for working seventeen hours a day, seven days a week in the coalfields. Kevin was not so much worried about the rights of the worker, rather those of the mentally ill.

Without reading the lyrics to the songs, and in fact without even paying that much attention to them while he's singing, but judging solely by his tone of voice on the majority of the tracks, you know he's a man who has been pushed to the edge and over on occasion. Kevin worked for three years as a social worker and psychiatric nurse prior to taking up a music career, and then he had a nervous breakdown at one point in his career.

So he knows what it is like to be suffering from a mental illness and the manner in which society treats you like a pariah. Listen to the song "Speak To Me" with these lyrics: "I wished I could hear a call, that said home, come home, but all I know as I sit, in this room I feel so all alone". Tell me you don't hear the desperation of a person who has been abandoned by everybody he thought loved him.

Even some of the titles are enough to let you know this disc will be a hard slog to listen to because of the content; "I Can't Take It Anymore", "But I Love You", "Take Your Pain Away", and "God Watches". From the first in this list, which is a heart felt cry for help and an exclamation of pain to the final song which voices the hope, almost a plea, that maybe a God does look after us and keep's us from harm.

What's amazing about the disc, aside from the outright power of the emotions, and the naked honesty in any of his songs is the complete lack of self-pity on his part whenever he touches on matters that pertain to him. He's just grateful for whatever gifts he has been given and the opportunity to be making use of and or enjoying them. Maybe it's just because he knows that it's almost impossible to appreciate your life when you are The Rock Star, and it's not until the bottom falls out that you realize how important the little things you used to ignore are.

Even now, in these songs, he's not confident of 'success' however you want to define it. It sounds like he might even just be using the opportunity to express those emotions that he needs to get off his chest. His voice rises up and down the scale, on occasion hitting almost primal scream levels. The music on some songs is so discordant it's almost painful, but the two working together are able to give you an understanding of some of the hardships and anguish that could be involved with mental health issues.

This is one of the most emotionally raw albums that I've listened to in a long time and it's not one I'm going to be able to listen to on a regular basis. But that doesn't diminish the power and the amazing strength of the disc. If ever you wondered what it is like to feel so much that it hurts – listen to the Kevin Coyne disc Room Full Of Fools and you may come away with a little more understanding of how even awareness can be harmful.

Posted by Ashok at 12:57 AM | Permalink

In the ten years since three of the four Ascendants of Estorea saved the Empire from certain destruction some things have changed for the gifted young people who have been born with the power to control the elements. But not everything, and not everything that has changed has been for the better either.

In Cry Of The Newborn, the first of James Barclay's two part series of the Roman like Empire of Estorea, The Ascendants Of Estorea we met four children with exceptional abilities and watched them grow into their power as full fledged Ascendants by the time they were teenagers. Each one of them could directly communicate with the energy patterns of the earth that in turn allowed them to control the elements.

Arducius worked best with the wind, Mirron with fire, Ossacer was a pain seeker, or healer, and Gorian was able to control animals and plants. While all could do 'Works" in each other's area they each had a specialty, the one power that was dominant when they were born. They had been taught that theirs were gifts from the Omniscient, and to be used for the betterment of all people. So they healed sick plants people and animals, called rain to arid fields, and pushed reluctant ships against the current.

But their very existance was seen by the officials of the church, specifically its chancellor, as an offence before the God and they should be burned at the stake as heretics. Fear of the unknown can be a deadly weapon, and in the early days the church was able to whip the people into a frenzy against the Ascendants and they were forced to flee their homes to undertake a perilous journey in order to survive.

Survive they did, but at a cost; they lost Gorian to his own worst instincts. Away from the guidance of his elders he gave into his lust for power and the belief that he was a superior being. He raped Mirron and killed a friend, and only the remnants of familial feelings the other three had for him saved him from being killed. They hopped abandonment would cause him more harm, but instead it strengthened him and stiffened his resolve for revenge on the living.

In the time that has passed, while Mirron, Arducius, and Ossacer have been establishing a school for the next generation of Ascendants in the heart of the Conquord (Empire) and fighting against the lies and hatred still being propagated by the Church, Gorian hasn't been idle either. He has allied himself with Estoea's strongest foe and devised a means for them to overthrow the empire with minimum loses.

What general or king wouldn't kill to have troops that don't need to be fed, don't have to rest, and will keep marching even if they that a sword stuck through their heart? That's what Gorain can promise them as he has learned the secret of re animating the dead.

That it goes against everything they have been taught, that it flies in the face of all that's sane and holy, and that he doesn't care for anything other then his own personal gain only show how far he has fallen from grace.

Ships full of plague invested rats sailed by reanimated corpses sail into Conquord controlled ports, where they spread death by the thousands, creating more bodies for Gorian's army of mindless vengeance against the world. Country after country is overrun and each successive battle yields up fresh "recruits".

Those soldiers brave enough to stand against their old friends must either dismember them piece-by-piece or burn them and scatter their ashes to the wind. But even then there is an inevitability about their advance that makes the bravest man wilt eventually no matter what weapons he has at his disposal.

In the end it will come down to whether three of the original four , Mirron, Arducius and Ossacer can figure out a way to overcome Gorian before he destroys the world so he can be King of death and putridity. But even if they manage that will they be able to outface their enemies at home who have turned the very people they saved ten years ago, and for whom they will lay their lives on the line for yet again.

Barclay is at his storytelling and adventure creation best in this book. Considering the subject matter it would be so easy to let this book become some sort of horror and gore extravaganza. While tit does become a bit gruesome at times, what is primarily conveyed is the anguish felt by those having to fight against resurrected loved ones.

All of the favourite characters are back from the first book and each of them has grown and changed over the ten years since we saw them last. Barclay has done a wonderful job of re creating the same characters but making sure they are ten years older. His atmospheric descriptions are even better then they were before and they present some pretty stark visuals that pop into your mind.

This is Barclay at his best, writing great characters and with imagery that brings the whole scenario to life. His worlds have always been vivid and believable and Estorea is no exception. What is new is the emotional depth and honesty that he has brought to the characters. Even the villains of the pieces are given definition that limits our ability to hate them.

This is a great book, and I believe that the whole Ascendants of Estorea sequence is one of those series that people will be reading years from now . From the opening lines of Cry Of The Newborn to the ending of Shout For The Dead Barclay doesn’t set a foot wrong or strike a false note. For the fan of the intelligent and well written fantasy/adventure story, these two books will serve you beautifully; they are written by an author at the top of his game.

Posted by Ashok at 03:53 AM | Permalink

When Kevin Coyne was asked to take over the lead singing duties in the Doors by his label, Elektra Records, after the death of Jim Morrison he refused. "I didn't like the leather trousers" was the excuse he gave for not even going to the States to meet with the head of the label to discuss it.

Kevin Coyne always did march to his own beat, in his life and his career. Like a lot of his United Kingdom contemporaries he learned to love the Blues through American influences and started to play guitar and sing after hearing that music. But instead of following a conventional path of playing in bands and getting gigs in pubs, he was working as a psychiatric nurse and social worker counselling patients with mental illnesses.

It wasn't until 1968, long after his contemporaries that he and his band Siren were signed to their first deal. But as you can tell by him turning down the Doors job he was not ready to compromise what he did musically for the sake of success. You could say that it was almost in spite of himself that he became famous.

Unfortunately by the 1980's he stopped being able to cope with the pressures of the music business and developed a serious drinking problem and following a nervous breakdown he left the United Kingdom and moved to Germany where he lived until his death in December of 2004 of a lung disease.

During his time in Germany he was probably at his most creative, constantly recording and touring , drawing and painting, and writing. Three of his last albums were released on the German Blues label Ruf Records and are still currently available in their catalogue.

Thomas Ruf, owner and founder of the label, commenting about watching Kevin record, said that he was always amazed at how he would come into the studio and be able to "create" a whole album in two days. His song lyrics were all improvised on the spot, and are amazing poems dealing with subjects, like the normally taboo topic of mental health, and the treatment of mental health patients.

His 1999 recording for Ruf, Sugar Candy Taxi, is a spectacular musical and lyrical odyssey. It's an example of how a Blues song is not necessarily defined by the music, but can also be given that designation via the emotional content and attitudes expressed by the lyrics. There may not be too much Mississippi Mud or Chicago grit on the music of these songs, but they still act upon you emotionally and intellectually like any Blues number should.

I'm looking for a paradise where the/Ones I love the don't tell lies/But I can't find that precious place I want you , I need you, I love you,/I'm almost dying,/I want you… "Almost Dying" Kevin Coyne Sugar Candy Taxi 1999, Ruf Records

But he's not just emotionally heavy, he's can also poke fun at himself. Like on "Porcupine People" when he says things like "(All shout) He's paranoid" in reference to himself, and in the next verse he says "I sure I'm paranoid, maybe I am? …There's not much joy in being paranoid, listen to me…" Remember this is the man who had a nervous break down, so to be able to sing lyrics like that takes a sense of humour most of us are lacking.

Or then there is the song "My Wife's Best Friend" where he revels in every man's fantasy of fooling around with his wife's best friend, because you know men are really like that don't you. Than there are the lines that just stick in your head because they are so real and fly in the face of convention, maybe not in the lyric, but in the way they are said and the inflection in his voice. "Even blondes girls get the blues" might not sound too biting sitting on it's own, but in the context of the title song "Sugar Candy Taxi" it gains a texture that doesn't show up on this page.

That brings me to Kevin Coyne's voice. Some people are said to have the voice of an Angel, but they weren't talking about Kevin. Unless of course your definition of Angel stretches to include imps with a voice that sounds like a mixture of Joe Cocker and Warren Zevon with the delivery of Randy Newman.

But unlike the latter two whose constant irony, bitterness and sarcasm can wear on you after a while, there's an honesty and rawness that will slip through in Kevin's delivery and voice that resonate on an emotional level instead of simply an intellectual level. Sure he uses clever arrangements of words, and quick turns of phrase to make some points, but he still knows the true strength of a Blues song resides in it's emotional honesty.

Before listening to Sugar Candy Taxi I had only heard one song of Kevin's, but that had been enough to make an impression on me. Sometimes though those first impressions can be misleading, and listening to a full disc of the person's music will be a disappointment. Not from this man though, and not from this disc.

Kevin Coyne's 1999 CD Sugar Candy Taxi is a disc that has already stood the test of time and sure sounds like it will continue to do so for many a year to come. Even though Kevin is no longer with us, he has left a wonderful legacy behind him.

Posted by Ashok at 01:26 AM | Permalink