In Memory of Jack

Yesterday, Canada lost one of our best and most caring politicians, NDP leader Jack Layton, to cancer. A couple of days before his death, Jack wrote this letter, which he left to Canadians. It's a beautiful and inspiring piece. And, just as Jack said, let's be hopeful:

August 20, 2011

Toronto, Ontario

Dear Friends,

Tens of thousands of Canadians have written to me in recent weeks to wish me well. I want to thank each and every one of you for your thoughtful, inspiring and often beautiful notes, cards and gifts. Your spirit and love have lit up my home, my spirit, and my determination.

Unfortunately my treatment has not worked out as I hoped. So I am giving this letter to my partner Olivia to share with you in the circumstance in which I cannot continue.

I recommend that Hull-Aylmer MP Nycole Turmel continue her work as our interim leader until a permanent successor is elected.

I recommend the party hold a leadership vote as early as possible in the New Year, on approximately the same timelines as in 2003, so that our new leader has ample time to reconsolidate our team, renew our party and our program, and move forward towards the next election.

A few additional thoughts:

To other Canadians who are on journeys to defeat cancer and to live their lives, I say this: please don’t be discouraged that my own journey hasn’t gone as well as I had hoped. You must not lose your own hope. Treatments and therapies have never been better in the face of this disease. You have every reason to be optimistic, determined, and focused on the future. My only other advice is to cherish every moment with those you love at every stage of your journey, as I have done this summer.

To the members of my party: we’ve done remarkable things together in the past eight years. It has been a privilege to lead the New Democratic Party and I am most grateful for your confidence, your support, and the endless hours of volunteer commitment you have devoted to our cause. There will be those who will try to persuade you to give up our cause. But that cause is much bigger than any one leader. Answer them by recommitting with energy and determination to our work. Remember our proud history of social justice, universal health care, public pensions and making sure no one is left behind. Let’s continue to move forward. Let’s demonstrate in everything we do in the four years before us that we are ready to serve our beloved Canada as its next government.

To the members of our parliamentary caucus: I have been privileged to work with each and every one of you. Our caucus meetings were always the highlight of my week. It has been my role to ask a great deal from you. And now I am going to do so again. Canadians will be closely watching you in the months to come. Colleagues, I know you will make the tens of thousands of members of our party proud of you by demonstrating the same seamless teamwork and solidarity that has earned us the confidence of millions of Canadians in the recent election.

To my fellow Quebecers: On May 2nd, you made an historic decision. You decided that the way to replace Canada’s Conservative federal government with something better was by working together in partnership with progressive-minded Canadians across the country. You made the right decision then; it is still the right decision today; and it will be the right decision right through to the next election, when we will succeed, together. You have elected a superb team of New Democrats to Parliament. They are going to be doing remarkable things in the years to come to make this country better for us all.

To young Canadians: All my life I have worked to make things better. Hope and optimism have defined my political career, and I continue to be hopeful and optimistic about Canada. Young people have been a great source of inspiration for me. I have met and talked with so many of you about your dreams, your frustrations, and your ideas for change. More and more, you are engaging in politics because you want to change things for the better. Many of you have placed your trust in our party. As my time in political life draws to a close I want to share with you my belief in your power to change this country and this world. There are great challenges before you, from the overwhelming nature of climate change to the unfairness of an economy that excludes so many from our collective wealth, and the changes necessary to build a more inclusive and generous Canada. I believe in you. Your energy, your vision, your passion for justice are exactly what this country needs today. You need to be at the heart of our economy, our political life, and our plans for the present and the future.

And finally, to all Canadians: Canada is a great country, one of the hopes of the world. We can be a better one – a country of greater equality, justice, and opportunity. We can build a prosperous economy and a society that shares its benefits more fairly. We can look after our seniors. We can offer better futures for our children. We can do our part to save the world’s environment. We can restore our good name in the world. We can do all of these things because we finally have a party system at the national level where there are real choices; where your vote matters; where working for change can actually bring about change. In the months and years to come, New Democrats will put a compelling new alternative to you. My colleagues in our party are an impressive, committed team. Give them a careful hearing; consider the alternatives; and consider that we can be a better, fairer, more equal country by working together. Don’t let them tell you it can’t be done.

My friends, love is better than anger. Hope is better than fear. Optimism is better than despair. So let us be loving, hopeful and optimistic. And we’ll change the world.

All my very best,

Jack Layton

Because it's almost graduation time...

I have a confession to make: I've never read Harry Potter. I just didn't do it early enough (tried one time with the first book and lost interest) and now it seems weird to pick it up. I can't commit to 7 books, not when there are so many others I want to read and so little time to begin with. Not now. That said, I'll probably do it some day - maybe in 2 months, maybe in 30 years, who knows? Also, despite having never read it, I really do like JK Rowling, and I was in Boston last weekend for a visit and toured Harvard (or Hahvahd - as the locals say) so when I read JK Rowling's graduation address to the Harvard class of 2008, I wanted to share. It's a beautiful read, full of wisdom and good ideas, and above all, compassion. Enjoy:


President Faust, members of the Harvard Corporation and the Board of Overseers, members of the faculty, proud parents, and, above all, graduates.
The first thing I would like to say is ‘thank you.’ Not only has Harvard given me an extraordinary honour, but the weeks of fear and nausea I have endured at the thought of giving this commencement address have made me lose weight. A win-win situation! Now all I have to do is take deep breaths, squint at the red banners and convince myself that I am at the world’s largest Gryffindor reunion.
Delivering a commencement address is a great responsibility; or so I thought until I cast my mind back to my own graduation. The commencement speaker that day was the distinguished British philosopher Baroness Mary Warnock. Reflecting on her speech has helped me enormously in writing this one, because it turns out that I can’t remember a single word she said. This liberating discovery enables me to proceed without any fear that I might inadvertently influence you to abandon promising careers in business, the law or politics for the giddy delights of becoming a gay wizard.
You see? If all you remember in years to come is the ‘gay wizard’ joke, I’ve come out ahead of Baroness Mary Warnock. Achievable goals: the first step to self improvement.
Actually, I have wracked my mind and heart for what I ought to say to you today. I have asked myself what I wish I had known at my own graduation, and what important lessons I have learned in the 21 years that have expired between that day and this.
I have come up with two answers. On this wonderful day when we are gathered together to celebrate your academic success, I have decided to talk to you about the benefits of failure. And as you stand on the threshold of what is sometimes called ‘real life’, I want to extol the crucial importance of imagination.
These may seem quixotic or paradoxical choices, but please bear with me.
Looking back at the 21-year-old that I was at graduation, is a slightly uncomfortable experience for the 42-year-old that she has become. Half my lifetime ago, I was striking an uneasy balance between the ambition I had for myself, and what those closest to me expected of me.
I was convinced that the only thing I wanted to do, ever, was to write novels. However, my parents, both of whom came from impoverished backgrounds and neither of whom had been to college, took the view that my overactive imagination was an amusing personal quirk that would never pay a mortgage, or secure a pension. I know that the irony strikes with the force of a cartoon anvil, now.
So they hoped that I would take a vocational degree; I wanted to study English Literature. A compromise was reached that in retrospect satisfied nobody, and I went up to study Modern Languages. Hardly had my parents’ car rounded the corner at the end of the road than I ditched German and scuttled off down the Classics corridor.
I cannot remember telling my parents that I was studying Classics; they might well have found out for the first time on graduation day. Of all the subjects on this planet, I think they would have been hard put to name one less useful than Greek mythology when it came to securing the keys to an executive bathroom.
I would like to make it clear, in parenthesis, that I do not blame my parents for their point of view. There is an expiry date on blaming your parents for steering you in the wrong direction; the moment you are old enough to take the wheel, responsibility lies with you. What is more, I cannot criticise my parents for hoping that I would never experience poverty. They had been poor themselves, and I have since been poor, and I quite agree with them that it is not an ennobling experience. Poverty entails fear, and stress, and sometimes depression; it means a thousand petty humiliations and hardships. Climbing out of poverty by your own efforts, that is indeed something on which to pride yourself, but poverty itself is romanticised only by fools.
What I feared most for myself at your age was not poverty, but failure.
At your age, in spite of a distinct lack of motivation at university, where I had spent far too long in the coffee bar writing stories, and far too little time at lectures, I had a knack for passing examinations, and that, for years, had been the measure of success in my life and that of my peers.
I am not dull enough to suppose that because you are young, gifted and well-educated, you have never known hardship or heartbreak. Talent and intelligence never yet inoculated anyone against the caprice of the Fates, and I do not for a moment suppose that everyone here has enjoyed an existence of unruffled privilege and contentment.
However, the fact that you are graduating from Harvard suggests that you are not very well-acquainted with failure. You might be driven by a fear of failure quite as much as a desire for success. Indeed, your conception of failure might not be too far from the average person’s idea of success, so high have you already flown.
Ultimately, we all have to decide for ourselves what constitutes failure, but the world is quite eager to give you a set of criteria if you let it. So I think it fair to say that by any conventional measure, a mere seven years after my graduation day, I had failed on an epic scale. An exceptionally short-lived marriage had imploded, and I was jobless, a lone parent, and as poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain, without being homeless. The fears that my parents had had for me, and that I had had for myself, had both come to pass, and by every usual standard, I was the biggest failure I knew.
Now, I am not going to stand here and tell you that failure is fun. That period of my life was a dark one, and I had no idea that there was going to be what the press has since represented as a kind of fairy tale resolution. I had no idea then how far the tunnel extended, and for a long time, any light at the end of it was a hope rather than a reality.
So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged. I was set free, because my greatest fear had been realised, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.
You might never fail on the scale I did, but some failure in life is inevitable. It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all – in which case, you fail by default.
Failure gave me an inner security that I had never attained by passing examinations. Failure taught me things about myself that I could have learned no other way. I discovered that I had a strong will, and more discipline than I had suspected; I also found out that I had friends whose value was truly above the price of rubies.
The knowledge that you have emerged wiser and stronger from setbacks means that you are, ever after, secure in your ability to survive. You will never truly know yourself, or the strength of your relationships, until both have been tested by adversity. Such knowledge is a true gift, for all that it is painfully won, and it has been worth more than any qualification I ever earned.
So given a Time Turner, I would tell my 21-year-old self that personal happiness lies in knowing that life is not a check-list of acquisition or achievement. Your qualifications, your CV, are not your life, though you will meet many people of my age and older who confuse the two. Life is difficult, and complicated, and beyond anyone’s total control, and the humility to know that will enable you to survive its vicissitudes.
Now you might think that I chose my second theme, the importance of imagination, because of the part it played in rebuilding my life, but that is not wholly so. Though I personally will defend the value of bedtime stories to my last gasp, I have learned to value imagination in a much broader sense. Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and therefore the fount of all invention and innovation. In its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity, it is the power that enables us to empathise with humans whose experiences we have never shared.
One of the greatest formative experiences of my life preceded Harry Potter, though it informed much of what I subsequently wrote in those books. This revelation came in the form of one of my earliest day jobs. Though I was sloping off to write stories during my lunch hours, I paid the rent in my early 20s by working at the African research department at Amnesty International’s headquarters in London.
There in my little office I read hastily scribbled letters smuggled out of totalitarian regimes by men and women who were risking imprisonment to inform the outside world of what was happening to them. I saw photographs of those who had disappeared without trace, sent to Amnesty by their desperate families and friends. I read the testimony of torture victims and saw pictures of their injuries. I opened handwritten, eye-witness accounts of summary trials and executions, of kidnappings and rapes.
Many of my co-workers were ex-political prisoners, people who had been displaced from their homes, or fled into exile, because they had the temerity to speak against their governments. Visitors to our offices included those who had come to give information, or to try and find out what had happened to those they had left behind.
I shall never forget the African torture victim, a young man no older than I was at the time, who had become mentally ill after all he had endured in his homeland. He trembled uncontrollably as he spoke into a video camera about the brutality inflicted upon him. He was a foot taller than I was, and seemed as fragile as a child. I was given the job of escorting him back to the Underground Station afterwards, and this man whose life had been shattered by cruelty took my hand with exquisite courtesy, and wished me future happiness.
And as long as I live I shall remember walking along an empty corridor and suddenly hearing, from behind a closed door, a scream of pain and horror such as I have never heard since. The door opened, and the researcher poked out her head and told me to run and make a hot drink for the young man sitting with her. She had just had to give him the news that in retaliation for his own outspokenness against his country’s regime, his mother had been seized and executed.
Every day of my working week in my early 20s I was reminded how incredibly fortunate I was, to live in a country with a democratically elected government, where legal representation and a public trial were the rights of everyone.
Every day, I saw more evidence about the evils humankind will inflict on their fellow humans, to gain or maintain power. I began to have nightmares, literal nightmares, about some of the things I saw, heard, and read.
And yet I also learned more about human goodness at Amnesty International than I had ever known before.
Amnesty mobilises thousands of people who have never been tortured or imprisoned for their beliefs to act on behalf of those who have. The power of human empathy, leading to collective action, saves lives, and frees prisoners. Ordinary people, whose personal well-being and security are assured, join together in huge numbers to save people they do not know, and will never meet. My small participation in that process was one of the most humbling and inspiring experiences of my life.
Unlike any other creature on this planet, humans can learn and understand, without having experienced. They can think themselves into other people’s places.
Of course, this is a power, like my brand of fictional magic, that is morally neutral. One might use such an ability to manipulate, or control, just as much as to understand or sympathise.
And many prefer not to exercise their imaginations at all. They choose to remain comfortably within the bounds of their own experience, never troubling to wonder how it would feel to have been born other than they are. They can refuse to hear screams or to peer inside cages; they can close their minds and hearts to any suffering that does not touch them personally; they can refuse to know.
I might be tempted to envy people who can live that way, except that I do not think they have any fewer nightmares than I do. Choosing to live in narrow spaces leads to a form of mental agoraphobia, and that brings its own terrors. I think the wilfully unimaginative see more monsters. They are often more afraid.
What is more, those who choose not to empathise enable real monsters. For without ever committing an act of outright evil ourselves, we collude with it, through our own apathy.
One of the many things I learned at the end of that Classics corridor down which I ventured at the age of 18, in search of something I could not then define, was this, written by the Greek author Plutarch: What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality.
That is an astonishing statement and yet proven a thousand times every day of our lives. It expresses, in part, our inescapable connection with the outside world, the fact that we touch other people’s lives simply by existing.
But how much more are you, Harvard graduates of 2008, likely to touch other people’s lives? Your intelligence, your capacity for hard work, the education you have earned and received, give you unique status, and unique responsibilities. Even your nationality sets you apart. The great majority of you belong to the world’s only remaining superpower. The way you vote, the way you live, the way you protest, the pressure you bring to bear on your government, has an impact way beyond your borders. That is your privilege, and your burden.
If you choose to use your status and influence to raise your voice on behalf of those who have no voice; if you choose to identify not only with the powerful, but with the powerless; if you retain the ability to imagine yourself into the lives of those who do not have your advantages, then it will not only be your proud families who celebrate your existence, but thousands and millions of people whose reality you have helped change. We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better.
I am nearly finished. I have one last hope for you, which is something that I already had at 21. The friends with whom I sat on graduation day have been my friends for life. They are my children’s godparents, the people to whom I’ve been able to turn in times of trouble, people who have been kind enough not to sue me when I took their names for Death Eaters. At our graduation we were bound by enormous affection, by our shared experience of a time that could never come again, and, of course, by the knowledge that we held certain photographic evidence that would be exceptionally valuable if any of us ran for Prime Minister.
So today, I wish you nothing better than similar friendships. And tomorrow, I hope that even if you remember not a single word of mine, you remember those of Seneca, another of those old Romans I met when I fled down the Classics corridor, in retreat from career ladders, in search of ancient wisdom:
As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters.
I wish you all very good lives.
Thank you very much.

Sisters

We are four sides to a square, each holding that precarious balance, their piece of our existence as a whole. We are a range of colours and shapes and emotions, an abstract painting done in some dream of light, a reflection through a foggy mirror, each of us swimming into the next, the distinction so clear and yet so blurry. We can be the same person if we swim far back enough, can reach that point where our hearts are still beating in one spot, are still fed directly from our mother, where our minds do not yet fully exist, where our worlds are warm and fuzzy and hold you so close, so protective, there is nothing to do but be held.
I am a different person with my sisters, different with each of them and yet exactly the same because it is not a secretive change, but a natural one. I am a clown with S, a writer with H, and a sweetheart with A. We fit into each other’s clothes, steal shoes and thoughts and old headscarves, steal ideas. We steal and are stolen from willingly, listen and talk silently, hug and cry when there is nothing else to be done. My sisters stretch before me like sign posts, they stretch after me like a trail of fans, following every step, waiting, breath held, to see what I will do next.
A is the oldest, and so sweet there is something beguiling in her smile. You can’t help but have some of it rub off on you when you’re with her – you start to think more kindly, to talk more earnestly, to ignore the things that drive you crazy. A tricked our parents into thinking all little girls were so angelic, so they went and had more of us, and for that we all owe her.
H is the witness, the one who chronicles our lives, all the joys and the heartbreaks – the graduations and marriages, the births, the reunions and separations. H will make you cry no matter how determined you may be to keep your eyes dry and your face stern. She will find that spot in you by telling, by reminding, by making you soar first and dive later, reach your humanity, your longing. When we are 80 and we want to remember, it is to H’s words that we will turn. When we are 80, she will still find ways to make us cry.
S is the baby and the joker. She is the opening line of a performance that started off as a simple phone call, and the comic relief at the end of any hardship. S has a knack for words and keeps it a secret, tucked away beneath a straight face, sparkling eyes deadpan, waiting for you to crack first. And though she’s the baby she’s been everywhere and done everything. She steamrolls right past you – not showy or obvious, but quietly doing her exceptional thing as though it was nothing, and blushing when you point out the accomplishments, wishing you would stop.
I do not know who I am without them – I am attempts at A’s kindness and gentleness, H’s intensity and lyricism, S’s wit and humility. I am attempts to emulate each of my sisters, falling short and hoping to some day catch up, happy in the meantime that I at least have the teachers to guide me.

Momentous

I want to be there
for something enormous
for a moment
that stretches into an hour
a day that stretches into a year into
a new reality

that stretches into
a way of thinking
of being caring touching speaking
in kindness
in love
of speaking good
instead of insinuations

I want to be there for truth flowing
for justice for all going
from theory to practice
for the end
of war
the end of all the givens
to be there
not only as witness
but as actor
for the moment
that starts the motion
that starts the march
to good

For the Love of Language

I love words, so I just had to post this:

Bringing the bling to daily speech
How celebrity speak and TV catchphrases creep into our conversations

By Colleen Ross

As Britney Spears rises again, strutting onto stages to tour her comeback album Circus, I have begun to wonder what would happen to the popular phrase to pull a Britney. It has hitherto meant doing something outlandish: with or without shaving your head, marrying your childhood sweetheart and annulling within three days, or having two kids within a year. Now, because the phrase is so ingrained in popular lingo, perhaps it will come to mean achieving new heights of popularity by acting crazy. The term is as ensconced in popular lore as the celebrity herself.
Celebrity-based words and TV speak are increasingly wending their way into daily speech, reflecting a fame-obsessed society.The Simpsons as linguistic innovators? Meh. (Associated Press)
Before you get the hateration on for this column because you can't handle the truthiness of what I have to say, I urge you: check it out! (That's American Idol's Randy Jackson speaking, not me.) Words from the celebrity world are slowly creeping into our lexicon.
Meh, you say, shrugging your shoulders. (By the way, that word popularized by The Simpsons is on its way into the Collins English Dictionary next year.)
But I've thought this through. I mused when this first started to happen. O.J. Simpson in the news again brought back memories of the white bronco, a term now parked in the Urban Dictionary to mean getaway car. Maybe what that O.J. needs is some more bling. That word, now in the Oxford English Dictionary, was thought up in the late 1990s by rappers Cash Money Millionaires. Then there was of course jump the couch, made famous by Tom Cruise, which means going off the deep end, as he so famously did on Oprah.
Rachael Ray's EVOO (extra-virgin olive oil) is now in the Oxford American College Dictionary and Beyonce's immensely popular bootylicious has sashayed its way into the OED. The Urban Dictionary includes political satirist Stephen Colbert's word truthiness, Jon Stewart's creation catastrof**k, Mary J. Blige's hateration, and the unabashedly simple That's hot! from that celebrity we love to hate, Paris Hilton.
In addition to the celebrity lingo, language spawned by television has been working its way into popular speech. Think of our Seinfeld-isms: yada yada yada, "Not that there's anything wrong with that," high/low/close talkers, double-dipping, and the list goes on. Then there's the lingo from the sitcom Friends: the oft-quoted "How you doin'?" and the uber popular so-not combo as in: "I'm so not going out with that guy." Seriously? That's so Grey's Anatomy.
Repeating what the stars say
While English has long incorporated lingo from the entertainment world, the cool cats pace of acquisition of our parents' generation is much faster now, says Tim Blackmore, who teaches popular culture at the University of Western Ontario.Satirist Stephen Colbert: Truthiness has its social consequences. (Jason DeCrow/Associated Press)
We have the rap world, we have mega stars who shamelessly market themselves, and we have a proliferation of talk shows and reality shows that contribute to our daily lingo. You know, the whole sista ebonics of Tyra Banks and the bumbling deadpan of Ellen Degeneres (who, incidentally, has her very own dictionary). Of course, there's also the quick repartee of political satirists Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart.
Blackmore notices lingo popularized by rappers and talk shows is creeping into daily conversation. He reels off a list: don't go there, that's so whatever, I'm all about the (fill in the blank), let the healing begin, that's what I'm talkin' about, and my favourite: talk to the hand!
"Some of my students, as well as teens and tweens, have a very quick patter," says Blackmore. "It sounds smart, but then I listen more closely. It's a loop. They've picked up some quick responses from a TV show; they have a certain number of responses and then they run out."
Blackmore says the issue is there isn't any conception that what people like Colbert and Stewart say on TV isn't actually 'normal' conversation; it's been heavily scripted by many people. But with Canadians spending an average 21 hours per week watching TV, we may just fall into repeating what the stars say.
"This language shows that we're on top of things, that we're hip to it," says Blackmore. In our fast-paced world, we want to have a smart answer, a slick reaction — and these celebrities do what we feel we can't do for ourselves.
It seems that in talking like celebrities, we're simply mimicking people we deem successful. We use that ancient tool of language: gossip.
Social psychologist Frank McAndrew from Knox College in Illinois just wrote a comprehensive article on gossip for Scientific American Mind. McAndrew says we chat about celebrities because we're so intimate with the details of their lives that we feel we know them. Anthropologically, we consider them part of our inner circle. "We may look to celebrities to learn strategies for being successful, just as we looked to the most influential members of our tribe (e.g. the best hunters and warriors) in days of yore," says McAndrew.
Expressing the deep thoughts
So what's the fallout of all this celebriteez lingo?
As Tim Blackmore deftly puts it: "Knowledge produces eloquence and vocabulary. Going from TV show to show produces pickup lines." He notices that his students are slower to come up with a considered response, consumed by their desire to be quick and funny. He says when they're asked to form an honest answer to a question without quips, they often pause, saying they don't know. But after some hemming and hawing and formulating and reformulating of sentences, they do get down to substance.
So the deep thoughts are there; it's just a matter of finding our own words to express them.
In the end, maybe this celebritized language is an exercise in democracy. We're all equal in our quest for a crib, a boo, and occasionally a little bling, and in so pursuing, we're all speaking the same language. I believe there is some truthiness to that.

A Direct Theft

This post is a direct theft from Jen's blog (although it's her hubby who posted this particular entry). I try not to outright steal too often, (and I always give credit when I do) but this poem was just too perfect and startling not to share:

THANKS
by W.S. Merwin

Listen
with the night falling we are saying thank you
we are stopping on the bridges to bow from the railings
we are running out of the glass rooms
with our mouths full of food to look at the sky
and say thank you
we are standing by the water thanking it
smiling by the windows looking out
in different directions

back from a series of hospitals back from a mugging
after funerals we are saying thank you
after the news of the dead
whether or not we knew them we are saying thank you
looking up from our tables we are saying thank you
in a country up to its chin in shame
living in the stench it has chosen we are saying thank you

over telephones we are saying thank you
in doorways and in the backs of cars and elevators
remembering wars and the police at the door
and the beatings on stairs we are saying thank you
in the banks that use us we are saying thank you
with crooks in office with the rich and fashionable
we go on unchanged saying thank you thank you

with the animals dying around us
our lost feelings we are saying thank you
with the forests falling faster than the minutes
of our lives we are saying thank you
with the wires going out like cells of a brain
with the cities growing over us like the earth
we are saying thank you faster and faster
with nobody listening we are saying thank you
we are saying thank you and waving
dark though it is.

The ONLY thing I'll miss about Bush...

is his way of mangling words... Ladies and Gents, I leave you with this list from Yahoo! News of ridiculous phrases. Enjoy. The next four (well, hopefully the next eight) years will be both more boring and articulate in the Oval Office:

Bushisms: U.S. leader sets standard for mangled phrases during presidency

President George W. Bush will leave behind a legacy of Bushisms, the label stamped on the U.S. leaders original speaking style. Some of the president's more notable malapropisms and mangled statements:
-"I know the human being and fish can coexist peacefully." - September 2000, explaining his energy policies at an event in Michigan.
-"Rarely is the question asked, is our children learning?" - January 2000, during a campaign event in South Carolina.
-"They misunderestimated the compassion of our country. I think they misunderestimated the will and determination of the commander-in-chief, too." - Sept. 26, 2001, in Langley, Va. Bush was referring to the terrorists who carried out the Sept. 11 attacks.
-"There's no doubt in my mind, not one doubt in my mind, that we will fail." - Oct. 4, 2001, in Washington. Bush was remarking on a back-to-work plan after the terrorist attacks.
- "It would be a mistake for the United States Senate to allow any kind of human cloning to come out of that chamber." - April 10, 2002, at the White House, as Bush urged Senate passage of a broad ban on cloning.
- "I want to thank the dozens of welfare-to-work stories, the actual examples of people who made the firm and solemn commitment to work hard to embetter themselves." - April 18, 2002, at the White House.
-"There's an old saying in Tennessee - I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee - that says, fool me once, shame on - shame on you. Fool me - you can't get fooled again." - Sept. 17, 2002, in Nashville, Tenn.
-"Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we." - Aug. 5, 2004, at the signing ceremony for a defence spending bill.
-"Too many good docs are getting out of business. Too many OB/GYNs aren't able to practice their love with women all across this country." - Sept. 6, 2004, at a rally in Poplar Bluff, Mo.
- "Our most abundant energy source is coal. We have enough coal to last for 250 years, yet coal also prevents an environmental challenge." - April 20, 2005, in Washington.
- "We look forward to hearing your vision, so we can more better do our job." - Sept. 20, 2005, in Gulfport, Miss.
-"I can't wait to join you in the joy of welcoming neighbours back into neighbourhoods, and small businesses up and running, and cutting those ribbons that somebody is creating new jobs." - Sept. 5, 2005, when Bush met with residents of Poplarville, Miss., in the wake of hurricane Katrina.
-"It was not always a given that the United States and America would have a close relationship. After all, 60 years we were at war 60 years ago we were at war." - June 29, 2006, at the White House, where Bush met with Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi.
-"Make no mistake about it, I understand how tough it is, sir. I talk to families who die." - Dec. 7, 2006, in a joint appearance with British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
- "These are big achievements for this country, and the people of Bulgaria ought to be proud of the achievements that they have achieved." - June 11, 2007, in Sofia, Bulgaria.
- "Mr. Prime Minister, thank you for your introduction. Thank you for being such a fine host for the OPEC summit." - September 2007, in Sydney, Australia, where Bush was attending an APEC summit.
-"Thank you, Your Holiness. Awesome speech." April 16, 2008, at a ceremony welcoming Pope Benedict to the White House.
-"The fact that they purchased the machine meant somebody had to make the machine. And when somebody makes a machine, it means there's jobs at the machine-making place." - May 27, 2008, in Mesa, Ariz.
-"And they have no disregard for human life." - July 15, 2008, at the White House. Bush was referring to enemy fighters in Afghanistan.
- "I remember meeting a mother of a child who was abducted by the North Koreans right here in the Oval Office." - June 26, 2008, during a Rose Garden news briefing.
-"Throughout our history, the words of the Declaration have inspired immigrants from around the world to set sail to our shores. These immigrants have helped transform 13 small colonies into a great and growing nation of more than 300 people." - July 4, 2008 in Virginia.
- "This thaw - took a while to thaw, it's going to take a while to unthaw." Oct. 20, 2008, in Alexandria, La., as he discussed the economy and frozen credit markets.

IF by Rudyard Kipling

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too:
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream -- and not make dreams your master;
If you can think -- and not make thoughts your aim,
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same:
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build'em up with worn-out tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings,
And never breathe a word about your loss:
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings -- nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much:
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And which is more; you'll be a Man, my son!

Changes

I wrote to be more like you, started it because it was something I could copy you at and then realized - wow, this is actually something I might be good at! - and started to enjoy it myself but even then, it was always linked to you in some way...
you were always the first ear to listen to my voice re-reading the words off the page, the first critic with a verdict - It's good. It's sad. It's strong - always so kind about it, lifting the grade of the words a point or two above what I would have given myself, turning average into nice, nice into moving, moving into powerful. I would read you those words still fresh off the page, still scribbled in my illegible handwriting, read them to myself aloud for the first time in that recital, for the first time since writing them, stumbling over the scratches and the underlines, the changes in mid-sentence, the run-ons, the flows that didn't flow and needed fixing.
For years, you read your novels through me, through the dog-eared pages of the latest book under my pillow, and I would breathlessly explain the circumstances of the last 2 pages, the lead up to that perfect sentence I had highlighted, that perfect sentence I needed you to hear... When the book was just "ok" I might have two passages to share, when it was amazing every second page was dog-eared, every second page needing reading aloud and after twenty-or-so sessions it was just "You need to read this book!" - to which you might answer "you're reading it to me anyway".
I still underline and dog-ear. I read more now that you're away, actually, read in some of the time we might have spent talking, some of the time I might have spent on the floor of your living room, playing dress up with my Little Angela or giving pony-rides to my Little Angel. Maybe when you visit I will greet you with a barrel-full of books and say "here, read the underlined parts". Maybe you'll move back someday and we'll spend the next three years working our way through the pile slowly, between our day-to-day. Maybe you'll never read them, but it makes me feel better to mark them up for you just the same.

Can I at least consider it a healthy addiction?

So M and I went to Paragraph, our favourite Montreal independent bookstore, yesterday, so that I could buy or order the remaining Ann Patchett books. Unfortunately, the only ones they had in store were Run and Bel Canto, two of the three I already own. I left the store having not placed the order, but instead with three other books. One, a classic that I've always loved and always wanted on my bookshelf, To Kill a Mockingbird. Two, The Gathering by Anne Enright, winner of the Man Booker prize for 2007, and three, a non-fiction, the latest by John Esposito, called Who Speaks For Islam.
I still have to finish Run before I can start any of these, but I think I'm actually dangerous to myself in a bookstore. If you left me there for a few days, I could easily run myself into debt. I can't stop...

Soul Touching

For my soon-to-depart sister:

You opened me with your words
Like a flower
In rain, just a little afraid to be pelted
But wanting the water
Opened to a thirst I didn't realize I had

Not a need but a want
To be connected, to be held in the thoughts of
Another human being, a beautiful creature
With wings for ideas, each notion
Touching down to tickle the back of my neck
And fly away
Hover on the edge of the horizon
Turn to wave before leaving

You opened me to feed me
To nurture my pieces with extra
Wholesome cooking
The cream rich in your soup
The bread soft
The dough chewy after hard stale crackers
(And here I thought the bucking up was good
And here I was learning to be tough
But I learnt again what it is to fall
Heavily into a bed, to sink into it
To close your eyes and dream
When still awake
To feel all the succulence
And not only the sustenance)

And all with only words
To make me feel a giant
To fill me full to my brim so I can
Grow beyond them
Look down from high high high on up
And see that they are not so big
That I am bigger
(If only in my head and your words)
And stop being fine when asked.
No, be good. Be truly, really good.

Seuss Lovin'

M and I were talking about Dr. Seuss the other day, and he mentioned Green Eggs and Ham, but I don't think he's read the others that much. My favourite one: Oh the Places You'll Go!
It's basically a graduation speech. Just about the best ever graduation speech because it says everything that needs to be said about jumping into something new and being confident and then being scared and then making it work out and all the guck in between. Also awesome, Horton Hears a Who. And check out this site if you're a general Seuss fan.

Just spreading the joy:

Oh, the Places You’ll Go!
Congratulations!
Today is your day.
You’re off to Great Places!
You’re off and away!
You have brains in your head.
You have feet in your shoes
You can steer yourself
any direction you choose.
You’re on your own.
And you know what you know.
And YOU are the guy who’ll decide where to go.
You’ll look up and down streets.
Look ‘em over with care.
About some you will say, “I don’t choose to go there.”
With your head full of brains and your shoes full of feet,
you’re too smart to go down any not-so-good street.
And you may not find any
you’ll want to go down.
In that case, of course,
you’ll head straight out of town.
It’s opener therein the wide open air.
Out there things can happenand frequently do
to people as brainyand footsy as you.
And when things start to happen,
don’t worry. Don’t stew.
Just go right along.
You’ll start happening too.
OH!THE PLACES YOU’LL GO!
You’ll be on your way up!
You’ll be seeing great sights!
You’ll join the high fliers
who soar to high heights.
You won’t lag behind, because you’ll have the speed.
You’ll pass the whole gang and you’ll soon take the lead.
Wherever you fly, you’ll be the best of the best.
Wherever you go, you will top all the rest.
Except when you don’t
Because, sometimes, you won’t.
I’m sorry to say so
but, sadly, it’s true
and hang-ups
can happen to you.
You can get all hung up
in a prickle-ly perch.
And your gang will fly on.
You’ll be left in a Lurch.
You’ll come down from the Lurch
with an unpleasant bump.
And the chances are, then,
that you’ll be in a Slump.
And when you’re in a Slump,
you’re not in for much fun.
Un-slumping yourself
is not easily done.
You will come to a place where the streets are not marked.
Some windows are lighted. But mostly they’re darked.
A place you could sprain both you elbow and chin!
Do you dare to stay out? Do you dare to go in?
How much can you lose? How much can you win?
And IF you go in, should you turn left or right…
or right-and-three-quarters? Or, maybe, not quite?
Or go around back and sneak in from behind?
Simple it’s not, I’m afraid you will find,
for a mind-maker-upper to make up his mind.
You can get so confused
that you’ll start in to race
down long wiggled roads at a break-necking pace
and grind on for miles across weirdish wild space,
headed, I fear, toward a most useless place.
The Waiting Place……
for people just waiting.
Waiting for a train to go
or a bus to come, or a plane to go
or the mail to come, or the rain to go
or the phone to ring, or the snow to snow
or waiting around for a Yes or a No
or waiting for their hair to grow.
Everyone is just waiting.Waiting for the fish to bite
or waiting for wind to fly a kite
or waiting around for Friday night
or waiting, perhaps, for their Uncle Jakeo
r a pot to boil, or a Better Break
or a sting of pearls, or a pair of pants
or a wig with curls, or Another Chance.
Everyone is just waiting.
NO!
That’s not for you!
Somehow you’ll escape
all that waiting and staying.
You’ll find the bright places
where Boom Bands are playing.
With banner flip-flapping,
once more you’ll ride high!
Ready for anything under the sky.
Ready because you’re that kind of a guy!
Oh, the places you’ll go! There is fun to be done!
There are points to be scored. There are games to be won.
And the magical things you can do with that ball
will make you the winning-est winner of all.
Fame! You’ll be famous as famous can be,
with the whole wide world watching you win on TV.
Except when they don’t.
Because, sometimes, they won’t.
I’m afraid that some times
you’ll play lonely games too.
Games you can’t win’cause you’ll play against you.
All Alone!
Whether you like it or not,
Alone will be something
you’ll be quite a lot.
And when you’re alone, there’s a very good chance
you’ll meet things that scare you right out of your pants.
There are some, down the road between hither and yon,
that can scare you so much you won’t want to go on.
But on you will go
though the weather be foul
On you will go
though your enemies prowl
On you will go
though the Hakken-Kraks howl
Onward up many
a frightening creek,
though your arms may get sore
and your sneakers may leak.
On and on you will hike
and I know you’ll hike far
and face up to your problems
whatever they are.
You’ll get mixed up, of course,
as you already know.
You’ll get mixed up
with many strange birds as you go.
So be sure when you step.
Step with care and great tact
and remember that Life’s
a Great Balancing Act.
Just never forget to be dexterous and deft.
And never mix up your right foot with your left.
And will you succeed?
Yes! You will, indeed!
(98 and 3/4 percent guaranteed.)
KID, YOU’LL MOVE MOUNTAINS!
So…be your name Buxbaum or Bixby or Bray
or Mordecai Ali Van Allen O’Shea,
you’re off to Great Places!
Today is your day!
Your mountain is waiting.
So…get on your way!

-Dr. Seuss

What it Takes

Do you love wordplay? If so, listen to this song by Jason Mraz. Just delightful and poetic in that light, fun way. Some of the lines are so simple, and yet very very true. Youtube video's pretty silly, but just try to enjoy the song.

Curiosity

Shhh...
Open your eyes. Look.
Each person who passes you
on these city streets
is an atom
of life
a leaf from a Maple tree shading
the small flowers below.

Do you wish
in some moments
to know all their stories?
To marvel at their miracles
big and small
to meet
the criers and the liars
the givers
the needers
the huge dilemmas
and the small paradoxes

Do you wish to meet
the Pandoras
to watch them untangling
the worms from the earth
shaking out the swirls and swoops
making straight lines
of everything?

For instance:
This boy who walks by
with a toque on his head
in mid-July
floppy red hair emerging
from the sides
(falling into his eyes)
what is his story?

How about that girl
on the curb at the bookstore
sorting through cards of
identical photographs
is this her life?
Does she go home at night?

I should keep walking.
The air changes angles
blows up instead of
sideways.
I need to look down
to continue
to move through time and
and space and experience
If I look longer
they will paralyze me
with my questions
too many to count

and everything will stop.

Happy Birthday Canada

This is my country, the one my parents chose over 33 years ago, the one I was born in, the one I think about when I'm somewhere else and homesick. This is where I huddled in bed as a child with my sisters, having impromptu sleepovers when our parents had asked us long ago to go to sleep; where I learned to ride a bike in the yard of the Catholic school on our street, my dad holding on to the back, holding, holding and then letting go and leaving me pedal off; where I met my first best friend and felt the rush of little girl secrets exchanged, of exclusivity, then had my first fight, spoke my first bold insult, felt my blood rush to my head with anger and shame as I stood alone in yard with the minutes of recess dwindling away and the wind whipping at my face, wanting to go back inside and do addition and subtraction; where I memorized Quran while sitting on a mossy rockface near Perth Ontario, reciting verses of Yaseen and looking at the trees and the lake in front of me; where I decided I loved hockey after Mr. Falls took us down to the library to watch the Olympics, where I watched Peter Forsberg score that goal and win the medal for someone else and felt my first of many sports heartbreaks; where I wrote my first rhyming poem and had it shown to the principal and got an extra sticker and decided I always wanted to write; where I stayed up nights finishing my writing portfolio for arts school in eighth grade, reading and re-reading the character profiles, the poems, the short story and agonizing over words, replacing "white" with "ivory" and switching back to "white" before finally printing; where I spent 4 years sleeping and reading and writing on the 90 minute bus ride to arts school instead of going to the school 10 blocks away; where Mr. Fitzpatrick gave us books to read and told us to study their tone and their voices, and I fell in love with "The Shipping News" and "The Wars" and wanted to write like Timothy Findlay; where I met Katherine and May and Brenda, whom I don't see for months or sometimes years but still fall back into easy conversation with when I do, and love like sisters, and hope and pray for regularly; where I met M at my sisters Katb Kitab; where I fell into easy conversation with him and knew, and waited some more and still knew; where I watched my other sister become a mom and carried my niece and nephew for the first time and learned to bottle feed and change diapers and pj's and hush a crying baby and tiptoe like I'd never tiptoed before.

Where I grew up and became who I am, and am still trying to become who I want to be.

It's not perfect here, and we make mistakes and maybe don't treat each other as well as we'd hoped we would, but at least we have that hope, have that intention to be fair and good with anyone who wants to come live here.

Happy Birthday.

Joke of the Day

Stolen from CBC radio this morning, with a slight modification. Because it's so bad, it's good:

A neutron walks into a deli and orders a sandwhich. The waiter brings it over a few minutes later and says, "For you, no charge".

Knee-slapping ensues!