Mom

I’m just glad I got a chance to talk to her before she died.

 The obituary will probably read “after a long illness”. There’s so much left unsaid in those four words, so much pain only hinted at. And you’d never know, reading such an obituary, that my mother actually died in a fire.

I don’t know how to feel. The overwhelming emotion is a species of relief: Mom had been battling an array of diseases for years, and I know for a fact she wanted to go. I know this because Eva and I have had at least four conversations with her in which she begged for permission to die. The first time was nearly three years ago. I wrote her a short letter, using a first-grader’s vocabulary, telling her everything was okay and I loved her, signing it ‘Kenny’.

I hope she kept that letter.

I feel so much guilt, too. Not for feeling relief: as far as I’m concerned, death was a great relief to Mom and so it should be to me as well. I feel guilty because I wasn’t as close to her as a son should be. That the distance was largely imposed and maintained by her seems like a poor excuse. I feel guilty for knowing this day was coming, preparing for it for years, only to be bushwhacked when it arrived.


My mother was a fighter. All her life she fought demons within and without. She left a highly toxic home environment at sixteen and made a life for herself, by herself, in the big city three hundred miles to the south. Her first husband died in a car accident; she lost her firstborn son, my twin brother, after two days (and nearly lost me). Her second marriage, to my father, was a fair approximation of hell for both of them; it dissolved in 1977, when I was five years old. For three years it was Mommy and I against the world. She met my stepdad, John McCallum, in 1980 and intensely disliked him on sight. It was one of the few times in her life that her first impression was a hundred percent dead wrong. And I’m forever grateful she overcame it: all John did was marry her, rescue and raise me, and remain devoted to her for 34 years. He was her primary caregiver as her illnesses progressed: in that he has borne, and continues to bear, a great burden, the same way he does everything: privately, with quiet grace and strength.

We had a falling out, my mother and I, not long after I met Eva. It was a silly thing that snowballed into anything but silly: both of us felt very much disrespected by the other, and some very hurtful things were said on both sides. She did not attend our wedding, which had its intended effect of wounding us deeply.  For roughly five years, there was no real contact between us.

John called me at one point and told me Mom’s health was starting to slip, and I realized neither of us was getting any younger: it was time to put away my bitterness. She had her reasons for acting as she did: to her they were damned good reasons, whatever I may have felt myself.

Our relationship reset, but it was not the same. Entire wings of her life’s mansion remained politely but firmly closed to me, the largest being her health. This was only to be expected: my mother was an intensely private woman, used to guarding her heart against betrayals, and while being weak didn't faze her, appearing weak certainly did.  And as her diseases — COPD and a form of dementia among them — progressed, taking away her independence and eventually most of her sanity, she was adamant that she didn’t want ANYONE seeing her. Almost totally housebound, shrunken and shrivelled to a seemingly impossible 67 pounds, and often incoherent, I could certainly understand her direction. But I resented it all the same: I wouldn’t be going to see her so I could look at her, if you understand my meaning. My resentment was at least partially founded in my own feelings of guilt for not being a proper son, not to mention my bewilderment in no longer knowing how to be.

She had her good days and bad days that ever so gradually became good hours and bad weeks. I’d never know which Mom I was calling: if I caught her in a lucid period, she sounded footloose and fancy free, as if she was about to get up and go gallivanting. Those were rewarding, if increasingly rare conversations. Through them I learned that she, raised deeply Catholic and terrified of hell, had cast off the shackles of her religion and embraced a spirituality that, strangely enough, wasn’t all that different from my own.

Then  there were the bad calls, when each sentence she uttered was an adventure, seemingly devoid of context, impossible to parse or respond to. What a horrid feeling: so many words  said, all of them doubtless meaningful as they’re spoken, all sense of meaning utterly stripped between mouth and ear. How do you talk to someone for whom each utterance takes place in a different era, years apart?

No matter how confused she got, she always remembered my wife’s name. Considering the tumult that accompanied the first year of that relationship, and the five years of radio silence afterwards, that meant the world to me.

I did get to see Mom in the hospital a few months ago — a place she had sworn up and down she’d never go to again. She sounded, when I saw her, quite remarkably well: God alone knows what effort that took, or how much it took out of her. What struck me more than anything else was the sheer vitality in her eyes….her body may have been most of the way to dead, but her eyes fairly burned with life. I’d long since given up any pretence of prognosis for her, but my sense then was that she had a good long while left yet.

And indeed, she got out soon after, returned home, and seemed better. Not well, but better. For a while.

On November 3, just before 11:00 a.m., I called her. She picked up on the fourth ring, and we talked for about five minutes. It was definitely a bad call: her confusion was a palpable thing. She asked me three times if I kept my cats at home, apropos of nothing at all; seemed convinced I was going to see my dad the next day; was inordinately happy that I was working night shifts. One of the few things she said that made sense was that she was “pissed off” that she couldn’t breathe. And this time she must have said she loved us both six or seven times. It felt final. I hung up thinking how final it felt, and then immediately chastising myself for having thought that so many times before.

About two hours later, the fire department attended her property and discovered her dead body. A volunteer firefighter was first on scene and was overcome by smoke trying to rescue her; he was treated and released.

The fire seems to have started in her chair, but she was not burned. As far as we know, she died of smoke inhalation. With her lungs in the state they were, it would have taken her quickly. The fire itself is still under investigation, so I couldn't say more now if I wanted to. What I can tell you is that she is free from pain, free from indignity, free from suffering.
---------------

Everyone tells me I’m a lot like my mom. It horrified me when I was a teenager. I hotly denied it every time. She was so damn stubborn, I would stubbornly insist. Moody, too, I brooded. Endlessly loving, curious about people, passionate but reserved. Complicated mind, largely self-taught; simple heart, ENTIRELY self-taught. Many insecurities that sometimes manifested irrationally; many securities that made you look past them. A love of music, a love of words, a deep, deep desire for and appreciation of truth and sincerity. Cared so much for those who couldn’t or wouldn’t care for themselves. No, we aren’t alike AT ALL.

In her time she was an RPN, a patient advocate at a psychiatric hospital, an auxiliary police woman, an ambulance dispatcher. A devoted wife. A loving mother.

So many regrets. I regret I have no children to pass the mother in me on to. I regret that I ever said bad things about her, and to her. I regret so much the stolen years, both those long gone and those that will never come. She was 67 years old: an age when people are just settling down into no longer punching a clock and wanting to punch a boss. Too early. Far too early.

So many memories. Being a ‘momma’s boy’ for so many years, and proud to be THAT momma’s boy. Cookies and cupcakes baked for every school occasion. The satisfaction of knowing home was an oasis of peace and love, a priceless gift to a child for whom it wasn’t always. Teaching me how to write cursive…endless pages of capital K’s for me to butcher. Songs sung, stories read, laughter and love shared. A life.

My mother was a good woman, a strong woman, a true woman, and I love her.

I love you, Mom.

ARLENE JEANETTE McCALLUM June 10, 1948-November 3, 2015

Musical Interlude: Into The Trench Again

I have a new favourite album.

I'm writing this blog on my second listen-through to an album called Astoria. If this blog suddenly dissolves into bebop, you'll have to forgive me: this music is  tremendous,  and tremendously distracting.

Seven years ago I wrote a gushy blog about a Canadian group I had just discovered called Marianas Trench. I wrote then,

This Vancouver group is, at heart, a pop-punk band, like so many ho-hum pop-punk bands infesting the scene today. Unlike pretty much all of them, Marianas Trench has musical ability out the wazoo. Couple that with an utterly fearless eclecticism (this album has everything from doo-wop to an almost Broadway sensibility in places), sprinkle with infectious hooks, and stir in a three-octave-plus range from lead singer Josh Ramsay...and you have an album with staying power.

I'm glad to report the group has staying power. They released an album called Ever After in 2011 that was just as good as the Masterpiece Theatre. This Astoria outdoes both of them. Handily.

American readers, you probably haven't heard of Josh Ramsay, though you've almost certainly heard the song he wrote for Carly Rae Jepsen,  "Call Me, Maybe". His own output is considerably more eclectic: in the course of any one song, he's apt to veer wildly from Motown to Queen to Fall Out Boy to Maroon 5, and he somehow welds all that and sweeping orchestral soundscapes together into cohesive and catchy power anthems and love ballads. Though he's not averse to going slumming, as he shows in "Pop 101".  Caution: look out for the hooks or you'll be hung up for days. I've been composing since I was four years old: take it from me, this guy's got it.

Astoria is a tribute to the eighties in general and The Goonies in particular (that movie takes place in Astoria, Oregon). That's a whole layer of this I remain ignorant of: I saw The Goonies, but...c'mon, thirty years ago. My wife has that kind of encyclopaedic movie memory; I don't. But I can tell you this album quotes about a dozen eighties hits, from "Money for Nothing" to "Cruel Summer" to the theme from Footloose", and then there's the Marianas Trench tracks. In the space of thirty seconds of "Dearly Departed", Ramsay recites no fewer than eleven titles off his older albums, makes it scan and rhyme, and it fits the sad, sad song he's telling. I'm picturing him sitting beside a dear friend as she lays dying:

Every MASTERPIECE I'd write again
You'll always be my PORCELAIN
I CROSSed MY HEART, but I STUTTER too
So TRUTH OR DARE, so GOOD TO YOU
HAVEN'T HAD ENOUGH of you ALL TO MYSELF
Still right BESIDE YOU, in sickness and health
And EVER AFTER you will be my own
...and there's NO PLACE LIKE HOME.

And the lyrics aren't even this group's strong suit. Musically, there's not a weak track on this album, and that especially includes the orchestral interludes interspersed throughout. The final track, "End of an Era",  starts off with a cheeky nod to the symphonic rock suite that closed a previous album, "Masterpiece Theatre Part III", this time with an 80's new-wave vibe, before it pounds off into into a something that flirts with progressive metal..then back down into coruscating chorales of theatrical power pop

There are layers upon layers here. I feel like I could listen to this thing a dozen times and just scratch the surface. Most impressive is their a cappella work: it's absolutely gorgeous.

If you like good music, listen to this album. Here's a link to the full album on YouTube. When I have money--just like the last two MT albums--this one's getting bought.

For My "Fraudulent" Friends Who Aren't Frauds At All

Ken - I have a secret fear that people will discover I am a fraud!

...said a friend of mine, who isn't.

I have to say, I was nonplussed. How do you answer something like that? Agree and you're saying your friend is a fraud. Disagree and you are minimizing her feelings.

I'm not allowed to disclose this friend's identity. Suffice it to say that if you know her, you know she's not a fraud: genuine through and through, exceptionally talented, beautiful...I know, it probably seems like I say this about all my friends. What can I say? I have genuine, exceptionally talented and beautiful friends.

Looking into this, I discover something called impostor syndrome. It's especially common among high-achieving women. Neither a mental illness nor a personality trait, it is instead a reaction to certain situations. The list of people who live with impostor syndrome is long and impressive. Kate Winslet. Maya Angelou. Margaret Chan, the chief of the World Health Organization. Tina Fey, Jodie Foster, Renée Zellweger. Meryl Streep. Michelle Pfeiffer. And countless more women: about two in five successful ones.

Since I have so many successful female friends (roughly, um, all of them, in one way or another), I'd venture to guess I don't have to address this solely to the one friend who confessed her "secret".

The damnedest thing about impostor syndrome is that there is no evidence you can bring forward that the "impostor" won't twist into proof of her fraudulence. Any achievement is a matter of good luck, timing, or someone else's contribution, never something she earned through her own grit, talent and determination. If you point out something incredible she's done, she'll tell you it's nothing, and besides, there's so much more she hasn't done.  It's like a conspiracy: the more you try to rebut a conspiracy, the more the True Believer will tell you that you just don't understand what's really going on.

The psychiatrists say that banishing impostor syndrome is a matter of (a) owning your successes and (b) facing your fears.

OWNING YOUR SUCCESSES

Consider the possibility you didn't get shit lucky with that promotion...that you actually earned it. Why consider this? Because to say otherwise heavily implies the person who promoted you is, in fact, an idiot. Give her a little credit: she doesn't promote people just "cuz". Likewise that big sale--most people don't throw their money way on crap. You certainly don't, right?

Owning your successes isn't being cocky. Don't let your mind tell you it is. You're allowed to own your success and be modest at the same time: really, all it takes is not crowing about it. "Thank you, I put a lot of work into that", whatever "that" is, and then walk away, knowing someone has appreciated your effort.

FACING YOUR FEARS

This one's harder, because one of those fears is the impostor syndrome itself: the fear that you're going to be found out.

Put that one aside for the moment and look at what other fears you have. I guarantee you there's at least one big one, and more likely a few of them:

• FEAR OF NOT BEING GOOD ENOUGH
• FEAR OF NOT BEING AS GOOD AS _____
• FEAR OF FAILURE

None of these are worthy fears to have. NONE OF THEM. 

Fear of not being good enough. This one probably comes to you direct from childhood, when one parent or another, perhaps both, didn't take the time to celebrate your achievements because they thought you might rest on your laurels. Crappy parenting, that: also once ridiculously common. Nowadays, of course, it's more common to celebrate every last niggling "achievement", even the things that aren't achievements at all. That won't end well, either, trust me. As with so much else in life, the key is that bubbly woman who talks to the dead. The happy medium, I mean.

Strive to discard that mother-voice (it's usually a mother-voice, though it doesn't have to be) in your head that tells you you're not good enough and can never be good enough. How do you discard that voice? Engage it! Ask it "for what?"

I'm not good enough FOR WHAT?

I'll "never be" good enough FOR WHAT?

It'll rant and rave at you: mother-voices don't like backtalk. Since it's a mother-voice and not your actual mother, feel free to give it a suggestion involving sex and travel. Do this unfailingly, every single time the mother-voice tries to sabotage you, and eventually it'll shut up and go away.

Fear of not being as good as somebody else. Being polyamorous, this is one I am intimately familiar with in another context. You know what worked for me, and might for you? ADMITTING IT! AGREEING WITH IT! "Nope, I'm not as good as he is at thus and such." That's undoubtedly true for a whole series of thus-and-suches, BUT NOT FOR ALL OF THEM. Simple logic dictates that: you just can't be worse than your metamour (or your sister, or your colleague at work) at everything. Believe it or not, your metamour/sister/colleague is almost certainly thinking the same thing--she'll never be as good as you are! Both of you...are right!

NOTE WELL that admitting this will only work if you do so to get past it, rather than to fixate on it. To quote A Course In Miracles, "what you resist persists". So accept that you're not as good as she is, and resolve that this does not matter. Why doesn't it matter? Because it's (sorry, I love this)...what's that thing that's not a pachyderm?....that's right, it's irrelephant. STOP COMPARING, it'll get you nowhere.

The goal is NEVER to be better than anyone else: the goal is to be better than you were yesterday. 

Fear of failure: the hardest fear for most of us to conquer. I know I haven't done it. But "you teach what you have to learn", and so...

Everybody fails. Everybody is humiliated; everyone falls flat on his face. Repeatedly. That's called "life". Being the high achiever that you are--trust me, people who set the bar low don't suffer from impostor syndrome--you're probably quite familiar with the feeling of failure. Now listen closely and realize that you know this already: failure is integral to success. You know this because you weren't and aren't content with failure: you're driven to succeed. It's likely that you just haven't framed the relationship between failure and success properly in your mind.

Don't feel bad about this, because very few people have.

FAILURE IS NOT THE OPPOSITE OF SUCCESS the same way "hot" is not the opposite of "cold".

(What, you thought "hot" was the opposite of "cold"?)

It isn't, though.  We seem predisposed to think in binary terms: hot/cold, black/white, success/failure. Reality isn't like that. Reality is a whole bunch of continuums. Cold is a lesser degree of heat (or, for that matter, heat is a lesser degree of cold). There's a whole world of greys between black and white. And even the most utter failure contains, at the very least, an element of success called "effort".

Seen in that light, failure is nothing to be afraid of. It is, in fact, something to welcome: now you know that doesn't work. You didn't know that didn't work before it didn't work, ergo, you learned something. Congratulations, that's a degree of success. There's two ingredients for success you've assembled: effort, and knowledge. Keep going!

And while you keep going, recognize that it's YOU doing the keeping going. In other words, own your success!

Trust me, dear friends: you are not frauds. I wouldn't bother being your friend if you were.

Lots of love,

Ken

"Oh, he's so dreamy...."

If I was to refer to a female politician using anything remotely like the terms I'm seeing women use to describe our Prime Minister, I'd be drawn and quartered.

And that's too bad.

(Didn't expect that, did you?)

Look....anybody who knows me beyond the most superficial level knows that superficial levels barely register with me. Until I know something of your personality, empathy and level of intelligence, I will treat you exactly the same regardless of your physical appearance. I do appreciate beauty...I tend to see it in (many) places many others don't, is all.

This does not make me better or worse than most people, only different. I'm just as prone to prejudice and irrational instant dislike as other people, I just tend to base mine on different grounds.

Justin Trudeau has been dismissed as a pretty boy with nice hair for years. It rose to a fever pitch this past election campaign...perpetrated by a woman named Jenni Byrne and helped along by a gaggle of men desperate to discredit Trudeau any way they could. It turns out that women aren't the only ones who can be objectified, nor are men the only ones who objectify. Whodathunkit?

Anyone who's ever been to a bachelorette party, for starters. Anyone who's heard how women talk about each other (you think men are vicious?)  Anyone who has met a sexually aggressive woman (they're out there, and they do things that would get a man thrown in jail).

There is nothing wrong with objectifying a person, provided that person consents to being objectified. There is everything wrong with objectifying strangers, be they nursemaids or Prime Ministers.

Problem: how to distinguish a sincere compliment on someone's physical attractiveness from an all-encompassing, dismissive judgment call on their ability or intelligence? It should be clear from context. All too often, it isn't. This has made me very hesitant to compliment women on their beauty, and anything that reduces the amount of genuine appreciation of beauty in the world is a bad thing, as far as I'm concerned.

The angle of Justin's dangle is all wrong for me, so I'll have to take the ladies' word that he's a fine specimen of Prime Minister. (Cue Jeremy Hotz: "it even SOUNDS like a cut of meat!") He's certainly not averse to showing off the six-pack and his insanely hairy arms --

--women, do those arms turn you on? I find them gorilla-like, myself (ewwww!), but then, I'm the guy who can't understand both genders' fascination with asses (really, people? The part the poop comes out of? Could you fixate on something, anything else? No? *sigh*)

Let's assume that Justin Trudeau *is* some kind of gorgeous. How is that relevant to his policies and practices? Don't you dare say he's "just a pretty boy with nice hair" unless you're fine with me saying "she's just a  hottie with a nice bod".  I've said before that the word 'just' really ought to be scrubbed from the language...it would go some distance towards making both the above statements more socially acceptable. What's wrong with being a hottie, or a hunk? Nothing...so long as people recognize there's a lot more to you.

Thou Shalt Not Gloat

I didn't expect a majority.

Nor did I particularly want one.

Canadian prime ministers with majority mandates have much more power, domestically, than U.S. presidents. We've seen that over the past electoral term: the only thing keeping Stephen Harper from near-dictator status was our Supreme Court.

He's gone now, and I am very happy for that. He is a petty, vindictive, and above all small-minded man, and my Canada is bigger than he is.

Enter Trudeau fils.

His dad was a brilliantly intelligent man--even his enemies (and Pierre had many) agreed on that. Justin doesn't have his dad's smarts. I've read his biography, and he admits as much. What he does have, in spades, is emotional intelligence. Empathy, in other words. I'll take that, and gladly, because pace the past nine years, it's not called "The Harper Government" or "The Trudeau Government" but rather The Canadian Government. If Justin is truly as emotionally intelligent as he is said to be, he will recognize his weak areas and seek out those who are strong to guide him. If he's really smart, he'll take ideas from all over the political spectrum when he does this.

I wouldn't hold my breath, for two reasons. The first is because he's a Liberal. I can only hope that all traces of entitlement have been washed out of that party, but I think I'm wrong because of the second, which is that damned majority government.

I hate majorities. They say absolute power corrupts absolutely. That's not true--if your power is truly absolute, there's nothing to corrupt you with. It's really the perception of inadequate power that corrupts. And power being like money, the more of it you've got, the less of it you really think you have.
Majorities grant too much power. They negate the need for consensus, which is the defining characteristic of a true leader.

Trudeau absolutely needs to understand -- and take to heart -- that his resounding victory tonight is much more a repudiation of Stephen Harper than it is a wholesale endorsement of his platform or personality. The majority he's been granted can evaporate just as quickly as it coalesced, likely in favour of a Conservative party led by someone who doesn't hate everyone else.

In the meantime, I will be watching for the following promises to be made reality.

• Legalization of marijuana. I put this first not because I am a pothead, but because Colorado has shown this to be an extremely lucrative and harmless way to raise tax money--money that currently goes to organized crime. Also because pot has numerous benefits for those who do partake. And if pleasure is one of them, why is that my business? Alcohol is legal and tobacco is legal and pot is basically alcohol you smoke. Except nobody high on pot ever beat the shit out of anything other than a bag of chips.
• Electoral reform. This is a big one. I highly doubt that Trudeau will move on this now, having been given a majority government. If he does, my respect for him will go through the roof and into the stratosphere. A different electoral system would mean that no vote (or at least dramatically fewer votes) would be wasted. We could actually get a government that reflects our vote...a government that would be forced to work together, the way government is supposed to.
• Action on C-51. Trudeau supported this odious piece of Harper-dung because, he said, Harper would have eaten him alive if he hadn't. As I just wrote in a comment to my last blog, C-51, by virtue of Harper's majority, was going to pass anyway, so opposing it wouldn't have made a difference. Trudeau has said he will amend the ugly parts. There are a lot of ugly parts and he'd better get amending.
• Open, honest government. The usual promise. Walk the damn walk, Justin. If there isn't an extremely pressing reason for something to be secret, it must not be. Do what you said you do. I respect Mike Harris for that reason, even though I hate what he did to my province. He said what he was going to do, won TWO majorities on it...and did it. 
• Dedicating money and attention to the common good. This includes scientific research, effort on diversifying the economy beyond oil (preferably towards less environmentally damaging substances), public transit and infrastructure, and a whole host of other things that have gone largely by the wayside of late.

Congratulations Justin Trudeau. Now the hard part begins.

Endorsement

I fear many Canadians are embracing hatred as the prime mover in their choice this election. It seems left wing progressives love to promote hate; these progressives can't see their promotion of hatred as a disaster leading us to American style polarization.
--"Mike Kenny" (published online 10/17)

Embracing hatred? More like rejecting it.

The list of people Stephen Harper hates is exhaustive and exhausting. He hates the media, because he's under the mistaken impression that it has a left wing bias (exactly one paper, the Toronto Star, has consistently endorsed someone other than Harper over his tenure). He hates Parliament, because it has a pesky habit of trying to get in his way: that's why he's repeatedly prorogued it, why he was found in contempt of it, and why he's forever trying to bypass it.

Harper hates the Supreme Court of Canada, because it insists on interpreting the laws of the land rather than bowing to the Law of Harper. This despite the fact a majority of its judges were appointed by, you guessed it, Stephen Harper.  He hates environmentalists--he's gone so far as to call them terrorists. He hates Statistics Canada, the CBC, Sikhs, Muslims...really, anyone and everyone who disagrees with him on anything, ever.

Among a host of ugly qualities, the thing that defines our Prime Minister most in my mind is that it costs $78,000 to ask him a question. I find that repugnant. It proves that he lives in a bubble, deliberately isolating himself from dissent and conflicting opinions.

That's not a leader, whatever his job title may say.

Harper first came to power promising transparency and accountability, only to preside over the most secretive government in our nation's history. He touts his economic management: eight straight deficits before a fake, manufactured surplus; a higher unemployment rate now than when he took office; increased inequality; and most recently, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade deal negotiated in utter secrecy that will outsource Canadian jobs and cede our sovereignty to corporations. (Thanks, Wikileaks: without you, we'd still have no idea what's in there.) He's now saying the economy is too fragile to entrust it to anyone else. Who made it that way, Steve?

I can't vote for that record. that personality, that "leadership" style. Even if I agreed with everything Harper has done, I'm honour-bound to vote against the way he's done it.

Now, this is of course my opinion, and you are free to say I'm full of shit. I have friends and colleagues who think Harper is the best thing to happen to Canada in ever. Notably, they exist on a privately-schooled, monied plane I can scarcely imagine. For us plebes, I firmly maintain a vote for the Conservatives is a vote against our self-interests.

So who to vote for? Voting against is mandatory (NSFW link)  as far as I am concerned, but it's also dangerous if you don't closely examine the person and party you're voting for. Depending on your political proclivities, voting against landed us with Bob Rae. Or Mike Harris. Or Stephen Harper himself, for that matter.

If Jack Layton were still alive, it'd be no contest. That goes for my vote and also, I suspect, the wider election. But alas, he's not.

For much of this campaign, I was planning on voting NDP anyway. Mulcair initially impressed me: he seemed statesmanlike, principled and passionate on issues I believe in, and more centrist than any Dipper leader in history. Going in, too, I wasn't at all happy with Justin Trudeau, not least because the Liberals never bothered getting back to me about volunteering after I had expressed an interest in doing so back in February; their siding with Harper on that travesty of an "antiterrorism" bill (C-51) did nothing to endear them to me.

But as the campaign progressed, Trudeau started to win me over. He not only held his own in the debates (full disclosure: I read transcripts), he scored points against both his rivals. Call me perverse: his refusal to stick to a balanced budget really struck home for me. There are other deficits besides the financial: a social deficit, an infrastructure deficit, a research and development deficit, and so on--and given historically low interest rates which won't be increasing any time soon, modest budgetary deficits to address some of the other deficits strikes me as a very good idea.

Trudeau is campaigning on open, honest government. I've never known a politician to campaign on secretive, dishonest government...but somehow that's what we always end up with. The Liberals plan to make all government data open by default, digitally accessible to all Canadians. If they carry through with that, they'll go a long way towards ensuring my vote in perpetuity.

The economic plans do seem a little fuzzy, but I'll take fuzzy with its heart in the right place over clear rich-get-richer-poor-get-poorer policies every day and twice on Monday.

And I suppose I'd better address the thing many people are saying about Trudeau, that a vote for him means a vote for shari'a law in Canada.

Calm down. Have some dip.

Muslims currently make up 2% of our population, a figure Harper has gone out of his way to characterize as four percent too many. Trudeau's proposing to take in (screened) Syrian refugees that would raise that Muslim percentage all the way to...three percent. I have no problem with this. If you do, I'm sorry, but the problem is yours.

I could go on. There are other policies of theirs I agree with and a few I don't. My riding is slated to go overwhelmingly Liberal and a vote for any other party, under our first-past-the-post electoral system, is thus an utter and total waste. Trudeau is promising that the 2015 election will be the last one before meaningful electoral reform. I say: bring it on. I never want to see another majority government in this country ever again....especially one a majority of citizens voted against.

I will say this: I will be holding Justin accountable. You'll see it, here in the Breadbin. If and when his government goes stale, you can count on me to say so.

Whether you agree with me or not, and if you haven't already done so, PLEASE get out tomorrow and vote for your leader and party of choice. This election, more than any other in my lifetime, is absolutely critical for Canada's future. Thank you.

Happy 15th Anniversary, Eva and Ken

October 14, 2000: Embro, Ontario

"So what's the standard gift for your fifteenth anniversary?" I asked Eva the other morning.
She applied Google-fu, and within seconds replied: "Crystal".
"Oh, that's great!" I said, enthused. "Have you found her yet?"
...and that earned me a slap and a giggle. "Smartass," she said. "The other option is watches."
"Right...I get Crystal, and you watch."

Apparently I like getting slapped.

All kidding aside, fifteen is supposed to be a big one. They stop numbering individually after this and start counting by fives...I guess we're supposed to go to "China" on our 20th. I'd rather do Crystal again somewhere in Europe, but, hey, if it has to be China, so be it.

People have expressed--I don't know what it is. Surprise? Awe?--that we have been married so long. It baffles me, really. First of all, fifteen years is not a long time. My mom and stepdad have been married over twice as long; Eva's parents were married almost three times as long (it'd be more than three times as long by now had her father not passed away...I miss him.) We have friends in our generation with longer-lived marriages: you get the point.

And really, why do we even acknowledge these milestones? It seems strange to me, somehow. I'm just sharing my life with a woman I love. Isn't that...normal? Since when is "normal" worthy of congratulations?

 I had two 'starter' relationships before Eva. One of them even had (engagement) rings involved in it. Neither of them had the immediate depth, strength, and clarity of purpose that I found with Eva. Not even close. I thought I knew what love was long before I met my wife. I didn't.

We bought a bed on our second date, on the grounds that I wasn't going to subject her back or mine to that God-awful futon of hers ever again if I could help it. By the end of our third date we were discussing wedding plans. People say we moved fast. We didn't. We simply knew, and in the knowing, acted accordingly. Where there is Love, Time ceases to be.

"How long you been married?"
"Fifteen years, but it's 23 with the wind chill factor."

Not in this house. Marriage chills are few, far between, and very short-lived over the length of our relationship. (Guys: the key is to (a) realize you're wrong and (b) actually admit you're wrong. Even if (shhhh) you're not, sometimes. Pick your battles: if you've picked the right spouse you won't have many, and when you do put your foot down, she'll know you're serious.)

There was one instance when I felt a powerful urge to slap my wife. One. It was when she offered me a divorce after it became clear we wouldn't be able to have children. Kids *were* a part of our vows (they make no appearance in the standard set)...but kids don't make a marriage.

What does? What IS a marriage, to me, to us?

Not long before I met Eva,  I read the third volume of the Conversations with God trilogy, by Neale Donald Walsch. Practically everything in all three volumes resonated with me immediately--in much the same way Eva herself did, come to think of it. Within that volume, Neale reproduced his full wedding service. Over the years, I have repeatedly come back to this passage, each time with a deeper awareness and appreciation of its vision. This is an excerpt of the service, at the point just before the vows are exchanged.

...

Minister:  Now Nancy and Neale, you have told me it is your firm understanding that you are not entering into this marriage for reasons of security . . . . . . that the only real security is not in owning or possessing, nor in being owned or possessed . . . . . .not in demanding or expecting, and not even in hoping, that what you think you need in life will be supplied by the other . . . . . .but rather, in knowing that everything you need in life . . . all the love, all the wisdom, all the insight, all the power, all the knowledge, all the understanding, all the nurturing, all the compassion, and all the strength . . . resides within you . . . . . . and that you are not marrying the other in hopes of getting these things, but in hopes of giving these gifts, that the other might have them in even greater abundance. Is that your firm understanding tonight?

 (They say, "It is.") 

 And Nancy and Neale, you have told me it is your firm understanding you are not entering into this marriage as a means of in any way limiting, controlling, hindering, or restricting each other from any true expression and honest celebration of that which is the highest and best within you - including your love of God, your love of life, your love of people, your love of creativity, your love of work, or any aspect of your being which genuinely represents you, and brings you joy. Is that still your firm understanding tonight?

 (They say, "It is.") 

 Finally, Nancy and Neale, you have said to me that you do not see marriage as producing obligations but rather as providing opportunities . . . . . . opportunities for growth, for full Self-expression, for lifting your lives to their highest potential, for healing every false thought or small idea you ever had about yourself, and for ultimate reunion with God through the communion of your two souls . . . . . . that this is truly a Holy Communion . . . a journey through life with one you love as an equal partner, sharing equally both the authority and the responsibilities inherent in any partnership, bearing equally what burdens there be, basking equally in the glories. Is that the vision you wish to enter into now?

(They say, "It is.")

--from Conversations With God, Book 3 by Neale Donald Walsch

----

Knowing what you know of me, and knowing what you know of Eva and I, you can perhaps see how we have chosen to interpret and live this vision.

For us, it works.

It's worked for fifteen years...really a little more than sixteen, because we considered ourselves married on that third date; the actual ceremony eighteen months later was a formality (in no way "mere").

Life isn't always easy. Actually, I think it's fair to say that over the last year or two it hasn't been easy at all. But being married is easy. I can't imagine facing  the crap we've faced down together...alone. I just can't.

I have written Eva quite a few poems over the years, but as far as I'm concerned, I've never outdone or even matched the first one I wrote...on our second date.


And Every Day... 

I've never felt this way before
I miss you and I love you more
than I could ever hope to show,
and every day I'll tell you so. 

I'll tell in words, I'll tell in deeds
I'll tell you as we plant the seeds 
of life and love: they're ours to sow, 
and every day we both will know. 

We'll know that love is ours to share. 
We'll know it is forever there. 
And through the years our seeds will grow, 
and every day, my love, we'll go... 

We'll go to places yet undreamed. 
We'll go to places often deemed 
to be where streams of kisses flow,
and every day the breeze will blow. 

The breeze will blow us joy and cheer 
and laughter, and a fleeting tear 
and Life will lead both high and low 
and every day, new rows to hoe... 

I love you, Eva, don't forget
I haven't even started yet 
to demonstrate so that you'll know:
But every day, I'll tell you so.
--written by Ken Breadner, June 1999

Does that read like a second-date love note to you? Even I--a man who falls in love easily and deeply--knows that any other woman would read that on a second date and run far far away. But we just knew, and acted accordingly.

We've done a lot of living in fifteen years. It feels like four or five lifetimes--or four or five minutes. Where there is Love, Time ceases to be.

 Life has indeed led both high and low. Both of us have had to recognize, and rekindle, each other's light in times of darkness. Both of us have had to remind each other who we really are. Because that's what a partnership is for. Oh, yeah, and to scratch those damned infernal itches in the exact MIDDLE of your back. That too.

I love you, Eva Breadner. I always have and I always will.

Eva's political statement

I'm immensely proud of my wife.
She's fighting a lonely battle. No matter how much love you have in your support network--and Eva has more than most--fighting battles with your own mind is lonely work. But she is still engaging with the world as best she can, even on days when it's the last thing she feels like doing.

She's trying. She's trying very hard.

Obstacles keep getting thrown in our path. I won't gild any lilies; things are tougher right now than they have ever been, for either of us. But as we approach our fifteenth anniversary, I can say this: we are stronger by far as a couple than anything that has been thrown at us. You can only truly fight demons from without if you are strong within. Ken is, Eva is, and  the shared entity called KenEva is as well.

She made what so far as I know is the first public political statement of her life and put it up on our lawn today for all the world to see:

Although I wholeheartedly approve of the content of this statement, I'm mostly proud of her for having made any statement so boldly.

I do the politics in this house. It's not that Eva doesn't care: she cares too much. When it comes to bullshit, she has a much lower tolerance than I do. I'll sift through the bullshit and try to determine some cogent underlying message. She just rejects the bullshit, and let's face it, it comes from all parties left and right. So she pretty much ignores politics whenever possible. She doesn't read my political blogs. It's right up there with hockey as a trapdoor subject for her.

I have tried as best I can to be somewhat balanced in my political discussions with Eva. I've failed because quite frankly I can't get inside the head of our Prime Minister. I'm quick to ascribe the worst possible motives to his actions simply because I can't think of any others. Why would you muzzle scientists? Why would you burn their books and archives? And why wouldn't you accept questions from your citizens? I beg any Harper supporters reading this, if they know the answers to those questions, to leave them in my comment section. To educate me, if nothing else.

Evidently my wife agrees with my political assessment, which is always nice (though certainly not mandatory...we have voted differently in elections in the past and doubtless will again in the future). But the extent to which she agrees surprised me. It's not like her to be this passionate about bullshit politics.

Anyway.

I'm going to take a wee political break from here until just before the ballots are cast. I can't take the hatred that passes for political discourse online. I'm busily digesting the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement ahead of making a pronouncement on it. There's a lot of good in there, but there are also some very scary elements. Expect a post on that sometime in the next week. Until then, this is Ken Breadbin, signing off.

Advice For and By the Polyamorous

Virtually every person who walks the poly path runs into (problems/challenges/opportunities). Until fairly recently, we pretty much had to figure out solutions on our own...or have our partner(s) impose them on us, which may or may not be beneficial.

If you've ever wondered what kind of advice polyamorous people give and get, well, here you go. There was a thread in r/polyamory asking "what's the best piece of advice you've ever received?" and the replies are enlightening.

Emotions come from a very old part of your brain that's trying to motivate you towards a certain behavior. Jealousy = "Danger! Danger! Protect your stuff!" NRE ("new relationship energy") = "Hang around this person all the time and make babies!" Etc.
The rational, decision-making part of your brain is totally separate. So you can say "Hey, thanks for the warning emotions," and then choose what you want to do with that information. Your emotions aren't what you HAVE to do; they're just a suggestion. They're not bad or "less than" the rational part, but they have a job to do that's not always conducive to your true happiness. I like to think of them as an overly-sensitive smoke alarm!
--"silent_purple_sky"

One of the reasons I am well-equipped to handle polyamory, relatively speaking, is that I have always been self-reflective. When I feel an emotion, I can almost always tell you why (though sometimes I may not want to admit it). If I can't explain my emotions, I get very nervous, very quickly: I feel as if my mental ground has shifted from underneath me.
This allows me to process my emotions reasonably well, most of the time. Of course, there's the trademark Breadner knee-jerk reaction to change, which isn't pleasant to experience or behold, and in my case it's compounded by an overactive "what's the worst that can happen? gland. Thank Trintellix that last doesn't squawk quite as loudly as it once did.

At this point, a year in, it's hard to rattle me. Which I think is a good thing.

Relationships aren't owned, they are experienced. You don't own your friendships, your romances, your long term partnerships. They aren't possessions, and they aren't reduced or destroyed by other relationships. You don't own the connection between yourself and your partner, you create it every moment you are together.
--"boobytubes"

Put this one in the column of advice I've never needed. To me, this is the emotional equivalent of two plus two. If you believe you own your partner, that makes your partner a slave.

She/He didn't do that TO upset you. 
She/He did that AND upset you.
--"Kesshisan"

Now this, on the other hand, is advice I continue to require almost daily...and I have a woeful feeling that other people consider this to be kindergarten-level stuff.

I've actually been rejected in a poly context, and the pain from that lasted roughly forever. Maybe two forevers, I kind of lost track of time there for a bit.  I let it render me an emotional wreck. Had I the maturity to actually take the above to heart, I would have been much, much more resilient. We really do choose our emotions--or, given the first advice-nugget, our response to them--the same way we choose our loves. and I'm going to resolve never to forget that going forward.

"You were already in two relationships. Your relationship with her, and your relationship with yourself. You already know how to balance those two, how to keep one from being a negative on the other. She's the same way. She just knows how to balance three or four. You'll learn. You may never balance more than two... but you'll learn why she does."
--"Mono_Guy"

"Mono-Guy" is something of an r/polyamory celebrity. As you can infer from the above, he is the monogamous part of a "mono/poly" relationship. Such beasts do exist, though you'll trek far and wide to find one that works as well as his does.

I have a friend like him, a person who truly gets polyamory despite being monogamous. It's really humbling to always get solid and sound advice from such a person. You find yourself thinking geez, if monogamous people can saw right through this so easily than I certainly should be able to. Someday I'll actually meet another polyamorous person, for offline values of "meet", and I can onlt hope she'll have that mental toolkit.


Change is inevitable. You can hold on to feelings and let them fester or you can release those hang ups. Be okay with things not being what you thought they should be.
--"Uncaged_Rarity"

That's good advice for anyone, mono or poly, and it holds true for all of life, not just romantic relationships. It's also something that I once had a great deal of trouble with, something that, again, Trintellix has helped me banish. "Festering", great word. Derives from the Latin for "ulcer", and sure enough, if you let feelings fester that's something you might end up with.

And finally, because I can't resist quoting this song...

you love to hear me sing, even if you didn't write the note 
i love to hear you laugh, even if i didn't tell the joke 
you know i love to cuddle, love to pull your body close 
and i love it when you're happy even if i have to let you go
cuz if you need your space then baby you can let me know 
i'll you from afar you my star in a telescope 
i'm not a god, i'm not a fool but I would be both 
to think that love was something i could control

--"Can't Help But Fly (The Poly Song), 'naimainfinity'

Truer words were never sung.

The veiled threat: a longer thought.

ATTENTION CANADIAN VOTERS: YOU ARE BEING PLAYED.

Our Prime Minister hired an Australian political whiz named Lynton Crosby to  return him to power.

Mr. Crosby fights dirty. He has a history of exploiting latent racism in the electorate, and sure enough, he's doing that again here.

Harper et al have been very careful not to actually tell you how many Muslim women have tried to remain veiled as they took the oath of Canadian citizenship. (The law banning niqabs was found to contravene the Citizenship Act,  just another chapter in Harper's continuing war with the Supreme Court of Canada.) Just yesterday I had to refute somebody online who was convinced the number was "millions".  Obviously that's hyperbole, but surely there are hundreds, maybe thousands?

No.

There are two.

Two. Second source provided because I'm sure nobody believes me.

That's right, the whole country is frothing over two Muslim women who tried to exercise their right to wear a veil as they took an oath. (My cousin--the one I recently unfriended because I don't accept racist bigots in my family--tried to tell me that for all we know, those women were actually men. Nonsense--anyone taking the oath must prove their identity beforehand.

So here we all are, passionately arguing back and forth about whether or not two women (or, let's be honest, any of their co-religionists) ought or ought not to be allowed in this country, with or without veils, and nobody's talking about the Duffy trial anymore.

Or the Brazeau trial.

Or any of the other Senate trials and charges.

Or the election fraud, the bribing of a dying MP, the muzzling of scientists, the omnibus bills, the contempt of Parliament, the fact we had 2.5 million protected lakes and rivers ten years ago and now have 159... Shall I go on?


...The repeated proroguing of Parliament, the book burnings, the crazy fiscal mismanagement before this sudden fake surplus, income splitting that disproportionally benefits the people who least need the help, the killing of the long form census (because the government respects your privacy), Bill C-51 ((because the government doesn't give two shits about your privacy)....

The scariest thing is that I've barely scratched the surface of all the misdeeds Harper has perpetrated on a sleeping public. I haven't even brought up the warmongering -- Harper's got to be the only person who has ever celebrated the BEGINNING of the First World War! -- but soldiers only give him warm fuzzies while they're fighting and dying, not afterwards...

And even if...even if somehow you can look past all of this...do you really want a PM who only accepts questions from his citizens if they pay his party $78,000?

But he'll keep you safe from those two Muslim she-monsters.

I guess that's all that matters, right?

The veiled threat: a quick thought.

"I don't think that anyone has the right to tell a woman what to wear, or what not to wear. And if indeed there are cases of oppression, let's not go after the  oppressed person, let's go after the oppressor. And it's not by depriving a woman in that circumstance of her citizenship and of her rights that we're going to be able to reach out to her."

--NDP Leader Tom Mulcair (source)

I've been wrestling with this issue since it showed up in Québec a couple of years ago. I have the privilege of counting among my friends an extraordinary woman who has spent time in Saudi Arabia, where she was required to be veiled. Her views match quite well with those of women's rights activist author, and president of the Council for Muslims Facing Tomorrow, Raheel Raza.  I would love to see Raza, or my friend, debate Mr. Mulcair.

Because both sides here have valid points. Both sides can legitimately claim to stand for women's rights.

It is true that the niqab--the burqa too, for that matter--is profoundly misogynistic. It's also true that neither is a requirement of Islam itself. That renders the religious accommodation rationale moot and takes quite a bit of the wind out of the sails I had been floating as a proud supporter of women being able to wear whatever the hell they want.

Not all of it, though. Because as Mulcair notes, punishing a woman who is already being oppressed is not exactly fair. Also because xenophobia hides so easily beneath the veil of concern for women's rights. I just unfriended a relative on Facebook the other day when a discussion on veiled women suddenly veered off into la-la land: "Forty-eight percent of people in this country weren't even born here," he informed me. "Soon we'll be a minority in our own country."

The horror.

America is a melting pot and Canada is a cultural mosaic: we learned this in social studies class, and it's true. There are benefits and drawbacks to both models. I can't deny that occasionally I've felt a pang of what the hell are you doing in my country when I'm confronted with someone who's been here forty years and never bothered to learn a word of English. But I happen to think that many cultures mixing together enriches the larger culture. Provided that our laws are respected. There is no place for shari'a law in my Canada.

Let's continue to welcome women and men from all over the world. In view of the fact they have a right to wear what they want as Canadian citizens, depriving them of that right at the moment they're granted citizenship seems hypocritical in the extreme. And yes, if they are being forced into wearing a veil, let's go after the man who is forcing them to wear it.

Okay! Blue Jays! Let's...Play...Ball!

I know there are many people out there who believe baseball is only slightly less boring than competitive paint drying. I'm not going to disabuse you of your notion, because we all have sports we can't stand.

For me it's football. I've only ever watched one football game from beginning to end, when the Wilfrid Laurier Golden Hawks defeated the Mount Allison Mounties to win the Vanier Cup in 1991. It was a school spirit thing, even though I never really had much of that.  (Still remember the T-shirts, though, with a Golden Hawk extending an upraised middle talon, caption "Mount This!")

I have a prosaic reason for hating football: it was always the football players who took the keenest interest in rearranging my face. I've been beaten up (quite badly) by Tim Tindale, who went on to play for the NFL's Buffalo Bills (slogan: Boy I Love Losing Superbowls). That's my claim to football fame right there.

I'm a fan of baseball. It appeals to me on many levels. George Carlin has a primer on the differences between baseball and football that, while quite funny as he always was, makes several underlying points that really resonate with me (as he always does):

In Football, the object is for the quarterback, otherwise known as the field general, to be on target with his aerial assault riddling the defense by hitting his receivers with deadly accuracy in spite of the blitz even if he has to use the shotgun. With short bullet passes and long bombs, he marches his troops into enemy territory, balancing his aerial assault with a sustained ground attack, which punches holes in the forward wall of the enemies’ defensive line. (applause) In Baseball, the object is to go home, and to be safe. I hope I’ll be safe at home, safe at home.

The whole atmosphere surrounding baseball is unlike that of any other sport I can think of. There are rivalries, sometimes heated ones...but most baseball fans really do respect other baseball fans and usually 'their' teams. Baseball's the only place they stop the action so the entire stadium can rise to its feet and start singing a song that dates to 1908. There's a sense of camaraderie with baseball fans, a studiousness that mirrors my personality. And then, of course, there's the history. No other team sport is so rife with history. The stats encoding that history in its minutest detail have gotten a bit ridiculous--"he's the only lefthanded knuckleballer in major league history with a career WTF of .360, an OMG of .750-plus, and a BBQ of -1 or better"...but every player who steps into a batter's box and runs the bases is literally walking in the footsteps of his sport's greats...and he knows it.  The crowds cheering today's Trouts and Donaldsons and Arrietas and Prices are no different that the ones who cheered Mantle and Maris and Koufax and Ruth...and they know that too.

I've been holding off on writing a Toronto Blue Jays blog out of fear I might jinx them somehow. (Scratch the most rational sport's fan's surface and you'll find a dark cave riddled with superstitions: you don't refer to "no-hitters" until they're over, for instance: the same goes for shutouts in hockey.) Now that they Jays have clinched a post-season berth for the first time in 22 years, ending the longest drought in professional sports, I feel like some shackles have been removed.

Do you remember 1992 and '93? The Jays won back-to-back World Series titles and the celebrations were just amazing. I lived then, as I do now, an hour west of Toronto and the main drag in my city shut down as throngs of cheering people, by no means all of them young, rushed out into the street and starting hugging and kissing total strangers.  I still get chills listening to this (RIP Tom Cheek): "Touch 'em all, Joe, you'll never hit a bigger home run in your life."

And then things went south in a hurry. The Jays entered a prolonged period of mediocrity. You'd find at least one star player on every year's roster--Carlos Delgado and Roy Halladay being the two most memorable--but the team never seemed to put it together. They compete in the nuclear arms race that is the AL East division, and until recently they've been bringing budgetary pop guns to each year's nuke-fight...with predictable results.  They'd sometimes go on a run of eight or ten wins in a row, but the fans and even the players seemed to know they couldn't sustain it...and they never did. Each eight game winning streak would be followed in short order by a stretch of ten losses in twelve games, and Jays fans everywhere would return to their somnolent doze.

Not anymore.

The 2015 incarnation of the Toronto Blue Jays looked, at first, to be destined for the same scrap heap that had consumed its predecessors all the way back to '95. They could hit home runs, there was no denying that...with Bautista and Encarnacion, power wasn't a problem. Josh Donaldson looked as if he might provide some pop and much-needed defence as well. But pitching? Arguably their best starter was  the ageless Mark Buehrle, a solid and dependable #2 or #3 on contenders...and a whole lot of question marks after that. Even the days of the the Doc, when the rotation consisted of "Halladay, and pray, pray, pray", were more inspiring. And the bullpen was, in my considered opinion, a disaster.

On July 28th, the Jays' record stood at a game under .500. Josh Donaldson had proven to be everything we could have hoped for and much more besides...and yet the Jays kept finding new and interesting ways to lose baseball games. It was infuriating, because once again this year the AL East was uncharacteristically the AL Least division. Getting into the playoffs was a less daunting proposition than it had been in many years...but the Jays didn't seem to be into daunt. Dilly-dally, dither, dipsy-doodle...not enough daunt.

Alex Anthopoulos had had enough.

First he traded one talented but laid-back shortstop, Jose Reyes, for an even more talented and driven Troy Tulowitzki, also picking up LaTroy Hawkins and Mark Lowe to stabilize their bullpen. Then he rented the consensus best pitcher available, David Price, who instantly became the Jays' ace by a country mile. Almost as an afterthought, Anthopoulos brought in Ben Revere, a pesky outfielder who had a career history of spraying hits every which way and an above-average glove.

And what happened? Oh, nothing much...the team just went 38-14 in its next 52 games. Price has been lights-out every time he has stepped on the mound, compiling an 8-1 rec with a no-decision since joining the Jays and making himself a good bet to win a Cy Young. Tulowitzki started his tenure with a bang, going 3-5 with a home run  and two doubles, and has contributed most games since (although currently injured after an unfortunate collision with Kevin Pillar). The bullpen has snapped into form thanks largely to the emergence of Roberto Osuna...the youngest player in franchise history to don a Jays jersey (and the youngest player in the history of baseball to record an extra-innings save).

And that Josh Donaldson guy?  The odds-on favourite to win the AL MVP award. It's an honour and a privilege to watch this guy play baseball. He  does it all and he does it well, never taking a second off and making it all look easy.

Yes, the stats get a little out of hand. But look behind the numbers and what you see on this team is...a team. They care about and for each other and they emanate an intimidating aura of confidence: we're going to win and we're going to have fun doing it. Fans of other teams have started to take notice, and in the manner of baseball fans everywhere, they're appreciative of the talent and the teamwork.

A division pennant is well within their grasp, and then the playoffs await. Nobody wants to face them. But I sure want to watch them win it all.

C'mon, sing along with me:

This Is How I'm Different

I knew I had a real problem the first time I used Microsoft Word.

This little puppy popped up on my screen and asked me if I needed help. I didn't, and so he tucked his tail between his legs, gazed forlornly at me as if I had just banished him outside, and slunk off the screen.

Now, it's not as if I cried, or anything. But I did get a little hitch in my chest. I wanted to tell the puppy that he could come back and stay on my screen as long as he didn't get in the way of my typing. Maybe wag his tail every now and again. Look at me with a little happiness in his eyes.

The Microsoft Office assistants have been mocked, parodied, and called "one of the worst software design blunders in the annals of computing" by Smithsonian magazine. And all I remember about them was banishing the little puppy, and feeling awful doing it.

------------

A couple of weeks ago, with back-to-school in full swing, the amount of garbage set out to the curb in my neighbourhood suddenly quadrupled, and included all manner of cast off furniture and such. Eva and I watched as two burly sanitation engineers wrestled a queen size boxspring into the back of the garbage truck, which ate it in stages, setting off a cacophony of creaks and groans and snaps. I winced several times and gritted my teeth: I found the noises ugly almost to the point of physical pain.

------------

More than twenty years ago, I went to visit my best friend, who was living and working in downtown Toronto at the time. I met him for lunch, in the towering atrium lobby of his office building. There were what seemed like thousands of similarly dressed men rushing to and fro like so many rats in a maze. You've heard the saying 'you could cut the air with a knife'? I felt as if I had to use a machete, hacking through thick brambles of tension with every step.  The best metaphor I can come up with is a psychic smell, a mental miasma of fear. It was an indescribable relief to get out of that building into the open air.

--------------

I can go on and on with anecdotes like this: rare is the day I don't gain a new one.

I have too much empathy. Way too much. It sits in my gut, ready to give my insides a good rearranging any time someone is in pain around me. The nausea can and does progress to the point of vomiting if the pain is severe enough. I can harden myself against it, if I know it's a long-term thing I can't do anything about, but I feel compelled to do what I can to lessen that pain instead. People think I'm so loving and caring, and I am, but that love and care as a selfish component to it. I want my gut to stop pogoing around my body cavity, okay?

It doesn't matter whether it's a person, an animal, or an inanimate object. If it's being destroyed in some way, I empathize with it. I seem to be incapable of turning that off. God knows I've tried.  I've tried because even I recognize those anecdotes above are not indicative of mental health. I can forgive you if you laugh at me for wanting to run away whenever anything explodes, or for getting a little bit misty-eyed at this



"That is because you crazy", indeed.

Over the eleven years I have been writing this blog, I have repeatedly cited Spider Robinson's philosophy, given such high expression in his Callahan's Place novels, that "shared pain is lessened and shared joy is increased; thus do we refute entropy". If I could sum up my mission in life in one sentence, that would be it. That maxim permeates virtually every important interaction I have, both on and off line. I seek out pain, it seems. I never have to seek far to find it: pain is lurking behind so many smiling facades, and so many people have constructed intricate and persuasive personas to mask their pain from themselves and especially from anyone else who might see it and judge them for it.

I don't judge. I feel.

It's why you'll see me always trying to drag people closer to the center of any argument, seeking consensus. Consensus is harmonious; extremism breeds free-floating hatred, which all too often is unleashed on total strangers...wounding me by proxy. It's hard for me to read the kind of vicious, unthinking attacks that pass for 'debate' when you can't see the person you're debating. I don't understand why rudeness and worse is so damned common online: how are the people behind the pixels so easily minimized? The few times I have found myself feeling the kind of intense anger that I see all around me, I've withdrawn completely. I don't want to inflict pain on people whom I know are already hurting.

It's why I love the way I do: because people are loveable. Simple like that. Also because so many people have forgotten they are loveable, and reminding them seems to me like a good thing to do. It might just lessen some of their pain...especially if they choose to share it with me.

It's why I love music so much: because music is universal and heals pain like next to nothing else. Through music, I can share my hurt and you can share yours and somehow we'll end up with less than half a hurt apiece. 

It's why I read: because reading expands perspectives, opens you up to different perceptions, and allows you to better understand people and their pain. 

Many folks do not believe that shared pain is lessened...they act as if sharing pain just provokes a different sort of pain. I may not be able to heal what's causing your hurt -- I'm only human -- but goddamnit I can do something about that other pain. Expressing your anguish should never cause more anguish...but bottling it up will. 

Since I can't seem to turn this empathy off, or even down...I might as well do something constructive with it, no?

So, like, total freedom, right?

"AN IT HARM NONE, DO AS YE WILL"
--the Wiccan Rede (song here, one I love and live by, live and love by)


So I've been reading a lot about poly relationships, and there seems to be a recurring tend. The impression I'm getting is that if you're poly you have to be okay with everything your partner wants. For example, you're not comfortable having sex with someone who's having unprotected sex with someone else. The response is usually to tell that person to work on themselves so they're not stifling their partner's expression and that hard limits are just signs the person shouldn't be poly. Am I missing something? Is it really fair to tell a person they're not allowed to say they're not okay with something?
--user "CSpyder", posted to r/polyamory, 9/23

This is an extreme variant on a common question in poly circles. Indeed, it's pretty fundamental to relationships in general.

We're all familiar, or we think we are, with the freedoms and restrictions in monogamy. Odds are you'll find yourself less familiar than you think, though. According to this survey, 92% of women and 86% of men consider "having sex with someone else repeatedly" to be cheating. (Presumably the minority, which I find surprisingly high for both genders, would feel differently if that sex was paired with emotion.) Towards the other extreme, another survey found that seventeen percent of women and nine percent of men considered viewing pornography to be cheating, while seven percent of women said if their man stayed up all night talking to another woman online (no mention of topic), that was cheating. (Yike.) But by and large, we know what we're talking about when we talk about monogamy.

Polyamory is a whole different world. YOU decide what's legal, what's illegal, and what penalties will accompany illegal behaviour. And the YOU here is plural...by which I mean more than two: remember, polyamory is "multiple committed relationships with the knowledge and consent of all involved".

Franklin Veaux and Eve Rickert, in their book MORE THAN TWO, have devised a "Relationship Bill of Rights" that is useful for everyone, be they mono or poly.
__________________
THE RELATIONSHIP BILL OF RIGHTS

You have the right, without shame, blame or guilt: 
In all intimate relationships:

to be free from coercion, violence and intimidation
to choose the level of involvement and intimacy you want
to revoke consent to any form of intimacy at any time
to be told the truth
to say no to requests
to hold and express differing points of view
to feel all your emotions
to feel and communicate your emotions and needs
to set boundaries concerning your privacy needs 
to set clear limits on the obligations you will make 
to seek balance between what you give to the relationship and what is given back to you
to know that your partner will work with you to resolve problems that arise
to choose whether you want a monogamous or polyamorous relationship
to grow and change 
to make mistakes
to end a relationship

In poly relationships:
to decide how many partners you want
to choose your own partners
to have an equal say with each of your partners in deciding the form your relationship with that partner will take 
to choose the level of time and investment you will offer to each partner 
to understand clearly any rules that will apply to your relationship before entering into it 
to discuss with your partners decisions that affect you 
to have time alone with each of your partners 
to enjoy passion and special moments with each of your partners 

In a poly network:

to choose the level of involvement and intimacy you want with your partners’ other partners
to be treated with courtesy
to seek compromise 
to have relationships with people, not with relationships
to have plans made with your partner be respected; for instance, not changed at the last minute for trivial reasons
to be treated as a peer of every other person, not as a subordinate
(Veaux, Rickert; source)

I think nearly everybody can agree on the first set, and even the most staunch monogamist can understand how the second set might function. Many people have problems with the third set, specifically the very last point:

to be treated as a peer of every other person, not as a subordinate

One of the most common mistakes people make transitioning from monogamy to polyamory is to draw up a long set of rules and restrictions designed to ensure the primacy of the existing partnership over any other. This seems like a logical thing to do if your object is to ensure the primacy of the existing partnership over any other, right? Unfortunately, logic doesn't always obtain in a world full of emotion.

And sometimes logic just goes right out the window. My favourite two examples of that both concern the RMS TITANIC. If she had rammed that iceberg head on instead of (logically) trying to port around it, she wouldn't have sunk. She'd have been towed into port with her bow heavily damaged, an international laughingstock to be sure, but loss of life would have been minimal, perhaps zero.
Once that iceberg was hit, TITANIC was doomed...but what did Captain Smith order? The watertight doors shut--which had already been done, because it was the logical thing to do. But if those doors had remained open, TITANIC would have sunk on an even keel, taking much longer to do so. She could well still have been afloat when  the CARPATHIA arrived.

Elevating one relationship over another breaks both of Veaux' and Rickert's Rules of Polyamory, to wit:

1. THE PEOPLE IN THE RELATIONSHIP ARE MORE IMPORTANT THAN THE RELATIONSHIP
2. DON'T TREAT PEOPLE LIKE THINGS

If you treat people with the love, respect and devotion they deserve, you're likely to get the same treatment in return. This means wherever possible, boundaries should replace rules.

BOUNDARIES VS RULES VS GUIDELINES

The difference is surprisingly simple. A boundary is negotiable; a rule is not; a guideline is a self-imposed rule.

Rules are usually enacted in response to fear and insecurity, and enforced because it's easier than working on that fear and insecurity.  Boundaries can be used to set limits on freedom, but those limits are expected to be discussed and expanded as relationships evolve.

Without getting personal, Eva and I have one rule, one guideline ("don't be a dick") and a few boundaries that are always negotiable. We believe this model will allow us maximum freedom while still respecting each other and our metamours to the utmost degree.

It is not only okay, it is obligatory to express discomfort in relationships. In good ones, regardless of their form,  the expression of discomfort is seen as an opportunity to heal the hurt. If you are in a relationship where it is not okay to express discomfort, that is an abusive relationship, and you need to leave it. Relationships of all kinds imply freedom granted, not denied.

Escape to Another World

The cinematic highlight of 1993 for me, and I'm sure for many others, was the release of JURASSIC PARK. 

I had seen virtually everything Hollywood had put out over the preceding two years--cinephile girlfriend--but our relationship  had blown up like a Michael Bay explovaganza by that point. Hobson's choice: I saw JURASSIC PARK alone. 

I have always hated going to the movies alone. It hasn't stopped me from doing it, if I really want to see the movie badly enough, but I feel like the world's biggest loser, sitting by myself...almost as if I'm wearing a trench coat with nothing underneath it. But for JURASSIC PARK, I didn't care. Dinosaurs trump low self-esteem. Dinosaurs trump a lot of things, really.

And that movie performed. It was damn near perfect: stunning spectacle--the effects hold up 22 years later--but so much more besides. It functions as a scathing critique of blind faith in science, of capitalism, of humanity's misperception of its place in the world. All this and velociraptors. 

There was a heated debate, at the time, over that film's rating. It was rated PG-13, meaning any child could get in and see rampaging dinos chasing kids just like them. My Media Studies prof allowed me to write an essay on whether or not children should be allowed to see such things. (Longtime readers may be surprised to find out I argued they should.) 

I wrote that essay much the way I would write a long Breadbin entry today, with a framing personal story and references pulled from all over. I got a 95 and a complimentary question I've never forgotten: "have you considered writing for the media?"

I had, as it so happened. And so I went to that prof and had a long sit-down discussion with her. Shortly after, I dropped out of university.

What she told me was a variant on what people have been telling me my entire life. I have talent, she said, but talent alone is meaningless. In order to succeed at a newspaper--the first step, at the time, towards writing the long-form articles I admire as a writer and a reader--my talent must bent indefinitely  to the will of an editor, and behind him, a readership, with very firm ideas on what is and is not "news"...ideas I vehemently disagree with. Her words, as well-meaning as they were, had the effect of slamming a door in my face. You'll have no doubt noticed I don't handle rejection very well.

I have digressed.

Movies. Dinosaurs.

In those halcyon days before stadium-style cinema seating had made it to our fair city and drove most of the rest of the business out of business, there were three movie theatres within a couple of square blocks of downtown Kitchener. Before JURASSIC PARK, for whatever reason, I'd only ever been in two of them, the Lyric and the Capital. I saw SILENCE OF THE LAMBS earlier at the Lyric and loved it so much I went back to see it again the following night; I saw TITANIC later at the Capital and did the exact same thing. 

The Hyland occupied a cavernous space in the basement of one of the few office towers that existed in downtown Kitchener ca. 1993. It had seats for more than 450 people, and on the night I saw JURASSIC PARK, I got one of the last ones: frontmost row, off to the right. Not ideal seating, but so what? Dinosaurs!

All this trivia is about to mean something, I promise.

I'm convinced that each of us has at least one incredible ability that happens to be incredibly useless. I, for instance, can sit down at a piano and play a song that's never been played before (and most of the time will never be played again). 

My darling wife has this astounding, and astoundingly pointless, facility of recalling anywhere she has ever sat. Go into a restaurant, no matter how long ago it's been since she was there last or how many times she's been there, and she can tell you "I sat there, and there, and over there..."

This talent of hers of hers seems to have come at the expense of her ability to recall dates. She wouldn't be able to tell you within three years either way when JURASSIC PARK came out; even important dates rarely imprint on her. We joke that we married in 2000 so she'd always remember which anniversary was upcoming: I'm the one who remembers dates around here. 

So Eva says she sat "front-middle-left" when she saw JURASSIC PARK at the Hyland theater, but couldn't tell you whether it was the 7:30 showing on June 12, 1993. It wouldn't surprise me in the slightest if it was: it wouldn't be the first time we had crossed paths, long before I met her at a job interview in 1999.

The Hyland cinema closed shortly after we saw JURASSIC PARK, and laid vacant for some time. It has reincarnated as the second-run/repertory Apollo,  and last night we went full circle there and saw JURASSIC WORLD.

The theater itself couldn't be more different. It's considerably more upscale, with actual tables to rest your popcorn and local craft beer (that's another change) on; much more comfortable seating, and no sense whatsoever that you're in a cave. That said, the prices are quite reasonable (even more so if you have a Groupon that effectively gave us two-for-one admission and concessions). 

We needed an escape; it had been a very rough day. Luckily, the theater was almost empty--I think there were three other couples there besides us, not that I was paying that much attention.

No commercials or trailers before the film started, and right away I was hit with the HOME ALONE problem: I couldn't shut my brain off.

HOME ALONE is one of two movies that I have walked out on partway through (the other was BEETHOVEN).  HOME ALONE is considered a comedy classic, but I couldn't suspend my disbelief long enough to even let the comedy begin. I'm supposed to just accept that a mother and father would accidentally forget to take one of their children on a trip to Paris?  After sending him to his room the night before? And the kid would let this happen?  Yeah, sure, tell me another one. On second thought, don't, because I can see the "comedy" is going to involve pain, the way it so often does. Excuse me...pardon me...sorry...I'm gone.

So here we have JURASSIC PARK up and operating bigger than ever, in the wake of -- did the first three movies even happen? Apparently not. Okay, it's a full reboo--wait a minute, they're fully acknowledging at least the first movie not ten minutes in. Um? Hello? The first generation of life, uh, found a way, and I'm supposed to think "try again, fail again, fail better"? Even more astonishing, regular boring old velociraptors and T-rexes aren't good enough anymore and we need to (gasp) GENETICALLY MODIFY even bigger, badder beasties? Give me my hip waders, I beg you, the bullshit's getting thick on the ground here. 

I was turning all that over in my mind and I realized that yes, actually this sort of thing probably would happen. It's a chronic failing of humans to forget the past: every real-estate and commodity bubble pops and blows goo all over investors who, right up until the splat, were feverishly arguing about how "it's different this time". Austerity as an economic strategy has never worked, and yet it's always the first "solution" trotted out to any economic problem. If you prayed to God and bad things still happened, you didn't pray hard enough. Try again, Fail again. Fail better. It's something Ian Malcolm would have said, with a sardonic grin on his phiz.

Okay, let's see if they even allude to this.

Not quite, but several of the characters seemed as if they were in on the joke, which I appreciated. Those characters were cardboard cutouts, every last one of then--the dinosaurs, especially the raptors, had more depth--but before long the gobble-gobble had commenced and my brain had finally winked out. It was just Eva and I and our limbic systems, out for a stroll in the woods. 

The popcorn ate itself as the people got popped and eaten. Predictable, sure, but the journey was fun. 

Total escapism...which is just what was needed. I'm glad I saw that on a big screen. Incidentally, once again the 3-D glasses were entirely unnecessary. I'm still waiting for another movie that actually demands those glasses. I'm thinking I'm gong to have to wait for the sequel to the only one that has so far: AVATAR.

Thanks, love, for a great night.

Refugees, Again

1956...Budapest is rising...
1956...Budapest is fighting...
1956...Budapest is falling...
1956...Budapest is dying...
--Tim Rice, CHESS: THE MUSICAL

It's sickening, what Hungary is doing to Syrian refugees.

Hungary has a far-right PM (Viktor Orban) with an even-further-right opposition that has been gaining in popularity lately. The Syrian refugee crisis is the perfect opportunity for Orban to be a good Nazi and "preserve the Hungarian nation". And so you have razor wire, tear gas and water cannons to repel the tide, and worse-than-prison conditions for those refugees who managed to get in before Hungary had any clue as to the scope of the situation.

It's strange that Hungary, of all nations, should be so virulently anti-refugee. The 1956 uprising, the first spark of heat in the Cold War, is still within living memory. It produced over two hundred thousand refugees, more than a few of whom are still alive.

But in Hungary, and in Eastern Europe generally, a strain of xenophobia has existed since time out of mind. The Museum of Terror in Budapest, a memorial to the horrors of communism, heavily implies that communism was actually Jewish revenge for the Holocaust...but only in Hungarian. The English plaques make no such claims.(source one) (source two)

There are people in Canada who share this xenophobia. It goes without saying they are on the rightward end of the spectrum and the redward end of the necktrum. In the wake of Alan Kurdi, the three-year-old Syrian refugee who drowned off the coast of Turkey, a Conservative supporter heckled a reporter by asking “How many kids drowned in pools in Canada this past summer? Do you blame the government for that?”

I'm seeing all kinds of hate masquerading as concern for the--to borrow a useful phrase--"old stock Canadians". There's the picture floating around Facebook of ISIS flags flying over Syrian refugees in Germany...WE DON'T WANT THEM HERE! it says, and no, we sure don't. Only problem is, that ISIS flag was Photoshppped into an older picture.

There's the "refugees make better bank than Canadian pensioners!" claptrap I refuted a few blogs back. And just this morning, I got this piece of bile in my mailbox:


Can someone please explain the following regarding the Syrian refugees arriving in Europe and perhaps Canada from worn torn (sic) destinations.

 1/ How come they all seem to have endless supplies of money to pay the people traffickers.

 2/ Most appear to have working mobile phones. 

 3/ Most appear well dressed and fed and do not appear to be suffering the effects of malnutrition.

 4/ Most of the refugees are men of military age. 

 5/ Why are other Muslim nations not helping their fellow Muslims. (Saudi, Kuwait, U.A.E. Indonesia but to name a few) 

 6/ How come the two boys and their mother drowned off the Turkish coast can be returned for burial to the place they fled so quickly, what I believed to be I.S. held territory. ]]


Could it be they are being paid to come to Europe as a way to increase the Muslim population and get IS fighters embedded in Europe? We all know life is cheap from an I.S. point so the loss of a few lives along the way has no meaning for them as long as it benefits their cause. Just a thought.

I almost burst a blood vessel reading this. Really, refuting it is like swatting dead flies, but...

1) Define "endless supplies". It cost one migrant $2000 for the privilege of a twelve hour sea voyage with 75 other people on a boat meant for 30. That's more than a year's salary--likely most of his life's savings. If you're leaving home, with no guarantee you'll ever see home again, would you not take money with you? I would.

2) Okay, here's where I LOSE IT. Such parochial thinking. GO ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD, from the slums of Calcutta to the favelas of Rio to the poorest parts of Africa and EVERYBODY HAS A WORKING MOBILE PHONE. Just because it's obscenely expensive in Canada doesn't mean it's that way...anywhere else.

3) They are fleeing a WAR ZONE, not a ^&^*ing FAMINE. This is not the Middle Ages: ISIS doesn't besiege a town hoping to starve people out.

4) Oh, really? You counted? I'M a male of military age, and if ISIS was on my doorstep I'd be over the hills and gone. Call me a coward if you will, but what I really am is a realist. I am not physically, mentally, or ammunitionistically equipped to deal with that threat. Sorry. If it's any consolation, you're welcome to come with me. I am intimately acquainted with several dozen places ISIS would consider well beneath notice.

5) Now HERE's a legitimate question. There's an air-conditioned tent city in Saudi Arabia that's used for the Hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca. It holds over 300,000 people...and it's sitting empty. The whole region is filthy rich and could easily absorb ALL of Syria. But it won't, for a couple of reasons. One is that many of the Syrian refugees are the wrong flavour of Muslim. The overwhelming majority of the refugees are Sunni, so they are not welcome in Shiite-dominated areas. And ISIS hates all Muslims that do not adhere to their strict perversion of the faith. They loathe Saudi Arabia in particular. Sheltering refugees invites reprisals.

6) Kobane, Syria, the hometown referred to here, was not and is not 'IS held territory". It is in fact rather hotly contested territory, having been the site of several ISIS massacres, but it is not under ISIS control. See, that's kind of how war zones work, and why people tend to flee them.

A final note on the final note up there. Migrants are not being paid to go anywhere. The Muslim population in Europe is doing just fine all on its own, since their birthrate is higher than the native populations'.

There are, sadly, many Canadians who will read these questions, rephrase them as statements, and repeat them. And that hurts my head...and my heart.