I just can’t control my inexplicable love for Pee Wee Herman! I just can’t! It was the last film I saw with my pal Tony before I left for the Philippines on a one way ticket. No one else really wanted to go nor shared my passion for the zany fellah! Bottoms up to Pee Wee today!. Last I heard Tony was selling Joico hair products in Toronto - it was the 80s after all - and well I like data now, I do not think I could have predicted then what I do now!
Story telling, I think, is what is going to change the conditions of some of the worst places on the planet - urban slums in developing countries. Members of my family who do not read the newspaper, who go on all inclusive trips, and never get near an urban/social/policital academic journal, who do not read any in-depth journalism, are talking about slums! I came back from travels in my 20s completely downtrodden from what I witnessed in the Manilla, Bangkok, Hong Kong trying to explain it, trying to express that we were a big part of that problem, working on the issue, all on deaf ears. "Dear, you cannot fix the world’s woes" is all I would hear as I watched them all put on more weight and purchase more stuff! Hopeless, the west is hopeless is all I thought. I say this now, back here, as I squander my time in a day and avoiding work.
But alas, Hollywood crafted movies, narrated in a language and using symbol sets the mainstream understands, might actually be doing the trick. People talked about Bombay slums, Chiawelo is on the map, and we will not forget Rwanda. Also, those who made those movies, had to experience those conditions while filming on site, wealthy people who can use their capital and social resources to influence change and perhaps even change themselves are getting first hand education. I do not know how long it will take for those stories to stay in the memelight, and what kind of change will occur and how deep that will be, but I think this may be more powerful than the starving children late night clips tugging at our heart strings on late night television. Maybe. Just maybe we need stories.
Ani Difranco Self Evident Lyrics:
(inspired by the WTC disaster)
yes,
us people are just poems
we’re 90% metaphor
with a leanness of meaning
approaching hyper-distillation
and once upon a time
we were moonshine
rushing down the throat of a giraffe
yes, rushing down the long hallway
despite what the p.a. announcement says
yes, rushing down the long stairs
with the whiskey of eternity
fermented and distilled
to eighteen minutes
burning down our throats
down the hall
down the stairs
in a building so tall
that it will always be there
yes, it’s part of a pair
there on the bow of Noah’s ark
the most prestigious couple
just kickin back parked
against a perfectly blue sky
on a morning beatific
in its Indian summer breeze
on the day that America
fell to its knees
after strutting around for a century
without saying thank you
or please
and the shock was subsonic
and the smoke was deafening
between the setup and the punch line
cuz we were all on time for work that day
we all boarded that plane for to fly
and then while the fires were raging
we all climbed up on the windowsill
and then we all held hands
and jumped into the sky
and every borough looked up when
it heard the first blast
and then every dumb action movie
was summarily surpassed
and the exodus uptown by foot and motorcar
looked more like war than
anything I’ve seen so far
so far
so far
so fierce and ingenious
a poetic specter so far gone
that every jackass newscaster was
struck dumb and stumbling
over ‘oh my god’ and ‘this is
unbelievable’ and on and on
and I’ll tell you what, while we’re at it
you can keep the pentagon
keep the propaganda
keep each and every TV
that’s been trying to convince me
to participate
in some prep school punk’s plan to
perpetuate retribution
perpetuate retribution
even as the blue toxic smoke of
our lesson in retribution
is still hanging in the air
and there’s ash on our shoes
and there’s ash in our hair
and there’s a fine silt on every mantle
from hell’s kitchen to Brooklyn
and the streets are full of stories
sudden twists and near misses
and soon every open bar is
crammed to the rafters
with tales of narrowly averted disasters
and the whiskey is flowin
like never before
as all over the country
folks just shake their heads
and pour
so here’s a toast to all the
folks who live in Palestine
Afghanistan
Iraq
El Salvador
here’s a toast to the folks
living on the pine ridge
reservation
under the stone cold gaze of mt. Rushmore
here’s a toast to all those
nurses and doctors
who daily provide women with a choice
who stand down a threat the
size of Oklahoma City
just to listen to a young woman’s voice
here’s a toast to all the folks
on death row right now
awaiting the executioner’s guillotine
who are shackled there with
dread and can only escape
into their heads
to find peace in the form of a dream
cuz take away our playstations
and we are a third world nation
under the thumb of some blue blood royal son
who stole the oval office and
that phony election
I mean
it don’t take a weatherman
to look around and see the weather
Jeb said he’d deliver Florida, folks
and boy did he ever
and we hold these truths to be self evident:
#1 George W. Bush is not president
#2 America is not a true democracy
#3 the media is not fooling me
cuz I am a poem heeding hyper-distillation
I’ve got no room for a lie so verbose
I’m looking out over my whole human family
and I’m raising my glass in a toast
here’s to our last drink of fossil fuels
let us vow to get off of this sauce
shoo away the swarms of commuter planes
and find that train ticket we lost
cuz once upon a time the
line followed the river
and peeked into all the backyards
and the laundry was waving
the graffiti was teasing us
from brick walls and bridges
we were rolling over ridges
through valleys
under stars
I dream of touring like Duke Ellington
in my own railroad car
I dream of waiting on the tall
blonde wooden benches
in a grand station aglow with grace
and then standing out on the platform
and feeling the air on my face
give back the night its distant whistle
give the darkness back its soul
give the big oil companies
the finger finally
and relearn how to rock-n-roll
yes, the lessons are all
around us and a change is
waiting there
so it’s time to pick through the
rubble, clean the streets
and clear the air
get our government to pull its
big dick out of the sand
of someone else’s desert
put it back in its pants
and quit the hypocritical chants of
freedom forever
cuz when one lone phone rang
in two thousand and one
at ten after nine
on nine one one
which is the number we all called
when that lone phone rang right off the wall
right off our desk and down the long hall
down the long stairs
in a building so tall
that the whole world turned
just to watch it fall
and while we’re at it
remember the first time around?
the bomb?
the Ryder truck?
the parking garage?
the princess that didn’t even feel the pea?
remember joking around in our
apartment on avenue D?
can you imagine how many
paper coffee cups would have
to change their design
following a fantastical reversal
of the New York skyline?!
it was a joke, of course
it was a joke
at the time
and that was just a few years ago
so let the record show
that the FBI was all over that case
that the plot was obvious and
in everybody’s face
and scoping that scene
religiously
the CIA
or is it KGB?
committing countless crimes against humanity
with this kind of eventuality
as its excuse
for abuse after expensive abuse
and it didn’t have a clue
look, another window to see through
way up here
on the 104th floor
look
another key
another door
10% literal
90% metaphor
3000 some poems disguised as people
on an almost too perfect day
must be more than poems
in some asshole’s passion play
so now it’s your job
and it’s my job
to make it that way
to make sure they didn’t die in vain
sshhhhhh….
baby listen
hear the train?
Saint Brigid’s a church come Centre for the Arts and Humanities is such a great venue for the writers festival. I saw Eduardo Galleano there year this summer and it was delightful.
tuesDAY, September 22
MonDAY, September 28
An Ethiopian saying I read this morning that was quoted in an article about peace activist Muriel Duckworth (2) (3), who at 100 is saying goodbye to her friends.
How come I only ever get to learn about these amazing people in obituaries or when they themselves are saying goodbye. Where would we read about people like her, how do my kids get to find out about these people? History class in Canadian high schools - not! People like her changed the face of Canada and we know very little of them.
The global statistics on the abuse of girls are numbing. It appears that more girls and women are now missing from the planet, precisely because they are female, than men were killed on the battlefield in all the wars of the 20th century. The number of victims of this routine “gendercide” far exceeds the number of people who were slaughtered in all the genocides of the 20th century.
The Science and Human Rights Program of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) has done an assessment of the Sri Lankan Civilian Safety Zone (CSZ) and surrounding environs in the northeast by analysing high resolution images derived from multiple satellites: DigitalGlobe’s QuickBird and WorldView satellites; and GeoEye’s Ikonos and GeoEye-1 satellites. This work was done at the request of Human Rights Watch (HRW) and Amnesty International USA (AI-USA). In addition, a set of photographs taken during a helicopter over flight of the CSZ by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on May 22 provided critical information which aided imagery analysis. These data were accompanied by ancillary information on mortar and artillery was derived from publicly available United States Army Field Manuals, as indicated below and also public statements from the Sri Lankan Government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), as well as media reporting. The latter were not considered to be accurate.
In one assessment six images, spanning dates from 9 May 2005 through 24 May 2009, were compared to discover significant land cover change, human displacement and an expanded area cleared for graves. Between May 9-10
no outside parties were allowed access to the area during the timeframe in question, commercial high-resolution satellite imagery was one of the only options for gathering information.
This report summarizes results of satellite imagery analysis concerning possible indications of shelling, IDP movements, changes in gravesites, and possible artillery and mortar positions. Selected images and analysis results described below have been made available on GoogleEarth for public use.
The report explains how the analysis is done, which visual cues to look for (e.g. raised rims, circularity, peripheral ejecta, bowl shapes and size to determine bomb craters) provides images and explains all data sources. The images captured:
Balibo is a film about the story of two Aussies, two Brits and a Kiwi - who lost their lives ahead of the Indonesian invasion of East Timor in 1975. Gary Cunningham, Greg Shackleton, Malcolm Rennie, Brian Peters and Tony Stewart.
Via BBC news: Revisiting East Timor deaths
I am writing about the work of Jeremy Wood at the moment, that is terribly late, and for some reason more difficult to do than expected. Jeremy has a series of pieces called Mowing the Lawn that I was thinking about yesterday. He the traces the lines of mowing his mother’s paddock using a motorized mower and the global positioning infrastructure. Seems mindless really, but these are quotidian movements through space that millions of farmers, golf course owners, gardeners and suburban dwellers do. So why not trace the lines, distance, time and the movement of going nowhere but doing it somewhere!
As I was thinking about it, I recalled Joe Fafard’s field work project - Maclaren Against the Grain: The Fafard Field Project.
The early winter of 1996 marked the beginning of an idea of the MacLaren Art Centre to work in conjunction with the 1997 International Plowing Match (IPM) to create a plowed and planted work of art in a farm field—a big farm field. The MacLaren Art Centre’s Director and Curator, William Moore began by talking with internationally recognized Canadian artist Joe Fafard from Regina. Joe is known for his agricultural imagery and his ability to tackle big projects. An idea began to take shape.
The idea developed that a well defined image be planted in various crops suitable for aerial and elevated viewing at or near the International Plowing Match site. Roy Hickling, because of his background as a farmer and his abiding interest in art, was invited to act as the Curator and Project Coordinator. After a presentation to the1997 IPM committee, they agreed to incorporate MacLaren Against the Grain: The Fafard Field Project into their event.
A completely wonderful cooperative effort was born. Its connections linked farmer and artist, cultural and farming institutions, and the City of Barrie with its rural community. The MacLaren Art Centre is responsible for organizing and creating the work for the plowing match in exchange for the use of an adjacent fifty acre field that the match secured. The result is a truly unique growing installation exhibition. It represents the plowed image of a horse and is planted in different crops which, over the period it runs, will change with the seasons—like an animation.
Fafard’s work was exhibited last year at the National Gallery of Canada and there I saw a film of the changing seasons of the Horse. This just stayed with me. Especially the images of the farmers doing this work. I am not much of a nationalist, but, this just seems like a Canadian’s thing to do.
A housing desegregation pact was just signed by one of the richest New York Counties. Racial red-lining has been banned in the US for decades, but there are work arounds, such as property values, the loss of building permits, apathy and so on. But not for this place where a court order is
compel[ing] [Westchester] to create hundreds of houses and apartments for moderate-income people in overwhelmingly white communities and aggressively market them to nonwhites in Westchester and New York City.
The agreement calls for the [Westchester] county to spend more than $50 million of its own money, in addition to other funds, to build or acquire 750 homes or apartments, 630 of which must be provided in towns and villages where black residents constitute 3 percent or less of the population and Hispanic residents make up less than 7 percent. The 120 other spaces must meet different criteria for cost and ethnic concentration.
Some cities have almost gone bankrupt arguing against desegregation. It must have been brutal for the kids going to the white schools once the cases were won! Imagine doing this in the Glebe, Rockliffe Park, Westboro, Westmount, Rosedale and so on. The Anti-Discrimination Center successfully argued this case in court. The Anti-Discrimination Center works
to prevent and remedy all forms of discrimination in housing, employment, education, and public accommodations through advocacy, litigation, education, outreach, monitoring, and research. The Center is a 501(c)(3)not-for-profit corporation organized under the laws of the State of New York.
NIMBY (not in my back yard) has been around for a long time. Mostly, it is neighbourhood members coming together to get prostitutes & crack dealers out of their communities using vigilante style tactics because the police do little. Usually the problem just moves to the neighbourhood next door and the social issue continues. In other cases NIMBY coalitions come together to stop environmentally detrimental projects from coming to their hoods. Often, but not always wealthier neighbourhoods win and poorer neighbourhoods that do not have the resources to fight and so get the unwanted projects. Again, nasty development does not disappear or is made cleaner, it just moves.
In Ottawa we see NIMBY in gentrifying neighbourhoods like mine - Chinatown, where first time home buyers realize that their house was cheap because it is beside a rooming house or public housing and so they organize to close these down or to stop the construction of new ones. NIMBYs have successfully lobbied against payphones as these were used by drug dealers. Too bad for the rest of the population such as the poor family that needs the phone! Bref, instead of dealing with the real issues, poverty, social inequality and exclusion, we construct ugly social housing or concentrate all the poor and marginalized in one small area where we cannot see them or we displace them from prime real estate.
Lebreton Flats is a classic example of this, where an entire community was expropriated in the 1960s as their neighbourhood was suddenly deemed a slum. The area remained vacant for 40 years and now high end ugly condos are being built by a sole builder - Claridge homes! A deal that sounds much like those negotiated in the Wire. Claridge even has the nerve to call it one of Ottawa’s newest urban villages! Good grief - it was one of Ottawa’s first neighbourhoods! We are still waiting for housing to show up, the bike paths to open and for a definition of affordable housing. Funny that the housing just across the street on Lorne by Nanny Goat hill, Booth Street or Primrose has become high end. It was the same kinds of housing that was on Lebreton Flats and some are considered as heritage districts. Go figure! Who gets to label a slum as a slum!
I read about great spatial location analysis of public housing strategies in the city of Montreal. The objective was to locate public housing in mixed income neighbourhoods, with access to public transit, grocery stores, schools and daycares. Then proposals were developed to build small numbers of affordable and/or subsidized units in those areas, but designed in such a way that they would blend into the neighbourhood look and feel. This reduced public housing blight and does not ghettoize the poor. In Ottawa we have hid and concentrated high numbers of really horrid looking public housing in inaccessible neighbourhoods - no library, no transit, terrible walkability, no grocery store, no trees, no parks. I am not a geographic determinist, but I am sure that these are not the best conditions for developing pride of place and for kids to thrive. Class segregation is alive and well in Ottawa.
In the spring of this year I attended a conference in Calgary on the topic of homelessness in Canada. I attended all the francophone sessions since, well, they were not going to be well attended in that town, and also I wanted to hear about how researchers in Quebec think about this issue. I listened in to a session given by Celine Bellot on Judiciarisation et criminalisation des populations itinérantes à Montréal. This research is the result of the Collectif de recherche sur l’itinérance, la pauvreté et l’exclusion sociale (CRI) that has produced much interesting trans-disciplinary work on the topic.
In Calgary Bellot reported the fines homeless people had received in Montreal, the fine arrears that homeless people accumulated and how eventually these unpaid fines lead to jail terms. The fines are for spitting, sleeping on a park bench, etc. Her research demonstrated that it is incredibly expensive, let alone regressive, to imprison and administer these accumulated fines and that it might in fact be cheaper to find a way to house these people! Go figure! Her research also led to a reduction in arrests.
Today I read an Op-Ed on the same topic Is It Now a Crime to Be Poor? The issues are the same as those discussed by Bellot and cities are jumping on the bandwagon of criminalizing corporeal necessities, public addiction and mental illnesses performed in public spaces.
But what of the absence of public washrooms, water fountains, community showers, coop laundromats, clean safe spaces for people to rest, the reduction in mental health beds and the lack of a social and health infrastructure? The Op-Ed was inspired by a new report Homes Not Handcuffs by the The National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty and The National Coalition for the Homeless.
And if that is not bad enough, as institutions are banding against the homeless, society is lashing out with an increase in violence against them (e.g. bum Fights, random murders, setting them on fire, rapes and easy targets for teenage violence). These Attacks on Homeless Bring a Push on Hate Crime Laws in US Cities.
Wot! In both instances we revert to the law and not social change! What have we become?
Last night my son and I walked through a bunch of shortcuts to get to the Bytowne Theater. We walked through small greenspaces on the edge of overpasses, through parking lots, construction zones and by the Shepherds of Good Hope. We saw a woman using the park as a washroom, a group of drunken men hanging out behind the shelter along a chain linked fence surrounded by trash, we saw a few men laying about Rideau street watching the construction. On the way home, we walked along Rideau street toward the Rideau Centre. My son mentioned that it seemed like every other person we walked by looked like a criminal, and he was right, at least like the stereotypes. We saw a couple of drug deals, we saw a fight, lots of public drunkenness, beggars, and there were plenty of disenfranchised and rough looking youth hanging around, some with babies in carriages. The bus shelter no longer had windows with trash and cigarette butts everywhere! Woooo! Ottawa! What have we become, the Nations capital, but 3 blocks from parliament, there is hell on the streets. The city is empty of Ottawa locals, full of tourists and people who cannot afford to leave town for the weekend and the homeless. My son asked me why we took these routes? I mentioned that we need to see all sides of the city, the good with the bad, the beautiful with the ugly, and we need to remind ourselves or our good fortune and to not forget to work for the less fortunate because in the end it is us who have created this. Yes us!
