This gourd proudly displayed by grocer in the holiday spirit.

It must be a happy gourd, as many women walking by it had a wry smile on thier faces. 

     I saw Waiting For "Superman" yesterday, the Guggenheim film about the state of education in the U.S.  This is a documentary, like his previous film An Inconvenient Truth.   From the general hype, I really expected more.  While it was a pretty damning condemnation of the American educational system, it came across more like a TV special than a feature film.  It often seemed unfocused and offered few real solutions. 

     Two things need to be said to put this film into perspective for Canadians.  Firstly, this is truly about the American system.  While there may be a few parallels, largely there is little similarity to our situation up here.  (Not that we're perfect or don't have our own difficulties.)

     Secondly, the primary culprit highlighted in the movie was the Teachers' Unions.  Again, I don't think that this applies to Canada or Ontario the same way that it does in the States.  Tacher bashing is such a popular pastime that I can see viewers quickly concluding that we have the same irrational unions up here.  We don't.  Teacher federations in Canada do act to protect teacher jobs, as any union or federation does, but it is possible to fire a teacher.  I have personally seen it happen with the joint cooperation of federation and employer.  (Again this is not to say that some scrutiny might be advisable here as well.)  Also there are teacher evaluation with consequences, all-be-it they are generally considered a bit of a joke in providing accurate assessment. 

     The best part of the film was near the end when you saw the young students who had been spotlighted in the film, waiting to see whether they would be lucky enough to be selected for enrolment in the charter school system.  Selection has to be done by lottery.  As you watch the joy in the eyes of those who won, and the tears in the eyes of those who lost, you can't help but wonder at system and a country where children who want to go to school so badly are forced to rely on a lottery in order to get decent education.  You also can't help but wonder about other children who take education for granted and don't appreciate the opportunities that they have. 

This film gets a B-

     OK, I want to do a whole blog entry here on Christian opposition to anti-bullying campaigns in American schools because they think they're part of a gay conspiracy.  I want to talk about how these people would rather stand back and watch young people bully each other to the point where some commit suicide, rather than move towards any small degree of tolerance or compassion.  But I'm really reluctant to do it, because I really don't want this Blog to turn into one centrering on religious issues.  But these issues are so dangerous and I think are going to be pivotal in the development of our culture. 

     Can't these people see that they are framing their own religion as one of hate rather than love.  Fortunately these are only extremists, and I in no way want to paint all of Christianity with the same brush.  But it seems that there are more and more of these radical conservatives out there and, if you believe last week's Time magazine, now they are arming themselves because they are unhappy about the few civilized steps towards a more enlightened society that their supposedly "socialist government" has managed to achieve. 

     But this article, from the Augusta Chronicle, takes the cake.  I checked the story and the paper out.  They're both legit. 

"The Ku Klux Klan will hold a rally in support of the Augusta State University counseling student who claims her First Amendment rights were violated when the school ordered her to learn more about the homosexual community.
 Bobby Spurlock, who identified himself as imperial wizard knighthawk and grand dragon of South Carolina and North Carolina, said the KKK has met with school officials and plans to protest the school's treatment of 24-year-old Jennifer Keeton on Oct. 23 from 1 to 4 p.m. Klan members will be in full dress across from the school's main Walton Way entrance in the median at Fleming Avenue.
Spurlock said the KKK believes Keeton's rights were violated when the school required her to participate in a remediation program after she objected to counseling homosexuals.
"It's your constitutional right, so how could you tell someone you have to do something completely different?" Spurlock said. "We're not out to harm her. We're trying to protest the constitutional rights that they are trying to take away from her."
Spurlock said the KKK has not been in contact with Keeton.
"She is no way whatsoever affiliated with us," he said. "She has not contacted us, but we were contacted by someone that is aware of her."
A message left on Keeton's cell phone was not returned Tuesday.
Richmond County sheriff's Lt. Scott Gay said members of the KKK met with the sheriff's office Saturday to discuss security for the protest. Gay stressed that his office's involvement is strictly neutral.
"We are not condoning it one way or another," Gay said.
Spurlock said he is affiliated with the Church of the National Knights of the KKK based in South Bend, Ind. He said the group, which boasts 100,000 members, is active in 41 states and 21 countries.
It was formed in 1960 as a response to the civil rights movement from a collection of splintered Klan groups in Southern states, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center's Web site."

Hey.  Shit attracts flies. 

     "The Windup Girl" by Paolo Bacigalupi tied for this year's best SciFi novel in the Hugo Awards.  I just finished it, and although it was a fairly dense and challenging read, in the end it was a thought provoking and enjoyable book.  What made it challenging was something that a lot of modern SciFi novels suffer from.  It has become fashionable for a lot of modern writers, SciFi and others, to demand a huge amount of inferencing while their work is being read.  You're not told what the setting or situation is; you have to infer it as you go along.  "Dune" by Frank Herbert, was one of the first of these, requiring you to constantly look in the glossary or notes in the back of the book for the first hundred pages in order to fathom what was going on.  In "Dune" it was, in my opinion, done successfully.  There was enough enjoyable action and character development in the novel to keep the reader engaged and make him or her want to make the necessary inferences.  An example of a novel that I feel has totally failed in this task is Neal Stephenson's "Anathem".  After three tries and a hundred pages I was still largely in the dark about what the book was about.  It was full of clever ideas, and I love Stephenson's "Snow Crash", so it's not a matter of style.  But clever ideas is not enough, unless you want to write non-fiction. 

     "The Windup Girl" threatened to suffer the same flaw for the first quarter of the book.  Set in Thailand and steeped in exotic culture and a future where society's priorities have completely foreign, I came close to putting it down several times.  The inferencing was too indirect and the engagement value too elusive.  I am glad I finished it though, as it slowly turned into a good, exciting story in the second half.  It kind of sits half way between "Dune" and "Anathem" in it's opaqueness.  On the fence, so to speak.

     One of the things I really enjoyed about the book was its portrayal of environmentalism as an ideology with a religious fanaticism.  (Oh no, here we go again.)  It has occurred to me many times that in order for environmental initiatives to be successful, they probably would benefit from the same kind of religious zeal which we see in many other things.  Could environmentalism become a religion?  It's happened before.  Many indigenous cultures and pre-Christian religions had their foundation in Nature and the environment.  Shintoism, I believe, is one where it has endured.  The challenge would be to bring these pre-rational beliefs into a post-rational perspective.  Hmm.  Food for thought. 

This all came back to me just after I posted the Nuit Blanche entry.  (See below.  This isn't it!)

Lyrics from my teenage years, which spoke vaguely to me then, now have a whole new meaning!!

Thank you Paul Simon.

Hello darkness, my old friend
I've come to talk with you again
Because a vision softly creeping
Left its seeds while I was sleeping
And the vision that was planted in my brain
Still remains
Within the sound of silence

In restless dreams I walked alone
Narrow streets of cobblestone
'Neath the halo of a street lamp
I turned my collar to the cold and damp
When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light
That split the night
And touched the sound of silence

And in the naked light I saw
Ten thousand people, maybe more
People talking without speaking
People hearing without listening
People writing songs that voices never share
And no one dared
Disturb the sound of silence

"Fools", said I, "You do not know
Silence like a cancer grows
Hear my words that I might teach you
Take my arms that I might reach you"
But my words, like silent raindrops fell
And echoed
In the wells of silence

And the people bowed and prayed
To the neon god they made
And the sign flashed out its warning
In the words that it was forming
And the sign said, "The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls
And tenement halls"
And whispered in the sounds of silence

     About 20 years ago I was camping in the States with one of my youth groups and had the opportunity to share an evening of conversation with other youth from cities in Texas, Florida and California.  One of the things that came up was how amazed they were that our boys felt comfortable going downtown in Toronto on a Friday or Saturday night.  They protested that they would never be able to feel safe doing that in their respective cities.  Having visited a few of them myself, and notably San Francisco a  few years ago, I can easily see why they felt that way.  We were very wary and uncomfortable navigating our way just a block and a half from the only downtown shopping mall to where we were parked, sometimes crossing the street or taking detours to avoid loud groups. 

     In the past few weeks I've spent a lot of time in downtown Toronto.  Often, as was the case last night, this has been in the dead of night.  Now, admittedly, last night's Nuit Blanche was well attended by other people, providing a sense of security.  But this says something in itself, -that upwards of a million people felt at home in this city even in the dead of night and the wee hours of the morning.  This, however, was not the only time I'd been in the city so late.  During my TIFF adventure, there were several occasions which saw me making my way to Union Station around midnight, never once fearing for my safety. 

     The last three months I have become more of an urban explorer that any time since I was a university student.  What I've found is a vibrant, exciting and cultural city.  Ethnic, food and cultural events have peppered the past months, with everything from Caribanna to TIFF to Buskerfest to Word on the Street, to Taste of the Danforth, to Nuit Blanche, -just to name the few.  Unlike the American cities that surround us, -Buffalo, Detroit, Rochester-, the centre of our city is not dead and abandon.  It is alive with a population which is heartily participatory. 

     For those willing to go out an find it, Toronto is definitely a world class city.  (As such it has some world-class-city-problems, but they're minor compared to most other cities I've experienced.)  When I visited Buskerfest in late August, I went down by cycling along Toronto's bike trail system from the Finch subway system, -a total distance of 34 kilometres.  I know that when we cycled down, we only sampled a fraction of the cities routes, and spent very little time on actual roads.  (This doesn't mean the bike lanes are unnecessary.  They would be an excellent addition and compliment to these other existing recreational trails.) 

     Torontonians and those living in surrounding areas are luckier than many realize.  The city is alive and successful, not strangle it by thinking of it purely as a functional organism where garbage is collected and streets are paved.  Like a person, if you ignore the city's spirit and don't give it a purpose for being, no matter how well you feed and clothe it, the result will be hollow.  A city's spirit needs to be nurtured or, like so many examples around us, it dies. 

     Two cities??  Well I have to give a thumbs up to the satellite community of Newmarket, where I've also spent a lot of time these past months.  It has been careful in its planning to include a lot of green space throughout its development, and has a vibrant town centre of its own, Fairy Lake.  Good planning creates healthy communities.  But we must be ever vigilent that our politicians respect what's been accomplished and continue the work.

     That, I believe, is what municipal elections are about. 

     That being said, I have to give a thumbs down to last night's Nuit Blanche art extravaganza in downtown Toronto.  For those not familiar with it, this is an evening where major Toronto streets are closed (Yonge, Bloor, Queen, Bay) from dusk to dawn for the installation of major art exhibits and projects.  it is all billed as being very contemporary and interactive.

     I want to commend the endeavour on its scale and organization.  Having an evening of partying in the main streets of Toronto is very ambitious.  As such, it was a great success.  If anything, it seemed that the Frosh starved university students from U of T and Ryerson got their chance to cut loose in a big way.  Frosh activities on campuses in Ontario have been curtailed this year, with many of the more extreme events being sidelined.  I suppose that explained the thousands of drunk, loud and often vulgar people partying in the area of Yonge and Dundas, though I'm not sure that was the intended goal.  I have to say that I've never heard so much loud public profanity in the street, on subway cars and buses...  It seems that civil public behaviour is about as dead as dead can be.  But I suppose that may be a topic for another entry...

     Ya, so where was the art??  I was fully armed with maps and even the i-phone app (which was annoyingly unhelpful). 

     I started my evening around midnight at Nathan Philips square for the presentation by Daniel Lanois.  This initial experience, was, unfortunately, the highlight of my evening.  It was a 12 hour concert by Lanois accompanying film clips that were projected all over the square onto giant screens. 

     As I said, unfortunately it was downhill from there.  I must have hit at least a dozen exhibits.  Several were videos projected onto screens which were noteworthy in neither content nor quality.  I think other things were supposed to be happening around them, but I didn't see anything and it would have had to be pretty spectacular to make up for the lacklustre videos.  I spent 20 minutes in Ryerson Theatre watching what I think was a chess game being played on stage, waiting for the other multi-media extensions that were supposed to accompany this exhibit.  Nothing.  Eventually I left along with a lot of other confused people.  The huge campfire in the middle of Dundas Square was ... a huge bonfire in the middle of Dundas Square.  I suppose that it was a little odd to see this fire surrounded by people dressed as if they are in the backwoods, sitting in camp chairs, but are urban people really so unfamiliar with this that it counts as art??

     (CONTINUED BELOW DUE TO LACK OF SPACE.  ...STUPID BLOG PROGRAM...)

     One exhibit that I'd like to use as an example of what was wrong with the art was a 12 hour live video projection of a horse standing in a stall.  That's what it was advertised as, and we were not disappointed; that's exactly what we got.  The artist claimed that this was supposed to show our own relationship to time.  OK.  I can even see that.  But so what.?  There have been many times that I've watched an animal or a spider and marvelled at their patience, being just content to spend time, ...not doing anything particular.  Just spending time.  The concept is great.  The exhibit, however, is just mundane and banal. 

     Art has a responsibility to not just present a novel idea, but has to actually do one of two other things.  Either it has to push the viewer into some new level of understanding, feeling or awareness, facilitating some kind of emergent experience in the viewer, or it has to demonstrate the same kind of story or emergent experience in the artist.  Not doing that is like going to a Planetarium and seeing nothing but pictures of a night sky, or going to an Art Gallery and seeing on displays of painting materials and pictures of colour wheels.  Art has to not just speak to you, but has to speak to you in a profound, transitional, transformative, transactional, transindental way.  The key concept is "trans"

     A photographer can take a picture that is a representation of reality.  An artist modifies, emmphasises or exemplifies things in that photograph, or in a painting, in order to accomplish a greater presentation or representation of reality.

     This is what was missing from most of the exhibits that I saw last night.  The video of the horse was just that.  It seemed to be missing the component that would qualify it as art.  The loop of video tape held aloft by fans was not a statement about  the repetition and entrapment of technology.  It was, as was commented by one viewer I overheard, "...interesting, but little more than a gr. 7 Science Fair project." 

     Nuit Blanche was a great street party (and I'm all for that, in spite of the bawdiness) but it was a discredit to modern art.  I despair at all the people who went home with a negative impression of modern art.  One person coming off the bus at Finch (at 5 a.m. in the morning) loudly stated that he felt like pissing on the nearest Scotiabank (the sponsors) for wasting his night.  Another, downtown, made a wonderful comment about the Emperor's new clothes and couldn't the city see that it had ripped off.  Normally I would think that these loud guys owed their lack of artistic taste to being caught up in their boorishness and wanting to impress their girlfriends. 

     But in this case, I had to agree with them.