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Getting to the Point Makes Us Dull

Posted by :James Howden On : August 23, 2007
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Category: At First Glance

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No doubt, some brilliant graduate of a university program in Marketing looks out at city bus fleets that are rolling billboards – not just bedecked in ads but painted to be ads – and he stretches and says, eyes moist with emotion, “I thought of that. That’s my contribution!” If you sense a rant coming about universities that offer degrees in advanced consumerism, be very disappointed. I have other scabs to pick at. (But you might want to read Ivory Tower Blues.)

One bus ad that smacks me surly these days is for one of those skinny little newspapers that commuters get for free. In my city, it’s called Metro. Its selling slogan? Get. To. The. Point. The point, apparently, is that any daily paper that doesn’t deliver The News in a quickly digestible text-bite is wasting my precious time, at best, and branding me as a hopelessly out-of-date codger, at worst. There is no time to think, slowhand. Never mind nuance, you old ninny. Understanding is a luxury we can’t afford. Nothing to see here, folks, so keep moving.

Have you read any of these things? It’s certainly efficient, and eminently disposable; just leave it on the seat next to you after four minutes. I suppose I should consider that some reading of yesterday’s news is better than none, slightly more insightful than Hot 108 in your ear-buds, but I’m irritated anyway. In the spirit of Get. To. The. Point. my entry today should have read:

You know those newspapers that sell for free at bus shelters? They suck. So read a real newspaper. So read an actual book. So there.

Brevity is the soul of wit, I’ve heard that too, and there is a lot of bad writing in academic journals and elsewhere that could be improved by any high school English teacher with red ink to spare. Long-windedness is not a virtue, though some of my younger (non)readers might complain that I’m trying to make it one. But Metro would have us believe that we’re fine, we’re doing our Average Citizen Duty – and they’re happy to serve us – when we are easily bored, intolerant of complexity, and content to consider world events as ten-point answers in a workplace trivia game.

IRAQ: Hundreds more dead. Another car-bomb. More important, fourteen American soldiers died in a helicopter crash. More numbers tomorrow.

MONTEBELLO: Harper met with President Bush about some ways to work together. Lots of people protested about something or other, and there was riot gear and arrests. Mexico’s top guy was there, too. He’s the short one.

SPORTS: These teams won, and these ones lost. Joe Football wants more money.

ARTS: ARTS? We’re getting to the Point, remember? But a famous bimbo did get arrested.

Get. To. The. Point. We’re all held at gunPoint, it seems to me, and not just by commuter newsrags. It’s so easy to become hostages to public impatience, to intentional ignorance, and to a sneering adolescent tone that dismisses thoughtful discussion as a quaint relic. Politicians are at gunPoint. Media pundits certainly are. What was once discourse appears as slogan. What could be consultation dissolves in rapid-fire cleverness. And what was intended as a thought-provoking Web log discussion of an admittedly minor social irritant was too long to read for almost everybody but YOU.

(Thanks for staying with me.)

Bill McKibben (art & worship)

Posted by :James Howden On : August 7, 2007
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Category: At First Glance, He Said/She Said

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“Art, like religion, is one of the ways we digest what is happening to us, make the sense out of it that proceeds to action….Therefore it falls to those of us alive now to watch and record its flora, its fauna, its rains, its snow, its ice, its peoples. To document the buzzing, glorious, cruel, mysterious planet we were born onto, before in our carelessness we leave it far less sweet.”          Bill McKibben (American author of environmental and lifestyle warnings and pleas, cross-country Vermont snowman)

In Search of the Real Artist

Posted by :James Howden On : August 3, 2007
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Category: At First Glance

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“So are you a Real Writer yet?” occasionally comes the smirking blonde query.
“Well, no. Not today. That’s a definite Someday,” squirms the wannabe.

Brian Smith is a Canadian portraitist that I’d never heard of. That’s no insult to him, for my knowledge of the visual arts is sparse. And by his own account, figurative artists like him don’t get much cutting-edge attention in the contemporary art world. What I do know is that he speaks well about the arts, especially that important task of de-mystification and encouragement for all those who linger hungrily around the edges of creativity and wish they knew the occult secret.

I wandered into a lecture he was doing, after-hours, at the Haliburton summer School of the Arts, held in a sparkling lake district at the base of northern Ontario. It’s pretty here. Every summer, this small town of ball caps, cigarettes and chain saws becomes a stock-up depot for the cottagers and boaters, and a magnet also for those who want to seek out creativity instead of the perfect tan. There’s an unusual number of painters, potters and sculptors in the area, and a fine school for the dabblers and the nervously ambitious makers to enhance their skills and confidence. Confidence is where Smith comes in.

He gives an animated lecture annually at the school, and this year’s edition was a wry but ultimately earnest assessment about what makes for a Real Artist. His conclusions were not surprising, but the road there was fun. (An early video-screen projection: a New Yorker-style cartoon has two gallery-goers, one of whom murmurs, “His work hovers between neo-classicism, impressionism and crap.”) In preparing his talk, Smith had run across a Website that would be gut-bustingly mockable if it weren’t aimed at such a place of human yearning and vulnerability. Apparently, you can call 1.800.REAL.ART, or go to its companion on the ‘Net. A series of questionnaires, which Brian Smith filled out on-line, resulted in an e-mailed letter of fulsome (and ungrammatical) personal praise from the – wait for it – Real Art Certification Board.

I am delighted to congratulate you on…certifying yourself as a Real Artist. All of us at RACB sincerely hope that your new-found vocation will change your life in a positive manner [glad that was clarified!] and expose you to wonderful world [sic] of Real Art…

Smith had gobs of fun with this and other expressions of the antique, exclusivist, fairy-dust notions we have of what makes an artist and what such a creature actually is and does. But his message was plain: art is about INTENTION. He scoffs at dichotomies like high art versus low art, or art versus craft. (I liked the simple truth in his quote from the potter Harlan House: “Craft is what I do all day. Art is what I have at the end of it.” If you’re lucky, Mr. House, I must say. If you’re lucky. And good. Democracy’s a pretty cool concept, but not everybody can be an RA.) To the assembled group of mainly female, mainly grey or greying pilgrims seeking to believe in the art in themselves, he proposed a simple catechism:

Anxious, spiritually yearning question: “Am I a real artist?”
Pragmatic, possibly encouraging but very likely reality-inducing answer: “Did I make any art today?”

When Smith spoke of the importance of art, and the value of allowing oneself to pursue some expression of our creativity, he was preaching to the choir. This was an audience – many of whom were already his fans from previous years – who were more than ready to laugh with him and mine a small vein of courage along the way. I expect nearly anybody would pass the Real Art Certification Board quiz and “qualify” for their specially-priced Internet “master classes”, but even in that crowd of people paying to act like artists for a week, not many would pass Brian Smith’s dauntingly simple test.

Still, I found something of what I was looking for, including chuckles and an excuse to make a little verbal mess like this one. And I liked Brian Smith’s conclusion: When we look at paintings or any media, we are the arbiters. What moves us as art is entirely subjective. We decide what is art, including OUR OWN. Don’t worry about being original. Just be authentic, true to your own vision of whatever it is you’re doing. And MAKE LOTS OF ART, be it good or bad.

Show up at the easel. Be true to your keyboard. Keep your appointments. Fulfil your own promise.

An Eccentric Perfection

Posted by :James Howden On : August 2, 2007
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Category: At First Glance

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The Arabic term “Kamal” means something like perfection. Last night, I found myself among the endearingly odd and tiny Bahá’í community of – hmm, to tell the truth, I don’t even know where I was, though we had a gorgeous view of Baptiste Lake, wherever that is. We had joined them for their Feast of Kamal, a community gathering that combines prayer and study, community consultation and, in this case, gobs of ice cream and fresh fruit. There was sweetness on so many levels.

We four city-dwelling vacationers had wandered, not quite aimlessly, down country roads, through near-villages, past lovely lakes and the key turn. We were finally guided by cellphone along ever-smaller lanes to the Feast, whose size we nearly doubled, and were charmed by the beauty of the scene and the homey welcome of the host friends. Our program of writings, treating on the perfections of creation and the potential perfections in human beings, had been hand-printed and photocopied. No clergy, of course, in a Baha’i gathering, but I was touched, amused and impressed by the great care our hosts took in distributing the readings. We read aloud to the accompaniment of sunset sparkling on the lake, wind in the poplars, the occasional burst of laughter from the neighbouring patio or their kids squealing at the waterfront, and the tail-wagging, bumping visits of Max, the golden Lab next door.

It was too hot to be inside, and too beautiful to pay much heed to distraction. I’m sure we were something of a distraction to this elderly, close-knit band ourselves. But they never let us feel that way. Everyone was sweet to my seven-year-old Sam, the only person under 40 present. It was sweet to hear the words of Bahá’u’lláh in the sunlight and the wind. The raspberries and blueberries were bursting with sweetness. And the ice cream was, well, it was ice cream. Perfection, indeed, thanks to Slim and Mary Lou.

Too Much Honey on the Bagel, Honey

Posted by :James Howden On : August 1, 2007
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Category: At First Glance

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It’s the silly season for angry men, namely this one. Object of my double-plus un-equanimity this morning? A Wonder brand square bagel. (No wonder I was pre-disposed to out-of-proportion rage: what overwhelming consumer need led to this creation? Who decided it was essential to our civilization’s contentment that we jam a rectangular innovation into a round tradition? And so on. Mumblegrumbleargh…) The Princeling wanted a second honey-coated, microwaved WonderBagel. The Princeling is not ready to do the basting himself. (Allegedly.) I was the nominee and, it’s true, I had been given my instructions.

“Make sure there’s not too much honey, okay Dad?” (Can you do this as well as Mummy, old codger?) I dutifully halved what I would’ve slathered on a dry, whole-wheat brick like this, and humbly presented it to my four-and-a-quarter-foot petit prince. He looked like he was sucking on a sourball. “Too much honey!”

“Just eat it, bud. We gotta go. I had enough with the battle over your clothes this morning.” Whining engines revving. Eyes scanning for Mummy’s second opinion. “Two choices. Eat quietly, or I’ll be glad to eat it myself.” Dad the Stern and Impatient. This-or-that. Simple. Luckily, Just and Compassionate and Eminently More Practical Mummy sailed in just at this moment; otherwise I wouldn’t have a thing to write about on a sun-baked vacation day. A truncated and partly imaginary transcript sort of follows:

Oh, yuck. That IS too much. No princeling of mine…
No fuss. He’s hungry or he isn’t. Simple. By the way, who asked you, beloved?
Honey’s too sweet. Knife. Scrape. End of problem!
Now the whining volume is higher. Thanks. Don’t you have to pack the car?
Such a big deal about honey. Why so stubborn?
Why intercede? Why undercut your parenting partner?
But it’s so easy to solve!
But you make a bigger problem than what you solved! Pickiness. Privilege, and the never-ending negotiations over meals. This is why. Case in point. This is exactly the problem. Paradigm! And so on.

Square bagels are fine for throwing, or at least I was burning to test out that impetuous theory. Didn’t, but I muttered in my head. Fifteen minutes of pressure cooking, introverted flame. Sheesh. Control freak…why contradict me…why argue when I’m right…no surprise the kid can debate…angry over bagels, for cryin ‘ out loud…gotta be mid-life…symbolic of our differences…my father’s frustration…kitchen equality…this bird don’t fly…apologize…for her error?…you’re brooding over bagels, idiot…square ones, too…tough turf to defend…must be other battles…hostile…ten-dollar feelings in a five-cent frame…head-shaking time…maybe there’s a stream of contentiousness I can harness…word power…two dogs converse in a New Yorker cartoon: I used to have a blog, but I’ve decided to go back to pointless, incessant barking…

Good morning. Today’s intransitive WOOF has been brought to you by the new HBO series Desperately Frustrated HouseGuys: The Oedipus Complex is Killin’ Me! and by Wonder Bread — for the modern Little Prince at your house.

Plastic! It’s All Plastic!

Posted by :James Howden On : July 4, 2007
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Category: At First Glance

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I grew up, unbelievably, in an age that was largely BP: Before Plastic. By the time my age was being expressed in double figures, things plastic were becoming much more common. In the early 70s, somewhere, the poet Shel Silverstein was already complaining about the plasticization of life, including the artificially enhanced curves of women, as I recall. (It’s all plastic!)

Plastic. Plastic. Plastic. (Write it often enough, and it starts to look as odd as its ubiquity actually is.) I’m sure there are lots of plastic things I have appreciated, but I’m having trouble thinking of them at the moment. Okay. Frisbees. Vinyl record albums. Yes, and those milk crates that were so good for storing albums, or anything else. But plastic is making me crazy. I’m suddenly plagued by noticing it just about everywhere: in the absurd amounts of packaging on nearly everything we buy, and in the piles of food and drink containers thrown by nearly every roadside. Plastic has been a useful invention, I guess, and it had better be. The stuff hasn’t been around long, but it lasts pretty much forever.

Imagine its invention. Imagine the wonder and excitement of materials scientists who, in ways that mystify me, found they could manipulate the chemistry of petroleum and create tough, sometimes flexible, easily shape-able materials. “Look, we can make anything!” they must have shouted. They took oil and made Plexiglas. (Hockey was happy, and basketball fans didn’t have sightlines blocked by the backboard anymore.) They made Baggies. They made Tupperware. They made car bodies and clothing and, let’s not forget, medicines, too. And they made plastic grocery bags by the BILLIONS, and who ever thought of where we were going to put all these nearly indestructible do-dads? Love is bliss, say I – it’s ignorance that’s blind. “Without vision, the people perish,” says the Old Testament scripture. Aboriginal wisdom, long ignored or suppressed, wags a knowing finger at our cultural obliviousness by reminding us to consider the effects of decisions for seven generations to come. Seven generations. We can’t wait seven months for “New and Improved!!”

And so now I think about plastic every time I go grocery shopping, anything shopping, and I try hard not to buy unnecessarily overpackaged stuff. Why do we need so much plastic crap around simple products? Answer: we don’t. Often it’s mainly for marketing and advertising purposes. Plastic containers give good surfaces to stick logos and contests and shiny colours and cute characters to. And plastic grocery bags, well, how did we ever get along before they were invented? In Ontario, I’ve read, we use about seven million of ‘em every day of the year. Where do they go? Ever wonder? (Leaving aside the ones that festoon the trees on windy days in fall and winter.)

Grocery bags are a big deal, suddenly. Ireland makes customers pay for them, has for years. San Francisco banned them completely last spring, and tiny Leaf Rapids, Manitoba is now the first Canadian municipality to say NO MORE. At my house, we console ourselves a little by re-using them in our kitchen garbage catcher, but we’re trying to avoid them when shopping. Cloth bags sit in our car trunk, and I sometimes remember to take them into the grocery store. (I always forget when I walk over, though. Mindfulness!)

I just came across another good reason to avoid plastic bags, besides the overflowing landfills and the little white ghosties blowing around every street and field. It was a bag from one of those big stores in every mall in every city: Athlete’s World. We’ll leave aside my curmudgeonly complaint about an allegedly “athletic” enterprise that caters mainly to style-addicted teens. Or maybe I won’t, because of this message that I read on an AW merchandise bag:

Warning: Wearing contents in bag may cause increased confidence and style leading to baggin’ on your friends for lookin’ all fugly.

Yes, that’s what it actually says. Translation: “Yo, young minds! Check it out! Buying your clothes at The Right Place will suddenly make you A Good And Worthy Person. ‘Cause that’s what happens, y’know. Human value comes from what you buy and where you buy it. So BUY it!”

And this ol’ English teacher won’t even comment on the contraction of a putdown and a vulgarity that results in “fugly”. Let’s just say this: if thoughts about the lasting curse of plastic garbage don’t make us clean up our act a little, maybe the toxic messaging on some of those bags might. (Though I doubt it. That was a snappy conclusion, in a plastic sort of way, but it’s a vain thought. But wouldn’t it be useful to think about where that bag is seven month, seven decades, from now. It’s a fugly thought, and now it’s all yours.)

That Long-Overdue Gandhi Quote…

Posted by :James Howden On : June 29, 2007
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Category: At First Glance

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If you ever take a look down and right for the He Said/She Said… section of this cyberspace pit of thrills, you’ll know more about me than is probably healthy. Sucker for quotes. Sets lofty goals and doesn’t meet ’em. Can’t find his keyboard when life gets fast. Needs, even in the ever-advancing senilization of middle age, reminders about the most fundamental things…

Nobody reminded me, though. I’ll blame it on you. Yes, in that month-old (at least) quotation from the mighty Helen, I promised another similar sentiment from Mr. G. It’s a double-barrelled shotgun blast of humility AND the need to act. This passage is taped to the wall, nine o’clock high, next to my writing desk. Sorry, don’t know where it comes from.

June Up, June Down

Posted by :James Howden On : June 27, 2007
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Category: At First Glance

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It’s an exciting time of year – but also a sigh-inducing, did-I-do-all-that-I-could’ve, what-the-heck-happened-to-Sally period of angst-y reflection – for the teachers.

After six weeks at a suburban Ottawa high school, I’m within hours of my release from room 222. It feels good, mostly. It always did, and why not? While it has been odd to be teaching my head off without really knowing all my students very well (let alone my fellow staff members, or the community within which this school operates), the late-night marking sessions are over. The texts are in. The deadlines for reporting and commentary have been met. My room is clean and the car is packed. I can look forward to the plans for summer, and in particular to making friends with my keyboard again. My writing output has suffered during this return to full-time teaching, so I’ll relaunch my writing / With gnashing and biting / And blasts from a thousand kazoos… That’s the end of my favourite limerick.

But here’s a line from another poem, a fairly whiny bit of long-ago existential self-importance: The loneliness birds are croaking / There’s that pressure behind my brow… Yes. It’s an odd little tang of nostalgia to leave this school, where I have no history and no expectation of ongoing connection. I’ll observe graduation ceremonies tomorrow for senior students for whom I know not a single name. But that’s just life and my peculiar ability to get sentimental about nearly anything.

Worse, there’s a sour ball of disappointment in my gut over the grade nine kids who didn’t get their credit in my courses. That’s the angst. That’s the wondering. Of course, in my situation, the kids who flunked were well on their way by the time I came on the scene in May. (I was covering a maternity leave.) I don’t know if it’s like this for every teacher, but I can’t help feeling my own failure when a kid goes down. Mind you, it chagrins me over and over again to realize, as is too often the case, that I seem to take it harder than the kids do. Even after all these years in classrooms, I don’t find it a bit easier to handle an adolescent nose-dive, though I’ve only known these folks for six weeks. And in virtually every case, the student either dithers or outright decides to not bother doing Essay X or Reading Y (why?), and they are far from surprised at their outcome.

Parents, though, are sometimes blindsided. “He never told me there was a problem!” I can hear the same little guilty tune playing behind their questions, their bewilderment and even the anger and blaming. It becomes a control issue, of course. I still have to remind myself, after 20 years of doing this job, that there are limits to what I can do. I can’t rock every student’s world. I can’t make them love language or care about ideas or be hopeful about the future. It’s up to them. Sigh. I hate that.

“You have the right to fail,” I have sometimes said, “but why would you want to do that?” It’s one of my many attempts to shift a student’s perspective. As teachers, we might wish that we could force a student to do what seems to us so clearly to be the best for him or her. I sure do. But like us, young people have an irritating tendency to want to make their own decisions. And so on we go. Life is for learning. Et cetera.

And in other news…

It’s also an exciting time of year to celebrate all that is best about Canada. Living in Ottawa for these past five July Firsts, it has been quite wonderful to celebrate in the capital, to see the dazzling fireworks that have so terrified our little Sam each year as they explode over Parliament Hill. He’s seven now, and is given to marching through the house singing “O Canada” in French at the top of his lungs. (He has a delightful Outaouais accent. He didn’t get it from me.) I think this will be the year that these astounding displays will be delightfully awesome fun for him instead of an incitement to run away screaming or hide under his Mummy’s arm. Mars Attacks. I thinks that’s what the experience has been for him.

I miss down-home festivities in my little riverside hometown, though. It hasn’t been so long since I lived there. I’ll miss the parade with almost as many people in it as there are watching, the crowds of people milling about in the park afterwards, the more modest but still terrific fireworks down by the dam. We love being around the Big Show here in Ottawa on our national day, but it’s like the culture shock I had about big city grocery stores: I won’t see many people that I actually know as we share our patriotic joys. For that, I’d have to be hanging around the Grand River in Caledonia on Sunday. I’ll miss all those familiar faces, and I’ll remember on Sunday that there are all kinds of communities. One of those is my own little neighbourhood, where Sam and his Mum and I, before we head downtown, will eat hot dogs and wave flags with Djiboutian and Somali-born parents whose kids think Canada Day is the coolest.

Return of the Return

Posted by :James Howden On : June 27, 2007
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Category: At First Glance

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One fine day — it was the last day of high school classes, a fine day indeed — one of my students was asking me a question to which, for a reason that escapes me now, the answer was a visit to this site. I fired up the machinery at my desk, we looked, and she was overly impressed (“Wow, you have your own site!”). I was impressed, too; and depressed, repressed and steam-pressed, by one fact.

The date of my last post had been May 15. “Return of the Chalk Monster”. It detailed my re-entry into high school teaching on other than an occasional basis. One month later, on an otherwise sunny and happy June 15, I was stunned by the time that had passed. I was resolute: this must change. And, I guess, nearly two weeks later, it is. I amaze myself.

Return of the Chalk Monster

Posted by :James Howden On : May 15, 2007
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Category: At First Glance

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Sorry to have been so long since the last post. (Hmm. The Last Post. What a mournfully gorgeous thing that is when played on a trumpet. November 11. Remembering the cause of peace, honouring the sacrifice, praying for the dead and the eternally changed. That is a thousand leagues from my recent inability to publish my tiny cerebral explosions.) As for my Web site silence, I can only say that education is to blame.

I am now, and again, a fully-fledged High School Creature. After months of substitute gigs in several Ottawa schools, I have taken over a position at a suburban educational emporium. (Cairine Wilson Secondary. Know who she is?) I’m not sure who has been more challenged and distressed by the change, me or the ninth and tenth graders I teach. (Okay, it’s the students. Who am I kidding?) Administratively, organizationally and interpersonally, it’s been a fair upheaval. For one thing, this place begins its classes at 8:10 a.m., so that my bride has had to adjust her morning routine in order to get Junior to his bus, which had been my job. And yes, I got a little lost on the way here the first day, and there were computer problems, key problems, and behavioural problems (not all mine!). Curriculum, planning, materials, mindset – all of this has needed considerable massaging and headscratching.

But for all that, and though many of the students have been reluctant to accept graciously the new Ogre in room 222, I feel at home here already. I still don’t know where a lot of things are in this funky, ‘70s-designed school layout, but I’m getting there. But being in the language classroom again – two French classes, one English – feels fine. Last Friday, after perhaps the most frustrating day of trying to get my new kids on the same page as me, was a turning. There were more smiles. There were glances that said, Hey, maybe this clown won’t be so bad after all. I could lower my shield and sword, bring some energy and animation to what was being taught, and not worry about losing the kids to side conversations and general distraction. Cool!

My writing schedule is completely thrown off, though. Not only have I not been posting to my Web site for the last two weeks, but the less visible writing projects that I’ve been trying to nourish lie in a dusty, chaotic heap in my home office and in foul-smelling corners at the back of my mind. Forgotten, but not gone, I hope.

The most urgent reason for returning to education was a financial one. I had a steady and adequate salary when I was writing for and with the former Governor General, Adrienne Clarkson. As an independent flogger of my own ideas, though, my income has been, well, less than stellar. (If I was a more confident/arrogant writer and weighed a little less, I might have called myself a “starving artist”.) After a year and a bit of literary exploration, I have had to bow to economic realities. (Can’t stand economics OR realism!)

Less urgent, but more important – at least to me – was that even during the best periods of my exclusive writing life, something was missing. It was my Teaching Jones. I love that whole relationship: Educators and Those Who Need Them. I love being at the centre of a community of learners, of which I am one. Sometimes high schoolers don’t recognize their own hunger to know, blunted as it can be by distraction and the habits of enforced ignorance. (And, I’ll say it, by poor teaching.) But when those coloured lights start to sparkle and glow, there’s nothing like it. I often felt, even when I was writing speeches for the visit of Heads of State or for national honours to the greatest of Canadians, that I was likely doing less for the world than I had done as a chalk-stained wretch or whistle-toting basketball guru.

And so I’m back in class. I surely hope to balance this return to Shakespeare and the passé composé with my ongoing quests as a writer. But if my next school needs a basketball coach, I don’t know how I’m going to keep all those ducks in a row. So many darned ducks!