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Here’s to Diners

Posted by :James Howden On : April 18, 2006
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Category: At First Glance

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Because my cluttered study is shared with wife and sons (teenaged and kindergartenish); because ‘Net-wading and inbox adventures sometimes feel like Actual Work; because laundry and dishes sometimes shout louder than my keyboard does; and because I had a nearby appointment anyway, I spent a big chunk of my work day at Ada’s Diner. I read, I ate, I planned, I ate, I wrote and I ate. Working bliss! (Today, I love being a writer.)

Over three hours, I did actually get done some decent work and some needed spring cleaning of the cerebral kind, but mostly I like diners. I discovered Ada’s a few years ago, when I was taking some supply-teaching dates at the elementary school around the corner. It’s a tiny storefront restaurant with clean floors and tables, good food and friendly people. There actually is an Ada, with a husband who bakes fresh muffins for the weekend brunch crowds and a pretty, smiling server who’s been there for several years. (Just realized that, unlike many of her customers, I don’t know her name. Not getting to Ada’s often enough!)

At Ada’s, I get the impression that my patronage is genuinely welcome. I feel like a real person rather than an object of marketing and plastic hospitality. Nobody knows my name there, yet, but it’s a cheery and homely place. Here’s to Ada!

Just Human Nature?

Posted by :James Howden On : April 15, 2006
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Category: At First Glance

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Have you ever noticed how gloomy we are in the way we talk about ourselves? About our species, I mean. Someone cheats – on his taxes, on her partner – and we shrug and mutter, “Well, it’s only human nature.” Over and over, we sing the same mournful refrain in response to signs of dishonesty, selfishness and aggression, most often evident among people that we don’t know.

I find this bizarre. I think we need to reclaim this phrase, and shout Now THAT’S human nature! whenever we catch people in acts like this: pushing a stranger’s car out of the snow; smiling at small children; preserving history or restoring spoiled habitats; singing the good old songs; standing against injustice; jumping into icy water or burning houses to save another. I don’t mean that lying and brutality don’t happen, only that they are not the default mode of the human system.

It reminds me of the view of history as one unrelieved tale of war, tragedy and competition. If this was true, how could we have cities and art and temples and enduring music? War destroys quickly, and this is the horror, but it is also the exception. If war and aggression were the rule, we’d have destroyed ourselves long ago. If it were otherwise, how could any of the cooperative projects and personal accomplishments of human beings remain? The King James Bible, Chartres Cathedral, Réal Madrid CF, the computer program on which I write: pick your favourite example of human enterprise and progress, and know that it required time and peace to be built.

And if our human nature is nothing but self-interest and negativity, how have we survived? (Just give us time, I hear some of you muttering. We’re working on it.) We can be beastly to each other, but we can also be angels. When we think of our friends, our family, the colleagues we know and respect, we don’t assume as some sort of default stance that they are “only out for themselves”, “naturally aggressive” or, God forbid, “born in sin”. Oh, we screw up. We are in constant need of education. Most of the time, though, most of us are just ordinary Janes and Jamals who are trying to be useful, wanting to enjoy the company of others and to leave some legacy of goodness behind. It’s only human nature, after all.

(And here’s Waldo! Ralph Waldo Emerson, that is, with his description of humans being at their best, the success that, in our heart of hearts, most of us want more than anything else:

To laugh often and much, to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children, to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends, to appreciate beauty, to find the best in others, to leave the world a little better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition, to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.

On the Walrus Shelf

Posted by :James Howden On : April 13, 2006
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Category: At First Glance

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How lucky am I? Well, I’m David’s Dad, for one thing, and last night that meant an invitation to an amazing event. My kid is finishing up at Canterbury High School, the specialty arts school for this region. (We chose Ottawa, in large part, because of his successful application. And it’s public education, speaking of great institutins and lucky fathers.) CHS, with its Literary Arts program, took a strong role in hosting The Walrus magazine’s Ottawa instalment of its “Bookshelf” promotion, and My Dave was one of two student readers at McGinty’s Pub downtown.

Four novelists were there to read from their work. James Meek read from The People’s Act of Love. From the United Kingdom, Meek draws here from his years as a journalist in Russia. The novel sounds bleak and fascinating, though I found his writing about sex clumsy. (I find nearly everybody’s writing about sex clumsy, though Bruce Cockburn, oddly, is an exception. Maybe sex and prose don’t mix.) Rawi Hage, born in Lebanon and living in Montreal, read searing stuff on the adolescent idiocy of civil war from his début novel DeNiro’s Game. Jaclyn Moriarty comes from an entirely different authorial zone, and she was a delight. She is Australian, a lawyer with a Ph.D. and a practice she has left behind for writing. (It’s hard to imagine that charming and quirky voice arguing copyright law, but that’s my bias.) I Have a Bed Made of Buttermilk Pancakes is suburban fantasy, I suppose, and it was intriguing and funny. The remarkable Canadian Ann-Marie MacDonald closed with a superbly delivered (hardly a surprise, given her acting and performing background) series of readings from The Way the Crow Flies. (Wow.)

Yes, and my Dave and Fatima read their poetry, too, and hundreds of teachers and librarians (and the odd freeloading parent) absorbed beer and bar food and WordsWordsWords with rapt attention. The editor of The Walrus, Ken Alexander, spent several years as a high school English teacher. The Walrus Bookshelf hit 12 Canadian cities this year, and its partnership with publishers like HarperCollins, Anansi and Vintage Canada results in schools walking away from the evening with dozens of autographed copies of the novels at hand for use with their students (25,000 books, I’m told, across the country). It’s all about reading and the good teaching that encourages it.

And until Dave leaves for university next year, I have four signed hardback novels under my roof, and they are squirming to be read. (That’s me squirming, I admit it, especially since I still haven’t read MacDonald’s ridiculously successful first novel, Fall On Your Knees.) My guy was a bit overwhelmed, in his usual understated way, as we walked away: “I had no idea how prestigious this was.” That made two of us. What a great night to be a Dad, to be a (once upon a time) teacher, to be a writer with an itch.

Are You Sure You’re Sure?

Posted by :James Howden On : April 8, 2006
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Category: At First Glance

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Pierre Trudeau, that Canadian bellwether, was front-page news again. It seems that among the archives of this arch-federalist former Prime Minister is evidence that he once believed in Quebec independence. Shocking Revelations! I shouldn’t be sarcastic – there is no way that this could be anything but a big story in Canada.

What interests me, though, is what it tells us about our attitude to leadership. We say that we value open-mindedness. Boards of Education trumpet the value of “life-long learning”. One of our favourite bits of wise-arse wisdom is this: “It’s what you learn after you know it all that counts.” And yet, when it comes to our political leaders, we seem to prefer that they never change their minds, no matter where those minds are stuck. We appear stunned by the possibility that Mr. Trudeau might have seen his country differently when he was 20 than when he was 50. (Shouldn’t we hope so?) But in a world where so much is uncertain, there is obviously an appetite for leaders who are bloody consistent, and consistently self-assured. George W. Bush understands this.

Remember how the media scurried to find out what Pope Benedict might have said or done as a student in Nazi Germany? The best ammunition for the 2004 Bush campaign was often evidence that John Kerry had occasionally changed his mind (“wishy-washy!”), whereas Mr. B was impervious to anything other than “staying the course”. I’m not here to slag steadfastness of purpose, of course, but to question our headlong quest for certainty. Putting every public debate or intellectual issue in rigid, either/or terms is a recipe for clumsy and often dangerous thinking: “for us or against us”; “separate but equal”; “are you now or have you ever been…” Most people resist being pigeon-holed, and the wisdom of their own street tells them that things are usually not as simple as they appear. Yet we look for leaders, it would seem, who haven’t had a fresh thought since they were seventeen.

The documentary Why We Fight (sorry, haven’t seen it yet) takes us back to an American icon, General and Republican President Eisenhower. His recognition of the complexities of modern governance – particularly his famous warning about the “military-industrial complex” as he left office – makes him sound, according to one reviewer of the film, as “the sort of guy who would get tarred [these days] as a leader of the ‘Hate America’ crowd…”

We’ll see how the revelations of Mr. Trudeau’s youthful passions play out, but at first glance, it looks like Canadians might be leaning toward intellectual simplicity in their leaders about as much as Americans do. Hey, it’s good to be clear-minded. It’s good to have principles. But we also have to be willing and able to progress, to learn, and this requires a degree of tolerance for ambiguity and subtlety. And it was an American who said it well, the great Ralph Waldo Emerson: “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds / Adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines…” (Now that’s a Waldo worth looking for.)

Calvin is Six

Posted by :James Howden On : April 6, 2006
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Category: At First Glance

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Happy birthday, Samuel Justice! Six years old. Calvin (and Hobbes) years. Blonde, bright, stubborn, imaginative, likes his stuffed animals, always on the go. Sounds like somebody Bill Watterson used to know. (What is Bill Watterson doing now?)

We are very happy that Sam attends École le Trillium in a special pilot program of our local French public school board. Somehow, enthusiastic parents convinced the CEPEO to institute a program in Steiner-Waldorf education at one of its schools, and we lucked in. (Sam’s proficiency in French, courtesy of a little help from me and lots from caregivers Samira, Anik et Natalie, was the big factor, though.) And Mommy gets weepy nearly every time she’s in this gentle, beautiful, inventive learning place where Madame Claire makes miracles. The latest? A sweet birthday story pour le roi du jour, Samuel, qui a six ans aujourd’hui!

And now there’s a happy birthday adjustable basketball hoop in our little sloping driveway, and a six-year-old boy who is proud and stubborn about his own special way of making that ball go swish…This is why Mr. Naismith invented basketball.

Words AND Music?

Posted by :James Howden On : April 5, 2006
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Category: At First Glance

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I woke up this morning with a full-colour version of an old and quite likely vain imagining playing in my head. (Playing with my head, it felt like.) It already has a title: How Long Will That Take In OldDog Years? First, though, it will be serially published, let’s say in Guitar Player magazine. Each month will chronicle some of the daily highs and lows, as well as account for this musical pilgrim’s progress in learning one of the standard riffs. We’ll start with the main rhythm from “Smoke on the Water”. And some month down the road? The Walsh solo from “Hotel California”. And one thing, anything, from Bruce Cockburn. “Foxglove”. Anything from Speechless. Yeah, in my dreams…

I want to learn how to play guitar. (There, I’ve said it. You’ve read it. “The temple is already built!”) That thought has been banging around in my brain for years, and it must terrify me. I’ve never taken even the remotest step towards it. It frightens me almost as much as writing does, except that when it comes to words I know lots of the basic repertoire. I just suffer from performance anxiety and bad habits. That, and a deep melancholia about the place of my scribbling in the parade. (As if place matters. Join the parade! Even if you’re the guy with the broom walking behind the elephants…) In any case, I’m trying to learn how to follow what Julia Cameron writes in The Artist’s Way: “Creativity is a spiritual practice….The stringent requirement of a sustained creative life is the humility to start again, to begin anew.” And the courage, Ms. Cameron. And the courage. “The beginner’s mind,” says the guru. “A culture of learning,” says the International Teaching Centre. So.

Humility and courage, the Right Stuff, remind me of one of my favourite Far Side cartoons. (And where is Gary Larsen now?) It informed me when I was making a second stab at marital sustainability, and it sits above my writing desk now. The cartoon shows a dog on a unicycle riding on a high-wire. In the spotlights’ glare, our wide-eyed pooch juggles four balls, keeps a hula hoop whirling, holding a jug on his head and a cat in his mouth. The caption: “High above the hushed crowd, Rex tried to remain focused. Still, he couldn’t shake one nagging thought: He was an old dog and this was a new trick.”

This writing trick is a hard one. A recent article in the Globe and Mail discussed the publishing trend that may have begun with Peter Mayle’s A Year in Provence, and which continues apace with Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking, among many others. It’s a diary. (I can write a diary!) It recounts, more or less, a substantial, natural and imaginable block of time. (I can imagine a year!) It’s become something of a publishing cliché, but it seems to have staying power. (I hope I have staying power, and I know I can do clichés!)

How Long Will That Take In OldDog Years? This crazy notion reminds me of that lead-balloon anti-joke about heeding an ambition. Self-Doubting Desire complains: Do you know how old I’ll be by the time I learn to play the guitar? The Voice of Pragmatic Encouragement answers: The same age you will be if you don’t. (Borrowed that one from Julia Cameron, too.) I like it. Such dedication to a long-delayed dream scares me. (Yeah, so?) Okay, how about A Year and Six Strings? Or maybe Because A Red Miata Seemed Too Obvious: My Mid-Life Quest for Guitar Glory. I am Title Guy. Now I just have to Do the Deed and Write the Rambling Memoir. (Cool.)

I Hate Men (Pardon My Language)

Posted by :James Howden On : April 4, 2006
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Category: At First Glance

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Well, today there was another one. Early reports on my local news had a guy dying, running from the flames of the home of his estranged wife, and I felt sick. I was pretty sure I knew what would follow. Yes, the woman was unaccounted for. More sickness: they’d had three kids. And soon we knew for a fact what my gut had already told me: that another weak and cowardly male had taken action. He had shaken his fist at fate. He had made his own destiny.

Well, congratulations, Super Commando. (I can’t stand to type your name. You are less than nobody.) You killed children. You murdered where you had pledged to love. Was there not enough porn-fed masturbation to get you through? Was the comparative dignity of killing yourself too big a leap? You couldn’t find the least fucking trace of imagination or guts? When your ex-wife was dead, when you’d spattered your children’s blood around the home you didn’t deserve, when you’d lit the fire that made ashes of a family, did you then try to run away? I think you did. I wonder where you thought you were going. You are the worst face of maleness – I will not call you a man – and I am disgusted to share your gender.

What can we take away from this? Anger and disgust are galvanizing, but they make a toxic stew. So I add my feeble prayer for one more woman and her children. I remember all the good men in my life, the rule that reproves this chicken-shit exception. And I guess that we all keep shuffling toward equality, but it’s been a rough day for it where I live.

Youthful Reasons and Dreams

Posted by :James Howden On : April 2, 2006
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Category: At First Glance

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Otesha means “reason to dream” in Swahili. In button-down Ottawa and in hundreds of schools and community centres and parks across Canada, it has come to stand for how youth can grow hope and planetary stewardship right in their own bedrooms, backyards, school grounds or streets. Otesha means sustainability, usefulness, vision, good humour and a whole lot more, as my jam-packed living room found out last night.

The co-founder of Otesha, original “hopeful hooligan” Jessica Lax, is a 24-year-old crusader that my bride fell bike-over-compost in love with. You can find out what Otesha does and how it began – in the hearts of two Canadian kids who became brilliantly conscious of the oneness of humanity – by letting your mouse do the walking here.  Here’s what my family said in inviting friends and neighbours (and neighbours of friends) to listen to Jess’s story:

Otesha  is one of the coolest and most exciting things going on – by youth, for youth, and for a world of hopefulness and positive change….Jessica Lax, an Ottawa girl, found herself sitting under a tree in Kenya with Jocelyn Land-Murphy, another Canuck. Each was a university biology student, each was involved in the Canadian Field Studies in Africa program, and neither could see herself going back to Canada and resuming ‘life as usual’. They had been changed by their experience, and they wanted to BE THE CHANGE that they felt was required to make a healthy world. They loved the Swahili word ‘otesha’…and they gave it to the project that they dreamed up under that tree: ‘to enable and empower our generation to take action towards a sustainable future.’ Jess and Joss saw the global environmental crisis, the disparity between rich and poor societies, and the overconsumption – of energy, of goods, of everything – in their own communities back home. They formed Otesha as a way to help young people to be aware without despair, to see what was happening and not feel powerless about it. ‘We knew we wanted to present this message to schools across Canada,’ says Joss, ‘and we knew we didn’t want to drive more cars to do it!’ 

So they returned to Canada with transformed ideas about EVERYTHING – from diet to clothing, from education to entertainment – and a determination to act on what they had learned…

And as if that wasnt’ enough, Julie Séléger of the Ottawa Bahá’í community added to the mix! She danced her way through Europe with a youthful company called Diversity Dance Theatre, volunteers from around the world offering dramatic representations of social ills and clear-eyed looks at solutions to them. Julie has also volunteered as a neighbourhood school teacher in Haiti, part of a worldwide “youth can move the world” ethos spreading like wildfire in the Bahá’í community. Amazing stuff all ‘round, and about 30 teens and twenties filled our house with light as they talked about it all. Hopefulness came down like rain. It was sweet and good, sometimes sombre, frequently funny. What could be better?

How Foolish of Me

Posted by :James Howden On : April 1, 2006
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Category: At First Glance

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Having April Fool’s day fall on the weekend just seems wrong to me. My favourite pranks, always, were the ones I played on my high school morning classes. I could rant ridiculously about their unseemly behaviour, their shameful marks, or their pathetic attitudes. Even better, I would spring a surprise test on them that accounted for an absurd proportion of their grades, or lay out for them the details of an impossibly lengthy and complex project to be completed within days. And let me say this: I kept eye contact and I never cracked a smile. I was ferocious.

Until it was time for tee-hee. The battle between relief and indignation on my students’ faces was almost as fun to watch as the just-ended one where disbelief duked it out with resentment. And then I’d go for a very short walk and a good long chuckle. I don’t miss everything about teaching school, but I do miss that. I hope I’ve been forgiven.

Over-Parenting Anonymous

Posted by :James Howden On : March 28, 2006
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Sixth Birthday Fever is running rampant in our household, mostly infecting the five-year-old. However, there is recent evidence that the contagion has spread to my bride. An otherwise fairly sane person (marital decisions notwithstanding), she sent me the following. (I have mercilessly pruned it, ’cause it went ON and ON…)

“Sounds pretty cool, eh?” my wife wrote in attaching this piece of HyperMom Frenzy. It IS full of ideas, but my goodness! What’s the kid going to expect for his seventh birthday party? And then grade 8 grad will have to top that. And prom. And university graduation, if just learning and studying isn’t far too much boring effort by then. I figure that this kid will fully expect to literally go into orbit on his wedding night (ceremony on the space shuttle, honeymoon around Uranus…)

Anyhow, take a listen. Maybe it’s the materialism, maybe it’s the manic effort on the part of all to make this kid’s party the Top of the Charts, maybe it’s the selfishness (who is this FOR, really?), but I find this bloody alarming. (Perhaps you’ll find it superb and think of me ever after as a pinch-faced pessimist. The risks I take!)

For my son’s 6th birthday party, I threw him a Super Hero Training Party. I called each of the parents and asked them questions about their sons: weight, height, distinguishing features, brief personal history, enemies, etc. I then wrote up a dossier on each kid, with TOP SECRET watermarked on the paper. I paper-clipped the dossier, a headshot of the boy, and a cover letter into a manilla folder marked “Top Secret” on the outside. We hand delivered the invitations…’Please come in your Super Hero uniform [scrambling parents make sure their son has an adequate costume; somehow, I’m thinking this isn’t happening in the low-rent district] and be prepared to work hard….We hope you decide to become a part of the…CRIME FIGHTING SUPER HERO LEAGUE.  Regards, Justice Forall.’ 

As the kids entered we had a sign that said ‘Entering Restricted Area, please proceed to handprint recognition and retinal scanning.’ We had two boxes that my brother rigged up with flashlights to check handprints and retinas….When all kids arrived, I handed out their ‘Crime Fighting Super Hero League Training Manual.’ made them in Print Shop using the 1/4 card template. Inside there was three sections: Endurance, Agility, and Marksmanship….[Olympic-type events with stickers for successful completion ensued. Here’s a taste of *Marksmanship\*] I had 50 water balloons ready and a piece of plywood covered in plastic with a bullseye. The manual stated, ‘Hitting the target you are aiming for is an essential skill to fight crime…’ The boys took turns throwing one water balloon at a time at the target…they stood at the back door and threw them out at the target. We handed out their stickers for their training manuals when they had used up all the balloons. When they finished all the events we went back to the ‘Welcome Center’ and had a graduation party….

After the ceremony we had a reception in which I brought in cupcakes decorated with the emblems of Spiderman, Batman and Superman. Right when I brought them in I had my husband (dressed as Dr. Zogie the evil scientist) and my brother (dressed as the Emperor from Star Wars) attack the party, steal the cupcakes and run away. Then I told the boys, ‘You are all now Super Heroes! Remember everything you have learned! Go get the bad guys and save our cupcakes!’ The boys needed no further instruction. They all went running after Dr. Zogie and the Emperor…

FOOD – We served cupcakes decorated with superhero emblems, homemade ice cream and juice. FAVORS – After we were done with food, we proceded with present opening. When the guests would give my son his present, he would hand them a little canvas bag that I had painted their names on. There was candy and more super hero stickers inside. While we waited for the parents, they just ran around the obstacle course, attacked the pillows and ran around like crazy boys do. It was loads of fun and we were all exhausted by the end… 

 So, yes, no question, it’s a deeply admirable effort, and surely the kids had a great time. And if they didn’t already  think the sun rose and set on their wee arses, surely they must by now! Whew! MISSION ACCOMPLISHED! (But sorry, love. We ain’t goin’ there. The Little Prince will live, and more. Trust me.)