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Pardon the Interruption

Posted by :James Howden On : May 2, 2018
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Category: At First Glance

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We are all our own monsters. (photo from EntertainmentTime.com)

[2.5-minute read. NOTE: this post has nothing to do with the sports-men, Kornheiser and Wilbon, and their high-energy exchanges. I only interrupt myself.]

Jumpstarting a depleted battery. Cranking the old Model T. Applying the paddles to a flatlined patient. Making the Monster LIVE!

Whatever. (Insert your own favourite new-life, Renaissance, man! analogy here.)

I’m back at the controls of the Good Ship Howdy. Hurray! Below, I exhume and quote from an older piece of mine. I just re-read it, quite by chance, and it felt like a good way to help recharge by weary bloggish batteries and get GOING. It also serves to remind readers of one of my favourite things to do on This Little Site of Mine. (I’m gonna let it shine!) Yes, it’s been eerily, fear-ily quiet here at The Howdy. I keep telling myself there’s a silver lining: my recent inactivity has meant that a special piece, much more important than the bookish or sporty matters I often obsess about, was at the head of the Howdy Queue for months. (It’s just down below, in this “At First Glance” section, which is the main one.) A celebration for the age.)

Here I go again. A week ago, when I wasn’t watching, this space hit a small milestone. (It’s a small consolation that, even when I’m not grinding at the word mill, humans are still reading my messages to the universe. Sweet.) 40,000 page views is a decent month for many sites, and it’s taken me quite a few years to get here, but it’s something. I insist that many of those views involved people actually reading what I’ve written, so there! Yes. Thanks for reading, for reading me, for reading just about anything. READING MATTERS. And now this, a blast from the Oh-So-Quotable! JamesHowden past (complete article here):

He Said/She Said… Did you notice this FAVE-QUOTES section? It’s just down there, on your right, if you’re looking at this on a laptop or other big-screened device. There’s no up-top tab for this “He Said/She Said” section, but you can find it if you try hard, maybe?

I’m always looking for the right words. Some people look for the magic bullet – the easy lazy remedy, the simple common-sense answer. Some look for solace and conviction in chemical form, but for me it’s nearly always an incantation. If a problem can’t be solved with words, I’m often not interested in it….

I’ve collected quotes forever. Once upon a lucky break, I was suddenly being paid well to write with her Right Honourable Self¹, and she loved quotations, too. So I scavenged everywhere, tore from newspapers, scribbled in the margins of novels and other good reads, and I cheated: I went to Bartlett’s, to John Robert Columbo, to Cosmo Doogood’s Urban Almanac, to on-line sites like Empyrean. I love to find just the right words….

There be monsters in the quotable woods, though. I remember Mr. Hill’s comments on a high school essay that I had just larded with some of the best quotes ever. Problem: some of them I hadn’t fully understood, when removed from the context in which they were written, and “this is the evil of Bartlett’s”, quoth Mr. Hill. Who knew a treasure house of words could be evil? And then there was my recent discovery that one of my favourite quotes of Ralph Waldo Emerson – beginning “To laugh often and much, to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children…” and ending “This is to have succeeded” – is “almost certainly not his”, according to a scholarly website that I accidentally consulted….

All this to say that I have a wee quote box just down there to your right, underneath the “On Second Thought” section…

¹ In the middle of the Aughts, I wrote correspondence for, and later 18 months of vice-regal speeches with, the Right Honourable Adrienne Clarkson, during her term as Governor General of Canada. It was fun. I had deadlines then. And an audience.

May I Quote You On That?

Posted by :James Howden On : November 28, 2006
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Category: At First Glance

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He Said/She Said… Did you notice? It’s just down there. On your right.

I’m always looking for the right words. Some people look for the magic bullet – the easy lazy remedy, the simple common-sense answer. Some look for solace and conviction in chemical form, but for me it’s nearly always an incantation. If a problem can’t be solved with words, I’m often not interested in it. (Once upon a time, there was a jumpshot or a perfectly timed diving catch that would solve the problem. But what do I do now?)

I’ve collected quotes forever. Once upon a lucky break, I was suddenly being paid well to write with her Right Honourable Self, and she loved quotations, too. So I scavenged everywhere, tore from newspapers, scribbled in the margins of novels and other good reads, and I cheated: I went to Bartlett’s, to John Robert Columbo, to Cosmo Doogood’s Urban Almanac, to on-line sites like Empyrean. I love to find just the right words. Today, for instance, I laughed out loud in my doctor’s office, delighted at the righteousness of the following description. It’s not a very funny topic, actually. The environmentalist, unorthodox-Christian writer David James Duncan is speaking of reverence for nature and its critical importance, and calls to account those who welcome war and destruction because they think it hastens their own salvation: “The Armageddonist’s rejection of the world-as-gift is [mere human] projection: an obsession with the “End Days” is surrender not to God but to men with exaggerated reverence for their own fragmented understanding of holy writ.” Zing!

There be monsters in the quotable woods, though. I remember Mr. Hill’s comments on a high school essay that I had just larded with some of the best quotes ever. Problem: some of them I hadn’t fully understood, when removed from the context in which they were written, and “this is the evil of Bartlett’s”, quoth Mr. Hill. Who knew a treasure house of words could be evil? And then there was my recent discovery that one of my favourite quotes of Ralph Waldo Emerson – beginning “To laugh often and much, to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children…” and ending “This is to have succeeded” – is “almost certainly not his”, according to a scholarly website that I accidentally consulted. Yes, and “Desiderata” wasn’t found in Baltimore’s Old North Church in 1608, or when-and-wherever it was supposed to have been. Sigh. It was actually written by a guy called Max in the 1960s. (And, to my surprise upon re-reading it recently, I still like it. Good Max!)

All this to say that I have a wee quote box just down there to your right, underneath the “On Second Thought” section, and that YOU, careless reader, have probably never even bothered to look at!! (And a good thing, too, because I haven’t done a thing with the Will Rogers line that my tech guy put there as filler months ago. “Even if you’re on the right track,” it said, “you’ll get run over if you just sit there.” Nice choice, Artie!) But now I’ll be putting up quotes every Monday (or so) in the “He Said/She Said…” section, and you’re invited. Heck, I’m going to start with the phony Emerson, ‘cause I like it, too. I wish I knew who actually wrote it. (Something similar, though not as good, was the winning entry of one Bessie Stanley in a 1905 newspaper contest, according to my trusty website on Transcendentalist philosophers. Bessie’s version is below.)

“He has achieved success who has lived well, laughed often and loved much; who has gained the respect of intelligent men and the love of little children; who has filled his niche and accomplished his task; who has left the world better than he found it, whether by an improved poppy, a perfect poem, or a rescued soul; who has never lacked appreciation of earth’s beauty or failed to express it; who has always looked for the best in others and given them the best he had; whose life was an inspiration; whose memory a benediction.”  Not bad!

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.)