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A Modest Proposal: Coaching Hoops While North

[17-minute read]

MARCH MADNESS of my very own, 2025

(Being an OPEN LETTER to Canada’s (Young) Ballcoaches)

 

Dear coaches and basketball dreamers,

(And especially *you*, young hoopers, trying to make your mark on this game we love so crazily and so much):

Hear me out, folks. This is not a rant. But its heart is in making basketball a better place to work and play and live in. (This will take you 17 minutes or so. You’ve got this!)

I’m the old guy waaaay over there in the baggy sweats, still blowing his whistle and dreaming his dream, still wondering if we can make This Thing We Do better for the next generations of hoop-crazy kids. My view: as with many other Big Important Deals going on in the world, the biggest problems we face all have to do with not getting our stuff together.

The basketball community – in Ottawa, where I live, and maybe where you are, too – is like a team whose players all have different ideas about how to win. We leaders/coaches don’t play together. We don’t play smart. (We do play hard, to finish the old formula advanced by Dean Smith at North Carolina; Ontarians, Canadians, are putting in the work, don’t get me wrong.) As a result, we don’t come near achieving, certainly in my city, what the sum of our separate talents might suggest we should.

We’re not united. Greater unity is the solution to nearly every problem. Zoom all the way out to climate change, the renewed scourge of war, or infighting in your favourite local or national legislature: only long-view collaboration can overcome them. Can basketball development be much different?

I get it, this is sport; this *is* competitive. But to too great an extent, the basketball community doesn’t act as if we have shared interests, as if we are all in the same boat (we ARE) of trying to realize a double vision: a) to create maximum opportunity for masses of kids to enjoy (and stick with) this game, and b) to encourage excellence at all levels, especially for the (relatively) few who are ready for the push. Instead, we coaches go our own ways. Instead of competing mainly on the court, where it best belongs, too often we are going our own stubborn and selfish ways, poking away at each other, undermining each other’s efforts, often without intending to. We’re guarding our yard, you might say (or growing our brand), without seeing beyond our own little patch of real estate.

As always, in any community (or any family), the cost of disunity is borne by the kids. For the truly talented (or truly privileged, or both) among our players, this might not be a big problem; if their ambition is to play at various “next levels”, their athletic gifts and other resources usually allow them to succeed in the basketball economy. The worst effects are felt, unfortunately, by the greatest number of young players.

[I’ve coached more high school than anything else, but have run numerous house leagues and founded a regional basketball club, have coached in elite development programs in Ontario and with a top-level club in Ottawa. I will probably end my decades of coaching in a high school program where I have been welcomed and have a fine young coach to work with. That’s where I’m coming from.]

So here’s what I see.

***

High Schools, Prep Schools and Clubs. In Canada, hockey, soccer and baseball have traditionally been club-based sports, just as in Europe, Asia and most of the rest of the world. Football and basketball have tended to be school-based, following the globally unusual American model. (“Education through school sport” is the Ontario Federation of School Athletic Associations (OFSAA) motto. I still maintain my stock!) Bias alert: my main career was as an English teacher; I love the intersection of sport and education; John Wooden is my coaching icon.

Of course, school-based sport has its challenges, especially in the U.S. where it is practiced at its best and most extreme: jocks getting an educational “free pass”; frequent corruption where schools rich in facilities and other resources get richer while the poor schools get poorer. (Hey, can you say “NCAA transfer portal”?) However, this American model has produced by far the greatest proportion of the best amateur and professional players in our sport. The Amateur Athletic Union (A.A.U.) system in the States developed as an extra way in which motivated athletes could enrich their development and playing experience, particularly if their schools did not have a solid off-season development program. Clubs in Canada have filled a similar void.

And between such school and club programs falls the modern “prep school”. Originally, every secondary school was considered a prep school, preparing students to succeed in post-secondary education. (Americans still refer to high school sport in general as the “prep” level.) Specialized preparatory schools, usually private ones, often offering an extra high-school year, evolved to help get students prepared academically for entrance into high-ranking universities with lofty admission standards. It’s only in the last few decades that this concept was extended to preparing “student-athletes” – yeah, I’ll say it, far more emphasis on the athlete part of the equation! – to get athletic scholarships. Pay the prep school fees, so the current thinking goes, wear cool gear, attend shoe company tournaments and you’ll be readier for and better known to the college sports powerhouses. (Pardon the history lesson.)  

Fine.

In Canadian basketball, it seems to me, we’re following the American model, sometimes to our benefit, but for better and for worse. For most of my basketball life, a player needed to take care of academics if he/she wanted to play after high school, whether that was in a Canadian college or university or (for the very few) in the NCAA. That squashed the ambition, for example, of my super-talented high school teammate, since he didn’t care much for school. But it also kept a great number of high school football, basketball and other players in school, and at least somewhat motivated to succeed there. And playing for your school, if that community cares about what you do, is one of the best things sport has to offer. More on this later.

The “for worse” part is this: instead of emphasizing the value of school-based athletics, as the Americans have done for over a century, we are (I think pretty blindly) copying the AAU mentality, as well as adopting a prep-school-is-the-only-school approach. Both of these can seem to benefit the top, let’s say, 1 or 2% of players, but they also can actively interfere with the development and enjoyment of a majority of those who play our game seriously.

CONFLICT. It wasn’t that long ago that club and high school basketball had quite distinct seasons. When I was coaching club teams in Ottawa in the 2010s, these select players would finish their high school seasons (perhaps with some extra weekend training with their clubs) before starting a club season that would run from March to May and beyond. My current high school teams don’t have a lot of club players; the ones we do have, though, are stretched thin. Their club coaches are insisting on what amounts to a nine-months-or-more commitment; meanwhile, we’re trying to build a team culture, a shared commitment and feeling, for a four-month season, at most. (I’ll leave aside the growing fact of kids’ inability to play multiple sports, which we know has huge advantages for young athletes.) Our club kids are pulled in opposite directions, and are incentivized to pace themselves at my practice because they’re going to his practice that evening. Or to skip one or the other. They’re more prone to overuse injuries. They’re more likely to get stale. (“Coach, basketball is starting to feel like a job,” one of my boys confessed this past season.)

Yes. We’ve all heard it: “High school ball is dying.” Really? Isn’t that a self-fulfilling prophecy? (It’s alive and kicking hard at our school, and we’re not alone. At the risk of being obvious, it’s still — to an almost absurd degree — a Pretty Big Deal in the Excited States of America!) So many kids are enticed to pay big money – and to sacrifice the real comradeship that comes with studying and playing and graduating at your own high school with your buddies – to pursue the prep school dream, which is an illusion for so many; I’ve seen the love for the game, for too many boys, dampened by their eventual, inevitable disillusionment. Even the ones who “succeed” there are often role players on a thrown-together “all-star team” where one or two kids get all the reps. I can’t help thinking of specific case histories of players I’ve coached or trained, who would have been much better off leading their own high school (or local club) teams, and developing as complete players rather than being slotted as under-sized forwards, or strictly as rim-runners, or as corner-three specialists.

[HOCKEY SIDEBAR. Canadian hockey learned this the hard way, probably still is. It took forever for our hockey leaders to acknowledge that the Soviets, and the Europeans in general, were producing more skilled hockey players with their emphasis on puck-handling, more creative and flowing movement, and especially on having a 3:1 or 4:1 ratio of practices to games. Elite Canadian youth teams, meanwhile, tended for decades toward the opposite ratio, played sixty- and eighty-game seasons, asked their players to fire the puck into corners and then fight to get it back, and began losing international competitions they had once dominated. Every Russian or Swedish forward, it seemed, could out-skate and out-dangle our guys and roof backhands over the goaltender. Eventually, we learned. The McDavids and McKinnons and Bedards of modern Canadian hockey didn’t learn those exquisite puck skills playing dump-and-chase, game after game after game. They had quality practices with huge numbers of puck-touches, and enormous numbers of skill reps. Okay, back to basketball!]

I agree: exceptional ballplayers (think Cooper Flagg, leaving Maine in search of competition) may benefit from playing with and against other gifted athletes. (Hmm. But Larry Bird and LeBron James, Michael and Steph, Steve Nash, Caitlin Clark, all played for their hometown high schools, and benefitted from the responsibility-for-winning that they carried. Just saying.) At our place, we tell truly hungry kids that we’ll recommend they leave our high school program if we can no longer give them what they need to continue improving.

But as high school coaches, we have huge advantages to offer our players. At our place, we can (and do) provide gym access, nearly year-round, before school. And of course, we have the standard three hours (or so) that high schools have after school for their teams, zero-cost gym availability that gives us basketball coaches at least two practice slots available every weekday (more if the secondary gym is available, which it often is); it’s everything we need. I was constantly frustrated, as a club coach, by the cost, the scarcity and the scattered locations of our practices.      

The AAU Curse. Speaking of skill development, I watched that rock-fight in the NCAA second-round game, no. 2 St. John’s under Pitino and Calipari’s late-developing Arkansas team. This isn’t breaking news, but it seemed pretty obvious: here were superb athletes, assembled by two master recruiters, and the intensity was ferocious. These young men have each played many hundreds of games, some important, but many meaningless. (The 5th glorified pick-up game of a weekend on a secondary court against another area all-star team? Come on.) Yes, their ball pursuit was relentless, and they competed. But they couldn’t shoot. Defensive fundamentals were rough. I didn’t see a single great pass. And the offences they ran, under these two Coaching Giants, were based on brute force and one-on-one, high pick’n’rolls where the “roll” man was ignored, and very little sophistication. (Kinda like Canadian dump-and-chase hockey in the ‘70s and ‘80s.) In other words? I would bet my house, were I a gambling man, that most of these powerful athletes, on the whole, had played at least four times as many games in their lives as they had had quality practice sessions. It’s an old story. It’s one of the reasons I coach high school ball instead of club and so-called “AAU teams”. Skill development.

***

“So, Coach Jay, what are you saying, exactly?”

What can we do? How can we adopt a more united vision of what coaches, schools, clubs and trainers can accomplish for our players together – in our city, or pretty much anywhere? And hey: why should you WANT to?

I have some thoughts.

Basketball is a team game. Let’s work together. I was at a local USport game, and got talking to a young guy that (maybe?) I’d coached against in the National Capital high school league. He went to uni in Boston, got into coaching there, and had returned to his home town. He was keen, excited. “Yeah, I want to start up a training program and make my name here.” DON’T DO IT, I surprised him by saying. We’re not short of young guys marketing themselves as personal trainers, or starting their own one-man coaching bands. But we *do* have well-established clubs in Ottawa that need help, clubs with infrastructure and house leagues, resources and referee-development and established “home gyms”. These are fine places for young coaches to plug in their talent and enthusiasm. And hey, at my school we have two excellent coaches in need of assistants, and all the gym time in the world, and no need to squeeze kids for money! In other words, I suggested, be a team player, and contribute to something that Already Exists, instead of re-inventing the wheel and having to poach players from existing organizations. (It’s a disease.) Ottawa does NOT need more clubs and Basketball Dream Factories. The traditional clubs, across the city, sometimes don’t play nicely with each other, but they are sustainable and solid, offer real resources, and could use your energy and talent.

So yeah, young fellas, be team players! Build your skills and experience within a structure that offers opportunity, perspective and help.

ALSO. “All I’m askin’ is for a little respect (Just a little bit)…” In Ottawa, the dog-eat-dog pursuit of scarce (player) resources means that club tryouts for a primarily spring/summer season occur in August and September of the previous year. That’s a LOOOONG club “season” (more like three seasons, all-season!). When I was coaching both high school and in an elite club program, I made a clear distinction between phases of our club program’s development. Once the team was chosen, we tried to get one weekend skills practice per week, from October through February, so that my 14 athletes from 13 schools could dedicate themselves to their high school programs. We didn’t install team sets and terminology; most of them were getting enough of that in their schools, where each guy was a leader. And then, come Madness time, and right through to early summer, we ramped up as a club team, playing in our various tournaments and leagues.

It’s still a good model. But the weaponized pursuit of players has meant that because of the endless club season, club coaches not only don’t or can’t coach high school, they are actively interfering with the traditional high school season with competitions and practices through the winter.

(A brief road trip down Highways 416 and 401: High school tournaments in Kingston, a smaller city producing fine players, and club and high school teams, have been eye-opening for our coaching staff. Years ago, they united several clubs into one, and the high-competition teams from U15 up don’t do much during high school season; in fact, many of their best school coaches are Kingston Impact coaches as well. The Queen’s University program seems to support this process. Kingston looks so good from where I sit. Maybe you have similar examples where you are.)

This kind of mutual respect between existing club and high school programs would have huge benefits. Clubs that, increasingly, disregard the high school season are counter-productive. The result is burned-out players (and families), the dilution of high school ball (quite obvious in Ottawa and elsewhere, sadly), to say nothing of 12- and 13-year-olds who can’t even imagine trying another fun sport, even if it was primarily as cross-training for hoops.  From a 30,000-foot view, there are no obvious advantages, whether for individual players or the basketball eco-system as a whole. I’d argue that club ball would actually benefit from a shorter, more focussed season, just as the NBA surely would.

“Sometimes when everybody else want to zig, you maybe oughta ZAG.”

So. Yes! I AM going to finish with an unpopular suggestion. We need more young basketball-lovers to ZAG in their approach getting involved in the game. What does this mean?

Consider COACHING HIGH SCHOOL BALL. (In some cases, this could include “prep schools”, which can be very good overall experiences. Too often, though, they can also be exploitative, badly run money-and-attention-grabs that seek to attract and market talent, but don’t develop it as well as they could.)

You may find yourself in a school, maybe even the place you graduated from, where recent tradition doesn’t seem all that, y’know, competitive. But that can change. Schools are meant to foster enthusiasm, learning, and EXCELLENCE, and athletic programs  can benefit from that basic “education through school sports” philosophy, if you’re willing to work at it.

The advantages? Holy cow! They can be awesome.  

The High School ADVANTAGE. Academics automatically matter, and you can use your coaching as motivation for your players to be real students. Player development matters, because you can’t just pluck and choose your talent from wherever; you will be required to do what all-star “teams” can too easily neglect – skill development.  Team feeling, family feeling matters, because your players can be together through four years of shared experience, fun, trials, wins and losses and ultimately their graduation alongside their friends. Affordability and gym access MATTER, since you’ll no longer be scrambling for expensive evening rentals but will instead have all the hours you need – and heck, you might even be able to spend more evenings at home. (Or continuing to play yourself!) The existing infrastructure matters; you’ll still have to schedule tournaments and exhibitions, of course, but establishing your practice itinerary will be a breeze compared to coaching for a club, and there is a league and playoff structure already in place. (In Ottawa, it’s way too brief and under-promoted, and I know it’s much better in other jurisdictions. But the more there are dedicated coaches in our schools, the easier such problems will be to solve.) Example matters, and when have the youth had a greater need for a big brother or sister to look up to? (Especially those coming from minority backgrounds.) School spirit matters, and when you’re doing something exceptional, it can begin to galvanize the whole school community; our boys have had the experience of playing big games in our gym with a genuine home-court advantage – big and loud audiences of their friends, school-mates and (gasp!) even their teachers! Club coaching often means you’ll have a higher calibre of talent overall, and these programs certainly has their place. (In the high school off-season, that is!) But the games aren’t as meaningful, the practices aren’t as frequent, and it’s only a few parents who generally get to watch.

Think about this. Why is the NCAA Women’s and Men’s “March Madness” tournaments so compelling? Where does the interest, the hype, the tradition come from? Largely, they come from school communities, fan bases that really care about their alma mater, their teams, and from student bodies who find a reason to get excited over something together and graduates (plus band-wagon jumpers, sure!) who remember and re-kindle their own school experience. You wouldn’t see anything even resembling that at an AAU-style or club tournament.

High school sport, at its best, is a BLAST! For most players, it’s the highest and most personally meaningful level they will reach.

And here’s the other thing: coaching high school ball won’t prevent you from doing personal training, or catching on with a club if that’s your thing. I would argue it gets you readier to do a great job in those other coaching environments.

***

Okay, faithful readers and friends-in-sport. You’ve been generous with your time, and patient with my rambling and All These Suggestions you didn’t ask for. I appreciate your reading ALL THE WAY DOWN TO HERE. I’ll finish with the obvious: Like any team, like every sort of collaboration, the more the leaders in our basketball community work and PLAY TOGETHER, the greater our results will be for the ones that really matter: little house-league ankle-biters, high school strivers, next-level talents, and even the adult recreationists who still feel good about our game. The PLAYERS! What’s best for (ALL OF) them is our shared purpose. Thanks for listening!

And hey, if you’re in Ottawa, take an old coach to lunch!!

Sincere and hair-on-fire regards,

“Coach Jay”

 

Flipping My Lid: “It’s a Revolution!” (Well, it was *something*…)

 

An attack on goodness. (Image from abcnews.com.)

We’re three weeks out now and it seems so calm. Capitol Hill has now seen another Presidential inauguration, quiet and with a brooding military aspect to it, but also a reaffirmation that maybe the adults are back in charge of the Excited States of America¹. Major media are celebrating the Biden/Harris Reset, at times with a gushing “America is back! This is who we really are!” relief that is mildly embarrassing. Canucks like me are used to American excess, like what my football-loving big sister always eye-rolled as “another Pride-Of-America halftime show”. They still believe in comic books, redemptive violence and superheroes. The noble sheriff is back in town. Batman Returns! But listen, don’t get me wrong here: I’m also relieved, as many are, that the American government seems to be on more solid footing, but these are not days of wine and roses.

¹ Tip o’ my ballcap to the great Allan Fotheringham, another one we lost in 2020.

Three Wednesdays ago, as we were treated to video of a tear-gassed woman giving her name and city, and the explanation “We’re storming the Capitol! It’s a revolution!”, and much more jaw-dropping footage, I flipped my lid. I stomped about. I muttered darkly. (I couldn’t write at all.) I was outraged. Indignant. My bride was bemused. She was thinking, It’s not my country. It’s sad to watch it suffer, of course. But it quickens the process – people are going to be shaken up and realize how much they’ve ignored the cracks in the walls. Racism. White privilege. Bipolar resentment. System failure. She’s a pragmatic person. But she wanted to understand, in the days that followed, why I was so combustible, and simultaneously so deeply disheartened, by a mob – stoned on deception and wired on the skewed perception of having been robbed – storming the Capitol building in a mighty country next to my own. I tried to explain my bubbling anger to her. I mean, I know I was fried that day, having run too far for my fitness level. And I *am* an old fart. Maybe Seasonal Affective Disorder is an Actual Thing. (“SAD AT.”) Covid-crankiness? I can’t dismiss that, either. But this was much more.

I came up with three “reasons” to explain how January 6 had knocked me on my arse. (Rationality played only a minor role.)

Actual Reason the First: I love white men. My father, brother, and most of my best buddies and mentors have been white men. I feel a brotherhood, narrow as it might seem, with white men, and in the way that family arguments can grow bitterly excessive, incidents like the Capitol storming turn me inside out. I friggin’ h–e white men. (How dare they stoop so low?) When they kill women they can’t manage, or abandon them; when they take faux-heroic stands against unsuspecting targets of their twisted resentments (a synagogue here, a Black church there); when they “revenge” themselves against innocents who happen to wander into their crosshairs (Virginia Tech, Las Vegas) or target women at a Montreal engineering school, or children at Sandy Hook elementary school – well, I’ve been known to flail about and blister the Interwebs with angry words then, too.

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Close to Home: What’s Up on Whitton?

[5-minute read]

They must be wind-protected. (Photo from National Candle Association, literally not metaphorically.)

It was a relief when the police tape came down, but it hasn’t felt the same, not yet. Maybe it’s just imagination, but Whitton Crescent seems a lot less lively now. Shocking violence can do that to a neighbourhood, and it’s not only the besieged and grieving family that will never fully recover from that terrible morning in early September. The perpetrators — just kids, really — and their families are also ruined in their own particular ways. It was another sad day in, and for, Overbrook, my little piece of Ottawa, where a curvy little street is named for Charlotte Whitton, first female mayor of a Canadian city.

It’s a question that came up in my living room on the weekend: Aren’t you afraid to live here? The answer, sadness aside, is a simple No. We chose this area when we moved to Ottawa. We love it. My family lives two blocks from the murder scene, and from the shooting the week before, which we learned to our dismay injured a lovely woman we know well. We’re a two-minute bike ride from the shooting at the “four corners”, where the convenience store and the pizza restaurant have seen too much of this kind of criminal traffic. Though we don’t fear for our own safety — without a doubt my daily commute across town to my high school coaching gig is more dangerous than where my house sits — it’s unsettling. As for everyone in Overbrook, but especially those on Whitton or near the four corners, these events feel far too close to home. So what are we to do? My wife and son and I are privileged folk in many ways, including our relatively easy option to move out, but that has never crossed our minds.  Nor have we considered extra home security, spending less time walking or biking the streets, or (God forbid!) getting suspicious or cold towards our neighbours.

Just the opposite, actually. If darkness has sometimes fallen on my part of town, the thing is to get to work and create more light. “Better to light a candle than to curse the darkness,” as the ancient proverb says. When violence strikes at the heart of community, if the threat of it erodes our hopefulness and our trust in each other, then we have TRULY lost. The better course? Build more community. We started by asking what we might be able to do for the victims’ families? We’re trying to go beyond that: what are we already doing that involves us with Overbrook folk or local development? How do we do more of that? We wonder, What’s missing in this area? and then look to take some small action to begin to fill in that gap. Doing something helps us, first, and let’s hope it ripples outward, but mindset is critical.

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Re-Broadcast the Last: Vahid Tizfahm and His Living Letters

I could be writing, it’s true, about gun violence here and there. (Been there, wrote that, but there’s always more.) I ought to explore the tangled feelings of a frayed and stubborn father and his proud, combative son. (It wouldn’t be the first time.) There are Things to be Said about the two troupes of (mainly) 14-year-old boys that I’m spurring/goading/inspiring/herding toward basketball excellence, so impatiently. (How about now? Can you hear me NOW?! Why aren’t you trying harder?) And how about those Warriors, and the hardwood genius of Stephen Curry? And, like, all those other like sports thingies?

There’s Paris. I’ve barely written a word about the horrors of Paris then (and Beirut, and Bamako (Mali), and Kano (Nigeria), and San Bernardino (USA)…), and nothing of Paris now: governments and leaders defending their privilege (systematically) and twiddling and fiddling (often) while the climate burns, slowly and inexorably. (Heck, you think we have a refugee problem now? How about when Bangladesh or [insert your most precious coastal population centre here] is under water, or drought deepens in California or any other global or local food basket? Say, while I’m on the subject, didn’t Syria have a series of disastrous crop years just before the war?)

I’ll be getting to those. Probablymaybe. Soonerorlater.

But today, as I promised myself and The Usual Lurkers here at JH.com, I’m thinking about the last of the Iranian Seven, prisoners now on the most trumped-up of charges – weird how, suddenly, “trumped-up” accusations have a whole new layer of meaning – for over 90 months. I want you to know about and remember Vahid Tizfahm. You might not have heard of him, or his six brothers- and sisters-in-nobility, but I’ve written about each and I’ve been re-issuing the call. They’re still in jail. Their names are listed below.

There’s one, though, that I want you to read RIGHT NOW (sorry, no need to shout, I guess, not really, but wow) is this updated profile of Vahid Tizfahm, in which I include links to three remarkable — I dare say nearly incredible — letters written by (or partly by) Mr. Tizfahm.

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Jerome K. Jerome (on love and time)

My bride and I don’t think of ourselves as old. (Well, not old old.) I run around with athletic teens and 20-somethings, and that can make me feel a tad creaky and lardaceous by comparison, but still. We did celebrate (and celebrate) a significant anniversary last month, which compels us to accept that, while we can still find some giddy in our good coupling luck, we’re not exactly newlyweds. We felt like it at certain August moments, which for me was like dozens of non-fattening banana splits in one hand-delivered magic box.

Days back, during my ongoing organizing and an attempted material purge, I ran across the quote below from writer Jerome K. Jerome. I had long ago photocopied it (and its accompanying sentimental snapshot of an elderly couple) from somewhere onto coloured sheets of paper I used to use for something that we dinosaurs used to call “letter writing”. I have a whole stack of them. It makes me want to write letters to people! (Confession: I even have stamps.) With a little new-fashioned research, I easily found that Jerome’s comments on love and marriage – I hadn’t known the source – came from an early 20th-century play of his.

It’s the sort of play whose subtitle has a subtitle, whose dramatis personae includes “Mrs. Sharpe”, “Miss Kite”, “Mrs. Tompkins”, and The Major (“Troublesome creatures, these girls! Troublesome creatures!”). There is a mysterious Stranger, who quickly becomes everyone’s confidante. A young man is described as a “cheerful bounder” – now there’s a word we’ve lost, if we ever really had it in the Colonies – and another is said to speak with “gallant jauntiness”. (Jaunty! Don’t you think we should be, in general, more — and more frequently — jaunty?)

Enough preamble to the prologue:

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Vahid: Peerless Insight From Inside

Vahid is Vahid Tizfahm, yet another widely known and cherished community servant taken from among the Iranian Baha’is. He and his partners in “crime” are the focus for the international #7Bahais7Years campaign, and here we go again. Danny and Pej asked their buddy, me, to contribute to the social media protests, and I’m hoping these personal essays are of some use in the necessary worldwide conversation. Vahid Tizfahm and his six colleagues are sacrificial lions, bravely enduring pariah status in a country that needs their kind more than it knows. Here is the last instalment of my series on the Quietly Magnificent Seven, prisoners of conscience in Iran for seven years, and counting…

Ever had an optometrist for a hero? I have, now. Vahid Tizfahm is a lion.

Ever had an optometrist for a hero? I have, now. Vahid Tizfahm is a lion.

At 42, Mr. Tizfahm is the same age as his father was when he was executed for being a Baha’i. Three bullets, no lawyer, no charge that we would recognize as remotely judicial. Vahid, the son who is now the similarly arrested father, is quite the youngest of the Yaran, the “friends”, the group of seven Baha’is that worked to guide and encourage the members of their persecuted community. As has become the disgusting norm in Iranian society, it goes without saying — so I’ll SAY it, again — that he did not go to university; as a member of “this detestable sect”, he wasn’t allowed to. He was able to train as an optometrist, and alongside this business he was a youth leader, taught children’s classes and was appointed to generally inspire, encourage, and promote learning among Baha’is. He studied under and supported the BIHE, the Baha’i Institute for Higher Education, an underground university that trains excluded Baha’i students in living rooms and by email. He did these things, of course, until he and the other Yaran were arrested, for “crimes” such as these, a little more than seven years ago.

***

Vahid is the Persian form of an Arabic word that means “unique”, “peerless”. Vahid. One of the greatest figures of the violently visionary and just plain violent early years of the Baha’i movement, in 19th-century Persia, was given this lofty title. And now we have another singular man, quietly, hardily, heartily bearing societal rejection and punishment in the name of principle, in the pursuit of justice.

The Tizfahm family. Not sure whether this is a prison visit, or just prior to his arrest.

The Tizfahm family. Not sure whether this is a prison visit, or just prior to his arrest.

Vahid Tizfahm’s son was in grade 3 when they came for him, about the same age his daddy had been when his own father was taken. The family had just moved to Tehran, and my thinly educated guess is that they had done so in order for Mr. Tizfahm to more easily work together with his Baha’i leadership colleagues. (You know, relocation to pursue sacrificial voluntarism, that old story.) The lad is now a sophomore in high school. I have a son about that age, who probably gets more contact with his Dad than he’d like. But what about young Mr. Tizfahm?

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A Letter to My Son (When He Was Only One)

He’s six feet tall now, with arms and legs madly off in many directions, a big smile, a stubborn spirit, floppy hair, and arguments that seem to never end. He drives me nuts, but he’s also smart and talented and funny as hell. It was fun to look back at how I saw him as a wee one. There were clues right from the beginning, and I’m not just talking about the messes he leaves behind. This is why baby pictures are so lovely, so necessary.

 

Dear Goonybird, Stinkerbomb, Punky Poobler, SammerBammer, my honey bunny boy,

Today you have six teeth, four consonants, and one candle on your cake. You delight the heart of a Dad who thought his diapering days were behind him. You love your little purple and orange basketball, and your peek-a-boo skills are splendid. “Clap, clap, hooray!” we say as you grin and applaud the wonders tumbling about you. With two deep dimples and the softest of skin and hair, you are a shameless magnet for kisses.

And I get to thinking about three bigger boys that I’ve hugged and smackerooed, probably a Dad’n’Lad world record, and wonder when did I stop kissing your gigantic brothers? They are rather more elusive targets, and two of them are bigger than me now, but young men can still benefit from a whisker rub now and then. Thank-you for reminding me how my chest explodes when I hold my sons.

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e.e. cummings (on love and funky sonnets)

Poetry is where you find it, I’ve heard, but this “found poem” is one I was wonderfully predisposed to be warmly attracted to at first sight. It came from a member of my own family, a family not generally known for its poetic enthusiasms, a member with no previous convictions about verse that I knew of. In a way yet unexplained — and I’m thinking that I very well may not want to know whence it came to her — life brought her a piece of cummings. Her routinely warm and generous heart sent it to me as a birthday tribute to my wife, the same impulse that led me to murder a Paul Simon song for the glory of love.

I do love Mr. Cummings, and while I don’t (not yet, anyway) consider this among his best or my favourites, that doesn’t mean it isn’t pretty darned marvellous. He was 26 when he wrote “i carry your heart with me(i carry it in)”; he generally didn’t title things, so they’re called by their first lines. Here ’tis: 

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Abdu’l-Baha (on peace, happiness & everything)

“The body of the human world is sick. Its remedy and healing will be the oneness of the kingdom of humanity. Its life is ‘The Most Great Peace.’ Its illumination and quickening is love. Its happiness is the attainment of spiritual perfections.”

‘Abdu’l-Baha (1844-1921) was the son of Baha’u’llah, the source of the Baha’i system of knowledge and practice.

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A Girl Just Like the Girl

This is a small love letter to the woman I woke up with this Mother’s Day morning. She’d been groaning, sneezing and muttering semi-coherently for a couple of achy days, but today she just feels a little crappy. Her 12-year-old son was a little off this morning, too, after a late-night binge of Marvel comic heroes, and managed to soil his hand-crafted M-D artwork with a surly Well, I gave you a card, didn’t I? His father, disgruntled at the attitude, had to nonetheless admit that he hadn’t come up with even the card. It’s all that my girl really wants on this (and her birth) day.

I knew when I married her that she was eager to be a mother, but I hadn’t known how good she’d be at it. She’s a woman of quicksilver emotions, a ResultsMaker, and when we finally decided it was time to face the reality of my single-dad situation, her first meeting with my three sons was a sit-com disaster without the laugh-track. (Well, I did chuckle ruefully, resignedly, when I thought, after months of sweet, scary and resuscitating courtship, Well, this just isn’t going to work at ALL.)

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