Pliny the Elder, quoted in Benjamin Farrington's Greek Science 2, (Penguin: Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England, 1949) inveighs against religion. Farrington introduces Pliny, and at the end calls Pliny's a cheerful life:
"And here in conclusion, is another passage, which owes some of its arguments to Lucretius, but is completely personal and characteristic. 'Beyond the grave lie the empty speculations about the spirits of the dead. For every man it will be the same after his last day as it was before his first. After death neither body nor spirit will have sensation any more than they did before he was born. This vanity of staking a claim on the future and imagining for oneself a life in the season of death takes various forms: the immortality of the soul, the transmigration of souls, the life of the shades in the underworld, the worship of the spirits of the dead, even the deification of one who has already ceased to be a man. As if, forsooth, we drew our breath in any way that could distinguish us from the other animals; as if there were not many creatures who live longer than we do, for whom nobody has imagined a similar immortality. These are the inventions of a childish folly, of a mortality greedy of never ceasing to be. Plague take it, what madness is this, of repeating life in death? How shall those born ever rest, if sense is to remain with the soul on high or with the ghost below? Nay, this fond fancy destroys nature's chief blessing, death, and doubles the smart of him that is to die by the calculation of what is still to come. If life is to be so sweet, who can find it sweet to have ceased to live? But how much happier, how much more sure, that every man should come to trust himself and take from his proven insensibility of what was before he was born his warrant of the peace that is to be.' The author of these words lived an active, cheerful life in the service of his fellow-men and died an adventurous death while making too close an observation of Vesuvius in eruption." (136-137)
Farrington notes Lucretius, whose On the Nature of Things I read years ago and highly recommend. Farrington's book details Ancient Greek and Roman scientific achievements, despite religious efforts to corral and conscript science. Judeo-Christianity, like the war machine now, soon drew the best minds to its service, and science progressed little until the Renaissance.
Interesting quote. Interesting book.
Sunday, February 23, 2014
Sunday, January 26, 2014
Israel in Dustbin of History?
Decades ago, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev said that socialism would leave capitalism in the dustbin of history, or words to that effect. That's still a work in progress, but I made progress in a dumpster this week. I found Israel there.
This phrasing recalls the religious zealot who asks, "Have you found Jesus?" My reply, "I didn't know Jesus was lost."
"Boy Scouts for Israel?" the hotel clerk asked a janitor on the phone.
"Boy Scouts for Israel?" I puzzled humorously to myself. I had told the clerk that the pin said "Boycott Israel." The janitor might have opposed the sentiment might have purposely thrown it out.
"It's hard to replace. I got it in Edmonton," I explained. I remembered the Palestine Solidarity Edmonton table at the north end Islamic cultural centre and high school. There in December, 2012, a fundraising event for medical aid to Gaza raised tens of thousands of dollars. There I got the pin, and another that said "BDS" for "Boycott Divestment and Sanction."
History will leave Israel in the dustbin, but how did my pin get into a dumpster? And how did I find it?
The hotel in question was the site of a two-day seminar on Canadian indigenous education. South Africa got its apartheid idea from Canada's treatment of indigenous people. This seminar was an effort to restore indigenous dignity through education. One might argue that any parallel system, even one run by indigenous people, perpetuates Canadian apartheid; but that argument was absent at the seminar. I would argue that a parallel system improves on the pathetic public system and anti-democratic private systems of education, and that this indigenous system should continue until the public system is really inclusive. Indeed, the seminar argued for inclusion, against the racism that continues in the non-indigenous systems.
That afternoon, my pin was absent from my coat, which I had taken off at the seminar. I went to the hotel desk to ask if anyone found the pin. Two friendly women there were happy to call the janitor who cleaned the seminar site. I explained the pin, which features a graphic of the Israeli apartheid wall. I was happy not to meet a wall of indifference or hostility in seeking the pin.
Nikita Khrushchev's Berlin Wall is in the dustbin of history, waiting for the Israeli Apartheid Wall to join it. The Soviet system wasn't perfect, but it aimed for that, aimed for a better future, unlike the Zionist system, which aims for a non-existent past at the expense of the present and future of Jews and non-Jews.
"Yes, the janitor found a pin," one clerk told me as she talked on the phone. "'Boy Scouts for Israel,.'" she confirmed into the receiver.
She confirmed something that doesn't exist. The United Nations made in 1948 confirmed something that shouldn't exist when it allowed a Jewish state on Palestinian land. Religous states should have disappeared with the Reformation, but a few hang on, like the greasy discarded food, coffee grounds, and napkins I found in the garbage bag in that dumpter, after I climbed in.
A bag of discarded seminar papers confirmed that I had found the one bag which the janitor had used for the site's garbage. I poured out the bag. I used one piece of garbage to poke through the rest of the garbage. The United States, perched on stolen land, uses Israel to poke the land it stole in 1948.
On the point of giving up, I saw the pin glint, among coffee grounds.
Climbing out of the dumpster was much harder than climbing into it had been. I commend the dumpster divers who troll these metal behemoths for beverage cans and bottles, for which recycling agencies pay deposits.
Climbing out of Israel apartheid will be harder than sliding into it had been, for Zionists, Palestinians, and the world. Palestine has room for Jews, Christians, and Muslims, as it had for centuries, until Zionism sabotaged peace and progress.
As I dug in the garbage, as I struggled out of the dumpster, as I walked away into a sunny winter day in my mountainous home in Western Canada, a home on indigenous land, I thought of Gaza, thought of Palestine.
People in Occupied Palestine suffer more than I did. Soldiers stop them as they go about their peaceful daily duties, governments and courts rule against their human rights, jailers detain them unjustly, a few outsiders help by boycotting, divesting, and sanctioning the Zionist state of Israel, and the world watches, wrings its hands, and does little, lest the United States, and increasingly Canada, attack the world for trying to bring justice in Palestine.
I live on stolen indigenous land, which is America, that New World which meant to improve on the Old World of European empires and wars. That improvement is not here, but it is coming, thanks to such as the seminar I attended, thanks to people in solidarity around the world, thanks to justice, sometimes weak, but never dead, thanks to the harm that injustice does to others and to itself.
Khrushchev's dustbin still has room for obsolete, hurtful ways of thinking and living, including capitalism, racism, and anti-semitism and its spawn Zionism. English poets Percy Shelley and Samuel Coleridge wrote of "Ozymandias" and "Kublai Khan," whose empires fell to dust.
I recently re-read Ancient Greek tragic plays of Aeschylus, Euripides, and Sophocles. They put their cultural myths on stage. The myths and the plays taught people how to live justly in an unjust world. They showed history driving people to tragedy despite their efforts to avoid it. Modern dramatists could stage our era's historically-driven tragedy of indigenous land called home by competing people. Cassandra claimed "There's no way out." Khrushchev and I beg to differ. If not, better art as Aristotle might confirm, but worse life, as indigenous suffering implies today. The Athenian Empire did suffer the fate of Ozymandias and Kublai Khan.
Well, readers. Get to work. Get writing.
This phrasing recalls the religious zealot who asks, "Have you found Jesus?" My reply, "I didn't know Jesus was lost."
"Boy Scouts for Israel?" the hotel clerk asked a janitor on the phone.
"Boy Scouts for Israel?" I puzzled humorously to myself. I had told the clerk that the pin said "Boycott Israel." The janitor might have opposed the sentiment might have purposely thrown it out.
"It's hard to replace. I got it in Edmonton," I explained. I remembered the Palestine Solidarity Edmonton table at the north end Islamic cultural centre and high school. There in December, 2012, a fundraising event for medical aid to Gaza raised tens of thousands of dollars. There I got the pin, and another that said "BDS" for "Boycott Divestment and Sanction."
History will leave Israel in the dustbin, but how did my pin get into a dumpster? And how did I find it?
The hotel in question was the site of a two-day seminar on Canadian indigenous education. South Africa got its apartheid idea from Canada's treatment of indigenous people. This seminar was an effort to restore indigenous dignity through education. One might argue that any parallel system, even one run by indigenous people, perpetuates Canadian apartheid; but that argument was absent at the seminar. I would argue that a parallel system improves on the pathetic public system and anti-democratic private systems of education, and that this indigenous system should continue until the public system is really inclusive. Indeed, the seminar argued for inclusion, against the racism that continues in the non-indigenous systems.
That afternoon, my pin was absent from my coat, which I had taken off at the seminar. I went to the hotel desk to ask if anyone found the pin. Two friendly women there were happy to call the janitor who cleaned the seminar site. I explained the pin, which features a graphic of the Israeli apartheid wall. I was happy not to meet a wall of indifference or hostility in seeking the pin.
Nikita Khrushchev's Berlin Wall is in the dustbin of history, waiting for the Israeli Apartheid Wall to join it. The Soviet system wasn't perfect, but it aimed for that, aimed for a better future, unlike the Zionist system, which aims for a non-existent past at the expense of the present and future of Jews and non-Jews.
"Yes, the janitor found a pin," one clerk told me as she talked on the phone. "'Boy Scouts for Israel,.'" she confirmed into the receiver.
She confirmed something that doesn't exist. The United Nations made in 1948 confirmed something that shouldn't exist when it allowed a Jewish state on Palestinian land. Religous states should have disappeared with the Reformation, but a few hang on, like the greasy discarded food, coffee grounds, and napkins I found in the garbage bag in that dumpter, after I climbed in.
A bag of discarded seminar papers confirmed that I had found the one bag which the janitor had used for the site's garbage. I poured out the bag. I used one piece of garbage to poke through the rest of the garbage. The United States, perched on stolen land, uses Israel to poke the land it stole in 1948.
On the point of giving up, I saw the pin glint, among coffee grounds.
Climbing out of the dumpster was much harder than climbing into it had been. I commend the dumpster divers who troll these metal behemoths for beverage cans and bottles, for which recycling agencies pay deposits.
Climbing out of Israel apartheid will be harder than sliding into it had been, for Zionists, Palestinians, and the world. Palestine has room for Jews, Christians, and Muslims, as it had for centuries, until Zionism sabotaged peace and progress.
As I dug in the garbage, as I struggled out of the dumpster, as I walked away into a sunny winter day in my mountainous home in Western Canada, a home on indigenous land, I thought of Gaza, thought of Palestine.
People in Occupied Palestine suffer more than I did. Soldiers stop them as they go about their peaceful daily duties, governments and courts rule against their human rights, jailers detain them unjustly, a few outsiders help by boycotting, divesting, and sanctioning the Zionist state of Israel, and the world watches, wrings its hands, and does little, lest the United States, and increasingly Canada, attack the world for trying to bring justice in Palestine.
I live on stolen indigenous land, which is America, that New World which meant to improve on the Old World of European empires and wars. That improvement is not here, but it is coming, thanks to such as the seminar I attended, thanks to people in solidarity around the world, thanks to justice, sometimes weak, but never dead, thanks to the harm that injustice does to others and to itself.
Khrushchev's dustbin still has room for obsolete, hurtful ways of thinking and living, including capitalism, racism, and anti-semitism and its spawn Zionism. English poets Percy Shelley and Samuel Coleridge wrote of "Ozymandias" and "Kublai Khan," whose empires fell to dust.
I recently re-read Ancient Greek tragic plays of Aeschylus, Euripides, and Sophocles. They put their cultural myths on stage. The myths and the plays taught people how to live justly in an unjust world. They showed history driving people to tragedy despite their efforts to avoid it. Modern dramatists could stage our era's historically-driven tragedy of indigenous land called home by competing people. Cassandra claimed "There's no way out." Khrushchev and I beg to differ. If not, better art as Aristotle might confirm, but worse life, as indigenous suffering implies today. The Athenian Empire did suffer the fate of Ozymandias and Kublai Khan.
Well, readers. Get to work. Get writing.
Sunday, October 27, 2013
A Story About the Sisters of Christ the King in Anaham, 1944-2013
A Story of
the Sisters of Christ the King and Anaham, 1944-2013
In 1944, Tl’Etinqox
Chief Casimir Bob offered land to the Sisters of Christ the King. Archbishop Duke built the convent. The sisters offered to serve the people,
which they did for decades. At one time,
Anaham had ten sisters.
"Sister Nurse"
The sisters were
nurses. In those days, people rarely
travelled. For many of us, these sisters
were better than doctors. People would
travel by horse and wagon to see “sister nurse.” Sister Theresa would travel by horse and
wagon, in all kinds of weather, to treat the sick. The convent was our pharmacy.
The sisters ran the
hospital near their convent. They
treated people from all over. They
delivered babies. They saved lives. Oldtimers will remember the day the hospital
burned down, in June, 1958, on a hot day.
People came running to rescue as
many patients as they could, but some patients died in the fire.
The convent was
also our source of religious inspiration and religious articles. Who didn’t get a rosary or scapular from
them?
"Teaching All Subjects"
The sisters were
also teachers. They taught in our schools,
and not only catechism. The first school
was a one-room cabin by the priest’s house.
The second school was Raphael Alphonse’s old house. The third school was Late Johnny Harry’s house. Then the present school was built, with
electricity and plumbing, which the earlier schools did not have. Sister Assumption taught in the one-room
cabins and in the present school. Soon
there will be a new school.
Many people remember
the sisters teaching all subjects in the school. Until the 1970s, all the teachers were
sisters. Even the first teachers who
were not sisters were Catholic: Mr. Joe McIsaac
and Ms. Joy Zelamaya, for example.
Sister Eileen would be in the school
early every day to supervise floor hockey, and there until late at night. Under her leadership, the school won
tournaments in floor and ice hockey, in Anaham and elsewhere. When she blew her whistle, children and staff
jumped.
The sisters also brought school
students on field trips. One memorable
annual trip was to the May Ball Festivities at Alexis Creek. Students square danced, as they did at other
times during the school year. The
sisters even ran clubs, such as Brownies, Girl Guides, Cubs, and Boy Scouts.
The annual school Christmas concert
was a fun and glittery event. It
required lots of preparation. One year,
the school performed “The Nutcracker.”
Another year’s theme was “Around the World.” Students had fancy costumes and did dances
from different cultures: Dutch, Italian,
Chinese, Japanese, and prairie Indian, for example. Another year, the students acted out “Twas
the Night Before Christmas.” At the end
of the concert, people would honor the nativity scene. Sometimes there was a real baby in the nativity scene.
"Happy and Relaxing"
Sister Rose, our special Sister Rose,
collected and distributed clothes for years.
She had a green thumb, and her garden was beautiful every year. Many of us stole apples from her tree. Sorry, Sister. There were even chickens for awhile. Sister
Rose wanted to be buried in Anaham, but she rests in peace in Quebec, near
other sisters and their Mother House.
Perhaps there’s an apple tree there.
The beautiful grounds around the
convent were a great place for children
to play. How happy and relaxing that was
for us kids. Some children even stayed
in the convent for awhile.
The sisters prepared generations of
us for sacraments. They did this
throughout the Chilcotin: Stone,
Redstone, Nemiah, Toosey, and Alexandria.
For baptism, communion, and
confirmation, the sisters were our patient, caring teachers. A sister would help nervous parents and
godparents during baptism.
Sisters saw many priests serve in
Anaham, and they fed many of these priests at the convent. Father Haggarty was a frequent diner. Now that he is in Lillooet without any sisters to help, perhaps
he can cook. Father John is in North
Vancouver and Father Maynard is in Edmonton.
Perhaps they can cook now, too.
The people gave the sisters fish and moose. The sisters gave the people their dedication.
The sisters served with many priests, brothers, bishops, chiefs, and
councillors.
The sisters also made spiritual house calls. They would visit homes during May, the Month
of Mary. They brought communion to the
sick and to elders. They would always be
ready when a family was bringing a body back before a funeral: the church would be open, clean, and
welcoming in those hard times. They
would pray with us. They would pray for
us. They became part of us.
"Busy Times"
At Thanksgiving, Christmas, and
Easter, busy times, the sisters would decorate the church, with help from the
community. At Thanksgiving, each helper
would bring something. Each would go
home with something.
During advent, the church was
beautifully decorated, with a nativity scene, branches, and candles. If a sister chose you to light an advent
candle, you would feel like a very special person. Up in the loft, the children would sing along. These young participants would remember
Midnight Mass for years. The church
would be warm and crowded. The New
Year’s Eve celebration would sometimes
be in the convent chapel.
During Holy Week, sisters would
choose the readers, as they would for weekly masses. Being asked to read at a mass was an honor.
Many times during the year, children
and their families went to the convent chapel in the wee hours. This was before everyone had
electricity. The convent would be a warm
and bright place.
"Favorite Sisters"
Each of us has favorite sisters. Some
were here for a long time. Some were
here for a short time. Some went away
for awhile and came back. Some went to
other countries: Haiti, Philippines,
Korea, and countries in Africa, for example.
Some sisters retired. All were
special: Sister Marcella, Sister
Hisako, Sister Joanne, Sister Jackie, Sister Gemma, Sister Henriette, Sisters
Sheila and Elnora playing guitars, Sister Edwina, and Sister Joan with her
beautiful singing voice.
Sister Helen had a volkswagon, which
people would race on horseback, and a little house where she taught pottery and
other crafts. Sister Eileen played the
church organ, and drove fast, until a deer hit her. She says she didn’t hit the deer. She says the deer hit her.
Sister Theresa was called Sister St.
Paul, when sisters had saint’s names, not their own names: Sister Lucienne (Sister Assumption), Sister
Evva (Sister Veronica), Sister Irma (Sister Gabrielle), just to name a few. In 1994, the sisters celebrated 50 years of
service in the Kamloops diocese.
"In Our Hearts"
Chief Casimir Bob welcomed the
sisters to Anaham. Today his grandson,
Chief Joe Alphonse (me), and councillors, thank the sisters for 69 years of
service.
This is a sad time and a happy time. We say farewell to the sisters, who have been
here so long and done so much. We miss them
already, and they’re not gone yet. Come
visit anytime. We’ll ask the deer to
stay out of the way.
The sisters leave our land, but they
stay in our hearts.
-Written by Carla Alphonse and
Michael Wynne
Sunday, October 6, 2013
Bike, Bush, Breach, Be, Beer, Bard
Sunday, October 6, 2013 Williams Lake, Canada
With a title that goes from bike to bard,
Catching your eye should not be hard.
This tale begins on a bike, riding in search of Dog Creek Road. One can find this road by driving
from Vancouver on the TransCanada Highway 350 kilometres north northeast, then on Highway 97 200 kilometres north, then on Highway 20 two kilometres west of the Williams Lake junction.
Today I found Dog Creek road through on bush trails that spidered up the hills that divide it from South Lakeside Drive, which branches off Highway 20 one kilometre west of the aforesaid Williams Lake junction.
A previous attempt had me go to the end of South Lakeside, about seven kilometres, then climb onerous hills on shrinking trails before I emerged at Kwaleen School, the latest local public school to close; but on the same side of the hills as South Lakeside Drive. Today I branched up less-onerous hills only two kilometres along the drive.
Bushwacking away, mostly pushing my bike, I emerged at Allen Road, which joins Schmidt Road, which joins Dog Creek Road. Rather than a leisurely coast downhill back to Williams Lake, however, I rolled eastward off Dog Creek Road onto Tamarack Road, to search for a bush trail way to get back downhill to the city below.
Woody Guthrie came to mind as I walked up to a log fence with a sign that said, "No Trespassing." On the other side it said nothing. That side was made for you and me, but I walked along the fence rather than breach it. A log mansion has breached the hilly forest, its kilometre-long, winding driveway private, but a necessary path downhill, to...
Walmart, another breach of the local wilderness, and robust local economy and fair wage legacy.
That legacy is history across Highway 20, where a non-operating sawmill squats along the Williams Lake River Valley. A lake river valley, you wonder? Yep. Riding among the many buildings and piles of planed lumber and logs, I remembered when this mill was noisy with jobs and production, a few short years ago.
I rode toward the millsite bridge, to avoid going farther along the river to find a cross the river on one of many railway flatcars converted to bridges farther downstream. Every time I have seen the bridge, the gate on its east side has been locked. Today the gate was open, the padlock hanging on the gate's chain links. Open gate, open lock, like Rome, open city in the Italian film of that name, private property in retreat, at last. The mill people or the bike people breached this barrier, I rejoiced. I want to find someone to thank.
I rode a kilometre along the path on the river's east side, then began to climb a trail to the railway crossing above. This crossing had crew shacks and sheds when I came to Williams Lake in the early-1990s. An old woman lived in a little house surrounded by lilacs, on the west side of the tracks. Now all the buildings are gone.
Two snakes, brown, about a centimetre wide and 40 centimetres long, crossed my path as I climbed the trail. Coleridge's line from The Ancient Mariner came to mind as I stopped my bike to let first one snake, then 20 metres farther uphill the other snake, cross my path: I honored man and bird and beast, as Coleridge wrote; or at least I honored snakes. Perhaps a reference to Milton's Paradise Lost is more fitting. The snakes breach the land long after provincial government sold what was a provincially-owned railway to what was a federally-owned railway, and is now a subsidiary of a United States railway. The railway went. Jobs went. Snakes survived, possibly thrived.
I considered riding a few kilometres north to the dump, with its Share Shed, actually two sheds, and surrounding ground, where people may leave things or take what others leave. I imagined that many former millworkers shopped there, given the recent destruction of the local economy by governments and businesses, near and far.
But people be. People survive, some happily like me, here in this depressed and sometimes depressing city, whose population was 13 000 when I got here in the early-1990s and is below 10 000 now. The art of merely being, enjoying each day of life, is a useful art too rarely practiced. My late mother-in-law could do it. I have a photograph of her merely sitting on a lawn chair, smiling in the summer sunshine. Many times I saw that look of contentment on her face: merely glad to be alive.
The beer can, which I found in the dirt off the edge of the Walmart parking lot, in my bike bag, I rode across the train tracks, walked uphill a couple blocks, and rode a few more blocks home. Riding along the paved path that joins my apartment building to the local recreation centre, with its swimming pool, two ice rinks, and performing arts theatre, I saw several beer cans. They filled my bike bags. The beer cans were from fans of last night's hockey game between a local team and another town's team, in an adult league that feeds no professional hockey league. The economy goes nowhere, the hockey players go nowhere, but the beer cans go for dimes at the local liquor store, a government-owned corporation in a province and country selling assets built by generations of people.
These were mostly Budweiser beer cans. I once read that the Busch brewery in St. Louis, USA, or somewhere, has enough capacity to fill the whole Canadian beer market's volume; albeit with yucky beer. This could turn Canada into a nation of teetotallers, or alcoholics for lack of tasty beer.
One bike trail from earlier in the day was called Guinness, presumably the beer choice of some mountain bikers. I wouldn't ride those steep trails, drunk or sober.
While I wait for a local renaissance, I'll turn on the U.S. Public Broadcasting System television channel to watch William Shakespeare's Henry the Fourth, Part Two, from the English Renaissance:
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/gperf/episodes/the-hollow-crown-shakespeares-history-plays/synopsis-henry-iv-part-2/1750/
With a title that goes from bike to bard,
Catching your eye should not be hard.
This tale begins on a bike, riding in search of Dog Creek Road. One can find this road by driving
from Vancouver on the TransCanada Highway 350 kilometres north northeast, then on Highway 97 200 kilometres north, then on Highway 20 two kilometres west of the Williams Lake junction.
Today I found Dog Creek road through on bush trails that spidered up the hills that divide it from South Lakeside Drive, which branches off Highway 20 one kilometre west of the aforesaid Williams Lake junction.
A previous attempt had me go to the end of South Lakeside, about seven kilometres, then climb onerous hills on shrinking trails before I emerged at Kwaleen School, the latest local public school to close; but on the same side of the hills as South Lakeside Drive. Today I branched up less-onerous hills only two kilometres along the drive.
Bushwacking away, mostly pushing my bike, I emerged at Allen Road, which joins Schmidt Road, which joins Dog Creek Road. Rather than a leisurely coast downhill back to Williams Lake, however, I rolled eastward off Dog Creek Road onto Tamarack Road, to search for a bush trail way to get back downhill to the city below.
Woody Guthrie came to mind as I walked up to a log fence with a sign that said, "No Trespassing." On the other side it said nothing. That side was made for you and me, but I walked along the fence rather than breach it. A log mansion has breached the hilly forest, its kilometre-long, winding driveway private, but a necessary path downhill, to...
Walmart, another breach of the local wilderness, and robust local economy and fair wage legacy.
That legacy is history across Highway 20, where a non-operating sawmill squats along the Williams Lake River Valley. A lake river valley, you wonder? Yep. Riding among the many buildings and piles of planed lumber and logs, I remembered when this mill was noisy with jobs and production, a few short years ago.
I rode toward the millsite bridge, to avoid going farther along the river to find a cross the river on one of many railway flatcars converted to bridges farther downstream. Every time I have seen the bridge, the gate on its east side has been locked. Today the gate was open, the padlock hanging on the gate's chain links. Open gate, open lock, like Rome, open city in the Italian film of that name, private property in retreat, at last. The mill people or the bike people breached this barrier, I rejoiced. I want to find someone to thank.
I rode a kilometre along the path on the river's east side, then began to climb a trail to the railway crossing above. This crossing had crew shacks and sheds when I came to Williams Lake in the early-1990s. An old woman lived in a little house surrounded by lilacs, on the west side of the tracks. Now all the buildings are gone.
Two snakes, brown, about a centimetre wide and 40 centimetres long, crossed my path as I climbed the trail. Coleridge's line from The Ancient Mariner came to mind as I stopped my bike to let first one snake, then 20 metres farther uphill the other snake, cross my path: I honored man and bird and beast, as Coleridge wrote; or at least I honored snakes. Perhaps a reference to Milton's Paradise Lost is more fitting. The snakes breach the land long after provincial government sold what was a provincially-owned railway to what was a federally-owned railway, and is now a subsidiary of a United States railway. The railway went. Jobs went. Snakes survived, possibly thrived.
I considered riding a few kilometres north to the dump, with its Share Shed, actually two sheds, and surrounding ground, where people may leave things or take what others leave. I imagined that many former millworkers shopped there, given the recent destruction of the local economy by governments and businesses, near and far.
But people be. People survive, some happily like me, here in this depressed and sometimes depressing city, whose population was 13 000 when I got here in the early-1990s and is below 10 000 now. The art of merely being, enjoying each day of life, is a useful art too rarely practiced. My late mother-in-law could do it. I have a photograph of her merely sitting on a lawn chair, smiling in the summer sunshine. Many times I saw that look of contentment on her face: merely glad to be alive.
The beer can, which I found in the dirt off the edge of the Walmart parking lot, in my bike bag, I rode across the train tracks, walked uphill a couple blocks, and rode a few more blocks home. Riding along the paved path that joins my apartment building to the local recreation centre, with its swimming pool, two ice rinks, and performing arts theatre, I saw several beer cans. They filled my bike bags. The beer cans were from fans of last night's hockey game between a local team and another town's team, in an adult league that feeds no professional hockey league. The economy goes nowhere, the hockey players go nowhere, but the beer cans go for dimes at the local liquor store, a government-owned corporation in a province and country selling assets built by generations of people.
These were mostly Budweiser beer cans. I once read that the Busch brewery in St. Louis, USA, or somewhere, has enough capacity to fill the whole Canadian beer market's volume; albeit with yucky beer. This could turn Canada into a nation of teetotallers, or alcoholics for lack of tasty beer.
One bike trail from earlier in the day was called Guinness, presumably the beer choice of some mountain bikers. I wouldn't ride those steep trails, drunk or sober.
While I wait for a local renaissance, I'll turn on the U.S. Public Broadcasting System television channel to watch William Shakespeare's Henry the Fourth, Part Two, from the English Renaissance:
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/gperf/episodes/the-hollow-crown-shakespeares-history-plays/synopsis-henry-iv-part-2/1750/
Tuesday, September 24, 2013
Doorstep to Revolution
I trade in food, helpfully, not harmfully like Monsanto.
Down the hall in our building live a single mother, 32, and her daughter, 11.
The mother, delivered in Clearwater by a doctor I know, now a retired University
of British Columbia medical professor, had a hard life. She grew up in many places and
moved to this building three years ago. She was a heroin addict, but her daughter shows
no ill effects, although she sometimes stays with relatives when her mother is not
dependable. They're on welfare; the mother is on methodone. Budgeting is a challenge,
although the best budgeters are the poor, because they have the least room for error.
Sometimes they're low on food and other household necessities. Mom asks and we give.
They rely on the food bank, for whose initials FB they have a whimscal name.
Lately, she has given us food, usually what she gets from the food bank but doesn't like.
The five-pound bag of enriched flour that she gave us a couple weeks ago will be part of the
oatmeal chocolate chip cookies that I plan to make to bring to library events this week: a
local science fiction author's reading on Wednesday, the film The Fruitpickers on Thursday.
The chocolate chips came from Surplus Herbie's, which operates in Williams Lake and Kamloops. Their stock comes from bankrupt stores. I feed off chocolate chips that came from a store that
feeds off other stores. Hamlet talked about a fish eating a worm, a king eating
the fish, and worms later eating the dead king. I found a similar story this month in the Ancient
Greek writer Herodotus's history of the wars between the Greeks and Persians. A king throws his ring in the water, a fish eats the ring, and a fisher catches the fish and gives it to the king, who gets
his ring back. Surplus Herbie's sells fishing gear, but no rings for kings.
his ring back. Surplus Herbie's sells fishing gear, but no rings for kings.
The library will get my cookies because last week I found a great book on the new books shelf:
Paul d'Amato's The Meaning of Marxism. I hope that book isn't why the local employment
office has a job posting for a new librarian. The York University graduate whom the library hired
a couple years ago started the film series, and might have brought the book. If she's still there
this week, then I'll commend her. The USian d'Amato, who writes for the Socialist Worker,
gave me refreshing Trotskyism after my years of enduring Vancouver Stalinists,
New Democratic Party heartbreakers, and Justin Trudeau and Stephen Harper, hot air versus hot oil.
Trotskyism: the pause that refreshes, available at a revolution near you.
That trading background painted, in glowing red, I now write of food trading. This differs from the English trading away Irish corn and grain while Irish people starved in the 1840s, trading away rice to starve India during World War Two, from India now trading its land and water to corporate agriculture and thereby causing farmer suicides, and from the US trading subsidized corn to Mexico, impoverishing its farmers off the land and into wage slavery or drug trading. I write of fair trade in food.
Today was the first time that this single mother and I traded food on the doorstep. Weeks ago, my daughter received the flour but I don't recall what she gave. I'm sure she traded fairly. I'm no mercantilist, monopolizing trade.
We're free traders, but more like the Zapatistas than like the corporate free traders who
drove the Zapatistas toward revolution.
Gunfire set aside for later, this single mother, not the Zapatistas, knocked on my door today. She had an empty margarine container in one had and some food items in the other hand. She asked
for butter and juice, not The Last Tango in Paris, nor did I offer it. I gave her two 1/2-cup margarine chunks, leaving myself enough to make the cookies. I shun margarine and only have this margarine
because months ago my daughter asked for it. It has languished in the freezer. I also gave a can of
concentrated frozen iced tea and one of grape punch, thawed.
In her other hand, she held, not an Kalashnikov rifle, happily, but a vegetable Mr. Noodles, a 284 mL can of sweet peas, and a 398 mL can of baked beans in tomato sauce. She offered them to me and I accepted. I think the AK47 takes different ammunition.
The Kalashnikov's inventor recently died, his Russian rifle still the best. Look for it the next time you find yourself revolting. Some find you revolting already. Many find me revolting, but as the English singer Billy Bragg says, "If you've got a blacklist, I wanna be on it."
As I finish typing this, I remember d'Amato's argument that communal kitchens, laundry, and child care would reduce women's double burden, of work outside and work inside the home.
The "coincidence of wants," about which I learned in university economics, also crosses my mind. These economics aren't d'Amato's, but I learned his economics at university, too, from of a Marxist professor from Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh, where 90 000 worked in the steel industry at its postwar peak, has given away that industry, but the city re-invented itself as a cultural mecca, CBC Radio "Ideas" recently said. The host hoped that Canada's former steel city, Hamilton, would reinvent itself, education and medical industries prime candidates for the job.
The "coincidence of wants," about which I learned in university economics, also crosses my mind. These economics aren't d'Amato's, but I learned his economics at university, too, from of a Marxist professor from Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh, where 90 000 worked in the steel industry at its postwar peak, has given away that industry, but the city re-invented itself as a cultural mecca, CBC Radio "Ideas" recently said. The host hoped that Canada's former steel city, Hamilton, would reinvent itself, education and medical industries prime candidates for the job.
The "coincidence of wants" means having what another wants when she has what you want. This
is so unlikely that a means of exchange, that is, money, arose. More likely, such coincidences would
be like the Bible story about asking someone for a loaf of bread and getting a serpent.
What if she came to my door with something I don't want and wanted something I didn't have?
If she came to my door with an AK-47 and a serpent, then I would know that she was either in an undependable phase, or that she had risen from her lumpenproletarian ennui to foment revolution, or that she was joining a herptologist group, or a wacky religion. I'd make cookies for that.
My crockpot is full of broccoli stalks, cabbage, and potatoes now. It wouldn't hold a serpent.
Some religious people hold serpents, but that's another sermon. I'd rather hold a serpent than
heed most sermons, including those from conservatives, liberals, socialists, communists, and more overt religious folks, each group itching to patent the truth.
I used to know everything. I don't anymore. Now I'm easier to get along with.
When we speak of trade, we approach one of many inefficiencies of capitalism, that is,
advertising, which pressures us to buy what we don't want and pay what we can't spare.
d'Amato's socialism doesn't need advertising. In that vein, Thorsten Veblen, the early-1900s
Norwegian economist, called advertising wasteful when it did anything more than provide information.
Ah, if only socialism itself needed only a little advertising to supplant our exploitative system.
Use value, exchange value, iced tea, beans, dreams and schemes, eh?
Thursday, September 12, 2013
Fossils, Beetles, Palms, Temperature, and Freedom
Thursday, September 12, 2013
The North American Cordillera has at least four important insect fossil sites, Simon Fraser University entomologist Bruce Archibald told a group of 20 people last in Williams Lake on September 11.
Archibald used these sites to link beetles and temperature 50 million years ago.
HOMAGE
Archibald began by paying homage to Buffon and Von Humboldt, Enlightenment thinkers whose probing of nature enhanced human reason, progress, and, I would argue, freedom. He also noted his current research, on lacewings, whose intricate wing patterns are beautiful as well as useful, as the Ancient Roman writer Horace advised our lives and work to be. English zoologist Richard Dawkins argues that the natural world is more beautiful and inspiring than any religion, with its anti-intellectual strictures and anthropomorphic hereafter.
SITES
From south to north, these sites are Republic, in Oregon, United States, and Quilchena, McAbee, and Driftwood Canyon in British Columbia, Canada.
I saw one site, McAbee. In 1999, when I was teaching at the nearby indigenous community of Skeetchestn, I brought a group of children to McAbee. We looked but we did not touch. The children marveled at fossilized sea creatures on what they knew as a desert hilltop. Psychologists note that such mental challenges enhance reasoning.
ANTI-SCIENTIFIC GOVERNMENT
A few years later, a new, reactionary provincial government removed protection from the site. Anyone could then go there and chip away, which one paleontologist called equivalent to letting people with chisels and hammers into the Sistine Chapel. Happily, scientists and a local opposition member of the provincial legislature have since convinced the government to restrict access again.
Beetles were Archibald's focus. His cameras focused finely enough to show fossilized insect hairs and encased soft tissue 50 million years old. At the end of the talk, I cited the science fiction film Jurassic Park about dinosaurs recreated in our era using fossilized DNA. Extract soft-tissue DNA and reproduce these insects. The soft tissue was sex cells, which contain only half the chromosomes, however, as the movie contained only half-baked science; but ancient soft tissues might tell us how much the insects changed over millions of years, which relates to the accuracy of Archibald's theory.
Alas, Archibald lacks the funding to do what he does now, let alone explore other under-researched areas: other scientists, who study bats and leaves, among other things, subsidize his work because it relates to theirs. Bats, for example, use echolocation to hunt. Some of Archibald's beetles have an organ that detects bats' echolocation signals, thereby enhancing the beetles' survival against predation by bats. Richard Dawkins writes fascinatingly on echolocation evolution. An equation using the ratio between jagged and smooth-edged leaves, for example, reveals past temperature and even predicts future temperature. This commendable collaboration among scientists arises from government indifference or hostility toward science as well as from scientists' intentions.
"If you want to research how to move oil, the government will give you a grant. Anything else, good luck," Archibald quipped. Archibald rejoiced that Parks Canada paid for his gas to come from Simon Fraser University in Burnaby to Williams Lake, 500 kilometres north. He uses the cameras at Parks Canada's Vancouver research facility,but better resolution would help his research. A person in the audience noted the University of Victoria's new electron microscope, news to Archibald; but he and Archibald agreed that the queue is long and the access is expensive. "Insects become oil," the person joked. "Tell the government that."
BEETLE AND TEMPERATURE LINK
Archibald's theory proposes a link between a particular beetle, the palm beetle, and temperature. This beetle only eats palm leaves. Palm trees do not grow where the winter temperature falls below five degrees celsius, or below eight degrees in climates of increased carbon dioxide, such as humans have made.
This summer, measurement at Hawaii's Mauna Kea Telescope found atmospheric carbon dioxide above 400 parts per million. Climate change activist Bill McKibbon cites a sea of evidence that predicts irreversible global warming at carbon dioxide levels above 350 parts per million.
Archibald noted 50 million year old fossilized palm seeds in Antarctica, still linked to Australia but then separating from South America. The climate has warmed before, but never as fast as it has warmed since humanity's massive burning of fossil fuels.
Archibald's team found fossilized palm beetles, 50 million years old, in three of the four sites. They found none in Driftwood Canyon, at 54 degrees north latitude the most northerly site. They therefore concluded that, 50 million years ago, palms grew in these places. These sites are between two and three thousand kilometres north of where palms grow today.
REASON, PROGRESS, AND FREEDOM
As I type this story, I remember another beetle story I encountered, years ago in Vancouver. I also think about reason, progress, and freedom.
Beetles proliferate on Earth, luckily for Earth, and for us, I learned years ago at Science World, a science education centre in Vancouver. Archibald's mention of the hundreds of species of beetles was not news to me: Charles Darwin wrote extensively about beetles. A Vancouver presentation about dung beetles was, however, news that I long remembered; but there, as in Archibald's work, I found a reasoned link between different parts of the natural world. Dung beetles, of which there are many species, eat dead organic matter. Without such decomposition, life as we know it, including human life, could not long continue. Dead matter would overwhelm living matter, a veritable biospheric zombie cataclysm.
Zombie Cataclysm, a good name for a musical group?
Reason helps us connect such natural phenomenon as palm beetles, palms, and temperature, to connect dung beetles, decomposition, and life. Genesis, like many of the books of the Bible, like most religious people, uncritical, pushy, slavish servants, long dissuaded people from reasoning, from opposing dominant views, from progress.
Thanks to critical thinkers such as Carolus Linneaus, his Latinized name a taxonomical testimony to his inquiring mind, our species fell from its muddling metaphysical perch into the natural world. The dung beetles welcomed us, especially after we died. Aristotle before him and scientists after him have hypothesized about nature, and used observation and experiment to prove or disprove those hypotheses.
The monk Gregor Mendel left his Bible to cross pea plants, happily for humanity, to whom hybridization is more useful and beautiful than Bibles. Mendel's work explained species divergence, a puzzle to Charles Darwin, whose titanic work on evolution was a few decades before Mendel. A few decades after Mendel, Rosalind Franklin, James Watson, and Francis Crick detailed the deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) molecule, the elegant code of genetic transmission.
Genetic Transmission, another musical group name?
Genetics is only one branch of science that has brought progress, both material and intellectual. A scientist might not know where her research will lead, to a better battery or to a better bomb. The scientific method, however, has led us from the captivity of cults, both religious and scientific. We have a widespread, durable freedom to question, to challenge accepted wisdom, to err, and to correct our errors; but sometimes to wallow in our errors when complacency, gain, or authority defeat reason.
Curiosity and freedom led me to listen to Bruce Archibald talk about beetles.
Curiosity and Freedom, another musical group name?
The North American Cordillera has at least four important insect fossil sites, Simon Fraser University entomologist Bruce Archibald told a group of 20 people last in Williams Lake on September 11.
Archibald used these sites to link beetles and temperature 50 million years ago.
HOMAGE
Archibald began by paying homage to Buffon and Von Humboldt, Enlightenment thinkers whose probing of nature enhanced human reason, progress, and, I would argue, freedom. He also noted his current research, on lacewings, whose intricate wing patterns are beautiful as well as useful, as the Ancient Roman writer Horace advised our lives and work to be. English zoologist Richard Dawkins argues that the natural world is more beautiful and inspiring than any religion, with its anti-intellectual strictures and anthropomorphic hereafter.
SITES
From south to north, these sites are Republic, in Oregon, United States, and Quilchena, McAbee, and Driftwood Canyon in British Columbia, Canada.
I saw one site, McAbee. In 1999, when I was teaching at the nearby indigenous community of Skeetchestn, I brought a group of children to McAbee. We looked but we did not touch. The children marveled at fossilized sea creatures on what they knew as a desert hilltop. Psychologists note that such mental challenges enhance reasoning.
ANTI-SCIENTIFIC GOVERNMENT
A few years later, a new, reactionary provincial government removed protection from the site. Anyone could then go there and chip away, which one paleontologist called equivalent to letting people with chisels and hammers into the Sistine Chapel. Happily, scientists and a local opposition member of the provincial legislature have since convinced the government to restrict access again.
Beetles were Archibald's focus. His cameras focused finely enough to show fossilized insect hairs and encased soft tissue 50 million years old. At the end of the talk, I cited the science fiction film Jurassic Park about dinosaurs recreated in our era using fossilized DNA. Extract soft-tissue DNA and reproduce these insects. The soft tissue was sex cells, which contain only half the chromosomes, however, as the movie contained only half-baked science; but ancient soft tissues might tell us how much the insects changed over millions of years, which relates to the accuracy of Archibald's theory.
Alas, Archibald lacks the funding to do what he does now, let alone explore other under-researched areas: other scientists, who study bats and leaves, among other things, subsidize his work because it relates to theirs. Bats, for example, use echolocation to hunt. Some of Archibald's beetles have an organ that detects bats' echolocation signals, thereby enhancing the beetles' survival against predation by bats. Richard Dawkins writes fascinatingly on echolocation evolution. An equation using the ratio between jagged and smooth-edged leaves, for example, reveals past temperature and even predicts future temperature. This commendable collaboration among scientists arises from government indifference or hostility toward science as well as from scientists' intentions.
"If you want to research how to move oil, the government will give you a grant. Anything else, good luck," Archibald quipped. Archibald rejoiced that Parks Canada paid for his gas to come from Simon Fraser University in Burnaby to Williams Lake, 500 kilometres north. He uses the cameras at Parks Canada's Vancouver research facility,but better resolution would help his research. A person in the audience noted the University of Victoria's new electron microscope, news to Archibald; but he and Archibald agreed that the queue is long and the access is expensive. "Insects become oil," the person joked. "Tell the government that."
BEETLE AND TEMPERATURE LINK
Archibald's theory proposes a link between a particular beetle, the palm beetle, and temperature. This beetle only eats palm leaves. Palm trees do not grow where the winter temperature falls below five degrees celsius, or below eight degrees in climates of increased carbon dioxide, such as humans have made.
This summer, measurement at Hawaii's Mauna Kea Telescope found atmospheric carbon dioxide above 400 parts per million. Climate change activist Bill McKibbon cites a sea of evidence that predicts irreversible global warming at carbon dioxide levels above 350 parts per million.
Archibald noted 50 million year old fossilized palm seeds in Antarctica, still linked to Australia but then separating from South America. The climate has warmed before, but never as fast as it has warmed since humanity's massive burning of fossil fuels.
Archibald's team found fossilized palm beetles, 50 million years old, in three of the four sites. They found none in Driftwood Canyon, at 54 degrees north latitude the most northerly site. They therefore concluded that, 50 million years ago, palms grew in these places. These sites are between two and three thousand kilometres north of where palms grow today.
REASON, PROGRESS, AND FREEDOM
As I type this story, I remember another beetle story I encountered, years ago in Vancouver. I also think about reason, progress, and freedom.
Beetles proliferate on Earth, luckily for Earth, and for us, I learned years ago at Science World, a science education centre in Vancouver. Archibald's mention of the hundreds of species of beetles was not news to me: Charles Darwin wrote extensively about beetles. A Vancouver presentation about dung beetles was, however, news that I long remembered; but there, as in Archibald's work, I found a reasoned link between different parts of the natural world. Dung beetles, of which there are many species, eat dead organic matter. Without such decomposition, life as we know it, including human life, could not long continue. Dead matter would overwhelm living matter, a veritable biospheric zombie cataclysm.
Zombie Cataclysm, a good name for a musical group?
Reason helps us connect such natural phenomenon as palm beetles, palms, and temperature, to connect dung beetles, decomposition, and life. Genesis, like many of the books of the Bible, like most religious people, uncritical, pushy, slavish servants, long dissuaded people from reasoning, from opposing dominant views, from progress.
Thanks to critical thinkers such as Carolus Linneaus, his Latinized name a taxonomical testimony to his inquiring mind, our species fell from its muddling metaphysical perch into the natural world. The dung beetles welcomed us, especially after we died. Aristotle before him and scientists after him have hypothesized about nature, and used observation and experiment to prove or disprove those hypotheses.
The monk Gregor Mendel left his Bible to cross pea plants, happily for humanity, to whom hybridization is more useful and beautiful than Bibles. Mendel's work explained species divergence, a puzzle to Charles Darwin, whose titanic work on evolution was a few decades before Mendel. A few decades after Mendel, Rosalind Franklin, James Watson, and Francis Crick detailed the deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) molecule, the elegant code of genetic transmission.
Genetic Transmission, another musical group name?
Genetics is only one branch of science that has brought progress, both material and intellectual. A scientist might not know where her research will lead, to a better battery or to a better bomb. The scientific method, however, has led us from the captivity of cults, both religious and scientific. We have a widespread, durable freedom to question, to challenge accepted wisdom, to err, and to correct our errors; but sometimes to wallow in our errors when complacency, gain, or authority defeat reason.
Curiosity and freedom led me to listen to Bruce Archibald talk about beetles.
Curiosity and Freedom, another musical group name?
Tuesday, September 10, 2013
Bookstores, Gone and Free
Tuesday, September 10, 2013
Kamloops lost a great used bookstore this year:
http://www.atsecondglance.com/
http://www.cbc.ca/kamloops/mt/2012/12/final-chapter-for-at-second-glance-books-in-kamloops.html
At A Second Glance Bookstore had first one, then two, then one location in Kamloops, a city of
80 000 in the arid Thompson River Valley 400 kilometres northeast of Vancouver, Canada.
Decades ago, At A Second Glance began, across the river from downtown Kamloops. By the late-1990s, it moved downtown. Soon it expanded to two downtown locations. In the early 2000s, Chapters Indigo, which is to independent, progressive bookstores what a fox is to chickens, drove out of business the downtown Kamloops new bookstore. While Chapters was funding illegal Israeli settlements on Palestinian land, At a Second Glance was bursting at its two downtown locations.
At A Second Glance asked its customers to help it move from its two downtown locations to the location vacated by the bankrupt new bookstore. People lined up, an arm's length apart, along the several city blocks necessary to move the books. They passed piles of books hand-to-hand to help move At A Second Glance. For another decade it puttered along, across from the city's public library.
Last winter, At A Second Glance went out of business. Downtown Kamloops now has no bookstores, used or new. The city's west end, up a hill along the Trans Canada Highway, sports a smaller used bookstore attached to the building that holds a big grocery store. Above that, Chapters squats by the highway, a glitzy predator of Canada's book trade.
In the early 2000s, Prince George, a city of 80 000 about 800 kilometres north northeast of Vancouver, lost Mosquito Books. Its owners retired to their previous home near Smithers, a city of 10 000, 400 kilometres west of Prince George. Mosquito Books, like Vancouver Co-Op Bookstore, stocked progressive magazines and books such as Chapters does not stock. Downtown Prince George still has Books and Company, which has a few used books, squished in back shelves behind its new books and cafe:
http://www.booksandcompany.ca/Home.html
Happily, MacLeod's Books endures in downtown Vancouver:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GAvoEnwSc2Y
This is my favorite used bookstore. At A Second Glance was a close Number Two. I hope the landlords who helped dispatch At A Second Glance have no equivalent vultures trying to dispatch MacLeod's, in high-rent Downtown Vancouver. This place's basement has the biggest collection of history books I've seen outside university libraries.
The best-organized used bookstore I saw is Russell Books in Victoria, at the southwest corner of Canada:
http://www.russellbooks.com/
Back in Vancouver, People's Coop Bookstore, begun in the 1940s, endures:
http://www.peoplescoopbookstore.com/
People's, in the socialist mainstream, is my favorite new bookstore.
In a philosophical eddy of that stream floats Spartacus Books, in Vancouver's famous Downtown Eastside:
http://www.spartacusbooks.net/
Spartacus has anarchist, Communist, gay, lesbian, queer, feminist, and cultural criticism books and music, new and used. It resisted eviction and is a meeting place for various radical groups. Like People's Co-Op, it advertises events such as speeches, meetings, and rallies. Both bookstores exude an air of critical thought, something that Chapters' air conditioning would probably extract.
Then there are free books, such as found in "Share Sheds" adjacent to dumps in my home region, the Cariboo, between Kamloops and Prince George. This week, I found Fyodor Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov in my local Share Shed. I read it when I was 17. What will I see differently in it now that I am over 50? The local public library does not have this novel, but it has a couple others by the great Russian writer. I read and gave away more Dostoevsky than my library stocks. but Karamazov was my first of his, and my first Russian novel.
This month, I found an oasis of free books in Kelowna, a city of 130 000, 400 kilometres east northeast of Vancouver. We were moving our daughter there for university.
More than 10 years ago, a retired woman rankled at the sight of a truck dumping books into a compactor at the Kelowna city dump. She put a shed for books by the dump. She and various volunteer helpers move books from the shed to her garage, a well-sorted operation that welcomes anyone to have almost any book for free:
http://www.kelownacapnews.com/news/162877666.html
I noticed Sophocles, Ovid, and other great authors, whose works I first read in a university Classics course in Ottawa. Early Christians burned the great library at Alexandria, according to Michael Parenti in History as Mystery:
http://www.michaelparenti.org/HistoryAsMystery.html
Fewer than ten of Sophocles' 70+ plays survived to our time. I thought of that as I noticed Sophocles' plays in that Kelowna garage, in books saved from destruction. This garage's owner seemed like a Medieval Irish monk burying Homer in the peat bog, to save him from marauding Vikings: my Irish and Norwegian ancestors in battle.
While book burners, book monopolists, and book compactors busily suppress knowledge that threatens or inconveniences them, legions of people preserve and promote knowledge. Smaller legions promote critical thought, fueled by knowledge, catalyzed by reflection and argument.
At A Second Glance is gone, Mosquito Books is gone; but MacLeod's, Russell, People's Co-Op, and Spartacus remain, while Chapters and its ilk careen across the intellectual landscape. Like our small, furry mammalian ancestors who outlived the dinosaurs, these bookstores' legacy will endure, when the last predatory bookstore is a quirky fossil.
Spartacus was the name of early-1900s German revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg's movement. The latest issue of Briarpatch, a magazine I get from Regina, about 1800 kilometres east southeast of my home, argues that Luxemburg's analysis of capitalism and its defects is relevant to our era:
http://briarpatchmagazine.com/articles/view/more-than-a-hero
The German Social Democratic Party government assassinated her in 1919, but Rosa's words and ideas live, thanks partly to books.
So stop reading this and pick up a book, eh?
Kamloops lost a great used bookstore this year:
http://www.atsecondglance.com/
http://www.cbc.ca/kamloops/mt/2012/12/final-chapter-for-at-second-glance-books-in-kamloops.html
At A Second Glance Bookstore had first one, then two, then one location in Kamloops, a city of
80 000 in the arid Thompson River Valley 400 kilometres northeast of Vancouver, Canada.
Decades ago, At A Second Glance began, across the river from downtown Kamloops. By the late-1990s, it moved downtown. Soon it expanded to two downtown locations. In the early 2000s, Chapters Indigo, which is to independent, progressive bookstores what a fox is to chickens, drove out of business the downtown Kamloops new bookstore. While Chapters was funding illegal Israeli settlements on Palestinian land, At a Second Glance was bursting at its two downtown locations.
At A Second Glance asked its customers to help it move from its two downtown locations to the location vacated by the bankrupt new bookstore. People lined up, an arm's length apart, along the several city blocks necessary to move the books. They passed piles of books hand-to-hand to help move At A Second Glance. For another decade it puttered along, across from the city's public library.
Last winter, At A Second Glance went out of business. Downtown Kamloops now has no bookstores, used or new. The city's west end, up a hill along the Trans Canada Highway, sports a smaller used bookstore attached to the building that holds a big grocery store. Above that, Chapters squats by the highway, a glitzy predator of Canada's book trade.
In the early 2000s, Prince George, a city of 80 000 about 800 kilometres north northeast of Vancouver, lost Mosquito Books. Its owners retired to their previous home near Smithers, a city of 10 000, 400 kilometres west of Prince George. Mosquito Books, like Vancouver Co-Op Bookstore, stocked progressive magazines and books such as Chapters does not stock. Downtown Prince George still has Books and Company, which has a few used books, squished in back shelves behind its new books and cafe:
http://www.booksandcompany.ca/Home.html
Happily, MacLeod's Books endures in downtown Vancouver:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GAvoEnwSc2Y
This is my favorite used bookstore. At A Second Glance was a close Number Two. I hope the landlords who helped dispatch At A Second Glance have no equivalent vultures trying to dispatch MacLeod's, in high-rent Downtown Vancouver. This place's basement has the biggest collection of history books I've seen outside university libraries.
The best-organized used bookstore I saw is Russell Books in Victoria, at the southwest corner of Canada:
http://www.russellbooks.com/
Back in Vancouver, People's Coop Bookstore, begun in the 1940s, endures:
http://www.peoplescoopbookstore.com/
People's, in the socialist mainstream, is my favorite new bookstore.
In a philosophical eddy of that stream floats Spartacus Books, in Vancouver's famous Downtown Eastside:
http://www.spartacusbooks.net/
Spartacus has anarchist, Communist, gay, lesbian, queer, feminist, and cultural criticism books and music, new and used. It resisted eviction and is a meeting place for various radical groups. Like People's Co-Op, it advertises events such as speeches, meetings, and rallies. Both bookstores exude an air of critical thought, something that Chapters' air conditioning would probably extract.
Then there are free books, such as found in "Share Sheds" adjacent to dumps in my home region, the Cariboo, between Kamloops and Prince George. This week, I found Fyodor Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov in my local Share Shed. I read it when I was 17. What will I see differently in it now that I am over 50? The local public library does not have this novel, but it has a couple others by the great Russian writer. I read and gave away more Dostoevsky than my library stocks. but Karamazov was my first of his, and my first Russian novel.
This month, I found an oasis of free books in Kelowna, a city of 130 000, 400 kilometres east northeast of Vancouver. We were moving our daughter there for university.
More than 10 years ago, a retired woman rankled at the sight of a truck dumping books into a compactor at the Kelowna city dump. She put a shed for books by the dump. She and various volunteer helpers move books from the shed to her garage, a well-sorted operation that welcomes anyone to have almost any book for free:
http://www.kelownacapnews.com/news/162877666.html
I noticed Sophocles, Ovid, and other great authors, whose works I first read in a university Classics course in Ottawa. Early Christians burned the great library at Alexandria, according to Michael Parenti in History as Mystery:
http://www.michaelparenti.org/HistoryAsMystery.html
Fewer than ten of Sophocles' 70+ plays survived to our time. I thought of that as I noticed Sophocles' plays in that Kelowna garage, in books saved from destruction. This garage's owner seemed like a Medieval Irish monk burying Homer in the peat bog, to save him from marauding Vikings: my Irish and Norwegian ancestors in battle.
While book burners, book monopolists, and book compactors busily suppress knowledge that threatens or inconveniences them, legions of people preserve and promote knowledge. Smaller legions promote critical thought, fueled by knowledge, catalyzed by reflection and argument.
At A Second Glance is gone, Mosquito Books is gone; but MacLeod's, Russell, People's Co-Op, and Spartacus remain, while Chapters and its ilk careen across the intellectual landscape. Like our small, furry mammalian ancestors who outlived the dinosaurs, these bookstores' legacy will endure, when the last predatory bookstore is a quirky fossil.
Spartacus was the name of early-1900s German revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg's movement. The latest issue of Briarpatch, a magazine I get from Regina, about 1800 kilometres east southeast of my home, argues that Luxemburg's analysis of capitalism and its defects is relevant to our era:
http://briarpatchmagazine.com/articles/view/more-than-a-hero
The German Social Democratic Party government assassinated her in 1919, but Rosa's words and ideas live, thanks partly to books.
So stop reading this and pick up a book, eh?
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