5.

Cynicism salves the pain of unrealized hope. If we convince ourselves that nothing can change, we don't have to risk acting on our dreams. But the more we accept this, the more we deny core parts of ourselves. We deny even the possibility that our choices can matter….

As the poet and essayist Lewis Hyde points out, [cynicism] becomes "the voice of the trapped who have come to enjoy their cage." Accordingly, we might think of a modern cynic as someone who's given up all hope of finding a door, much less a key. And we might remember that there are better ways to live.

from Soul of a Citizen: Living With Conviction in a Cynical Time, by Paul Loeb, St. Martin's Press, 1999. Read the whole excerpt here, at Earth Island Journal. Thanks to Chris Clarke for the link.

Coping with Societal Change

You know, I wish we could all sit down over tea and talk about the issues raised by the "Feral Capitalism" post and in the comments. I think we'd find that we agreed on many points. Immigration is, to me, an issue separate from the riots, though there are cross-threads. I don't think anyone has suggested that the British rioters were mainly immigrants, but that the lack of jobs is attributable in some measure to the influx of immigrants as well as offshore manusfacturing. And I certainly hope no one is saying that immigrants are, somehow, worse or more neglectful parents. From my own experience in both America and Canada, the opposite might well be true. Immigrants are among the hardest-working people in these societies, whether we are talking about students, fast-food workers, shop-keepers or doctors, precisely because they have come for freedom and opportunity, expect to work hard, and do not have a sense of entitlement.

Among my own close friends, all of whom have tried hard to be good parents, the majority of the children have thrived but there are some who have gotten into genuinely serious trouble, floundered, made a series of very bad decisions, or had difficulty with substance-abuse. Others have suffered from depression and mental illness, seemingly from a variety of causes, one of which is anxiety caused by an inability to cope with the pressures of modern life as adults. Several of these young adults have had problems with managing anger and frustration. "Tough love", counseling, and medication have all helped, but even these have failed at times. Parents who must work outside the home, and are often raising children alone, without the extended families and neighborhoods and churches that used to form the basic structure of social life, cannot possibly counter all the influences to which a child or young adult today is subjected, and cannot protect them from the fears, anxieties, and uncertainties to which we are all subject and from which we all suffer to one degree or another! Violence has come much closer in the West, both in reality and through the media and technology. Parents are primarily responsible for teaching children right and wrong, that is certain, but they themselves have to have a decent childhood where they learned respect and were themselves respected, and to have internalized a personal value system and the skills for passing on. Meanwhile, all around us are examples of people who are seemingly rewarded with wealth and fame for their talent, perhaps, but also for their greed, corruption, and flagrantly consumptive habits; some children are much more susceptible to these pressures than others.

And ever since Watergate, I think we've all grown more aware of the hypocrisy and unfairness that seem part and parcel of politics, government, and institutions. I knew a lapsed Catholic businessman, who used to repeat, "I was taught differently, and try to behave differently, but I've learned that nice guys finish last." In a world where acquisition of money and possessions is a primary goal, who is arguing effecively with that? As religious belief and attendance decline — as a result, partially, of the hypocrisy of the church, the abuse scandals, and its failure to adapt and speak effectively to modern men and women — one wonders, actually, why more people don't lie, cheat, and steal. In secular life, one can run up debts and declare bankruptcy with impunity. How many people nowdays believe they'll be accountable in an afterlife, let alone in this one, for breaking the ten commandments, if they even have an idea what they are?

There is a whole constellation of reasons why social values and a sense of participation and fairness have broken down in our societies. My reason for writing the previous post was to try to go deeper than the "bad parenting" answer and ask WHY — and let's stick to white anglo-saxon culture, since there is no evidence that I've seen to blame these riots on immigrants. In my own WASP family, which has been in the U.S. since the first boats arrived from England, there have been people who've contributed a lot to society and some who have not. Those who have, have fought in the wars and farmed the land and taught in the schools and volunteered in churches and organizations, and raised "decent" children. Yet, like Jean, I feel no sense of entitlement or earned privilege as an American, none whatsoever. I feel incredibly fortunate to have been born free and to have had loving parents who gave me a good education and continued to love and encourage me. I know now that this is far more rare than it should be, but I refuse to judge other people. Instead, I want to try to understand, and to share what I've been given — especially the love and understanding — with those who don't have the same.

My husband's family came only one generation ago from the Middle East and Armenia, escaping persecution and seeking education and opportunity. They worked hard, just as my ancestors did when they came here from England. If we had had children they would have been browner than I am, just as the world is gradually growing browner. That's fine with me. I have no attachment to some notion of "American" culture, nor can I even define it: unlike the Tea Partiers, who have a much narrower view, to me American culture is this rich melting pot that results from immigration, mixed cultural contact, and intermarriage. I do not believe in cultural, racial, religious, sexual, ethnic, ancestral or economic superiority; I really do believe all people are created equal and have an absolutely equal right to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." Perhaps that's a liberal attitude that's easier to sustain in North America but, after all, it is the founding principle. The difficulty of carrying it out and remembering it ought to be painfully obvious by now, only 235 years into the experiment of American democracy.

The desire for freedom from oppression of all kinds, coupled with the possibility of movement, means that people are going to seek new homes and to mix, and that there will be a subsequent dilution of so-called cultural purity, as well as a loss of ethnic identity in the new homeland. These separate purities, which in their original form gave rise to tribes and nations, have been a source of imperialism, oppression, genocide and war, as well as unique and rich founts of literature, art, cuisine, dress, customs and rituals. No longer separated by geographic boundaries, or even by time and distance, we can neither hide from each other, nor suppress our natural curiosity and hunger for what we see on the other side of the mountain, ocean, desert or river — or, for that matter, the barbed wire or constructed wall. Human beings will always seek freedom, equality, and a better life for themselves and their children.

Living among the French in Quebec, as part of its English-speaking minority and as one immigrant member of an urban society filled with other immigrants from all over the world, has made me much more conscious of how a small isolated group can feel their unique culture is threatened. (Immigration to Canada is not guaranteed, there is a point system and a long process that must be followed.) But the dark reverse side of cultural preservation is racism. Each society has to decide what matters most, and where their true values ultimately lie: are there ways to offer freedom, openness, asylum, and opportunity and welcome the cultural richness which enhances life, encouraging participation in the society as a whole, while also preserving an existing culture and language? (Shall we ask the indigenous peoples of North America what they think about that?) In Quebec, when some racist (anti-Muslim, most recently) sentiment came to the surface, the whole society engaged in a debate and year-long process with appointed commissioners, because as a nation we wanted to acknowledge the problem of cultural preservation vs. immigration and deal with it openly. I think this will be an ongoing discussion, because it is generally agreed here that racism is unacceptable, immigration is desireable, French culture is valuable, and that we have to find ways of negotiating between the resulting tensions and fears.

Social and economic frustration; changes in values and behavior; loss of the familiar and precious; the breakdown of family and community support and increasing isolation of the individual; the omnipresent influence of technology and media; the diminishing reward of education and hard work; corporate and governmental corruption and greed; violence moving closer to us: these are very difficult issues, and I think we've already recognized here that they are interrelated. I'm glad we can talk about them and try to trust each other.

Confronting the Limits of Complexity

This week:

We joined the 21st century, and bought smartphones.

We changed our phone system to a different v.o.i.p. provider.

We replaced our modem, after days of intermittent internet service that drove us crazy.

I started a new feed on Twitter.

Everybody started flocking to Google+.

This was the week it all became Too Much.

I knew it was getting bad by Tuesday afternoon, when I started having visions of getting rid of as much of my stuff as I could, in order to create a nearly bare room in which I saw myself sitting in total silence.

My husband and I went to bed each night and lay there, each with our new phones, learning how they worked. "We've become just like everybody else," he remarked, only somewhat tongue-in-cheek. "Now we'll go to restaurants and not talk to each other, but just play with our phones."

"Maybe you," I said. "Not me!" But my vehemence was only the result of disgust at the seductiveness of the little gem-like computer-phone, and what all of this was doing to my brain.

On the internet, invitations to Google+ have been flying around, and everyone seems to be talking about what it is and how to use it and will it actually be a competitor to Facebook, or will we all just have yet another social networking site to manage?

I asked myself why this was bothering me so much, why did I feel fried, annoyed, even angry? Why did I feel, most of all, like unplugging completely?

Part of it was information overload: the difficulty of solving technical problems, learning a new system, dealing with frustration. That's OK. But once that is over, what do I want?

What I want is to be creative, I said. I want the tools to serve me, not the other way around. I'm getting absolutely nothing significant done, but I'm supposedly "busy" all the time. And it's all driven by a shared anxiety: if we don't keep up, we'll be left behind; if we don't flock over here with the Crowd, we'll lose our audience and no one will talk to us or listen to us anymore. We're not so sure they're listening now…maybe we'd better issue another Tweet or Post or Dent and make sure they're there.

Meanwhile, we're all being manipulated by huge corporations who stand to make enormous profits by understanding, influencing, and controlling our behavior, and then recording what we do and who we are, and selling that information to others and using it to get us to buy things ourselves.  Don't people see that? Increasingly, we are becoming pawns not only in the political arena we used to call democracy, but in a worldwide web of profit-making.

I, for one, don't want to participate in that game any more than I have to. And I am going to unplug, to a certain extent, while using the various media in as subversive and creative a way as possible.

I can see perfectly well why I've been writing micro-posts, but there's no need to maintain a new Twitter feed to do that.

The blog is my central focus, and will remain so; I'll continue cross-posting from the blog to Twitter and FB but I'm pulling back from anything new. I opened an account at Google+ because I like its lack of ads and lack of games and clutter, but my attitude is wait-and-see. Maybe it will replace FB as the place for conversation, but I can't maintain a significance presence at both. I know, for sure, that I've reached a point of complexity that is my own limit.

I've decided to cut down dramatically on my interaction on Facebook anyway. FB is useful for keeping in touch with certain people, for sharing news, and for marketing, but can be a tremendous time drain, and the busyness of the interface and constant bombardment of ads, along with all the voices demanding my interest and attention, are part of what's putting me over the edge.

Analog activities suddenly seem very appealing: seeing friends in real time, gardening, cooking, drawing. This week I cut out and sewed a dress, the first I've made in ages.

And I'm going away for a few days, out into the country, with my sketchbook and camera and some pieces of paper; A.S. Byatt's "The Children's Book" (3/4 finished) in paperback, and the complete novels of Virginia Woolf on my phone. You'll be hearing from me, but in brief.

Meanwhile, what do YOU think about all of this?

 

 

 

Magnificat

My days and nights right now are accompanied by Ricardo Reis.* Everything tinged with melancholy, solitude, the loneliness of men needing women to stave off their thoughts of death, and feeling myself quite different but knowing the truth of it for some men, the way they feel death like a chill in their bodies and so it is in the body that they seek comfort.

Yesterday I spent a rare day by myself, and it was as beautiful a day as we ever have here. I began in the garden, as the sun had just come over the fence to open the morning glories, talking to a friend whose husband is in a nursing home. He has Parkinson's, she brought him home the previous night for the evening, she is very strong but her eyes were full of tears as she told me about his decline, his anger, their sadness, and touched just briefly on her own isolation. Who is taking care of you, besides les fleurs, I asked her. Myself, she said, with that kind of smile that shows the warmth behind the stoicism. I have friends. But it is a hard thing to share.

And then I cycled up to the studio, where I am now, past another centre de readaptation where the staff, in white, sat smoking and talking in the sun before their shifts began; past an old woman talking to a squirrel that was eating nuts at the base of a tree.
I'm glad I don't have to face all this quite yet. Surrounded by paints and colors, with fresh coffee, and the piano, I was content

Today, our choir season began. It was good to see everyone,and even better to be making music together again. No melancholy at all. The 4:00 Evensong was devoted to music by the English Romantic composer Charles Villiers Stanford (he was actually Irish by birth), and I'll leave you with this recording of the Magnificat from his Service in C (accompanied by a bizarre and mostly-dreadful collection of paintings of Mary and the annunciation: shut your eyes and listen.)  It is, as you'll hear, what we call "a big sing." As one of only four sopranos in our choir of 25 or so today, I can vouch for that – by the end of the service I felt like I had a had an aerobic workout as well as a vocal one. I'm glad there were two pros on either side of me, better able to belt out one high G after another than I am! But it was fun.

http://www.youtube.com/v/90g_Zm68U-Y?fs=1&hl=en_US

*The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis, by Jose Saramago

Your Crown is Stuck in Traffic

In the waiting room, reading. Listening, sort of, to the French news on the television. I had arrived ten minutes early, the first patient, but it was now twenty minutes past nine. The Iranian dental assistant had come in just before the hour, clicking her usual high heels on the floor, and then the surgeon himself, greeting me warmly and taking the book out of my hand –what are we reading today? Saramago. The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis. Is it good? — before disappearing into the  inner reaches of the office. At twenty past, Manon, the receptionist, looked up at me, bird-like, over her high counter. I'm sorry it's so late, she said, in her French-accented English that I find so endearing. But your crown is stuck in traffic. I laughed. I've already called the delivery person twice, she went on, he's trying his best to get here. It shouldn't be much longer.

It's fine, I said, glancing again at my watch, I'm enjoying my book. I had reached an important point — where Ricardo lays his hand on the arm of Lydia, the hotel chambermaid, for several moments too long, and she leaves the room, the teacups on the breakfast tray trembling along with her hands — when the office door opened and a young man came in, carrying two small white cardboard boxes. Each had type on its sides, inscribed along a curve with a tooth at each end: "We Deliver Smiles."

My appointment began and proceeded smoothly; we laughed and talked as usual in-between ratchetings and filings and tap tap taps on the red film that showed what needed to be adjusted in my bite to accommodate the new tooth. There was a CD playing in the background: first Mozart, then Arabic music, the faintly African rhythms. What is this? I finally asked, when the reedy nasal sound of a Turkish ney broke into a woman's voice in full aria-flight, and I couldn't keep from laughing. He asked the assistant to turn the volume up and laughed too; we both sang snatches along with the singer. It's an obscure disk from France, he said. Some crazy guy who's combined Mozart with middle eastern and African music, but it somehow works. It does something different to your brain – you know, if music is supposed to free our minds to imagine places and scenes, this takes me somewhere entirely new. I feel like I'm in… a souk somewhere. While with western music I'm often bored, I love it but I've heard it so much, it's predictable. And your brain is used to it so it doesn't take you anywhere, I said. That's why I like performing contemporary music, I have to think harder.

We spoke of his daughter, who I'd met recently, she's torn between the violin and chemistry; and about books, and politics; I told him about our recent trip to the U.S. He told me he'd hurt his back at the gym, overdoing it. Listen he said, laughing again –the Requiem with Arabic drumming – fou fou fou. Then at one point I said –I've started painting again. Good for you! he said. How does it feel? It feels good, I said, shrugging. It's different than before. I have no idea now exactly what I want to be doing or where I'm going with it, but that's OK. I'm experimenting. Enjoying it.

It doesn't matter, he said, nodding, and pressing the glued crown into its final destination with his thumb. At this point it's the journey and the process that are more important than the result. He paused, and then grinned. We know that, he added, widening his eyes behind his round glasses, because now we're mature.

Tongues of Flame

Pentecost, a Christian feast commemorating the birth of the church and
the descent of the Holy Spirit, as well as the gift of glossalia, or
speaking in tongues, occurs 50 days after Easter. I like the little orange flames sitting over the heads of the apostles in this painting by Duccio!

And when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one
accord in one place. And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of
a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were
sitting. And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire,
and it sat upon each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy
Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them
utterance. (Acts 2:1-4)

The symbolic point of this "babble" was not chaos, but that even though everyone was suddenly speaking in a language incomprehensible to themselves, they could "hear" what was being said and understand it. In my former church, this used to be dramatized by having the gospel for the day (below) read aloud all at once by different people in many languages, which went on for several minutes, and then at the end the English version emerged out of the babble of incomprehensible words.

Now there were staying in Jerusalem God-fearing Jews from every nation
under heaven. When they heard this sound, a crowd came together in
bewilderment, because each one heard them speaking in his own language.
Utterly amazed, they asked: "Are not all these men who are speaking
Galileans? Then how is it that each of us hears them in his own native
language? Parthians, Medes and Elamites; residents of Mesopotamia,
Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and
the parts of Libya near Cyrene; visitors from Rome (both Jews and
converts to Judaism); Cretans and Arabs-we hear them declaring the
wonders of God in our own tongues!" Amazed and perplexed, they asked
one another, "What does this mean?"

Theologically, I think Pentecost is supposed to be a time of marveling at the greatest gift that Love (what I'd prefer to call the Holy Spirit) can offer: the coming-together of all the human tribes into mutual understanding and common awe, but I've never heard that expressed in a sermon.

—

When I was young, the
prayer book didn't call it Pentecost, but Whitsunday (Whitsuntide)
which is the British name for the pagan midsummer feast the Christian
festival merged with.

In somer at Whitsuntide,
Whan knightes most on horsebacke ride,
A cours let they make on a daye,
Steedes and palfrays for to assaye,
Whiche horse that best may ren.(Chambers)

Pentecost always had a resonance for me, because I was
such a nut on Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. I liked the
word itself, and the fact that Pentecost was Arthur's favorite
festival, when he held a jousting tournament and big feast, and expected all his knights to gather around the round Table to tell stories, and some great marvel usually occurred. I think it was on Pentecost when the knights, in a communal fervor,
departed on the quest for the Holy Grail. Their vow tore at Arthur's heart because he foresaw that they would scatter and die, following out their own interpretations of what the Quest meant and blinded by their own lusts and desires. He knew it would lead to the downfall of everything he had tried to accomplish in his Kingdom.

"So King Arthur had ever a custome, that at the high feast of
Pentecost especially, afore al other high feasts in the yeare, he
would not goe that day to meat until he had heard or seene some
great adventure or mervaile. And for that custom all manner of
strange adventures came before King Arthur at that feast afore all
other feasts." (Malory, Morte d'Arthur)

I was probably one of a minuscule handful of people in the blogosphere actually observing Pentecost yesterday, and wondering what it might mean in a modern context. We sang a big mass for choir and organ by the French composer Louis Vierne, and at the offertory one of the Sunday School teachers swept down the center aisle with a basket full of construction paper "flames" made by the kids, on which were pasted little plastic butterflies (one hopes they had fire-resistant wings.)

In the afternoon we went to a modern joust: a soccer match between the local Montreal team and Fiorentina. The Italian community turned out in large numbers; Montreal fans cheered lustily for both sides; we got a little sunburned but it was a lot of fun – our first live, upper-level soccer match, which ended in a 1-1 tie.

Sitting in the shade during the half, I especially liked this grandfather, explaining the fine points of the game to his grandson.

Like the city itself, the game and the presence of an A-level team brought out soccer fans from every country; languages were flying all around us as I stood on the upper level of the stadium, watching the crowds leave and the Olympic Stadium in the background.

Games, music: these are the common languages we recognize today. Few people would identify the communal lifting of hearts, and sense of lack of separation, at a rock concert or football game as the "Holy Spirit;" that's a term now reserved for the ecstasy of pentecostal (yes) religion and used almost with embarrassment by more reserved Christians, but it describes a phenomenon that's fundamental to human social behavior and for which, I think, we hunger.

The profound disconnect between the rich myths and literature from all cultures, and our contemporary sense of alienation, despair, anxiety, and atomization — which we could call "lack of meaning" –  makes me very sad. These stories that form the basis of myth and scripture have developed over the millenia in order to help us see and interpret our own historical patterns, the failings of flawed kings and the gifts of true leaders, as well as our personal longings, fears, hopes, and wonder. Without them, each individual, like Arthur's knights going off in a hundred individual directions, is forced to begin again and again to try to piece together meaning from the babble of a chaotic contemporary world, or seek communal or private highs from experiences that largely exist now without their historical psychological, emotional, and spiritual context because the traditional repositories of wisdom — whether they're religious institutions, classical literary educations, or even art forms — have become inaccessible, discredited, or impoverished by the inability of teachers to interpret them for a modern technological age. Meanwhile, fundamentalisms — and governments based on them — clash in conflicts of ever-more-epic proportion. All one can hope is that new forms and new stories are arising that will eventually become a counter to the despair and destructiveness so prevalent in our modern world, rather than mere opiates proffered by the media and continually washed into our subconscious minds.

A Familiar Face, and Another Reflected

Yes, that's the man. William Jefferson Clinton was in town today to receive an honorary doctorate from McGill, and I was lucky enough to know someone who had a ticket and was able to get another. This event took place under the radar, or so it seemed; there was one small TV truck from CTV near the building, very little press inside, no crowds, a relatively small contingent of Secret Service, six or seven unmarked black vehicles. I had the impression that the event had been managed very carefully. We arrived about 40 minutes early, and judging from past experience with things like presidential debates or candidate appearances in New Hampshire, I had expected a long wait before being cleared for entrance, and even debated whether I should bring my cell phone, let alone a camera. In the end I took a small purse with both in it, but I needn't have worried: there was no gauntlet of security to go through, no metal detectors that I could see, not even a bag check. It's harder to get into any art gallery in a major American city than it was to get into this event. We gave our names at a desk, received our tickets, and walked into the auditorium along with about a thousand other people, and that was that.

 

The low-key scene at the back door, after the speech

Clinton's plane was late, and the master of ceremonies informed us we'd have an extra ten minute wait. But soon we heard the sound of bagpipes, and a solitary piper in full regalia entered the auditorium, followed by the chancellor of the university and the board of trustees and other officials, all in their lovely red robes and soft black academic caps, along with the guest of honor. It wasn't a huge room, so we weren't too far from the aisle or the podium, and at the first glimpse of that utterly familiar face I felt a quizzical sense of comfortable recognition: yes, that's Bill Clinton, we're in the same room after all these years, how bizarre, but how…normal it feels. I've followed his career, listened to his speeches with attention and admiration, watched him on television so many times and for such a large chunk of my life, that he does feel familiar. All the mannerisms I've come to know were in evidence: the hang of the head while listening to the introduction, the wry little grin, the way he looks up and suddenly moves from introspective listening to engagement, and then to that disarming charm and charisma. A flawed man with a very big heart, and a true genius for connection. Someone who may even do more as a past-president than he was able to accomplish in the office itself.

Since I was little, I've been interested in political speeches, sermons, orations, and the people behind them. A part of me, I guess, has always wanted to do that myself, but (although my mother hoped I might) I didn't go into politics, nor did I follow in the footsteps of my paternal grandfather and uncle and go into the ministry. I remember what must have ben a formativ time, listening to Jack and Bobby Kennedy, and to Martin Luther King when I was between 9 and 12, and talking with my parents about what they had said and what made them such gifted orators. In the intervening years, few people came close to those standards – Jessie Jackson, sometimes; William Sloane Coffin; Mario Cuomo was a reluctant but gifted speaker. But Clinton had it – perhaps not the ringing, memorable lines that will go down in the history books and enter the anthologies of quotations, but definitely the gift for connecting with an audience, and saying real things that created a movement of the heart, so that I often found myself changed through the course of his speeches. What also astounded me was his ability to talk extemporaneously and compellingly and with great relaxation about the most complicated subjects – I've never seen anyone, including Obama, who does it better.

Today was no different. After the degree was conferred, Clinton went to the podium and proceeded to speak, without notes, for over an hour. It was World Food Day, and he talked about farming, and soil, and feeding the world; he also talked about AIDS and malaria, about lowering the price of medicine and delivering it to the people who need it. That's the work he's involved in now. But mostly he talked, throughout his wide-ranging speech filled with stories of people he'd met and the initiatives they've taken, about finding and nurturing hope in ourselves and the crucial need to move forward as a world together. He pointed out that intelligence and dreams exist in human beings everywhere. What we tend to have, and a lot of people don't have, are the systems that allow, for example, medicine to be delivered to those who need it. "It's not like a food drop," he said. "You can't airlift medicine to Africa and drop it into a field." Putting together the money, products – often innovative ones – and people, and building systems for delivery and then for self-sufficiency is what matters to him. He also extolled the internet as a means by which people can multiply their own power and actually make things happen, whether that's tsunami relief or much smaller projects that require a collective spirit. He spoke about things like the postal code lottery in the Netherlands, wher epeople buy lottery tickets but the prize doesn't go to an individual but is split between all the buyers in a postal code – with the profits going to humanitarian work. 'What a different mindset that comes from!" he remarked. Or the small tax of 1 or 2 euros on international airline tickets, first imposed in France and then joined by other countries which has generated huge sums of money; his organization has been able to use some of the money raised in this way to lower the cost of AIDS medicine from $600 to $60 per individual in the African countries where he works.

"What I think has persisted in Canada but been lost in my country, until the past ten years or so, when it's slowly started to come back," he said, "is a spirit of communalism – a sense that we need each other, and we need to move forward together." That's what his speech was about, at heart, and it was one of the best I've ever heard him give. I wish the religions could do as well as this at touching that flame of love and hope that, I believe, burns within each of us. Bill Clinton didn't mention God, but it was a deeply spiritual speech, and I was not the only one with tears in my eyes as we stood to applaud at the end of it.

Riding the metro on the way home, I caught sight of my face in the darkened window. I saw the reflection of a thin woman, getting older, with lines around her eyes, and the strong feeling of optimism and inspiration that had buoyed me through the cold streets gave way a little. I felt my heart sink. "You're too old," that demon voice whispered. "You've missed your chance, it's too late to make a difference, to do anything new." But then I saw another face in my mind. "You idiot," said the angel on my other shoulder. "He's older than you are, his face is full of years, full of sadness and hope and determination, not that different from yours. He's not going to give up, and neither are
you. It's never too late."

I'm so grateful to have had this unusual opportunity and gift today, and happy I had the chance to stand up and applaud one of the great human beings of our time. I look forward to hearing what he'll do over the next years, and hope I can retain the encouragement I felt from his words. As another very thoughtful friend once told me, "It doesn't matter so much where you go in, where you put your energy, so long as you go in somewhere." In other words, act.

κριτικός

kritikós: "able to discern," from the Greek

Several recent conversations have made me think about the role of bloggers as critics, myself in particular. Just the other day I wrote a pretty harsh review of a film, and today I responded to a post and conversation at (p)(b) about literary criticism in general and a particular book, Caroline Alexander's "The War that Killed Achilles," and a review thereof in the NYTimes.

I've had some second thoughts about the review I wrote, trying to put myself in the shoes of the filmmaker if she were to read it. It certainly hurt me when I read negative comments in reviews of my own book, and I don't want to be unfair, especially to someone who is clearly talented at the art of making films and who could, I think, grow into a deeper interpreter of her own cultural heritage. So there's that.

Trying to be non-judgmental and kind has always been my desire. But when also trying to get at the truth about things, a sharp intellect and verbal skills don't always result in absolute kindness.

Someone close to me recently asked, basically, "Who do you think you are, setting yourself up as a critic?" suggesting that doing so is mostly about my own ego – a charge that probably fits most critics like a tight T. But, as if there were a wasp caught inside that taut shirt, the comment stung me.

There's a difference between having something to say (and trying to say it well and carefully) and pontificating in order to put oneself up on a pedestal. The Greek root of the word, κριτικός, has to do with that overused Anglican word, "discernment," (often trotted out in vague circumstances when people who don't agree at all agree to go through a "process" together to "discern the will of God.'") The "ability to discern" has come to imply a sifting of right from wrong, good from bad, making the best decisions rather than not-so-good ones. Not much in life can be put into such neat piles, it seems to me. I suspect the original meaning was closer to "having good judgment", a by-product not of innate intelligence or sharply-honed debating skills, but of long experience and wisdom — which is why it probably grates on us to read snarky put-downs of other writers and artists by young self-seeking critics. In my role as editor at qarrtsiluni, I have to pass judgement on other people's work; the result can encourage or it can, especially when handled clumsily, completely squelch someone's creativity. It's not a task I approach lightly, and it's only recently, on the upper end of middle-age, that I've felt comfortable at all about taking it on. A degree of humility seems fairly important, but even if you have that, the role itself can obscure it.

Maybe offering opinions is always fraught with peril. I probably won't stop, but thinking about what I'm doing, why I'm doing it, and weighing the potential results is pretty crucial.

What do you think? Just as the internet has allowed everyone to publish their work, it also allows us all to be critics. Is that good? How do you "discern" intelligent commentary and discussion from the clamor of the millions of voices out there, and is it even something you seek? Or is much of the popularity of the medium, really, just because we get to to hear the sound of our own voices?

Inauguration Journal: Monday Night

We were very fortunate to be given invitations, passed along to my sister-in-law by someone from another state who couldn't attend. These will supposedly admit us to the ticketed standing area behind the reflecting pool…after we manage to get into the city and through the security checks. We're not sure if they'll allow J. to enter with his camera and an extra lens; if they don't, we'll go into the Mall itself along with the non-ticketed public, which will be fine. At the right in the picture above are two of the special metro tickets issued for this week. We probably won't use them – we're betting on the buses as a sturdier mode of transportation tomorrow, and if there's a problem, at least we know we can get off and walk!

See you on the other side…

The Times in Transition

The January-February 2009 issue of The Atlantic has a story some may find shocking, others less so, speculating that The New York Times may cease publication in the not-so-distant future. I've been wondering about this myself, in the wake of so many newspaper downsizings, acquisitions, and closures — how can The Times, as much of an institution as it is, possibly maintain itself in its current form, let alone receive enough revenue  to justify the flight in readers (like myself) to the (free) online edition?

As the Atlantic article points out, the Sunday Times has been a ritual for many of us all our lives. In Vermont, readers used to have a copy reserved for them at the various general stores in the small towns, and you'd go down on Sunday mornings and see your friends while picking up the paper. My grandmother always spent Sunday afternoon doing the crossword – in ink – and my mother continued the ritual, as well as reading the entire paper. In our small upstate town, the arts reviews, book section, fashion ads, and Sunday magazine were, like each week's New Yorker, connections to a world we needed to feel included within.

We haven't bought a copy of either the Sunday or daily edition for years, but I read the online paper every day. This is not a good indication.

But as for many contemporary readers, the Times is no longer enough. There is too much fluff, way too much emphasis on style over substance, clearly the result of editorial decisions to try to offer small bits of enticing nothingness for quickly-bored, sound-byte consumers. Fewer and fewer readers are willing, apparently, to sit down and digest long or even multi-part articles by dedicated old-style journalists. Like everyone who writes on this topic, I worry about the decline of investigative and research journalism; the decimation of newsrooms across the country is now a fact rather than a worrisome trend affecting only the smaller papers. But it's also a fact that the internet has made it possible for each of us to customize our reading to our interests, our taste, our attention-span, our values, our political leanings. That seems to be exactly what we want.

"If you’re hearing few howls and seeing little rending of garments
over the impending death of institutional, high-quality journalism,
it’s because the public at large has been trained to undervalue
journalists and journalism. The Internet has done much to encourage
lazy news consumption, while virtually eradicating the meaningful
distinctions among newspaper brands. The story from Beijing that pops
up in my Google alert could have come from anywhere. As news resources
are stretched and shared, it can often appear anywhere as well: a Los Angeles Times piece will show up in TheWashington Post, or vice versa.

But the business strategy of The New York Times, as practiced since Abe Rosenthal’s editorship in the early ’70s, when New York
magazine first threatened the daily’s stranglehold on the city’s lumpen
upper-middle class—and as imitated by countless papers around the
country—has undermined the perceived value of serious newspaper
journalism as well. Under the guise of “service,” The Times has been on a steady march toward temporarily profitable lifestyle fluff. Escapes! Styles! T
magazine(s)! For a time, this fluff helped underwrite the foreign
bureaus, enterprise reporting, and endless five-part Pulitzer Prize
aspirants. But it has gradually hollowed out journalism’s brand, by
making the newspaper feel disposable. The fluff is more fun to read
than the loss-leading reports about starvation in Sudan, but it isn’t
the sort of thing you miss when it’s gone. Not many people would get
misty-eyed over the closure of, say, “Thursday Styles,” fascinating as
its weekly shopping deconstructions often are."

However, it's hard for me to imagine a world, or even a day, without the Times. New competitors like the Huffington Post, touted in the Atlantic article, have little appeal for me. The Times has definitely lost some of its luster, but along with the online BBC world news and the Washington Post, supplemented by the Guardian and a few others, these institutions still form the basis of my daily news, with a seriousness and depth that I find lacking in much – though not all – of online journalism. On the other hand, they are slow-moving behemoths, good at what they're good at, but no match for blogs in reporting and following unfolding events from the ground, in the first-person.

What do you think? Where do you get your news and why, and what do you predict for the future?