Through an Open Door

A good teacher knows that he or she at some point has to stand back. An instructor who stays with you overlong steals a crucial part of a necessary education from you. With someone always overseeing you actions there are important things you never learn: independence, mental courage, an inner vigor that can only come from taking your own risks. Every individual who has come to a point of appropriate self confidence has had to learn from their own experience. It is a hallmark of an exceptional educator to know when to let go. Likewise a parent must eventually let go to allow growth.

Whenever you see a powerful leader, look at what his leadership is doing to those who are followers, are they firebrands or are they weak and passive sycophants? The demagogue may think he is “strengthening” his followers, the faithful if you would have it so, but this is exactly the blind spot of an extrovert. Our inspiration can be drawn from faith, literature and other sources of lessons but ultimately the core of our inspiration must come from within us, not from our blind submission to external control.

Clement Okon, Brother in Law to the Former Minister of Internal Development Says Tick-Tock Time is Money and the Hot Babes are Waiting.

Based on my spam filter’s content (about 150 items per day in one account alone) somewhere I must have taken a survey. I don’t know what the questions were but apparently I answered that I:

-Have self confidence issues as to my manhood,
-I believe drugs can relieve those issues,
-With the above two items resolved am looking for a young hot date,
-Believe Nigerian ex-government officials are trustworthy, and
-Am desperately in need of watch that is exquisitely precise and conveys a great deal of social status.

Just for the record none of these items is fully accurate.

Hockey-How I Pick Who to Root For

Okay so in viewing how the playoffs go for me there is a ranking of who I root for. It goes like this

The Habs,
The Red Wings,
Toronto,
Any team from Canada over any American team,
Original Six over expansion
Eastern over Western teams
Northern over Southern teams,
If any of the above don’t apply the team with the most MSU connections, or
Against any team with U of M ties.

That is it in a nutshell.

TERMS OF DEBATE

Once again I have not been as focused as I should be relative to my blogging. Currently as I most likely have noted before I am reading a book on ethics, Being Good. In one section the author has offered what I view as a particularly insightful analysis of one of things that is wrong with our current political debate. This comes to the forefront today as the Democratic Party is conducting its Pennsylvania primary election.

The author Mr. Blackburn talks about how the way we phrase our ideas ultimately prevents us from addressing troubling issues head on in an open and meaningful manner. For example, if we talk about religious freedom we end up with the question of whether we are talking about freedom of religion, freedom from religion or freedom to engage in religion (or not).

When you talk about the freedom from something it implies paternalism. Using the term from appended to the word freedom albeit from want, from unlawful search or from slavery implies that government or some other elite should be making a determination wherein the larger community benefits from the constraint of some level of individual action. Freedom from hunger means that somebody will not be allowed to accumulate foodstuffs in excess of what they need when others are hungry.

Freedom from religion is tricky. Our constitution prohibits the government from either promoting or constraining religion. The First Amendment prohibits the federal government from making a law "respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof". The first part is the element most people don’t understand and which causes the major kerfuffle in our conversation on this, it is the from clause. No one is required to be religious and they have every right to be without a doctrine or theism. Without expressly using the word from, this is a from freedom. The second part of the establishment clause is the to clause.

A freedom to carries with it the connotation of a submission of the general society’s interest to the will of the individual. In the religious milieu our case law has defined this to mean that for so long as some higher more ultimate societal rule is not broken we cannot bar a person from a unique act that may be found to cause unease in others in their pursuit of God or universal connection. Snake handling and urine drinking are examples of this. Virgin sacrifice resulting in death or ceremonial and ritualistic rapes are examples of religious practices that would violate higher values.

The area where this all breaks down in our discourse is when we talk about the freedom of something. A freedom of something conveys a more generalized, more philosophical sense of what we are talking about as to religion. Thus people talking about freedom to practice religion, freedom of religion and freedom from religion are talking past each other when they say they believe in religious freedom. It is easy to be in favor of religious freedom or a free press until you get to the details of what that means.

Our politicians don’t address the hard questions head on because it is anathema to electability. We let them get away with it by allowing sound bite addicted press pundits present faux debate. Don’t you really want to know what they feel about the growth of Islam in America and the granting of tax exempt status to schools sects that view women as not entitled to suffrage? It is a freedom of religion issue. What about a ultra orthodox Jewish Sect if it had a similar doctrine vis a vis women and suffrage?

I guess what I am saying here is that it is easy to find common ground by using expansive terms, but we need to debate our stands on the harder issues, the from and to freedoms. In an age of global warming and diminishing economic power for the United States these debates are crucial and need to be honestly addressed.

To the Point-America in Decline

I know I said that my blog would not be political. However I heard this piece this morning and it so totally sums up what I have been thinking for over a decade I had to post it. If you think things are going to get better soon a rethink might be in order. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=89642189

Old Bloor Street is Coming Down

It is hard to write a blog, especially one that is not focused on the contemporary issues of the day. It is easy to rant and rail at the foibles of politicos and government policy. It is hard to talk about the mundane and keep it interesting. Real stretch to come up with that that last though, eh?

What I try and write about are internal things like my thoughts and fears in living day to day. Sometimes the details required the setting out of experiences and hopes; but this is not intended to be a diary. True North is a blog about observations and perhaps it is a starting point for a conversation. Sometimes this requires a journey back in time. Sometimes it simply requires me making notes about what I see.

Over the past two decades I have tended to journey to Toronto, Ontario twice a year. My stays have run the gamut from hockey hotels (the places where the out of town minor league teams stay) to five star places (the kind of joint where they would masticate your food for you at a price)

Normally these sojourns would be in mid-April and late November. Sometimes it would include a Labour Day trip. Labour Day trips usually ended up involving a trip to the Ex. The Ex is an experience. It is an agricultural fair and trade show located in the middle of a sprawling urban center. It is a county fair on steroids. You can watch people milk cows and the kids can ride carney rides. (Me, I don’t do ride anymore. It involves a story about a bucket or two of beer and a tilt a whirl a few years back). As you walk through the pavilions in addition to absorbing the smell of bovine urine into your clothes you can pick up free rulers (metric of course) and post it pads that say Neighbourhood Watch.

The coolest thing at the Ex is the human cannonball. I have seen these guys on television hundreds of times and blah, blah, blah so what. However when your are standing under the maniac’s flight path and you see him hurtling about 20 feet 4.5 meters above your head you realize just how nuts those people are. I am sorry I don’t see how this guy doesn’t soil himself each time the cannon goes off. To see what I am talking about check out http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Az566JcRjI

But I digress. Normally I love going to T.O. The food is so wonderful. Indian food, Thai food, Jamaican food and other cuisines abound. As you wonder about on foot here are so many different things to do. This time I found some old college buildings that looked like Hogwarts. Some fancy ball was going on and there were police everywhere and limos. Ah to live that life. Just down the street a movie was being shot. Tres cool.

The city is just so livable. However this time it just didn’t work completely. It probably has to do with the fact that this is the longest time I have spent away from T.O. in years. Last April I didn’t go because of my cancer surgery. Last November it was the flu and the weak U.S. dollar. In the interim my little piece of the world a microcosm contained within the confines of Bedford Avenue, Avenue Road, Bloor Street West and Prince Arthur had changed. The fortune teller, the little Mac’s store, the Swiss Chalet, Harvey’s Burger and the Bedford Ballroom all disappeared.

The Bedford Ballroom was the place where I could go hoist a pint of Smithwicks and not be afraid to be seen by my clientele. Located at 232 Bloor St West it was an old late 1800s building populated by University of Toronto students and staff quaffing pints, shooting darts and engaging in stick. It had great tortes and carrot cake. It was pool hall for people who drank and a haven for people who wanted to be crowded into a smoky bar on a cold winter’s night. The Leafs were always on. Where it was is now a four storey deep hole that will be the base of an 18 storey tall condo.

All over Yorkville the scene is being repeated. The Pizza Hut and the little Mac’s convenience store where I bought my scratch off lottery tickets from the old Arab guy are gone too. Condos being dropped into places where neighborhoods once were sucks. The foolish thing is that the moneyed want to move to where the cool factor is. When money pores in and changes the physical attributes of the place the essence of cool is gone. I guess the lesson is don’t let a friend go too long without seeing their face.

I don’t want to linger on the comparison between my lack of ease with this change and my lack of happiness with growing old, they are different things. Like that old song goes, “Life is change, how it differs from the rocks.”

The building at the top of this is the Royal Conservatory of Music. It gives you an idea of the kind of building that once populated the area. These structures are quickly going. C'est la vie.

TOPICS OF LATE

This is from a letter I wrote to a friend who was struggling with a relationship that was facing difficulty. Given the recent spate of responses to my last post, I think it makes sense to put this out there now.

No one else can give me the meaning of my life; it is something I alone can make. The meaning is not something predetermined which simply unfolds, I help both to create it and to discover it, and this is a continuing process, not a once and for all.

Milton Mayeroff, On Caring, P 62.