City of God

I've been hors de combat with the flu this week, but maybe I can return to the front lines now even though I am being distracted by a young woman suckling her child. I don't find that at all offensive and mother needn't be so discreet to cover herself. Both mother and infant are very attractive and give unmistakeable signs of intelligence and alertness. And yes, they're white. Wish I was less shy as I would very much like to take their picture. So glad to see them reproduce.
So today, with the main legacy of that vicious and unmannerly virus is a set of ribs that feel as if Mike Tyson has been practicing his left and right hooks, my initial act after returning to consciousness and being out and abroad was to purchase a copy of Augustine's City of God. It's one of those tomes I always knew I would have to read and dreading it. Three factors conspired together to make this the moment: first, it was 20% off, second I had the requisite $20 in my pocket, and lastly the first paragraph my eyes fell on after opening it up at a random page which said, "Now if wisdom is identical with god, by whom all things wer made, as we are assured by divine authority and divine truth, then the true philosopher is a lover of god." This is from the beginning of Book VIII on Natural theology, so in the next paragraph he explains that theology signifies reasoning or discussion about the Divinity,
The first thing that catches the attention is that while he is speaking about something known through faith he wants to reason about it. Although he was a Latin speaker from North Africa and could not read Greek, this is an entirely Greek thought. Faith is there, certainly, but in reason, not a deity. I take this to mean that he largely equated reason with the deity, to be an aspect of it...that wisdom is identical with God. His idea of Natural Theology apparently comes from Varro (about whom I know nothing) who would "extend his 'natural' theology as far as the visible world, or the World-Soul, but no further."
With such a discussion leaping off the first page I looked at, how could I resist plunking down my 20 bucks?

I don't normally like to comment on newspaper reports...correction, I would like to comment on them but I don't have much in the way of direct knowledge of how a story makes it into the newspaper. All I know is that I've been deeply suspicious for years of the honesty and integrity of the journalistic profession. I have noticed reporters have prejudices that go way beyond their political leanings and that they have few compunctions of hiding their biases behind a smokescreen of supposed objectivity. Consequently when one of those prejudices figures in a story I read it with a jaundiced eye.
Of all the prejudices journalists are prone to one against the police seems to be built into their DNA. A recent example in Victoria concerned a car chase in which the fugitive was shot to death by the police. In spite of the fact he had a string of convictions as long as your arm, in spite of the fact that he was driving like a maniac through residential streets, despite the fact that he tried to run down the officers who shot him, the newspaper account only seemed concerned with whether the police followed all the car-chase guidelines. Further along in the story his girlfriend tearfully told us all what a kind and gentle fellow he was. Nowhere did the reporter ask the question I would like to have answered: why the hell was this guy out on the street? Why wasn't he locked up in a cage where he couldn't do any more damage? But no, the assumption of the reporter was that it was the police who needed to be investigated.
It's pretty common to hear somebody say they hate cops, but I always wonder if anyone ever thinks about what they do for a living. I have and I wouldn't want their job if they paid me a million bucks. As a cab driver I have learned how to avoid trouble by being careful about who I pick up. I don't let anybody in without getting a good look at them. But every so often somebody gets in who gives me a problem and although I prefer to defuse a situation. But if I reach a certain tipping point I'm a big guy and I will give somebody the boot. However, if the bark doesn't work I won't bite. That's when I call the cops, and when they do show up I'm very glad to see them. My problem is now their problem.
That's what they do. They handle problems that are too dangerous for the rest of us. They are in a potential life and death situation every time they respond to a call. This is a very tough job. Of course I never see what they have to do afterward. I don't get to see the paperwork, I don't see how the courts treat them. But I get the impression they are treated with the same kind of contempt given to them by the media.
But to me they are guys who do their best to do a tough job as well as they can. I have a lot of respect for them.
That doesn't mean I don't get upset when I'm the one who gets pulled over. Yes, I can swear like a leftist if I want.
Today in the Vancouver Sun an article, a long, frontpage, special report with the headline, "He had a license to kill."

Crying in my beer

Whew. Got a glass of Swans' Heritage Ale in front of me. It's in a small glass, a ten ounce cognac snifter, and it does compare favourably to an excellent cognac. When I told the waitress I'd try a glass she poured a little taste, a little smple, a bit like someone taking a prospective bungee jumper to the edge of a cliff to give him a chance to change his mind. One little sniff is enough to tell you that it's no ordinary beer. In fact, I think it's more properly called a barley wine. That's what they called it the last time they made a batch, and I thought then it was the best beer I had ever tasted, comparable to a good Trappist ale. Chris was the brewmasteer then and you would never know from its taste what kind of a punch it packed. This one is much bolder. At 11% it's the kind of nectar to linger over.
If I'm going to step into Cafe Philosophy tonight (with the intent of reporting the proceeds to my legions of readers) I need a little fortification, but not too much.
A few days ago (I can't find it now) I read a column where the writer wondered where all the beautiful movie stars went. Of course one of the reasons I like old movies is because the actresses (Not actors, for Christ sake) were so beautiful. And today I was surprised to see at A&B Sound a new old musical. The movie is "Lillian Russell" and it stars the most beautiful of all the movie stars, Alice Faye. I may think Lana Turner was gorgeous and Hedy Lamarr ravishing, but every time I see Alice Faye I fall in love. She had a certain light in her eye, impish and wanton, but at the same time a lady who guarded her virtue. To see her is to love her. There must have been some error in the structure of the universe that we lived in different generations. But in another universe I know we'll meet as we are destined. And maybe in that universe I'll be worthy of a woman like you.

Episode one, chapter 1

I think I'll start a story today. It's for boys who like to read, and although it never really happened (as far as I know) it could have happened, and that's the main thing. It will be about the adventures of Anak laki laki, a boy who lives on an island somewhere in the south seas. It's probably best if girls don't read it, even mothers, who might not care to hear stories about giant cockroaches, birds who eat vomit and so forth. Besides that Anak laki laki gets in fights and doesn't always do what his mother tells him to do..many mothers might think such stories would be bad influences on their sons. I'm not sure what the title will be because I'm not sure how the story will turn out. For now I'll just call it

The Adventures of Anak laki laki- Episode one

Chapter one
The sky was bluer than blue. That was what made Ibuku so sad. From where she sat on the parapet beside the well she could see past the village spread below, past the line of pruas pulled up on the beach by the lagoon, past the smoking island at the entrance to the bay, all the way as far as the horizon. As far as her eyes could see, and there was nothing wrong with her eyes, the sky was blue. It was a deep blue, a purple blue, different from the blue green of the ocean. Not a single trace, not the slightest hint of a cloud could she see. It made her want to cry. She couldn't help it. A little teardrop formed in the corner of her eye.
If the rains didn't come soon her garden would be ruined. If her garden was ruined months of work would be in vain. She did not complain of how much all that hoeing and planting and watering hurt her back and neck. She didn't mind because she loved her garden, her garden was her pride and joy. Her fruits and herbs and vegetables were the best on the islands. The Dutch traders paid good money for her vegetables and fruit. But without rain her garden would wither and die. And how would she feed her son and her elderly aunt without money from the Dutch Traders and food from the garden?
It was early in the morning. Only moments ago it was very dark. There was no moon that night and though the stars shone like jewels in the sky the path from her house to the well was very dark. She did not care, her bare feet knew the way. By the time she got to the well the ocean had become the colour of melted butter. It quickly coagulated into a huge ball and leaped out of the ocean in a mighty heave until it was clear of the horizon. The sun was up. It was morning. And there were no clouds in the sky. It was bluer than blue.
Anak laki laki woke up when the sun came through his window. He wondered about all the little bugs that danced in the sunbeams. How could something so small be alive, he wondered. He was very comfortable, swinging back and forth gently in his hammock thinking of what he would do that day. A bit of movement on the bamboo rafters caught his eye. Straining to see, he could just barely make out a large lizard. What colour was the lizard? Sometimes it was brown like the bamboo, sometimes dappled like the sunlight, he was whatever colour everything else was. When it moved it lurched like it was drunk. At the moment it was standing motionless on his two right legs, his other two legs stuck out to the side. Its right eye moved one way while its left eye moved another way. Something else moved on the rafters. It was a big blue irridescent beetle crawling on another bamboo pole not far from the lizard, just minding its own business. The lizard's roving right eye was fastened on the beetle. The next thing the poor beetle knew it was in the lizards jaw. Now it would never get to where it was going. Whatever plans it had for the day would have to be cancelled. Its skinny black legs wiggled while the lizard chewed. The lizard closed his eyes and seemed very happy.
"That wasn't nice of you, old lizard." Anak laki laki said. "But I guess you have to eat, just like me." When he thought about eating a beetle he didn't feel very hungry. He tried to catch one of the little dancing flies with his tongue, not very hard.
Where was his Ibuku? Where was his breakfast? Anak laki laki jumped down from his hammock and ran outside to look for her.

St. Patrick's Day

It was a rainy St Pat's Day on Saturday but the lineups at the Sticky Wicket were already forming by early afternoon, and soon afterward the sons of old blighty were using the adjacent construction pit for a latrine. Later on in the evening a visitor from Prince George was determined to retrieve his hat down there. How it got there he didn't say. A passenger in my cab had idea of such brilliance he was clearly transfixed by his own genius. "You know," he said, "On St Patrick's Day every bar in the world should be required to serve as much free beer as you want, as long as you are of Irish descent.
My Mother's mother's mother was born to the Rooney clan so I guess that make me of Irish descent. If so, something must have gone wrong. Oh, I like my beer well enough and Guiness is one of my favs. But I do not like public drunkenness. As far as I'm concerned you shouldn't be out in public if you can't handle your suds. I really, really, detest drunks of the boorish, belligerent variety. Maybe detest is not quite the word. Contempt is far better. You might detest a mobster, but you feel contempt for the lickspittles who hang around the big man hoping for a little reflected glory.
My Catholicism was inherited from the Rooneys and I guarantee my grandmother had no use for drunks either and her strict moral code woulde have been horrified by the kind of behavior these so-called Irish descendants display so proudly. I think she felt the same way I do. They shame our race. I think St Patrick would feel the same.
At one time I was rather proud of my Irishness. You know, the land of bards and all that. And Ireland does have a literary heritage disproportionate to its size. But then there are the Boston Irish, of whom the most despicable is Edward kennedy. Even from this distance I am aware of how callously he walked away from the car he had driven into a river leaving a young woman to drown. I'm still wondering why he isn't in jail for that. Then there is that fool Bono who thinks he can tell the prime minister of Canada how to run the country. Considering the prime minister in question was Paul Martin I suppose he groveled instead of telling him to stick his head somewhere the sun doesn't shine.
Who was St. Patrick? He is the semi legendary bringer of Christianity to Ireland. Ireland already had a rich religious life, and the story goes that he engaged in a contest with the country's religious leaders. By winning the dispute St. Patrick convinced them to convert to Christianity. Subsequently Ireland evolved its own distinctive version of the Faith, being isolated from other centers of European cultural and religious development. Monestaries were centers of learning and art and only the Irish Church of Western Christianity retained a knowledge of the Greek language. Asceticism was in, mortification of the flesh. Things are a little different now.
By the way, maybe this is a good place for me to trot out my explanation for the legend that St.Patrick drove the snakes out Ireland. Nonsense, we are told, there were never any snakes in Ireland. I suppose the experts are right that there are no native Irish snakes. (Unless we count the Kennedys) But if you read your Herodotus you will find a story about a certain people (I can't remember which one offhand but I think they lived somewhere above the Black Sea) who kept snakes for religious purposes. Now, if you look at the names of many of the rivers that flow from the north into the Black Sea you will note that most of them begin with the letters dan, don, dn, etc. Irish legend claims a long ago people called the Tuatha de Danaan invaded the island. That means the People of the Godess Dana. Any connection? A people who brought domesticated household snakes with them? You heard it here first.

The voyage

One of my regular web reads is The New English Journal and one of the reasons I read it is because Theodore Dalrymple often appears there. He and Paul Johnson were the main reasons I liked to read The Spectator. But while Paul Johnson, a Catholic, is very religious it turns out that Dalrymple is an atheist. This surprising (to me) news he revealed in a NEJ article in a previous issue, and now elaborates on in the current issue. It surprises me because I don't understand how an intelligent person can not believe in God. There's lots of room for disagreement on the nature of God- whether he is good or not, male or female or does not apply, omniscient and omnipotent or limited in powers and knowledge just as we are but at a higher level, but that our reality could be anything other than the product of some great thought by a great being I don't even question anymore. That our physical being is not animated by some empyrean spark is impossible for me to believe whether it's called the soul, spirit or what. John Donne put it precisely in Air and Angels,

But since my soul, whose child love is,
Takes limbs of flesh, and else could nothing do,


To me the ultimate questions revolve around why we and the world were made, and while it may be nice to benefit from scientific reasoning which brings us airplanes and computers and such, its main interest to me is to help me pursue those ultimate questions. Atheists always demand proof. If God exists, prove it, they say, and since proof of the kind they want is wanting they say gottcha. One of the reasons I have come to believe in God is precisely because I cannot prove it. In fact, I cannot prove anything by their rules of the game. Where is yesterday, for example? Can I really prove by direct measurement and observation that there is such a thing as the past? If, as so-called philosopher Daniel Dennett explains, science -ie, proof- consists of things that can be weighed and measured, then what happens when I die? I won't be able to weigh and measure anything then, will I. No, just about everything we believe we believe on faith. The only things we know are the things we feel...pain and pleasure. Everything else is a constructed image in our thoughts and we believe the truth of that image because our senses convince us.
Even the most atheistic scientist has to believe in certain principles, among them that the universe always and everywhere has a consistency of behavior that can be calculated using mathematical reasoning. I happen to believe they are right in this assumption, and I also believe science to be the most precise instrument so far invented to examine the works of God. Unlike Muslims, I am convinced that he wants us to examine his works.
I also believe that God is good and loves us all. How is that possible, some atheists ask, when even innocent children suffer? Some religions have noted that the world is filled with suffering. Animals kill and eat each other in most horrific ways. I always think of a monstrous tarantula injecting its poison into a beautifully coloured song bird, cutting short his lovely melodies. The venom is actually digestive juice that liquifies the victim's insides which the spider then sucks out. It does seem as if a principle of evil has triumphed over a principle of beauty and goodness, doesn't it? And it isn't simply an accidental, contingent event. To live on this planet one must kill to eat. It's built into the system. So the Manichees (my label for what are usually called gnostics) erected an elaborate belief system on the premise that God (the God who created this world) was an evil being, a falolen angel, Satan, but that we humans were created by him using divine sparks of the real God. This theology has survived into recent times taking the forms known as Bogomils, Cathars and others.
In his latest article, I am glad that Dalrymple is at least an honest atheist, the only honorable kind. He is suspicious of theories that try to explain everything. The subject of his piece was a lecture on neuroscience that he lauded for its excellence. But he had reservations about the professor's confidence that neuroscience would soon explain everything about human behaviour, comparing it to previous secular theories-of-everyrthing such as Marxism and Freudianism which he rightly compares to religious fundamentalism.
He ends the article thus: Ergo, self-understanding is not around the corner and never will be. We shall never be able seamlessly to join knowledge and action. To which I add, not in a religious sense: thank God.
But isn't that a circular argument that comes around and bites its tail? Acting without principle is impossible. We do what we do for reasons, never mind how strange they may seem. And do I detect a sneaky version of a liars paradox in his statement? In saying we cannot join knowledge to action isn't he doing precisely that and making a liar out of himself?
Actually, I do not really believe that the only things we know are the things our senses tell us. There is something else. Why do we want to live if life is more often than not a terrible ordeal? We do, and we know instinctively that taking one's own life is very wrong. Not only do we desire to live, but we desire certain things of life. Mere eating and screwing is not enough. Accumulating worldly goods is not enough. Achieving great power and wealth is not enough. (or so I've heard) There is something else we desire from life- beauty, fulfillment, love, accomplishment, wisdom. We have an inborn knowledge of something we cannot satisfy through worldly means. Some take that lesson to heart and renounce the world. I believe we are not meant to renounce it. I believe life is precious and important..not just my own but life itself, your life, the life of the world. And we are meant to see it and learn about it and try to understand it even though we are doomed to always fall short.

Venice Beach Lady

After owning it for six months at least I decided to learn how to use the scanner on my Epson combo kit, and this morning I think I've figured out how to get a photo on the blog. Simple enough, but computer logic doesn't agree with me. Anyway, the first picture I'm going to put up is of a little girl who I saw on a doorstep in Venice Beach in 1989. If she was four then she will be about 22 now. I would love to email it to her if by some chance she should see this blog.
We had some heavy rain last night but judging by all the broken beer bottles on the streets and sidewalks it must not have deterred partiers. A party of another sort must have taken place on the train tracks below the Bayview construction site because there must have been at least a hundred discarded syringes piled up beside articles of bedding and clothing strewn all over.
But otherwise it was a pleasant walk across the bridge to Le Vieux Montreal where I am now having one of their tasty croissants. Thanks be to iPod that I can bring my own music. French pop music has its good points but doesn't take long to wear out its welcome. One of these days I'd like to get a set of earbuds that seal off outer noise. I kind of like being out in public but the music played in most places i otherwise like is atrocious.

The Three Hundred

I can never get over the huge capacity of the human race for absurdities. Speaking about the older Victoria buildings the other day I neglected another factor in the uglification of architecture in my time: the fact that with reinforced concrete just about any shape is possible. The result has been the kind of monstrosities designed by a countryman of mine, Frank Gehry. For some reason solutions to the constraints imposed by gravity, thrust and other factors involved domes, arches, vaulting, corbels and other strategems turned out to be beautiful as well as functional while the freedom of structure allowed by steel, glass and concrete only results in ugly self indulgence. But now the envirocultists are introducing a new distortion into the equation, the Green Building. Nowadays everybody has to pay homage to the envirocult. Never loath to embrace the latest Paris styles, San Francisco is getting a new Federal Building that forsakes the greenhouse gas emitting air conditioner, the electricity hungry elevator is only allowed to stop on every third floor, and the architect, one Thom Mayne is bewildered that people are so retro as to think the building is ugly. During a previous paroxycism of architectural lunacy the politicians in BC decided to ignore certain laws of condensation and evaporation when they made it mandatory for all new buildings to be as airtight as possible. This was part of an energy saving initiative called Powersmart. Who needs physics when you can think up a dumb name for a dumb program. Now, if you should go out on the town today you're sure of a big surprise. Brand new and nearly new buildings are often shrouded in tarps. This is because all the condensation has rotted the drywall and woodframe elements and made the buildings uninhabitable. They call them leaky condos, but that's a misnomer. A better tag would be condensominiums.
Herodotus is one of my favourite ancient authors and the first true historian. He has had a bit of a bad reputaion among modern historians who claim he made up many of the stories he relates in his History but his tall stories have a way of turning out to be true. Anyway, his book is primarily about the great Persian invasion of Greece, embellished by numerous digressions. A movie has now been made of one of the episodes in that history, the stand of the three hundred Spartan hoplites at Thermopylae against a vastly larger Persian army. I doubt if I'll go to the movie as it bears all the marks of a typically idiotic Hollywood travesty of history. Just telling the plain, unvarnished story in a telling way doesn't occur to them, and it would never occur to them to try to show what the culture was like. Because the culture of the Spartans was different. The Spartiate aristocracy was raised communally, innured to hardship and privation from childhood, and utterly devoted to war while they were supported by a vastly larger population of helots and perioikoi who had no status whatever. It is estimated that the male warrior population was a mere 3000 at the time of the invasion compared to a total population of about 60,000 in their area. The number of warriors was fairly static due in large measure to their custom of infanticide. Officially only deformed and unhealthy infants were "exposed,' as it was called but there was also a reluctance to have too many sons because that meant the estate that provided the money to keep the soldier equipped would have to be divided up into uneconomically small parcels.
The regimen prescribed by the Spartan system meant that their armies were feared throughout Greece, and considered unbeatable. They were the kind of soldiers that often did not have to fight because their opponents would run away rather than face them. They positively terrified the Persians who hadn't developed the kind of disciplined tactics used by Spartan armies. This is why Cyrus hired a later generation of Greek soldiers to help him overthrow his brother.
Thermopylae was a narrow gap between the mountains and the sea that was the easiest route to southern Greece, a perfect spot for a small disciplined force to oppose a larger force. Unable to push past the Spartans, the Persian general sent a scouting party into the hills and found a way around them. Caught in a trap, the Spartans refused an offer to surrender. This is where Herodotus' gift for storytelling is displayed at its best. A Greek and a Persian are standing somewhere nearby where they can see the Spartans before the final battle is commenced. The Persian is astonished at what the Spartans are doing: naked, they are doing up their hair...famous for their elaborate hairdos they wouldn't think of going to their deaths without their hair in a mess. The promotional still I saw in the paper showed a Spartan soldier with short hair which does not inspire me to see the movie and neither does the cartoonish look of some of the other photos.
It's often said that people never change but that's a drastic oversimplification. Cultural norms differ radically. For instance a news item in our paper reports indignantly that a violent rapist given an indefinite sentence 13 years ago has now been released. On the other side of the world in Iran or maybe Pakistan where sharia law is the standard it would have been the rape victims who were punished. In fact it takes a great effort to imagine how people of past epochs really thought but it's hard to understand one's own times without that kind of knowledge.
In the write-up the basic facts are there...the battle took place in 480BC between 300 Spartans and 'hordes of Persians' but the writer obviously can't take too seriously something that happened so long ago. The Spartans were "lean, mean, fighting machines" who "scored a moral victory." Somehow I get the impression that she can't get it through her head that they werre living, breathing men and that their "headstrong valour and unwavering discipline" were rather preposterous, like the "masochistic bozos" from the Jackass movies. Whatever they are. As for what kind of victory it was, the Spartans were wiped out because they Spartans simply didn't surrender, and the significance of their sacrifice was to delay the Persian army meeting up with the Persian navy. Athens subsequently defeated the Persian navy at Salamis which doomed the Persian invasion. The victory was that of Greek civilization based on laws and constitutions over oriental despotism. If it hadn't happened who knows what kind of a world this would be now.
Unlike what much of recent academic opinion would have it battles have immense historical consequences. It was after the Persian war, and thanks to the Greek victory that the great foundation builders of Western civilization flourished, including Herodotus, Plato, Aristotle and so many others.
Time to go, here comes my pint of porter.

The Great Conversation

Browsing through Chapters the other day I noticed that another bookshelf had vanished. The situation with books is not as dire as with the recorded music business, but there are fewer titles in stock as the years go by. The classical and jazz sections in A&B Sound shrank again a few months ago and I can't find the SACDs at all. I can neither afford the price of books, or find a place to put them in my little apartment so when I see something new I want to read I check for it at the library. And I have been known to read a book right in the store. I got through Steve Wozniak's memoirs in an afternoon. I didn't feel guilty, he's got lots of money and anyway he's a liberal minded guy. Good book, though. Another I read there a few years ago and enjoyed immensely was Flame of Pure Fire, a biography of Jack Dempsey, the famous heavyweight boxing champion of about 75 years ago. More than a biography, it was about how tough someone had to be to survive in those days.
But usually I prefer meatier reading and have a policy of only buying books I will read regularly and refer to often. I read the Odyssey about once a year, Parsifal and Herodotus, too. When I'm in the mood for a rousing adventure story Xenophon's Persian Expedition is hard to beat. A Greek army is hired under false pretenses by a Persian noble who wants to use them to help him sieze the throne from his brother. Cyrus dies in a battle and the Greeks, not too popular with the king they were there to usurp was none too happy with there presence, leaving them stranded somewhere not far from present day Baghdad, abandoned by their former Persian allies who have skidadelled, their generals killed through treachery. What do they do? Read it to find out from a narrative written by one of the participants. It's a long walk home.
I have a few anthologies of poetry and philosophy I often refer to. Some pedants dislike the idea of anthologies (from a Greek word meaning flowers) but too much poetry and philosophy has been written for a mere mortal like me to plow through it all so I appreciate the zeal and scholarship of the dedicated souls who assemble them. And I am often led thereby to investigate an author further thanks to his good work.
A poem is a thing best read when it catches you unawares. A good poem is savored and should be memorized so you can roll it around, listen to its music and ponder it at leisure. Donne's "Air and Angels" is one of my favourites. Twice or thrice have I loved you before I knew thy face and name/ So in a voice, so in a shapeless flame angels affect us oft and worshiped be. The prologue to the Canterbury Tales I like to recite when spring approaches, rolling my r's as if I was from Inverness: When that Aprille with its showeres Sweet the drought of March hath pierced to the root and so on.
Philosophy is much harder for me, not because I'm not interested in the topics. Au contraire, when I encounter some of these subtle and profound ideas my little noggin explodes at every line. I have objections, arguments. And every philosopher seems to invent his own language of terms and definitions that has to be deciphered before much sense can be made of it. This is especially true of 20th Century philosophers who are so dense and obtuse as to be virtually impenetrable. And the question that arises when attempting to read them is of course, "Is this crap going to be a total waste of my time and effort?" Because it seldom looks very promising. So I rely on the selections made by anthologists when I want to explore the thought of a philosopher new to me. I do think it's far better to get it straight from the horse's mouth rather than through somebody elses idea of what is being said.
I noticed on my browse through Chapters that Penguin has added a Great Journeys series to their Great Ideas series. I haven't read any of those yet but the teasers on the cover are tempting. Mark Twain, at the Moulin Rouge: Heavens! Nothing like it has been seen on earth...I placed my hands before my face for very shame. But I looked through my fingers." But the Great Ideas is an admirable collection covering a multitude of finely chosen essays from philosophers, saints and assrted essayists. Schopenhauer, Nietszsche (I can never spell his name), Ruskin, Marcus Aurelius (one of Rome's great emperors and a philosopher of the Stoic school: A little flesh, a little breath, and a reason to rule...that is myself), George Orwell (Political Language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind)
This is The Great Conversation in action and there is no more exciting game, sometimes taking the form of music, sometimes art or architecture, sometimes ideas, sometimes religion, but it's the real thing, the big leagues. It makes football, hockey, mountain climbing, and even sex seem dull and boring. Over the ages men have starved, fought, frozen, for the sake of the Great Conversation. For the sake of Marx probably 100,000,000 people died in the last century to explore the significance of his ideas. Every society is an expression of some facet of it. We are now living in an era molded largely by the idea of Nietszche that God is dead. And it is a man's game, the only game in town that really matters. In a very real way we inhabit the brains of Nietszche, Marx, Plato, Muhammed, St Paul. We see through the eyes of Rembrandt, Degas, DaVinci, hear through the ears of Beethoven or Alice Cooper. It matters, seriously and grievously matters. It's best that we can at least read the program.
These little Penguin volumes are only ten bucks each, or three for the price of two and they will help. But they are hard work, too, like training for a triathelon is hard work. Now, it's a peculiarity of our time that treasure troves of music, poetry, philosophy can be had by anybody for the price of a couple of big macs. It's as if on one table someone was offering for sale some flashy glass beads, and at an adjacent table someone else was offering for sale diamonds and rubies. Or if you had a choice of eating moldy bread and dirty dishwater or roast turkey and all the trimmings. And it turns out that most people prefer the coloured glass beads or the moldy bread when they could have the other.

Harbingers of spring

Overheard conversation-
Gleefully; Daddy, Sarah picked her nose and ate it.
Daddy, covering little Johnnie's mouth: Shh

It was spring for a few hours this afternoon and I was luckily enjoying a day off when it happened. Walked down to see how Beacon Hill Park was looking. Crocuses fading, more daffodils, a few cherry trees blooming but most trees still bare. Young moms and young dads out with preschoolers. One dinner plate sized turtle spotted basking on the island in the middle of Goodacre Lake. Now I'm home, and just in time, too. The wind has come up, the sky has clouded over and small raindrops are tinkling against my window.
The afternoon stroll took me from the library along Courtenay Street toward Christ Church Anglican Cathedral on Quadra, where a well known bricklayer named Winston Churchill put in one stone. They had a new organ installed there about a year ago but I was a little bit disappointed at the concerts I went to. The sound didn't quite resonate and shake the building quite like I imagined it would. And I guess the organist was tired of the famous Toccata and Fugue cause he didn't play it. It's an old chestnut but I would have liked to hear it all the same. If I remember right I was catching the flu that month, and the weather was miserable.
Looking for cherry blossoms I walked down Quadra but since most of the trees are still bare I decided to detour via Humboldt Street and cut through St Ann's Academy. It's a beautiful building dating from 1871 and it's set in a beautiful park. Originally it was a convent with a residential girls school but now is owned by the government. One minister of our unlamented NDP government of a few years ago wanted to show porn movies there. I guess he thought it was a pretty funny idea. I didn't think it was funny at all. No longer an elected representative, I am sorry to say he landed a lucrative position at our university. Funny how failure in politics is no obstacle for career advancement. No hard landings for those boys and girls.
That part of town has a lot of old buildings, and looking out my own window at the new buildings going up on Tyee, I wonder why modern architecture is so ugly. Is it really so expensive to add details pleasing to the eye? Are glass, steel and concrete, practical and solid as they are, incapable of beauty? The older buildings along Humboldt are beautifully proportioned, and details in windows, doors, entryways, stairs, rooflines were carefully designed to please the eye. Funny how they didn't think anything was wrong with lovely ornamentation just for the sake of ornamentation. Actually, the new Mount St Mary's hospital on Fairfield is quite an attractive building, and unlike the stark squalour of the new part of the Jubilee Hospital, the grounds are lovely, too.
But long ago, in the early part of the 20th century influential architects adhered to the dictum, "Form follows function,"
and decoration for decoration's sake was repudiated. Luckily, Victoria's original growth spurt of the late 1800's and early 1900's preceded that lamebrain idea. We were also blessed with architects of vision and talent and the men who hired them had pride in their city, ambition for its future, and good taste. Even luckier, probably because Vancouver replaced Victoria as the economic engine of BC, our classic buildings escaped the wrecking ball during the booms of the '60's and '70's. Whenever I stop to smoke my pipe in Bastion Square I think about that and am grateful.

Precocious Jennifer

St Patrick's Day is coming up and sadly it's become just another excuse to get drunk. I was working one Bobby Burns Day and that's been turned into a bit of a party night, too. The bright looking attractive young couple I picked up at the student cluster housing was not going to waste the opportunity and told me they wanted to go to The Irish Times, a downtown pub well liked by the upwardly mobile in our town. Scotch, Irish, whatever.
"So you're celebrating Bobby Burns Day," I said, and made a few jokes about haggis and single malt. Then I opined that Scotland deserved praise for having their national day named after a poet.
"Oh," said the sweet young thing. "Was Bobby Burns a poet?"
I was a little stunned that, having graduated with sufficiently high marks from a Canadian high school to be enrolled in a Canadian University, she had never heard of the poetry of Robert Burns. So I recited a few lines of one famous poem that goes:
Wee sliket, cowerin, timorous beastie
Oh what a panic's in thy breestie...
I had memorized most of it for the occassion, and she was rather intrigued with the part about man's dominion breaking Nature's social union, seeing it as 'ahead of its time.' But they soon tired of the conversation and asked me if I had any tunes.
A few nights later I drove three generations of ladies into town from the airport, grandmother, about my age, daughter about 35 and granddaughter. Jennifer was one of those preternaturally bright children with the vocabulary of a well educated adult, enunciation as clear as if she had a diction coach, and well able to converse with her elders. Wanting badly to get in on the conversation with such a little elf I was very happy when she asked me if I was a cab driver.
"No." I said.
Her elders tittered a little at the pleasantry but Jennifer thought very seriously for a few minutes. I could almost hear the gears and sprockets turning and meshing inside her pretty little skull. "Yes you are," she said accusingly. She had got it. It was a little variation on the liar's paradox and there was no way she was going to let it get by her without resolving it. So I said "Yes, I am a cab driver. I was lying when I said I wasn't a cab driver."
This, of course made things even worse from a logical point of view.
You have to be careful with children because they take things too seriously. They don't really understand jokes, especially sarcasm. For example I was taken once to a baseball game as a boy in my home town. We had a baseball team called the Edmonton Eskimos. Innocently, I asked who they were playing against. "The Brooklyn Dodgers," I was told. I knew who the Brookly Dodgers were. They were in the world series on the radio. I knew the names of the players, had seen their faces on bubble gum cards. So when the Eskimos beat them I thought we must have one of the best teams in the world. It was years before I realized that it was a joke.
Anyway, I changed the subject, and remembering that she had just turned six offered to recite her a poem by A.A. Milne. It goes:
When I was One
I had just begun
When I was Two
I was nearly new
When I was Three
I was hardly me
When I was Four
I was not much more
When I was Five
I was just alive
But now I'm six
And I'm clever as clever
And I think I will be six
Forever and ever.

She asked me to repeat it a few times until she had almost memorized it but by that time we were at the hotel. Just before she got out I turned around to look at her and found her eyes boring into mine. I couldn't help thinking of those stories in Irish folklore where the fairies exchange one of their children for one of ours.
But the main thing I thought about was something I have thought about many times before. How is it that a young child who is naturally curious with the enchanting world he has been born into comes out on the other end of twelve years of school knowing nothing, interested in nothing, culturally impoverished? Energetic and bright at five, dull and listless at fifteen.
Maybe puberty is to blame, maybe it's a difficult test no matter what. The need to be cool, to be stylish, to meet the approval of the right crowd, to suddenly be ruled by your crotch. Or maybe something is wrong with sending children to a school away from home where they are taught by teachers who do not have any intrinsic love for the material they are teaching. But maybe poetry, word games, puzzles that tickle the mind, when intoduced to a young child can help as sort of prophylactic against raging hormones and indifferent teaching.
What made me think of all this was a nice little volume of nonsense verse I found in Chapters, our downtown big box bookstore. Put out by Everyman's Library, it is nicely bound, printed on good quality paper, and has a well-chosen selection of witty and clever verse of a kind that children would enjoy having read to them. Unfortunately, Chapters takes a dim view of people like me taking notes from the books they want to sell. "This is a bookstore, not a library." I was told by the security person. Fair enough, I have nothing against a store making a profit. So here are a few things from my own bookshelves that I think children might like.

It's hard to believe that the composer of the Wasteland could pen lines like these:

I have a Gumbie cat in mind her name is Jennyanydots
Her coat is of the tabby kind with tiger stripes and leopard spots

but further on the opening cuteness transforms itself:
She is deeply concerned with the ways of the mice
Their behavior's not good and their manners not nice

Yes, Jennyanydots may be cute and cuddly, but she is also a merciless killer. T.S. Eliot didn't pander to the modern urge to make everything nice. Never forget that children are savages, too.

Edward Lear, born in 1812, wrote a lot of nonsense verse for children. In his alphabet book,
Z was once a piece of zinc
Tinky
Winky
Blinky
Tinky
Tinkly winkly
Piece of zinc.

Ogden Nash, born in 1902:
I would live all my life in nonchalance and insouciance
Were it not for making a living which is rather a nouciance

There's lots of it. Infectious humour, love of language, quirky ways of looking at things. Maybe a few doses of good, light poetry would painlessly inoculate a child against the inevitable banalities of looming adulthood.
It was during adolescence that I discovered poetry, specifically e.e. cummings. Nice of him to do away with capitals, punctuation and such frivolities, I thought. And the subject matter was nice and racy and they provided lines for me to use in attempted seductions. A pretty girl who naked is is worth a million statues, he wrote. I liked that line very much. Nowadays I find his cheap cynicism and his Marxist politics tiresome. But as life goes on our outlook changes and ripens. How mysterious is the great power lurking in words that some of our fellow humans are able to discover.

Greenhouse gasbags

Last Wednesday I went to see a session of our provincial parliament. Nationally, we have two political parties strong enough to form a government, the Conservatives and the Liberals. The NDP, a coalition of big government unions and gay, environmental and statist activist groups are a distant third. There is very little difference between the Liberals and the NDP except the Liberals are stronger in big business circles. Former Liberal prime minister Jeqan Chretien is married into one of the wealthiest families in the country. In that respect the Liberalism in Canada resembles fascism, a system where the state allies itself with monopolistic business interests and buys off the public with bogus social programs: in other words a queer combination of Marxism and mercantilism. The Bloc Quebecois, devoted to the secession of Quebec from Canada, also has a strong presence. Here in BC the choice is between the NDP and the Liberals. Especially on Vancouver Island, once an important source of coal for the steamship lines, we have had a strong history of militant trade unionism modeled on the British pattern. As the coal mining industry waned the forest industry waxed. Also an industry requiring large investment in machinery and processing plants, it was also congenial to the large woodworking unions. Forestry is still our largest producer of wealth in spite of the best efforts of Greenpeace and the rest of the econazi crowd but has declining in relative importance to other sectors. The NDP has largely been taken over by public service unions who have little understanding of economics and see the taxpayer as a cow to be milked. You know, capitalism is the Great Satan and all that while Big Brother knows what's good for you. Big Sister, to amend Orwell slightly.
For the last few years we have had a Liberal government and our economic picture has improved dramatically. But the local Liberals are by no means conservative...with the one exception that they understand the importance of private investment to economic prosperity. However, they are not really opposed to big government. The main difference between them and the NDP is that they understand that if they are going to have programs with which to buy off the public with illusory programs then they need a functioning economy to pay for it all.
What prompted this long preamble is one of the issues du jour, global warming. I'll save my opinions on that subject for a future post. I will only say here that anyone with the brains of a coelecanth who looks at the evidence has to see that the global warming hysteria is the biggest hoax so far of this young century. Assuming that all politicians are not idiots, then they have to know. Yet they feel compelled to fall all over themselves to show how diligently they are fighting this fictitious menace.
No surprises that such a situation leads to absurdities. The NDP, the most sanctimonious of our political parties, is deathly afraid of the Green Party and has tried to outflank them on the eco front. Yet an NDP member calls for a statutory cap on the price of gas. In other words, while he is against global warming and wants to reduce so-called green house emissions, he wants to be able to drive his greenhouse gas belching dually around his riding without paying the world price for fuel! It looks to me as if he has stumbled over his shibboleths. In the NDP demonology pantheon, global oil companies are a greater evil than global warming...especially if it comes out of his pockets. Meanwhile, the Liberal goverment has felt compelled to deliver a major constellation of legislation devoted to energy policy which, we are assured, is proof of the government's committment to reduce emissions. The NDP is livid because one of the provisions is an incentive program for industry to develop new technologies to combat this bogey man, and if there is anything that gets the NDP in a lather it is big business.
The result in the parliamentary debate I watched was almost comical, although it is surprisingly easy to get drawn into the game. I enjoyed it. But I wish we had a true conservative party that had a policy of butting out of people's lives and concentrating on getting government back to doing the things they are supposed to be doing, like enforcing the laws so we don't have squadrons of drug dealers infesting the streets of my beautiful city.
It's funny how a post runs away on you. I had intended this one to be about some books I've been reading lately, but here I am back on the dreary topic of politics.

Esquimalt's five year plan

Esquimalt is the name of the town to the west of Victoria on the other side of the bridge. It's the home port of Canada's Pacific Fleet- such as it is. After WW2 Canada had one of the largest navies in the world but it has been in decline ever since. Especially since the '60's all our military branches have been demilitarized to some extent and become a wierd kind of civil service. Since the Trudeau era it has been politically incorrect to even think we should ever have to go to war and -eek- kill people. I mean, go someplace with guns and bombs and actually terminate their corporeal existence. Oh, no, tut,tut, we are Peacekeepers, and all mention of all that bad war stuff was officially discouraged- except when politicians wanted the votes of the veterans of those wars. Probably the nadir of awareness among our federal politicos concerning our military history occurred under the late, unlamented stewardship of Liberal Paul Martin when he made a speech about Canada's role in the D Day operation. Apparently neither he nor any of his speechwriters knew the difference between Normandy and Norway, as in the speech Norway was represented as being the site of the D Day invasion. On another occassion the defence minister spoke about the remarkable exploits of our sodiers in the famous WW1 battle of Vichy France. Not only did he get the place wrong, but he was probably confused about which war was which. Vichy France was the part of France left to more or less run itself during the German occupation of WW2. Vimy Ridge was what he meant, a horrific battle in which Canadian troops succeeded in dislodging German troops from some miserable hill in northeast France in WW1. It was an iconic battle where a Canadian army fought under a Canadian general in a European war and succeeded where the Mother Country failed. When the faux pas was brought to his attention the minister snapped that a defence minister didn't have to know anything about history. So it's no wonder our navy is so dilapidated. I read the other day that our only supply ship is in such bad shape that it can no longer sail, leaving our warships without a refuelling at sea capacity.
Naturally, a decline in the size and quality of our navy has led to a decline in the fortunes of Esquimalt which has a bit of a seedy reputation in the Capitol District. According to a piece in the Times-Colonist today the mayor of the town, Chris Clements, is working on a plan of renewal for the town center. "It's a huge opportunity to shape the community," he enthuses. Reading further it's not surprising to find the usual buzz words. It's a planning process, it will be open and accountable, environmental standards, blah blah, visions of a pedestrian friendly village atmosphere, blah blah. Public facilities are 'aging.' Because of the region's booming economy land values are rising and horror of horrors, developers have been making enquiries. We must hire a consultant! Nowhere in the piece is anything mentioned about how much the whole thing will cost or how it will be paid for.
I have a suggestion for Esquimalt taxpayers: let the developers make their proposals. To be sure the world is full of quick buck artists, but there is nothing wrong with someone wanting to make a profit. Developers have to know their business or they would be broke. Some of them are immensely creative and all of them know how the business works far better than some recently retired (ie, dis-elected) politician. They know the costs involved, they know the pitfalls, they know what works and what doesn't. And best of all developers know where to get money- investment money. (If he doesn't, and wants money from the town, then beware)
But for some reason saying the word developer in Victoria is like saying Hitler in Jerusalem. All hell breaks loose whenever a developer comes up with a proposal to redevelop a piece of property. Pressure groups form. Letter writing campaigns are launched. Lawsuits are filed. Until the poor developer gives up or the proposal is so watered down it is no longer of any interest whatsoever. That's the way things are in Victoria. The reporter never thought to question the assumption that all things good proceed from government action. You would think the example of the Soviet Union and all their ineffectual five year plans and great leaps forward would have taught the world a lesson, but I guess that news has yet to reach the jounalism schools.
One of the mayor's comments especially exasperated me. He deplored the evils of 'piecemeal' development. Well, the whole of Victoria is a panorama of piecemeal development. That's what makes it such a lovely city.
In other news a certain "Ottawa based" Theresa Ducharme spoke Saturday on the topic, "Walking together, Expanding the circle." Not at all clear on what that could possibly mean, further reading disclosed that it was about race and sex based violence, hope and healing, and the right to safety in our own country. Sponsored by the Anglican diocese it is hoped that it will help redress the 'harming the aboriginal way of life' done in the past by the church.
I was rather sorry the picture of Miss Ducharme wasn't a little bigger as she seemed quite attractive. She reminded me a lot of some of the very beautiful young Cree ladies I used to know in Edmonton. Golden, glowing skin, raven hair, eyes simultaneously fierce and modest, and sexually agressive, they certainly captured the attention of my younger self.
Reference was made in the article to the Picton murders (alleged, I think I am required to say) and that murders of prostitutes in Vancouver's downtown eastside have not ceased since he was taken out of circulation. Why did I get the idea that they at least hoped they hadn't- otherwise there would be no further need for funding groups like theirs. Oops, did I really say that? But you know we already have laws against assault and murder and a very large law enforcement establishment to enforce them. So instead of touring the country making speeches to guilt ridden white church groups, why doesn't Miss Ducharme lead a campaign on the Indian reserves discouraging young native girls from becoming prostitutes, and trying to reduce drug and alcohol abuse? But I guess that would be too logical, and there's no money in it from funding agencies.
And if she really, really cares about the undoubtedly horrific circumstances of natives in Canada, she should work terelessly for the abolition of the Indian Act, the disbanding of reserves, and the integration of natives into the life of the country. Give the native peoples title to their present reserves with the right to buy, sell, develop, borrow money on just as every other Canadian. There is nothing more harmful to natives than the welfare mentality. There is an insulting little bit of doggerel I heard as a boy. I didn't know then what it meant, but I do now. It goes, "Hi yo Silver, Tonto's in the air, Tonto's lost his underwear. Tonto say, me no care, Lone Ranger buy me brand new pair." The thing about vicious little bits of folk verse is that there is often a kernal of truth to them. Otherwise there would be no point to them and they would be forgotten. Natives have to do for themselves. People come from all over the world to enjoy the fruits of the Canadian system. Like all others it has lots of flaws but I don't know of many that can compare.
I've been posting this from Swan's, a pub that brews the best ales in Victoria. And as my typing skills are not very good under the best of circumstances, I will now sign off for the day.

Postmodernism

My first computer was an iMac and I've only used Macs ever since. This is one decision I've never regretted. Although I'm by no means a cultist, I admit I follow the company's fortunes in a way that would never occur to me in connection with, say, a maker of toaster ovens. I admire the way Apple Inc always innovates even if sometimes the innovation flops. And then there is the phenomenal Steve Jobs. If Steve Jobs ran for president I would vote for him in a minute if I could, whatever party he represented. He's a problem solver who can grasp both the details and the big picture at once, make decisions about which direction to take, and even when he's up to his ass in alligators he never forgets he's there to drain the swamp.
Often on Apple's website cutting edge artists explain how Macs help in their work. For a high tech company like Apple it's innovate or die, but innovation in art usually makes me cringe. I was reminded of that when I had the opportunity to spend some quality time in the presence of some of the great masters of Western art. Paintings by Rubens, El Greco, Rembrandt, Poussin and several others were on loan to the Victoria Art Gallery from the National Gallery. I've never been especially affected by paintings as such but even I was awed by the way the colours seemed to have an inner glow. My favourite was by an artist I had never heard of before, one Paulus Bors. It depicted an unusual subject, the annunciation to the Virgin Mary of her imminent death. An angel hovered above her and an ethereal light from heaven bathed them both. It made me think of my mother's brother who died only a few weeks ago. Death, struggle,love, birth, creation, the themes of art always remain the same and to some extent every age is judged by how it reinterprets those themes.
How will our age be judged? I think we may be the laughing stock of history if the exhibit in the adjacent room is any indication. I'm sorry if these words hurt the feelings of the artist but it can't be helped. Her work, installation art I believe it's called, consists of piles of fabric arranged in painstakingly contrived ways on the floor or tables. The one that stands out most in my memory resembled the contents of the stomach of some huge prehistoric bird, emptied after a bad meal, furred with putrefied mold. Vague shapes suggestive of decomposed body parts protruded here and there. I'm sorry, but if this is going to be called art then we're going to have to think of another word to use to designate the paintings of the 17th century Flemish masters.
Postmodernism is a philosophy that claims there is no absolute truth...and they are absolutely sure of it. They think that truth is whatever you want it to be, provided you have the power to enforce your version of truth on society. That's why modern artists are politicians and salesmen, but not really artists. They trade in whatever is grotesque and shocking, but they have been doing it for so long now that even they must be bored with their own productions. Far from being the heroic rebels they like to think they are, they have become the elite, the mainstream. They are in positions of power and their art their art is prescribed for us like an old time medicine: it may taste awful but it is good for you. But of course we poor plebians are incapable of knowing what's good for us without the guidance of their superior wisdom.
Naturally, these elites do not like traditional art...probably because they are made to look so bad by comparison. They especially despise anything to do with Christian symbolism, which is why they are so eager to remove crosses from public spaces. It isn't necessary to be an avowed Christian to acknowledge and appreciate the riches of our Christian heritage
Isn't it time for us plebians to push back? But we who venerate our magnificent cultural legacy must employ the methods that made it so great. Although postmodernism is the enemy we cannot hate it. We have to engage its arguments with reason and logic, and we have to use persuasion rather than force and political power to counter the Talibanization of our cultural monuments.
Closely related to postmodernism, utilitarianism has also had a corrosive effect on our society by insisting that survival and the needs of the body are all that matters. On the contrary, I believe the reason we want to live has more to do with the needs of the soul than the needs of the body. Rather than being merely something peripheral to life, the search for beauty and truth is central. We don't live to eat, we eat to live, and we live not just to find pleasure and happiness but to enrich our souls and try to make our own contribution to that legacy handed down to us by our parents.
Innovation in art has been mainly concerned with technique. In the 18th century the innovation of equal temperament tuning made possible the exploration of key signatures in the 19th century possible. The innovation of the Internet has made it possible for people like me to bypass publishing houses and editors. But the themes of art and thought remain the same throughout the ages and are only reexamined and reinterpreted by each generation as perspectives change. We are thereby deepened in our understandings.