Hockey Violence, not a proud Canadian tradition!

Canada Russia, 1972, the film (all four hours of it!) aired again last night on CBC. Having seen it at least half-a-dozen times before, I wondered what the sense was in seeing it again, this time with my American-born wife of nine years.
Whether or not the seriousness of the competition depended for its frenzy, in part, on the Cold War waging between Russia and the West, this was definitely a "mini-war" with sticks, bodies, pucks and "chirping" words of invective as the weapons on the ice, not to mention diplomatic strategy, distrust, trickery, lying, failing to keep commitments, and geo-politics off the ice.
Playing while virtually unconscious from a concussion, and scoring the winning goal in the final game, to give Canada the series win, Paul Henderson, has become a walking, talking emblem of the series in this country. Ken Dryden, the scholar in the team room, had both "highs" and "lows" riding almost exclusively on the number of goals scored in his net. Harry Sinden and John Ferguson, he of infamy in a Canadiens sweater for many years, distinguished themsevles by their ruthless, often panic-stricken decisions and "take-no-prisoners" approach, and Phil Esposito showed the power of leadership, even superior to that of the supposed leaders, Sinden and Ferguson, who were not trained in active listening skills.
But it was the immature, incessant getting-in-your-face "slash and burn" of people like Clarke, Bergman and Cashman, not to fail to notice or mention a similar approach of several Russian players that produced pools of blood, a sliced tongue, and a career-ending slash on Valery Kharmalov's ankle and a wave of embarrassment, angst and disgust among Canadian "intellectuals" as they are so named and so despised by the "hockey crowd".
The anti-intellectualism of this country, epitomized by the "hockey crowd," is nothing short of racist.
It was demonstrated in the contempt of his team-mates for Ken Dryden, inside and outside the dressing room, until he played an important role in the final victory; it continues today in the "Coach's Corner" with Don Cherry and Ron Maclean on
CBC's Hockey Night in Canada.
It is a reverse form of snobbery, given the glacial movement to change the game, even to remove the blind-side head-shots, and the icing rule, both of which have ended careers unnecessarily. "We may not be as 'smart' as the rest of you, but we know that hurting other people in violence is what the people buy tickets to see!"
And the bread and circuses continues, at somewhere between $200 and $2000 for a single seat in the Conference Final between Montreal and Philadelphia just last month in the Bell Centre.
It was in 1976 that Judy LaMarsh chaired a Royal Commission on Violence in Hockey. In a formal submission to the commission, I wrote then that only if and when the advertisers stand up and really threaten to remove their dollars from these spectacles, will the violence cease. However, why would the NHL attempt to restrict the flow of dollars from advertisers? And thirty-four years later, that still holds true.
Like sex, violence sells both tickets and the products of its long waiting line of advertisers.

Arizona...tip of the iceberg on race!

Randall Amster.Peace educator, author, and activist
Erasing Arizona: Dark-skinned Mural Faces Ordered "Lightened" to Appease Bigotry from The huffington Post, June 5, 2010)It is difficult to fully explain the impacts of Arizona's burgeoning and overt anti-immigrant climate these days. To outsiders it must seem like either the inmates have finally taken over the asylum, or alternatively that someone is finally standing up to an inept federal government. To those of us living here, it further appears as either a formalized decree of misguided policies that have long been in place below the radar, or a chance to finally push a brewing agenda to its logical and necessary extreme on a statewide scale. While all of these sentiments possess a kernel of truth, more to the point is that Arizona today has in many ways simply become a veritable theater of the absurd.

To wit: legalizing racial profiling, banning ethnic studies, dismissing teachers with accents, lauding "ethnic cleansing" policies, militarizing the border, seeking to abolish the 14th Amendment (the one that makes the bill of rights applicable to the states and makes anyone born here a citizen), and more. Still, all of this pales (pun intended) to a recent localized atrocity that speaks volumes to the climate of antipathy and purification being plied here in the desert. In a twisted feat of modernized and imposed "passing," artists in Prescott have been pressured to "lighten" the dark-skinned faces on a just-completed public mural due to a backlash inspired by a city council member who said that he failed to see "anything that ties the community into that mural."
Racial purification, ethnic cleansing, blatant bigotry, and the far less blatant, and much more sinister kind of sophisticated bigotry that Vice-president Joe Biden spoke of when he was a candidate for President...they are growing! It is not creeping so much as galloping across the continent as immigrants of a different skin colour and a different accent are drawn from their native lands to North America, where, as one graduating class from UNC Chapel Hill was told last week, "With your graduation from this university, you have won the jackpot!" In global terms, it is true that graduates from a respected North American university, compared to the deprivation, starvation, squalor, disease, death and corruption in much of the rest of the world, have indeed 'hit the jackpot'.
In the U.S., according to ABC News, June 4, 2010, 1 in 6 marriages are between whites and blacks, although the ratio of white males with black females "pales" when compared to the reverse. There is an extremely competetent, intellectually brilliant, socially and ethically committed black president for the first time. Many governors and mayors come from a racial minority. And yet, the colour of particularly some of the south-western states is "tanning" as the flow of Latino immigrants continues to outstrip the white birth rate.
And all of this is happening when the country is at war:
in Iraq,
in Afghanistan,
on Wall Street,
in the Gulf of Mexico,
in the ghettos in each city in the land,
on the border between the U. S. and Mexico, against the importation of drugs and the export of arms in the "drug wars."
Each "issue" in the U.S. seems to take on a "war" metaphor, given the highly intrusive military presence in the psyche of the nation. This is a tradition of militarism born at the end of a gun, in rebellion, nurtured with virtual reverence in each military college and training institution, revered by every single volunteer in the history of the country's military, (as if there has never been an unjust war fought by the U.S.)Whenever a military general, like Colin Powell, speaks, the country goes into a deep and reverential silence of awe and respect regardless of the content or purpose of the address!
It seems that whatever frightens the U.S. collective consciousness drives the citizens to fire a bullet at the object of that fear: sometimes the bullet is metal, and comes from the barrel of a gun (missile, aircraft carrier, drone,) and in a parallel paradigm, sometimes (more often) from the pens of the various ubiquitous legislators. Attack, attack attack...the best defense is a good offense...do unto others before they do unto you...as if each and every enemy is now in the crosshairs...And that mentality easily trumps collaboration, mediation, arbitration, negotiation, and community building, except when the community takes up "arms" against the "enemy". Hard power will always win over soft power in such a culture!And the current enemy in Arizona is the wave of Latino's all of whom want a better life for themselves and for their families.
Yet, with unemployment running at 8-9%, and the ghetto's predominantly filled with people of colour and poverty, and often no immigrant status (in the words of the U.S. government "aliens", I know, I was one in spite of the fact that I was working on a valid visa!)and the rich getting richer faster than the poor are becoming poor, the clash of disparity between those who have and who see their share of the pie threatened and the wannabe's frightens the weak politicians who "cave in" to the demands of the excessive fear they meet in their town-halls. Frightened voices are loud, and angry and impatient, and demanding and relentless and basically stupid and ignorant and "something has to be done immediately!"
It is racism; it is the have's vs. the have-not's, and putting up a legal "wall" against those who would presume to want a piece of the "golden pie" on which the country prides itself. If we can put up a wall, and draw a line in the sand, then we can get "control" back of our country...seems to be the mind-set of the perpetrators of this injustice.

I wonder what the Lady of the Statue of Liberty is thinking:
Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!'
She would not even be built today, even as a gift from the French! Certainly not in Arizona!

The Fire Still Burns...after nearly seven decades

When you have seen 24,000-plus dawns and evenings, there is a real danger that the evenings, the closings, become more visible, more deeply felt and a little more anticipated that the dawnings.
After nearly seven decades, one senses that there are not another seven, perhaps not even one more decade, and the perspective, while inevitable, is a little difficult to swallow at times.
Time for reflection, not so much as in time during the day, but more as in the inevitability of reflection is more the order of the day.
It is not that septaguinarians have a more acute memory than others; it is more like the fact that the important things in our lives are in the past, and the farther back they are, it seems, the more likely we are to bring them to consciousness.
I have trouble remembering what I had for lunch yesterday; and yet, I can certainly recall the conversation on the shore of Georgian Bay in which, at eighteen,I pointedly and matter-of-factly posited the view that I would not see forty, because it was likely that I would burn out, rather than rust out.
And here it is a quarter century after the fourtieth calendar year!
And, there are signs of rust, but there are also still signs of "fire" inside my belly.
* the fire of passion that pushes every conversation to its most extensive degree of disclosure, and of new insight, regardless of the participants
* the fire of hope in the life that pours from the two-and-a-half month-old grand-daughter's eyes, whose picture adorns my desk-top
* the fire of pride in the accomplishments of three graduated daughters who serve their colleagues/students/clients with distinction;
* the fire of gratitude for the many events that have shaped my consciousness, including those that were most painful, when they were occurring
* the fire of appreciating the delight in writing, in reading and in being made aware of the most demanding and the most complex realities of human lives, even though many are almost completely incomprehensible
* the fire of the memories of the interesting people whose hands I have had the honour of shaking, while they were unaware of the deep impressions they were making on my psyche
* the fire of tears shed for words and memories not shared with those who went before
* the fire of learning whether it be literature, history, education, philosophy, theology or pastoral counselling
* the fire of a great teacher sharing his/her most intimate insights about the subject(s) of his/her life
* the fire of a symphony orchestra rendering a Beethoven Concerto, for whatever audience, probably for their first time hearing the power of such a creative mind
* the fire of a deep and profound debate, disagreement, conflict whether it goes as far as resolution or not, leaving all participants changed from the encounter
* the fire of performances at the piano, in the classroom, in the TV studio, in the radio control room, on the radio phone, in the pulpit and carrying groceries of wealthy Americans to their cars, and the accompanying "applause" fitting to the moment
* the fire of a first motorcycle ride, and a first jet flight, and a first, second and third grand-child
* the fire of advocating for those whose voice seemed mute, when abuse poured with impunity that required "push-back"
* the fire of fear for the eventual 'last day' that everyone faces, and everyone holds within, because to speak about it is to cause 'discomfort' for others
* the fire of dreams still being dreamt and still being pursued
* the fire to read books, and to write books still undiscovered
* the fire to visit places for the first time, with a loving partner, whose presence gives life, hope, promise and cheer beyond her wildest imaginings.

Cultural Shift Needed to close Growing Income Gap

From the Fact Sheet of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives by Armine Yalnizyan

The internationally respected Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development threw out a warning flag to Canada this week.
It says the income gap between Canada’s rich and poor is growing faster than most of the other 30 developed nations in the world, and that our governments need to stop that trend.
The news is about as sober a warning as it gets. Canada is falling behind internationally. We used to be above the average when it came to income equality. Now we’re below average. And there’s really no good excuse for it.
As a nation, we are richer than most. Ours is the ninth largest economy on the planet. We have seen one of the strongest, most sustained periods of economic expansion in our history.
But most of the gains of economic growth have gone to the richest 10%. Earnings for those in the middle have been stagnant for 30 long years, and workers at the bottom are losing ground compared to a generation ago.

This is harldy news, since we have been hearing about the growing gap in incomes for the last decade, in both Canada and the U.S.
It is the culture that gives these facts immunity that needs to be changed.
And until the culture is changed, any attempt to reduce or eliminate the gap will amount to little more than "tweeking" at the edges.
Only yesterday, we learned that the five chartered banks in Canada earned a total of $5.1 Billion in the first quarter of this year.
By charging mortgagees 5-plus percent on their mortgages, while paying a meagre 1-2% on savings accounts, even though the interest rates are relatively low, there is a significant gap in those figures. Little wonder they are making huge profits, robbing Peter (the poor) to pay Paul (themselves).
More importantly, the literal "reverance" for corporations and the values of those corporations has left individuals, families and towns and cities at the mercy of the decisions and the values of those corporations.
Humans are considered "raw material" for the purposes of the accounting calculations in the corporate board rooms.
Use them as you would a piece of iron ore, in the process of making steel and spit them out when they prove to be too costly.
It is as if there is a finite "brass ring" around which only a finite number of hands can grasp, and the hands on the ring are attached to feet that are kicking all those who would like a piece of the ring away from even touching it.
One sector that is failing is the media. And we now learn that those media corporations that spend more on "reporting/writing/editing" than on newsprint will likely survive while those spending more on newsprint than on the "human" functions will not.
That is a reasonable and a responsible paradigm for other sectors...look after the people at the core function/purpose/essence of your business and there is a good chance you will survive and grow.
Even people like Lee Iacocca were yelling about the "merger mania" and the ruthless, greedy grab for the buck, at the expense of human beings, and jobs and the long-term survival of the economic system as far back as 1988, when he was the head of Chrysler.
Aphorisms like "being our brother's keeper" and "a hand up not a hand-out" and recognizing that CEO's don't need, deserve or can they sustain, incomes at hundreds of times the average wage of their employees. That gap used to be a comfortable 10-20 times.
And the corporations are putting so much money into the campaigns of all politicians that no laws can be easily enacted that would right the balance, because the people at the bottom of the economic ladder cannot and will not match the campaign contributions of those huge corporations.
It is not only money that has shifted the balance to the richest 10%; it is also a significant shift in political power to make changes.
And pieces like the one you are reading here, and the CCPA's fact sheet will remain lone voices in the wilderness, until the whole society erupts in a burst of consciousness that the people really do have the power to make change.
And yet waking up is not the likely result of an education system geared to the preservation of the political power of those in charge, and they are aligned with the rich, and the politically powerful, given the extreme sycophancy of the Canadian education system at all levels. We are breeding "politically silent" conformists in our schools and colleges!
We need an education of radicals, and in order to achieve that we need to find leaders who are unafraid of their own political reputation and for that we need educators and writers to remind us of those who "fought for justice and equality" in our past.
Only now, the face of those leaders will be multi-coloured, from multi-ethnicities, and from multi-regions of the world, and that new "wave" will require a significant shift in openness, receptivity and collaboration from the indigenous so that their new surge of energy, ideas and restlessness that accompanies all new pilgrims can make a meaningful difference in attitudes, and then policies and then the lives of individual families.
Where are the next David Lewis's and the Tommy Douglass's and the Ed Broadbent's and the Ed Shreyer's and the Stephen Lewis's? They are not apparent in the current political farce in Ottawa.

Domestic Violence (DV) more complicated than myths

Here are the facts. Nearly 250 scholarly studies (including studies by Statistics Canada) show women are at least as likely to initiate or engage with equal vigour in DV as men. Only 5.5% of all DV conforms to the gender paradigm of violent males who gratuitously batter non-violent females, and almost all of those men are extremely psychologically damaged (or culturally driven, a whole other ball game from normative DV). Self-defence accounts for only 10%-20% of female partner aggression. Fewer than 1% — not 22%, as often claimed — of emergency room visits by women are for DV assaults. False allegations of abuse, rarely punished, are at least as ruinous to men’s lives as actual abuse is to women’s. (Barbara Kay, National Post, June 3, 2010)
Domestic Violence, one of the most heinous of situations for police to investigate, and certainly one of the most heinous for family members to experience. And the myths that have grown up surrounding this horrible dynamic are just as horrendous as the physical pain that victims of both genders suffer.
I am a survivor of domestic violence, being on the receiving end of physical, sexual and emotional abuse until eighteen, at the hands and larynx and psyche of a troubled mother. And my father, the partner who "did not know what to do about the situation" was found in the middle of the night, behind the jacket-heater with a .22 pointed at his head, because he was at his "wit's end" in the situation. I was 12 that night and for 52 years, until his death, not a single word was ever spoken in our family to discuss the moment, its causes or its consequences. It was the great "family secret." This is the first time it has been disclosed publicly, both parents now being deceased.
Women as perpetrators of violence is not a myth.
Men as perpetrators of violence in not a myth, either.
What is a myth is that men are the single cause of family violence.
It is always much more complicated than that. And yet, our compulsion for simple explanations, supported by the facts of a larger body, and more muscular strength of the man, has brought us to the point where myths have to be debunked.
Men have to own their full share of responsibility for domestic violence, and so do women, something that has not been the case for far too long. And as long as both parties inflict physical, emotional and sexual abuse, without taking responsibility for their part, whether by overt or by covert attitudes, decisions and actions, the victims will show up in our hospitals, courts, classrooms, churches and morgues. And the myth of male "violence" and abuse of women, exclusively, will continue.
Let's hope there will be ownership and acknowledgement and a sharing of respsonibility for Domestic Violence between both men and women, at the conference on the subject in London this week.

Masculinity under Fire

In his now decade-old work, The Decline of Males, Lionel Tiger points out that now that reproductive decisions are the exclusive responsibility of females, and that those decisions do not require the participation of a specific male person, only his banked sperm, there is some danger that males will become (have become?) obsolete. Certainly, their importance, from the perspective of this anthropologist is declining and might quite likely continue.
Naturally this perspective, along with others of a similar vein, like the trashing of mostly male workers in the dot-com bust, in the Wall Street fiasco and in the housing bubble's bursting, has created a push-back on several levels.
On one level, it is finally being recognized that "Gender Studies" should, from the beginning have been focussed on both genders, not merely on the feminine.
On another level, we are quickly coming to realize that feminine symptoms of specific "conditions" like depression cannot be used to forumlate a universal definition of the condition, in a work like the DSM-IV. Male symptoms require much additional research. The Foundation of Male Studies is an initiative that strives to bring about opportunities for such research in academic centres across North America.
On another level, men are choosing not to lead in many fields, because they do not accept the conditions under which leadership must function. Those conditions have been severely impacted by the entry of female leaders into the field. One female member of the Canadian Parliament, previously an accountant, broke ranks with the Liberal Party's position on submitting MPs' expense accounts to the Auditor General. She had made a commitment to her constituents to be an open and transparent and accountable representative. Her standing in the party has, consequently, dropped, "for doing the right thing."
Pundits, males, drub Obama for being too "restrained" and not "angry" enough in his public statements about the B(ad) P(etroleum) disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. Are these males really seeking some political testosterone from the President? Are they finding him less "masculine" than the situation requires? As former Secretary of Labour in the Clinton administration, Robert Reich, has written in the Huffington Post, there are times when restraint does not cut it and vitriol is expected, and this is one of them. Today, Reich called for the complete take-over of BP by the government so that all its resources could be directed to the stopping and clean-up of the oil spill.
Masculinity is "on trial" especially among men who wonder what it is about them that is so objectionable. Masculinity is on trial among men who do not understand or accept gay men or gayness generally.
Earlier today, in a conversation about a "man" who has decided to have a gender change to become a "woman" I expressed the notion that we do not have vocabularly to express our confusion about such a decision. Will s/he be welcomed back into the situation in which he worked prior to the change? Not likely. Those people are unlikely even to find voice for their feelings, hardly knowing what their feelings might be.
Masculinity is under fire among men who do not know when or if they might be attacked by an angry woman, for something they did not even think about doing, simply because she knows that public support for her attack is virtually guaranteed.
Masculinity is under fire among men who do not know how to teach their sons about how to become a adult man. What was both expected and acceptable when the fathers were growing up has completely changed. Now men, who had difficulty knowing how to choose a life-partner for centuries, are totally mystified about what attitudes, values and political loyalties might come with their choice of female partner. Is she a feminist? Is she a ball-crushing feminist? How will I ever really know for sure?
Masculinity is under fire in the applications to the courts for child custody, but certainly not for child support. Men often find themselves on the short-end of the custody battles and the long-end of the support claims.
Masculinity is under fire in the schools, colleges and universities, with males dropping out, failing and failing to achieve their academic, cognitive potential in cultures that do not support their healthy growth.
Masculinity is under fire in the court and prison system where the majority of "accused" and of convicted and of prisoners are male...and their life-conditions explain some of the pattern, but not all. (To be continued)

How many other men are driven to "show them"?

(From an interview with Dennis Hopper conducted by Terry Gross, host of the NPR radio program, Fresh Air, which was recently rebroadcast, in honour of Mr. Hopper, shortly following his death from metatasized prostate cancer at the age of 74.)
When the young Hopper worked first with James Dean in "Rebel Without a Cause" he (Hopper) realized that Dean, only a few years older, was acting at a much superior level to his own. He asked Dean to teach him about acting.
"Are you angry at your parents and are you holding that anger inside to drive you to "show them" what you could become?" asked Dean in words similar to these.
"Yah, I am!" responded Hopper.
"Well, so am I and that is what drives me, as an actor, to show them what I can do!" from Dean. "Now, you are a very good technical actor and you need to forget about all that technique. When you hear a knock at the door, you go and answer the door, naturally, and only then do you react to the gun you see pointed at you. You need to be in each and every moment, and not in the next one."
Anger at their parents as the driving motivation/force behind their outstanding acting!! Imagine that!
I have been driven by a similar anger for nearly seven decades. And to some extent, I still am! Putting into words how I respond to various pieces of information, events, opinions and scholarship is my way of saying to anyone who might be listening (reading, blogging, reflecting):
This is who I am, and this is how I am and this matters to me!
I have no formal schooling, except the events of the last six decades, that informs this initiative. I have no formal 'title,' or authority or pulpit from which to utter these words. I represent no organization, no belief system, no social class and no affiliation. I am nobody!
But I certainly am not nothing, or no one, or without value.
I listened, for some twenty-plus years to a parent (female) who repeated in my face, as an echo on a daily basis, the words, "You are no good and you will never be any good! You are just like your father, no good!"
When I finished first year in university (U.W.O.), with a B average, I realized that I was so frightened of her, the B average was in response to my fear.
By second year, I formally and consciously decided, "I am doing this for me and not for her!" And, with final exams falling the week immediately following an auto accident, at midnight, after an eighteen-hour day of studying John Milton's Paradise Lost, I did not fare so well in my final report.
By third year, I had taken on the responsibility for the Arts and Science Ball, as co-convenor with Sheila Tweedie, since I wished to demonstrate to myself (and probably to that critical parent voice conceived and planted by my mother in my psyche)that I could do things and do them differently and creatively and with a certain panache.
We moved the dance from the traditional gym to the 'ballroom atmosphere' of the elegant campus dining room, after a formal audience to seek permission for the change with the then President of the University, Dr. G. Edward Hall. His only comment after the interview, "You two are very good salesmen." (It was 1961!)
We hired a no-name band then working at the CBC, directed by one Chico Valez, after decades of 'big-name' bands like Les and Larry Elgart, Glenn Miller, Benny Goodman etc. And we used as our theme, in the first week of an Ontario February, "Flight to the Sun" with faux Air Canada tickets and cascanettes from the Caribbean hand painted with U.C. Ball '62 as favours. And we hosted the first faculty cocktail party at the home of the then Prefect of University College Council, John Schram, who later became Canada's Ambassador to Zimbabwe.
After missing a few Zoology classes of one Dr. Helen Battle, I was summoned to the office of the Dean of Arts, who had attended the festivities.
His only comment, while disciplining me: "You ran a helluva dance; now go make your peace with Dr. Battle!"
The dance fell on my twentieth birthday, and it was the best birthday present I could have given myself at that age! I was becoming a real person, independent of others, autonomous from my mother and proud of the collaborative accomplishment of many classmates.