Principle versus pragmatics over Syria....Obama's legacy hangs in the balance

"After all, it was devotion to high principle that gave us Vietnam and Iraq."
This is the last line in a New York Times piece by writer at large, Sam Tanenhaus, about the declining presidency. The piece, entitled The Hands-Tied Presidency, appears in the Times, today, September 7, 2013.
While the people of the U.S. continue to ask tough questions about both the cost and possible implications of a military strike on Syria, both Secretary of State Kerry and President Obama have framed their argument  in favour of military action in high-sounding moral principals.
Is this a debate between morality and pragmatics? If it is, and Tanenhaus certainly infers that it is, history is on the side of pragmatics.
Obama, appearing at a microphone before departing St. Petersburg on Friday of this week, reminded his reporter audience, and the rest of the world, that while London was being bombed during the blitz by Germany in the Second World War, American public opinion was strongly opposed to becoming engaged in support of Great Britain, "even though it was the right thing to do" as the president put it.
Given the current state of both the culture of the United States, as well as the culture of the western world generally, high-minded principals have given way to narcissistic self-promotion for both individuals and nation states, and the pragmatics that make such pursuits the shortest and the most viscious, oh and possibly the most likely of success. No one really cares whom them step on, on their way to their millions, or if possible their billions.
National self-interest is divined by such a complex algorithm that even Bill Gates would have difficulty untangling it. And in the case of Syria, the U.S. national self-interest seems to be defined by the White House as protection from the chemical weapons of Assad falling into the hands of the thousands of terrorists currently operating in that country, apparently on the side of the "rebel forces". Another aspect of the White House argument seems to be the "line-in-the-sand" one of demonstrating that there are consequences for any leader to choose to deploy chemical weapons on his own people (or presumably on the people of his enemies).
General Dempsey uses the words, "degrade and deter" Assad's capability to use chemical weapons, in his presentation to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
However, what would be amiss for the U.S. to twist Russia's arm (really Putin's) to get an agreement to pressure Assad to sign the Treaty banning the use of chemical weapons, since Syria is one of only five countries in the world that did not sign that treaty? Make the arguments public, through all channels of public media, including a resolution to the Security Council, where Russia and China would have to declare their position, and by voting "No," they would, in effect, be giving cover for Syria's abstention from the treaty.
That process would require at least another month, during which other countries might have a different kind of change of heart, from that of the French president who came out loudly supporting the U.S. announcement of a military strike and now is pulling back from that position. The U.S., and especially the U.S. president, knows that military action will neither stop Assad from deploying chemical weapons, even if it deters him for  a matter of days, weeks, or even a few months, until the furor dies down, as it inevitably will. Let's not forget that his father held tyrannical power over Syria for forty+ years by killing his enemies within the country. Clearly the acorn did not fall from the tree, in the case of the junior Assad.
Weakening the presidency further, as Obama will undoubtedly and ironically accomplish, should he fail to achieve the necessary votes for his proposal in Congress, and as he most surely will, if he does not go ahead in the face of that political failure, could and likely would leave the U.S. Presidency virtually, if not literally crippled, for future occupants of the White House.
Ceremony and substance were originally included in the founding fathers' picture of the complex system of checks and balances between the three levels of the U.S. government. Crippling the most visible, and the most potentially unifying, and the most potentially inspiring of the three branches, will so emasculate the office that it will devolve into little more than the equivalent of the Canadian Governor General, who cuts ribbons, and pins medals on some deserving Canadians after some committee names those recipients. Oh, by the way, he also frequently represents the Queen and Canada at funerals of foreign dignitaries the Prime Minister does not think worthy of his presence.
Is that the kind of White House Obama seeks to leave as his legacy?
No!
Nor is this man not so bred as to have one of the more significant potentials to enhance the reputation of the country and the office to which he was historically elected. Is his courage, vision and patience up to the current task of avoiding military action in favour of so many historic moves, like having the U.S. sign as a signatory to the International Criminal Court where Assad could be prosecuted with as much if not more impact than a few mis-guided missiles will have, as to pressure Assad to sign the treaty banning the use of chemical weapons....now that would be historic...and would leave an Obama legacy worthy of the man!

Who did it? We could never really know....and so, what is to be done about Syria?

There is a very sad drama playing out in St. Petersburg, Russia, with the G20 leaders face to face in one room, for periods of time, including a formal dinner with conversation about Syria, with no consensus, and no likelihood of any movement toward a resolution of the Syrian crisis.
At the core of the disagreement, apparently, is who is responsible for the chemical weapons that were inflicted on the Syrian people on August 21, just last month. Russia blames the rebels, while the U.S. and France and a few other countries hold the Syrian regime of Assad accountable.
The United Nations inspectors, while focussing on the evidence they gathered, will not be able to discern the agent of the slaughter of some 1400 people, over 400 of them children. Yesterday's release by the New York Times, of a video purporting to be the assassination of regime supporters by the rebels, in cold blood, does nothing to bring world leaders to the side of the rebels. Neither do reports that suggest some 15-20% of the rebels are AlQaeda affiliates, apparently that translates to between 15-20,000 of the total of the rebels.
It would seem that the debate in the U.S. Congress is taking a turn toward rejection of the proposed resolution from the Obama administration, whose calculus on this issue has not gone according to what might have been their script. The British Parliament's rejection of the military strike concept, along with confusion as to what might result from a U.S. strike has lawmakers in the U.S. putting their foot on the brakes, not the accelerator of this proposal.
World Court, International Criminal Court, the United Nations, NATO...all of these have been proposed by several legislators in Congress, from both parties, as avenues to explore, prior to or perhaps never resorting to the military strike.
Everyone, however, internationally and within the U.S. does seem to agree that the cessation of the slaughter has to stop....but how to get to that termination seems to be a gordion knot which no one or even a cadre of countries can untie.
Reports from the inspectors will be available in two or three weeks, probably after the U.S. Congress votes, and Ban Ki Moon, Secretary General of the UN has asked the U.S. President to hold off inflicting the attack until after their report is released. Hawks, like John McCain and Lindsay Graham will not likely remain patient that long; they have been waiting for the administration to strike Assad's regime for two years.
We continue to hold out hope for the various processes that exclude, even preclude, military action, given that the world knows it will not be a solution, but merely a punishment, and not a very effective one at that. There is always the possibility that in this proxy war, following a strike by the U.S. even with allies, the Russians will take the opportunity to up the ante by supplying additional weapons, support and further enmeshment of their forces with the regime, while the U.S. will inevitably become more engaged in response.
And that scenario has to be playing out in the minds of even the most supportive advocate for the Obama proposal to strike.
It would take very little for this proxy war to escalate into a Middle East conflagration, the only winners of which could be the radicals in establishing one or more Islamic states. And that prospect is not one the world can really afford, or tolerate.

NPR: Move the homeless out of city parks...across the U.S.

Jessica Jones' story below, about moving the homeless, rising in some cities at a rate of 42% since the U.S. recession, is indicative of two things: there are agencies like churches that attempt to put band-aids on the problem by providing some food, and that politicians are supporting the business community as they seek to revitalize downtown cores, and use their office and their authority through the police to move the homeless out of sight, out of mind.
Some individual activists want municipalities to provide housing, as their answer to the "blight" that the homeless are considered by the political class. And yet, through policies and circumstances that resulted from the complicity of both the political class and the business class, the homeless numbers are continuing to grow. And there is no politician getting much attention for taking that position.
There are millions of dollars of public monies being spent to purchase Tomahawk missiles about to be dropped on Syria, and yet there are no dollars for the human tsunami of homeless that is flowing across many American cities in the homeland.
Is this not an issue of "homeland security"?
Is this not an incubator for desperate recruits into a form of vengeance that could bite those cities in the backside?
Seeing the homeless in such a simplistic manner can no longer be tolerated. They are the seeds of the next public uprising. They are also the flotsam and jetsam left over from the insouciance of the last half decade during which the Wall Street indices have soared through the roof, and now are camping in the city parks, defecating on downtown city streets and "giving those cities a bad image".....
So, only the homeless must move or be arrested, because after all, how can we 'gentrify' our  business district with homeless casting a pall over the adjacent city parks.
These people, many of whom are willing and able to work, yet cannot find the jobs that would take them out of those parks, are the new under class, generated by a culture that cares only for the wealthy and the powerful. And it takes a non-profit agency like npr to shine the spot light on their plight.
And even npr is in the crosshairs of many Republican budget-cutting congressmen and women...because it covers those stories that those politicians do not want to see the light of day.
And yet the drum-roll for Syrian invasion continues, albeit with some justification, while the homeless continue to plague the heartland of the homeland....
how tragic!

More Cities Sweeping Homeless Into Less Prominent Areas

by Jessica Jones npr website, September 5, 2013

In North Carolina, a fight is brewing over the homeless in the capital city of Raleigh. Elected leaders have asked charitable and religious groups to stop their long-standing tradition of feeding the homeless in a downtown park on weekends.
But advocates for the poor say the city is trying to push the homeless out of a neighborhood that business leaders want to spruce up.
'I Will Arrest You'
Almost every day, the Rev. Hugh Hollowell walks through Moore Square, a centuries-old city park in downtown Raleigh.
As he strolls down paths shaded by towering willow oak trees, Holloway greets nearly everyone here by name. Most are homeless. On weekends, when soup kitchens are closed, Holloway and his church workers distribute breakfast to as many as 100 people. But recently a policeman showed up.
"And I said, 'Um, is there a problem?' And he said 'I'm not here to debate with you sir, I'm here to tell you you have to leave. And if you don't leave I will arrest you,' " he says.
Police also banned nearly two dozen other groups who've fed homeless people in the park for years. Candace Jeffries, who relies on those weekend meals to survive, says she knows what's going on.
"I think the reason why they doin' it 'cause they don't want us in the park at all — nobody, like everybody just disappeared," the 21-year-old says.
Local Merchants Hurt

Raleigh isn't the only city seeking to move its homeless population to a less prominent location. In recent years, municipalities from Seattle to Tampa have cracked down on the homeless and groups that help them.

Nationally, there is an increase in cities responding to visible poverty including homelessness by criminalizing it.
Maria Foscarinis heads the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty, an organization that seeks to end homelessness. She says many cities want to revitalize downtown areas.
"And they feel like having homeless people, having visibly poor people in those downtown areas detracts from those efforts," she says.
There's been a dramatic increase in the number of homeless and hungry people since the recession, Foscarinis says. And tight state budgets haven't helped solve the problem. That's true in Columbia, S.C., where councilman Cameron Runyan says the number of homeless people in the county has increased by 42 percent in two years. He says their presence on his city's main street hurts local merchants.
"Businesses have a real issue with panhandling, there's an issue with defecating," he says. "We just arrested a woman for using the bathroom on the sidewalk right in the heart of the main street business district area."
As a short-term solution, Runyan and other city leaders in Columbia plan to keep an emergency winter shelter open an extra two months. His strategy includes arresting people who choose not to go there.
'Make Sure Hungry Get Fed'
At a recent public hearing in Raleigh, N.C., advocates for the homeless say that's not a plan they support.
"If you want Moore Square to be free of homeless people, then provide homes for people so they don't have to come to Moore Square," says local activist Patrick O'Neill. "If you don't want us feeding the hungry...at Moore Square, if that's unsightly and an embarrassment to our city, then do something about it, and make sure the hungry get fed."
The city council has since voted to stop arresting charities that feed the homeless in the park until the matter can be studied further. Meanwhile, two downtown landowners and the Episcopal Diocese have offered their downtown parking lots to groups planning to distribute food to the poor.

 

 

UPDATE: UC Irvine political science professor urges ICC for Assad, not military strike...

According to the CBC website, Professor of Political Science at UC
Irvine, Tony Smith, told CBC news that taking Assad to the International Criminal Court, where evidence could be collected, and Assad could be prosecuted, "in his presence"...where the world would be watching, would be preferable to any military strike.
We whole heartedly concur!...
It is more than possible that the request for authorization to strike Syria, from the White House to the Congress of the United States, will be turned down. The Congress, although several leaders on  both sides of the aisle have initially come out in favour of granting the petition, limited as it is to strikes to degrade and deter Assad's capacity to deploy chemical weapons, is so dysfunctional, and so embedded in its dysfunction that even on a foreign policy issue, under the current president, it could well be unable to reach a concensus.
Testing the limits of the elected representatives' resolve to prove their irresponsibility and their intransigence, the president is calling their bluff. Some, and we concur, consider it a prudent political move whether the final vote supports the president's decision to strike or not. Nevertheless, there are still other avenues open to the Congress and the president to call Assad to account, including the legal approaches of both the United Nations and the World Court.
It was Senator Udall from New Mexico who, in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing yesterday, urged the administration to call out Russia, and president Putin, as "supporters of the use of chemical weapons" and to hit them repeatedly with such a public charge. It was Senator Rand Paul who posed the multiple hypotheticals of what happens if we strike.... with Iran, with Hezbollah, with...and Israel, and even with Assad. Secretary of State John Kerry, nor anyone else, really cannot provide answers to such questions, although Kerry did "guarantee Paul that Assad would attack if the U.S. failed to act. It is such a step too far that is confounding this whole initiative, the capacity of any government to predict what another government will do, in the face of both military action and a failure to act. We were confronted with the prospect of mushroom clouds coming from weapons of mass destruction, uttered by the mouths of Condolessa Rice and the former President George W. Bush, along with then Vice-president Dick Cheney, prior to their attempt to intervene in the Middle East to destroy a regime and bring about the fall of Saddam Hussein.
So Bush cuts both ways: some propose that if he were president making the same request that Obama is making, the Congress would readily concur, while others point to the "cloud" of suspicion that Bush has left hanging over United States credibility, and the deployment of the U.S. military no matter what the intelligence is telling the administration.
A president who prefers no military entanglements, having got the U.S. out of Iraq, and still in the process of getting the U. S. out of Afghanistan, Obama would prefer not to have to even make this request of Congress. He has assiduously avoided any entanglements in the now-thirty-month-old civil war in Syria. Over 100,000 have died, and well over 2 million refugees have spilled over into neighbouring countries like Turkey, Jordan, Lebanon, and Egypt, and according to the Prime Minister of Sweden this morning, even into that country.
And then there is the pursuit of nuclear weapons by Assad's ally, Iran, and what the U.S. and the western countries do or say about precluding such a development. And there is also the infiltration of the Syrian rebels by Islamic terrorist elements, whose dream would be to capture some of those chemical weapons under Assad's control and deploy them against the U.S. and its allies.
We often hear about "perfect storms" around raging forest fires, or raging hurricanes, and now we are witnessing what might be called a perfect storm around the raging fire of Middle East turbulence, including, but clearly not restricted to Syria. And there no single answer, or a single approach to bringing the conflict to a peaceful resolution.
Putin and the leaders of China cannot and must not be permitted to hold the world, including the United Nations and the agencies of the world's legal system, hostage to their support for Assad. Prying both of them from their intransigence, and their intractability, on this issue, as a start at thawing relations with the rest of the world, is not the sole responsibility of President Obama; there are many other western leaders who have the ear of leaders in both countries. There is a common enemy, among radical Islamists, for all countries, including China and Russia to at least get their attention and their focus, in any discussion on Syria.
Should the Congress vote, "No!" and the Russians and Assad claim victory, along with the Chinese, there are very serious ramifications that we do not like to contemplate...and those consequences could echo through our global geopolitical conversations for decades.
It is all very well for the British Labour Party to claim they stopped this U.S. campaign dead in its tracks without having to take responsibility for the future of the Middle East. And perhaps their "isolationism" can be shown for its inherent short-sightedness, especially in the light of events that play out over the next weeks and months, if not years.
No one wants a war; everyone, including Assad and Putin, want a negotiated settlement of the civil war. However, actions speak much louder than words at this point, and Syrians are being killed, maimed and uprooted from their homes as these keys are being tapped.
The international community either insists that chemical weapons cannot be deployed or it does not.
This is not a question of whether or not some politician from Hackensack New Jersey can see past his contempt for the president. It is a question of the sinew, muscle and will of the world community going forward, in the face of despicable actions by those unable to be shamed into withdrawal, or even responsibility, given the cover provided by the political and business allies.

Reflections on the nature of nature and of evil

“It is only through mystery and madness that the soul is revealed”
― Thomas Moore
If there is even a grain of truth in this nugget of wisdom, then the religious institutions of our time must re-examine the dogmatic tenets of their various faiths with respect to how they regard, interpret, "treat" and heal those whose lives have touched the outer limits of both mystery and madness.
First, the soul's revelation, and the ensuing life that emerges from such 'birthing' can only be seen as appropriate and fulfilling to a culture that is open to such epic risk. And it can only be through entry into a faith in the unknown, the ultimate mystery, otherwise expressed as a "relationship with God", that such risk can even be entertained, contemplated and ventured. Margaret Atwood reminds us that we find ourselves only by losing ourselves, a similar, if secular, and nuanced version of a similar view. In the parables, we find a similar upside-down view of winners and losers....and yet...
Our churches persist in maintaining a veneer of perfection, casting aside, rejecting, alienating and even despising those whose lives thwart the institution's rules, regulations, demands, expectations and interpretations of the mind and will of God. And we all live in a culture founded and maintained by such a paradox that cannot but be tilted overboard, replete with unrest, psychic disease, anxiety, and negative stress given the human capacity to both seek and to risk the ultimate test, to cross the boundaries established as sacred and "uncrossable," for the simple reason that they are there and that 'we can'....
If our religious nurture and formation consists almost exclusively of "fitting in" to the norms of the chosen faith and our human nature, at its core, is tied inextricably to a search for self-awareness, self-understanding and self-release into those mysteries, then it is the institutions and their "binding" of their adherents that must let go, or be released from our need to belong.
"Political correctness" and strict compliance with any church's definition of the rule and mind of God is precisely what can lead only to a rupture between the human unconscious and the social conventions imposed by that institution. The more we move into the "conformity" expected by the institution, subsume our selves into the vast cavern of the whale's consuming appetite (for it is nothing short of a monstrous appetite for control that drives the religious institutions of our time) and mistakenly conceive, believe and accept that such conformity is moving closer to the "holy" or to God, that our unconscious will thrust itself out from the bottom of our inner self, raging and writhing like a beached dolphin left to die in the sands of the desert, screaming and cavorting in dramas of excruciating pain, or delirium or ecstasy or upward currents of imagination that make tornadoes and hurricanes seems like halcyon breezes.
There is a reason that nature is so uncontrollable and so unpredictable and that human beings are such an intimate component of that nature. We too are unpredictable, uncontrollable resisting all those ties that bind our spirits, even in the name of God, or should we say especially in the name and service of God. No God ever intended such bindings, except perhaps for the "mummies" of the ancient world following a human death. We have so linked, even equated holiness with purity of action, purity of thought, purity of mind heart that we have expunged our very natures from their life-source....and in so doing, we have inflicted mountains of self-flagellation, self-rejection and self-loathing on so many millions of religious followers, because we can and must all acknowledge our own indiscretions, misdeeds, misdemeanors, and even outright betrayals of those we most love and trust...and, except for the occasional 'confessions' and penitential cleansings, based on a trust in the death and resurrection of a saviour, we are left with the guilt of those "sins" as the defining features of our lives.
It is madness, first to declare our human natures as sinful and then to prosecute that nature through the instrument established to worship a deity whose traces of insight and wisdom have been filtered to us through the minds, spoken and written words of our fellow humans of distant times and places.
Unless and until the church opens its collective arms, hearts, minds and spirits to the fullness of the truth that our lives inevitably lead to the soul's full revelation and disclosure, only through unplanned, unpredictable, yet inevitable journeys through mysteries and madnesses which neither can nor will be expunged from our natures, no matter how compelling the case for conformity and chastity and self-control that is so much  a part of the spiritual formation of our religious "leaders"....most of whom have no experience with either mystery or madness, and thereby are restricted from even a glimpse of the fuller truth and the fuller risk of such exposures that they cannot mentor those in their "flock" whose lives venture forth into the darkness.
We have created, and generations of people have fallen into line of acceptance, institutions of human judgement, repression and fault-finding, complete with a social network of vehement and viscious condemnation in the name of God, a legacy that no God would either welcome or endorse. And the cost to our individual lives, not to mention the costs to the health care systems, the insurance costs, the family break-ups, and the rebellious 'crossing those sacred lines' just as our forebears did in Genesis, continue to climb exponentially as we continue to enact this drama. We have fully drunk the belief that we are fundamentally and inexorably horrible, sinful and irredeemable without God and the institutions that "propagate His word," without seeing through the human darkness that both clouds our psyches and our vision of a free, full and open to risk life...open especially to the greatest risks of both mystery and madness through the teachings of the ecclesiastical institution which is paradoxically incapable of the very compassion, tolerance, acceptance and even alignment with those undergoing such voyages into our deepest unknowns that we/they could provide, if only we/they could accept as normal what the churches in their wisdom have deemed "evil"....

Seamus Heaney, Irish poet dead at 74

Ireland buried its famous poet, Seamus Heaney, yesterday, and according to The Associated Press, his last words, texted to his wife minutes before he passed away were, "Noli timere!" Don't be afraid.
Seems the Irish poet was speaking, not only to his widow but to the world, at the same time.
Those words cut through so much of the blarney that passes for public and political discourse today when terrorist and terrorism can and does abruptly pop out of the next corner of any street in any city, just when it is least expected.
And when the threat of radioactive water, higher than any other nuclear meltdown, is going to be "contained" by an untested wall of ice from flowing into the Pacific Ocean, where the damage to human and aquatic life is unknown.
And when the speed of the growing divide between the 'have's' and the 'have-not's' has never been faster, nor more permanent....
And when the political will to act collaboratively, among nations, seems to be so weak as to be unable to sustain the most meagre of a trickle of water from a blocked spigot..
And when the religions of the world (Heaney was raised in the Roman Catholic school in Northern Ireland) seem unable to speak to each other in words of reconciliation, compassion and tolerance...
And when the threat of a natural holocaust, with rising temperatures, increased frequency and duration of forest fires, protracted droughts, violent storms send signs of the destruction of the planet's environment through human pollution and erosion of the atmosphere, without the accompanying collaborative action necessary to reverse the tide...
Here was a man whose words and life touched his Irish comrades from pillar to post, from presidents and prime ministers, to ordinary folk, bending the arc of the meaning and usefulness and significance of poetry upward and outward into the heart beat of a culture.
Here is just a single sample of his work:

From The Frontier Of Writing by Seamus Heaney

The tightness and the nilness round that space
when the car stops in the road, the troops inspect
its make and number and, as one bends his face

towards your window, you catch sight of more
on a hill beyond, eyeing with intent
down cradled guns that hold you under cover

and everything is pure interrogation
until a rifle motions and you move
with guarded unconcerned acceleration—

a little emptier, a little spent
as always by that quiver in the self,
subjugated, yes, and obedient.

So you drive on to the frontier of writing
where it happens again. The guns on tripods;
the sergeant with his on-off mike repeating

data about you, waiting for the squawk
of clearance; the marksman training down
out of the sun upon you like a hawk.

And suddenly you're through, arraigned yet freed,
as if you'd passed from behind a waterfall
on the black current of a tarmac road

past armor-plated vehicles, out between
the posted soldiers flowing and receding
like tree shadows into the polished windscreen.

Labour Day, 2013...reflections on a 50-year working life

Labour Day, 2013....fifty years after I started my first full-time job as a teacher in an Ontario private school, teaching grades 5 through 8. Not an unreasonable day on which to reflect on the various cultures, supervisors, organizational goals and objectives and the various treatment of workers in the several workplaces on which I am both willing and able to reflect.
First, the Canadian culture of the mid-sixties could not be more different from the culture of the mid 21st teens. There were bomb shelter signs on  buildings in Northern places like Buffalo and Niagara Falls, N.Y. into which towns Ontario basketball and football coaches were invited to play what we then termed "exhibition" games.  John Kennedy was in the White House, for the first 75 days of the fall term in 1963, until his tragic assassination on  November 22. In Canada, there had been a few years of Diefenbaker governments, both minority and majority; the termination of the contract to  build the  latest and most innovative fighter aircraft, the AVRO Arrow was signed by Diefenbaker, throwing many highly trained engineers who had been working on the plane out of work, especially noteworthy to one from Parry Sound, the urban centre that serviced Nobel, where much of that work as being carried out. In 1963, Lester Pearson was brought to Sussex Drive, as Prime Minister, and the Liberals began what turned out to be nearly a half-century of continuous power in Ottawa.
An Ontario private school in the mid-sixties was a place of rarified atmosphere, accommodating the offspring of some of Ontario's most affluent parents, some of whom arrived in chauffeured Cadillac limousines, in short pant, blazers and navy ties, carrying their boy-size brief cases. Army cadets, and parades for all students in the "upper school" (high school) were expected as were team sports, accommodating all young men of all shapes, sizes and levels of courage and competitiveness. There were five football teams to accommodate fewer than 150 students; in my first year, I was assigned to the "third" team, a mix of some sizeable bodies with younger more agile athletes, 'in training' for an opportunity to be called up to one of the first or second teams, in case of injury, or exceptional promise from their respective performances.
As their coach, at twenty-one, I too was competitive, and somewhat pleased, honoured and humbled when I was asked to coach the 'second' team in my second year a the school. Before the end of the first year, however, our team was having a feast on the competition, besting them by halftime by some twenty points or more. It was at that moment that one of the "masters" from our school who was then serving as referee for the game approached me quietly at the end of our team bench.
"I would advise you not to play your first string in the second half," he opined, "you do not need to humiliate the opposition any more than you have already done!"
Stung by his mentoring, and his more than slightly officious demeanour, I remained silent, while I considered what he had said. Knowing that his standing and history at the school went back at least twenty-plus years, (he was also a Housemaster, and part of the 'inner circle' of the school) and my barely beginning my career, I accepted his counsel and played everyone of the reserves, as we continued to sustain the victory.
In my third year at the school, I ran into a minor discipline situation with one of the senior students, in grade twelve as I recall, and when I discussed the situation with the Headmaster, a former Army Colonel and retired Anglican clergy, I recall his words as if they were issued only yesterday.
"John," he said in a gruff and uncompromising tone, "Do not bring this matter to the Headmaster; that boy's father has been on the Board of Governors of the school for decades and you are sure to lose!"
I obeyed the directive, and let the matter drop.
Having requested teaching assignments that included some additional secondary school English courses and classes, I watched and waited eagerly for an invitation to the Headmaster's office to inform me of whatever decisions had been taken, with respect to my request, only to learn via the proverbial and eternal "grapevine" that entwined itself around the faculty, the residences, the nurses offices, the chapel and the dining room, that an "old-boy" had been recently hired, following his graduation from Bishop's University to teach the very courses for which I had applied. With less than a month to go in that third year, I recall quitting and staying, until the final day of classes, when I moved to the public secondary school system. I knew that as a non-old-boy I would never be able to compete with those whose pedigree included graduation from that school, years of 'service' to school teams, and the potential that accompanied such men in terms of fund raising.
Into the public secondary system I plunged only to find that it too had its favourites, its traditions and its blind spots. Teaching history to grade twelve students, I found a single sheet of foolscap in my mailbox each Monday morning with an outline of the week's curriculum, which was merely a copy of the titles, subtitles and treaties or battles from that portion of the assigned text. The document was prepared by the 'head of the department' and I was suitably chagrined, given my own capacity to read the information from the text itself. I petitioned the then principal to scrap the course, in favour of an approach that would examine a series of intellectual papers collated into book form, on the history, usefulness, impediments and prospects of the United Nations. He concurred.
Also, I was offered more coaching assignments, starting with 'bantam' basketball, where I had the opportunity to learn from one of my own teachers, a former English teacher who had returned to get a PHE degree and now taught in the Physical Education Department, along with his coaching. As part of my apprenticeship as a basketball coach (I had coached the sport for three years at the private school) I had the opportunity to attend a clinic by then widely respected coach of the Indiana Hoosiers, Bobby Knight, at the University of Toronto, where some 500 Ontario coaches gathered for a full day of tutoring, demonstrations and schooling under the 'master'...as we considered him then.
Early in my stay in the first school, a guest of the Canadian Club visited the town where he gave a public lecture. So interested and curious was I about the man, I attended, and spontaneously, following the address, approached him with an invitation to speak to my three grade twelve classes. his name: Don Harron, then famous as Charly Farquharson, the Parry Sound Farmer, on a CBC weekly television show bearing the title, "This Hour has Seven Days" with hosts, Patrick Watson and Laurier LaPierre. Harron was delighted to accept the invitation, knowing that I had offered it without prior approval or permission, and recommended that I submit the proposal as a lecture on his experience as a Shakespearean actor, and not as another Charly satire of the town. Later I learned that the editors of the local paper considered his performances to be ridiculing the extremely conservative town, and refused even to interview the famous guest of the Canadian Club.
Also during my stint at this school, I met and spent some time with Patrick Watson, another of the Canadian Club's guests, at a time when the Ontario Liberal Party was about to hold a leadership convention. Having listened to former evangelist and then radio host, Charles Templeton, I wondered if Mr. Watson knew whether or not Templeton was going to enter the race. Politely and dutifully, Mr. Watson sent a letter after his return to Toronto informing me of what he had learned of Mr. Templeton's intentions.
Another of my public opportunities came when the local Rotary Club sponsored a summer concert, fundraised, featuring Catherine MacKinnon, Don Harron's wife. My task as a member of the Rotary Club was to chair the advertising committee for the concert, which, if I recall satisfactorily, made a fair stash of cash for the Rotary projects around town.
My third secondary school, a recently opened "open concept" school featuring what was then known as "team teaching" offered different opportunities, under a former military officer, whose gait, speech and brain functioning were of a speed one had to work hard to 'keep up' to any or all of them. Younger, more vigorous and much more ambitious teachers had been hired into what was then considered an 'experimental model' of a secondary school. As one of three English instructors in the grade thirteen class, I was invited to 'teach' the large group instruction session on the novel Wuthering Heights. With some ninety students who had already been assigned the reading of the text, I invited two teachers from the art department to attend the class, for the purpose of listening and transcribing the responses from the students to the question of the hero's character onto a series of canvases. Heathcliff is a dominating and perplexing man, found deep in the psyche of the author, Emily Bronte, and brought into the light of day, through his roller-coaster relationship with Catherine Earnshaw. The students and the artists participated vigorously in the exercise, and I thoroughly enjoyed the experience, recalling its energy, variety and complexity even forty-five years later.
On another occasion, there seemed to be a "day without an assigned topic" when it was once again my 'turn' to prepare and conduct the LGI (as we all called it then). I had listened to the Simon and Garfunkel recording of Sounds of Silence, and it had moved me deeply, as I considered its import in the then current vernacular of the alienated, the isolated existentialist. I borrowed the recording from the local radio station, printed a copy for each student of both  The Unknown Citizen by. W. H. Auden and also T.S. Eliot's The Hollow Men... and guided a discussion of the synchronicity that seemed to emerge from the reading of these three pieces. Judging by the energy, variety and subtlety of the many responses, as well as my own "feel" for the connection of the students to both the moment and the writings, I was satisfied with the experiment.
Moving to a different school in the same town and under the same board, I found a much older, more established faculty and administration, into which a new principal had been inserted, much to the chagrin of the teaching staff who wanted one of their own appointed principal. That conflict never really was absent from most conversations within the teaching staff, until the vice-principal who had not been appointed departed for a board some one hundred miles distant. Also departing after one year under the "principal-import" was the Head of the English department, who moved into the local liberal arts university to teach English, having found the new administration "not to his liking" to put it mildly.
After a move into the newest building for the city, the school took on more of the ambience or its new home. Athletics, including football, basketball, hockey and track and field played a very prominent role in the lives of individual students, as well as many faculty members. There was an active, if most friendly, competition among the local schools, insofar as athletic competitions were concerned. Coaching basketball, helping with the student variety shows, advising on the student yearbooks and eventually, my own  "walter-mitty" took me into freelance journalism in radio, television and newspaper, focussing on the local city council news. Combined, these activities consumed many hours outside of class time. From 1970 through 1978, three daughters were born to our family, and they provided hours of enjoyment and pride in their own accomplishments in all phases of their school life.
Summer employment in these years included retailing in a local beer store, in a local men's wear store and the latter spilled over into some weekend work as well.
In my last formal deployment in public education, I was offered a position in public relations in the local community college, with the title, Information Officer and  Assistant to the President. This title and post preceded the onset of the computer by a couple of years; I will still tied to an electric typewriter preparing text for radio ads, television ads, brochures and newsletters, along with Multi-Year Reports, detailed minutes of groups like the Innovation Centre, and the Executive Committee.
Under the tutelage of the then president, I adopted advocacy for three long-term goals:

1. a measureable increase in the number of bilingual course offerings and students in that segment of the college community
2. a considerable increase in the number of women in prominent positions both on the college board of directors and among college faculty and department administrators
3. a measureable decrease in the frequency and number of students engaged in cigarette smoking within the college facilities

These three stated goals were ones to which I attached considerable significance, while continuing to attempt to design and execute marketing initiatives that would see the college maintain and grow its market share of potential students in a relatively highly competitive marketing scene.
Another significant project,  designed as part of my responsibilities, comprised a weekly public affairs radio program of ninety minutes, in which I interviewed guests from across North America in issues relevant to the public discourse, some in nutrition, some in provincial and national politics, some in women's rights, all designed to fit under the umbrella "a life-long-education" a theme we were working to integrate into the public consciousness of the 50,000+ community. The first forty-five minutes were dedicated to a one-on-one interview of the guest(s) with the second ninety minutes open to public phone calls to discuss the issues raised in the first half.
It was the freedom to innovate, the freedom to experiment, the license and the trust that was afforded me in various positions that helped me to grow intellectually, politically, socially and culturally. As a highly curious individual, and one born and raised on the vitamins of questions asked to anyone I meet, even if those questions seem, on the surface to be more than a little cheeky, I found my twenty-plus years in the classroom the most enriching, challenging and rewarding of my career.
It was only when I entered both the seminary and later the formal life as a clergy that my curiosity, and my questions, and my incessant challenges and provocations found a consistent and persistent brick wall, both in the pews and in the hierarchies.
In one of the last conversations I had, face-to-face with a bishop, I urged him to read Matthew Fox's writings which he admitted were "too radical for me''....and then I pushed even harder..
"It is time," I ventured, "for men to get to know their emotions, to become familiar with them and to know what they mean in their lives!"
To which he literally screamed, "That is much too dangerous! That must not happen!"
At which point, one of his lackies uttered these words, memorable words that effectively terminated both the conversation and my life inside the church, "Well there is much too much emotion in this room for me, I have to attend a meeting!"
Since 2000, when that conversation, I have reflected many times, on this proposition:
If humans are going to continue to "mess-up" then why does the church find that part of humanity completely unacceptable, intolerable and totally rejectable, under the dogma that identifies the sinner with his/her sin, and the faith with the abdication of its commandment to "love one another"....the church cannot love only those who "obey" its dogmatic dictates, and will never find a sustainable institutional life unless and until it finds a compassionate and just process for resolving even the most unacceptable, and most messy situations and the people whose lives are entwined within them.