D'Caffeinated Pickle

on the occasion of skiing down a mountain

2012-01-08T19:26:00.000-07:00

Thebalaclava has fused to my face. It’s like my moustache and beard have conspiredtogether with the driving snow, facial sweat and nose drippings to create a newfrozen outer shell. I gingerly touch it with the finger of one gloved hand – Idon’t want to break it.

I am lyingon my back levitating a foot and a half off of the ground thanks in no smallpart to the layer of snow that blankets this mountain. I am staring up insidethe cloud that is unloading white onto the slope. Crowding the corners of my visionare the ever-present mountains. They seem to know that this prairie boy is accustomedto the open horizon where the sky never quits. So these jealous mountains peekin on the edges of my sight. I turn to look. I am a sucker for their tricks. Peakslike the knuckles of a thousand fists poke out across the ridge – a giant frombelow punching out his frustration. I feel that remote sense that must drivethrill seeking adventurer types to climb these ridges. They call to somethinginside that I immediately recognize as sheer foolishness. Later, while drivingbeside a particularly alluring ridge, I off-handedly suggest that reaching thesummit might be a fairly easy task. My son snickers, agrees reluctantly and,being the pragmatist that he is, reminds me of the effort and time it wouldtake to scale that mountain. But in this moment on my back between the snow onthe slope and the falling snow – I am smitten.

Our skis,speared through the crust of the snow beneath the powdery stuff I have beensliding on, stick up like the fence posts of a lunatic rancher. The three of ushave done the same. The boys, anxious to re-establish the burning thigh effectthat is a constant companion down this mountain, break the spell I am under.“Let’s go dad!” I am torn. I crave a few more minutes to soak in this slow-motionexperience. But adrenaline is calling for another fix. Caught between controland disaster. Skis swing back and forth across the mountain, sitting back on myheels a little (especially in the powdery stuff) but always on the edge ofplummeting headlong down an unsuspected icy patch. Its danger and beauty mixed.Who am I kidding? It’s not beautiful when I ski – unless in your mind beautylooks a lot like a short stumpy 40 year old atop an unbroken colt – without anystirrups. It’s ugly and dangerous – but fun.

We are thelast off the hill. We convince the lifty to send us up the back side of themountain just before she shuts it down so that we don’t have to hike thekilometer and a half back to the rental shop.

Later, asthe body’s pain mechanism begins to register in the brain I am brieflyconscious of curious feeling. As the lactic acid builds in every fiber of mylegs, I wonder how we have come to consider this activity recreation. Thisrigorous exertion of energy to the point of…cursing agony – I am only trying toget out of the hot tub! How did this activity evolve into something we woulddeem to be invigorating and worthy of spending our leisure (dollars and time)?It is perplexing enough that we would willingly subject our bodies to torturouslabor in the name of having fun. It is even more peculiar that we would chooseto spend our time doing something that could endanger our ‘productivity’ in therest of our ‘responsible’ lives. Stranger still is that we would take thefinancial advantages we have accrued to measure out ecstatic suffering upon ourown bodies.

What wespend our leisure on is a signal to us and those around us. It is possibly amessage about who we are. It is a descriptor of our vigor perhaps. Maybe it isa disclaimer of our relative wealth. It might not be much more than the sort ofthing a dog does in marking its territory – a smelly reminder to us and othersof what is our personal ‘territory’. As uncomfortable as these signals make methere is a more redemptive notion that seems important as well.

For me thissliver of time on the side of a mountain has given pause to appreciate theuncrowded spaces that we are afforded in our lives from time to time. Theseunencumbered moments in the splendor of this exquisite place and the pleasureof spending time with my sons remind me of just how alive I am. My body on theother hand…well…it just might prefer not to be so alive – right now!

on the occasion of taking my son to the airport

2012-01-01T23:48:00.002-07:00

The embrace changes

Imperceptibly but unmistakably

He comes to you

Your arms outstretched they invite him in

It’s a call with wrapped arms as celebration

Beckoned he toddles toward the first one you give

The embrace changes

Imperceptibly but unmistakably

She runs to you

Lungs never quite full enough to howl

It’s a comfort squeezing darkness and pain away

Your arms the mop for spilled tears

The embrace changes

Imperceptibly but unmistakably

I hugged you through the new backpack

I hugged you till teasing stopped

I hugged you and monsters under beds disappeared

I hugged you so that standing in the corner meant somethingother than disdain

I hugged you at first out of wonder

Then out of worry

Then out of compassion

Then responsibility

I hugged you

The embrace changes

Imperceptibly but unmistakably

He limps off the field

Bravery is a thin disguise with his full weight on yourshoulder

It’s only one arm and he won’t accept the other

The extent that pride will allow him

The embrace changes

Imperceptibly but unmistakably

The one that I’m used to

Is the one that I give

The one that you give

Is now the way we let go

And it is the one

That I’m not getting used to

The embrace changes

Imperceptibly but unmistakably

He stands at the gate

Blinking you whisper something both will soon forget

But not the recognition

That every next together will end with a hug

Apart

The embrace changes

Imperceptibly but unmistakably

NEED HELP AND DONORS - Game, Set and Match

2011-12-12T20:48:00.001-07:00

When charitable relief aid organizations are directed by and accountable to the donors, the recipients of the aid lose their ability to influence the efficacy of the aid delivered. Their only recourse is to directly influence the donors. but those who need help do not have the wherewithall to engage that influence. Into that gap step agencies that filter and manipulate the message of need that is intended to motivate donors to whom they are ultimately accountable. Does this not sound like a conflict of interest? The agency that is directing the message of need, solicits towards the need they have identified, and then deliver a report of the need that they have met. Hmmm...

snow job

2011-11-06T09:26:00.001-07:00

the snow sprinkled on the crispy grass

a facade really

thin

like the space that keeps us

from revealing secret

sin

whiter than this icy trickster

covering over brownish

dinge

bone chilling wind keeps

us from looking

under the blanket of this winter

wonderland we laud and

sing

the ugliness of our ‘summer’

romp with that knowing

grin

that one day soon the snow

would fly and cover it

again

our indiscretions and our

reckless, futile

spin

frost has settled in once more

and painted a new face

fin

Build a rocket

2011-10-30T08:52:00.001-06:00

Where did you grow up?
When did you grow up?
Will you ever grow up?
The 80s. ’69 was my birth year so the 80s is the decade of the presumably emancipatory adolescence of my now 40 plus years of existence. Ah the 80s. Not close to as bad ass as the 60s. Or as high! Not nearly as funky as the 70s. Nor as disco-ball cool. Not as grunge as the 90s. Whatever the #$%^& ‘grunge’ is/was?
The 80s. Fabulous fashion. Rugby pants, legwarmers, primary color knit sweaters tied around your neck. ¾ length white sleeved black shirts with Black Sabbath emblazoned on the chest. Perms for men (I confess), Big glasses.
The 80s. Great music. Boy George, Corey Hart, George Michael, the theme to TV’s FAME, Gloria Estefan, the Bangles, David Lee Roth (post Van Halen), Men Without Hats and Men at Work…Mmmmmmm!
The 80s. Some blip on the radar of good taste and better judgment or the best decade since the Renaissance; I’ll let you decide. There is no halcyonic nostalgia about those days in my mind at least. Riding my bike to the corner store in a town of barely 100 residents should not be considered evidence of some idyllic teenage coming of age. (Some readers will be quick to point out that I also rode my Dad’s Nissan INTO the corner store – causing a minor re-shelving problem for the owner and much larger problem for between me and my father.) To be sure there are many things about those formative years of my life that could only be described as pristine conditions within which a boy may become a man. I married the girl next door and began my life long infatuation with her in the one acre corn field between our houses. I drove my first vehicle (my buddy’s) on the gravel roads that snaked through the hippie soaked Pembina Hills. But not before I mapped every nook and cranny of that place on snowmobile. I emulated Jim Craig to my very best ability on giant rubber snow boots on the freshly flooded ‘rink’ next to the school. I was good. Those days were golden.
“You can be anything you want to be” – they told us at my graduation. Liars.
I can’t. I still want to be a Grey Cup winning quarterback – but I won’t. I never built a rocket – and I won’t. Being anything I want to be is a myth and a peculiarly harmful one at that. Perhaps that sort of rhetoric emerged from the desperation of the time. Because as Commodore 64 and the internet were mere glints in the eyes of their conceivers; we were still fighting a Cold War that promised to bring us to an end. We were just starting to battle our brains out over abortion, and immigration, and French language. We could see our Canadian distinctives sliding away from us perhaps with more urgency than they ever had. We got excited about all the same silly stuff that the US did – who can forget the enormous cola war of the 80s. We decided that free trade with the US was going to be a good thing. So what if it meant foreign ownership of many of our national institutions. We unashamedly gobbled up the latest greatest media offering being pushed out of the burgeoning colonialist Hollywood machine. (Shoot, how else was it that Daisy Duke became the model for one of the ‘best’ fashion trends in the 80s J)
Behind the neurotic push toward the future in almost every aspect of life, those of us ‘growing up’ then might have known something untoward was lurking in the reeds of our surface optimism. But we paid little heed to that lie about our potential when we saw the Berlin wall come down. We forgot our background dread when we saw hostages rescued from Iran. And we began to believe that our ability to forge a brave new world could itself be the savior of our once dysfunctional world. I suspect that belief has an almost religious hold upon us.
In my classroom – we talk about current event and we try to engage with the big themes of our world as events unfold. If there is one reaction that surprises me most in my students it has to be the relative indifference that most pay to the way our world works. Occupy this or that, kill off a dictator once in a while, start a revolution on facebook if you want to, or bailout the country where democracy was born. Meh – whatevs… On one level it irks me – this passive nonchalance toward our life and times. On another level it saddens me to see a generation face down in their phones – enslaved to the immediacy of their ever-shrinking world (where life and love begin and end at the end of text).
Sometimes exposing lies leads to life change. At other times exposing lies leads to a retrenchment of the lie itself – perhaps because the truth is just too uncomfortable to face. You can frame your life as targeting potential. Aspire to this or that. Achieve this or that. Or you can frame your life as targeting significance. Accept the ugliness of the world and do your part. Acknowledge your own culpability in the problems to begin with.
You can be anything you want to be seems out of place in the latter mindset but conveniently distracting in the former.
There are some of us who still remember that in the 80s a young man decided to do his part, accept his own ugliness, and died fighting off the monster that eventually took his life. Terry Fox lived and died in the 80s and school children to this day honor his memory.
Long live the 80s…

pop goes the...

2011-09-14T10:09:00.002-06:00

A little popculture for your wednesday...

Old man look at my life…

2011-09-03T17:31:00.003-06:00

This is a coming of age story.
I bit back tears as I hugged and said good-bye to my oldest son. He’s headed off to college in Manitoba to carve out something new. It’s time for him to shape himself and get shaped in ways that are distinctly different than the ones he has become accustomed to under our parenting. It is a good thing. He is ready. But I know it won’t be easy.
Like it has been for so many of us the challenges and euphoria of the independence of early adulthood is significant. I remember deep loneliness in some dark times when I thought the responsibility that I was taking on was too great. I remember ecstatic freedom at how spontaneous my life could be. It really was a pretty wide spectrum of emotions. I am far too clever to allow my protective emotions to get the better of me – but underneath I want to keep my children from the dark. The reality is that life is dark. Freedom, peace, joy with permanence, and fulfillment come only after one has truly stared into the darkness and seen it for what it is. Walking in the dark is another matter altogether but a good hard look in is essential to know the value of the good things that life affords.
At a time like this, I wonder if I’ve done an adequate job of allowing my children to stare at the darkness honestly and without fear. I wonder if I have prepared them well enough to recognize the value of freedom, peace and perhaps even love. I wonder about the gaps in my parenting that my children will need to compensate for. I am under no illusion that there are many. I think honest parents know that they’ve made mistakes with their kids. Honest parents are conscious of fact that they leave an indelible mark on their offspring. I think there is a lot of guilt attached to that sentiment for many people. Guilt, denial and compensating for both leads to plenty of regret. It’s hopeless; my kids are stamped with a healthy dose of me and thankfully an even healthier dose of Char.
One thing I know to be real is the persistent grace that my children have afforded me. So today I am grateful to have the opportunity to say the kind of goodbye that only a dad can say to his son – the kind of goodbye that will always be followed by hello. Usually when we say goodbye we say it to anticipate a loss of closeness but a father can say goodbye with a sense of anticipation. A dad says goodbye and is picking up the phone to say hello to – I need some cash – or – I think I found a girl that likes me – or – I wonder if you think this car is a good one to buy.
Today this song connected with me. Maybe you’ll like it too.

Bless you Jared…

A pair of hard working hands
Everything that I needed
I got it from the old man
With a nine second dream
He drove the Redlight Bandit
And the grease on his hands
Was the way he commanded
And the life he demanded
It kept us all in a struggle
When he ruled with his fist
It kept us all out of trouble
Even though he would leave
He wore his heart on his sleeve
And by the way that he walked
He taught me how to believe
Old man look at my life
Take a look, take a look
Old man look at my life
cause I'm a lot like you
Old man, old man take a look at my life
Take a look, take a look
Old man, old man take a look at my life
cause I'm a lot like you
Growin' up at the track
He had a reason for being fast
His heart felt like breaking
He'd look right up at the ceiling and
Start again, never breathe a word of his loss
Cause it's not about winning
It's the rivers you cross
And the pain that you feel
Could be the fuel that you use
And if you're in need of direction
Be it the path that you choose
My old man is a legend
He cast a shadow so great
I think of how he is watchin'
With every move that I make
Chorus:
Now there's no slowin' down
There's only settin' the pace
No more dreams to be stolen
Just the right ones to chase
You've been through the worst
Now you know who to trust
Leave them something behind
Before the ashes and dust

Yes and for those of you wondering - yes that was some hard core riffing on old man Young which you can find here

dying of obesity or dying of starvation

2011-09-01T20:59:00.000-06:00

As we get ready to leave the summer behind

2011-08-27T15:02:00.000-06:00

- as it fights to regain the adolescent vigor it displayed in June
- as students prep their finest stories to impress or aggravate their teachers
- as the Christmas Wish Book gets plunked on your front step
- as we nervously glance at the large tote where we stashed the parkas to ward off the bad omens of late spring snow falls
- as the trees pretend to be artists for the week of color after that frost
- as mowers get shoved tot he back of the shed
- once more as summer becomes forgetful of our shooting star wishes 'round a backyard camp fire...
there's this...
This summer I went swimming,
This summer I might have drowned
But I held my breath and I kicked my feet
And I moved my arms around, I moved my arms around.

This summer I swam in the ocean,
And I swam in a swimming pool,
Salt my wounds, chlorine my eyes,
I'm a self-destructive fool, a self-destructive fool.

This summer I swam in a public place
And a reservoir, to boot,
At the latter I was informal,
At the former I wore my suit, I wore my swimming suit.

This summer I did the backstroke
And you know that's not all
I did the breast stroke and the butterfly
And the old Australian crawl, the old Australian crawl.

This summer I did swan dives
And jackknifes for you all
And once when you weren't looking
I did a cannonball, I did a cannonball.

Boy & Bear - Feeding Line

2011-08-22T19:00:00.000-06:00

Enemy Language…

2011-08-22T08:00:00.004-06:00

I don’t exactly ‘get’ all the references to enemies found in the Psalms. Now I know that David was writing out of a fairly real and present danger of personal and national enemies throughout his lifetime. It seems understandable that he would write about the stuff he was struggling with at the time.
I don’t have enemies. I don’t believe I have any personal vendettas against my person (unless you count the thugs over at the dance mafia wanting me to quit my ‘special moves’). I am not so deluded to think that there aren’t people who are disappointed with me, frustrated with me, annoyed, hurt or even ticked at me. But I am not in any significant battle against anyone. So on that level ‘enemies’ does not connect. So few of us are in positions of the sort of power where we could identify the characteristic features of enemies plotting to destroy us.
Even the more euphemistic versions of enemies leave me stumped. At times I hear of people talking about enemies in a sort of symbolic way (Like how emotional or physical pain and suffering are enemies that need to be vanquished). I am not belittling these struggles in the least – I just wonder about whether labelling them as enemies is the most helpful way of framing these types of struggles. The motif of a battle/war against these difficulties has certain appeal to be sure. It worries me a little when we frame these things in the win/lose paradigm that this imagery entails. Plus I am not sure that this sort of euphemistic interpretation is the most honest way to get at the meaning of David’s texts in Psalms.
It’s actually a wonder to me that more revolutionary leaders have not cottoned to these passages as ways of spiritualizing their military actions. I could see any number of despots contorting these scriptures to rally the underlying spirituality especially in some of the countries with strong ties to the ancient Roman Catholic traditions…
My enemies are evil.
      They will trip and fall
   when they attack me
      and try to eat me alive.
When I'm in trouble,
      he will keep me safe in his house.
   He will hide me in the safety of his holy tent.
      He will put me on a rock that is very high.
Then I will win the battle
      over my enemies who are all around me.

In the end I am not really sure what to do with these passages and specifically this type of terminology. It is even more perplexing when I consider the tradition of pacifism that forms my background and is evident in the life of Jesus. Does God takes sides in war? Or is all killing a horror to God? If He takes sides in war might he takes sides in less dire situations in life? Notice that David says that his reliance on God will provide him victory over his enemies. David does not say that God will help him negotiate a peaceful settlement that ends the violence. Anyone else perplexed?

Astonish Me - a short film for WWF

2011-08-17T16:26:00.000-06:00

Where Children Sleep...

2011-08-16T10:06:00.001-06:00

Click here for more of James Mollison's work...

Using time...

2011-08-16T10:00:00.000-06:00

The Wall Street Journal has commented on a survey of the way people in America use their time. Their angle has been to relate it to joblessness - which remains a persistent problem in USA.
For me it seems that there is much more to be learned from this analysis.

holding back the morning…

2011-08-14T22:43:00.001-06:00

His knees squeeze tighter to the sweat-soaked vinyl. His fingers dig a little deeper into the ribs of his older cousin as the 150 bounces over the cobblestone and wiggles past the honking microbus. His other hand cradles the box propped against his waist and the humid afternoon sun. It shines deep polished purple – the ironic royal colour for the peasant child that will sleep in it…

His knees scrape the sharp skirt of the table. His wrinkled brow is the slightest of emotional indicators of the sharp sting. His wince passes easily for the gravitas he assumes over the matter at hand. His fingers stumble over keys on his phone to let his wife know the meeting is will last longer than expected. His warning has ironically turned into a lie he will have to explain in the morning. “..be jome soon…” flies into the ether.

The wooden box fits. He takes out the white shirt and the tennis shoes he bought at the market and places dresses the boy. No new pants. He lays the sleeping child inside and slips the box into the shade. He leaves the boy there under the watchful eye of his own mother, herself busy about the supper plans. His stomach growls as he gropes for his tools – and he’s off…

The oak table is too big. Too big to acknowledge that man on the other side whose niggling nasally voice has concluded something poignant. His pocket vibrates and he counts on answering the text soon enough. Sleep would be a welcome relief but now the man has called his name. Now the tone has changed from convincing to accusatory. His stomach growls as it wrestles the fast food through his digestive tract. He shuffles the papers in front of him, collecting himself for rebuttal…

The night gathers over his shoulder as he begins his work. The freshly mowed aroma fills the air where the knife has cleared the ground. Ample. The spade is next – and this much slower work than before and not nearly as well paid as he is accustomed. He hangs his own dark shirt over the brick nearby. He will need it clean later. His mind focuses now on the task at hand. His arms strain against the shovel but the roots are cut eventually…

Twilight lingers. The sun lasers into his eyes through the blinds swaying against the manufactured breeze. He has laid scripture verse and context at the feet of the gathered wisdom. His words are ringing with very redundancy he swore to avoid when this all began months ago. He is convinced. He has a rack of sweater vests in his closets for every tedious meeting and conference he has ever attended on this subject. He too invested in this to tell anyone that he’d rather just see this debate die…

The pre-dawn light makes the business worse. Almost able to see but not enough for efficiency, he pulls the spade out of the hole once more. The gathering dew makes the tears and sweat less the salty sting of pain – more the gift of a natural goodbye. Goodbye too close to hello. Three years is not enough time awake to warrant sleeping forever. Four large coins in his pocket are his only escape…

His car stops as if on instinct at the crimson light. His side won but he can’t help feeling thin. His belly against the wheel reminds him otherwise. He slides the car into place and it is still. He escapes into the flickering screen of his laptop and the late night sports highlights…

It was as if the fat night, lazy in its moonless hammock, is been startled by the timid advances of the sun across the sky. Scrambling to attention in a futile bid to impress his superiors against the inevitable victory of the morning, the night snuffs out the stars. Soon the darkness will give way to the blinding light…

What does it mean to be a Canadian?

2011-08-12T11:21:00.001-06:00

This fall I will guide some 70 grade 11 students through the social studies curriculum. The guiding question that centers the scope of the course is: To what extent should nationalism be embraced? There is almost an ironic quality to that question being asked of a Canadian audience. To many it would seem that Canada best embodies a fairly a-nationalistic persona. The most patriotic sentiment that Canada might muster is “I am Canadian, Meh…”

This perspective is a little dishonest since it really doesn’t account for the fact even this tacit denial of nationalistic pride or identity might itself be evidence of a strong nationalism. This is especially true since Canada has unavoidably advanced its strongest elements of it national character against that of USA. Since American patriotism is so bold – a lackadaisical perspective on Canada’s collective pride might seem like a vindication against the perceived American arrogance. Of course a non-committal approach to themes of national identity are not well supported in the main. One only needs to ask a few poignant questions to bring out some of the most ardent opinions with relative ease. So here is my challenge:

What does it mean to you to be Canadian?

Is being Canadian substantially different than being American? If so in what ways? If not which factors constribute tot he assimilation?

the gift of a mudslide…

2011-08-10T20:59:00.003-06:00

I stand on the rain soaked slope. A shelter is far too gracious a nomenclature for the random collection of poles, corrugated tin, canvas and palm thatching glued to the collapsing mud bank of the mountain side. A family lives there. A few wisps of the smoke of a cooking fire trail into the sky – evidence of a family carrying on its daily routine. More of a prayer to stay on the mountain.
He’s three or four but still not quite out of the clumsy teetering of a toddler. Shirt and some battered leather shoes yawning to reveal the stubby toes that search for anything stable. No pants. His sister, seven, yanks him onto her hip and over the two foot deep ravine carved into what is understood to be a road. Torrential rains run unimpeded down the clear cut mountainside sculpting trenches that snake like veins on a body-builder across the landscape. Today his dad has stopped in to bring another piece of tin to cover the three foot gap above the boy's bed. Tonight dad will catch the bus back to San Juan del Sur to join the boy’s mom and work. The boy might not see either of them again for a number of weeks. He hangs a little tighter to his sister.
A man in torn jeans hunches over the handle of his welder as lays a bead across a newly laid piece of tin roofing. An extension cord is loosely thrown over the nearby power line. The neighbour’s TV flickers and then blinks out. No shirt. No mask. No worries…
A pair of exceptionally thin oxen plod across the highway: a cart full of sugarcane piled eight feet high in the air. If the beasts were slower perhaps their load would not as quickly be converted into the all sorts of candy that form the staple diet of childhood here. But their load reaches and is then with no small effort converted into the dulcet bricks of dark raw molassesy sugar.
Starting at the top of the hillside, I scramble to the bottom and turn to face the small community pasted up the slope. My stance below the huddled barrio belies my true position. I am the giver. I am the agent of charity. I give and in giving I stretch out my hand against gallons of adversity that threaten to wash away… …even life itself. There is no humility in giving. No grace in charity. It is arrogant pride in its finest and most bewitching trance. I stretch out my finger and the spot it points to screams out for help. Haunting need. Immediate need! Now!
And I can meet that need. My money – not even that of a carefully coordinated fundraising campaign. My money! My money meets the now needs of every place my finger points. And as I lift my finger having met that need a new one springs to life in its place. I can dream of bigger money than mine. Money that could meet a dozen fingers pointed at once onto that mountainside. I have already coordinated in my mind the soup and pie lunches and the raffle tickets and…
…a church goes up here, a clinic – a retaining wall keeps the mountain back over there. My dentist friend is pulling teeth, my construction buddy is putting up rafters, my coaching friend has got those kids ready to win their local tournament. Needs met. Joy imparted. I can do this… I can DO this!
It falls to MY evaluation that these people are worse off than I am. And in a place where destitution can be warded off with lunch money – there is an intoxicating elixir to be consumed. I drink. The moment I place myself as the giver of charity – the gift that sneaks along for the ride is the way my gift puts them in the position of getter. Willingly enough it would seem – the smiles dance when the gifts are brought out and passed around. I have told them that they are not as good as I am – whether they acknowledge it or not. It is not so far from colonialist agenda that I aspire to.
I stare in the face of my charity with contempt now – seeing it for what it really is – my own vindication of my superior position. My easy gift. It occurs to me that we can give to meet the needs of now which are not fictitious needs. There is real pain now – real struggle now – real hardship now – real need now! But we can also meet the needs of then. These are just as real but not as obvious. These needs don’t stare you in the face before you close your eyes every night. These needs are not the haunting echoes of a mudslide or child being consumed nightly with worms. These are the kinds of needs that require a different kind of giver.
The needs of tomorrow are understood by living inside a community of pain and entering the rhythm of it agony. The needs of tomorrow are observed when the impulse to extend our arrogant giving to the NOW is curbed in favour of some long term investment. How do you affect the accepted logic of leaving your children alone in a ramshackle hut to find work in another country? How do you step into the relational dynamics that exact furious pain between genders inside and outside of marriage? How do you break cycles that perpetuate poverty that only deepens (in spite of all the money we have thrown at the NOW needs)? The giver who might try to make this their charity ought to consider that the cost is not one’s personal fortune or fame. It is a life. A life. A life that stays. A life that chooses not to escape the reality of pain. A life that chooses not to appease guilty consciences and incessant nightmares with dollars. A life – no less. A life – no more!
Somehow this song seems to tag nicely with these sentiments...

...fixed

2011-08-01T23:30:00.000-06:00

The sign reads, "repair and unblocking of cellular (phones)". Signs claiming the same services were almost as common as the fried banana on the dinner plate. Its ubiqutous presence makes one almost miss the extraordinary nature of this sign. The ability to unblock phones that are locked out of certain services or access to certain networks is the stuff of your average cyber hack (aka the regular teenager). That feature perhaps is not that extraordinary. The ability to unlock your phone is mostly thought of as a sort of mischievious way to circumvent the annoying restrictions that cell companies hold over the equipment they distrubte. So to advertise this service publically - out in the open - is out of the norm - a least to our sensibilities.
What really stands out is the that there is a claim to repair these bewildering micro circuit devices that now rule live in ours and the developing world - everyone has one. I am not sure that I have ever heard of anyone actually having their cell phone repaired. It just isn't done. Phone that stop working end up in the kids toyboxes while we march to the nearest agent for the upgrade which we have no doubt qualified. How do you repair a cell phone?
I asked Pablo that question - he seemed surprized I was asking.
Of course if your screen get cracked you can get a new one hand fabricated. You can get a new screen installed. You can swap your speaker for one that is louder. And louder is better. there are some features that can't be repaired but even some of the finest connections of the circuit board are available for a skilled technicians hand.
As technology has charged ahead into the blithering unknown. It has also left behind a stunningly large wake of disposable products in it wake. Disposable is actually a part of the market cycle that these new tech companies depend on. They count on the fact that when our phone breaks down the only option we consider is replacement.
Repair is the stuff for people who are satisfied. Satisfied with hanging on to what is. When you choose to repair a cell phone you choose to give up the possibility of acquiring the latest features available in the new models. You choose to hold your phone a little longer. Keeping stuff around longer. Its an ethos...
Our ethos is not as much about keeping - its about getting. One could speculate on which one is better but that is not really the point. I was just thinking that most of us are really hoping that this type of repair store exists for us as people as well. We all know that from time to time we break down as people - we make mistakes, we live poorly, we blink and squawk and hiccup. At times we feel like a blocked cell phone - struggling to make the most of days we are given (more crappy Diem than carpe Diem). We would love to find a spot that might actually be available to repair our broken parts. We would love to think that someone might want to keep us - hold us - a little longer. In the pace of life we live, fixing things just doesn't seem viable anymore. So we all start wondering if these repair shops actually exist any more.
Thankfully, I have found someone who want to hang onto to me a little while. By now I know that I need some touch ups - maybe even a solder joint to two. My 'plan' is not the latest greatest thing but its good enough for her.
I would wish the same for all of you my friends.
May you find someone who want to keep you...

Nicaragua the precipice…

2011-08-01T10:47:00.002-06:00

Adios Nicaragua. You are a place on the precipice. You are the line between just enough and nothing at all. You hang in the balance: meagre survival and hopeless disaster. You are a fragile ecosystem in search of an environmentalist who might care to advocate your delicate existence.
You don’t curse the rivers that pour down out of the sky and wash away your home. You don’t curse the pothole that swallow trucks whole. You don’t curse disease or pain or fever. You don’t curse the traffic. You don’t curse the fuzzy subtitled overdubbed TV programming. You don’t curse the beggar. You don’t curse a bad cell phone connection or regular yet unpredictable power outages. You don’t curse a herd of oxen that won’t move out of the way. You don’t curse the smell of diesel, of sweat, of rotting everything. No curses for poverty – no swears for bad manners. No epithets for persistent noise. Nicaragua you save curses for friends as terms of endearment. And F-words are saved for bad things.
Nicaragua you are a precipice. You teeter between keeping it together and completely falling apart. You are a balance of resilience. You are an inspiration against my gluttonous sense of what I deserve. Thanks for lending me your precipice for the few days I walked and unbalanced the scales a bit. Adios Nicaragua…

tarmac to tarmac

2011-08-01T10:27:00.001-06:00

The poignancy of standing on the very tarmac which was the last Nicaraguan soil I touched 32 years ago, is not lost on my over active sense of irony. The resort that we called home for 5 days used to be the beach residence of the brutal dictator Anastasio Somoza. The airstrip that belonged to him was used by American forces to extract their citizens from Nicaragua when the fighting got bad in 1979. The Americans had reason to flee. Their strong ties to the Somoza regime made them natural targets for the Sandinista forces on their march to the capital Managua. Having propped up the fifth wealthiest man (at the time) in the world politically they co-opted his ‘benevolence’ with the use of his beach side airstrip since the airport in Managua was essentially closed for business.

So I stand there on the tarmac and I am struck by the idea that this might the longest flat part of Nicaragua that I have seen for the entire trip. Its the part of the trip that least resembles this place of volcanoes and sprawling mango trees that squeeze the borders of the sky. Its the place where I am most aware of the fact that I normally live somewhere else. That runway of my last getaway forces me to recognize something about who I am. I am a leaver. Not that I necessarily am predisposed to leaving as feature of my personal character. I am leaver in the sense that I can and will leave. As much as I would love to espouse an affinity with this place as one its prodigals, I realize that belonging to this place comes with the cost of staying here. Its a cost I would gladly pay but I never really could. I can leave and that changes who I am.

That is what perhaps hurts the most as I stand there. There is a recognition that this place that holds so much of my childhood identity can never be and never really was home. They say that home is where the heart is. Its a wonderful statement but one we know is not real. Home is the place where you are not the visitor. The fact that you can visit a place (even for as long as a childhood) says little about its ability to be home – it has everything to do with your sense of position in the world.

For 5 days I wandered around in the same parks and gaze into the same blazingly beautiful vistas that he no doubt used to appease his guilt over the horrors of torture and abuse that he inflicted on the people. There is no lack of beauty here. It is also coincidently an all inclusive resort. All inclusive, that bastion of quintessential holiday package releasing your mind from the preoccupation of making choices about where to eat, what to drink or how much. Pretty sweet deal. This just happens to the only such all-inclusive resort in the entire country.

On the way back to Managua to take our flight home we pass this place. The rain had been falling all day – torrentially at times. This is someone’s home – this is the place where they are not visitors. The floor of their home runs with water when it rains. The place where I am not a visitor is well braced against the fiercest snow. I visit Nicaragua like Grandparents babysitting their grandkids – eventually they go back to live with their parents.

So I stand on the tarmac again because I can. I feel like a leaver. I feel dishonest. I feel alien. I feel also a certain dull ache of longing that cries to be left out on the front step with a old wooden top in my hand – and I never want mom to call me in for supper.

At once I am a stranger and friend but always a visitor…

…on the tarmac.

bed-time stories

2011-07-24T23:16:00.001-06:00

I don’t mean to be insolent – I hope you will see that.

We all are storytellers. These stories carry us through the night. By stories I mean the constructed narratives of meaning that keep us from despair or desperation. That they are stories has less to do with whether they are true than place us a characters within a scene that helps us make sense of life. We have faith that the narratives we clothe ourselves with, will fill up the longings, doubts and foreboding that creep in again and again. We can never be truly certain that the stories we tell ourselves go the way we tell the ending. Even so few of us keep our stories to ourselves we make big and small efforts to have others accept these tales we have adopted. Foreboding likes company.

Lately, I have struggled with how pretentious ‘church’ can be. It bothers me to see how trivial minutia get undeserved attention. My son pointed this out today as we sat in church in San Jose. He figured that if the whiners in church could spend a couple of Sundays in this church – they might not complain about music, noise, money, blah blah blah.

This church sang out loud. perhaps three minutes of the whole service was spent with the blaring piano and the song leader and the congregation all on the same key. It seemed that the more off key they were the louder the lifted their voices in search of the that unity – it got very loud. We don’t need to begin to talk about tempo.

A more devoted display of faith in the Christian narrative I have rarely seen if ever. And if there ever were a people who might be able to question the rational logic of their choice of narrative – it would be these. They claim that Jesus walks beside them and then spend the night waiting for the their pre-teenage boy to come home. The boy bound and gagged all night long finally arrives at home while the father has been out searching all night and day. If Jesus is the strength they claim why did he not prevent this trauma? In fact should it not be possible to see more evidence of Christ’s help in making these believers lives better? If anyone should have a reason to doubt their faith story it would be these. But you can’t chase these people from their faith.

It is not that these people have a more pure unadulterated faith – that they have found some secret to spiritual truth that most closely resembles the child like faith that Jesus described. No their faith is not uncomplicated. And although one might deduce from the intensity of their cried that their faith is certain – they would have to admit (as much as it might sadden them to do so) that they could not be – not completely. Nevertheless it is unshakeable.

It seems the faith narratives that we trade in – in North American churches are so accessorized that we lose sight of real reason for faith in the first place. Faith is not meant only for our own comfort. What these people have in greater supply than we do is that their faith not only holds them through the night but it extends to hold others through the night.

And these nights here are not our nights…

So bring on the GOOD bedtime stories…

the rooster and the cricket

2011-07-24T06:02:00.001-06:00

In a few days this place will once again pass into memory. I will search for tastes and smells and sounds and find that they will slip ever so easily away. I will look for the way a smile gives a away an other wise incredulous sounding suggestion and find it missing. I will forget how each and every hand I shake, body I hug is sticky. The sweet smoke of the sugar mill, or the taste of young coconut milk will fade. Memory is like that…

We work so very hard to hold on to certain memories because of how much they mean to who we think we are. But in the end memories have a way of having a mind of their own. Stubborn little buggers that slip away in the night – when the cricket and the rooster make a changing of the guard over the night songs. Even the ones we keep are themselves only hollow copies of the real thing.

We hold a memory tight but never completely. We only hold those things about the experience that serve our purposes. It is not really a complete picture of what actually happened. It is a copy and it serves us to reinforce our identity.

Then there are a few rare times when memory catches up to us and folds us back into a dynamic experience full of all the original stuff. We are completely at the mercy of a long ago.

Nostalgia is a sloppy mountainside upon which to build a selfhood. At any moment the torrential rains can wash away the meaning all you’ve built. The way things used to be is easily wipe out by progress, development and change for its own sake.

A self without memory is just as fickle a space.

Regret is the vilest of tricksters in the memory game. Regret is a really only a thinly veiled arrogance that claims to deserve better than what was received. Regret sets out traps for memory so that when it comes calling it will get tangled up in the insincerity of one unwilling to admit that in the end - life has been way better than should have been. Life is hard but it is good. It isn’t always easy but it is worthwhile. Life can steal and rob joy and contentment – but it is full. This isn’t careless optimism – this the humility we should aspire to live toward.

As sand slipping through our fingers – the last cup of Nicaraguan coffee will be swallowed some weeks from now. My clothes will go back to smelling Canadian again. I will shake dry hands. I will eat french fries. I will smell a barbeque roasting steak as i run through town. I will stop at stop signs. I will see the wide horizon open down to my toes. I will water my lawn. I will forget.

I will forget but I will cherish. I will put up a sign on the front porch inviting memory in. I will always tell the rooster not to step on the cricket on his way out the door to call in the morning.

coming home and getting the shaft

2011-07-23T07:16:00.000-06:00

One day i walk in flowers
one day i walk on stone
today i walk in hours
someday i shall be home

O I have been a beggar
and shall be one again
and few the ones to lend a hand
within the world of men

I sat on the the street corner
and watched the boot heels shine
and cried out glad and cried out sad
with every voice but mine

This song goes through my head today
A strong motif for this trip has been the idea of a home coming - its a pretty arrogant supposition. I am keenly aware that for as much as do and want this to feel like home, it isn't home till you are accepted back intot he family. I was told the first day that my spanish was too academic. So i have been practicing dropping my "s" at the end of words. I have been playing with the particular lilt that turns every phrase into a singsong affair. I've been eating the food - breathing in the air and marinating in various mixtures of sweat.
You sorta know you are in when they feel comfortable enough to prank you. Pablo has pulled a few on me and i ahve gotten one on him so the score is 3-1 in his favor. I don't usually take easily to losing a prank war but in this case if it means that I trully have come home then...

two cemetaries

2011-07-22T07:54:00.001-06:00

We past two cemeteries, it is believed that each belonged to a different class of people in this society. they were right across the street from each other. Both were now considered full. The rich cemetery was more ornately adorned and significantly more well kept. The poor one was in disrepair and seemed rather neglected. The rich one had tombs above ground where the bodies were placed – the belief being that being above ground was that much closer to heaven. The poor one buried people beneath the ground. these of course it is believed will take just a little bit longer to get to heaven on resurrection day.

Even in death the poor get the shaft it seems.

When we were here at the service last Sunday it was interesting to listen to the rhetoric used to talk about the nature of the people’s faith. Perseverance in the face of struggle, joy in the face of hardship, acknowledging pain and horror as a common way of life and identifying Jesus as dear helping friend. This is the narrative that they told themsleves. While it may not be typical of all the thematic material that these people cover in their in spiritual journey it certainly seems common. This narrative of peace in the face of conflict takes on a much different flavour when on the way home you also see a young man carrying a three foot coffin on a motorcycle. It certainly takes on a completely different tone than it does in any context that I have heard in Canada.

The pastor said that when we get to heaven we all will understand each other but the main language will be Spanish. Rousing cheers errupted – and I certainly would not be opposed to that. The pastor also kept reminding us that we have the same faith no matter where we come from. There are not borders with Jesus he told us. But I can’t help thinking that while the sentiment might be good for a sense of community building it really stands on some pretty feeble logic.

The fact is there are huge differences in our faith. The one out here has to be able to sustain people in ways that we hardly ever encounter back home. It must hold them in a quotidian struggle against the inherent level of difficulty that they face. Some might say its a more simplistic faith. We squabble over cerebral issues in the minutia of Christology for instance. How do we justify the luxury of those debates?

We live unconscious to the reality of the hard world that searches for meaning here. We live oblivious of how the narrative they speak to each other helps them to hang on a little longer. The horizon of their hope is in their next step, the next sunrise. Yet their kindness and joy pours out of every pore as easily as sweating in the hot sticky sun. How is it that complaining is so easily on our lips…

The arrogance of our position is not lost on me. But it does little to scold myself or anyone else. In the end it seems a rather pathetic and plastic faith that we own in North America – that I own… Caught up in trivialities that leave us vulnerable to the sins of greed, lust, complacency and ultimately arrogance. Like the arrogant rich buried apart from the poor.

For my part, I might hope that I might be worthy to be buried with the poor on their side of the street. And bury me as deep underground as you care to dig. Right there in that cemetery if you like. If what they say is true I certainly might be one of the last to arrive at the pearly gates but then maybe I’ll get one last glimpse of this paradise before I wander upstairs. And if I happen not to make up there and must return to this place – that might be wonderful reward – to wander around here for eternity eating cajeta de coco.

Bury me on the poor side please – if you think I’m worthy…

It was ironic as we drove by that the passage about dividing the sheep and the goats came back to as did the passage about it being harder for the rich ot enter the kingdom of heaven. The sheep were on the right and the goats were on the left to be banished forever in that parable of Jesus.

As we drove up the hill the rich cemetary was on the left…

Doing good–doing the best!

2011-07-21T07:00:00.001-06:00

a question that keeps coming back to me over and over – It is possible to do good things – especially where the need seems so comparatively great – but then good may not be good enough what is the best thing to do?

Soy aquel que

2011-07-18T07:20:00.001-06:00

I wish words were sufficient for the flood of emotions and thoughts swirling through me…

I suppose that I shouldn’t be surprized at how my experiences here feel like a home coming. I’ve taken enough courses in psychology to know to expect that. There are some things that defy the logical objectiveness that that knowledge should provide. Almost everything smells, tastes, sounds and even looks like the world of my childhood. There are moments of when the deep calm of coming home settles in – at times when I like should feel much less at peace.

a drunk grabs my hand at the market as we enter demanding money, drugs whatever… My dad final has to sternly push him off so we can keep going unmolested. My boys are scared. I feel comfortable – like somehow that is supposed to happen. I feel like a child I think.

we drive by the house where we used to live – it has changed but the street where we lived hasn’t changed all that much and as we drive past the corner where i used to play on the street with my friends, I am overwhelmed with the weirdest sense of exhilaration and powerful sense of belonging – I really am speechless.

The one thing that everyone here keeps asking me is how much Nicaragua has changed. It’s true it has changed – a lot. But in some ways it has not changed at all. When I talk to the people here – its almost as if they want me to reinforce the notion that Nicaragua has changed – especially for the better. It has gotten better – the way a good wine gets better with age. The most noticeable changes though are ones that I would not attribute to betterment but rather greedy lust of commercial pursuits. Development has occurred but I suspect it has only exasperated the distance between the relatively rich and the desperately poor. Yes it has changed.

But mostly for me so far it has not changed. The air is still always tinged with diesel. A deep breath is never bland. in the course of one breath you can smell the ripening mangos, dona celinas taceria cooking up goodies, the exhaust of the japoneras (the little Japanese trikes that serve as personal taxis, and earth. the next breath will be another set – distinct enough that you can taste everything you smell.

The sound of rain falling – horns always honking – birds, animals – but the most pleasant sound of all is Spanish. I was told by our driver that my Spanish was far too academic – I shouldn't be offended. To get more campesino I am going to have to drop all those hard “s” at the end of words like nosotros.

It tastes like home as well. ginger drinks, gallo pinto, mamones, nancites, roschia – its all there. Each bite a little bit more like the fall into deep cushiony bed.

It’s hard not to smile – after all el chocolatito beat the mexican in a convincing tko last night – vive nicaragua…

Boston Bruins: The Cup Is Coming Home

2011-05-29T22:54:00.000-06:00

I’m still here…

2011-05-22T21:53:00.001-06:00

Harold Camping did us a favour.

Mr. Camping is the dude who told us that the end of the world was supposed to be yesterday. He was wrong about that prediction and maybe finally we can all move on from giving any time and space to this sort of prognosticating. Although, I’m sure that listening to the clever backpedalling that Mr. Camping is doing today from his pulpit (if indeed he decided to show up in his pulpit at all) would be mildly amusing. Maybe Mr. Camping is wondering if the level of homosexual debauchery has actually reached the critical mass that he claimed would precipitate the calamitous end of the world. Perhaps Mr. Camping is engaging in recalculations of the actual end of days which no doubt eluded him this time. You know listening to God’s voice is a tough job – especially when its supposed to tip you off to impending doom.

I doubt he is figuring out sly ways of apologizing to sincere believers who either took him seriously or are embarrassed at his antics in the first place.

I doubt Mr. Camping is helping to raise money for Robert Fitzpatrick who spent most of his life saving making doomsday posters warning people of the impending doom. Something about this story caught my attention. While Mr. Fitzpatrick may have meant this next quotation as a notification of the impending wrath of Judgement Day – there may be more truth his word than may first appear to those of us dismayed at this man’s fool hardy actions:

"If you're not saved by the time these events begin tomorrow, then you'll be left here to face judgment day."

The truth is that many people did wake up to face the judgment of horrors that have befallen them in this life. The innumerable suffering of that we are all vulnerable to is the kind of doomsday that many people re-live over and over again. It is worthwhile to ask from where salvation will arrive for the broken relationships, poverty, disease, loneliness, etc. Fact is that for some people one final judgement day might be preferable to the daily hell that they endure.

It would seem that Mr. Camping’s antics would be more a distraction from the real life salvation that believers are responsible to bring to the world. On the other hand maybe we can finally put this end times tom foolery to bed once and for all. I mean the end is near right? Sure it is – but let’s face it for many the end was a long time time ago. It’s time to get on with the business of redeeming whose lives seem over. Instead of focusing on this Judgement Day why not spend some time judging our own efforts to provide the tools for people to get out of the desperate situations they find themselves in. And maybe we can all hope that the media will grow a up a little or just plain tire of the idiocy of these types of stories without whose help we would have been blissfully unaware.

Rich Religion

2011-05-16T09:53:00.000-06:00

According to this research, it pays to be Hindu. This data shows that Hindus in USA have a higher level of education and the highest amount of over 75K earning individuals. If you are bothered that your particular religion is not faring as well, its not that hard to reconcile this numbers and ameliorate your own relative religious position. Because we know that God helps those who help themselves! Anyway, a quick recall of the basics of statistics will tip you off to the fact that there are significantly more Baptists still in USA than Hindus - and a larger sample number means that there is a greater chance of the that larger sample landing closer tot he mean (average). So multiple gods may not have as direct a correlation with wealth and education as it appears on this graphic. A smaller sample group landing on the higher education and more wealth side is significant since according to statistical theory they could just as easily land on the negative side. Interestingly, "the way of suffering" (Buddhism) leads to a nirvana of cash and degrees as well.
What might be a little more significant is that the health and wealth Pentecostals ought to check out what the Anglicans are doing cause they are kicking their blessed rear-ends. So take a moment and basque in your relative wealth and academic achievement - unless of course you are Jehovah's Witness - in which case...
Now snap out of it people. Seriously, isn't the whole point of religion supposed to be about being satisfied with the unexplainable truth - taken as faith? And isn't the reward of the afterlife the thing to strive for? Come on a little bit poorer and an little bit dumber never hurt anybody right? Ignorance is bliss and simplicity is true riches.
I think it is interesting that a rhetorical frame like this one can dance into the social head space and force education and wealth as a rubric of evaluation on religion. I think its cool our social sphere can be that banal. I think its perverse for those who might claim to hang onto any vestige of faith to exacerbate this issue further. So then what do you make of this post? God thing it goes mostly unread...

Ask a Ninja

2011-04-13T20:45:00.003-06:00

Imperialism and Colonialism for Preschoolers

2011-03-03T22:11:00.000-07:00

Jesus HEART U on your bumper…

2011-03-01T00:14:00.001-07:00

So today on my way home from school I am listening to CBC radio – like the geek that I am. The feed is from Calgary so after 3pm I get to hear about Calgary traffic woes – which all seems a little pedestrian…

The traffic reporter comes on with her litany of fender benders, tow trucks this and that and a handful of road closures. Turns out today the weather and not the usual ineptitude of Calgary’s drivers that is the worst enemy of the homeward bound commute. It is some freakishly cold temperature and blowing snow – etc, etc. Apparently, there are several hills in Calgary that can in these conditions get quite icy and make progress up the hill largely impossible. This is not a reasonable calculation to many Calgarian drivers as they unheedingly attempt to rocket their way up these inclines (let’s be clear these are not really challenging grades except for Albertans whose predilection for flat open spaces seems to hinder their judgement of rudimentary principles of physics). Squiggling and swerving out of control as they were the traffic stacks up behind them.

“It seems a group of high school boys are out there on Center Street helping to push cars up the hill”

The traffic reporter barely even squeezes the words out – but my mind is popping. i know that area of Calgary and I know that there is a small Mennonite church sitting basically at the bottom of that hill. I know too that there is a volunteer youth worker at that church who has led small groups of high school boys for years. Its weird but somehow I know the number of the church and after I call it my hunch is confirmed: his small group of boys had not even gotten down to doing their Bible Study they had spent the whole time pushing cars up the hill.

I told him his group had made the traffic report. “Shoot,” he said, “we didn’t want to get noticed.”

Sometimes, I hear evangelicals debating evangelism over service formerly known as the Social Gospel. I think that argument ought to be put to bed at least for a good long rest. The answer is simple.

I wonder if sometimes this debate is entertained because we are just looking for the easiest way to appease the guilt we face when we encounter the servanthood that characterized Jesus ministry. Some people argue that there is little point to good deeds if we can’t somehow communicate the reason for our good works. Rubbish! Jesus didn’t teach us to do good deeds because they will allow us to do some other more important thing. Jesus did good things – he served people – because it was the best thing he could do for them. That’s it! No other agenda!

Could it be that we somehow think that the ‘telling’ will allow us to get away with doing less for people? I mean follow the logic. Maybe our desire to share the gospel with people is actually a result of the fact that we really are not that interested in serving them wholeheartedly. Maybe we think well if THEY have Jesus they probably will pull THEMSELVES up by the boot straps and put their lives back together. Or maybe we think – I’m not totally willing to serve THEM (you Jesus called this bringing Kingdom of Heaven to the earth) so I will at least make sure that I seal their eternal fate by telling them about Jesus. Or maybe worst of all we think that some flimsy act of randomish kindness that cost us very little is actually meaningful to the receiver of that gift and that adding the phrase “because Jesus loves you!” really cuts the mustard. Dude! Let’s give our heads a shake if that is where we are at!

That’s what I thought about when I heard about these boys. Okay so in some ways maybe their service was not the deepest most engaged action they could have taken. Who knows? But I do know that when they saw a REAL problem they rolled up their sleeves and pitched in. Done. No – hey I am gonna push you up the hill and write Jesus hearts U on your dirty bumper as you drive off. These guys were even bummed to get mentioned on the traffic report!

Look all I’m saying is until we are willing to serve people in as much depth as Jesus was we should probably SHUT UP about claiming to do things in his name – THAT’s ALL!

do you ‘Like’ revolution?

2011-02-25T16:35:00.001-07:00

A friend of mine asked me recently about my thoughts on how technological advancements might effect pedagogical philosophy and methodology. Of course that is something that one can easily boil down into neat little 140 character answers…

Here is my twitter feed if you are interested: https://twitter.com/DCalfN8DPickle

One of the factors that we talked about at length was the notion that the institution of education in North America has ceased to be nimble enough to anticipate the next wave of technological advancements. Instead it seems that the focus has been on reactive strategies to the manage the exponential growth in tech advancements and their effects on our lives. It seems like if the classroom focus in on managing existing technology- we will inevitably remain mired in the irksome position of either endorsers of technology or resistive luddite hold-outs against the inevitable advancement. If the questions you are asking are about whether to ban these things or not – you are asking the wrong question. If the only thing you are interested in is incorporating the latest tech option – guess what you will never catch up.

If on the other hand we can begin to proactively affect the climate of the as yet un seen NEXT product (that we won’t be able to live without!) then we are at least heading in the right direction. This does not mean we Nostradamus this thing through some logarithmical formula or other equally dubious prediction. Instead we begin to teach the values and principles that OUGHT to guide which technologies will survive as vital in our future world. When the developers of the next greatest thing come calling on educators – not to endorse their products through clever classroom application (**cough—SMARTBOARD—cough**) – but as consultants on were development ought to go in the future then perhaps we might begin to have a more healthy position toward technology in the classroom than we currently do.

Understanding the latest tech stuff is fine. Being the agents of change for future tech is what we ought to be aiming for. I think that perspective ought to guide…

And now for something totally different and hopefully a little humorous…

Race #1

2011-02-22T23:29:00.001-07:00

Weight Log: 189lbs (never really thought this day would come but tonight as Char and I were at dance class she said – I don’t want you to lose any more weight. So I’ve gone from being unattractively large to being unattractively unlarge – hmmm!)

Also I just registered for the first post weight loss running race April 9th (see the link here: http://racepro.ca/coaldale/

I’ve been running a minimum of 5K for the last month or so. Recently, I have been averaging between 50K a week (with about one day off per week). I have found some free running music at PODrunner. The nice thing about his music is that it is mostly just beats and is paced at certain bpms so that you can keep a steady rhythm as you workout. I look forward to running everyday even though I am starting to feel a few aches in my knees and hips but all in all its fine. I have been thinking about seeing a podiatrist since losing weight has not seemed to cure my intolerably flat feet.

Of course just about the time I think I am really getting somewhere with all my exercising along comes Weighty Matters with some poignant stuff about how exercise doesn’t really make that much difference. So there…

Brain Juice Baby

2011-02-18T22:48:00.001-07:00

Look at this…

Is it just a coincidence that some of the nations with the highest consumption of coffee are also some of the highest achievers on the PISA academic results in MATH, SCIENCE, and LITERACY!

want proof? here and here

HMMMMM!

Drink Up Folks!!!!!

Beep Beep - Egypt!

2011-02-16T12:43:00.001-07:00

Great article on the way the idea of revolution has become mythologized as a peculiarly Eurocentric piece of rhetoric. Facebook, social media and the like have danced at the corners of this event - waving their victory flags (and all the more in the RELATIVE non-violence of this uprising). It worries me that revolution might already be just another commodified entity in an ever cheapening rhetorical sociological frame work.

"If the mythology of revolution indicates a pure state of popular will, the mysticism of the state—its modern political theology—reposes on a redundancy: a mysterious ritual of self-establishment that literally allows it to float in the air without the need to look down; it does not need awareness since it is itself, in Hegelian parlance, the peak of consciousness, spirit incarnate. Every state, by definition, walks on the edge of—and indeed across—a precipice: not just by demanding that millions of citizens comply with the law by imposing just a modicum of violence in routine times but also, as more people in the world are now becoming aware, by piling up hundreds of billions of “sovereign” debt for decades without anybody really worrying about it."

See entire article here:The elusive subject of revolution « The Immanent Frame

Why not a Valentines surprize Pizza?

2011-02-14T12:43:00.000-07:00

Check out this hilarious dude!

2011-02-10T20:30:00.001-07:00

a-DORA-bull-@#$%

2011-02-07T12:15:00.000-07:00

Beside some problematic racial stereotypes - Dora might now be interested in exploring ways to help pre-pubesent girls make the leap to adolescence 'effectively'
check out this article here...

look at her adorable transformation. Can you say, 'caliente' boys and girls?

no ribbons please…

2011-02-03T17:03:00.001-07:00

Yoni Freedhoff over at Weighty Matters has posted a timely bit on the connection between health organizations and the Food Industry. Timely, given my recent post about the connection between Walmart and Michelle Obama. CHECK out this quotation from the posting:

The risk is straightforward. Partnerships by definition serve to benefit both parties. For the health organizations the benefits involve some combination of money, resources and exposure. For the food industry the benefits include sales, brand image improvements (which in turn translates into sales) and spin which may serve to help deflect criticism or further political needs.
The increase in sales is problematic in that more often than not, the brands that partner with health organizations are the very brands whose images or products may be considered unhealthy. Moreover, the consumption of more food, even more healthy food, won't help with our obesity problem.

Dude its time to quit clapping for Big Food and their healthy food schemes – lets just admit it – THEY ARE JUST IN IT FOR THE MONEY!

Still unconvinced read Wendell Berry’s article “The Pleasure of Eating” or read his books…

while you are waiting for those links to load think about this…

“This is certainly true also of patrons of the food industry, who have tended more and more to be mere consumers — passive, uncritical, and dependent. Indeed, this sort of consumption may be said to be one of the chief goals of industrial production. The food industrialists have by now persuaded millions of consumers to prefer food that is already prepared. They will grow, deliver, and cook your food for you and (just like your mother) beg you to eat it. That they do not yet offer to insert it, prechewed, into our mouth is only because they have found no profitable way to do so. We may rest assured that they would be glad to find such a way. The ideal industrial food consumer would be strapped to a table with a tube running from the food factory directly into his or her stomach…As capital replaces labor, it does so by substituting machines, drugs, and chemicals for human workers and for the natural health and fertility of the soil. The food is produced by any means or any shortcuts that will increase profits. And the business of the cosmeticians of advertising is to persuade the consumer that food so produced is good, tasty, healthful, and a guarantee of marital fidelity and long life.”

Should we applaud?

2011-02-02T12:52:00.000-07:00

"Wal-Mart has changed the way people shop, now it wants to change the way they eat." (see the rest of the article here)

As most of you know by know any really important news eminates from the creative genius of either John Stewart or Steven Colbert. So it was that after a long night of learning the two step with my wife i sat down down to get caught up on IMPORTANT NEWS. Its not like there is much of great significance happening out there these days. So it was refreshing to hear Steven identify perhaps one of the most profoundly significant news stories of this relatively young year. Watch the clip here: http://watch.thecomedynetwork.ca/the-colbert-report/full-episodes/the-colbert-report---february-1-2011/#clip410180
Yes, Walmart intends to lower prices on healthy foods - so yippee right?!?
OK! <<<>>>
Why does Walmart get to decide which products are healthy?
Does this new healthier eating rhetoric just a convenient distraction from the larger problem of their complete market dominance?
If carrots and milk and stuff is gonna be cheaper - why not make twinkies cheaper too - expecially if you can lose weight on them?

Food round up…

2011-01-31T20:43:00.001-07:00

Weight Log: 195lbs

Ladies check this out brownies can accomplish so much more than just a tasty snack. They are the vehicle for grief moderation when that nasty boy has dumped you – so good right! Like a blanket against an icy cold cold heart – talk about comfort food – but then it also is the source of your guilty conscience. Good luck dealing with the stress of weight loss after you have packed on the pounds after he dumped you. Aren’t you lucky to be a girl with super huge expectations about what an attractive body should look like? Maybe you should shop at Bed Bath and Beyond instead – they know how to treat a girl right!

Since going public with my substantial weight loss I have had more women come up to me and tell me that they wished they could lose – 10, 15, 20 lbs. Really! No guy HAS EVER TOLD ME THAT EVER!!!! So yeah good luck with that ladies! Now go ahead and watch the good folks over at TLC with their show “What Not To Wear” – its okay cause they are more reasonable than some of these crazy shows – who cares that they are still asking you to conform to the dominant values of attractiveness prescribed onto the female body. And besides if you follow their advice your consumer instincts will be honed so that at least in the clothes that you wear you will be able to comfortably fit the ideal that free market capitalism wants you to be.

If all of this is turning your stomach then you might want to turn to the other gateway food.

Bacon – check out this link: http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2011/01/30/133304206/why-bacon-is-a-gateway-to-meat-for-vegetarians#more

Oh and if you are interested here is a link to the presentation that me and my friend made in our Social Context class today: http://people.uleth.ca/~dale.friesen/Fat%20like%20Me/fatlikeme.pptx

skater no legs

2011-01-31T19:00:00.001-07:00

You gotta check this out - Inspiriation on two hands

Media Influence on Self and Others - ie. your teenage children

2011-01-26T12:48:00.000-07:00

So if we think it does not affect us why do we think it affects them

My Blackberry Is Not Working!

2011-01-22T14:27:00.000-07:00

Starbucks' "Trenta"

2011-01-22T14:20:00.001-07:00

Weighty Matters: Starbucks' "Trenta" - the caloric equivalent of more than half a gallon of Coke!

Inactivity Does Not Explain Canada’s Obesity Epidemic | Dr. Sharma's Obesity Notes

2011-01-22T10:02:00.001-07:00

"And now comes the surprise: overweight and obese kids and adults are only marginally (if at all) less active than their “normal” weight counterparts."

and

"In light of these data and the tremendous negative emotional and physical impact of weight bias, I stongly believe that discussing inactivity (or exercise) in the context of obesity is not only obfuscating the issues but also a major distraction from addressing the real causes of the problem."

Drool awhile…

2011-01-20T21:15:00.001-07:00

Guess what today is…

2011-01-18T17:28:00.001-07:00

Under 200 day!

Actually this is the third day under that illusive target. Here’s the proof – Of course holding the camera to take the picture inched me ever closer to the 200 line but I think you can still see that I snuck under it even with the camera…

putting those childhood trikes to good use?

2011-01-17T22:53:00.000-07:00

uhm this is wrecked dude - but it looks like so much fun hey?

The Pie that love built

2011-01-17T12:23:00.001-07:00

World' largest saskatoon pie - oh baby

2011-01-14T11:51:00.000-07:00

That's a berry large pie! | Calgary & Alberta | News | Calgary Sun

2011-01-14T11:43:00.000-07:00

That's a berry large pie! | Calgary & Alberta | News | Calgary Sun

which one?

2011-01-09T20:26:00.001-07:00

Bikes and Blizzard…

2011-01-08T23:18:00.001-07:00

Had a chance to attend the Calgary Bike Show today with Henry Warkentin. Dandy. Henry has a sweet bike collection of old restorations and new ones as well. We white knuckled out way home in more than twice the time it took us to get there. I had a blast. Thanks Henry – so fun.

Culture, nature, and mediation « The Immanent Frame

2011-01-08T06:40:00.001-07:00

Culture, nature, and mediation « The Immanent Frame

The article/review starts like this:

"religion is about mediation. Ironically so, because it is about the divine; but because the divine is never directly available, religion must instead be about how the divine is indirectly manifest. Thus, as Régis Debray has shown in his God: an Itinerary, monotheism, which is apparently the most other-worldly and non-mediated of creeds, has had to identify itself in concrete terms, which may bizarrely include preference for some landscapes over others, or for association with some animals over others."

Here is one of the tricky dilemmas that this article points to: If as it seems Pentecostalism has done more to ameliorate the "conditions of abjection" faced by the world's poor, can a credible claim be mounted that this brand of Christianity holds legitimacy for a more just world.

"However, Pentecostalism has by and large endorsed the capitalist market and the gospel of success, even if it has also developed many compensating voluntary welfare ventures, which should by no means be despised."

The author contends that mediation is a central feature in solving this dilemma. This is fascinating stuff to be sure. But it is worth paying attention to for more than just the fun of playing on some intellectual monkey bars - no pun intended. People who care about how religion manifests real change in the world ought to think about this stuff. I'm not talking about evaluating Pectecostalism over against other denominations (although clearly that discussion is available). I am suggesting that in the efforts to affect the betterment of the oppressed masses (whom we should acknowledge are oppressed in large part due to the ideologies that support our relative affluence) religion ought to be aware of how powerfully they can entrench ideological frames that serve to reinforce the conditions of abjection.
This article and the material it reviews is well worth the read...

Village on a Diet

2011-01-07T09:32:00.001-07:00

Weight Log: 201

Look! You probably didn’t watch the first episode of CBC’s “Canadian version of the fat shows that now infest cable TV.” That’s a good thing. Don’t start! Issues of voyeurism aside I think Margret Wente (whose ope-ed stuff usually makes me cringe)gets it mostly right here.

“It’s a phony solution that reduces an extremely complex social challenge to a question of attitude. It’s junk-food TV, and if I were you, I wouldn’t touch it.”

Village on Diet is part of CBC’s Live Right Now program. Their attempt to make a difference in the health of Canadians.

Not only is this program predictably able to reduce the complexity of weight loss to the manageable stratagems regulated by the rigours of a television broadcast, it once again reinforces overt moralizing of public health through public media. When a broadcast company replete with irrelevance in its connection with Canadian audience, reaches for this type of candy floss programming to fill its schedule you gotta wonder just how much of Steven Harper’s own personal budget is financing this show…

the holidays would not be complete without…

2011-01-05T00:34:00.001-07:00

Jam-Jams (thanks Mom!) and Fartzelky (actually Portzelky (actually New years Cookies))

A long ride in the mini-van with my whole wrestling team. (driving through Regina seems to perfect the whole experience.)

An obligatory visit with the characters that inhabit that grand ol’ Yuletide narrative – Ignacio, eSteven, Incarnation, Chancho and the other brothers that don’t believe I know a butt load of stuff about the Gospel – but I do! What story could capture the agony of a friar inhabiting the world of sinful ungodliness to provide field trips for the children in his orphanage to the ancient mystic ruins of the Maya. Every year something new jumps out at me about this story.

An unbearable loathing toward all things retail both prior to, during and post season.

Catching up with the latest happenings of friends and family that I have been disconnected from for too long – engagements, thinner hair, good conversations and…

A Ski Hill or two… … and this time I got to go down it as well!

Christmas lights that not only can transform an alter call song into a Nativity classic but can actually, miraculously set it – ever so unexpectedly to techno dance rhythms – and now even our humble town of Coaldale has been visited by such a phenomenon…

glitter…

cinnamon pie (thank mom!)

watching the somewhat purer version of hockey on display at the IIHF World Junior Tournament (and seeing Canada embarrass the USA) now on to the Russians….

Things that normally constitute a holiday celebration but were sadly missed this time…

-new years dance party with Eddie at the helm…

-playing board games with seniors at the lodge…

-having straight A’s to brag about after a semester of work…

-crashing one of the numerous extended family gatherings that occurred around this time of year.

-Nut log, Rum Balls

amen.

A little Christmas Trudeau

2010-12-24T09:31:00.001-07:00

“Uniformity is neither desirable nor possible in a country the size of Canada. We should not even be able to agree upon the kind of Canadian to choose as a model, let alone persuade most people to emulate it. There are few policies potentially more disastrous for Canada than to tell all Canadians that they must be alike. There is no such thing as a model or ideal Canadian. What could be more absurd than the concept of an “all-Canadian” boy or girl? A society which emphasizes uniformity is one which creates intolerance and hate. A society which eulogizes the average citizen is one which breeds mediocrity. What the world should be seeking, and what in Canada we must continue to cherish, are not concepts of uniformity but human values: compassion, love, and understanding.”

Chewing the Fat like a Thin Man

2010-12-20T09:22:00.000-07:00

Some of you asked to read the research work I did on food as language in weightloss rhetoric. Go nuts - here it is...
Chewing the Fat like a Thin Man

Lament for a frightened virtue…

2010-12-18T07:08:00.003-07:00

Does this look like a dangerous person to you?
Before you favour me with the ‘kindnesses’ of your response, there is this:
The Ram 50 is a stead little beast but no amount of anthropomorphic resilience will bring her back to life after a winter's day spent shining her headlights into a snow bank. The wind-swept clutches of an icy parking lot work their slow magic on this proud monster like the little mice chewing away Aslan’s bonds. Only this time the creature does not come back to life but merely whimpers the last gasps of breath as I twist the little shank into her neck.
the battery is dead…
it’s dark. I’m tired. There’s the edge of a rankling brewing on the less than acceptable preliminary results of the exam I have just written. There are 4 other vehicles in the parking lot.
I push the truck to the middle of the lot. It sits prominently under a light pole, hood gaping wide like a suckling at the ready. I even have my own jumper cables. it’s cold.
three young ladies approach fomenting unimaginable horrors upon the nether regions of their professor. They will attend confession in the morning with a tell tale ache of the cerebrum. one of them makes her car beep and as they huddle around the red pontiac like coyotes around a carcass - I make my move.
they scurry inside the car and are gone before I can utter a word. even my inestimably demonstrative gesticulating of my arms does not attract their attention. I’m four bloody feet away from their car and the windows are not frozen. they are not looking at me – on purpose! the tail lights taunt, now visible at the exit. taunt like thumbs stuck in ears - fingers flapping.
my fingers are not flapping – they are stiff with cold. I dial my son to come and help.
two other girls approach – a guy, a pair of guys, and a girl all drive away in vehicles parked within mere meters of my dead Ram. I begin to wonder about the semiotic ‘readability’ of the propped open hood.
at first my anger seethes uncontrolled. a light post becomes receptacle for nasty epithets that discount the honour of the mothers of each of these unhelpfuls
as the blistering rage pauses for breath - a dim recognition
perhaps the sign that is misread here is me. perhaps, as the photo above will attest, I am the very thing their mothers warned them to avoid. looking at me they see that man – the dangerous man.
I should take a glory in the light of this. a smile perhaps? Not that I might revel in the thought of some imagined heinous identity I might possess. no the small glory should come in the success of post Mexico beard growing. but even that small medallion escapes.
now I am repulsed. that I could be a threat to any of those ‘brave’ souls who managed to ‘escape my wicked clutches’ is simply ludicrous. my repulsion fades into gloom.
how is it that an act of charity demanding meagre time wasted -- accomplish-able through the crack of the window, could so easily be discouraged? Should I conclude with Hobbes that we are an evil lot looking only for a way to excuse our selfish enterprise? Is the imagination of me being a potential threat an evident enough image to excuse charity?
Well Hobbes be damned there is benevolence after all. A boy, really, in his Ford SUV pulls up, having spotted me from the other side of the next parking lot. His girlfriend waits in a posture anything but patient. “I was just gonna drop her off at home – when I saw you.” it’s quarter to ten. “need a boost?”
i thank him through the inch and half crack of his window. it’s done. he’s gone. my son pulls up. as my hands slowly, in a screaming burn, return to normal circulatory function I dispense with Hobbes and shake my fist at fear.
a fear so humbly embedded on the everyday negotiation of safety left me out in the cold. a fear not recognized as fear anymore its just the way you do things. you don’t help beardy strangers in a parking lot – is just the way you do things. it is exactly the same quotidian negotiation that keeps us from dragging home the poor soul trying to sleep tonight on the park bench in Galt Gardens. fear is worked down deep inside the practices, keeping us from the charity that empathy might otherwise evoke. perhaps we no longer notice it as fear – its just the way we do things…
we’re not that bad – we’re just scared – and maybe we don’t even know just how scared we are…
look at me – won’t you be scared of me?

New Fav. Workout

2010-12-17T15:35:00.001-07:00

Weight log: 207lbs

21 reps 100lbs bench press // Plank hold 12-8s (I count in sets of 8 @140 bpm) // 15 reps 15lbs per side lateral raises // 15 reps bench // Plank 8-8s // 10 reps lateral raises

Jog at pace 2 m / 3.2 km or 30 minutes (which ever is longer)

18 reps bench press // Plank hold 10-8s // 10 reps lateral raises // 15 reps bench // Plank 6-8s // 5 reps lateral raises

Run 1.33 m / 2.1 or 20 minutes (which ever lasts longer)

15 reps bench press // Plank hold 10-8s // 10 reps lateral raises // 12 reps bench // Plank 6-8s // 5 reps lateral raises

Jog at pace .66 m / 1 km or 10 minutes (which ever lasts longer)

Cool down: Plank hold 3-8s twice.

Top 10 annoying things about being thinner…

2010-12-15T08:19:00.003-07:00

Weight log: 205 lbs

10. Having to wear mittens and wool socks to bed to keep my aching digits warm enough to not wake me up.

9. Not being able to ‘take advantage’ of my wife’s life-stage related warmth to reduce our heating costs this winter.

8. Not getting any ‘body-size’ sympathy from female cops about my lack of seatbelt use.

7. Lost friendship with my former tailor from the tent and awning company.

6. Having enough loose floppy arm-pit skin to involuntarily (and often in the most inappropriate situations) produce those arm-pit farts that I could never pull off as a boy.

5. The way my now protruding bum bones make sitting on unpadded benches in church a greater challenge for the minister to have a good sermon.

4. Having to learn an appreciation for the number of beats per minute in electronic/dance/trance music. (my latest music purchase: The Biggest Loser Latin Dance Workout Mix)

3. Not being able to claim outrageous weight loss methods in response to the ever popular, “So how did you do it?” question.

2. No longer possessing the same threatening cache as potential member of any human blanket/Tuna fish/dog pile.

1. Did I mention the loose skin?

The woman language translator - BestofYouTube.com

2010-12-14T20:12:00.000-07:00

The woman language translator - BestofYouTube.com Come on I gotta get this under the tree this year!

Between a Rock and …

2010-12-14T10:24:00.001-07:00

Weight Log: 206lbs

For my History of Revolutionary Ideas final exam I have the following choices to write an essay on:

1. Will history absolve Castro? (see link to his famous speech upon which this question is based)

2. Defend Stalin or Hitler or Osama Bin Laden.

3. Based on the revolutions of either Cuba, Vietnam, or China – justify the use of violence

Vaccinated...

2010-12-06T14:59:00.000-07:00

Weight log: 209lbs (finally!)

I can't believe its not purple!

Roland Barthes, Mythologies

"One can trace in advertising a narrative pattern which clearly shows the working of this new vaccine. It is found in the publicityfor Astra margarine. the episode always begins with a cry of indignation against margarine: 'A mousse? Made with margarine? Unthinkable!' 'Margarine? Your uncle will be furious!' And then one's eyes are opened, one's conscience becomes more pliable, and margarine is a delicious food tasty, digestible, economical, useful in all circumstances. The moral at the end is well known: 'Here you are rid of a prejudice which cost you dearly!'"

Here's a video clip that might lend a helping hand in familiarizing yourself with the sort of advertising rhetoric that Barthes was talking about...

Also see this link here: http:Good Luck Margarine
The old prejudice being that there was nothing like butter - these commercials were able quite successfully, I would have to say in hindsight, at ridding ourselves of that old prejudice (if the dairy fridge at my local grocery store is any indication).
Barthes seemed to be arguing that these commercials were able to immunize the public into accepting the new form of food and rejecting the old form. It was unthinkable to make certain dishes without butter but then margarine came along and...
Well it swept into popularity - it became the new standard - it even could retain all the amazing flavor of butter...

and it could be healthy for you - and even sexy (see here)
So now margarine is the accepted "Established Order" according to Barthes. Of course margarine has had to clean up its act to keep butter at bay so transfats were eliminated from the edible oil product. (see here)

"It is in the same way that the Established Order relieves you of your progressive prejudices. The Army, an absolute value? It is unthinkable: (and here I should think any self-respecting Mennonite should be nodding along) look at its vexations, its strictness, the always possible blindness of its chiefs. The Church, infallible? Alas, it is very doubtful: look at its bigots, its powerless priests, its murderous conformism. And then common sense makes its reckoning: what is this trifling dross of Order, compared to its advantages? It is well worth the price of immunization. what does it matter, after all, if Order is a little brutal or a little blind, when it allows us to live cheaply? Here we are, in our turn, rid of a prejudice which cost us dearly, too dearly, which cost us much in scruples, in revolt, in fights and in solitude."

Now don't get too worked up about Barthes slam on the church. He was addressing problems in the church that at the time of this writing in the late forties and fifties needed slamming. Let's remember that this was precisely the time when under the auspices of church work residential schools, and significantly oppressive views toward women were rampant in the dominant church denominations in Europe (Barthes was French). What is important here is to think about the way that we perhaps have allowed ourselves to be inoculated against protesting the forms of corrupt and oppressive behavior that tends to sneak under our noses because we so willingly gobble us the advertising buzz around us. Delicio Pizza commercials are rampant - lettuce commercials not so much. Why is it that 'healthy' food like vegetables and fruit cost more than 'unhealthy' stuff like the bake-it-yourself-and-we-promise-it-will-taste-just-as-good-as-the-grease-drenched-stuff-you-order-from-Panago-pizza?
Sure there is broader religious and political critique available in Barthes words here but then even our choice of food is really a religious and political action. Right?

10 K

2010-12-06T09:08:00.000-07:00

Today for the first time I jogged just over 10 kilometers – it took me 106 minutes to accomplish this feat. in honour of this accomplishment here’s a little treadmill humour to keep you on your toes

been there done that…

2010-12-03T15:47:00.001-07:00

Now its party time…come on over!

electronic conscience

2010-12-03T10:09:00.001-07:00

Texas Judge David Cabos has implemented the use of ankle bracelets to help reduce school truancy. Anna Maria Tremonte interviewed him in response to a program she aired on the rising truancy rate in Canadian schools. Finding effective solutions was the target of her investigation. The Judge issued some very interesting words about the use of the ankle tracking bracelets…

“It kinda serves as an electronic conscience as well” (17:35m)

Whole radio interview available here: http://www.cbc.ca/video/news/audioplayer.html?clipid=1678089964 (start listening at around 11:30)

Can a conscience be electronically induced? If it is possible to see the use of these electronic surveillance devices as a way of reinforcing important strategies of socialization (like going to school (regardless of the quality of schooling received)), what does that mean for the kind of mindful labour that Matthew Crawford and Wendell Berry advocate as important for virtuous engagement with the world? Can being mindful be transferred onto a device?

Here is Crawford…

“…modern science adopts an otherworldy ideal of how we come to know nature: through mental constructions that are more intellectually tractable than material reality, and in particular amenable to mathematical representation. Through such renderings we become masters of nature. Yet the kind of thinking that begins from idealizations such as the frictionless surface and the perfect vacuum sometimes fail us, because it isn’t sufficiently involved with the particulars.”

Instead…

“…to be a good mechanic (or any other kind of person Crawford claims) you have to be constantly attentive to the possibility that you may be wrong.”
We need to, ”…perceive (the world) clearly, and this requires a kind of “un-selfing”. [A]nything which alters consciousness in the direction of unselfishness, objectivity, and realism is to be connected with virtue. [V]irtue is the attempt to pierce the veil of selfish consciousness and join the world as it really is.”

Crawford suggests that if we remain in the world of projections (via ‘modern science’)…

“We have to wonder, then, whether degraded work entails not just dumbing down but also a certain unintended moral education…There seems to be a vicious circle in which degraded work plays a pedagogical role, forming workers into material that is ill suited for anything but the over-determined world of careless labour.”

So then the irony of the ankle bracelet technology is that it is being used to help students get a better education when in fact my removing conscientious engagement with the world it may in fact being accomplishing quite the opposite effect?

please hand in your ‘absence’ slips at the pearly gates…

2010-12-02T00:54:00.001-07:00

Weight log: 211lb (forgot to take my pill again today – it is really hard to tell the difference between taking it and not taking it – Great work out today though!)

I’m a little frustrated with an article in Christianity Today entitled A Feast Fit for a King by Leslie Leyland Fields. Fields does an ample job of providing a provocative critique of industrialized food. Its a thoughtful piece that doesn’t skimp on guilt-tinged advice for meaningful redirection of food choices for people who are mindful of their desire to follow Christ. She outlines some of the important strategies that are beginning to be recognized as the best ways to address the problems resulting from turning food into an industry. Of these the admonition to engage with local food production in our purchasing habits is likely the strongest.

Leslie also provides a challenging look at the fact that the new (especially anti-agribusiness) food movements in fact are thinly disguised forms of ideological rhetoric which tend to wander far too much into realm of religion. This is a valid point and a helpful caution for those who might see reform in the praxis of food to be essential to solving almost all of the worlds problems. She points to the influence of Hindu and Buddhist philosophy in the core elements of these sort of movements. But she also marks the fact that these same philosophies are not that far from core values intoned by Christian dogma.

The problem that I have is that I think she gives up a little too easily. Her conclusion toward the end of the piece seems to recover the standard defeatist position that has been the Christian mantra since Augustine.

“Our attempts to restore the earth and return to Edenic communion with it ultimately cannot succeed. Just as we cannot perfect our bodies or spirits through eating pure foods, so we cannot perfect the earth, no matter how heroic our efforts. Because of our foreparents' appetite for authority and forbidden food, creation has been groaning, subjected to futility and death… We steward the earth and exercise dominion over its creatures as expressions of love for and obedience to our Creator, who named it all very good, but we cannot take back or re-create the garden. Not until heaven will we see the garden restored.”

Stewardship and dominion over the earth and its creatures makes absolutely no sense if that stewardship and dominion do not have some actual consequences. We may as well bury the earth and its creatures in a hole and wait for the master to return. The earth and its creatures matter to God. They are not just symbolic elements of a uber complex Lego world he has fashioned for us to prove we love him in. These are not play things we are dealing with – they are the work of the master designer? Right? Eden may very well not be recoverable but then Eden likely not even a desirable idea for us to pursue. A more realistic idea would be to work within the indictment of man’s relegation to the make food by the sweat of his brow. To see this ‘curse’ to be the most potentially redemptive feature of our engagement with the real world might be the start of finding ways to recover honesty and integrity into how we consume and produce food. And is it not time for intelligent Christians to refuse to engage with the narcissism that results in the standard “-not until heaven” line. How arrogant is that. I mean can you even imagine anyone with a thread of human decency saying those words to those facing starvation and mal-nutrition around the world. At best it sounds something like this, “We’re sorry we aren’t going to help you because after all we can’t fix everything and heaven is just around the corner when we can forget that these terrible things ever happened in the first place – now say your prayers!”

It’s time to admit that more can be done and more responsibly. We have not even reached heroic status.

Fervor

2010-12-01T10:31:00.001-07:00

“But these truths were a fire in me then. Now I can tell them without being burned. These truths do not have to be hurled in men’s faces. They are not intended to ignite fervor. I do not trust fervor.

Every time it has burst out somewhere, it has brought fire, famine, misery….And contempt for man.

Fervor is the weapon of choice of the impotent.” – Frantz Fanon (Black Skin, White Masks)

Embarrassed at McDonald’s

2010-11-28T23:18:00.002-07:00

The Greasy-Eyed, Sheepish Apology usually goes something like this: “Oh, I just picked something up at McDicks.”
Allen Shelton noticed that when his fellow professors admitted to eating a Quarter Pounder and fries they talked about it as if, “this was an activity which in one way or another had been forced on them…They were vaguely apologetic or embarrassed by their presence there.” -- (Theatre for Eating, Looking and Thinking: the Restaurant as Symbolic Space)
McDonalds never seems to get the same ecstatic revelry from its patrons as say the Keg, or even Boston Pizza. “Yeah, you know I tried those new McMinis and they’re not that bad – actually.” Where as on the other hand you get…”If go to that new Indian place on 4th Ave. you just have to try the Baingan Bharta it is to die for!” Of course, it is not uncommon to hear criticism of all restaurants but even there a different type of language is used. “The portions at Ric’s Grill are small for the price and the food is just average – nothing outstanding.” Compared to…”Can you believe that they are actually bringing the McRib back? – That is just disgusting!” The differences are subtle but the way we talk about the food we eat at a restaurant says something important about what is “going on” in a restaurant.
Shelton’s article gives us a pretty convincing argument that a class analysis is available when we look at restaurants. He suggests a high end restaurant like Ric’s Grill or the Keg corresponds loosely to a high class identification. Boston Pizza on the other hand is more middle class. McDonalds and other fast food convenience type stores are more akin to the working class. It’s not that eating at one of these establishments means that you are that type of person but he says, much like Levi-Strauss says, that restaurants form a type of language that we can use to communicate things about our identity. They are located (loci) systems of meaning that we can use to speak to others and to ourselves. We know this intuitively since we hardly ever check what we are wearing when we enter a McDonalds but we pay special attention to what we are wearing at an upscale place.
Of course we know that food itself actually changes in these places as well. In McDonalds we can expect the same thing in every store across North America. The central item is the burger. At a place like Coco Pazzo’s we know that we won’t find the same food as anywhere else. In fact we may not find the same food week to week. Part of the reason for that is because we have different expectations about what is done with our food.
In McDonalds we know that its not really a chef making our burger but an assembly line of workers adding components that in the end construct the burger we order. No special attention is given to the food products themselves other than their order of assembly and the ‘state’ (usually hot or cold) that they need to be in to be ready to be added. Often the food is pre-manufactured to meet specification of assembly in these shops. A customer walks up orders a Quarter Pounder with cheese hold the onions – and one is delivered within minutes. Just over the tops of the burger shoots we can see the caps of these assembly line workers truckin along.
At the Keg something different happens. There is a chef and he has his minions. We usually can’t even see them working but we know they are there. And we know that they are having to do some magic with our food. We know this in a few ways. First of all we are asked about our preferences on how the meat is cooked which condiments or style of potato we want. The chef will need to work with the obstinate food ingredients to make sure they meet our specifications. The chef learns how to cook the steak just right so that it can be ‘done’ exactly as we have asked for it. We also know this because our food takes time to get to our table. Somebody must be working their butt off to get this stuff to us. And then we know this because the amount we get is usually proportionately smaller than what we could order for the same price at McDonalds or Swiss Chalet. So the price (the fact that it is more expensive) is another way for us to tell that our food is being worked into submission to meet our desire for pleasure.
Crawford calls this type of work mindful work as opposed to careless work. Crawford says attentiveness to how objects resist our will is not only a more elevated intellectual skill but it is also a virtue. He says when people have to work in jobs like McDonalds (in the mechanics world this would be Mr. Lube or Canadian Tire) a certain dumbing down occurs and also an unintended moral re-education. The Keg or Osho’s (the mechanics equivalent of the corner restoration specialist) helps workers engage with the particular of the material world and makes them more virtuous. (p. 101)

“There seems to be a vicious circle in which degraded work plays a pedagogical role, forming workers into material that is ill suited for anything but the overdetermined world of careless labour.”

Ouch!
How do you know its careless labour? – come on does the picture ever match what you get in side the box? Is there any wonder that they have to add a toy to the kids meal to make it really happy?
Enter the world of weight loss. If you wanted to lose weight you’d only eat at high end restaurants that feed you exceedingly small portions of the most succulent and worked over food on the planet. But that stuff cost the most. So you opt for Tony Roma’s instead of the Keg. You exchange Wok Box for Osho’s – Coco Pazzo for Pizza Hut. But then why stop there. Who has the money for Pizza Hut every night? You can get those Delicio Pizza a lot cheaper. But you exchange those for the Costco big pan $10.99 pizza – you fill your freezer with them and you admit under your breath that its not as good as Delicio but nothing feeds your family as well. You’ve traded down on the best stuff for you and you’ve end up with more food for less money – a whole lot more food. I can barely make pizza meal for my family from scratch for what it costs me to purchase a personal size at Coco Pazzo. But Pizza Hut and Costco have me beat cost wise by a mile.
So the food produced by careless labour is consumed by the poorest people – or most financially conservative. The question. If McDonalds type work makes us less virtuous labourers what does consumption of the product of this labour make the consumers? Dupes to be sure. We would do well according to Crawford et al. to only opt for the food products that have been sweated over. In the mean time consumers can’t afford that food. The food they can afford is the food that will make them fat. And to make up for the crappy taste of that food the multinational food corporations throw billions of dollars behind packaging and advertising to create a beautiful illusion (projection) or an imagined taste. If the consumer wants to unseat the powerful corporate interests that regulate this market structure he/she has to buy more expensive food. But now buying more expensive food is not even desired since the eat public has gotten used to eating and preferring the crappy food. (Why is it that my kids prefer the canned chicken noodle soup to my homemade stuff with real noodles? Why is a green garden salad so much more expensive to make than the main course and why don’t people like that salad as much as the main course?). I’m not talking about a conspiracy. I am talking about how tastes change – I am talking about about how obesity becomes ‘epidemic’ – I am talking about how economics at both the producer/chef/maker/assembler side and the consumer/eater/microvwaver/digester side of this problem is caught inside a system that inevitably shapes the free will choice of individuals within the system. It also allows individuals with enough dough to make the kind of pizza that will help them get thinner which will help reinforce their status as a high class individual in society which will…
OK its a conspiracy!

this is a chart of comparative analysis that I made up based on a few articles and authors I have been reading on this topic – the categories don’t necessarily line up exactly and are not analogous completely within columns but I have found this a useful way to keep track of the ideas of the authors presented…

Body as a sick engine

2010-11-28T20:31:00.001-07:00

I am not a mechanism, an assembly of various sections.
And it is not because the mechanism is working wrongly, that I am ill.
I am ill because of wounds to the soul, to the deep emotional self
and the wounds to the soul take a long, long time, only time can help
and patience, and a certain difficult repentance
long, difficult repentance, realization of life’s mistake, and the freeing oneself
from the endless repetition of the mistake
which mankind at large has chosen to sanctify. – D.H. Lawrence

Obesity is commonly understood as an illness. Here I want to superimpose an interpretation of Lawrence’s poem that may not be accommodating of his intention but I think there is room in his obscure language to make this available.

If as in a Cartesian sense the body is a machine, it makes sense to think that there must be possible to arrive at the idea of optimally running machine. Obesity from the point of view of optimum mechanical efficiency should be considered as an illness. But Lawrence is actually trying to reframe the idea of illness. Here illness is connected not to an improper function of the body/machine. Illness is connected to ‘wounds to the soul’ which he suggests take a ‘long, long time’ to recover from. So then obesity is not an illness of the body but of the soul. This is even worse. This turns into: “I am obese – I have an ill soul.” This is a short step away from: “You are obese – you are a bad person!” But something else is available here in Lawrence.

He suggests that these soul wounds require a ‘certain difficult repentance…of life’s mistake’. So perhaps if you are obese Lawrence would say that all one needs to do is repent of your mistakes – not of the body but of the mind and soul. So far we have covered the dominant rhetoric of the plenty of the weight loss as self-help programs (i.e. Weight Watchers, Weigh Down Diet, even Curves). Think right – eat right – be thin -they tell you. But it is also the ‘freeing oneself from the endless repetition of the mistake which mankind at large has chosen to sanctify.’ So what is this socially sanctified mistake that Lawrence is talking about? It is quite possible that Lawrence had a specific social problem in mind that was systematically opposed to healing. But he seems to have avoided being too direct in his accusation. As a result the poem is open for this: the endlessly repeated mistake that individuals must free themselves from is nothing less than seeing the body as a mechanism.

So what?

Perhaps if the body isn’t a mechanism then we can stop moralizing the body. Maybe we can stop using the body as a marker to determine which individuals are evil and which one’s are good. Maybe a better idea of illness can be recaptured. Maybe the common judgement of lazy, gluttonous, dirty, or careless can stop being the moral tags affixed to bodies that stand outside of the arbitrary way we have thought the typical body should look.

disclaimer: I am not in anyway trying to be an apologist for Lawrence. I doubt there is much of his ideological perspective I could endorse.

Upload Request

2010-11-26T14:50:00.001-07:00

Weight log: 210lbs (now the trick is to keep it off till next Friday-yikes)

Hey everybody,

If you are interested in uploading your pics of 100lbs of significant stuff here is the PhotoBucket account that you can use to do that. http://s1209.photobucket.com/albums/cc398/HundredPounds/ The account name is “hundredpounds” and the password is, “100pounds”. Feel free to upload your pics at anytime. Looking forward to seeing what you all come up with.

a good work ethic

2010-11-24T00:01:00.002-07:00

sporting my newly crafted Saskatchewan RoughRiders hat

weight log: 213lb (I am tired of this weight let's get lower already)

I am a parent of four teenage boys. I think that one of my jobs is to teach them a solid work ethic (which is a euphemism for not being lazy). Since Tuesday of the first snow fall I asked my boys to shovel the driveway (I also ask them to shovel the neighbour’s driveway since he is old). With the onslaught of looming school work, I did not have the time to spend with them on this job. Each day after school when they would come in I would ask them whether they had done a good job. Each time they assured me they had. They were wrong. Their idea of good job meant that the packed snow underneath the tire ruts were left as is. Their idea of a good job meant that the garage doorway had been cleared for just enough space to plant one foot over the threshold. Mine was slightly different. By the time one week later I took the time to fix their lackluster effort one of my other neighbours had ‘conveniently’ brought his snow blower over to clear off our driveway. I hate snow-blowers – they pack just as much snow onto the driveway as they remove. So I spent 3 hours scraping my driveway while my boys intermittently lent their assistance to my project. I expect that they are more aware of my standards now.

I am glowing now with that tell-tale glow that one gets when you are frozen to the core of your being and the blood ever so timidly re-investigates the outer reaches of your capillary system. I am glowing with a certain parental one-up-man-ship. “I showed them what real work was all about.”

I tilt back in my chair with a hot cup of coffee and am dimly conscious of the sound of a video game playing in the background. Something occurs to me in my state of glowing that is irresistible and annoying at the same time. There has not been one time when I have ever asked my boys to be diligent in their video-gaming forays. I have never said, “Jesse you had better make sure you beat that monster in level 8.” I have never rebuked my son about his choice not to march his ancient army through the Spanish peninsula as would clearly be most prudent. I have never asked my sons to provide evidence of their scores, kills, or points after each day of game playing.

At first I am intrigued that there seems to be this whole new area of ‘accountability’ that I can use to reinforce the ‘values’ that I want to pass on to my boys. Of course this is just ludicrous thinking. Who uses video game proficiency as a way to mark, grade and sort labour. It’s just plain silly.

But then I think about my desire to have the boys demonstrate diligence in ‘real’ work with their hands. I wonder if this is going to make any sense at all to them or to their kids in a few years.

Growing up, I can still recall scenes of five and six year old boys running a single shovel plough behind an ox in Nicaragua. There is almost no chance that my boys will need to depend on that sort of diligence in the future to sustain their lives. So I begin to wonder why it is so important to teach the boys to work hard – do a good job – take pride in their work. Well, before I start sounding like a buffoon, I should say that the answer seems fairly self evident. Diligence in work is virtue regardless of what work one does. So I hope that my insistence on getting the job done right is actually something that will bear fruit in whatever labour they choose to engage in. More importantly, I want my boys to be independent. When their vehicle breaks down I want them to have the wherewithal to at least make an attempt to fix the thing. Not because that is the manly thing to do but because I want them to avoid the screw job they are going to get at Canadian Tire when they bring it there for repair. Luckily, my boys have had some fabulous employers who have been more than forbearing on their deficiencies. They report to me that my boys are hard conscientious workers. Phew!

But before I go back to glowing, I am stumped by a nagging question that just seems to avoid a satisfying answer. Why is it that some types of work/effort are seen as valid – almost natural while others seem well not even really like work at all? It seems likely that at least one of my sons will find employment in a field that will involve the use of technologies that will for all intents resemble the very video games they play today. So should I be asking them to diligently play video games? On a deeper level, am I prepared, as a parent, to avoid the condescending tone that goes with the words, “So when are you gonna find a real job?”

We live in a world that is increasingly inaccessible. I still recall standing in sheepish chagrin over the disemboweled carcass of my new purchased Chevy Astro. My good friend was installing a water pump. I was a useless onlooker thankful that I had a friend who I could trust to get the work done. When one of the main bolts sheared off in removing the old pump I was in full panic mode. My hands were not even greasy but I was the one panicking. My friend calmly slid out from under the vehicle shut off the trouble light and causally said, “I’ll pick up a new in the morning and we’ll drill in out then.” A water pump is beyond my confidence level. Oil changes fine but that’s about it. My new cell phone on the other hand, I can’t do any maintenance on that. In fact if I do start to open the sucker up there is a sticker that tells me to leave it alone. I have only a few options all of which take the phone out of my hands. Return to store. Buy a new one. That’s it.

I’m a hard worker. I pride myself in that. I used to get winded from being over weight but now I think I am getting back to some of that old hard work form that once had. In the old days I used to work 12-14 hours a day setting and pouring concrete. Loved it. I am telling you that even in my peak athletic form there would be absolutely nothing I could do to fix my fricken phone!!! Those buggers who sell it to me have me over a barrel. In order to have a phone I can’t build one from scratch or fix my old one or upgrade it. I have to constantly be tied to their leash. So now tell me what is a good work ethic going to really look like in the future that my grand-kids will grow up into…?

For more on this stuff read the chapter: “The Contradictions of the Cubicle” in Crawford’s Shop Class as Soulcraft

Jamie Oliver is a food missionary

2010-11-22T18:41:00.002-07:00

weight log: 213 lbs
CBC.ca | The Current | Nov 22/10 - Pt 2: Jamie Oliver
Jamie says that people are not bright enough to empower people to evolve toward better food choices. He claims that corporations are to blame with fancy marketing schemes. He advocates a Nanny state to watch out for children's food consumption. Governments should get very involved. Really?
Poorest people are the most vulnerable.
British public was best when they had a "ministry of food" administered by 'girls'.
"What you don't want to be is a food NAZI!" - Jamie Oliver
so who is the fascist foodie?
does artisan food = good food?

So who wins? Really?

2010-11-22T18:29:00.001-07:00

Let them eat broccoli! - The Globe and Mail
Margaret Wente has done a good job of describing the different sides of the fence on this issue. Do we want the state legislating our food consumption (in much the same way they have legislated consumption of tobacco)?
"If people can’t resist their own worst instincts, then the state is increasingly determined to do it for them. To impose virtue on the lower orders, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has asked the federal government for permission to bar the city’s poor people from buying soda and other sugary drinks with their food stamps."
or are we to give in to the Applebees of the world who seem to be waging a far too effective guerrilla warfare against our better judgment?
Let's face it - there is a serious dilemma for the conscientious Mennonite - do what degree do we take advantage of the all-you-can-eat-buffet?

S.F. Supervisors pass anti-Happy Meal law - Business - Consumer news - Food Inc. - msnbc.com

2010-11-22T18:18:00.001-07:00

S.F. Supervisors pass anti-Happy Meal law - Business - Consumer news - Food Inc. - msnbc.com
so here is a question that might be worth asking: Is the presence of a toy a significant factor in the selection of a particular meal choice for parents? I mean does a toy make you choose one meal over another? I suspect that this will make very little difference in the sale of "Happy Meals" in San Fran. It will also likely not serve to change the proliferation of fast food as a significant source of food consumption for the population.

Status: None

2010-11-21T18:36:00.001-07:00

Weight log: 215lbs

I know that some of you keeners out there have noticed that the little Facebook badge on the right hand side of my blog site lists my status as none. This is one of those quirky things that seems to defy the gremlins in cyberspace – as it would seem that “status” on Facebook is a principle feature of this social networking medium…

the invisible fat man

2010-11-21T00:48:00.001-07:00

I want to be very careful here. It seems that racism is a distinct (and more horrific) form of bigotry. The oppression of non-whites is hardly something to trivialize with a comparison to other forms of discrimination. I do think it is possible to extract from the field of racism a particular nuance of the human experience of positional violence. I know violence seems like an overly loaded term in this space. It is appropriate if only to suggest that the act of reducing the other to something less is in itself a violent act where power is exercised to control the other. With all due respect and deference since I am a after all a white man I want to suggest a comparison that might get at a peculiarity at work in the field an us / them formulation.

In racism there is the black person and the white person. In body-sizism there is the fat person and the thin person. Black is to fat as White is to thin. This comparative equivalency is only really positional and not actual lest we fall into the dismissive problem stated above.

In order to think about this comparison let us turn to Frantz Fanon who gives us theory of how language situates and reduces the black person to a position of depersonalization. Fanon in the introduction to his first (and my favourite work) book Black Skin White Masks posits the way language works to reduce the black.

“To speak means to be in a position to use a certain syntax, to grasp the morphology of this or that language, but it means above all to assume a culture, to support the weight of a civilization…The Negro of the Antilles will be proportionately whiter-that is, he will come closer to being a real human being-in direct ratio to his mastery of the French language.”

Fanon is suggesting that the adoption of a language situates the individual to a restriction of identity as a subject. I think this should be fairly clear for anyone who has tried to master a second language since what becomes immediately apparent is the way the new language forces a different perspective, thought process, etc. The better one can speak the language the better able the individual is able to negotiate the essential elements of living within that culture. The accent is what gives one away as a foreign speaker – it keeps one at a distance. Distance might be negotiable but what Fanon suggests is that ultimately this restriction – the act of supporting ‘the weight of a civilization’ is an act of complicity toward a denial of the black person’s real identity as they strive to take on the whole cultural aesthetic of white person.

Turning back to food, I have already talked about how theorists have framed food as a system of signs that operate like a language. Food and eating is a way to communicate. Eating in a certain way is a way of producing identity.

Fanon again describes the project of coming out from under the restriction that language can impose on the racial oppressed black.

“We shall have no mercy for the former governors, the former missionaries. To us, the man who adores the Negro is as “sick” as the man who abominates him. Conversely, the black man who wants to turn his race white is as miserable as he who preaches hatred for the whites. In the absolute, the black is no more to be loved than the Czech, and truly what is to be done is to set man free…Mankind set free of the trampoline that is the resistance of others, and digging into its own flesh to find meaning.”

What Fanon is interested in is not just having the black person find vindication or revenge on the oppressor but instead to escape the entire system that allows this kind of oppression to exist and flourish. The point for the black person is not to achieve the position of the white it is to smash the whole thing to pieces to get at freedom. Fanon is alerting us to the fact that there is something deeply problematic about the function of distinguishing ourselves against another as something superior.

From here it is interesting to think about food again. If eating is a language than the supermarket is like a sort of dictionary. It catalogues the ‘words’ that are available for us to use to talk with the ‘language’ of food. And just like a dictionary a supermarket seems to provide a comprehensive catalogue of all the available words that we can use. (How many times have we heard in grade school: If its not in the dictionary then its not a word – of course in that there is no accounting for Sarah Palin’s “refudiate”) So when we head down the peanut butter aisle we think we are choosing from all the available kinds of peanut butter available – they are all there side by side. Chunky, Crunchy, extra Chunky, smooth, extra smooth, natural, organic, light, reduced fat, etc. – they are all right there together. But what we quickly and intuitively come to know is that although this seems like real choice – it is only actually a limited choice. There must be other peanut butters out there – they just did not make it on to the shelf. This illusion of real choice operates in the same way that words operate in a given language. There seem to be a limited amount of words available to use within a language to express what we want to say. So too it is with food and eating.

If the black man is reduced in speaking another language is the fat man reduced in speaking a different language. If I as a former fat man begin to speak in the new language of ‘being/becoming thin’ what do I do to the fat man. I say that the fat man was not as viable as the new thin man. I want to be thin so I choose to speak in a new language of food. I eat less. I eat the ‘right’ foods to keep me thin and make me thinner. All the while my former fatness betrays my accent in the new language. I have no way to express the way food made my former identity with the new language I am speaking. It seems ironic and even heretical for me to suggest to my son to make some microwave popcorn for him and his friend when I know that this is not the language I am supposed to be ‘speaking’ (and as a father I should not be teaching my kids to speak in my mother tongue). But as a fat man I was able to say things with food that I can’t say now. I used to be able to have ‘words’ telling cooks how awesome their food was by helping myself to seconds and thirds. There seemed to be a way that the mere fact of me being large was able to function as a verification of goodness of food. Now as a thinning man I am left without a voice – reduced. At every turn I must also deny the existence of the old fat man even though the flaps of skin are still hanging well below my belt. I am scrutinized and worried over. How many times have I already heard, “I hope you won’t waste away to nothing.” How ridiculous is that – there is a long impossible road before my material nothingness is realized. But another nothingness has appeared. The invisibility of the fat man. The fat man does not speak – only the thin man speaks. I learn the right way to talk about the fat man. I feel much better now than I did then. I choose different words/food to create my identity. I am trying to become thin…you might think this the ultimate sacrilege to racist discourse but here goes…

to take liberties with Fanon…To us, the man who adores (pities) the Fatso is as “sick” as the man who abominates him. Conversely, the fat man who wants to turn his fatness thin is as miserable as he who preaches hatred for the skinny. In the absolute, the obese are no more to be loved than the anorexic, and truly what is to be done is to set man free.

Here is the root of it all. There is something essential in human nature that perverts the natural distinguishing that inevitably occurs between individuals. When a distinction become a sight of making one person more worthy than another – we have engaged in an act of oppression…

100lbs of Significance Party

2010-11-16T11:03:00.001-07:00

Join the Facebook group for updates here: http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/home.php?sk=group_163645170341693&ap=1

So the way I figure it I am about 2/3 weeks away from getting over that 100lb threshold. To celebrate I would like to invite you to a party. But in order to participate you will need to prepare the following:

1. Collect 100lbs of something significant.

2. If you can make it to the party – bring your 100lbs of stuff to the party. We will have a photographer take a picture of it. Then you can take it back home with you or leave with me to put into the fire we will have at the end of the night.

3. If you cannot make it to the party – take a picture of your 100lbs of stuff and post it either to the facebook group or to the photobucket sight I will provide you by email.

As soon as I have a date for the party I will post it and let you know more details. Until then start collecting.

Wondering what to collect:

students – how about 100lbs of books, pens, paper, etc.

accountants – how about 100lbs of coins

recent mom’s – 100lbs of dirty diapers

You get the drift…

When the Meridia is done - I'll switch to this...

2010-11-16T09:57:00.001-07:00

Twinkie diet helps nutrition professor lose 27 pounds - CNN.com

His premise: That in weight loss, pure calorie counting is what matters most -- not the nutritional value of the food.
The premise held up: On his "convenience store diet," he shed 27 pounds in two months.

But you might expect other indicators of health would have suffered. Not so.

back

2010-11-15T20:09:00.001-07:00

weight log: 219lb (so technically Mexico left a little extra around the waste line)

Hitting the books hard now – this is tough sledding.

This last week was good and hard at the same time – I will no doubt blog more of this in the next few days as I squirrel my way out of this pile of work. Save to say that when certain sociological theorists write about hauntings – I think I may indeed be catching a sliver of what that feels like…

I could not have had a more exquisite time with my wife of 20 years. This really was all that we had hoped for to celebrate our love together and it made us even more excited about the trip to Nicaragua that we are planning for next year. We can’t wait to be able to take our boys with us to explore this beautiful part of the world.

I can’t sign off tonight without a brief comment about the accident which claimed the lives of 7 people on the morning of the day that we left the Mayan Riviera. 5 of these were Canadians. A quick glance through any Canadian press agency will tell you of the tragedy that this became for the Canadians involved. We know that they were a part of a wedding, that a little boy was one of the victims and so on. Now I mean no disrespect to the families of this individuals’ families and friends. Their loss is no doubt immense.

What I can’t get out of my mind is that we know very little about who the Mexican men were. The Canadian press told nothing other than their nationality but even after scouring the Mexican papers there is precious little that we know about these two. Their names and the age of one of the men was confirmed but nothing else. What bothers me is that the details of the lives of the Canadians seemed important and framed the situation as tragic and worthy of deep sympathy. Clearly, the loss of the Mexican lives is no less tragic but because we have no details there is no way to know who was left behind. In a place where scrapping by is the way life is – someone is now wondering were their next meal is coming from or worse. By not talking about the details of their lives we have left them in a certain kind of invisible state. (not that unlike the state of being that Ralph Ellison describes in Invisible Man) I am trying not to be bitter against our Canadian-centric digestion of this story but it is really hard for me. The tragedy is a glaring confusion of positions. A group of Canadians upwardly mobile enough to afford to get married in a far away place – with all expenses paid, etc, etc, – have their lives cut short in an accident in that place. Their choices put them in a place that was to cause their demise and great sorrow for their families. The Mexican men were in a much different place. They too made the choice to be there but their choices most likely revolved around a complex set of negotiations between kin and friends to stave off the edges of poverty in this place. They were likely some of the more ‘fortunate ones’ who like the young man who drove us to the airport that day reported that he made 1300 pesos a month and his wife made 450. He put in 12 hours a day and together they supported his mom and aunt and grandfather and their little boy. What if he had been the one who had died? Now the tragedy seems to be cast in a different light but because of our position we have no contact with the reality of these two individuals situation. And unfortunately it seems we can far too easily forget them.

forgetting is such an important part of how we validate our own importance…

On a much lighter note – here is one thing I will not forget soon. The look of my boys in their newly acquired wrestling masks. Boys I can’t wait to let you taste this place that haunts me still.

Oh and I would be completely remiss to publically thank Char’s mom for watching our boys for the week. They were spoiled to bits.

if we’d all just be a little more altruistic maybe this ‘system’ would work?

2010-11-11T07:59:00.001-07:00

So our friend Mr. Crawford tells us about about his work as a ‘abstractor’ (someone who writes abstracts for articles that are published in magazines). The objective of the job on the surface appeared to require substantial cognitive ability. But in the end, he found the job ultimately unsatisfying. The work was reduced to little more than a glorified bulleter of points made in the article – repleat with quotas on the number of articles abstracted and with the only measurement of quality reduced to grammar and spelling forms.

So then he says,

“What I want to emphasize is that the presence of this third party (the conglomerate that owned the company he worked for) seeking to maximize a surplus skimmed from my labour, in a manner not sensitive to the limitations of pace arising from the nature of the work itself, must drive the work process beyond its limits.

Yet to identify greed as the problem would be to place the issue beyond serious address, leaving only important lamentation or a tedious exhortation to altruism.While greed may indeed be the root cause of our impoverished work life, it is surely no the case that the managers who design and orchestrate the process are themselves greedy (or rather, they surely are greedy no less or more than the rest of us, but that is not he issue.) …The problem, rather, is in the organization of managerial work within which they must operate.”

I like this guy more and more all the time…

Coffee Cupping: How Professionals Taste Coffee | Serious Eats

2010-11-11T06:54:00.001-07:00

Coffee Cupping: How Professionals Taste Coffee | Serious Eats
What i find most interesting about his article is that it attempts to do two things at the same time which on the surface seem contradictory. The premise of the article is to give in layman terms the process by which an elite set of individuals grade coffee. This apparently needs to be done because this process is mysterious and shrouded in obscure almost dictatorial power in its ability to affix value to coffee.
It is almost like the author is saying, "Do you wanna why certain coffee is considered better than others? Well, there is a perfectly rational system in place that allows certain individuals to make those claims about certain varieties."
The other thing that this article does is to maintain the control that these 'professionals' have over this stratification of food. With just enough vague brevity the author rather successfully re-shrouds this field of action all over again. At the end of the article we feel just as bewildered as before about the whole thing. We also feel appropriately distant from being able to achieve the elite status that the professionals have in tasting coffee. We know that even if we attend some of these coffee cupping events we will remain subservient to a predetermined number set by the objective set parameter maintained by the 'gods' of coffee tasting.
as for me right now - i just wanna find some good coofee to bring home this week!

Mañana en la mañana

2010-11-11T03:08:00.001-07:00

Mañana en la mañana

Amanecerá el mundo a un recuerdo de la noche oscura

Los arboles bien quietos quedaran

Sin canción

Y su sombra los pajaritos se afijan

Que insuficientes son sus cancionetas

Para cubrir la inquietad

Mañana en la mañana

Amanecerá el corazón a un recuerdo del amor pura

Sin sangre revuelto en los engaños

De lo que gana

Las riquezas arrancadas con espada

Dejando pobre la novia

Del soldado libre

Mañana en la mañana

Amanecerá la mente a un recuerdo de una cierta duda

Que despierta la razón

En su certidumbre que otra vez ha caído

En la calle rechazado de la verdad

Que la sangre de los esclavos

Corre en la libertad

Mañana en la mañana

Disobedient Objects

2010-11-10T19:50:00.001-07:00

Disobedient stuff

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Restaurantes

2010-11-09T09:22:00.002-07:00

i am laying on the beach trying to hold down a conversation with my good friend from Germany about restaurant choices in Europe as compared to north America. this boy does a lot of international travel and has a fairly narrow palate that he uses effectively to mark high and low quality food choices. He tells me that in Europe the chain restaurant phenomenon is not nearly as prolific. while Fast food choice like McD’s do exist, there is far more trial and ‘error’ in finding the restaurant of choice for any dining experience. He also claims that the choice of restaurant has much more to do with atmosphere selection than menu style or type – this inspite of the fact that he claims restaurants generally have smaller menus with less variety and are able to cover less of the palate range than say you Ricky’s or Kelseys etc. Of course it is impossible to take his claims and generalize across a population but the comparative perspective is still a valuable tool in accessing certain dynamics of the public food eating experience.
At that moment a dude walks up trying to convince us of the need to go on the next booze cruise the hotel is planning – but he is not going to talk to us about that at all. Instead he tell us that he is an American transplant from Miami who decided to stay and make money. when we ask him why he is here he tells us. Back in Miami it is a crazy race with people getting nowhere – you go to work come home have a drink go to bed do it all over in the morning on the weekend you need to cut the grass so you go out to find that everyone else in your neighbourhood is doing the same thing. HERE he tells us – everynight i think which restaurant am i going to go to today and I go to a brand new one if I want to. I don’t like to do dishes.

a meal with Marcuse

2010-11-07T03:46:00.001-07:00

Weight log: 214lb

The waiter approached our table he’s had two trays of steaming hot food in his hands. They looked delicious. He set them down in front of me and my dinner guest. As we both picked up our forks, the older man swung the conversation around to one of his favourite ideas. Alienation.

I’ve talked about the idea of alienation before and I bring it up again because I think it is important to uncover the way social frames, informed by capitalist sensibilities, operate to negate meaningful resistance or protest to repression in all its forms.

Alienation, the old codger started, is what happens to the individual who only possesses the effort of her/his labour. The labourer no longer owns or possesses the work of his/her hands and so must stand a distance to whatever product he/she makes out of her/his labour. The grey beard Karl reminded me of how important this was for him as he watched the early Industrial Revolution emerging. Since labour was largely invisible it was a prime site for repression. So Marx predicted that capitalism would fail as the working class would revolt and demand a different way of exchanging their labour.

You sure sucked as prophet. – I told him not blinking. What you did not count on but perhaps should have predicted was that capitalism might actually be able to preserve itself by transforming the worker into a consumer. So that now a worker could ignore the alienation of his/her labour because it helped her/him be a better consumer. The wages of labour now paid for consumer goods which with growing demand caused the need for more consumer goods which meant more labour was needed to make more consumer goods.

Buddy Karl put down his fork in disgust and walked away from the table. And while he was over in the boy’s room freshening up our pal Herbert Marcuse wandered up and sat down in Karl’s place. He picked up Karl’s fork and proceeded to chow down. After a few bites he looked up and said…

We are again confronted with one of the most vexing aspects of advanced industrial civilization: the rational character of its irrationality. Its productivity and efficiency, its capacity to increase and spread comforts, to turn waste into need, and destruction into construction, the extent to which this civilization transforms the object world into an extension of man's mind and body makes the very notion of alienation questionable. The people recognize themselves in their commodities; they find their soul in their automobile, hi-fi set, split-level home, kitchen equipment. The very mechanism which ties the individual to his society has changed, and social control is anchored in the new needs which it has produced.

I have just suggested that the concept of alienation seems to become questionable when the individuals identify themselves with the existence which is imposed upon them and have in it their own development and satisfaction. This identification is not illusion but reality. However, the reality constitutes a more progressive stage of alienation. The latter has become entirely objective; the subject which is alienated is swallowed up by its alienated existence. There is only one dimension, and it is everywhere and in all forms. The achievements of progress defy ideological indictment as well as justification; before their tribunal, the "false consciousness of their rationality becomes the true consciousness”.

a link to this essay can be found here

Now we see the trouble brewing in the pot all along. The object; the cell phone, the SUV (or more pejoratively the minivan), the coffee pot, the brand of soda pop, the hamburger, the ginger beef – become and an extension of ourselves. Of course its hard to choke all that down but then we have to remember to pick out the bones. Marcuse was not telling us that we have become the object – only that our identity is unavailable and inseparable from the objects/commodities which we use.

The waiter is standing at our table again waiting to be paid. So as I reach into my pocket for some loonies I am moved to ask the kind fellow – What do you call that meal we ordered here today. I’d like to order it again.

Well sir -the boy replies confidently- it is our special today Hungry Man. The succulent meat like substance that you enjoyed was processed by roughly 92 foreign illegal workers at meat packing plant in the U.S. mid-west just before they were rounded up and shipped back to their home country. The animals they used were inhumanely held in cramped cells standing in their own feces everyday. The vegetables you ate were reconstituted by a crew of youth on a summer job program. I’m sure you can appreciate just how close actual vegetables those items tasted and even at that young age these youth really know how make it all look so realistic. – the waiter stopped to take a breath.

Seriously? –I cut in impatiently pulling out my plastic- are trying to pull a fast one on me young man? I mean there is no way that this meal came from all those places. Did you not tell me this was a Hungry Man Meal?

Why yes sir I did. –he was backing down sheepishly-

Well then stop with this nonsense and process my credit card. –i was cranky- next time don’t try to dazzle me with all your fictions just admit it, you got this out of the freezer at the grocery store?

yes sir

I left the boy a sizable tip…he’s gonna need a good education…

commonly uncommon

2010-11-07T00:58:00.001-06:00

I had a wonderful conversation – I should rephrase that – I ended up talking a poor fellows ear off this afternoon. While waiting for the wedding reception to begin I had the opportunity to discuss the scope of my research. I take any chance I can get.

Food is such a common object and so much a part of our everyday. Because it is so common drawing it out into the light to be examined gives it a special status. In any social analysis it is possible to miss the embedded environment of the social facts merely by focusing to directly on a single factor. I really want to avoid that from happening in this case. That’s why this conversation was heart-warming.

People are generally interested in food and especially if it is tied to a thinner body image but mostly people are not that interested in trying to think with food. This is a highly abstract endeavour. I’m not sure that people are really interested in thinking about how food might be conveying meaning about the kind of person that they are. I don’t blame them. There are many times when it would be easier to stop thinking so hard about something that I usually paid very little attention to. So when someone is willing to engage with me in batting around semiotic theory or other elements it is a treat.

Sometimes there are tiny cracks and windows into the real life of an object that has existed seamlessly as something we’ve hardly paid attention to. Sometime we look down at our plate and think why does the idea that some of my food is touching on the plate such a big deal for me? Why am I eating this right now? Or what does feeding cake to your newly minted spouse have to do with love? Why is mac and cheese not a usual banquet menu item? Or how does Trina make those darn chocolate chip cookies so tasty?

So I have a question for you. Have you ever experienced a moment when food has startled you – surprized you – or made you stop to wonder what was going on? If so tell me about it…

More sinful food…

2010-11-05T07:56:00.002-06:00

Is it any wonder that this KFC treatsie has obscure yet intentional sexual overtones in its name?

But not only can we participate in sexualized sinful behaviour – almost like a vicarious affair but now we can draw out particular emotional racial stereo-types. Stephen Harper I challenge you to eat this “Bad Boy”.

The Angry French Canadian

Sign your name in the comment section below to add your voice to the petition to get our Prime Minister to eat this puppy…
Oh by the way…
Weight log: 215lb for those of you keeping track that is 3 pounds till 100

Pre-Blessed Food!

2010-11-03T20:34:00.001-06:00

this video so totally matches up with a wicked cool story from today at supper. So my second youngest son stayed home from school today. He was supposed to go with someone for “Take your kid to work day” but he couldn’t go with Char to do catheters and pik lines and no other arrangements could'/were made so…

Char said, “Fine, you are going to stay home and find out what its like to be a house wife.” She lined up a bunch of chores for him to do around the house and i threw in a few as well. Bam he worked pretty much all day. I did take him to Dairy Queen for lunch (like I always did with Char every day when she was house bound as a house wife :))

Guess who made supper? – you guessed it! Now we are a family who still prays before we eat our meal. We tend to not use the memorized prayers but the content and format usually do not vary much. So tonight my youngest prays and as he says “…and bless the hand that have prepared this…” our grade nine ‘house wife’ throws up his hands like a football referee indicating a touchdown. He grins as I look over at him with a pretty blanked out look…

“That was me!” he says, “That was me!” He made the food – he got the credit and his hands got blessed in the process. What happened there in that moment is profound. Think of all the ways that scene comments on gender roles and the relegation of certain tasks into obscurity… Think of what that scene potentially says about for whom prayer is meaningful and how prayer operates either to create a certain kind of distance or to actually acknowledge engagement. Here is what I mean. There is a whole lot of work that has gone into getting the food we ate for supper onto the table. My sons work might actually be the least demanding. The table prayer is intended to reflect gratitude for this labour from which the rest of the family is benefitting. But is it possible that the prayer might actually be making the labour of getting the food onto the table disappear since it ultimately gives God credit for stuff that human beings spent a lot of effort producing. Don’t get me wrong – it not as if I don’t recognize that God ultimately is the source behind the food we get to eat. In a way (and i know this may not be popular to say) praying this prayer of blessing sort of allows to stop accounting for the guilt of not having worked very hard to make this food a reality. This video throws that door wide open. It seems to say look everything is already pre-packaged and pre-prepared but in order to allow yourself that unadulterated access to this food without having to even acknowledge the ‘ultimate’ divine source makes the alienation with the food complete. Now it is possible for food to exist without source – like it just appears on the Grocery Store shelves by magic – like manna appearing on the desert floor. The ludicrous nature of that idea should be apparent. I mean even the militant atheist would have to acknowledge that it takes a far weirder and outlandish faith to believe that stuff just appears on grocery store shelves than it does to believe that God is the source of all food.

In the end the disservice (the thing that does not get blessed) may lie in the fact that we are not really engaged in the production of our food.

So bless the farmer and the butcher and the meat wrapper and stock boy and the cart picker-upper dude in the parking lot. God bless the stove maker and the assembly line designer and the tortilla maker and the fertilizer distributer and the farmer who is wandering towards Christmas this year without so much as sniff of a profit line to show for all the rain and hope he has poured into the fields he tends. And God bless my son.

a special thank-you to the anonymous contributor who brought this video to my attention – storing up riches in…

what fuels your machine makes it

2010-11-03T14:49:00.001-06:00

Weight Log: 219lbs (I’m getting impatient-get to a hundred already!)

Ingested (Tuesday November 2nd): 1 fairly large and delicious Ambrosia apple, 10 oven baked french fries, about three teaspoons worth of sampling my newly made spicy ketchup, 1 pot of coffee, 2 cans of diet coke. = Caloric intake: 240; Fat grams: 4.6

Old Man Descartes – you know the guy who said, “I think therefore, I am” ---well he also said that the body is a machine. And if it is a machine then whammo it needs a source of energy – Right? There is no doubt that we tend to view our bodies as machines and we view food as the fuel. The idea that food is fuel to help our body function makes a certain amount of sense but we can clearly see where that idea is far from complete. Who really thinks about fuelling up their body as they sit down for a turkey dinner at Thanksgiving? So food is obviously way more than just fuel. But as soon as you want to talk about nutrition, weight loss, weight gain, training regimens, etc. the food as fuel and body as machine imagery becomes dominant – and ultimately constraining. I think it is interesting that we have something like a calorie counter that can measure a typical type of food in its potential calories like we have here: http://www.caloriescount.org/cgi/Enhanced_calcalc/enhanced_calcalc.cgi. Its strange really to think that this is possible because it is still completely unclear how exactly the body processes different types of calories and how they are used or stored in the body. This arbitrary calculator can now tell me how much energy I have just fed my machine.

But the story is a bit bigger than that. If food is fuel and the body is a machine. Then it becomes important to put the right kind and amount of fuel into your body. It is also possible to use the body as a reference for the kind and amount of food consumed. A body with that is fat has more than likely taken in too much fuel and a likely also the wrong type of fuel. A body that is fit and lean is taking in the right amount and the right kind of food. That would be the connotative logic – Right? But here too we notice something going on in the background. Thinner and fitter does not necessarily mean that the fuel consumption is appropriate – consider anorexia nervosa. This is where the real fiction is exposed though.

One would never judge the hauling capacity of a pick-up truck by analyzing its fuel. Nor would one ever say that a smaller leaner truck would be a more capable truck than a large one would be. So the idea of the body as machine and of food as fuel disappears as meaningful when it is paralleled with other machines and fuels. Still the body/machine-food/fuel metaphor persists. It has a long history of usefulness – especially once European nations emerged from a perpetual state of potential famine – much the same time as the Enlightenment was catching fire. This metaphor was first used to address what seemed to be very unfit soldiers who were failing on the battlefields of the various wars of the era.

Now we are in a place where the motivation is not toward the ability to carry out our duties as soldiers but rather that we are able to display in/on our bodies the appropriately idyllic gendered body type. Being a fit machine is important for aesthetic reasons not for functional ones. If you want proof listen to the group of guys or girls talking about what they find attractive in the opposite gender. I doubt you will ever hear a girl say - “Oh and by the way did you know that he can lift 300lb on the bench press?” and you certainly won’t hear a guy say, “you see those legs on that girl I bet she can burn out an elliptical machine with those…” (unless I have intoned some crass sexual euphemism unawares). The body machine now should have those functional qualities but not for their own sake but for the mark that these functions can leave on the aesthetic of the body. So now fuel is not only about being able to run an efficient machine but to allow that machine to produce the appropriate body.

Now glance back at the information I documented above. If I hadn’t confessed to you that it was my intake – you might guess that this record might belong to someone with an eating disorder. It does not. It belongs to me. And I defy you to figure out a way that what is represented as fuel can account for the flaps and bumps and bulges that are left on my body – even though functionally I might be in the best ‘shape’ of my life…

the good pain

2010-11-02T23:50:00.001-06:00

Weight log: 218lb

Today I could have run for what felt like hours on that treadmill. I felt so good. 3.5 miles an hour for 60 minutes. Plus I actually ran for 6 whole minutes at top speed – to the rhythm of “She’s a Maniac". I starting to get strategies in place for keeping my ‘fitness’ regimen going while in Mexico. Lots of planning.

Today I was feeling overwhelmed – still feel that way. Too much work to do before I feel I can be ready for Mexico. I am need to get a lot of work done in advance and today it felt like the work is just insurmountable. I don’t want to feel pressure out there because this is supposed to be a celebration of our wedding anniversary. I am worried that I will be a grumpy old dog with all this stuff hanging over me. The treadmill seemed like the one thing that I could be in control of and it was almost like an escape. In fact if I am totally honest (imagine having to declare that fact) it felt very much the same way I have often experienced ‘comfort food’. It was like I was eating a big pile of mashed potatoes with gravy and huge juicy slice of turkey nestled into a huge dollop of cranberry sauce, stuffing, and some cinnamon pie. I know this stupid but i distinctly remember thing its almost like I’d like another serving of this treadmill stuff – Yikes – I am losing my mind.

“…and he’s dancing like he’s never danced before…”

Monster Resistance

2010-11-01T19:17:00.001-06:00

you know this may actually constitute resistance…like a novelist using a pen and paper, like a cartographer using a three mast wooden ship to map the northwest passage, like a politician using the street corner, like a commuter using a horse and wagon, excess becomes resistance

Hmmm or Try this one out for SIZE!

That’s Gross

2010-11-01T17:50:00.001-06:00

Weight Log: 218lbs (32 pounds as of the beginning of September – that is 4.5 lbs per week)

I have a number of posts that are waiting for me to post but the hectic pace here these last few days has left me rather scattered so if some of this comes off even more disjointed than usual – I suppose my excuse is that I am just trying to get the stuff out the door.

I’ve done a fair bit of reading around the discourse of food and body image. One of the things that is important to uncover is the voices that are privileged to speak about the topic – that can regulate what can be said ‘with the true’ of any given subject. Obviously, I would be remiss to avoid the pervasive role of popular media. So I went hunting for television programs – well gosh I should say it was not much of a hunt – it was more like shooting fish in a barrel.

Television shows dealing with food and weight tend to come in several species: 1. Diet/weight loss shows (these can be stand alone shows like The Biggest Loser or my Big Fat Diet Show or incorporated into typically daytime talk shows i.e. Oprah, Dr. Phil, Dr. Oz, etc.) 2. Cooking shows (these are basically instructional videos – a how-to manual for the do-it-yourself chef (ideas of renovation and resistance should emerge here a la Daniel Miller) In this category I would include stand alone shows like Best Recipes Ever but also the recipe dissemination within talk shows as well) 3. Eating/Reality Shows (here the basic idea is an engagement with some ‘real’ life subject evaluating their cooking/eating habits – In here I would include Gordon Ramsay’s Hell’s Kitchen (sort of an Osbornes of cooking school), also Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution which I have already talked about a little bit, and You are what you Eat) For those of you that are up on this stuff you might notice that I have left off your favourite food show – that is largely because I am clearly unable to talk about all or even most of these shows because they are so prolific. Let me focus on one group of shows that seem to form an interesting voice over what can and cannot be said about food and body image.

The Eating/Reality Shows have a routine narrative arc that seems to necessarily include a display of the amasses collection of food that the family or individual eats in one week – one day – one month – etc. Jamie Oliver even backed up a dump into a BFI bin to dump a load of congealed fat into it. The idea seems to be to create this spectacle of what is outlandish and grotesque as a way of challenging the subjects to consider how they are eating. Here are some examples:

the first five minutes of Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution

or the last two minutes of You Are what you Eat

the following are screen captures from that those episodes…

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So what is it about these pictures that are actually gross? Well, for one thing the food is jumbled together. If you ask my boys they’ll tell you its not cool if food that isn’t supposed to touch does touch. But even more these images are supposed to be revolting. Deep fried, pre-packaged food is displayed in such a way dripping and piled into each other panned and given close up shots that might emulate explicit illicit display. Its a virtually pornographic display of food. Food Porn! Its not that hard to see these heaped up tables as a virtual food orgy. The table is laden with immorality. Of course it can be even more gross because it can be easily equated to obesity. This is fat food that makes people fat and there is a whole lot of it…

But take a close look at the Screen shot labelled “C”. This is the healthy food display. Notice that the food in this shot is not piled up in the same helter-skelter fashion. In fact it most closely resembles what one might expect spilling out of the classic cornucopia. Even in the way these images are constructed moral distinction is evident.

A quick trip down the grocery store aisles reveals that the food piled up on the vulgar table is in fact the cheapest. It is also the food that has the longest shelf life. Let’s also be clear that french fries, pizza, pizza pops, hot dogs, pancakes, eggo waffles, and corn dogs are tasty. What exactly is being said when tasty cheap food is being constructed as disgusting? What are we saying when we construct the highest priced food with some of the least preferred flavours ( I mean who really likes Brussels sprouts without a heck of a lot of cheese sauce to ameliorate the flavour of the vegetable). Are we not suggesting that there is a class distinction at work in the selection of food? What is of concern is not the subjects (of these TV shows) actual health but the construction of class distinction through the association of food with moral judgement? The reality is that only the rich can afford to eat healthy.

Now look at this picture. Is it grotesque? Looking at this picture you can easily imagine what this scene must smell like! You can also imagine the wet dank sweat that is dripping off of most of these items. These items form the guts of the slave master that I am chained to everyday that has allowed me to lose weight. These things make me stink. They make me tired – they put me in pain – they make me suffer. But they make me thin so they can be revered…. Right?

Heart-A-Mac and Cheese | This Is Why You're Fat

2010-11-01T10:37:00.000-06:00

Heart-A-Mac and Cheese | This Is Why You're Fat

The silent pie

2010-10-30T22:05:00.001-06:00

Weight Log: 218lbs

Exhibit A: Sunrise Berry Farms Saskatoon Pie

Exhibit B: Farmer’s Market Blueberry Pie

Both of these products speak but in substantially different ways. The first one clearly has less information displayed than the second one does. The first one appears to be more silent than the second one. Exhibit B: Lists the flavour, the weight, the price, the fact that the berries used are wild, a notification of an ‘egg wash’ process, that the pie was baked in the store, that the pie is intended to emulate a ‘country-style’ aesthetic, – and it does so in both official languages. Exhibit A lists, the flavour, the business logo – and that’s it. Both pies do not tell you where the berries were picked. It does not tell you who made the pie (in fact exhibit A actually identifies the company while the apparent logo in the Exhibit B is actually a pseudo in house brand of the store which misdirects the consumer as to the identity of the producer).

The first pie as many of you know is one that I sell every weekend – its a small 4” Saskatoon Pie – perfect for coffee break. It is one of the most popular pies that we sell every week at the Lethbridge Farmers Market. The second pie is one that I saw while shopping at one of the local big grocery chains this afternoon. It is ironic that the second pie is called a Farmers Market Pie because it is clearly not sold either in the physical context of the Farmers Market or by a person who could legitimately qualify as a vendor at a Farmer’s Market (in fact it is not really sold by a person at all). The taste of either pie is sort of irrelevant yet I have a pretty good idea which one would win in a taste test (although I have not tasted Exhibit B:)

In the last few classes of our course part of what our discussions have led to is questions like: how do we determine what is authentic? and how does the constant onslaught of new consumer goods cause a type of cultural amnesia? All these questions have led me to another question which is closely tied to the first two: in what ways do the politics of our economic system silence certain voices while privileging others?

It has always seemed strange to me that older ladies will come to buy our pies at the market. These are women who likely have acquired the skill of making pie/pastry as a part of a fairly patriarchal social framework. These ‘grandmas’ know how to make pie. So what are they doing when they come to the market to buy our pie? One of the things they are doing is giving up the ability to claim the pie as their own product (this must be a fairly calculated move reasons their own energy level and their desire to produce something that their children/friends enjoy.) They are still retaining the ability to govern the discursive field of what type of pie is seen as worthy of eating. This is the pie that Grandma serves and as a result it must be good because she serves it. Grandma and the production of pie are synonymous with quality. Would Grandma ever bring an Exhibit B: pie home – not likely? The connection to Grandma and pie is deeper than that. Grandma after all is the repository for the idea of ‘homemade’. Homemade isn’t just about where the product is made it is about how the product is made. What is the recipe? This means that a pie can hold some very strong sentiments about what things are supposed to be like. They might also be a repository for how things used to be…

When pies get made in batches instead of 1, 2, or 3 at a time something important happens. They stop being ‘homemade’. As soon as you sell more than 1, 2, or 3 pies at a time (let’s say at a bake sale) the authenticity of the recipe can be called into question. There is a uniqueness to a homemade pie – its a one-off – like a Picasso or Monet. No two pies of grandmas will taste exactly the same. Yet when we talk about something being homemade we don’t connote the idea of variability but rather of a consistently similar product that is reproduced in the same way every time – just like Grandma used to make it. But what the artisan pie baker can do is capitalize on this idea by producing a product that is consistent every time (or at least very close to the same product). A strict adherence to recipe and method produces the same product. What is interesting is what I have come to notice at the market over the years and was said numerous times to me today as costumers scrambled to pick up their products at the last market of the Fall. - “This pie tastes just like homemade.” or its corollary “This pie tastes like nothing like those cardboardy grocery store pies – this is the real thing!” Of course that gives a guy like me the fuzzies but what is going there. Me, the pie seller is commodifying an idea which becomes the product that I can sell effectively in this context. I am selling the real thing. But in reality I am selling a product that is as un-unique as a lithograph of the Mona Lisa in your favourite poster shop.

From that perspective the pie that I sell is not that different than the one I found on the shelf of the big grocery story. That company is engaging in reproduction of something more authentic. Yet clearly their pie is not held in as high esteem as the one I get to deal. But that is not for a lack of trying. Look again at the way the packaging begs to be identified as authentic. This authenticity is not however back to the idea of homemade or to grandma but to the place that has come to take grandmas place in the social consciousness. Their pie may in fact be just as tasty as our pie is but it clearly cannot produce the same aesthetic representation in the minds of its consumers. So the grocery store pie blares out its message that it is authentic and holds all the qualities a consumer might look for in a pie. My pie just sits there and waits to be picked up.

But here is the advantage that my pie has over the one on the shelf of the food pimping giant. My pie can answer your questions. Well not directly – but through me. I have been asked all manner of questions about pies and I have at times invented things to navigate an easier sale. But that has only been because the questions have just been completely bizarre and outlandish. Did you bake this pie? When was it baked? Do you add a softening agent to make the skins of the berries softer? Is it alright if I buy this pie and say that I made it myself? (to which I answered - - yes) Why does the sugar make polka dots on the crust? Will you sell this pie for less money? Do I get a deal? Could you make a raspberry pie? The fact is that if the customer has any question at all about the product they can and often will ask me. And I will to the best of my ability deliver an accurate answer. YOU JUST CAN’T ASK THE GROCERY STORE PIE A DARN THING! You have to depend on what the box tells you.

But you can depend on one other thing as well. You can depend on the political position of the monstrous sustenance peddler. You see the giant super store has positioned itself well. It is the fount of variety, the guardian of safety in food storage, the regulator against prohibitive food pricing. As such it has come to represent reliability in a significant way. Reliability – when is the last time you went to the grocery store and found that they did not have milk? So from that position the store can make a pie and wrap it in a box that is screaming its identity like so many of the bothersome toddlers that get dragged up and down the aisle in those stores. And the consumer will pick up that pie – i tell you – the consumer will pick up that pie because it is even more reliable than the farmers market pie. The farmers market pie after all could be contaminated by the farm. If the farmers wife is doing this in her kitchen (which by the way would never pass the food inspection standards that each vendor must meet) are we going to get the farmers greasy fingers mixing the dough? This is all desperately ironic since after all we know that grandma’s pie often had mistakes built right into it. Pies were made right after slaughtering chickens and sometime grandpa got his fingers in the pie filling before it was baked. Other times grandma would run out of a certain ingredient and then you’d get a surprise chokecherry or two in your Saskatoon pie. But we sure loved grandma’s pie – and still do. But now we can dismiss all the inconsistency that made her pie awesome and we can buy the cardboard pie because it is reliable.

The consumer gives up the right to ask the pie questions and must depend on the box to do the talking. So now the pie that says the least actually holds the strongest voice. The pie that can answer any question you ask of it (through me) has a much weaker voice. And grandma still isn’t making her own pies anymore.

A number of years ago my grandmother passed away. With her died a whole set of ideas, methods, and products which to this day have strong associations in my mind with her character. My mother made a concerted effort to record some of the families favourite recipes in a cookbook. It’s the closest thing we have left to the original work of art that was the product of my grandmother’s hands for many years. Raisin chicken, butter tarts, leaf lettuce salad, jam jams, and King George Cake. There in her own hand writing is the tell tale notion of her own inconsistencies that set her kitchen – set her apart as the master artist. Now she lies silent and we stare back at her masterpieces like novices at an art gallery. We smell her, we taste her – and she in not there.

But the greater silence is that in the consumer mentality that is common to our social fabric we have traded the beauty of inconsistency for the reliability of consistent and convenient. As Paul Connerton suggests, “A handmade world, in which all things were made one by one was a slow world.” Mechanical reproduction transforms society into one that is in constant progress toward the new latest product and into a perpetual forgetting. This forgetting is not as straight-forward as I have just described but it is an important place for us investigate the influences on our consumption of food.

Jason Laurendeau wrote an article with Carly Adams on the topic of Women’s Ski Jumping in the Olympics. The authors address these silences ( or we might even be able to say at this point – the memory losses). Certain voices get to speak louder than others and as a result certain aspects of the topic get privileged and others get forgotten, “…a given discourse appears with regularity across a range of texts (broadly defined) and practices to regulate what may be said ‘within the true’ about a given subject in a particular socio-historical moment. Not only, then, does a discourse constrain what can meaningfully be said about a particular topic at a particular time, but it also works to authorize particular voices and silence others.” p. 433

From this vantage point we see our willingness to disengage with the messiness of the authentic in order to gratify and satisfy other political voices that perhaps keep us from engaging social reality that is more connected to each other. When you buy an Exhibit B: pie you don’t have to hear about the relative that passed away suddenly. You don’t have to engage with people. Perhaps food after all is the one place where we might be able to restore ourselves to each other……………

…from there let the pie speak!

Mirrors of Fat

2010-10-29T18:41:00.001-06:00

“(This) is about how fat in any society is never just about weight or health or looks. Instead, fat is a symbol, a mirror we can gaze into to glimpse the things society tells us are the fairest of them all-and the things society tells us are the grossest, least fair of them all. Looking closely at how people think about fat tells us a lot about how they think about the world in which they live.” – Don Kulick and Thais Machado-Borges in Leaky in Fat: the Anthropology of an Obsession

“…left to itself, stuff tends to modesty. There is a natural humility to things, in that they work best as the frame that guides our sense of what is appropriate, rather than as things we pay regard to in their own right. This tendency can make stuff quite powerful when put into the service of ideology. when someone tells us we should do this or be that, we bridle and feel put upon. When this message is carried, not by a hectoring voice, but well hidden with the mere substance of apparently silent stuff, we are less likely to sense our disempowerment.” – Daniel Miller in Stuff

“In that tradition (of Marxist analysis), ideology stood for paradox; that as a process of objectification people may well understand themselves in the mirror of the world they live within. but what happens when that world is created by others, rather than by themselves? If they see themselves in that world, then it would follow that they now misunderstand themselves” - Daniel Miller in Stuff

Eggplant Parmesan

2010-10-29T16:49:00.001-06:00

Weight log: 222 lb