I haven't had a lot of opportunities for reading lately, but some down time over the last couple of days has allowed me to make my way through two books, both by Canadians. One was "Consolation" by Michael Redhill and the other was "Enemy Women" by Paulette Jiles. The former is a great big snooze, while the latter is definitely worth the time it takes to read from the first line of the seven-page prologue through to the last line of the novel's 321 pages. Redhill's book moves back and forth from the grieving family of a recent suicide, U. of T. professor David Hollis, who gave himself to Lake Ontario in a pre-emptive strike against the ALS that was claiming him, and Jem Hallam, the 1800's photographer who left behind a legacy whose whereabouts Hollis is sure he has discovered. A couple of people I have spoken to have gushed about the "rich layering" Redhill bestows on his characters and the city of Toronto, where the two overlapping stories occur. I must have missed that part. His characters failed to come to life for me. They were made of cardboard, each and every one. Hallam's musings were often nonsensical, and Hollis' surviving kin were not much more interesting than a stick. I think some of the kudos given to Redhill for this work come from the fact that he is a Canadian, being lauded by Canadians ready to idolize anyone who sets a story here in Canada, in Toronto the no-longer-good. While I am sure some were most sincere in their praise of the book, I think much ado has also been made about nothing much. "Enemy Women", on the other hand, gives the reader something to actually sink their teeth into, believable actions undertaken by believable characters living through the horrors of war. Redhill's characters spend entirely too much time wallowing through endless angst about whether or not someone else's actions properly fit expectations. Jiles, born and raised in the Missouri Ozarks where she sets her novel, and now the holder of dual U.S./Canadian citizenship, has won the Canadian Governor General Award, Canada's highest literary honour. This novel makes it abundantly clear why the award was given to her. From the very beginning, her main character does something none of Redhill's characters ever manage to do. She actually manages to take on flesh-and-bone, and step away from the confines of the letters printed on the page. Adair Clley, an 18-year-old Missourian, finds herself in the midst of a world being torn apart by the American Civil War. Having lost her father to Union Militia, she is soon separated from her two sisters and taken to a women's jail in St. Louis. What she does to survive and the twists of fate thrust upon her make for a story that is difficult to turn away from until you've seen Adair through to the last page. The people she meets are all believable, all hoping to guarantee their own survival in whatever way they can. There are some who reach out to Adair in kindness, but she meets others who will use her to further their own ends without any compunctions; those who bring her to the brink of disaster. The desperation Adair is forced to endure reaches out to the reader; the treachery she is subjected to strikes a chord of empathy most readers will feel. It has been said we are all only a few meals away from barbarism, and this is something Adair discovers, something so many of us have likely worried about, especially amid the dire predictions of global warming. I came away from Redhill's book with little more than one phrase willing to stay in my memory. He writes at one point of the street lights of Toronto all coming on at once as if the whole city had an idea. One catchy little image from 466 pages doesn't seem like much return for the effort it takes to read the book. I came away from Jiles' book with a character alive in my mind; a woman about whom I wish Jiles would write a sequel. Adair Randolph Colley did indeed step off the pages of flat print and file herself away in my mind.
I was listening to some snippets of CBC Radio again this morning. They were highlighting more stories of residential school survivors, something they've been doing since Harper issued the government apology on June 11. It annoyed me to hear them say more than once that the stories emphasize resilience. They named one survivor, for instance, a man who has gone on to become an artist and said his story is one more proof of the resilience exhibited by the survivors.
Cut the crap, people.
These broadcasts are being made under the guise of taking part in the support of survivors, but the truth seems to me to be that they are a sop to the general conscience of white Canada. Everybody loves to assuage guilty adult consciences with constant reassurances that children are resilient and they can survive anything. Have you noticed, though, that this line of bullshit never gets trotted out when people are talking about kids surviving mom burning the dinner casserole or dad lacing up a pair of skates incorrectly? This crock is only used when people are discussing things that can fuck up a whole lifetime, like the abuse at the residential schools has done to so many. The idea of children being resilient is just a lie told to help adults sleep better at night, in case they're the type who might find their slumber a little disturbed by the idea of children being mercilessly victimized. The so-called Indian residential schools would have been better named hell-holes. For the vast majority of the children who walked in through the doors of one of those institutes of torture, they walked back out again without their souls. They walked back out again a battered, broken person, in most cases; a person who went on to have children of their own that pass the national lever of suicide and substance-abuse rates, as a group, because of the emotionally empty wrecks trying to parent them. The survivors who did go on to do something like become a successful artist are newsworthy simply because they are such rarities. The defenceless innocents who were sent to those schools were nothing more than sacrifices being fed into the maw of white supremacy. They were meals being offered to the insatiable appetite of racial intolerance. Nothing more. Nothing less. White Canada needs to stop trying to mitigate its guilt. The sins and transgression of the fathers were horrendous beyond telling, and it is right now for them to sit on the shoulders of the sons. White Canada needs to do what I have no faith will be done. Each one needs to take to heart the saying that if you are not part of the solution, then you are part of the problem. Each one needs to spend a little less time worrying about acquiring the latest status symbol, and spend a little more time worrying about their aboriginal neighbours acquiring more of everything. They share with the whites one of the richest countries in the world, and yet their standards of life lag woefully behind. How can it be right for any Canadian to have the choice of being worried about whether or not their Bluetooth is right up to date with all the latest, while so many Canadian Aboriginals living on reserves have no such choice? One unavoidable worry comes at them every time they want a drink of water. Take a jaunt over to the website of the Office of the Auditor General of Canada and you can spend a minutr or two perusing the Opening Statement to the Standing Senate Committee on Energy, Environment and Natural Resources, on the topic of "Drinking Water and Human Health ". n case you don't have the time to read it for yourself, I have selected a few paragraphs that make for some pretty interesting reading.
" ...until a regulatory regime is established that is comparable with the one that is in place in the provinces, INAC and Health Canada cannot ensure that First Nations people living on reserves will have continuing access to safe drinking water. We also found that INAC had no comprehensive list of codes and standards applicable to the design and construction of water systems and that there were many deficiencies in the design and construction of water systems. We found that INAC’s programs to support and develop First Nations capacity to provide safe drinking water were limited, that the technical support was fragmented, and that many of the First Nations water treatment plant operators had difficulty meeting the education and experience requirements for certification. We noted that regular testing of drinking water on reserves was not carried out in most communities. In addition, at the time of our audit, Health Canada had no plan in place to achieve, by 2008, the testing frequency set out in the Guidelines for Canadian Drinking Water Quality."
The governmental attitude, the prevailing attitude of white Canada that resulted in those residential schools is still alive and well. It may have been dealt a blow or two, but it has yet to be brought to its knees. Not to worry, however, not when children are so resilient. The contaminated drinking water won't really present any difficulties to them. They'll figure out how to survive, and a decade or two from now CBC Radio can run another program detailing how all the children who suffered e-coli infections and whatever else forced on them by their unsafe drinking water all went on to be artists. At lest, isn't that what they bloody well should do so the rest of Canada doesn't have to disturb their comfy little lives with worrying over some traumatized native kid?
Yesterday, hubby and I were down at the St. Lawrence Market, buying some wonderful Ontario produce, and just generally enjoying the sights and sounds. One of the sounds that came as an unexpected bonus was the music-making of the Soweto Marimba Youth League. Visit their website and you'll be told that this touring powerhouse of energy was started as: *A mechanism to fill a void in the development of musical talent, left by a lack of funding in Soweto schools *A mechanism to give Soweto kids something to do other than to fall prey to all sorts of bad behaviour on the streets after school *A mechanism to raise funds to support the ongoing programme desires of the Dr. Mary Malahlela Primary School The group is making their second trip to Canada this year, through the coordination efforts of Canadian Michael H. Rea, a Corporate Social Responsibility Consultant. The members of the group boast a 500-song repertoire even though they are not able to read sheet music. Once you've been part of their audience, as I was privileged to be yesterday, you know that the lack of sheet music is in no way a hindrance to these amazing performers. The primary goal of Project SMYLe is to encourage more participation in the band, while the project's only rule is "EDUCATION FIRST! Their music was more than enough to make me a fan, but when I went to their website, I read there one sentence that spoke to me more than anything else. This pithy little nugget read, "It is our belief that education is the answer to all of life’s challenges." I agree; absolutely, without reservation. Indeed, education is power.
I discovered something else yesterday, but this wasn't quite as entertaining as the Soweto Youth. In fact, this discovery was of a clay foot that belonged to someone of hero status. JFK, 35th president of the U.S. of A. met his demise in Dallas in 1963, succumbing to assassin(s)" bullets, but not before he had done enough to earn the respect and even adulation of many. The youngest elected president, his time in office encompassed events from the Bay of Pigs to the building of the Berlin Wall. One of his first acts as leader of the States was to create the Peace Corps. Although wary of involvement in the Civil Rights Movement initially, Kennedy did intervene at significant moments, like when MLK was tossed into prison, and when George Wallace tried to block two African American students from gaining admission to the University of Alabama. Kennedy went on to propose what would become the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Many credit Kennedy with giving impetus to the feminist movement when he created the Presidential Commission on the Status of Women, but ... That brings us to the little discovery I made yesterday, the one which might cause some to withdraw that credit if they knew. Then-Senator Kennedy had been invited to the U. of T. to address the male-only membership of Hart House in the fall of 1957. Like almost all the visitors to Hart House, Kennedy signed the guest book and the lines he penned are still there, grafting a clay coat onto the feet of the man who wrote, "I personally rather approve of keeping women out of these places. It's a pleasure to be in a country where women cannot mix in everywhere." Yes, he did go on to create the commission, and yes, Hart House did go on to change their membership rules, but still, those words could give one food for thought, could they not?
University of Toronto Professor Alex Mihailidis, working at the Toronto Rehab and U. of T. joint venture, Intelligent Assistive Technology and Systems Lab, is developing home-based computer systems to enable aging-in-place. These systems are intended to assist people who have fallen and children with autism, but perhaps even more significantly, they will keep remaining safely at home within reach for those with various forms of dementia, for a longer time than is currently possible. The AI systems created by Mihailidis can recognize when patents need help and prompt them with instructions. Cameras in the ceiling track users' movements and behaviours; software interprets what the camera is seeing, determining what kind of help is needed, and then spoken instruction or video tutorials guide the person through the steps they can not remember. Going to the bathroom independently, for instance, and therefore retaining individual dignity is one of the boons offered by these systems. Not being able to toilet yourself is one of the reasons why people are currently moved to nursing homes. My father was institutionalized with Alzheimer's. Visits with him in that god-awful nursing home; watching him and the others living there being treated with everything from decency to outright neglect at times, makes me think Mihailidis and the research team members at IATSL should all be given heroes' treatments, and decorated with official awards. Age is a beast that stalks us all and anyone who makes it their business to help us avoid its greedy talons for as long as possible deserves kudos, indeed.
I was listening yesterday to CBC Radio's "The Current" while Susan McKenzie profiled the deadly problem of white nose syndrome. An actual misnomer, white nose syndrome has been accepted as the name for a group of 40 different kinds of fungus that attack cave- and mine-dwelling bats. The condition often manifests itself in the affected bats by leaving a ring of white around the creatures' noses, making them look like "they've been dipping their noses into the sugar bowl." Such a description gives the fungus an innocuous sound, but the truth is that it is killing bats in the thousands, especially in Vermont. The bat caves on Mount Aeolus, in Vermont, home to the greatest number of hibernating bats in New England each winter, including some endangered species, have provided disturbing evidence of white nose syndrome. Little Brown Bats and Indiana Bats winter in the hibernaculum there; a honeycomb of caves the exact size of which no-one is sure. Mckenzie travelled to the main cave, Guano Hall, in the company of wildlife biologist Scott Darling and endangered species biologist Susie van Ottingen. The documentary includes a partial recording of their visit there. Before that recording was aired, however, McKenzie tossed a few numbers at her listeners to help them understand the grave extent of what was found there. The average Little Brown Bat, for instance while only weighing 8 grams, or about the equivalent of three pennies, can consume up to 1,000 insects an hour. Although no-one has exact numbers on the bats already killed by white nose syndrome, some estimates place the total at 500,000. Says McKenzie, that amounts to "one billion insects every night that are not being eaten." Anything called a syndrome is so named because it has the experts stymied. It is not known how the fungus is spread; if the condition is communicable or not; if it can be transmitted to humans; or what the final outcome of its appearance in the bat population will be. This mystery-infection was first found last year in a New York cave by the New York Department of Environmental Conservation. Biologists returning to the cave this winter found 90% of the cave's bats dead. The visit to Mt. Aeolus' Guano Hall found corpses littering the slopes of Aeolus, and more corpses inside, as well as live bats with the telltale white on muzzles and wings. So far, the syndrome has not been found among the bat population here in Canada, but it can only be a matter of time. A fungus that respects countries' borders is a rare fungus, indeed. For some, the news of bat die-offs might elicit a response of approval. especially among those who regard the creature with suspicion, but it takes very little thought to realize that these flying carnivores are essential to humans. Take a minute to imagine the world without the "only night-flying insectivore". How many more mosquitoes would be unhindered in their spread of West Nile virus and the other diseases they carry? Even if they didn't represent such danger, they are still a damn nuisance when the night that could be wonderful for sitting outside beside a campfire or in wonder of the stars is ruined by their thirst for our blood. Thank god for bats, a totally natural insect control. First the bees of North America have come under siege, suffering Colony Collapse Disorder. Now some of our most important natural allies in our struggle to maintain a livable balance between us and the insect world are beleaguered by a mysterious foe that kills. Does it represent cause to worry about our eco-system? Is it all indicative of a need to reconsider our cavalier treatment of natural resources? Is it a death knell for more than just the little winged mammals? Scott Darling had some sobering thoughts to offer on the whole problem of white nose syndrome at an ecosystem level; on it being the possible cause of losing a "significant force of predation" of insects. "Insects," says he, "are the most numerous groups of organisms that have a tremendous effect on our vegetation and our agriculture and our human health, really too ... (without bats) it's possible we will be living in an ecological experiment in the next few years." Who wants to think of themselves as human guinea pigs struggling their way through such an experiment? Maybe it's time we gave more thought to treating the planet with TLC and a little less thought to our next material acquisition.
During the dark days of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, an estimated 1.1 to 1.6 million people lost their lives; 90% of the victims being Jews. One who survived was the Czechoslovakian Jew Dina Gottliebova Babbitt, and with her, her mother. The purchase price of their survival was probably the eleven paintings Joseph Mengele ordered Dina to do. Her subjects were the Roma people interred in the camp, often used for Mengele's savage "medical" experiments. After the war, Babbitt believed her paintings to be lost, until the Auschwitz Museum contacted her in 1973 to say that they had seven of the paintings on display. Babbitt went to Poland and confirmed the authenticity of the works, then began her quest to have them returned. For 30 years she has sought that end, and for 30 years she has been denied. The Auschwitz Museum claims it was obliged to keep the paintings as part of a state-sanctioned mission to collect evidence of Nazi crimes. The evidence has been collected. Let Babbitt have her paintings back. She declares the pictures are "part of my soul, part of my being, part of me that they have." The pictures have been in the museum's possession more than long enough for them to have taken multiple photos of them, made copies galore,if they so desired. To what end do they refuse the wish of the now 83-year-old artist who was forced to buy her life by using her talent on pictures that must haunt her to this day? Babbitt now has heart problems, so it is likely the number of days left for her fight are finite. What a disgusting thought, that the Museum may be purposely holding off this survivor, in anticipation of her death ending their problem. Give the woman back her art, her property, that missing piece of her life.
I went to Toronto's Canon Theatre yesterday to see the production of Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream" staged as part of the 2008 Luminato Festival. The staging is meant to bring together traditions of both English and Indian theatre. It first trod the boards in 2006 in New Delhi and has since then made appearances in Stratford-upon-Avon, and other UK cities, Verona, Perth, Adelaide, Sydney, and San Francisco. The performers, designers, and stage management, all Indian and Sri Lankan, bring a polyglot of languages to the stage: Hindi, Tamil, Malyalam, Marathi, Bengali, Sandkrit and Sinhala. It is perhaps a wonderful idea, on paper, to speak lines "carefully and faithfully translated from the original", as the theatre programme assures its readers, but to do so in a swirl of languages that change in the blink of an eye does nothing for the continuity of the story. If there had been surtitles provided, it would have been so much better, but as it stands now the production makes the assumption that all of the audience will already be familiar with the storyline and, therefore, able to follow along in spite of the lingual legerdemain. I am familiar with the story and have seen the play at Canada's Stratford Festival, more than once. The story deals in mix-ups, as Shakespeare's works so often do, and one needs some kind of an guide to successfully navigate the swirling fog of subterfuges that the Bard wove into the play. If this guide is not provided in the audience's being able to understand the lines spoken by the actors, then the result will be what happened yesterday at intermission. My husband is of Indian descent, and he wears his hair long and loose down his back. The effect is that he looks rather like some of the actors. I imagine that would be the reason why the woman seated behind us tapped him on the back and asked if he spoke the language the actors were using. "Can you understand the confusion?", she asked. Obviously, surtitles would have been a great help to her. Everyone was able to laugh over the slapstick visuals and such buffoonery as fitting out the transformed Bottom with a large gourd dangling between his legs when he suddenly appeared with his ass ears. Not many at all were able to make sense of the play's attempt to "give a fleeting, bright glimpse of our brief and shared mortality." The artistry of the cast is unquestionable. Their energy and lithesome athleticism brought the Dream to levels unreached by many a theatre company. Drummers seated in view on both sides of the stage underscored the action, and much use was made of ropes and silky drapings by cast members who, with deceptive ease, climbed them and made them into a part of the play. The three couples central to the play are all acted by young people who grace the stage, indeed, with the their presence. P.R. Jijoy's Oberon is certainly eye candy par excellence, but it would have been nice to know what he was saying in those lines he uttered so passionately to Titania, and so peremptorily to Puck. I know the story well, but I do not have the lines memorized, and there were just too many times when I was sitting there in the front row, being orated at by someone so obviously pouring heart and soul into every syllable while all I could do was ponder helplessly and hope some English would pop up soon. This production does not make as much of the play-within-the-play as they could. The possibility for laughter therein is definitely not utilized to its utmost. One of the stagings of this play that I saw at Stratford had the audience so involved; laughing so hard at the scene when Pyramus slays himself in an agony of grief over the discovery of his beloved Thisbe's seeming death, that the actors actually all chose to seat themselves for a moment or two on the stage, to wait until the laughter had subsided sufficiently for the play to continue. While yesterday's production demonstrated incredible mastery over the props and the action, masterful manipulation of the audience was most obvious in its absence.
The first one comes from Alberta's town of Camrose, about 90 kilometres southeast of Edmonton. A group of four teenagers there have been charged with unlawfully killing an animal, causing unnecessary pain and suffering to an animal, breaking and entering, theft, and possession of stolen property. Two of the boys have pleaded guilty. The group's mind boggling act of cruelty took place back in December 2007 when they broke into a house while its owners were away on vacation, and amused themselves by putting an adult cat into a microwave. Apparently, it would have taken the poor creature four or five minutes to die, in agony. There has been much outrage at the act expressed on Facebook, for instance. I would like to add my voice to the chorus. These thugs are guilty by their own admission of holding life in total disregard. If they found such an act of incredible viciousness to be entertaining, what is there to assure any of the rest of us that their next viewing pleasure might not come at the expense of a helpless human? What is there to prove, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that this act would not simply become the first in a list of horrors were these criminal to be set loose upon society? Bill C-373 is an act that would amend the Criminal Code in respect to cruelty to animals. Section 182.2, subsection 1 states that, "Every one commits an offence who, wilfully or recklessly, (a) causes or, being the owner, permits to be caused unnecessary pain, suffering or injury to an animal; (b) kills an animal ... brutally or viciously, regardless of whether the animal dies immediately; It goes on to specify that, "Every one who commits an offence under subsection (1) is guilty of: (a) an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term of not more than five years; or (b) an offence punishable on summary conviction and liable to a fine not exceeding ten thousand dollars or imprisonment for a term of not more than eighteen months or to both. What do you think? I think this is just all too wishy-washy. "Not more than five years"? Why the hell not more than five years? Slap their families with the fine of ten thousand dollars and then lock up these pieces of human refuse and throw away the key. Even better than that, march them out to stand in front of the wall out back of the courthouse, aim firearms at them and pull the triggers. Summarily. No time for last words. No last meal. Save the money and spend it on better things, like a couple of bags of cat food to be donated to the animal shelter in Camrose. I have expressed that wish before on this blog for others who have committed murder and been taken to task for it; told off for being un-Canadian in my espousal of capital punishment. I still feel it's the best course of action to take with murderers like the Camrose Four. I do not believe that anyone capable of such an unfeeling act of total brutality could ever be deemed truly rehabilitated.
The second story comes from my hometown, good ol' T.O. Apparently, a pair of peregrine falcons has made their nest on the balcony of an uptown condo. The proud parents are caring for newly hatched chicks, and while Mom and the little ones are doing fine, some humans are not handling the situation so well. According to the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources, it is the first time a falcon has been known to nest on a residential building. The condo's residents have been barred from disturbing the birds, but that would be their best choice anyway, Ministry edict or no. A peregrine rendered belligerent by a perceived threat to its chicks is not something the residents would likely want to encounter face-to-face. they could decide to view it as an incredible photo-op, and great viewing with croissants and coffee on weekend mornings. Heck, why not invite the family and friends over to take a peek, too? Can you imagine the Science project value inherent in this situation for any sons or daughters, nieces or nephews the condo owner might have? Although urban nests are not typically declared protected habitats, these falcons have little to fear from their human neighbours. In fact, it is not unusual for neighbourhood residents who find an urban nest to hold street vigils to protect fledglings when they learn to fly. These birds are being given the respect that should be given to all life forms. If, however, one of them were to become a renegade; an aberrant killer outside of the behavioural norms of its kind, it would be caught and euthanized. No less should be done to the cat-killers of Camrose.
Sometimes it seems one can not heave a sigh big enough to express the frustration of hearing unending stories of violence and intolerance that emanate from far too many sources in the Muslim world. Monday's attack on the Danish Embassy in Islamabad is yet another example of just how sadly incomprehensible the stories can be. An Al Qaeda leader had urged attacks against Denmark in retaliation for the newspaper caricatures of the prophet. First of all, how can anyone prove that if the prophet and Allah got a look at the cartoons, they might not share a laugh? Neither one of them needs the efforts of any mortal to shield them. One of the two is supposed to be omnipotent. If he gets pissed at some pencil-pushing artist, he can crush the offensive individual with one mighty stomp of his everlasting sole, without any help from some brain-dead, violence-loving hominid. Actually, since Allah himself doesn't seem inclined to take this vengeful step, why does Al Qaeda feel they need to? Secondly, the body count from Monday's attack, when first taken, included six Pakistanis, and only one "foreign" corpse, unidentified at that point. For someone wanting to slap the Danes on their collective wrist, killing Pakistani citizens might not be the most direct route to take. Perhaps the idea of sitting down in dialogue to search for a solution to the perceived problem rather than blowing a crater about a meter deep in their own capital city is too complicated a concept for those determined to use bloodshed as the answer to everything. Of course, trying to explain any form of reason to the vicious morons who support such actions is never anything but an exercise in futility. The bomb blast in Islamabad is one of the reasons why the story I read in Tuesday's Toronto Star seemed to emit such an aura of hope. It comes from Afghanistan, not Pakistan, but it is still from the world of far too frequent mayhem. The story highlighted the war being waged on polio in that strife torn country. In 1988, Afghanistan documented 350,000 cases of polio. By 2006, that number had been brought down to 1,956. Even bearing in mind that there are bound to be cases unreported, and that each case means others have been exposed and maybe infected, the numbers shine a ray of hope into the darkness of the death-dealing mujahideen. The positive results have been achieved in spite of incredible difficulties that include the Taliban shooting at volunteers from the regional polio office. This year, approximately 7.3 million Afghan children under the age of five have been vaccinated against the disease. Now, if only we could come up with a vaccination to immunize the children against the vituperative vitriol that constantly threatens to infect their minds.
A few numbers just in for Ontario prove that people are willing not only to listen to messages like those in "The Most Terrifying Video", but also to act on them. Apparently, Ontario's electricity consumption fell by 2.6% and the average for each individual fell by 4.6% from 2005 to 2007. It's not enough to get us where we want to go, but it sure as hell is a good step along the way. Based on those numbers, I'm betting there would be a lot of people interested in the Strawberries and Asparagus Festival, to be held in Toronto's Cedarvale Park on June 14th. There will be children's activities, adult and family activities, a green marketplace and an inorganic market. The whole event would be worth a bit of a drive, even for those who live outside the city, but the last one especially is the one that ties in to those hopeful figures on our declining electricity use. Anyone aware enough to contribute to those stats is sure to want to take further action toward starting an avalanche. (Follow that video link above for more on the avalanche.) " The Inorganic Market™ is a citizen-based approach to raise awareness about the issue of electronic waste based on community engagement through education and creative expression.The event includes community members’ creative expression through an activity, art, writing, or performance. We provide education through factual information and conversations about the issues surrounding electronic waste and consumerism. We also provide a collective opportunity for individuals to gather and dispose of their electronic waste. Bring your unwanted electronics to the Inorganic Market™. They accept laptops, desktops, monitors, printers, scanners, fax machines, ipods, mp3 players, power bars, any type of wires and cables, speakers, keyboards, mice, video game consoles, uninterruptible power supplies (UPS’s), cell phones and routers. Components will be reused or recycled." A "solar-cooled" ice cream for just $1.00 a cone, and some of Jen Gould's "Music Soup", as well as a chance to come away from the day feeling extra good about contributing to your own future ... what's not to like at the Strawberries and Asparagus Festival?
Italian composer Giorgio Battistelli is apparently hard at work on an opera based on Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth". Great plot line coming up! Giorgio began scribbling furiously away one year ago and, unless plans go awry, La Scala will present the finished result during its 2011 season, as part of its celebration of the 150th anniversary of Italy's unification. Battistelli plans to make liberal use of the La Scala chorus in his verismo about "the tragedy of our present situation." I don't know about you, but there's something in this whole idea that strikes a comic note for me. It makes me think of Victor Borge's one man rendition of an opera, played strictly for laughs, of course. I can see the tenor clomping his way out onto the stage, and hear the boards reverberating to his every step. I can picture him "surrounding the tree" symbolic of all the trees beset by global warming. (That visual is Borge's, not mine.) I can hear his mournful solo, echoing through the renowned opera house, bewailing the rising flood waters. Can't you just imagine the chorus, hidden until now in plain sight on the stage's nether regions, suddenly back lit by a dramatic blend of fiery red and ominous orange beams, adding their voices to the heartrending aria announcing our imminent doom? It isn't hard for me to hear the concert master dripping elegiac notes off the end of his bow as his violin sobs in harmony with those on stage. I can imagine the rest of the musicians getting so caught up in it all they begin hurling indiscriminate klangfarbenmelodies at the leitmotif in atonal despair. The end of this whole operatic misadventure would have everyone from Mozart to Wagner spinning in their eternal resting places, while the audience overwhelmed the cast with applause laden with thanks for their release from the aural torture penned by Battistelli. I'm betting this one isn't going to be high on the lists of planned performances when next any opera house has something to celebrate.
