Monday 12 November 2012
memoir writers homework-multi-tasking
College days were all about multi tasking.Trying to cram enough knowledge into my head and trying to make a number of different ends meet in the middle.It was a lot more serious than trying to walk and chew gum at the same time,which I could never do without walking into a telephone pole.
At school my desk usually had at least two,and often more textbooks open at the same time.I always had the required textbook for the course,plus another title to use as a cross reference,and a coil notebook for the taking of notes.Sometimes there would be a different text book,or notebook as well,if I were trying to study for an exam later in the day,or attempting to prepare for a class I was not quite prepared for as well as trying to take notes in the present.I usually had a small notepad in which to write down questions and answers from class discussions as well,as I'm well known for making a ton of notes on just about everything going on about me.And the writing implements.Pencils,pens and markers.Usually at least two colours of markers,one to highlight text,the other references.And two colors of pens for the various notes I was writing in the margins.Not only did I have ten things running through my mind,but I didn't have enough hands for all the writing implements.
Then the bus ride home,trying to catch up on school work.Can't waste a thirty minute bus ride.Thats another thirty minutes sleep.And of course there was work.Driving a taxi at night,which I really didn't want to do any more,hence the school.But I could bring along books from school and study them in the downtime between fares.No one cared if I drove around the clock either and I sometimes did,because money was tight.A time or two I pulled into the park and fell asleep with a psychology textbook open on the seat,until I was jarred awake by an urgent sounding dispatcher.
I also volunteered.It would be a help to my career after college.So twice a week I went to the hospital to work with disabled children.I taught adult literacy as well,on the week end,and worked as a host,helping immigrants integrate into society.And of course there was always the need to do all of the routine things like shopping for food and clothes,and cleaning the house.And there was a young lady named Melanie who vied for some of the time I didn't seem to have.That never did work out.
Two whole years running around like a headless chicken is what it seemed like.
At school my desk usually had at least two,and often more textbooks open at the same time.I always had the required textbook for the course,plus another title to use as a cross reference,and a coil notebook for the taking of notes.Sometimes there would be a different text book,or notebook as well,if I were trying to study for an exam later in the day,or attempting to prepare for a class I was not quite prepared for as well as trying to take notes in the present.I usually had a small notepad in which to write down questions and answers from class discussions as well,as I'm well known for making a ton of notes on just about everything going on about me.And the writing implements.Pencils,pens and markers.Usually at least two colours of markers,one to highlight text,the other references.And two colors of pens for the various notes I was writing in the margins.Not only did I have ten things running through my mind,but I didn't have enough hands for all the writing implements.
Then the bus ride home,trying to catch up on school work.Can't waste a thirty minute bus ride.Thats another thirty minutes sleep.And of course there was work.Driving a taxi at night,which I really didn't want to do any more,hence the school.But I could bring along books from school and study them in the downtime between fares.No one cared if I drove around the clock either and I sometimes did,because money was tight.A time or two I pulled into the park and fell asleep with a psychology textbook open on the seat,until I was jarred awake by an urgent sounding dispatcher.
I also volunteered.It would be a help to my career after college.So twice a week I went to the hospital to work with disabled children.I taught adult literacy as well,on the week end,and worked as a host,helping immigrants integrate into society.And of course there was always the need to do all of the routine things like shopping for food and clothes,and cleaning the house.And there was a young lady named Melanie who vied for some of the time I didn't seem to have.That never did work out.
Two whole years running around like a headless chicken is what it seemed like.
memoir writers homework-inherited from my parents.
Without doubt I inherited twenty three chromosomes from each of my parents.Beyond that,knowing exactly what they passed along to me gets a bit dicey,because I don't really see much of them in me.But that could be just my imagination.
For instance,none of those genes should have selected for iconoclasm,but,here I am.and therein lies a big part of the problem in trying to figure out just what came from where.Because,not only are iconoclasts hard wired to wonder what the mailman looked like and if perhaps he went on to a career as a high ranking member of the New Democrats,or a writer with the "New Yorker",but,I know this is hard to believe,we tend to disassemble things.So,I tend to have a big list of traits,that I imagine myself to have and yet I find it hard to attribute any given one of them to either of my parents.You see,when you disassemble things,you sometimes have a lot of spare parts left over when you try to put it all back together.
My mother was religious and my father profane,at least most of the time.I can be,by turns either ,or even both at the same time.My father was sickly from an early age and my mother healthy and robust until taken by a car accident in her seventy second year.Me,I'm healthier than either of them,though sometimes afflicted by conditions that neither had.Where did the gout come from?Will I die relatively young of a stroke ,or will I live until nearly a hundred or perhaps beyond,like my mothers family?And why am I the darkest on in my family?How did two stiff necked conservatives produce a liberal like me?An iconoclast,just to make clear to you what I mean by the term,is someone who you might say is a professional Pin The Tail On The Donkey player.The donkey could be anything at all.The President of The United States,or The Mayor Of Toronto,or Pro Athletes or The Christian Right...it really matters not.Or even the supposed notion that what we are is all in the genes.For the iconoclast,the donkey population is much greater than it is for most people.
In all seriousness though,I can only see what I've inherited in ways so subtle,I wonder how I see them at all.A tiny movement around the corners of my mouth,or my eyes that came from my father,or a word,an inflection that was my mothers.To myself,they are very fleeting things,but sometimes I catch them.
For instance,none of those genes should have selected for iconoclasm,but,here I am.and therein lies a big part of the problem in trying to figure out just what came from where.Because,not only are iconoclasts hard wired to wonder what the mailman looked like and if perhaps he went on to a career as a high ranking member of the New Democrats,or a writer with the "New Yorker",but,I know this is hard to believe,we tend to disassemble things.So,I tend to have a big list of traits,that I imagine myself to have and yet I find it hard to attribute any given one of them to either of my parents.You see,when you disassemble things,you sometimes have a lot of spare parts left over when you try to put it all back together.
My mother was religious and my father profane,at least most of the time.I can be,by turns either ,or even both at the same time.My father was sickly from an early age and my mother healthy and robust until taken by a car accident in her seventy second year.Me,I'm healthier than either of them,though sometimes afflicted by conditions that neither had.Where did the gout come from?Will I die relatively young of a stroke ,or will I live until nearly a hundred or perhaps beyond,like my mothers family?And why am I the darkest on in my family?How did two stiff necked conservatives produce a liberal like me?An iconoclast,just to make clear to you what I mean by the term,is someone who you might say is a professional Pin The Tail On The Donkey player.The donkey could be anything at all.The President of The United States,or The Mayor Of Toronto,or Pro Athletes or The Christian Right...it really matters not.Or even the supposed notion that what we are is all in the genes.For the iconoclast,the donkey population is much greater than it is for most people.
In all seriousness though,I can only see what I've inherited in ways so subtle,I wonder how I see them at all.A tiny movement around the corners of my mouth,or my eyes that came from my father,or a word,an inflection that was my mothers.To myself,they are very fleeting things,but sometimes I catch them.
Sunday 11 November 2012
Op/Ed-some random thoughts about war and remembrence.
Perhaps my argument here is non sequiter.You be the judge.But forgive my rambling.I don't always think in a perfectly straight line.That's especially true when it comes to remembering our veterans.
When I was young,there were still living veterans from both world wars.Those from the first war were very old men for the most part,at least in their sixties or seventies.The Second World War had ended only fifteen years before I was born,so there were plenty of relatively young men around with fresh,or should I perhaps say,raw memories of what that time and experience was like.Even as a young child I had the sense that many of these people,and everyone,absolutely everyone knew some of these people,were deeply haunted by the living out of that part of their lives.Many would not,could not talk of what happened on those battlefields.You see,to a young boy war seems glamorous,especially when you are still living in the shadow of it,and he wants to hear those stories and find glory in them.The same glory we used to see in all those John Wayne films.But such a thing,if it ever existed could not be found in any of the veterans that I knew.You see,their stories were real,and whats real is not so easy to talk about.
Just a few short years ago I had the privilege of getting to know on of Canada's veterans rather well.We came from the same part of the country,you see,and we shared a love of traditional music,which is how we came to meet.There were things that we did not agree about,specifically political things,but in the end we got along famously and I've always considered this man to be a mentor.And,he told me a story about his time in the war that I will never forget.
It was a terrible time he said,a bad time for everyone.He was a young man when he signed up and after a few short weeks he was sent to Normandy.His account,at least when he gave it to me said nothing of bombs exploding or low flying planes or bullets passing close.No talk of guns or smoke or tanks.It's as if those things were all absent.But what he did tell me revealed so much about what that time was like,and even more about how it is we should think about war.
"Once I was there for some time,I got a letter from my mother.It told me how my brother was killed in Italy.Then I got angry,with an anger I'd never had in my life.I knew I was there and I knew why.I had no doubt I was doing the right thing,and I understand why it was the right thing.It wasn't just because my country was telling me it was the right thing.So I was there and I had a gun and I was trying to kill men who were trying to kill me.Then that letter came,and it made me angry."And he paused for a long time.A long time."Then,I fired that gun for my brother.And I know I killed people.Before that,I was firing my gun,but I wasn't certain I was killing anyone...war is like that.But then,I know I killed people,once my brother was gone and I started fighting for him.What I don't know though,about those people I killed is,I don't know what happened to their soul."And that was his story as he told it to me.After some time he absorbed some shrapnel and his fighting ended.But not has war.He always wondered,he said, why God had taken his brother and left him.And he wondered forever about the condition of some nameless German souls.
What does his story tell us today?The old cliche that "war is hell"is no less true for it's having been said so often,for one thing.There was no real glory in war for this man and it's ghosts followed him until he drew his last breath.The only glory was that this man went and did his duty with a good idea as to the moral necessity of doing that duty.He believed in the right of what he was doing,at least in he beginning.And if he was not so convinced later in life,he came home with the fine and moral and unselfish idea that the souls of those slaughtered mattered,no matter what side of the battlefield they fell on.
I was honored to know this man.His story was so unlike that of what I though a war story should be,and yet so revealing.But my deep concern is with younger people today,who will never have the opportunity to know such a man.I don't know what war really means to them,what they think they are doing when they remember and when they wear the poppy.Some of them come from military families,of course,and some of them were taught well to remember.Some,as well will have friends who have known war in some far off country.But it's really not the same as living in that once long shadow.
War must have another purpose.Not that I prefer war to it's opposite,but when I see the world I'm living in today,it makes me wonder if,the more distant we get in time from those times which we say we remember each November 11,the more uncivil we become to each other.To be fair,there are many differences in our world today.It is such a different place.But it is hard to deny that we are.by comparison to fifty years ago lacking civility.
Today we are surrounded by social media,and I think we have to ask how that affects us as a society.Over the last few days I've posted many things about this season of remembrance on my facebook page.But,it's not the same as visiting a veterans memorial and having the cold and snow to remind me just what the sacrifice of those people really was.The internet is,to a large extent anonymous,or at least distant from the way we used to engage our world.It is argued by some that this makes things like cyber bullying and stalking more likely,and a sense of not caring about others and an attendant narcissism more the social norm.My question is,though,what does this have to do with war?
Today war is fought by professional soldiers,and I thank God for them.At least in this country,no one is called to serve that has not chosen to do so.We recently sent troops to Afghanistan,and some were lost.But that sacrifice was made by those who were being paid to do a job.It's not near the same as the World Wars,when our entire country,both military people,and those at home sacrificed to triumph in a perhaps not noble,but a necessary cause.My point then is that we were all in it together,and we knew it.We had some idea of the desperation in that struggle,and how very much our world would be different if we did not see it through to victory,at whatever cost required.And our world could very easily been defeated.It was so close.
Nearly all those brave men and women have passed now,and I fear that we live in a world that knows so little of sacrifice.Sure,some of us sacrifice for our children,or our career,or some such thing.But o any of us really know the sacrifice to preserve our whole way of life?Consequently,is the value of that way of life ever really apparent to us,especially as we get farther away in time from those terrible years.There seems no sense of striving together these days.And perhaps that is the whole higher purpose of war.By default do we become more selfish and less caring,thus bringing our world to a state that our enemies failed to do?Is that the danger of not remembering?I fear it may be,and that is why I say,"LEST WE FORGET"
We would do well to remember that civility,even towards those who do not share our worldview,is about concerning ourselves with the souls of others and knowing that there is dignity attached to each of hose souls.
When I was young,there were still living veterans from both world wars.Those from the first war were very old men for the most part,at least in their sixties or seventies.The Second World War had ended only fifteen years before I was born,so there were plenty of relatively young men around with fresh,or should I perhaps say,raw memories of what that time and experience was like.Even as a young child I had the sense that many of these people,and everyone,absolutely everyone knew some of these people,were deeply haunted by the living out of that part of their lives.Many would not,could not talk of what happened on those battlefields.You see,to a young boy war seems glamorous,especially when you are still living in the shadow of it,and he wants to hear those stories and find glory in them.The same glory we used to see in all those John Wayne films.But such a thing,if it ever existed could not be found in any of the veterans that I knew.You see,their stories were real,and whats real is not so easy to talk about.
Just a few short years ago I had the privilege of getting to know on of Canada's veterans rather well.We came from the same part of the country,you see,and we shared a love of traditional music,which is how we came to meet.There were things that we did not agree about,specifically political things,but in the end we got along famously and I've always considered this man to be a mentor.And,he told me a story about his time in the war that I will never forget.
It was a terrible time he said,a bad time for everyone.He was a young man when he signed up and after a few short weeks he was sent to Normandy.His account,at least when he gave it to me said nothing of bombs exploding or low flying planes or bullets passing close.No talk of guns or smoke or tanks.It's as if those things were all absent.But what he did tell me revealed so much about what that time was like,and even more about how it is we should think about war.
"Once I was there for some time,I got a letter from my mother.It told me how my brother was killed in Italy.Then I got angry,with an anger I'd never had in my life.I knew I was there and I knew why.I had no doubt I was doing the right thing,and I understand why it was the right thing.It wasn't just because my country was telling me it was the right thing.So I was there and I had a gun and I was trying to kill men who were trying to kill me.Then that letter came,and it made me angry."And he paused for a long time.A long time."Then,I fired that gun for my brother.And I know I killed people.Before that,I was firing my gun,but I wasn't certain I was killing anyone...war is like that.But then,I know I killed people,once my brother was gone and I started fighting for him.What I don't know though,about those people I killed is,I don't know what happened to their soul."And that was his story as he told it to me.After some time he absorbed some shrapnel and his fighting ended.But not has war.He always wondered,he said, why God had taken his brother and left him.And he wondered forever about the condition of some nameless German souls.
What does his story tell us today?The old cliche that "war is hell"is no less true for it's having been said so often,for one thing.There was no real glory in war for this man and it's ghosts followed him until he drew his last breath.The only glory was that this man went and did his duty with a good idea as to the moral necessity of doing that duty.He believed in the right of what he was doing,at least in he beginning.And if he was not so convinced later in life,he came home with the fine and moral and unselfish idea that the souls of those slaughtered mattered,no matter what side of the battlefield they fell on.
I was honored to know this man.His story was so unlike that of what I though a war story should be,and yet so revealing.But my deep concern is with younger people today,who will never have the opportunity to know such a man.I don't know what war really means to them,what they think they are doing when they remember and when they wear the poppy.Some of them come from military families,of course,and some of them were taught well to remember.Some,as well will have friends who have known war in some far off country.But it's really not the same as living in that once long shadow.
War must have another purpose.Not that I prefer war to it's opposite,but when I see the world I'm living in today,it makes me wonder if,the more distant we get in time from those times which we say we remember each November 11,the more uncivil we become to each other.To be fair,there are many differences in our world today.It is such a different place.But it is hard to deny that we are.by comparison to fifty years ago lacking civility.
Today we are surrounded by social media,and I think we have to ask how that affects us as a society.Over the last few days I've posted many things about this season of remembrance on my facebook page.But,it's not the same as visiting a veterans memorial and having the cold and snow to remind me just what the sacrifice of those people really was.The internet is,to a large extent anonymous,or at least distant from the way we used to engage our world.It is argued by some that this makes things like cyber bullying and stalking more likely,and a sense of not caring about others and an attendant narcissism more the social norm.My question is,though,what does this have to do with war?
Today war is fought by professional soldiers,and I thank God for them.At least in this country,no one is called to serve that has not chosen to do so.We recently sent troops to Afghanistan,and some were lost.But that sacrifice was made by those who were being paid to do a job.It's not near the same as the World Wars,when our entire country,both military people,and those at home sacrificed to triumph in a perhaps not noble,but a necessary cause.My point then is that we were all in it together,and we knew it.We had some idea of the desperation in that struggle,and how very much our world would be different if we did not see it through to victory,at whatever cost required.And our world could very easily been defeated.It was so close.
Nearly all those brave men and women have passed now,and I fear that we live in a world that knows so little of sacrifice.Sure,some of us sacrifice for our children,or our career,or some such thing.But o any of us really know the sacrifice to preserve our whole way of life?Consequently,is the value of that way of life ever really apparent to us,especially as we get farther away in time from those terrible years.There seems no sense of striving together these days.And perhaps that is the whole higher purpose of war.By default do we become more selfish and less caring,thus bringing our world to a state that our enemies failed to do?Is that the danger of not remembering?I fear it may be,and that is why I say,"LEST WE FORGET"
We would do well to remember that civility,even towards those who do not share our worldview,is about concerning ourselves with the souls of others and knowing that there is dignity attached to each of hose souls.
Saturday 10 November 2012
lest we forget
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| Canadian soldier-killed in Afghanistan |
 |
| black troops in WWII-these men fought for the freedom of a country in which they could not even eat at the same table as their white counterparts-LEST WE FORGET. |
 |
| Suvla Bay. |
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