tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-65680919960489156292024-02-20T15:03:30.710-07:00Essays by SeanWhere everyday life meets CitizenshipSean Crawfordhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13724844971087639706noreply@blogger.comBlogger500125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6568091996048915629.post-69513913411646993312020-06-16T08:41:00.024-06:002021-10-18T21:17:38.284-06:00My Five Hundredth Post<div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><b>Hello reader,</b></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Let's</b> end this blog</span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-size: large;"> to live anew,</span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-size: large;">for my dear life,</span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-size: large;"> and this blog too<span style="font-size: 12px;">.</span></span></i></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">I have moved </span></b><br />
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<b style="font-family: georgia; font-size: 12px;">About my new, exciting, delicious, IMPROVED blog, seven FAQs </b><span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 12px;">(Frequently Asked Questions)</span><br />
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">1</span> Will there be nice long posts?<br />
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A: No, nothing over 900 words. Guaranteed. <span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">2 Will it be a <b>different</b> sort of writing?</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">A: Yes!... <i>Surprise</i>!</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">3 How different?</span></div>
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A: Sorry, I don't quite know, and I dare not tell you in advance, in case I fail in my "life renewed."<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">4 </span>Your last post was a “focused letter” to Derek Sivers, about <i>One to One Conversations.</i><br />
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">Will there be more focused letters to Derek?</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">A: Yes, letters are fun. Besides, I end up revealing more about myself, which is healthy. My first new blog essay is a letter: <i>My Child to be a Leader</i></span></div><div style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">UPDATE: Actually, my very first piece is a post to introduce me, called <i>Me In My Own World.</i></span></div>
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5 Will there be journalism posts that are “dull but good for you?” Like broccoli? </div>
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A: No, but neither will I write about dogs in funny hats.</div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">6 Will you finish posting your <i>War of the Worlds</i> poems?</span></div>
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A: Maybe, but only a half dozen poems are left, about after the Martians are gone.<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">7 I like how for years you kept making an essay per week, for 500 essays.</span></div>
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A: You're welcome.... After all those man hours, let's hope I learned something!</div>
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<b style="font-size: 12px;">Sean Crawford</b></div>
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June-July 2020 (Note to self: My last <i>meta-blog</i> was in February, called <i>How You Learn</i>) </div>
Sean Crawfordhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13724844971087639706noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6568091996048915629.post-19779594297336754162020-06-09T08:02:00.018-06:002021-06-05T12:45:26.179-06:00Commentary on One to One Conversations<div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><b>Hello Reader,</b></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">I wrote to Derek Sivers, commenting on his 44 hours of being interviewed.<a href="https://sivers.org/i"> (link)</a> Who is he? See the beginning of any interview.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">Greetings from the best half of North America.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">You liked conversing with an Olympian who said, “I do not hang out;” <i>you very much preferred one on one conversations; </i> when a fellow would surprise you, at a scheduled get together for you and him, by showing up with friends, </span>you would be so disappointed. I can relate.</div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">I’ve noticed that when a few people in conversation are interrupted, no one picks up the old conversation thread. I guess because they were merely “hanging out.”</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">The problem with small social groups? For me? I have to politely go by the “slowest ship in the convoy” regarding vocabulary, intimacy, frivolity and so forth.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">As for good group socializing: A young lady confided to me that she despaired of talking too much in the bar. This would be—people varied from week to week—after our campus Toastmasters Club meetings. Despaired. </span><br />
<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">I advised her that I secretly count heads, do division, and then only talk my fair share of the time. One day she looked so happy to tell me, "Your advice really worked!"</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">One afternoon, there I am in the bar with two not-so-young ladies. One has a fiance whom I had never met. The topic was so cool! Intimate and interesting! The fiance enters the bar, walks up, and —like something out of a feminist caricature— he abruptly speaks several flat sentences, as an oblivious centre of attention, hijacks the conversation, and the topic is gone like smoke. I lost a lot of respect for the man, and I was not surprised, when I met the lady only a few years later, to learn she had divorced.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">To prevent hijacks, whenever one is late to bars, convention seminars or in everyday life, it helps to remember the old Chinese proverb:<i> “When you go outdoors, look at the weather; when you go indoors, look at the faces.”</i></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">I can tell you who truly prefers to converse, as opposed to hanging out or relaxing: </span><br />
<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">The social crowd of young 1930’s Paris intellectuals including </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><i>(“but not limited to,” my lawyer hastens to add) </i></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">Simone De Beauvoir and her boy friend, Jean Paul Sartre. I suppose sometimes the whole gang arrived in a group to a big cafe. Simone explains in her memoir something that amazed the cafe manager, given that her friends all knew each other: </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><i>(Of course the pairs would mix and match from day to day)</i> </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">and another pair came in, the second pair would find their own table, as would the next pair too. Easily explained: They all relished one on one conversations.</span></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><br /></span></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><span face="Roboto, helvetica, arial, sans-serif" style="caret-color: rgb(54, 59, 64); color: #363b40; font-size: 16px; white-space: pre-wrap;">As I found in Derek Siver's notes on the book Geography of Genius: “We’re not talking about conversation as a form of entertainment. We’re talking about conversation as the piling up of premises leading to a conclusion. We’re talking about conversation that takes an issue forward, conversation as a way of getting somewhere.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">I am writing to supportively say that you and I are not the only ones to seek Paris friends. I for one am still seeking.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><b>Sean Crawford</b></span><br />
<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><b>Note:</b> My new blog, at seanessay.com, has an expanded draft of this posted October 2020.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">June 2020</span></div>
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Sean Crawfordhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13724844971087639706noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6568091996048915629.post-55200373618287010252020-06-02T06:18:00.000-06:002020-06-03T06:38:09.024-06:00Brave New Generation<div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">I remember where I was when President Kennedy was assassinated. I remember his idealism, and then our eager long haired years when we said “Don’t trust anyone over 30.” We, and those coming after us, intended to keep our idealism for good citizenship as we all aged… striving, seeking and never yielding. The world was going to be “new and improved.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Mark Manson, successful blogger, is 36. This morning, (Monday June 1) I received my usual Monday morning e-mail from him. (footnote) At the risk of thereby misquoting or misrepresenting him, please let me present one great paragraph out of what he sent. I have broken it up into smaller paragraphs, for cosmetic reasons, all the better fit computer screens. His swear words are idealistically chosen for effect. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">I am thirty-six years old. Despite crippling problems with health care, education, gun violence, immigration, climate change, stagnant wages, income inequality, and racial inequality persisting for <i>my entire adult life</i>, I have never once seen my government help with or resolve any of these issues. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">For as long as I can remember, it has been: tax cuts, war, tax cuts, bailouts, tax cuts, bailouts. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">I have never seen things get better in this country. Only worse. I have never seen anything substantive from my leaders, Democrat or Republican, that makes me proud of voting for them. I wasn’t alive for the moon landing. I am too young to remember the Berlin Wall falling. I don’t give a flying fuck about Saddam Hussein. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">My introduction to my nation was 9/11, followed by hearing about friends and classmates being killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, followed by graduating into the worst economic collapse in 86 years, followed by thirteen more years of <i>absolutely fucking nothing changing</i>. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Forty-five years of no real wage growth for the middle and lower classes? Nothing. Kindergarteners being shot at school with assault rifles? Nothing. Eleven million bankruptcies due to a corrupt and dysfunctional health care system? Nothing. Black people being repeatedly murdered by police, live, on camera? An entire generation of young people saddled with over a trillion dollars of debt just to go to school and then told to stay home and not work as soon as they get out? </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">UNQUOTE</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">As Manson credibly related the ongoing frustration of his peers to the current protests and riots... something occurred to me: At age 36, <i>Manson </i><b><i>has never known a world without Reaganomics</i>. </b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">It is instructive to compare the 40 years between the war and President Reagan’s changes, with the 40 years until today. In this comparison, reagonomics loses out.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">While Mark and his friends take it for granted that a federal government should be <i>mainly</i> concerned with stockholders, and a business <i>solely</i> concerned with stockholders, that was not the case when I was young. In my day, every successful businessman knew there were other valid concerns beyond stockholders.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Some wise guy: “Ya, but the money will trickle down!”</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Me: “Really? How’s that working out for you?”</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">For you Canadians, I suppose this doesn’t apply, except, after the international border reopens, if, say, a U.S. citizen is sincerely asking you why all the other developed nations believe in socialized medicine, and why they nearly all, including Canada, declined to participate in the invasion of Iraq, and then declined to join the occupation “to instil democracy”… </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">After you heave a sigh and say, “It’s not coincidence,” you could suggest your American friends might just possibly, maybe, perhaps, debrief on how reaganomics has worked out. I tell you, the previous economic model was good enough for my grandfather, my father and I.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">And for my final angry word (And Lord, how I want to swear!) </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">In war time? A tax cut in war time? <i>Only</i> under something as <i>ugly</i> as reagonomics, back when America was supposedly needing all available money and troops for the war—desperate for troops— “all of us in this together,” when all of us were supporting some of us to fight overseas, could there <i>ever</i> be a tax cut… which the servicemen and their families would never see.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Sean Crawford</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Calgary</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">June 2</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">2020</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">For Mark Manson’s June 1st letter: </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none; text-decoration: underline;"><a href="https://markmanson.emlnk1.com/lt.php?s=d616227377f354812564f61b3d790428&i=309A354A1A2000">View in browser</a></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Promoting Mark’s regular Monday letter:</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">(Note: If you like these emails and know someone who would enjoy them, please consider forwarding this to them. If you are receiving this for the first time, you can <a href="https://markmanson.emlnk1.com/lt.php?s=d616227377f354812564f61b3d790428&i=306A351A1A1975"><span style="color: #1b80b8; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">sign up here</span></a> to receive this newsletter every Monday.)</span></div>
Sean Crawfordhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13724844971087639706noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6568091996048915629.post-71934777480406448472020-05-26T03:28:00.000-06:002020-05-26T03:28:57.017-06:00Warm Fuzzy World<div style="background-color: white; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none; text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://essaysbysean.blogspot.com/"><b>essaysbysean.blogspot.com</b></a></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>Blog note:</i><b> </b>During these COVID days, with shuttered wi-fi cafes, I am posting on Tuesday mornings.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Hello Reader,</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Got warm fuzzies?</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>I first encountered </b>the<b> </b>terms “warm fuzzies,” —not to mention “cold pricklies” and the “hip woman,” who had big hips— in an allegory, obviously from the ‘safe-to-be-creative’ late 1960’s. (<a href="https://reenchantements.files.wordpress.com/2018/08/warm-fuzzy-tale.pdf">Here’s the story</a>)</span></div>
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The wee story was a warning against “zero sum” thinking, or “fixed pie” thinking, or “not enough human worth to go around for all the common people” thinking, a warning badly needed because such crazy thinking was so prevalent in certain less functional families, communities and work sites. I’m glad things have gotten better since the 1950’s.<span style="font-kerning: none;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">(<i>Note:</i> Even today, some males don’t want to allow equal rights to females, out of some wimpy fear of getting less of the respect pie) </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">In the real world, of course, while we <i>can’t</i> all have a special first place blue ribbon, we <i>can</i> all receive ordinary compliments, hugs and smiles. Why not? Why not be bountiful with giving warm fuzzies? When reading the allegory of warm fuzzies for the very first time I thought, “Wha-what? Wow! What a concept!” </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Since I grew up on an emotional ice burg, and then initially found employment in frozen toxic places, I was surprised by the hip woman’s message. But it sunk in, and since then I have tried to be bountiful with my appreciation for all God’s children, and lavish in my praise.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">In fact, several store clerks have said I was their favorite customer. To me, being positive to clerks, besides the joy of giving warm fuzzies, offers a way of feeling like “I am paying my way on the human scene…” I don’t mean “pay,” rather, I mean I am <i>crew</i> not passenger, <i>host</i> not guest, <i>giver</i> not beggar, while feeling <i>gracious</i> in my bounty. It’s a lifestyle choice. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Last month I was with millionaire blogger Derek Sivers. As he checked out of his luxury hotel it was natural to him to compliment a desk clerk on her spectacles. As did I. Then she said she liked mine too. A week later, during an e-mail, when I referenced this incident as being like in my <i>Kind to Clerks</i> essay, Derek had forgotten about his compliment. Because his appreciative lifestyle was so natural to him.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">(By the way, Derek liked my <i>Clerks</i> essay, archived November 2019)</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Parting thought:</b> Of course I still have my bad hair—I mean, bad heart days when I am feeling witchy, or small, or ungiving, or waiting for someone <i>else</i> to smile <i>first</i>… I’m only human.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Chestermere,</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">made in March, </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">released in May, </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">2020</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Sidebar:</b> </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Speaking of “being kind,” I am proud that<a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/taiwan-scheer-include-who-1.5564885"> (link) </a>Canada is kindly pushing for Taiwan to be allowed observer status with the World Health Organization. Especially since Taiwan, with <i>only</i> six—<b>count ‘em, six</b>— COVID-19 deaths, has something to teach the world… <b><i>if</i></b> allowed freedom to speak. (Now at seven)</span></div>
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If the United Nation’s WHO is reluctant to grant observer status, when doing so is surely a “no-brainer,” then it can only be because the WHO is under secret orders from communist officials in Beijing, lest Taiwan then desire “freedom from China.” Canada needs warm fuzzy allies to help push for justice for Taiwan, over in the Asian corner of the world, because the communist officials no longer believe in their doctrine of equality. Instead, it’s as if <i>“‘All countries are equal,’ but China is more equal than others.”</i><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">If I would say that, “Yes, China morally deserves to rule Taiwan,” then I would have to face up to explaining why there have been not just days, not even weeks, but in fact months of demonstrations by so many idealistic young and old men and women on the streets of Hong Kong… I can face facts: China is not even morally fit to rule China, let alone a democracy like Canada or Taiwan. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">See my essay <i>China Molests Canada</i> archived May 2020.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Blog Administrator’s Note:</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">President Ronald Reagan asked for, <i>“a kinder, gentler America.”</i> </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Doctor Who said, <i>“Always try to be nice, but never fail to be kind.”</i> </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">I said, <i>“Inspired by Peter Capaldi’s Doctor Who… I could simply add “kind” to my blog site labels…”</i> </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">(Labels are on the right, that people can click on) </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">So I <i>did</i> add “kind,” putting three posts under that label. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Mind you, just as the label “humor” is for those few blog posts that advise, in part, on <i>how</i> to be funny, not simply for posts that have jokes, so too will the label“kind” be used for essays that advise, in part, on <i>how</i> to be kind.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">As Reagan said, <i>God bless America.</i></span></div>
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Sean Crawfordhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13724844971087639706noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6568091996048915629.post-14883543672823017272020-05-19T05:59:00.000-06:002020-05-19T05:59:47.292-06:00Contemptuous Coffee Table Books<div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none; text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://essaysbysean.blogspot.com/"><b>essaysbysean.blogspot.com</b></a></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">Last week’s post ended with a <b>contemptuous</b>: </span><span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>“You know what? The Chinese can keep their thought police. It’s time to recognize Taiwan.”</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Now, speaking of<i> </i><b>contempt</b><i>,</i> in these quarantine lockdown times, here is a <b><i>nurturing</i></b> paragraph, but with <b><i>righteous swear words</i></b>, from the blog of best-selling writer John Scalzi: (<i>Whatever</i>, for April 26, 2020)</span></div>
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<li style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="background-color: white; font-kerning: none;">All the above, incidentally, is why you have my official permission to tell all those people who are saying that you should develop a new hobby under quarantine and/or if you’re not doing six different things all very well, then you are wasting this precious gift of time, to fuck right off. Motherfuckers, I released a bestseller in quarantine and promoted the crap out of it and am negotiating some genuinely <i>breathtaking</i> business deals and I’m <i>still</i> mostly feeling like sleeping until 3 fucking pm in the afternoon and then going back under the covers an hour and fifteen minutes later. If you’re getting out of <i>bed</i> these days, you’re ahead of the game.</span></li>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">One of our local National Hockey League coaches would concur. <b>“I’m pretty good,”</b> Matt Brown replies. <b>“And I keep telling people, ‘Pretty good is the new great’”</b> </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Wes Gilbertson, in a sports article for page C1 of the Calgary Herald, May 9, writes ‘Sadness. Frustration. Boredom. Fatigue.’ </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">He then quotes coach Matt Brown: </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">“I think probably the most universal theme is that everyone, almost every day, goes through some sort of low-grade grief, and the reason is just that the emotion of sadness is always in response to loss…. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">If you look at our Flames players, for instance, the two things that they love most are playing hockey and being together. Both those things are taken away. Every day that you wake up, it’s another day that you’ve lost those things, so it’s a bit of a Groundhog Day of grief right now.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">“As a result, what sadness does is it causes a drop-off in energy…. (By design) </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">So we can process loss, so we can wrap our head around it…. So what people find unnerving is that you get high-functioning, very motivated people that suddenly have no energy. They know what they want to be doing…”</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>So, dear reader, let’s not have self-contempt</b>. <i>Note</i>: The article covers the whole front page of the sports section, having much practical advice for coping with COVID-19.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Hello Reader,</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Got pretty books?</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Of course I’m proud to be a member of the human race—not like being a Martian—but still, sometimes I have contempt.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Oh, how I wish humankind could learn two simple things, just two: </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">First is: ‘Don’t invade other countries,’ </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Second is: ‘Don’t introduce invasive species.’</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">So while the pretty peacenik with a guitar sings <i>“Where have the native flowers gone?”</i> hoping her fellow civilians will get a clue, I know the truth: </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">All we learn from history is that we don’t learn from history.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">… Here’s a poem from my <i>Tracing the Martians of H.G. Wells</i> poetry manuscript:</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Coffee Table Books</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Before I was born</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">there were books made for boys,</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">boys who wondered, “What’s it like on the inside?”</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">I saw how in a bomber fuselage</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">rivets and structural lines stretched along through rings,</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">with the turret gunner’s seat dangling like a swing.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">The bombardier had a mattress to lie belly down on</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">looking through rings of plexiglas.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">In a big cramped submarine</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">bunks lined the torpedo room,</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">with a sack of potatoes hanging inches</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">from a sailor’s nose.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">They called their subs pigboats</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">as diesel fumes clung to their clothing.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">A boy wants to see into the corners</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">of an airplane, submarine, battle-tank:</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">“What’s it like on the inside?”</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">An adult only wants to view the whole machine </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">at a long glance,</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">posed clean and pretty on a stage,</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">in a coffee table book.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">A grownup has trouble imagining </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">the wreckage of war,</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">as I learned when they did a product-recall </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">of a G.I. Joe battlefield command post: </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Toy soldiers with their map table and walkie-talkies </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">were set in a jagged corner of an open brick building.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Grownups prefer their toys on a clean flat coffee table.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">As a boy reading <i>The Martian Chronicles</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">I learned that when adults saw newsreels of wars in China, </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">they saw the footage as dim and unreal, too far away.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">I felt war as a child </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">during a nightmare in darkness.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">I was with Danny Beck and Bobby Johansen </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">and we were all crying.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">We were soldiers by the black barn, </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">and across the field was a creek.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">And down in that dark creek, we knew, unseen, </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">were the Germans. And we were in utter despair.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Adults live in their bright world of sunny </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">coffee table pictures,</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">with no shadowed corners, </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">never asking, “What’s it like on the inside?”</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Sean Crawford</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Calgary</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">May</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">2020</span></div>
Sean Crawfordhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13724844971087639706noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6568091996048915629.post-80028481802563196872020-05-12T00:11:00.000-06:002020-05-12T00:11:52.082-06:00Beauty and The Art of War<div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
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<a href="http://essaysbysean.blogspot.com/">essaysbysean.blogspot.co</a></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>“Every overseas Chinese is a warrior!”</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">China’s leaders, in 2020, writing to useful idiots and secret agents—call them prostitutes—who are physically living in Canada, but without love of Canada.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Hello reader,</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>Got beauty?</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Leaving last week’s land of thought police, (Part One)</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">I go to (Part Two) seeing beauty, with Asia in the background.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>I’m feeling</b> contemplative.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Before me is a thing of beauty. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Here is traditional Chinese bookbinding, a method developed during the Ming dynasty. (1338-1644) Scarlet ribbons are stitched across the spine, the thick-stock pages folded in half with the printing on the outside only, pages with both nice calligraphy and print. The cover is black with gold lettering; yet not as stark as that sounds, being offset by a red plaque, with gold calligraphy, pasted into an indentation.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">The volume, from the Amherst press, is <i>The Art of War</i> by Sun Zu. (Sunzi) I’ve long owned a paperback copy, in English. This new translation, 2011, is by James Trapp. Does the world need yet another translation of this 2,500 year old text? Actually, yes. I’ll explain below. For now, I’m just contemplating this piece, dipping into it, and thanking another James, one James Clavell.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Clavell, once a starving prisoner of war of the Japanese, is best known to the TV watching public for the mini series <i>Shogun</i>, of old Japan, featuring the handsome actor from the weekly TV series <i>Doctor Kildare</i>, Richard Chamberlain. A huge tome, <i>Shogun</i> is about as thick as a paperback can ever be, a best seller, a book that might especially appeal to fans of <i>Star Trek </i>or history, with its intricate fantastical depictions of a lone Englishman cast ashore, a stranger in a strange land: Castles, ninjas, even great public bathhouses—it’s all good.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">I remember, in the 1970’s, lending the book to two brothers still living on our old homestead. When I returned I found my book battered and wilted, like it had been through a whirlwind. “What the heck happened?” I asked. “We both read it, twice.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">I never did return to Shogun, but I read Clavell’s <i>Tai Pan</i> (colonizing Hong Kong) and <i>King Rat</i> (P.O.W.s of the Japanese) twice each. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Remembering how the </b>Chinese have a cradle-to-grave belief against democracy, and against the democracy of Taiwan… what I also have read twice—later as a little book, first as a <i>Reader’s Digest</i> article—is James Clavell’s grim and controversial <i>The Children’s Story. </i>It’s set down home in the USA. They called Clavell a communist for that one. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">I dimly recall the <i>Readers</i> <i>Digest</i> people having to defend themselves in the next issue. They said the story of poor Johnny, who’s father had been taken away for re-education, was only to dramatize how easily children can be led, and not for any other purpose. This would have been during the good old Kennedy or Johnson years. (Wikipedia mistakenly says 1981) </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">For me, it’s nice to contemplate the beauty of Clavell’s idealism. Besides his best sellers, he also took time to write independently, to do what he thought was right. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">As I see it, Clavell wanted to help inform his fellow citizens, realizing that many people know about only their own town and family, and maybe don’t care to know much more. In contrast, I remember when some of us, at least, cared about South Africa’s practice of apartheid, (apart hate) and we helped to stop it, with college students arguing over sanctions. Caring may not be the default, yet it readily follows after efforts by others who do care. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Clavell realized</b> something: The average educated Chinese housewife knew <i>The Art of Wa</i>r as well as she and her American counterpart both knew a work of English literature, but the American housewife, at the same time, had never heard of <i>The</i> <i>Art of War,</i> and she didn’t have any of its classic concepts as part of her vocabulary. Over here, no one did. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">In the west, as best I can judge by the writings before-and-after World War II of Captain Sir Basil Liddell-Hart, even army officers did not read the book. Not even during the conflicts in French Indochina and Vietnam. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>(Nor during the war in Malaysia, where the British would ultimately defeat the Chinese communist guerrillas, </i>partly<i> because the British cared enough to design their armoured cars to fit between rows of rubber trees, </i>mostly<i> because the Chinese insurgents were too chauvinist to convert the surrounding nonChinese to communism)</i> </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">What the Europeans did read, unfortunately, was a famous book, <i>On War</i>, by Karl Von Clausewitz, a Prussian staff officer who encouraged “blood.” </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Westerners, when I was a boy, would have thought I was crazy if, agreeing with Sun Tzu, I tried to say the highest form of generalship is to get the opposing army to surrender without any bloodshed. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">It’s queer to contemplate how—I’m thinking of the US Civil War and the First World War— the westernmost powers might have avoided so many, many sorry casualties if only the husbands and wives, in the U.S. North and among the Allies, had chosen an “anaconda plan” (as one lonely Union general did in fact advise) of naval blockade and sanctions without fighting. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>(Note: At the end of both the Civil War and WWI, both losing armies were starving—as were, come to think of it, the WWII Japanese armies in the Pacific. Out there, awful things happened. An imperial soldier was ordered to report to the cookhouse without his rice tin: He promptly deserted—he didn’t want to be cannibalized)</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">But about the only translation, in the west, was by a Jesuit priest long ago. And so matters remained, even when I was a boy. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Then something happened. Today there is a mainstream movie, starring Wesley Snipes, called <i>Art of War,</i> and the business section of a bookstore stocks Sun Zu’s classic as surely as it stocks books about samurai businessmen (‘<i>swords</i>’ and ‘<i>rings</i>’)… such books as would never have sold during my boyhood, by the way. Not back when “made in Japan” meant poor quality. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>(As in </i>Back to the Future<i> where the 1950’s professor says something (I forget) like, ‘No wonder your time machine broke down, Marty, this part is </i>made in Japan.<i>’ </i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>One of my friction cars from Christmas, when I was a boy, was from a tin can showing fruit and Japanese writing within, but turned inside out and painted like an automobile)</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Over in the social studies area of the local big box store, one evening last April, while I don’t remember if I specifically counted the actual number of translators, I know I counted eleven different editions of the work. Well! The western world has sure heard of it now! </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>What happened was</b> classic: One man made a difference. Someday I will read again James Clavell’s desperate forward to the first modern <i>Art of War</i>. I would have read it at a community college around 1981-ish. (Wikipedia has the date wrong) First Clavell began having various characters, in his various best selling “Asian novels,” mention the book. And he worked on a translation. Then he had to persuade an otherwise sane editor that a book ostensibly about warfare, about long dead guys with bows and armor, would sell enough copies to break even. The rest is history. The irony, to me, as I looked in vain, was that not one of those eleven editions I found that April evening was the first one with the introduction by James Clavell. How sad. He <i>knew</i> Chinese communism, and he had <i>seen</i> close up what happened to Japan in defeat, and so he desperately told how <i>important</i> national survival is, and how the book of Sun Tzu could help. Poor Prometheus!</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Never mind the bows and armoured horses. What makes Sun Tzu’s (Sunzi’s) work suitable for the business section, and other parts of the bookstore too, is, as James Trapp puts it: “…the elegance of the prose and the underlying Daoist principles.” </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">James Trapp has crafted an elegant translation, a much more humane one than the old standard translation on my shelf. Yes, plainly there is room in the world for a translation as clear and lyrical as this one. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>I think I would like to meet Trapp,</b> with his interesting artistic past, a past that must have fed his soul, not just his bank account. His specialties include Bronze Age art and early Buddhist sculpture. Today he works part-time at the British Museum, and also as a consultant to the UK school system for integrating China studies. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Dipping into the piece before me, I like Trapp’s choice of footnotes, useful yet concise. In a footnote to page one of the final chapter, <i>Using Spies,</i> Trapp writes, “Sunzi’s understanding of the necessity of an effective intelligence network, its efficient organization and the various levels of expendability of its agents is chillingly calculating…and modern.” </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">James Trapp’s introduction ends, “In the eyes of Sunzi a general is no mere jobbing soldier: he is a scholar, gentleman and philosopher. The depth of meaning which this element of mysticism imparts is undoubtedly responsible for the work’s continuing and universal appeal.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Now I contemplate citizenship; I cherish the responsible competence of James, James and Sun Tzu… And I truly appreciate the beauty of the work of art before me. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">As for Asians knowing <i>The Art of War</i>, tonight I was watching the Japanese animated (<i>anime</i>) series <i>Ghost in the Shell, (2</i></span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 8px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><i><sup>nd</sup></i></span><span style="font-kerning: none;"><i> Gig)</i> dubbed with English subtitles. In one episode the major shows up at a den, with luxurious furniture, of three wealthy old criminals. She is there to retrieve something stolen. Three angry young hoodlums are there too. One of the old men asks the major, “Are you the same race as Roh?” </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">She answers, “Can’t you tell?” Meaning: Yes, the major has a full prosthetic body. So formidable! </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">The major backs away with her prize and the hoodlums want to chase after her. The old man forbids them, and quotes Sun Zu: <i>When you know your enemy and you know yourself </i>(voice over as the major flees into a taxi) <i>you can fight a hundred battles without defeat.”</i> The implication being: The hoods <i>can’t</i> know how powerful the major’s prosthetics are.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>Beauty onscreen:</i> </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Did you ever see the 1980’s German art-house movie, with Peter Falk as a human, filmed in black and white, called <i>Wings of Desire,</i> about invisible angels on the roofs of East and West Berlin? In the very next episode of <i>Ghost In the Shell</i>, Battou is in Berlin, on stakeout on the roofs, near the major, using his invisibility thing—but a girl in a wheelchair can look up and <i>see</i> him. In homage, the TV episode was given the movie title. I thought the whole episode, with an angel motif, was well done. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">The Americans once attempted a remake of the German movie, for mainstream audiences, starring Nicolas Cage and Meg Ryan: Film critic Roger Ebert wrote, “But it's not really a remake. It's more of a formula story that benefits from some of Wenders' imagery (solitary angels standing in high places, solemnly regarding humanity) and his central story idea…”</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">At least the remake was better than the live action remake, (2 stars) staring Scarlet Johansen, of the anime feature movie (3 stars) <i>Ghost in the Shell</i>.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>I like the artful</b> words of Roger Ebert, a pulitzer prize winner, as he reviews <i>Wings of Desire.</i> “The film evokes a mood of reverie, elegy and meditation. It doesn’t rush headlong into plot, but has the patience of its angels. It suggests what it would be like to see everything but not participate in it…. For me, the film is like music or a landscape: It clears a space in my mind, and in that space I can consider questions… ”</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><a href="https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-wings-of-desire-1988">Review</a> of the Peter Falk movie (4 stars)</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><a href="https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/city-of-angels-1998">Review</a> of the Nicolas Cage movie (3 stars)</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>Music</i><b><i>:</i></b> </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">The Japanese, once fascist, now welcome the world. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxkMzn4et2U">Here the</a> incomparable Origa sings in Russian, graced with Latin, over graphics for the TV opening of the <i>Ghost in the Shell</i> series. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wy3oWFVePdAMusic:">Here</a> Origa sings in half Russian, half English, a song of determination, over the opening of the second series—anime truly not intended for the “Saturday morning cartoons” of children, nor for adults on their couches wanting a relaxed evening cartoon sitcom.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">I like how the joy of music, like a thirst for peace, is worldwide. In Japan, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z64HCi2rQkE&list=RDz64HCi2rQkE&start_radio=1&t=29">here is </a>a choir like in Bulgaria, and instruments like in my local philharmonic. For 18 minutes of something completely different, a Japanese symphony plays music of the original <i>Ghost in the Shell </i>movie. (which I still haven’t seen) </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">I’m no passive angel up high, I walk down in the world, a world where a sadder, now wiser German said, “All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">This week, I see beauty. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Last week, I looked at the <i>ugly</i> Chinese leaders being un-truthful, with their agents operating secretly in dirty shadows in Canada. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">This day, my eyes are clear… in my own words, after John Keats, </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Truth is beauty, and beauty is truth. And that’s all we know, or need to know.</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Sean Crawford</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Alberta,</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">May, </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">2020 </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Footnotes:</b> </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">~“Remember Taiwan.” <a href="https://www.facebook.com/GlobalNews/videos/245149626681001/">Here’s</a> what the various liberal party Members of Parliament don’t want you to see. “Speak truth to power.” </span></div>
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~Are you still thinking of last week’s post? I am. You know what? The Chinese can <i>keep</i> their thought police. It’s time to recognize Taiwan.<span style="font-kerning: none;"></span></div>
Sean Crawfordhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13724844971087639706noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6568091996048915629.post-71242179639769584552020-05-05T03:16:00.000-06:002020-09-13T10:16:00.116-06:00China Molests Canada<div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://essaysbysean.blogspot.com/">essaysbysean.blogspot.com</a></span><span style="font-kerning: none;"> </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>New up to the minute “now generation” quotations</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">An adult: </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>“Taiwan </i>(population 24 million, Chinese-speaking)<i> has had only </i>six<i> COVID-19 deaths.</i><b> SIX!<i> </i></b><i>But we are censored from knowing </i>how<i> they did it, and </i>when<i> they started doing it. This while their COVID progress graph line is </i>never<i> included on world graphs in the media, not like South Korea’s line, because the World Health Organization is </i>ordered by China<i> not to recognize Taiwan as existing.”</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>(National Post<a href="https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/canadian-who-official-appears-to-dodge-reporters-questions-about-taiwan-in-viral-video"> story with </a>fun video of reporter quizzing the WHO)</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">A child in Canada (not Taiwan):<i> </i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>“How come when fascists lie, we stop believing what they say, but when communists lie, we always hit the reset button and go back to believing?”</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Someone on twitter: </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>“China lied, people died.”</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Hello Reader,</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Got “shelter in place?”</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>I suppose I really </b></span><span style="font-kerning: none; text-decoration: underline;"><b>should</b></span><span style="font-kerning: none;"><b> attempt a COVID-length post: long and leisurely, complete with music and art reviews.</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">But no. So here is only part one, with links to </span>THIS WEEK’S JAW-DROPPING NEWS. (see below)</div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"></span>Part One:</div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Old rerun</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>China and Communism</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Next week:</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Beauty and the New Art of War</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Art and Music Of Japan and Germany</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">China is on my mind, being twice in the media "this week" (in 2015) I will review <i>The Art of War,</i> but first:</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>China and communism</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">As a baby boomer, I still think of students as being longhaired idealistic “peace and love” types. At Harvard University’s model-United Nations this week the students from China were not peaceful, just hateful. They truly <a href="https://finance.yahoo.com/news/chinese-students-were-kicked-harvards-145125237.html">didn’t like</a> Taiwan being called a free country. Their belief that Taiwan, covering the island of Formosa, “belongs” to China is, of course, part of their cradle-to-grave communist propaganda they are so used to hearing.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">(In the dystopian Asia of the movie <i>Cloud Atlas,</i> the propaganda was “womb to tomb”)</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">We forget how powerful propaganda is, especially in a controlled environment, <i>as do the students</i>. For example, my buddy Blair once had a Chinese student, here on a student visa, tell him the followers of Falun Gong kill their parents. Blair paused for thought, and then pointed out that Canada doesn’t allow violators of human rights, such as parent killers, into the country as refugees. “But Falun Gong refugees are allowed in, right?” (Right) </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">“Your government,” Blair said, <i>“has been lying to you!”</i> Blair told me this “really stopped him in his tracks.” </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">As for Taiwan, never mind what Chinese schoolchildren are told, I have a Canadian viewpoint: A baby boy can come to Canada in 1919 from Germany or Japan and when he grows up, he will love Canada and then, if he becomes an adult during World War II, he will go off to fight against those fascists. </span>Perhaps alongside my dad who advanced from the beaches of Normandy to Bremen.</div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Later, when Canadian troops fought and died in Korea, in the Commonwealth Division, my father was not pressured to rejoin: He remained a civilian, raising preschool children. From that war, </span>I have an idea why China so <i>fiercely resents</i> Taiwan. </div>
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I will tell you what I know: You may recall that during the Korean War China <i>did not declare war</i> on South Korea. The Chinese armies in Korea were not <i>sent</i> by China, at least not officially, but instead were officially "volunteers" from the People’s Liberation Army." These official volunteers, as prisoners of war, while being held behind barbed wire by the United Nations forces, told the UN they did not want to go “home.” No, they simply wanted to be released from the wire, set free, as soon as the war was over. <i>Perhaps to make their way to Taiwan. </i></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">To the UN this sounded fair but… No! Nay! Never!—peace negotiations dragged on, casualties mounted, the war prolonged—because the Chinese rulers insisted the volunteers be forcibly repatriated against their will… </span>This would have been a few years after the western communists had built the Berlin Wall as part of an iron curtain across Europe. </div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">At last, to make peace, the UN agreed to force those innocent soldiers to disappear forever behind the bamboo curtain. A win for China… but I guess the Chinese Communist Party officials have <i>never</i> forgiven <i>Taiwan</i> for existing.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">I am reminded of South Africa, back during my student years, when we might <i>hypothetically</i> say that “guest workers” are not citizens, <i>AND</i> we would <i>surely</i> say that any of their babies born and raised to adulthood in South Africa must given full rights and responsibilities to vote and love their country. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">In Taiwan the hopeful soldiers and idealistic young students who had escaped the communist takeover of the mainland in the late 1940’s would today be as old as my father—in their nineties. Their children, (baby boomers) and their children’s children, (Generation X, Generation Y and millennials) would have grown up loving the green hills of Taiwan, without any belief in communism.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">(<i>Writer’s note: My father, born 1919, who came to Canada when he was five, has since died)</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Taiwan grandparents my age</b> may, like me, own the <i>Quotations of Chairman Mao, </i>AND they relish their golden safety. Meaning<i>:</i> Safe to <i>read</i> the <i>Common Sense </i>of Tomas Paine, safe to <i>think</i> about the republican Sun Yat-Sen, and safe to <i>speak</i> with any Falun Gong… as I have. Near the British Museum, the Falun Gong handed out information brochures not just about their sunny religion, but also the dark oppression by the Chinese Communist Party/the regime/ Beijing—call it what you will. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>Late breaking news: From April 25 2020, comes <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-52425350">this story</a> of an imprisoned Hong Kong bookseller who escaped from China and safely opened a bookstore in Taiwan: A happy ending for folks who want life to be fair</i>. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Back in Canada, where my writer’s group meets at the old King Edward school, there were big beautiful paintings of gentle angels looking down as the communists harvest organs from the Falun Gong.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>The other mention of China this week</b> is in <i>Maclean’s</i> magazine (February 16, 2011?, p 74) where book reviewer notes a man “offers a rather frightful look into the mindset of China’s rulers.” The book is <i>The Hundred Year Marathon </i>by Michael Pillsbury. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">“His book would appear to be his attempt to make up for the neglectful advice he offered America’s leaders over the years. It concludes with a number of straightforward recommendations for the U.S. to adopt.” </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">I read Michael Pillsbury’s Chinese quote: </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i><b>“Don’t let the enemy know you’re a rival until it’s too late for him to stop you,” </b></i>Then I immediately thought of similar advice in <b>The Art of War.</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">—WHOAH! <i>Late breaking news</i> MY GOD! </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">This week, the Chinese quote is:</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>“<i>Don’t let the Canadians know</i><i> </i><i>there will be a pandemic until it is too late for them to stop you</i></b> from buying up all their Canadian PPE, while also accepting a donation from them of quote tons unquote of PPE.” (personal protective equipment, such as gowns and masks)</span><br />
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">When China did that, they molested Canada..</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Here is<a href="https://globalnews.ca/news/6858818/coronavirus-china-united-front-canada-protective-equipment-shortage/"> a link</a> from Canada’s Global News for April 30. There are other links in cyberspace too.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">If, dear reader, just like Canada’s Liberal Party folks who are Members of Parliament, you cannot “take in” this shocking news, and instead you just have to close your eyes and instantly forget, then I forgive you… </span>Too bad the liberal MPs in positions of responsibility won’t exert themselves to keep their conscience-eyes open, won’t STOP believing in China. </div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">I feel like it’s again the 1930’s, my dad sees Adolph Hitler on the cover of <i>Time Magazine</i> as “man of the year,” and no one’s brain will retain anything bad about the Nazis. So I forgive you and me. Just as back when we bully-worshipped the Germans, I know in advance that </span><i>(Hello to anyone reading this in some future year) </i>this story of Chinese immorality will be as forgotten as a nightmare from yesterday morning. And for that, I am sorry.</div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Sean Crawford</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Alberta,</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">May, </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">2020 </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>Cloud Atlas</i> <a href="https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/cloud-atlas-2012">movie review,</a> 4 stars, “…a repeated motif is that all lives are connected by a thirst for freedom.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Footnote for liberals:</b> The patriots of Taiwan are just as much members of the Mongolian race as people in China: While trusting the one nation and distrusting the other, don’t let your local Liberal Party MP escape his conscience by calling you racist, not if he or she flatly refuses to watch this Global TV <a href="https://www.facebook.com/GlobalNews/videos/245149626681001/">news report </a>by an investigative journalist. Never mind the liberal party, the price of freedom is the rest of us having eternal vigilance.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">You know what? The Chinese can keep their thought police. It’s time to recognize Taiwan.</span></div>
Sean Crawfordhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13724844971087639706noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6568091996048915629.post-3290079664165261842020-04-28T07:06:00.000-06:002020-05-11T13:36:24.856-06:00Peers of. Social Media<div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none; text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://essaysbysean.blogspot.com/">essaysbysean.blogspot.com</a></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Head Notes</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Four regular</b> (not fake)<b> news stories:</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>BBC news:</i> Coronavirus Doctor’s Diary: “Fake news makes people think we want them to die.”<a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/health-52337951"> (link)</a></span></div>
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<i>Abc news:</i> Due to social media “news,” people are attacking 5G communication masts (towers) across Europe, so then sometimes loved ones cannot speak to dying relatives in isolation in hospital<a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory/conspiracy-theorists-burn-5g-towers-claiming-link-virus-70258811">. (link)</a><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span></div>
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<i>Sun news UK, with photographs:</i> <b>celebrities are advising followers</b> that 5G towers are dangerous, as of 18 April social media followers have attacked 53 masts.<a href="https://www.thesun.co.uk/tech/11421457/ee-5g-towers-masts-5g-coronavirus-conspiracy-theory/"> (link)</a><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span></div>
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<i>Aljazeera news:</i> Yes, it’s a Russian conspiracy: <b>SOMEONE wants us </b>to believe that masts cause corona.<a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/ajimpact/5g-coronavirus-conspiracy-theory-driven-coordinated-effort-200410182740380.html"> (link)</a><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Hello Reader,</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Got social peers?</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Everybody likes having peers, everybody. A man once told me he bought a heavy metal concert T-shirt so that other fans of metal would find him. Not all peers are so obvious. It was E.M. Forster, in his oft-reprinted essay <i>Two Cheers for Democracy</i>,<a href="https://www.speakingtree.in/blog/two-cheers-for-democracy-em-forster"> (link)</a> who said that he belonged to an unspoken society of people who silently recognize each other. I suppose we can belong to overlapping groups, some vast and public, some small and quiet. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">As for those who are unthinking, unreflective, and reflexively trying always to conform as much they can, I wonder if they feel special, perhaps comforting themselves that by being so much in the majority they are so much more special than nerds and folks less classy. I really don’t know. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">A computer nerd, Paul Graham, once wrote that if you find yourself agreeing with absolutely everything believed by your surrounding culture, then you might want to think about that… I’ve read every one of Paul’s essays on the web. Read them without commenting, that is, as I don’t like his commenting peers. (On sites like Reddit and Ycombinator)</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Yet I often comment for musician and computer programmer Derek Sivers, another original web writer. His peers I like. On one of Derek’s comment threads someone complimented him by saying Derek had done like Cameron in the teen movie <i>Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.</i> Derek replied, <i>“Huh?”</i><a href="https://sivers.org/sammy-cahn"> (link to blog)</a> So I joined in. I said I didn’t get the compliment either, but at least I enjoyed the excuse to watch the movie, on DVD, and I provided a link for everyone to a review by critic Roger Ebert, a review with a thread of eight comments. <a href="https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/ferris-buellers-day-off-1986">(link to review)</a></span><span style="color: #520053;"> </span><span style="color: #520053;"> </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">I reflected on how (except maybe once on VHS with a few university students) </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">I hadn’t seen the movie since I had first caught it in the theatre. Around that time, speaking of conformity, I had noticed that folks would rush out the instant the credits started. So I would tell my movie companion that if we had a good reason to rush, such as to get to a car park, then OK, but let’s not rush blindly for no reason. So I saw the end of the <i>Ferris</i> credits. This would have been back when only funny guys like Peter Sellers or Jackie Chan added anything at the end, decades before Marvel started adding treats. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">It was on the Web, on some thread I’ve long forgotten, that I found several people saying that Ferris comes out of the bathroom at the end of the credits. How distasteful. I privately thought, “No way, the movie is not that low!” But who was I to disagree with social Internet media?</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Now I’ve rewatched it. My memory has been right all along, the “several people” who are not my peers are not correct. Who <i>are</i> these people? <i>I will tell you what I imagine:</i> They are the sort who forward social media. Who write social media. Whose peers are each other, a low sort who <i>carelessly</i> play the stereo louder than they know their neighbors would like, drive with a <i>fuzzy</i> regard for the two second rule, cheat at solitaire and murmur vague obscenities. (Janis Ian) They are people who innocently pass on social fake news as <i>truth</i>, innocently get alarmed at what’s on social media, and then tell folks right away about the COVID social news they just read… while seeing their peers, with self-satisfaction, as being worldly.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">I wonder: Do these guys mean to lie about the ending of <i>Ferris Bueller? </i>I can’t say, but I can say they don’t mean to take pains to be honest about everything they say or write. I get it: As long as many people are most comfortable around peers who believe in <i>“careless, fuzzy truth”</i> there will always be a place for fake social media.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Meanwhile, in the regular, traditional media where any reporter’s peers, including her editor, demand “journalism ethics,” comes this COVID story: According to a hospital doctor in the UK, social media fake news is causing people to avoid hospitals. (see the first link at the head notes) I can sympathize with the doctor. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">I’m sure it’s hard to explain to a patient’s distraught wife “the theory and practise of social media” with only a quick sound bite—better to try to discredit a specific falsehood— hard to explain that her beloved brother-in-law, meaning no disrespect to him, is mistaken when he endorses and forwards something on social media. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">In everyday life? Perhaps a good compromise is to say to your brother-in-law: <i>If</i> the social media story is true, <i>and</i> if we can wait for a day, <i>then</i> ethical journalists will pounce on the story and report to us in detail. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Furthermore, if <i>real</i> media does not show 5G towers causing any COVID, then <i>please don’t attack the towers!</i> Don’t attack based on <i>social</i> media. Let’s remember that real journalists practise “real journalism,” while many people cannot even define proper journalism. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">My not-so-common sense is: <i>If</i> from social media you hear something such as electrical towers causing a virus, or white vinegar curing COVID, or alien flying saucers have just landed on the Washington Mall, <i>and</i> <i>if you wait</i> just one day… and then all you hear from the eager capitalist reporters is crickets… then you might want to think about that…</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">In my own life—where “I don’t do Facebook,” because I <i>despise</i> the ethically-challenged company director, Mark Zuckerberg— …my secret peers remain homely everyday folk who would act, speak and write with the same self-respect as a journalist.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Sean Crawford,</b> </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">as COVID fake “news” infects social media, </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Spring, </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">2020</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Footnotes:</b> </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">~A Texan who has a “bachelor of science degree in mass communications” was arrested and lost his job after his fake COVID news on social media. He is now out on bail. <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-52397294">(link)</a></span></div>
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~Mark Manson on his blog says <a href="https://markmanson.net/newsletters/mindfck-monday-30?utm_campaign=mmnet-newsletter-202020-05-11&utm_medium=email&utm_source=mmnet-newsletter&utm_content=share-her">something </a>similar to me, and he even provides a URL for you to re-post it on social media.<br />
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~My recent social media piece is archived March 25.<br />
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">~I documented how <i>Russian Trolls Meet Social Media,</i> archived December 2019.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">~Gordon Corera, BBC News Security Consultant, recently recently reported on an EU report:</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">The authors also say there is "significant evidence of covert Chinese operations on social media", citing reports of networks on Twitter with ties to the Chinese government.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">The report also singles out Russia for spreading disinformation, saying pro-Kremlin sources and Russian state media were continuing to run a coordinated campaign with the aim of undermining the EU and its crisis response and sowing confusion about the origins and health implications of Coronavirus.</span></div>
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~Janis Ian sang <i>At Seventeen</i> back in the seventies. I don’t suppose there’ll ever be a remake of her piece. Some songs, like <i>Mac the Knife,</i> and some movies, like <i>Casablanca</i> and <i>Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,</i> just can’t be remade.<span style="font-kerning: none;"></span></div>
Sean Crawfordhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13724844971087639706noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6568091996048915629.post-49898810994032367392020-04-14T05:50:00.000-06:002020-04-14T05:50:09.660-06:00Warm Fuzzy Comments<div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none; text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://essaysbysean.blogspot.com/">essaysbysean.blogspot.com</a></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Hello Reader,</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Got warm fuzzy comment?</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Just as modern readers may enjoy a two page “flash fiction” as much as a normal short story, so too may I offer a careful web comment as if it were a “flash essay.” Hence my best writing is often my comments on other people’s blogs. Queerly, I never make copies for myself as souvenirs, instead, I let all my darlings rush away like sparkling salmon in the stream.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Recently another-commenter replied to my comment. This time with a difference: <i>He took my words</i> <i>and made a poem!</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">The blog was by novelist John Scalzi, called <i>Whatever</i>. Scalzi’s post was entitled <i>Behold My Drinks Fridge</i> (August 29, 2019) It included a photograph of his second refrigerator being turned into a “beer cooler.” There were—get this—scores and scores of comments in the thread. My first comment is below. My second comment was a short one: “As of Saturday midmorning…” and then just before I hit the “post” button, I hit the “return” key to add:</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">“Strange: Nobody’s written a poem yet.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">As for ‘no poem,’ a couple comments later were my own words, sent back to me:</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">QUOTE</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Kevin McLeod Bailey</b> says:</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none; text-decoration: underline;"><a href="https://whatever.scalzi.com/2019/08/29/behold-my-drinks-fridge/#comment-866866">AUGUST 31, 2019 AT 12:56 PM<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; color: #ababab; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"></span></a></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Sean:</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Are you sure?</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">As of</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Saturday midmorning</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">I count</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">125 comments</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">about</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">a humble refrigerator</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">With all</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">due respect to world peace</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">sometimes</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">the simple pleasures</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">are what</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">we talk about.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">UNQUOTE</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Now, <i>that’s</i> a warm fuzzy.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Say, dear reader, as salmon swim away in the stream, in case you’re curious, my first comment was: </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">QUOTE</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none; text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://essaysbysean.blogspot.com/"><b>Sean Crawford</b></a></span><span style="color: black; font-kerning: none;"> says:</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none; text-decoration: underline;"><a href="https://whatever.scalzi.com/2019/08/29/behold-my-drinks-fridge/#comment-866777">AUGUST 29, 2019 AT 8:25 PM<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; color: #163812; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"></span></a></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Nostalgia: Only a few years ago, as a tourist, I visited a regional dump serving three towns, it was just like the dump of my childhood (In the city we use garbage cans) Chatting with the old gate shack guy, he explained that a fellow comes around with a rod to suck out the (R-14?) from all the refrigerators, as an environmental thing, protecting the ozone layer.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">In my own big city dump, the young guy at the gate won’t let you in unless your vehicle has a load to drop off. Those are his orders.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">As for refrigerators, sometimes, like Philip K. Dick reaching for a light bulb string that isn’t there, I wait for my refrigerator to go click when I close the door. But no, it’s all magnets now. As a boy our fridge had a round plastic handle on the inside, (cool!) so a trapped child could get back out.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Here on the Great Plains, nearly all my city’s streets were laid down after ice boxes were no longer needed. A fellow in my toastmasters club did a speech explaining the new fangled technology behind his modern “beer cooler.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">UNQUOTE</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>EPILOGUE </b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Regarding comments being read, and being Noticed:</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Recently (September 2019) I sent an e-mail to a world famous blogger, Derek Sivers.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">You may wonder: </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>If</i> Derek gets <i>hundreds</i> of comments for most of his posts, (sometimes six or seven hundred) </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>then</i> is there any use in commenting? Would he ever notice little-old-me or you?</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Sure he would. I e-mailed Derek, to warn that his mass mail out wasn’t reaching everyone. Part of his reply included:</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>“…Good to hear from you. Thanks again for your comments on the blog. I see and appreciate them all. :-)”</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">I guess the overall lesson for today’s post, coming from a poet-commenter and a big blogger, is that everything we do gets noticed, at some level. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Sean Crawford</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">On the romantic rolling prairie,</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">September 2019,</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Posted April 2020</span></div>
Sean Crawfordhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13724844971087639706noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6568091996048915629.post-33267517151484461092020-04-07T05:15:00.000-06:002020-05-21T19:30:01.246-06:00Atheism on Mars, Imperialism in Canada<div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none; text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://essaysbysean.blogspot.com/">essaysbysean.blogspot.com</a></span><span style="font-kerning: none;"> </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Hello Reader,</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>Got love of creatures?</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">(Got distaste for imperialism?)</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Love of Creatures</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>War of the Worlds Poem</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>...Pause for Blog Identification</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Bonus material</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Epilogue</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Love of Creatures</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">There’s a church hymn, a “Doxology.” You may have read it or heard it. I have the words in my annotated copy of <i>The Secret Garden.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Praise God from whom all blessings flow,</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Praise Him all creatures here below</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Praise him above ye Heavenly Host </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Praise Father, Son and Holy Ghost</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Amen</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Here is <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQUTvMtUhw4">a link </a>to some singers; they repeat the lines.</span></div>
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<i>The Secret</i> <i>Garden</i> is set in Yorkshire, the same region where years later a famous veterinarian, who also wrote <i>It Shouldn’t Happen to a Vet</i>, cribbed from another hymn for his book title, <i>All Creatures Great and Small.</i> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-cga9Bz7skg">Link to</a> pictures as kids off camera are singing.<span style="font-kerning: none;"></span></div>
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I must confess that after reading the doxology, my own poem seems dull. <span style="font-kerning: none;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">I composed in the shadow of the London Museum of Natural History, featuring respectful exhibits for Darwin and the balance of nature. The British even put Darwin’s ship on their five pound note: I think that’s because the British are, as a Columbian engineer told me, so empirical. They also had a coin (which I never saw) of Darwin facing an ape: I think that’s because they are “just saying no” to having Yankee imperialism from powerful Christians in the city of Washington and the state of Tennessee. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>Yes Virginia, the Yanks imperialize.</i> </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Luckily, the United Kingdom is a “have nation,” as the U.S. federal government, in the name of "the people," denies aide funding to any nation where "the people" allow abortion. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">The republic of Ireland, </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>(a catholic nation with an openly homosexual </i>before<i>-he-was-elected prime minister) </i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">last I heard, was about to “just say no” to the U.S. on that one, rather than have their innocent lonely girls going over to the U.K. for their (legal-in-the-UK) medical procedure) </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">In my favorite “have nation,” Canada, according to the most recent Conservative party prime minister, abortion is legal and remains legal, with no opposing bills to be raised by the Conservatives in parliament, because the Canadian people do not want that can of worms opened. He did not, of course, apologize to our U.S. neighbours for our differing views on everyday life.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">As for life far, far away from Earth, you may recall the sinister Martians of H.G. Wells were evolving into creatures with simplified digestive tracts (they only took in fluids) and great round heads.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>War of the Worlds Poem</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>God’s Creatures</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Camouflage meets eye</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Stout armor meets teeth</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Toxin dances with anti-toxin</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Day mice dare the sky birds</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Nocturnal mice meet the owl</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">A feather floats on currents of air</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Centipede legs are fleet</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Millipede legs will ram</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Creatures circle and gyre</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Island dodos grow larger</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Across time dodos grow</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Across space Martians grow</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Heads grow as limbs shrink</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Grow and increase and drink blood</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Without God</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>...Pause for Blog Identification </b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">You are reading</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Sean Crawford</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Calgary</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">April</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">2020 </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Bonus Material</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Distasteful Yankee imperialism:</b> </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">During Obama’s administration, the U.S. built enough oil pipelines (according to someone I overheard) to reach to the moon. The <i>only</i> pipeline that was opposed? The one that would have reached over the U.S. to almost meet tidewater in Texas, to almost break the U.S. world monopoly on buying Canadian oil. (It stops at a refinery) Meanwhile, both Europe and the U.S. have oodles of pipelines, but Canada, with the longest coastline in the free world, somehow has no room for either of the three—count ‘em, three—pipelines that would have gotten the oil out to Canada’s tidal coasts, escaping American clutches. Two were killed, the last survivor has been on life support for a few years: We will see what happens. </span><br />
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As for the one that stops in Texas, at least this week our province invested heavily to get that pipeline finally built. We'll see.</div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">In Canada, when someone proposed to “follow the money” to see who was funding anti-pipeline efforts, it was the communists and other leftists who were opposed, and were quoted saying so in the newspaper. Sure, the leftists like transparency <i>for others</i>, but communism is an ideology, and as with any ideology, their reality is stone, transparency is opposed. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Decades ago, the North American Free Trade Agreement, NAFTA, was supposed to give Canadians permission to legally have their own culture. But I read once in the paper that U.S.capitalists keep winning every time they oppose Canadian culture in court, such as, for example, a Canadian country and western magazine, so that Yankees can make money selling their own music magazine across the border. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Well, maybe instead of country and western, young Canadian guitarists can sing the blues. A pity, for I had always thought it was charming how Canadian western culture did not mean “wildness” or six-guns being worn. Truly the CBC would never make a violent TV show about Paladin on <i>Have Gun Will Travel </i>“…a knight without armour in a savage land”)</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Incidentally, here’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgvxu8QY01s">a link </a>to that Paladin song the kids sing in the Stephen King movie <i>Stand By Me. </i>I used to sing it </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">For my U.S. readers, if you are pleased with having your plausible denial, then OK, but if any of you wish to take a grownup interest in what your government is doing to imperialize in your name, then I think you might painlessly start with the arthouse feature film <i>State of Siege. </i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Here is a<a href="https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/state-of-siege-1973"> link to</a> Roger Ebert’s movie review, at the very end of which some U.S. companies are mentioned, including <i>(“but not limited to,” adds my Yankee lawyer)</i> the United Fruit Company<i>.</i> </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">(As it happens, a business executive in my toastmaster club did a seven minute speech on the imperialism of the United Fruit Company) </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Or view (<a href="https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/missing-1982"> link to</a> Ebert’s review) view the mainstream feature film <i>Missing</i> starring Jack Lemon and Sissy Spacek. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Or view (<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093265/">link to</a>) the comprehensive-to-a-fault C.I.A. documentary <i>On Company Business.</i></span></div>
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<i>You may wonder:</i></div>
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By my posting this essay, am I hurting the feelings of, offending, my dear longhaired leftist fellow Canadians? No, I’m sorry to say. No, because those imperialist leftists, according to my blog research, won’t read my site.<span style="font-kerning: none;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Speaking of church music, in these COVID days you may wish to have a virtual choir, like<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BumCkswUUDA"> this Youtube</a> (three minute) spiritual, which has how to make one at the top of the comments. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">This song is on the <i>Odyssey</i>-inspired 1930’s movie with George Clooney, <i>Brother Where Art Thou?</i></span></div>
Sean Crawfordhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13724844971087639706noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6568091996048915629.post-31693749805667001952020-03-31T06:33:00.000-06:002020-03-31T06:43:35.216-06:00Art, a Man, and Intuition<div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none; text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://essaysbysean.blogspot.com/">essaysbysean.blogspot.com</a></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Hello Reader,</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Got art and intuition?</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Art</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">I hate to sound like I was once a sick puppy, but yes, as faithful readers know, I have a past. And so I was already middle aged, over 35, before I took an excellent lengthy aptitude test as part of my undergraduate class. My dominant job aspect? “Artistic.” I said, “Oh.” Me? Really? Of course I’m not prejudiced anymore against fancy artists but… it took a while to sink in. Apparently I would make a good executive on <i>Mad Men</i>.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Happily, I have since been privileged to go with others to periodically visit an artist, my sensei, Sheri-D Wilson, in her living room as part of making my <i>War of the Worlds</i> poetry manuscript. In mid-winter once, after supper at the Wainwright Hotel, I walked through the starlit snow to see Sheri-D perform at the Canmore Opera House. (A wonderful log building) So I know a little about artists. In fact, during a weekend poetry workshop by Sheri-D, I said I was only now learning to feel right saying “we artists.” A lady then began crying, saying she too was learning to say “we.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">I suppose having an artistic streak explains best-selling writer Michael Korda. I found his book about T.E. Lawrence to be, as a blurb writer wrote, “unputdownable.” I started over halfway in, beginning with Lawrence of Arabia’s postwar year, and read through to the end. Took three hours. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Besides his amazing originality in warfare and statecraft, Lawrence also went on to bring in reforms including (“but not limited to” says my Yankee lawyer) eliminating the taken-for-granted ankle puttees and Prussian collars for the RAF. While working with RAF speed boats, for rescuing planes downed in the water, he innovated a hull design that would be used by the U.S. Patrol Torpedo boats. His small motorboat manual, according to Korda, was excellent in having concision, and being comprehensive, and including extra things such as how to manage during storms. Lawrence’s reforms were quietly accomplished through people he knew of high rank, with no limelight for Lawrence. His own postwar rank? ( Enlisted) Airman second class. (Yes, nearly everybody on base knew who he was)</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Apparently Lawrence had an artist’s disregard for conformity. He began the war as a young army lieutenant, and ended as a young lieutenant-colonel. Before the war, of course, he was an archeologist and graduate of Oxford university. Postwar, in his thirties, he translated Homer’s poetry epic, the <i>Odyssey</i>. But not as a poem, as a prose novel: How strange, how delightful. Also strange is how the man who was too poor to afford a boarding school such as Eton ended up a friend to frightfully rich, famous, original people such as George Bernard Shaw and Winston Churchill. For his friendships, and for his life in general, Lawrence had complete disregard for “fame, rank and fortune.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">So was Lawrence socially, then, an artist among artists? Obviously Shaw was one, but not the others I know of, although of course the British education system at the time stressed being well rounded. Churchill, as it happened, not only painted as a hobby but wrote a book on the subject. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>(By the way, I have seen one of Churchill’s paintings hanging in the stairwell of the Lieutenant-Governor’s house, back when she lived off Jasper avenue across the asphalt plain from the old provincial museum, the one that has since moved downtown to just off Churchill Square. May I boast? I once held the door open for the lieutenant-governor to enter the museum. I didn’t know I was supposed to let her royal Canadian mountie do that, until she laughingly told me so.)</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">I wonder: Was Lawrence artistic? I don’t think so: Because I have no knowledge of him using art for self-expression, although maybe his entire unconventional life was a work of art. Perhaps his postwar life as a clerk, and as a mechanic, fulfilled a creative streak in him that I don’t know about.. The main reason that I don’t suppose he was “artistic” is I can scarcely imagine a good artist achieving such exceptional success in war. (Incidentally, Napoleon said a general was no good unless he could look dry eyed at a silent body-strewn battlefield)</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Perhaps, then, his amazing originality came not so much from an “artist’s creativity” as from feeling “unfettered by society.” Willing to fearlessly think and see. Like young Patton and Eisenhower scandalizing the military establishment by working on newfangled battle tanks together. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">(Patton had to scramble to recover his reputation by writing magazine articles on horse cavalry tactics) </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">You can achieve a lot if you haven’t had a lifetime of self-training in automatic conformity. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">If my speculation is correct, then Lawrence’s social circle was not other artists, but other “originals,” folks who were themselves unfettered. I wonder if they formed a secret club of those who conformed in dress, speech and thought only out of politeness, who would then fondly enjoy relaxing in private with likeminded friends. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Like how if you and I were transported to the 1950’s we would naturally gravitate to relaxing among individuals who believed in equal respect for women and nonwhite races, and enjoying drinks among folks who believed it was OK for males to be verbally skilled and cultured, instead of “strong and silent.” Maybe if I went to live in the year the twin towers fell, I would be dining among those who share our 2020 A.D. belief in the appropriateness of homosexuality, and of gender transitioning, for schoolchildren. Or maybe not.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">It was a countryman of Lawrence, the Nobel prize winner and philosopher Bertrand Russell, a man born in the Victorian age, who said you could achieve the freedom of a “licensed lunatic” if only you “made it clear, even to the stupidest, that (in being original) you were not criticizing them.” I can relate, having a life-time of self-training in being nice and polite. Truly, no one angrily says, “Who does he think he is?” Except maybe the very stupidest.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Everyone knows I’m a thinker; no one calls me a nerd,. As for thinking, my new insight on T.E. Lawrence being not an artist but an original has “made my day.” That, and being amused at the idea of a secret club. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Last month in London, I socialized with a chap from Oxford who was born rich middle class, now a multi-millionaire. And even though “I’m just a poor boy, from a poor family” I swear we both felt perfectly normal around each other. Call us club members.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Intuition</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">As for what club my poetry teacher would belong to, I have no idea. She is certainly intuitive. By this I don’t mean the usual definition that might, maybe, possibly, be “explained” by having a subconscious like a super-computer, putting together teeny tiny unnoticed clues. I suppose a lifetime of being willing to see would aide the inner computer. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">No, what I mean is Sheri-D Wilson had access to “an extra perception.” You’re on your own with that one, as I can’t begin to explain her various examples. One thing my sensei could (rarely) do is like what was documented by Robert Masters, a British officer stationed in India, who could speak both Gurkha and English. He once overheard a British Tommy and a Gurkha soldier, each speaking only their own language, having a sensible conversation.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">There are things beyond us, oh Horatio.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">I’m artistic myself, yet I don’t know if that explains my having a “weird intuition” <i>three times</i> last month while I was in Central London. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">(By the way, I just barely beat the virus by flying home February 28, started coughing five days later… but it was only a cold. Praise the Lord.)</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">In a Bloomsbury used book store I asked a handsome, plainly dressed staff, <i>“Are you a linguistics guy?”</i> We talked. He was from Italy, and yes, he had minored in linguistics. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">(I wanted to know why foreign languages have so many syllables; his answer jived with my essay where Doctor Who pronounces “Vincent Van Goff”, archived as <i>Anglicizing</i>, June 2018) </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">In a diner near my hotel I asked a young lady with an original hairstyle, <i>“Are you a poet?”</i> We talked. (Besides putting poems fortnightly onto my blog, I attend a weekly poetry cafe) Not only was she an active poet, she was just learning to write sestinas. (poems with the <i>hardest</i> rules, harder than a sonnet) </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">In a Van Gogh exhibit on loan from Holland, in a huge special tent, I found a pretty teenage girl on a bench in the lobby, waiting for her father. I asked, <i>“Are you a Doctor Who fan?”</i> She was excited to answer <i>“Yes!”</i> and told me that part of the TV episode with Vincent Van Gogh was included near the end of the tour. We talked. I told her and her dad about the Who Store being only 30 minutes by tube east of Central London, and about a fan’s “Doctor-and-Vincent” music video on Youtube. I play it often. The dad knew of the band ,Athlete, although I didn’t. Here’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L4aVKQZaSmY">the link</a>.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">By “weird intuition,” I mean: Who in the world would suddenly blurt out speculations about perfect strangers—and be right every time?</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Sean Crawford </b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">East of Banff, </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">March, </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">2020</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Footnotes:</b> </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">~I usually forget that I can figuratively “open my third eye” for about ten seconds at a time. No more, because it blinds me. Some knowledge is too much. Like how a social work student can do the in-class exercise “What I hear you saying is…” and then refuse to do so in the student union building—because who wants to know how very seldom we “get it right” in real life?</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">~Speaking of smart people, I had a friend who, although from remote Saskatchewan, knew foreign languages, and attended medical school without needing to take the Latin course. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">In my essay <i>Blair, Being Smart, </i>archived September 2011, I wrote of how Blair coped with being so brainy.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12px;">~In my essay </span><i style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12px;">Loving</i><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12px;"> </span><i style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12px;">Greek and Latin</i><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12px;"> archived March 2012, while feeling a gentle breeze from Oxford, I wrote of learning among future physicians and biologists.</span>Sean Crawfordhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13724844971087639706noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6568091996048915629.post-51986207161466853902020-03-25T07:59:00.000-06:002020-04-19T07:50:52.932-06:00Social Media Silver Lining<div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none; text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://essaysbysean.blogspot.com/">essaysbysean.blogspot.com</a></span><span style="font-kerning: none;"> </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Hello Reader,</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Got a silver lining to the covid-19 social media?</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">I was amused by the failure of nerve by the <i>National Post</i>. One full-page spread after another—and it went on for quite a few pages—had blue headlines at the top. Labeled <b><i>Myth </i></b>on the left page, and <b><i>Fact</i></b> on the right. This was a needed public service, but… —my mirth was from the <i>National Post</i> not daring to have the left side headline as <b><i>Social Media Myth</i></b>.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Because let’s face it, when someone tells you a myth, in person or on the telephone, they nearly always got it from social media. “My uncle Tom knows a guy, who knows a guy, who forwarded onto social media something he interpreted from the Web.” Misinterpreted, that is.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Who <i>are</i> these social media forwarders and believers? As it happens, I subscribe to a weekly email from famous blogger Mark Manson. On Monday he posted about how he published two nearly identical posts, exactly one week apart. The first one was well received. The later one resulted in all sorts of hysterical hatred and scorn. Why the difference? Manson has several theories, which might be phrased, in composite, as this: The Internet users were the sort of idiots who were slow to wake up to the virus that was <i>already</i> being reported on responsible channels. Here’s <a href="https://markmanson.net/newsletters/motherfcking-monday-23?utm_campaign=mmnet-newsletter-202012-03-23&utm_medium=email&utm_source=mmnet-newsletter&utm_content=view-in-browser">the link</a> to Manson’s scathing “<i>3. A tale of two emails.</i>”.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Idiots, indeed. Over in South Korea some folks passed around a water bottle laced with household ingredients that would make it virus proof. In fact, they all got covid-19 from the same bottle. Did they get the idea of a safe water from social media? I don’t know, but such is the sort of thinking I would expect from social media lovers. Call it “being innocent of the need for common sense critical thinking.” Or call it stupidity.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Recently an acquaintance earnestly told me, over the phone, about something important she had just learned from social media. About how having a drink every 15 minutes would make you safe from the corona virus. You ask: Did I pour cold water on the idea? To my acquaintance, who maybe doesn’t have a high school diploma, did I talk down sternly from my mighty university degree in critical thinking? No-o-o.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Because a few years ago I did a thought experiment: Consider two young men. One fellow, full of idealism for saving the planet, has a non-union low-wage factory job. The other, even lower waged, and with less idealism, is employed at the local campus as a graduate student and teaching assistant. Which one saves the planet by using a ten-speed bicycle? I picture the bike rider as being the grad student, I bet you did too.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">To me the difference between the two is not not knowledge of ecology, and not I.Q, but “knowledge” nevertheless, in the sense that “knowledge is power.” We all want a sense of power, of agency, and of control over our lives. "If I don’t feel power from knowledge then I’ll seek power from a fine set of wheels." Feel free to disagree, as I suppose I’m oversimplifying. Meanwhile, “they say” the panic buyers who valued toilet paper over the conventional “food and ammunition,” besides being too scared to think straight, were seeking a small sense of control in the midst of chaos. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">It seems to me that a person who has trouble with, say, science articles, or those traditional newspapers with “journalism ethics,” is going to fight against that nervous tornado of facts-hard-to-grasp by resorting to “power from social media.” And that’s why I didn’t have the heart to squelch my friend directly, but instead indirectly referred to my faith in fact-based journalism.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">So where are we today? </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">With all the distasteful tales whizzing around within social media, with many horrible lies needing long articles to refute them, with horrors needing a doctor on CBC radio to refute many myths at length, is there also, during this dark storm cloud, a sliver lining? As compensation, dare we hope? Has humankind, at long last, learned not to believe in social media? …</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Nope. No silver lining. Not as long as people’s needs are not met by traditional media.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">The good news, judging by the wimping out of the National Post, is that readers of social media can overlap with readers of ethical media. Maybe the readers of social media are both unknowing, and knowing too. In which case social media is more something to be ignored and kept in perspective, than something seen as a harbinger of social decent into barbarism. And maybe those of us with a sense of responsibility are just going to have to quietly live with the believers of social media. Like how during the blogging frenzy—remember?—folks with library cards (as noted by Neal Stephenson) were ignored by our new improved digital society, and in turn they ignored society’s practise of dull skimming and superficial soundbites, preferring instead to just quietly kept meeting with each other to have those deep conversations they loved, which society ignored. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">How many years did it take, in the time of our great-grandparents, to know that not all stuff in print is true? I think it will take us, in our own time, just as many years before we finally will say, “Just because my stupid brother-in-law forwarded it, does not mean it is true.” May God grant me patience and understanding.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">If someone blindly believes in social media, or blindly distrusts journalism ethics, then it might help me to “chill out” if I remember: Some people—judging by their actions—also believe in gossip that morphs, instead of honest unchanging facts; some people won’t make the effort needed for ethics, any more than they will strive to become ladies or gentlemen. In the end, some people will make my blond aunt very nervous because they forward without forethought.. All this while peach fuzzed cub reporters are proud to be “gentlemen of the press.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">It’s been decades since I walked as a volunteer student newspaper reporter at university, yet I still check myself when I speak or write on the Web. With all due respect to social media folks, being a gentleman has become a way of life.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Sean Crawford</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Dutifully stuck at home</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">In a plaster-walled wee cabin at the old city limits</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">2020 </span><br />
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Update:</b> The BBC has an <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-51967889">article</a>, complete with a picture of the corona, about how to stop bad information from going viral.</span><br />
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Another Update: The government has just started up a rapid <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-52086284">response</a> unit. Sounds serious. Real serious. Is it serious enough to shake people's faith in social media? Not if my thesis in the above essay is correct. Sorry.</span><br />
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">~What is a lady? I used to often say to my client Sheila-Ann, “Everybody likes you.” Gracious, thoughtful of others, never swearing, and ever polite. I noticed: Tough Handi-Bus drivers wearing rough work gloves would become smiling gentlemen around her. Now, <i>that’s</i> a lady.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">~I documented fake news being a communist plot—er, I mean, a Russian plot, in the Part 2, <i>Pax</i>, to my essay Russian <i>Trolls Meet Social Medi</i>a archived December 2019.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">~Three comprehensive posts defining three aspects of journalism ethics are archived in March and April of 2018.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12px;">~Of course the frenzied folks who skim sound-bites won’t have the patience to go over to my archives, and that’s OK. Better for them to stay away completely than to click an all-to-easy-link to a post intended for patient lovers of print.</span>Sean Crawfordhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13724844971087639706noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6568091996048915629.post-20165058171169393102020-03-18T08:48:00.000-06:002020-03-18T08:48:03.927-06:00The Uptight Aftermath<div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none; text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://essaysbysean.blogspot.com/">essaysbysean.blogspot.com</a></span><span style="font-kerning: none;"> </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Hello Reader,</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Got emotional suppression?</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">How do individuals, and communities too, become normal after things like an abuse or the loss of a town factory? I don’t know; I can only grasp parts of the truth.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">To me it’s normal to be uptight and to insulate one’s emotions, for however long it takes to process healing inside… and of course to also change circumstances outside…</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">I can imagine someone processing things at one level while playing with his grownup toys and gifts. In my family when I was a boy any Christmas gifts with store-bought gift wrapping would be from the Legion or father’s workplace. Relatives used newspaper. In today’s <b><i>War of the Worlds</i></b> poem, I imagine all the fancy electronic toys have been rendered inert by a Martian magnetic pulse, and the economy shattered, worse than when Sherman marched through Georgia.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">All my future poems to be posted here, of heroic survivors, will be from my last manuscript section, called <b>After the Martians.</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Uptight Man</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">In a boy’s mechano set</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">screws and nuts extend steel plates and girders.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">After every Gameboy got pulsed out,</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">the kids enjoyed their flat black mechano engine.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Hook it in and wind it tight</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">to have a mechano moving truck.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Just swivel the black lever,</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">release the hidden spring—whir-r-r-r-r.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Maybe I grieve for lost dogs, and birdsong,</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">and Mother Nature, so bent over her walking stick.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">She’s not the upright girl in the smooth green dress </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">she used to be.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">I grieve for gentle Uncle Jack. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Maybe I miss my mum and dad,</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">and childhood,</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">and I don’t even know what I’m so sad about,</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">but I know I’ve lost something.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">In my grief I am a mechano man,</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">wound up tight, unable to whirrr.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">I still walk and talk like a man,</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">tough like the other guys,</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">to hide my flat spring heart.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Beneath the open ribs of a church,</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">with sagging stained-glass windows,</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">I tightly curve over my prayer book,</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">in a silent congregation of strangers.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Can a single blade of grass, poke through a wasteland?</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Will a warm church of fellowship, ever form here?</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">I swivel my jaw, “Amen.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">A tear falls to the page.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Splat!</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Everyone can hear it.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Sean Crawford</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Calgary</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">March</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">2020</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Two Footnotes: </b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>A book I regret not buying:</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">In a London library, I found a collection of pre-television children’s games, many more than I ever played. It was being discarded for a (dollar) pound but I had too many books at home, or so I thought at the time. Too bad, for I could have taken it from the shelf anytime the world was getting me down, the nerd reader’s way of having a playground in my mind. You know, like in the 1972 hit song. (link)</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none; text-decoration: underline;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFONCfjewgM">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFONCfjewgM</a></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>A question posed by our principal which no child in my elementary school class could answer:</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Where does nylon come from?</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>SIDEBAR ON TOYS</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">In place of big leggo, we had small red blocks like bricks that snapped together along the tops. The blocks came with a cardboard green roof you could cut to shape. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">The counters in the monopoly set were carved round wooden abstracts; the most “real” was a “milk bottle,” the houses and hotels were wooden too. In the affluent 1960’s there came along plastic toys, including a plastic cannon that did everything, including having a flip up grenade launcher. (like a fancy vacuum with attachments) That was the “Mighty Moe,” hence the song kids still sing today:</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>Jingle bells, </i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>Christmas smells, </i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>Santa Claus is dead,</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>Someone took a Mighty Moe </i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>and shot him in the head.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Plastic swept in during the 1950’s, and was still rolling along at the time of <i>The Graduate</i>. But the age of cheap plastic only lasted a few decades. Now toy soldiers are tiny, cheap and squished, and you just cannot collect figures in the cereal boxes anymore, not since the Arabs raised the price of oil. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>…Economic Interlude…</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">—Oh, if only the U.S. economists, capitalists and the public had WAITED, knowing from Pareto’s law that cartels don’t last more than a few years—<i>I suspect the former two </i>did<i> know, as it would be business school 101, but </i>didn’t tell<i> the public— </i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i></i></span><br /></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Instead of waiting, capitalists invested in big oil wells, the Arab cartel <i>predictably</i> broke up, and then the Americans <i>needed</i> to keep the price of oil HIGH so big capitalists could get their investment back—I suspect Americans then purposely inflated their money supply, without telling the U.S. public about the <i>“mysterious new inflation,” </i>to help with their balance of payments to the Arabs… </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">(Of course, this all makes me sound like a conspiracy nut, I mean, surely someone else would have noticed while inflation was screwing with us. And raised the public’s ire. So you are welcome to check into my suspicions yourself) </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">My favorite essay to leisurely “sneak up rather than throw truth in your face like a wet dishrag” is called <i>Conspiracies and Inflation,</i> mostly about inflation, not climate-gate, archived November 2013. <a href="https://essaysbysean.blogspot.com/2013/11/conspiracies-and-inflation.html"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">https://essaysbysean.blogspot.com/2013/11/conspiracies-and-inflation.html</span></a></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>…End of Economic Interlude…</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>The pre-sweetened cereals never had the toys</b> because those junk cereals could <i>already</i> count on kids to want them. I collected sports figures, Robin Hood’s merry men, the jungle book animals, Eskimos and even “computers wearing tennis shoes.” Never any wee dinosaurs or soldiers in the cereal, though. Those I had to buy as tiny critters in a store-bought package. But hurray—Now that I’m an adult, I can buy <i>big</i> dinos! </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">(For a while I had a big Dino with a leg hooked over my flat screen to help me see if I had the wrong picture size) </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Many of the toys of the sixties were silly novelties, sold through silly TV commercials showing pretty people smiling too hard for real life, made for affluent families with too much money on their hands. For example, a collection of beetles that would flip through the air, using the principle of squeezing soap, if you hit them with the plastic bat. The target was a big frog. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>Bop, bop, </i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>bop the beetle;</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>hit, hit, </i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>hit it right.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>When you hit the frog,</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>It’s mouth, </i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>Shuts tight.</i></span></div>
Sean Crawfordhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13724844971087639706noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6568091996048915629.post-48854234691812350992020-03-11T09:14:00.000-06:002020-05-11T14:05:55.485-06:00Differing Abstractions<div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none; text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://essaysbysean.blogspot.com/">essaysbysean.blogspot.com</a></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>“Canadians all live in igloos”</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Some dude in Texas</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Regarding their mayor:</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>“They kept reelecting him because he was grandfatherly and worked hard to help individuals and families who were having trouble. They didn’t care much whether he also set good policies—that was too abstract for them.”</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Xenocide<i>, by Orson Scott Card, 1991, p 238</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Hello Reader,</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Got differing abstractions?</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>Introduction</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">I hadn’t planned to continue last week’s theme of middle class guilt. My current blog post, right up until today’s posting, begins:</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">QUOTE</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">… <b>I am</b> <b>writing this … under the spell of Audre Lorde, </b>a member of several minority groups: Black, and a woman too, “but a traitor” with a nonBlack partner, raising children, but “without a family values marriage,” lesbian, and speaker of truth to hands-on-ears fellow feminists… </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">UNQUOTE</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>Differing</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Trust us writers to care about the nitty gritty of sentences. So there I was, only three days after posting the above, still under the spell, among about a dozen writers, at a big long table, studying sentences, and I spoke of U.S. Blacks, and—I was corrected and told that now we say Persons of Colour. This was in Canada. You may wonder: Did Canadians genuinely ponder and decide to change names, or is this a case of swift Yankee imperialism? (Because hey, you’ve got to admit such things happen)</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">You ask: What did I think of being corrected?</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">I answer: I think it’s time to talk about levels of abstraction. But don’t worry, I’ll get back to Audre and me.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Here’s how I explain two words: I could say, “Gee, I better stop procrastinating.” Or I could say, “Well, I better get to my work.” The former is sentence is more “<i>abstract</i>,” the latter more “<i>concrete</i>.” By concrete I mean you can see it, like cement, and measure it, like with a ruler, and beholders can agree, “Yep, there’s Sean, working at his table saw.” But if you entered my man cave and saw me silent in my easy chair, the eyes of the beholder wouldn’t agree on whether I was procrastinating, or hard at work dreaming up some new poem about the Martian invasion. When it comes to something abstract like labels for people, there can be a whole lot of opinions going on. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Abstractions have power. Are people “developing” the land or “exploiting” it? Both words are easy to argue about, as both are abstract.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">How many races do you count? On the prairies, or great plains, the first nations medicine wheel abstracts four: black, white, yellow, red. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Black or Person of Colour? Again, abstract. A member of the Mongolian race, or a Person of Colour? A higher abstraction: Here colour means not specifically black, but non-white. When my father was a boy, history text books always started out listing the various races of man. When I myself was a boy, the <i>How and Why Book of Primitive Man</i> began by saying scientists don’t like to say the word race. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>(With race being not so much concretely found in nature as being abstract concept we make up. Hence laymen in Europe, when Dad was a boy, as documented in brown paged books in the campus library, would say that folks on two sides of a river were two different races. I bear no ill-will to 1930-Edmonton scientists or 2010-Saskatchewan indigenous elders. They both abstracted as best they could)</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">That would have been about the time the term Mongolian was dropped—should I now say East Asian, Oriental, or just what?—and when, for folks with a specific disability, the term Mongoloid, with its racial implication, was replaced, on our side of the pond, with Down Syndrome. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">If people argue about abstract single words, then they can get even more heated about abstract logic chains. I can remember when a Marxist study group, meeting down in the basement, would learn a set of steps to a conclusion for good comrades, but by the time the idealists got up onto the streets, among the rest of us, they would be forgetful about the abstract steps, and go right to the Politically Correct conclusion. It was when the rest of us were puzzling over the half-missing steps that leftists felt the need to be especially strident and shaming by saying, “Trust me, that’s not PC!” Well. Human nature means that we will calmly <i>discuss</i> the value of cement versus concrete, while our fiercest <i>arguments</i> will be over fuzzy abstract things like religion, politics and PC.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>Fun with abstract scenarios</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">If I am at a big long table with a dozen folks—not writers but my buddies who play World of Warcraft—and I want to talk about Yankee imperialism by certain Texas Yankees, then my peers might get their <i>Star Trek</i> shirts in a twist: “What if a U.S. citizen was spying on us from Texas using a super-telescope and heard you calling him a Yankee? He would be offended because the Texans fought on the side of the Confederacy, Rebels against Yanks, for the U.S. civil war, so shame on you, for not being PC.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Same table: One of my male ice hockey buddies, being a little more realistic, might use a few of those few English words that help us to phrase an imaginary state, words known as the “subjunctive,” words such as were, would or could. He might say, “What if a Texan were in this room and what if he would hear you talking about imperialism… and so you shouldn’t say such things, even if, as I must admit, no Texan is present.” </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Next to speak up is my hockey buddy with a sense of humour: “What if a Yankee—I mean a Texan—was just outside the window on his hands and knees in the shrubbery, so we couldn’t see him, but he heard us, and then stood up and yelled in the window?”</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Now, I just have to chuckle, and get into the game too, making things four sided. “Well buddy, suppose I had my own telescope to Texas, and so I called them long distance while they were talking. One of them goes over to the land line and says, “Hey you guys, the call display says Canada… Hello?”</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">“I just heard you people saying some falsehoods about Canada, some myths, shame on you, for no, we do not all live in igloos! You’re not being PC!” …Somehow, I doubt stereotypical Texans care much about PC, not these days. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>(I remember the scandal when new Texas vehicle license plates came out that said, “The friendly state.” Texas changed that in a hurry! At the time, my roommate from Kansas opined that Texans just like to bug the rest of the union—and I can blab that, because I’m in Canada)</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">At this point, as we are each getting into our differing private abstractions, if any of my buddies claims to have The Truth and be the centre of world, then I have to gently remind him, “Excuse me, an Ugly American would act that way, too.” (By the way, it was secret agent Matt Helm, settled in Santa Fe, who noted: No self-respecting New Mexican wants to be caught sounding like a Texan—and yes, I know I shouldn’t report that on a Canadian blog)</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Obviously, talking about labels and “what if” will always sound a little crazy. My buddy says with a tense jaw: “We label jars not people; you must say ‘a person with a gimpy leg,’ not a gimp; say ‘a person of the Jewish persuasion…’”</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>More private abstractions</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">One of my thinking tools is the abstraction of Political Correctness. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">According to PC, —I could be wrong— isn’t there is a PC sound barrier, not to be broken, between us and Yankee-land? And doesn’t PC include the concept that if you talk about others then you are “speaking for” them? We would say of a Canadian woman holding two Ph.D’s in “American Studies”, that if she travels below the 49th parallel, she knows less than a high school drop out, at least about certain things in “real” American life, and so if she travels down to the States then she shouldn’t “speak for” Americans. I guess it logically follows: PC-wise, I can’t rush across the border and vent my spleen at some Texans I hear mentioning igloos, either.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">At the same time, in the name of Political Correctness, the Americans have no right to complain as my professor talks, when up here, among us fellow-Canadians, about “those” imperializing Americans, no, not even if she accidentally tells us some myths about Yankees. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">(Of course she would document and footnote and quote U.S. citizens in good faith, like me quoting Matt Helm, of course)</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Maybe I feel a blazing social warrior leftist temptation to drive to Montana and shout “Power to the 99 per cent!” … Still, I have to let U.S. citizens seek their own salvation. Or at least, not shout, but talk nicely to those Yankee salt of the earth folks politely, talking <i>with</i> them, not <i>at</i> them. Maybe mail them some footnotes, if asked. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">It was an apologist for communism, self-described “Chinese” writer Han Suyin, who said, “Revolution must be neither exported nor imported.” Yes. My citizenship papers are stamped Canada, not U.S. of A, so I’ll cackle whatever crazy thing I want to “among us chickens, up here, about them eagles, down there.” My latest theory is that the U.S. public enables their Yankee Imperialism by holding on to an ignorant plausible deniability. “What? Us? Imperialize? We’re so innocent!” Yeah, you just go on saying that.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">A wide eyed peer might earnestly ask me, “Yes, but what if an eavesdropper <i>was</i> innocently out of sight below the window?” </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">(I suppose this is getting away from the abstract into the actual concrete examples)</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Easy: If it was <i>me</i> I would stand up, walk around the building and enter through the proper door. I would go to the room by the window and wait to be invited to join in. And then I would not hijack the conversation, but wait until it was appropriate to swing the conversation around to igloos. As a Muslim said to me in London, humbling and politely and without any hijacking, “If you want to know anything about Muslims then you can just ask me, for I’m Muslim.” At the time we were sharing a vegetarian, OK-for-Muslims-and-Jews, pizza.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">I wrote about that Muslim man on the jet back from London, for my last visit, just as this time flying home I wrote about Audre Lorde. It was while I was part way through Audre’s book that I met with a man who had moved across the globe to Oxford to raise his boy because it was a “diverse” city. That man was Derek Sivers; we knew each other through his blog, and he bought me a nice breakfast near Saville Row in London.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">You may ask: Does the boy call his father a Caucasian? I don’t know, I never asked.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Does the boy know about the various formal races of man, including, “but not limited to,” Caucasian, as found in old textbooks? I doubt it, the boy is only eight. Does he give himself a label? Sure, one he either made up or hears being used by his child peers: He self identifies as brown.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Historians are only half right: <i>We don’t learn from history, but we do learn from our peer groups</i>—too bad <i>they</i> don’t learn from history. They differ in their ability to abstractly see beyond the here and now, just as they vary in their ability to think in term of time and space. Seriously: Have you ever tried to organized a street protest <i>before</i> the deficit has worsened into a dragon? One snorting cutbacks, and breathing fire against government programs? Have folks declined your request to take to the streets early enough to do some good, even though your peers surely know what horrors we went through last time we finally had to kill the deficit? If so, then surely you were viewed as “a crazy minority of one.” Power to the people.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">It would be nice if groups were all equal, but no, they aren’t all the same. And that I like, since my different peers can express different aspects of me. Today I see I have mentioned peer groups from writing, computers, athletics and, if you include a peer group of just one, a Muslim. It seems to me that fighting within any given peer group, over fuzzy abstractions, words and labels, is like fighting over fashion: Even if I am are “right” I am are apt to walk away feeling somehow foolish. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>(Example: Should we dress for Stampede Days like a cowboy, or like a real cowboy? One could argue. Should my businessman’s trench coat be a real trench coat, complete with a wee loop for my pistol lanyard? And yes, on Saville Row they do indeed sell such coats. A young British businessman, sent to work in Italy, found that all his peers wore coats without epaulets, so he felt compelled to go back to his hotel and cut off all the epaulets on his coats. Now, before you would make a face in scorn, I would advise a pause… sometimes we really need our sense of "humour and compassion" for a poor lad craving a peer group) </i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">The most Positively Correct peers for me have been the ones who will like me and buy me a beer. If they go from properly saying cellular telephones to crudely saying cell phones, then me too. The worst peers share my hot ideals but lack a sense of proportion: No "humour and compassion." For them, as they grate on me, I will reach for the lubricant of humour, and alcohol too.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>If you, dear reader, want me to say Person of Colour, </i>then all you have do<i> </i>is <i>say</i> that word around me, like my peers saying “cell phone.” But that begs me to ask the question: Up here in Canada, when would you ever say P of C in real life? It could mean that, in order for you to change my everyday language, then, in your own everyday life, instead of talking about the the weather and such trivia, you would need to speak of what you were doing around racism. Yes, I sympathize; it’s hard to take action, and then it’s hard to share from your heart. But if I keep naturally hearing Person of Colour then I’ll naturally start saying the term too. Like how even bigots have exchanged the horribly stigmatized word homosexual for a nice, pretty, new improved one, gay.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Right now, from dear Audre, I keep hearing the word Black… God bless her.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Sean Crawford</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">In her majesty’s dominion of Canada,</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>(although Dominion Day has been replaced by Canada day)</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">At the foothills of the Rocky Mountains,</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">In the sweetest home city in the world,</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>(although our sibling rivals in Edmonton would say otherwise)</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">March</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">2020</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Update of Thursday March 12, regarding opportunities to say to others, "Person of Colour."</b></span><br />
<span style="font-kerning: none;">There are two Person of Colur documentaries are showing in Edmonton on March 19 at the Garneau. </span>About the time the Person of Colour Panther headquarters was being shot up, as noted one post back, innocent Persons of Colour women working in hospitals were facing the National Guard in their quest for a decent wage. <a href="https://www.metrocinema.org/production/i-am-somebody-finally-got-the-news/">Link</a><br />
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Meanwhile, today on CBC, writer Kiley Reid was interviewed for her book about the Persons of Colour situation called <i>Such a Fun Age.</i> I tuned in at the part where a middle class white woman felt safe that her husband would have no sexual desire for a domestic worker because she was a Person of Colour. </span><br />
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Reid, a self described as "light-skinned (I forget if there was another word too)" reminded those of us privileged to live in the developed British Commonwealth, including, "but not limited to," Canada and the United Kingdom, how it had warped her life, diverted her employment choices, to live in the only developed country in the world without national healthcare. </span><br />
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Footnotes:</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>~I Met a Muslim in London</i> is archived September 2017</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>~Guilt and Toronto,</i> with Audre Lorde, is archived last week, in March 2020. </span>You might be interested in the essay for Lorde’s definition of racism.</div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-size: 12px;">~In</span></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-size: 12px;"> </span></span><i style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12px;">Commenters and My Responsibility</i><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-size: 12px;"> archived May 2018, </span></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-size: 12px;">I quoted </span></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12px;">Derek Sivers, who moved to Oxford, at </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-size: 12px;">length<i> </i>in<i> </i></span></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-size: 12px;">my essay, His words in the footnotes are in yellow; his words about the financial costs of unclear writing are in the main essay, in a slightly larger typeface, with some bolding. </span></span></div>
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~Call me an artist, but this post was written in the subjunctive imagined world; while in the real world I lack a table saw, man cave and certain peers.<br />
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<b>Amusing (and tragic) difference in abstracting the definition of racist:</b><br />
While normally I would retro-change the words "Negro" or "Black" to Person of Colour, the humour below doesn't work as well unless I report the "dialogue" accurately.<br />
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As our leftist friends know, every man, woman and child in Canada is racist because we soak it up from our culture. As least most of us aren't as bad as the TV bigot Archie Bunker, although he could at least have Persons of Colour, the Jeffersons, over to visit him and Edith, or have his son-in-law's Person of Colour friend Lionel come over. <i>All in the Family</i> was the first post-colour TV show filmed (videotaped) before a live studio audience.<br />
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The "and tragic" part of my amusing memory is how my roommate, who divided his time between Canada and the States, driving a sports car down to California, had a definition of racist that differed from our leftist friends—Actually, I guess he spent more time down south than here, since he thought "minus four degrees centigrade" was cold.<br />
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I was renting the upper half of a duplex, while down below lived a Malaysian couple who were soon moving out. So they gifted me with a plastic silver platter covered in food and supplies. I remember one gift was a white container of Johnson's baby powder, only the blue writing was in Malaysian, not English.<br />
So there I was, coming up the stairs and cackling like a witch. Seriously, I was cackling. My roommate was at the top of stairs. "What I like about me," I laughed "is I'm not a racist. Look at all this cool stuff I just got."<br />
The guy exploded, "Sean, of course you're not a racist! You're living with a Black man!"</div>
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Sean Crawfordhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13724844971087639706noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6568091996048915629.post-34209685120172382572020-03-04T06:24:00.000-07:002020-03-06T15:51:42.594-07:00Guilt and Toronto<div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none; text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://essaysbysean.blogspot.com/">essaysbysean.blogspot.com</a></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Hello Reader,</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Got annoyance at Toronto snobs?</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Preface</b> </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>Audre Lorde, down in the U.S.A., taught a college English class:</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">“…I wish I had recorded some of it. Like the young white cop in the class saying, “Yeah, but everybody needs someone to look down on, don’t they?””</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>Your Silence Will Not Protect You, page 75.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">… I am writing this in Toronto, under the spell of Audre Lorde, a member of several minority groups: Black, and a woman too, “but a traitor” with a nonBlack partner, raising children, but “without a family values marriage,” lesbian, and speaker of truth to hands-on-ears fellow feminists… </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Grrr, those elitist</b> Toronto people—who do they think they are? I mean, they go around feeling like “guilty white liberal middle class” types. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Not me. I’m a westerner, I own two cowboy hats, and I don’t do guilt. For one thing, my middle class “membership” is rather honorary, the result of getting a university degree. I’m still poor, not rich. My big family (Dad had eight siblings) is solidly blue collar working class. (I have five siblings) I still retain our old-world fear of impulse buying, let alone going into debt.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Today, as a regular guy, I refuse to criticize minorities for things they can’t help… It logically follows I feel no guilt when I can’t help being born white and male. As for my various privileges, including being born into the biggest country in the free world, well, what the heck can I do about it, to avoid guilt? Besides, that is, virtuously saying, “Women and children and oppressed people first!” Hard to say with a straight face, I know, easier to look serious if I am yelling it.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Guilt, to my eyes, is useless. It adds no energy for the good fight, no political empowerment, no spring to my step. What it <i>does</i> do, out east in Toronto, is something <i>yucky:</i> I keep reading that guilty white liberal females are disempowering their white Arab sisters by wearing islamic hijabs “in solidarity,” forgetting that not all Arabs are religious-and-conservative. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">In fact, some Arabs are atheists, just like some Israelis, while others are religious-and-liberal. Some of my white Muslim sisters are born right here, smack dab in the First World, where just as I do they disagree with those parts of religion that supposedly call for Iran to murder protesters in the streets, and maintain a big infamous <i>torture</i> prison. Let’s speak truth to middle-class power: Our Muslim sisters are against war, holy or otherwise, against oppression of women, and against domestic abuse. Me too. This as guilty Christian liberals would “help” their sisters by wearing the tools of the oppressor.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Regular people, back west where I live, can only know about liberal guilt in Toronto if we read the newspapers, reading about poor and non-guilty women desperately pleading, begging, trying to reason with the rich middle class liberal women that no, the burka (<i>b</i>ig tent with eye holes) and hijab (<i>hi</i>des the hair) are not in the Islamic scriptures. I am sure Lorde would agree with me on this: Throughout time and space, every patriarchal culture, no matter how “religious,” manages to physically hobble its women in ways the culture just doesn’t use to hobble its men. (And has invisible hobbles too) Because that’s what “patriarchy” does, of course, feeling <i>entitled</i> to do so.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Naturally, I could be wrong about Toronto, since it’s so far away. At my Toastmasters club two different people who came here from out east told us of having misconceptions about the west, and one of them was especially embarrassed: She was a retired schoolteacher, and had been teaching western history wrong for years. To be charitable, maybe distance does that—or maybe Toronto people are just racist, geographically and culturally racist.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">I am still chuckling from the time I left Alberta, and crossed several mountain ranges to go further west into another time zone, visiting my sister up in cattle country in central British Columbia. In the kitchen my niece asked, “Uncle Sean, are you a red neck?” Her father answered for me. “He’s an intellectual red neck.” </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Meanwhile, in Toronto—the only city in Canada which can, bizarrely, hold the Grey Cup game with only sports fans caring, without any citywide buzz of excitement—the rich liberal racists probably don’t grasp that you can have a degree, be artistic, and also have dear friends and relations who are blue collar. I think Toronto racists won’t grasp that you can live back west and still be a world class artist.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Am I angry? How can you tell? Here’s what burns my neck red: A fellow writer endured a negative and <i>utterly rude</i> book review by a Toronto elitist, a rudeness my friend is convinced she would not have endured had she lived within the city of Toronto, or even in the greater Toronto area. As for Audre Lorde, she had her own mighty frustrations with white feminist racists, just as I surely would in Toronto. Reading Lorde, I scrutinize her word “entitled,” and her definition of “racism”: It is nourished by, motivated by, and produces… a sense of entitlement.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">If the artsy elite, entitled to be snobs, who avoid the Grey Cup, are racist against westerners and their Muslim sisters, then maybe their entitlement produces… a passive sense of guilt. A guilt where a “liberal” member of parliament (Justin) disagreed with anyone who would call genital mutilation, here in Canada, “barbaric.” Really Justin? Please STOP your misplaced guilt—If it’s not barbaric, here in the 21st century, then tell me: What exactly is it?… “Grotesque?” </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Like playing rock paper scissors, the action of “giving up entitlement” beats guilt. Simple. But out east in Ontario it’s very hard for a liberal rich man to do so, standing there beside his camel and needle.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Too bad I can’t ask anyone here what’s going on between Toronto ears, since nobody I know back west—and hey, some of my best friends are liberals—feels guilty. Here on the prairies I haven’t seen the wind, but I have seen my friends and I taking action against injustice and oppression. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">As for Toronto folks, for the sake of my artist friends back west, I sure wish they would stop feeling entitled to snobbery. More importantly: I wish the middle class ladies out there would drop their guilty support for domestic violence and inequality.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Sean Crawford</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">In the Toronto airport, </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">and </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">In the fuselage of a </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">March</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">2020</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">F<b>ootnotes:</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">~Joke: The graphic <i>Mad Magazine</i> once proved how it <i>is</i> possible to get a camel through the eye of a needle. You tie a rope around the camel’s belly, lift it up with a helicopter, and fly through a giant needle. “Nobody said how big the needle had to be.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">~ In Canada, soon after <i>Star Trek</i> ended its run, we de-cloaked our invisible hobbles by using consciousness raising circles. …But in our new century those pesky Romulans have cloaked again.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">~A self-defensive note: (In a tired voice, after mentioning white Arabs) Yes, my politically correct friends, I do know there are Black Muslims, and Pacific Muslims, with millions in the city of Jakarta alone; yes, I know one can do holy terror without being Arab, with the worst country for “global reach” into Europe being Pakistan…. But many of my readers, as in that country song, “don’t know Iraq from Iran,” and so I concentrated on Arabs. …Besides, experts on the vanished Indo-European language say Arabs are part of the Aryan nations, from Eire (Ireland) to Iran, so that makes them white to me, and why can’t racists see that?</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Sidebar </b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Audre Lorde’s World</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Long before 9/11 raised our consciousness about the existence of Islamic family violence, Audre Lorde visited the Second World and quoted a woman feeling triumphant against hijabs and honour killings. I quoted them both in <i>As Epilogue a Feminist Regards Muslim Uzbekistan</i> archived October 2017.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">As for Audre, it’s a small world: The last time I was in London, at the Tate Modern Art Museum, </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">(the most visited London attraction, according to a recent BBC News article)</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">I bought a green book of her essays. This time around, in a Bloomsbury store, I bought a pink book that has her essays <i>and</i> poems. Many of her poems are referenced in her essays,</span><br />
<span style="font-kerning: none;"> (including <i>A Conversation with Adrienne Riche</i>) </span><br />
<span style="font-kerning: none;">which is delightful because Lorde <i>thinks</i> by using poetry <i>first</i>, not by using words. </span><br />
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">(Other ways of thinking are in my essay <i>How You Learn</i>, archived February 2020)</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">The Tate exhibit was of U.S. Black political art, and it was so very sad for me to see some old black and white TV sets, outside in the lobby, each showing a person speaking, all of whom were dead except for Angela Davis. I think she survived because she was in prison during the police killings. When they took her away, Black writer James Baldwin said (I forget) something like, “Dear Angela, if they come for you in the morning, they will come for me in the evening.” </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">I had already known about police shooting up a Black Panther headquarters in a surprise attack, but the exhibit included a door of someone’s home with many police bullet holes: Shot while soundly sleeping. I do believe I once read about a <b><i>third</i></b> such door too.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">For any readers who still wonder why U.S. Blacks, including sweet gentle sisters, gave their brother, O.J. Simpson, the benefit of the doubt after his arrest, a memory has popped in: </span></div>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12px;">Back in the 20th century, perhaps from submarines mysteriously going missing in remote waters, we had a saying: </span><b style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12px;"><i>Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action.</i></b>Sean Crawfordhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13724844971087639706noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6568091996048915629.post-5379855453701488942020-02-26T14:30:00.001-07:002020-02-26T14:34:44.941-07:00Joy of Mother Indira<div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Hello Reader,</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Got joy?</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">At our Friday Free Fall writing a lady of East Indian heritage did a poem about how her parents were so pleased, here in the New World, to have a Ford car, a house that wasn’t made of mud, and—I forget what else she wrote. She was writing to honor and appreciate her parents. Me too, in my own poems. I said, “Well, I have a poetry manuscript… where some of the poems deal with poverty after the Martians.” I didn’t tell her that one of the characters was someone the British would call Asian, or, less often, South Asian.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Mother Indira</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Mother Indira, </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">who fled harsh parents in India, </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">once had crumbs of love, </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">lots of learned books, </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">but no husband or children.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Now in a commune she knows love and orphans.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Harry and Molly have lost their father and mother</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">but not their need for love</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">to fill them in the morning and at bedtime. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Mother Indira wears army boots,</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">and a sensible sweater under a thin pretty shawl.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Harry enters the kitchen,</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">“May I please have a glass of milk?”</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">“Have you had one today?”</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">“No.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">“Then you may.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Molly enters the kitchen,</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">“May I please have a slice of bread?”</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">“Have you had one today?”</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">“No.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">“Then you may.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Mother Indira saws the bread for Molly,</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">as Molly always ends up cutting a triangle.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Molly returns the loaf to the breadbox.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Mother Indira clomps around the kitchen.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">There is a little extra milk,</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">and a little extra bread.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Her eyes crinkle with affection,</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">thinking how surprised the kids will be to have this dessert.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">“Bread pudding—oh boy!”</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">“You may, you may, you may” </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Sean Crawford</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Central London</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">February</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">2020</span></div>
Sean Crawfordhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13724844971087639706noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6568091996048915629.post-44523375704072526642020-02-18T23:29:00.000-07:002020-02-18T23:29:55.443-07:00How You Learn<div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none; text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://essaysbysean.blogspot.com/">essaysbysean.blogspot.com</a></span><span style="font-kerning: none;"> </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>Have you seen </i>JoJo Rabbit,<i> the current Oscar-nominated movie about the boy in the Hitler Youth? Two men I knew separately here in town were in the Youth, and so was my favorite business writer—luckily he left Germany before the war broke out.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Hello Reader,</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Got an idea how you learn?</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Prologue</b> </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">As faithful readers know: <i>Of course</i> I like being self-indulgent by writing a post about me or my blog, but <i>only</i> after I have filled up a full page of 25 weekly essay titles. Well, today marks another 25.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>How You Learn</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">So, how are you managing your life? Are you becoming ever better, ever <i>learning</i> more about yourself and your business or hobby? Let’s not expect too much. My old telephone answering machine went, <i>“If you know what you are doing, leave a message. If not, join the club.” </i>Every caller, laughing, was already in the club.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Originally, the word “managing” meant “coping.” If today the meaning has shifted, if today we instinctively put the word “business” in front of “management” then it’s because my favorite business writer of all time quit his job during the middle of the Great Depression. There he was, a successful Wall Street analyst, when he asked himself: “Do I want to be the richest man in the cemetery?” In other words, was he living his values? That man was Peter Drucker. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">He went on to make the “practise of management” something that could be learned and taught, and caused universities to start up a faculty of Commerce, (business) because his observations and writings fell between the domains of Economics and Sociology—a new faculty was needed. Drucker’s first book was <i>The End of Economic Man, </i>with a forward by a German friend who wanted to “burn his bridges” against the Nazis. Drucker’s first famous book was <i>The Concept of the Corporation</i> where he interpreted General Motors, with it’s separate divisions, as being unlike historical companies such as, say, Ford. (Apparently Henry Ford didn’t want maximum independence and leadership in his managers, instead seeing them as his helpers) </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">I have read everything by Drucker I can get my hands on, including his memoirs. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">(Wherein I found a smoking gun from his compatriot Henry Kissinger documenting that the U.S. government was secretly causing inflation)</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">We can’t all be a Peter Drucker, but just as he did, each of us can <i>live, look and learn.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">If for today’s post I write about styles of learning then it’s not for my ego, but because I have something interesting things to say… and because, according to Drucker, I am learning the way Sir Winston Churchill did—I’ll get back to Churchill.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">But first: Right now the local bookstore is carrying <i>On Managing Yourself,</i> as part of a Harvard Business School series of books, each book with ten top articles on a given topic. Unsurprisingly, the first article in the book was by Drucker, called—such a classic title—“Managing Oneself.” Everybody knows that a manager or Chief Executive Officer has to be</span>—to quote a cliche—“a lifelong learner.” Where Drucker surprised me was when he said that many people “don’t know how they learn.” But they should.</div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">President John F. Kennedy learned by reading. He would have his agents prepare written reports for him: Think of the brilliant writers in Camelot, and of John Kenneth Galbraith writing letters (now published) back from foreign embassies to educate JFK. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">President Harry S Truman learned by hearing: Think of his cronies playing poker in the White House as part of his “kitchen cabinet.” </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Drucker reports about a CEO who “… was in the habit of calling his entire senior staff into his office once a week and then talking at them for two or three hours…he simply needed an audience to hear himself talk. That’s how he learned.” A successful CEO, I might add.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Reading Drucker, years ago, I wondered: Am I a reader or a listener? I only found out when I was middle aged at university. Around that time, my company Vice President told me I was an “oral learner.” One day in class it was my turn, for my small group, to teach us a seminar: There I was, just talking away about Thomas Paine, when suddenly a lady burst out: “(I just realized) You’re an oral learner! My LD kids talk like you!” (Learning Disability) A useful mirror, since I can’t see myself. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">No wonder I would study in the student bar by "talking" to myself, pretending I was explaining something. I guess I’m like Drucker’s CEO. And of course my speeches for Toastmasters are composed not at a desk but while walking along talking. (silently) As I explained in my essay about <i>Hacking Together a Speech,</i> archived November 2018.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">As for essays and speeches, Paul Graham, like me, enjoys doing both. Unlike me, he is a famous web essayist and keynote speaker. Graham believes a grown up’s essay, unlike the ones schoolboys write, does NOT start out with a topic sentence to be proved, but as something flowing along where you <i>don’t know </i>everything yet. You write the essay <i>to find out</i> <i>something new.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">I don’t know whether Winston Churchill composed his speeches by just flowing along the way I do. What I do know blows me away: According to Drucker, during his schoolboy days Winston got poor marks, as did others who shared his learning trait: Churchill learned in a way not recognized by the education system—not by reading, and not by listening in class. He learned by writing. And today? The boy who did so poorly in school now has his writing studied by students of composition. (I have yet to write as well as he)</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Knowing this about Churchill sheds new light on some of my blog essays. For example, for my essay comparing <i>Trust and Ugly Americans.</i> (Archived September 2019) I didn’t realize how being an Ugly Americans meant not trusting the natives, (Such as Iraqis) nor truly understand the individual I wrote about, (even though I had worked with him) not until after I had left the job and then wrote my essay. How strange.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">I see I have managed to work this essay around to me and my blog. How sweet.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">During the next 25 weeks I’ll listen and read as always. And, if I truly want to learn, then I’ll also speak and write. At long last, after another 25 titles, I may be self indulgent by writing about me and my blog, reporting on what I’ve learned during those precious weeks.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Sean Crawford</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">February</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">2010</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Note:</b> </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">My last meta-blog essay (following 25 posts) was <i>Summer Blog Reflections,</i> archived August 2019.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Reference:</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>On Managing Yourself, </i>Harvard Business Review Press, Boston Massachusetts</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">The <i>About the Contributors</i> list has a line:</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Peter Drucker</b> was a professor of social science and management at Claremont Graduate University in California.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>To my fellow writers:</b> </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">As a self-respecting adult, today I couldn’t bear to use a typical schoolboy “in conclusion” ending.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">As for my seminar research about Thomas Paine, I repackaged it and sold it as a feature article to <i>Falstaff's Table</i>: We writers re-use everything we can. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Paul Graham’s long list of essays includes three about writing essays.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">The one I reference is <i>Age of the Essay </i><a href="http://www.paulgraham.com/essay.html">(link)</a></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"> (The other two are The list of n Things; Persuade xor Discover; plus one on Writing, briefly) </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">For President Kennedy, his middle initial has a period because it stands for Fitzgerald.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">For President Truman, his middle initial has no period because it doesn’t stand for anything.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">I have copied a part of Churchill’s composition word for word, like an art student copying a master. Alas, I’m still a journeyman.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">I am so pleased to have collected various big volumes by Churchill from various antique stores. Not abridged! </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12px;">One of Churchill’s chapters is about his days among daring young men and their flying machines. Mechanical problems were common, forcing you to land at another aerodrome and motor your way back to the one where your young peers are wining and dining after their own harrowing flights. The best aviator of them all, one evening, wasn’t there. But there had been no reports of a crash on land. They waited, candles burned down, and at last they realized the truth… The abridged paperback ends: “He flew forever beyond mortal ken.”</span>Sean Crawfordhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13724844971087639706noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6568091996048915629.post-23169237020409925272020-02-12T10:43:00.000-07:002020-02-18T02:54:08.646-07:00Living Past Poverty<div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none; text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://essaysbysean.blogspot.com/">essaysbysean.blogspot.com</a></span><span style="font-kerning: none;"> </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Hello Reader,</b></span></div>
<div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">Got determination?</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">After the Martians passed on, leaving behind a ruined land, I imagine the remaining society: A few people would have wimped out, escaping into addictive substances and unhealthy attitudes which they would defend as being perfectly natural. But others would have found reasons to carry on, perhaps for the sake of their surviving children, or other people’s children yet unborn. Grief can be a dragging sea anchor, but still, I suppose, good citizenship is possible when all your neighbors are trying as hard as you are, trying to get healed while stubbornly appearing normal, trying to “fake it till they make it.” </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">God bless the wounded healers. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">When my parents were little, back in the old country, children got an orange just once a year, at Christmas. There is a reference to this (blink and you’ll miss it) in the Tilda Swinton and Ewan McGregor art movie, set in 1954, <i>Young Adam</i>.<a href="https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/young-adam-2004"> (review) </a></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Immigrating to Canada helped my parents, food-wise. In Canada, during the Great Depression, my father felt badly about sometimes having nothing to feel the dog; my mother had sores in her mouth, stopped speaking in class, until the public health nurse advised grandma to get some fruit for vitamin C.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">Here are two poems.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Guitar by Firelight</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>As I walk from the cold</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>into the warm tavern</i></span></div>
<div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i> my neck is bent down slightly,</i></span></div>
<div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>my gait is slightly uneven</i></span></div>
<div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>and things are out of joint.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">A man bends over a guitar in the tavern.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Some say he’s not meant for television prime time,</span></div>
<div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">not for satellite international broadcast.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">I say he is meant for here,</span></div>
<div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">where plain people get a life.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">We can see his face shining above his guitar.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Here we know our lives,</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">tensed then relaxed,</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">as guitar strums by firelight.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Once, when there was still a power grid,</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">back in my living room,</span></div>
<div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">I lived in a dying-room</span></div>
<div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">with instant coffee and instant feelings</span></div>
<div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">and paper dolls posed flat on my screen </span></div>
<div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">as I escaped into the mute button.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Such a muffled life. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">The artist in the tavern locks his gaze on mine,</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">strums my heartstrings, and I feel what I feel.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Memories squiggle free.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">From my radiant fellows infra-heat billows</span></div>
<div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">around me like a firemen’s rescue hoop.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Such a raw life.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">After midnight, a loose upright man</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">walks out the tavern door.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>I am not the same man who entered.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i></i></span><br /></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i></i></span><br /></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i></i></span><br /></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Yearly Orange</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">The Martians had swept over the land like a plague,</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">felling people in the streets and poisoning the crops.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">Like a rash the Red Weed had smothered farms</span></div>
<div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">jammed canals and blocked harbors.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">The Reading rail yard is still a jumble of silent rusting cars.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">The Red Weed has gone, crumbled to dust.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">Our ruined land is a harsh world.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Thin children are excited</span></div>
<div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">as lean adults quietly talk </span></div>
<div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">about goods speeding under the sea</span></div>
<div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">from the new world, to the old.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">In the holds and tubes of a submarine</span></div>
<div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">are spare circuits and seed stocks</span></div>
<div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">artfully stowed without a wasted inch</span></div>
<div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">clean and never contaminated</span></div>
<div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">speeding towards us from New London.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">The surface fleet was beamed and shredded,</span></div>
<div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">the same day a storm of silent particles</span></div>
<div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">made dead every child’s device,</span></div>
<div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">every Nintendo, Atatri, Playstation, Gameboy,</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">leaving the children nothing.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Nothing but the timeless games:</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Kick the can.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">King of the castle.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">Kite flying.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Robin Hood.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">A tired adult perks up as children run by,</span></div>
<div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">laughing and smiling.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">A girl feels </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">life is good, </span></div>
<div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">she raises her arms saying,</span></div>
<div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">“It’s all carrots and apples!”</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">The children will never grow as tall as their parents.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">The submarine will be an early Christmas.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Excited kids tell each other,</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">“Everybody gets an orange!”</span></div>
<div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">We don’t tell them</span></div>
<div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">oranges are good for their health.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Some day,</span></div>
<div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">we will give the children</span></div>
<div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">peaches and cream.<i> </i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i></i></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 15px;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i></i></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 15px;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i></i></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Sean Crawford</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Central London</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">February</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12px;">2020</span>Sean Crawfordhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13724844971087639706noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6568091996048915629.post-71285307857619228862020-02-04T16:49:00.001-07:002020-02-05T07:50:21.565-07:00Back-trail of Essays and Blogs<div class="post hentry uncustomized-post-template" itemprop="blogPost" itemscope="itemscope" itemtype="http://schema.org/BlogPosting" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(204, 204, 204); border-bottom-style: dotted; border-bottom-width: 1px; margin: 0.5em 0px 1.5em; padding-bottom: 1.5em;">
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essaysbysean.blogspot.com</div>
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<b>Hello Reader,</b></div>
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Do you like broccoli? </div>
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Here is an essay that, like the "broccoli movie" <i>Ghandi</i>, is "good for you."</div>
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Tis a nostalgia piece, a re-run, from back when blogs could be substantial like the articles in Sunday newspapers. Whatever happened to those days?</div>
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But first, a new headnote, from the blog of Seth Godin for October 26, 2019:</div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">If we only forward the easy, short and funny things we read online, why are we surprised that our inbox is filled with nothing we’ll remember tomorrow?</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">What would happened if instead, we shared the most complex, useful and thoughtful things we discovered instead?</span></div>
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<b>Here it is, my 75<sup>th</sup> post. My astute readers will</b> have noticed that for every 25 “postings” I do a piece explaining essays. I say “posting,” not “blog,” because hey, I’m not a blogger: I’m an essayist. But today I'll try to explain blogs too.</div>
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When telling people I have a hobby of writing, I merely say I write “nonacademic” essays, and leave it at that. I couldn’t begin to explain in just a sound bite how the essays <a href="http://grammar.about.com/b/2008/06/04/whats-wrong-with-the-five-paragraph-essay.htm" style="color: #999999; text-decoration: none;">school kids</a> learn to write are—ahem!— for kids. In the wider world essays start out with different goals and functions, and of course follow different forms. Open any magazine and see: An adult essay never ends with “in conclusion;” it very seldom begins with a topic sentence as a thesis to be “proven.” Such writing would be “bad form.”<br />
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I’ve heard that essays in <i>The</i> <i>New Yorker</i> will begin by meandering along and then finally, at the bottom of the first page, announce the topic. This form allows busy New Yorkers, in their fast-paced city, a nice chance to stop rushing… and fix on something that rewards an adult attention span. I wish internet blogs were simularly aimed at adults.</div>
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It was a guy with a decent attention span, Paul Graham, who inspired me to do my own internet essays. Graham noted, in his <i><a href="http://www.paulgraham.com/essay.html" style="color: #999999; text-decoration: none;">Age of the</a> Essay,</i> that the internet had existed for a few years before people figured out they could use it for blogs. (web log or public diary, with people's comments) His hope was that soon people would figure out they could use it for essays too. This hasn’t happened yet, and I’m losing hope it ever will. So far, no one else writes wide ranging essays like Graham, while my number of bookmarked essayists I can count on the fingers of one hand—not including my thumb. </div>
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I was at university when personal computers arrived for the public—but not for the university, not yet. Computers weren’t quite an everyday topic of conversation for people, not nearly as often as when color TVs or 10-speeds arrived, but still there was a trace of the old “left out” feeling if you didn’t have one. Naturally, among us starving students, only the nerds were motivated enough to get one. After all, a computer cost more than a used car.<br />
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I remember, back then, being at a seminar of people from Strategic Studies. Some one asked why armies still had those big expensive all-too-vulnerable tanks. I quipped, “Tanks are like personal computers: Everyone knows you should have them… but no one knows quite what to do with them.” As for computers, what we did with them was do household accounts, write letters, address envelopes and, uh… mostly guys resorted to playing computer games like <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Invaders" style="color: #999999; text-decoration: none;">Space Invaders.</a><br />
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At last came the World Wide Web. Meanwhile, at the university, at this time, there was a very long hallway, enclosed from the elements, running along the entire back length of the physical education building. I was probably the only one to notice that, on a campus of eager helpful opinionated young scholars, no one had posted anything at all. And of course no one posted “comment threads” of replies. </div>
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Soon the nerds began “surfing” and their word entered our vocabulary. But many students still preferred to put their money on a car. At this time the student radio station magazine, <i>Vox</i>, ran a skeptical editorial. The editor noted that guys who wouldn’t be comfortable in a bathing suit were preaching the joy of surfing to find out, say, how to fix their bicycle. From his cozy music hangout amidst a crowded friendly campus the editor’s question was: Can’t I reach out to living people to ask how to fix a bike?</div>
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Today, when everyone knows computers are a Good Thing, the reply to that music-loving editor would be, “Yes but—…there’s so much stuff out there.” </div>
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“Yes, I know I should get out and mingle with people, but…” </div>
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“Yes, I know I have all the social skills of a zombie, but that’s why I honestly prefer to stay at the computer playing zombie wars.”</div>
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I have sympathy but no answers. I have no idea as to when the line is crossed: When does being in a cybernetic community of bloggers, with words on my cold backlit screen, become an escape from my real local community? I am reminded of Kurt Vonnegut’s image of a dog stopping by a sidewalk vending machine so a cybernetic arm could come out and pet him. </div>
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As for me, I too like to escape. Sometimes I escape away from reading stuff I will long remember, away from essays or that zombie book <i><a href="http://www.amazon.ca/World-War-Oral-History-Zombie/dp/0307346617" style="color: #999999; text-decoration: none;">World War Z</a>,</i> (which I recommend) into reading fluffy forget-me-right-away blogs. “Yes, but— why do blogs seem to outnumber essays by a zillion to one?”</div>
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Because: Essays take more effort. I think of that long phys ed hallway. I guess it follows logically that people who wouldn’t make the effort to post with real paper onto a big hallway won’t make any effort for essays even when they finally have access to a computer. Contrawise, the non-college folks who wouldn’t normally write anything, the folks who, before telephone rates were de-regulated, (lowered) would rather make awfully expensive long-distance-phone-calls than write letters, will now write a blog.<br />
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I like young university students. At the same time, being middle-aged, and having been raised working class, I have an old blue-collar perspective. I’m aware that during the 1950’s the “slicks” were fast disappearing. These were the magazines with slick pages giving the world such things as <i>True Romance</i> and <i>True Confessions.</i> My waitress Sue, who reads pretty slowly when she reads aloud, would have liked them. She loves her Stephen King, but the other stuff? She can get it from television.<br />
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Yes, TV killed the slicks, and it killed the pulps too. Sue doesn’t blog herself, by the way, but it seems to me that a lot of her friends who type madly onto the blogosphere are literate but not readers. Not of books. They are typists, but not writers. Not for abstract thought. Naturally they wouldn’t care for essays.</div>
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I like Sue; I had her over to my housewarming party. She likes me too, yet obviously I would never expect her, let alone her friends, to read my essays. However, when it comes to ignoring my stuff, what is my excuse for any surfer with a university degree, let alone a degree in something considered extra smart like Computer Science? Of course I wouldn’t expect them to literally read my stuff, but I am surprised to find they don’t read anyone’s essays at all. </div>
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Some of the computer “guys”—they don’t merit the honorific “nerds”—are like Sue: they seemingly <i>can’t</i> read or write. How bizarre. As it happens, I already knew there was such a thing as a university graduate who doesn’t read books. Now I am finding that some of them can barely even read a longer blog.<br />
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I say this after reading the comments on the blog of one of my four bookmarked essayists, <a href="http://sites.google.com/site/steveyegge2/blog-rants" style="color: #999999; text-decoration: none;">Stevey</a>, who writes for computer programmers. I like Stevey’s humor. For me, a nonprogrammer, half of his stuff I can tell is real good but it’s like trying to read <i>The Jabberwocky.</i> Happily, the other half I get. In Stevey’s post of January 7<sup>th</sup>, 2008, <i>Blogging Theory 201: <a href="http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/01/blogging-theory-201-size-does-matter.html" style="color: #999999; text-decoration: none;">Size Does Matter</a>,</i> he explains how he decides on his blog length. He looks at reading duration<br />
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“… and some folks like to read slowly. Heck, some don’t even read at all. It’s one of the amazing miracles of the internet: write-only people. They won’t read but they somehow find a way to write. You see them comment in all the time in my blogs: ‘I didn’t actually read your entry, but allow me to comment on it all the same…’ Lovely.”</blockquote>
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I know what he means. I have read too many such comments for Stevey, complaints that his pieces (A) are too long or (B) … should be written as a sound bite. My reaction: “WTF?” They don’t get it that Stevey writes “long,” by their standards, t<i>o serve a purpose.</i> Part of their problem is their expectations for “blogs” as being “short.” What’s a man to do… put up a headline “Essays by Stevey?” They’d still complain.</div>
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Never mind. All I can do is mutter that quote from Mark Twain. (~)</div>
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Expectations by readers are one thing. What are the expectations of the actual bloggers?<br />
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By “bloggers” I exclude the good folks of <i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LiveJournal" style="color: #999999; text-decoration: none;">LiveJournal</a>,</i> as they seem to live in a nice sunny world of their own. Many other bloggers, though, seem to live in a grayer more competitive sphere… As a man from Tennessee says, “our grandparents lived in a troop of monkeys,” with a hierarchy, and therefore people tend to do a lot of comparing. In the real world some people genuinely believe in having a “mono-value,” a simplistic judgmental one-dimension criterion of “money.”<br />
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In the blog world a good many truly believe in the value of statistics: simplistically counting the “hits” on their site, or even hits on specific posts. I have even read where a few people were nasty and competitive for who has the best “stats.” Happily, I’ve also read many postings of generous advice on how to increase page hits. For some folks it might be healthier to ignore stats and simply see their blog as a chance for an ephemeral conversation. In other words, as being simply social.</div>
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But if a blogger, similar to an essayist, is striving for posts of lasting value, then I doubt the wisdom of choosing to have a mono-value of “stats.” Or, for that matter, having any mono-value in one's life. It’s too easy to be trapped. Graham once reported in an essay that after he received stock in his tech company he suddenly just couldn’t help evaluating his every action by “how it would affect the stock,” rather than “how it would affect the work.” And I once read on a U.S. waiter’s blog where every day, all day, he kept up a mental cost-benefit of how each customer was doing, value-wise, as a tipper. (In fairness, U.S. waiters are paid very little compared to waiters here)<br />
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It is money, I am sure, that is the root of some of the competitiveness, as certain bloggers desperately need to advertise their small business or generate funding from running advertisements on their blog. As for me, in my everyday job, as a “professional,” I am legally constrained from having a mono-value of money.</div>
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As a "blogger," I could simply type a one-sentence essay, “When you’re hot, you’re hot; when you’re not, you’re not.” After I gave it a catchy title, <i>All I know about sex</i> I could hit the “post” button and watch it get more hits than any other page I wrote. So much for stats.</div>
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Lately I’ve been following blogger <a href="http://blog.penelopetrunk.com/" style="color: #999999; text-decoration: none;">Penelope Trunk</a> (her pen name) who has a background as a business columnist. She writes on life and careers in a blog that includes lessons from her own life, even some awfully personal stuff. I should expect her blog to include archives. And I’m right, it does. I should also expect that she would write with pride, with substance, with a belief that her pieces have some lasting value. And I do. But her fans don’t. If they comment on a post that is any older than the food in my fridge, then they apologize. My reaction: WTF? I don’t expect a column post to be as lasting as an essay post, but still, I expect that Penelope put a modicum of tender loving care into her baby with hope for its future. And then to have people apologize…</div>
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When I am writing or public speaking I know I have made a connection when someone’s eyes light up and they say, “Yes! Let me tell you what happened to me!” In other words, when they feel moved to comment. So don’t apologize.</div>
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Of course many blogs, like those of Sue’s dear friends, are expected to be social, with easy social comments. As ephemeral as flowers, they are supposed to be for persons who are attention-span-challenged. Fine by me. I guess. Sure… but I admit I lose patience when I see this blog after blog … After blog. Perhaps this relates to the common wisdom that to be a “success,” as in have “successful” stats, you must blog several times per week, preferably daily. My reaction? (Besides WTF?): You can forget any lasting value.<br />
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Maybe that 20<sup>th</sup> century Chicago columnist <a href="http://www.amazon.ca/Johnny-Deadline-Reporter-Best-Greene/dp/0882293613" style="color: #999999; text-decoration: none;">Johnny Deadline </a>can be smart every day, but no one else can. As it happens, the competitive bloggers have proven, in black and white, based on their stats, that their readers will desert them in droves if their blog frequency falls off to (horrors!) once a week. My reaction: What the—! Who <i>are</i> these readers? And why would I “give a care” about them? So I can compete for stats? I’m no dog at a vending machine.<br />
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…What I find hard to wrap my head around is how people can leave a negative comment when they have only skimmed a piece, and have thereby badly misinterpreted things. If it is morally wrong to comment to censor a novel, without first carefully reading the novel, then it is also wrong to write in to censure a writer unless you first carefully read his piece.<br />
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This I believe: You have no right to injure the feelings of the writer, and to injure the community of readers, unless you are willing to take responsibility to read. To do otherwise is a vice. As you know, a “vice” is self-gratification at the expense of the community.</div>
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Essayist Scott Berkun takes a gentler view. Last week, for his <a href="http://www.scottberkun.com/blog/2010/why-you-are-not-an-artist/" style="color: #999999; text-decoration: none;">June 16</a>essay-blog on <i>Why you are not an Artist</i> he added to the comments: </div>
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The fascinating thing so far in this post is how many people seem to have skimmed it. It’s very hard to defend myself against things I didn’t quite say : ) </blockquote>
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I see Scott added a smiley emoticon. Before I totally lose my sense of smiley face humor, tossing around words like vice, I had best leave today’s subject of fluffy Blogs to return to today’s other solid subject: Essays. Unfortunately, it’s hard for me to go from fluffy cotton candy to solid potatoes. Especially when I’m feeling uninterested in explaining essays these days. You see, I’ve recently overdosed on explanations. I discovered in a used bookstore, while passing through Kamloops, a decade’s worth of annuals of <i>The Best American Essays. </i>That’s a decade’s worth of introductions regarding: What is an Essay?</div>
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Here is a sentence by <a href="http://www.forward.com/articles/11682/" style="color: #999999; text-decoration: none;">Joseph Epstein</a> from his forward to the 1993 volume:</div>
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"I prefer it when the essay takes a small, very particular subject and, through the force of the essayist’s artistically controlled maunderings, touches on unpredictably large general matters, makes hitherto unexpected connections, tells me things I hadn’t hitherto known, or reminds me of other things I had already known but never thought to formulate so well as has the essayist I am reading at the moment."</div>
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After spitting the cotton candy out of my teeth for such solid food, I have nothing left to say.</div>
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S<b>ean Crawford</b></div>
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In Cyberspace </div>
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(Hello Lain!)</div>
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And in Calgary</div>
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June 2010, February 2020</div>
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<b>Footnotes</b><br />
~A look at the blog world as of 2003 by writer John Scalzi<br />
https://whatever.scalzi.com/2003/06/16/reader-request-2-life-online/<b> </b><br />
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~Speaking of statistics, I am surprised that people are skipping from my home page to this page, but not my to my more recent <i>Polite Blogs </i>one. How strange.</div>
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<b>Update: Comedian George Carlin changed his life</b> and career when—lightbulb!—he stopped having laughter as his mono stat for the success of his stage comedy, as he explained in his autobiography.</div>
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~For my blog website I am the "administrators" of the site. I have a lined accountant's page, where page titles older than the food in my freezer can be seen at a glance. Any new comments there show up in vivid colored ink. </div>
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Update: I can click on "comments" to read them all, listed in reverse order.<br />
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~Real writers, when it comes to old pieces, find satisfaction in (ongoing royalties and) comments.</div>
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~Mark Twain said, “A person who <i>won’t</i> read has no advantage over the person who <i>can’t</i> read.”</div>
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<span class="post-author vcard">POSTED BY <span class="fn" itemprop="author" itemscope="itemscope" itemtype="http://schema.org/Person"><a class="g-profile" data-gapiattached="true" data-gapiscan="true" data-onload="true" href="https://www.blogger.com/profile/13724844971087639706" rel="author" style="color: #999999; text-decoration: none;" title="author profile"><span itemprop="name">SEAN CRAWFORD</span> </a></span></span><span class="post-timestamp">AT <a class="timestamp-link" href="https://essaysbysean.blogspot.com/2010/06/essays-and-blogs_26.html" rel="bookmark" style="color: #999999; text-decoration: none;" title="permanent link"><abbr class="published" itemprop="datePublished" style="border: none;" title="2010-06-26T21:29:00-06:00">9:29 PM</abbr></a> </span><span class="reaction-buttons"></span><span class="post-comment-link"></span><span class="post-backlinks post-comment-link"></span><span class="post-icons"><span class="item-action"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/email-post.g?blogID=6568091996048915629&postID=2892839835505092120" style="color: #999999; text-decoration: none;" title="Email Post"><img alt="" class="icon-action" height="13" src="https://resources.blogblog.com/img/icon18_email.gif" style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0px 0px 0px 0.5em !important; padding: 4px; vertical-align: middle;" width="18" /> </a></span></span><br />
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<cite class="user" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: bold;"><a href="http://rileyharrison.wordpress.com/" rel="nofollow" style="color: #999999; text-decoration: none;">riley harrison</a></cite><span class="icon user " style="font-weight: bold;"></span><span class="datetime secondary-text" style="margin-left: 6px;"><a href="https://essaysbysean.blogspot.com/2010/06/essays-and-blogs_26.html?showComment=1293923650974#c867447195747731540" rel="nofollow" style="color: #999999; text-decoration: none;">January 1, 2011 at 4:14 PM</a></span></div>
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Hello Sean,<br />
I enjoyed the essay. I'm relatively new to the blogging world and decided that I'm not going to conform to the the typical blogger's style of writing. I will remain faithful to my writing style and content will be that which I find fascinating. I'm writing primarily for myself not for popularity and commercial success. Keep those essays coming!</div>
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<cite class="user" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: bold;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/profile/13724844971087639706" rel="nofollow" style="color: #999999; text-decoration: none;">Sean Crawford</a></cite><span class="icon user blog-author" style="display: inline-block; font-weight: bold; height: 18px; margin: 0px 0px -4px 6px; width: 18px;"></span><span class="datetime secondary-text" style="margin-left: 6px;"><a href="https://essaysbysean.blogspot.com/2010/06/essays-and-blogs_26.html?showComment=1296314723902#c4857811501904115998" rel="nofollow" style="color: #999999; text-decoration: none;">January 29, 2011 at 8:25 AM</a></span></div>
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Note to other readers: I thanked Riley privately for commenting at the time he wrote here.<br />
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Now, a few weeks later, I can see that he is, to my surprise, able to post informative stuff on a daily basis: a feat I thought could not be done.<br />
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This is possible only because, as a fellow middle aged man, he has a lot of knowledge stored up.</div>
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<cite class="user" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: bold;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/profile/13724844971087639706" rel="nofollow" style="color: #999999; text-decoration: none;">Sean Crawford</a></cite><span class="icon user blog-author" style="display: inline-block; font-weight: bold; height: 18px; margin: 0px 0px -4px 6px; width: 18px;"></span><span class="datetime secondary-text" style="margin-left: 6px;"><a href="https://essaysbysean.blogspot.com/2010/06/essays-and-blogs_26.html?showComment=1329762366909#c4261823723695048778" rel="nofollow" style="color: #999999; text-decoration: none;">February 20, 2012 at 11:26 AM</a></span></div>
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Update: I am pleased to have Riley's site bookmarked. About a year later, Feb 2012, he has gone to about once a week, and I am still faithfully reading him. He writes on "getting unstuck" to have a good life.</div>
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Update: Riley has stopped posting, his blog has gone the way of all flesh.</div>
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Sean Crawfordhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13724844971087639706noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6568091996048915629.post-60117981946304743962020-01-29T08:07:00.000-07:002020-04-27T19:47:02.570-06:00Kind and Loving<div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none; text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://essaysbysean.blogspot.com/">essaysbysean.blogspot.com</a></span><span style="font-kerning: none;"> </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>Who has not found the heaven below </i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>Will fail of it above. </i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>God's residence is next to mine, </i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>His furniture is love.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Emily Dickinson </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>In the end, only kindness matters.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Jewel, singing “These Hands”</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Hello Reader,</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Got kind and loving?</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Recently I was thinking about Self Improvement. Something I lately realize: Improvement leads to Achieving One’s Potential, which leads to achieving kindness: The <i>real</i> potential. This new idea I gleaned from a famous blogger, Penelope Trunk. I was fascinated by her post <i>Living Up to Your Potential is BS</i> (footnote) from August 2008.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">I would hope that being filled with kindness could lead to expressing love. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Meanwhile, an even more famous lady, Hollywood’s Kristen Bell, notes that love can be a superpower. And she would know, since she voices Anna, the girl who’s sister Elsa, in the kingdom of Arendelle, has a superpower over ice and snow: In <i>Frozen</i>, the Disney movie. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Speaking of “sisters,” if my name was Sister Teresa I suppose I would know all about kindness, and move on to India and become Mother Teresa. Then I could blog my knowledge about kindness back to you. But no, I am only me… all I can do, from various sources, is glean knowledge for being kind and loving, and then share. Here’s Penelope—her post starts with a photograph of a man in bed with a sheet over him, reading a book crudely titled How to Get Up and Get Dressed</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">QUOTE</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">(After being optimistic enough to get out of bed) </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">The next big goals we have are the spiritual kind: Be good, be kind, treat people with respect. You probably don’t write these on your to do list, but now that you read them, surely you are thinking to yourself, “Oh yeah, I want to remember to do that.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Living up to your potential is not crossing off everything on your to do list on time, under budget. Or canonizing your ideas in a book deal. Really, no one cares. You are not on this earth to do that. Trust me. No one is. You are on this earth to be kind. That is your only potential.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">And then you have to earn a living.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">UNQUOTE</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">So heartening! I could do that.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">You are probably wondering what Kristen said. As it happens, in an interview with Mark Daniell, in the Calgary Sun, November 17, Mark asked: </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">“My niece had a question when she heard I was talking to you. She wanted to know if the new movie is going to answer why Princess Anna doesn’t have powers?”</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">QUOTE</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">She does have powers. Her power is love. Her power has always been love. Anna has always had the strongest power of all. You may tell your niece that. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Personally, I’ve walked through life feeling like I have a superpower because I’ve practiced trying to love everyone around me and it has filled me up with a ton of self-esteem. But I love when I’m good to people. I love it. I love that about myself. That might sound selfish, but I sleep so well at night being kind to everyone around me. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">It’s not to say that I don’t have bad days, I do. But when people ask me that question I always tell them: Anna does have a superpower and that power is love.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">UNQUOTE</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">So inspiring! I could practise being loving. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Of course I could always work on becoming wealthy, of course. But if one day I meet you after making my first million, wearing a broad imported silk tie, and a big wide platinum lapel broach, then I would hope that what you would remember about me, later, is not my success in achieving affluence, but my success in becoming kind and loving. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">And wouldn’t that be a worthy goal down through the new year of 2020?</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">As long as I’m gleaning wisdom from people more rich and famous than I am, let the last words be from a man my own age, Peter Capaldi, in his character as the twelfth <i>Doctor Who,</i> “summing up” before his time runs out:</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>“Always try to be nice, but never fail to be kind.”</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Sean Crawford</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Calgary</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">January</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">2020</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Footnotes:</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">~For a follow up, you might like my post <i>Be Kind to Clerks,</i> archived November 2019.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">~<a href="https://blog.penelopetrunk.com/2008/08/08/living-up-to-your-potential-is-bs/">Here’s </a>Penelope Trunk’s blog post.</span></div>
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~More on Doctor Who’s end-of-life summary of his motives: <span style="font-kerning: none;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">From his final episode, <i>The Doctor Falls, </i>on that fated day when he has no hope to see the next sunrise, comes this long<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GOaVJufPqUU"> video clip.</a> He is a near-immortal, pleading for help from the only other near-immortals he knows. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">He says, “if I stand…then maybe some of them might live, maybe not many, maybe not for long, but then who does?” This in the context of him having seen many mortal generations grow old and perish—but he has always hoped not to harden his heart to ephemeral humans. And me, as I get older and crankier I retain such hope too. The Doctor remained loving. The Bible says “Greater love has no man…” </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">(Private note to young precious fans: Peter Capaldi and I are old enough to remember when the TV ending credits listed “Doctor Who,” so that <i>can</i> be a time lord’s name, a name used by Peter in TV interviews)</span></div>
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~From the other sister, with her superpower <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XdZ1T1StY0">here</a> (the sing-along-version) is her most famous song.<span style="font-kerning: none;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">~And OK, I’ve linked to her before, but <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AfsS3pIDBfw">here</a> is Jewel’s most famous song.</span></div>
Sean Crawfordhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13724844971087639706noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6568091996048915629.post-12931445348369456962020-01-22T10:37:00.000-07:002020-01-23T17:22:56.779-07:00Sipping Suds in the Spotted Dog<div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none; text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://essaysbesean.blogspot.com/">essaysbesean.blogspot.com</a></span><span style="font-kerning: none;"> </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>With an </i><b><i>essay</i></b><i> of </i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>both travel and philosophy, </i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>to introduce a </i><b><i>poem</i></b><i> of history, </i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>both past and present.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Hello Reader,</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Got suds to solve the problems of the world?</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Yes, I know you and I aren’t truly that smart, but just as having tea inspires noble thoughts, so too does beer in good company lead to fine world-saving solutions—at least they seem good, within the walls of an authentic British pub.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">I was in south England, and my companion across the table said he had once golfed in my home town, Calgary. I instantly knew, and I eventually got him to admit: He was an oil patch guy. (North Sea rigs) Turned out he was a geophysicist. A common job in Calgary. I said, “I bet you just tell people you are a geologist.” I was right.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">What I never got to ask that night was why he was so reticent to admit his occupation to me. Here in Calgary you can’t join any club or hobby without tripping over rich petroleum engineers and executives. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">(How rich? Reporters aren’t allowed to even enter, let alone photograph, oil tower executive washrooms) </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Calgary is “the Denver of Canada.” And U.S. citizens, thanks to petroleum and natural gas, are our largest minority group. And me, as a happy joiner, I have no issues around drinking beer and hobnobbing with rich people. But I wonder: Was that man worried that poor little me would be uncomfortable with him? Is the British class system really that bad?</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Maybe so. Back in the 1970’s, on various NATO bases, talking with various British servicemen, they all complained about the class system—but I half-thought they especially meant within the armed forces— just as readily as we Canadians, at that time, would have complained about this new fangled mysterious inflation. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">(Back then, as our prime minister Trudeau was trumpeting his plan for everyone to observe “six and five” for wages and prices, <i>no one, </i>including gentlemen of the press,<i> </i>realized our government already secretly <i>knew</i> the cause of inflation) </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">It’s queer how entire populations, just like individuals, can be ignorant of knowledge they are not ready for, such as the cause of inflation: Like some sort of mass defence mechanism. Like how all the Germans after the First World War thought their army <i>hadn’t</i> been defeated, only “stabbed in the back.” Like how in Canada, at the time of the Quebec referendum on separation, all the people in Quebec—but not in Calgary—didn’t know their province was being being propped up by “equalization payments” from the three (out of ten) “have” provinces, payments that would vanish if Quebec were separate. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">(This is true of, say, the time-space 2,000 A.D, when the four provinces east of Quebec have a 50% unemployment rate, with many of the jobs being seasonal… but I guess this has changed: Ontario stopped being a “have” province to go to having the largest debt in the world of any substate, (non-country) and recently Alberta has been groaning from lack of pipelines to tidewater—the Yanks refuse to pay market value—amidst low oil prices)</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">We can be alienated from our own society, and maybe rush off to join the communist party, OR we can clink our glasses in fellowship, rich and poor in the same club, and feel that life is alright. Is that escapist? Nothing wrong with escape. Even the president of the United States needs to escape to go golfing at Camp David. Like how I escaped to south England to romantically follow the Martians of H.G. Wells in his classic <i>The War of the Worlds. </i>(They advanced north on London)<i> </i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">As for the Spotted Dog, the tavern in H.G.’s novel, my local beer buddies, who <i>of course </i>studied Wells in school, were disgusted to tell me the age-old tavern had been knocked down to build a car dealership. Here’s a poem:</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>The Spotted Dog</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">A man rushes into the Spotted Dog</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">interrupting the landlord’s conversation.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Someone has just offered the landlord one pound.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">The man says forcefully, “I’ll give you two pounds,</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">and I’ll have it back tonight.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">The landlord is amazed, “What are you talking about?</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">And why bring it back? I am selling a pig.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">The man rents a horse and cart, </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">but he doesn’t tell the landlord to flee.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Surely there is shame,</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">surely there is survivor guilt,</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">but it’s pushed way down.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">A boy reads with a torch under his blanket:</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Boilers on stilts</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">crossing fields “as fast as flying birds.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Fighting Machines wade among coastal shipping</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">facing the defiant <i>HMS Thunderchild.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Teachers in Woking make students read.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Surely the novel is classic,</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">surely it will last for generations,</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">down the years.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Adults drink suds in the Spotted Dog,</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">the same tavern they had read about as children.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">The visible pub connects them to the invisible,</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">to age-old fears and shames, hopes and resolves.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">A frightened man keeps his promise</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">to return a horse and cart</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">through dark of night </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">past frightful looming Things.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">His efforts end in ruin.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">If he hadn’t been a man of his word</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">he would have been in Leatherhead with his wife,</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">safe and sound, but he kept his promise.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Surely when the Spotted Dog is struck down</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">it will be rebuilt.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Sean Crawford</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">January</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Calgary</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">2020</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">~One of my few essays to be translated (into Spanish) is one where I expose the secret of inflation, archived November 2013, <i>Conspiracies and Inflation.</i></span></div>
Sean Crawfordhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13724844971087639706noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6568091996048915629.post-17227383128459755282020-01-15T11:23:00.001-07:002020-01-23T17:26:32.063-07:00Optimistic for Onions<div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none; text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://essaysbysean.blogspot.com/">essaysbysean.blogspot.com</a></span><span style="font-kerning: none;"> </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>I don’t speak of you being atheist </i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>and so I hope</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>you don’t mind me speaking of God</i>.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Hello Reader,</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Peeling the onion again?</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Of course you and I</b> as North Americans are optimistic, idealistic even. If not you and I specifically, then our country as a whole. For example, as the decade turns, and as we are hearing so much about the dangers of not managing our consumption of social media and fake news, the experts are writing that no one had predicted this outcome. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Remember how it was? People used to talk of how a connected world would mean more liberty. “Knowledge wants to be free” people said, thinking that with “a voice for everyone” the web would mean “power to the people.” Such idealism. And now we have, as an open secret, state-sponsored Russian troll farms.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">A recent CBC radio documentary, about the anniversary of the creation of the Internet, had a computer scientist saying he sorely wished he had thought to include a way for people to be identified on the web. For one thing, it would have stopped illegal death threats from trolls. But of course in those early days the excited scientists were too good natured and optimistic about people.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">If not for idealism, we might have considered that trolls were already scrawling anonymously on walls, already making horrible anonymous telephone calls; we might have anticipated folks believing in fake news and twisting social media, if only we had considered that gossip was already being twisted and maliciously faked in small towns and city neighborhoods across America; if we had remembered communist propaganda then we might have anticipated the Russians would adapt to a digital world.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">But then again, who knows? If we hadn’t been so warm and sunny about our neighbors and our country then maybe we wouldn’t have had, then and now, the sort of naive and functional democracy we enjoy. Yes, we have a world-wide reputation for being naive, but I wouldn’t want “the truth,” not if it meant my neighbors being as sour and cynical as those dispirited Russians.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>I was once as foolish</b> as a scientist. I would e-mail my brother using words about the actions and plans of relatives, using words like “maybe” and “perhaps.” I stopped. I had to tell him that from now on I would not write anything to him except for facts I was crystal clear about: No slim math probabilities, no “likely.” My brother was not a scientist, he was only human, just a small town guy with his gossip-beliefs morphing from “possibility” to rock-hard certainty. ’Twas ever the nature of gossip. And social media.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Remember the invention of video tapes and players? (My roommates made a long sex tape) Everyone knew “most” tapes were made for television shows and features, but I am sure I was not the only one surprised to read the actual percentage number of tapes regarding sex. I won’t say the percentage here, but I will just say that when I first came across the number, for a long second I thought, “it does not compute.” </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">And remember the invention of home TV taping, “TiVo?” (teev-oh) Had we looked at some people’s bookshelves, we could have easily predicted that many people would tape far more shows that they would get around to watching. But as I recall, the huge stacks of unwatched tapes were a surprise, something to be reported in newspapers.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Suppose I had bought a TiVo machine, <i>without</i> anticipation of future un-viewed stacks—would this “without” be from my innocence, or from denial? (“defence mechanism”) I believe “denial” is just as God-given as “idealism.” These words go on two sides of the same shiny yellow coin.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Speaking of metaphors, there aren’t two sides to an onion—there are a series of layers. And as the Earth turns, if you care enough to “do the work” then you can, circling the onion, periodically peel down another layer to see more Truth, a new reality. Very few of us, in this life, could peel down as fast and deep as a Shakespeare or a Freud. Those two I will honor without expecting me and my relations to be so wise. Nor my friends. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>My favorite normal friend </b>is Jane. Unlike everybody I knew in my self-help days, she never learned the onion metaphor. Jane was the first person I told that I lived through the final scene of <i>Bladerunner.</i> When we saw the TV episode <i>Ann</i> where Buffy rushes to the big city and uses her middle name, I told her how and why runaways use code names… </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">…and then it took months before I could spit out that I had left home earlier than Buffy did. Recently Jane was interested to hear the new-to-her onion metaphor: when I told her of glumly going down to another layer.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">She said simply, “But I thought you were all done.” </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">“So did I. It’s humbling.” </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">It was humbling the first time, back in my mid-twenties when I first learned to know and see; it was so jarring and exciting to revise reality. For years afterwards I was like an alcoholic fearing relapse, ever wondering in the back of my mind, “Is there something else don’t I know?” And of course there was, that’s how the onion works. At long last I thought I was done; I thought I understood enough of my past to disregard it, and just carry on. But of course God gives us denial for a reason, for until we are ready… Maybe God gives us minimizing as a “placeholder” until one day we are ready to look.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">If my denial came from a desperately needed optimism, and golden idealism, then let me be gentle to myself. And gentle towards the American Jewish girl in <i>Summer of My German Soldier</i> who had denial like me. Just like her on the last page, I too <i>struggled</i> to try to see my parents as “seconds.” (damaged goods on sale) </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Because I said I liked my self-help meetings, a friend came to one. Only one. Sitting beside me, she kept her head down on the table and cried for the entire meeting. Afterwards she told me that she was struggling with feeling disloyal to her dad.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">If you have read the fiction and nonfiction of Pat Conroy, who’s books have been made into movies including <i>Prince of Tides</i> and <i>The Great Santini,</i> then you may have read that while he hated his father, he idealized his mother. My own mother I called nasty names, minimized… and idealized. And was in denial about. Call me stubborn, because I crazily kept thinking I had to clean up my own side of the street first, that “you can only change yourself,” that I needed to be a hero and do it their way, pay my dues, and that I needed to protect my mother from knowledge. I should have remembered the enslaved android Ruk on <i>Star Trek</i>. (The one underground with the duplicate Kirk) Ruk found a way to rebel, to break his programming, by finding an equation: “You can’t protect what is trying to destroy you!” I did, and also I didn’t, down the years and the layers.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">As it happened, back when I was overseas I had a roommate who said he would step on every crack to break his mother’s back. This was back when I optimistically bought a sculpture souvenir for my mother, to give to her when I was less angry… but then I never did. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Today, no wonder </b>my own gossip never morphs, no wonder people can rely on me for “even handed reports.” Down the years I must have been reacting against family falsehoods and exaggerations. And, to use a term only recently being tossed around, (although the eponymous movie goes back to 1944) I was always against “gaslighting.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">With sadness, I’m sure it’s significant that I never told my counsellor or self-help group about a certain <i>big</i> gaslight. Too much stupid pride, shame and anger—My bad, mea culpa, how humbling. Now I attend the Alexandra Writing Centre Society where many of my peers are enthused about writing memoirs, but that is something I can never do. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">My recent onion layer was from reading the book <i>Education</i> by Tara Westover. I e-mailed a lady my age from Free Fall to recommend it. Turns out a mutual friend had recommended it too, but the local library had only two copies, so she was number 500 on the waiting list, so she bought her own. Such a small world. Now my library has lots of copies on display. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">The cover shows an isolated old wooden school desk in a prairie field. Tara is supposed to be homeschooled, but she never is. So Tara struggles on her own to get accepted to Brigham Young University. There she keeps her lack of homeschooling a secret, and there her teacher despises her for not knowing the word “holocaust.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">As I’m sure Tara would agree: Even while feeling background radiation clicks of “shame,” the truth of gaslighting and brainwashing is that <i>you don’t know</i> you are being abused, anymore than all the right-thinking women in a faith colony will know they are being abused when told that they are “supposed to” be “sweet” rather than ask any questions of authority. Meanwhile, <i>normal</i> people in society won’t know about denial; they “don’t get it;” they just cannot grasp that honest God-fearing people like Tara can honestly not know they are in fact being violently abused. —Not even if you salvage their bloody T-shirt from the garbage, as Pat Conroy did— The “education” in the title is not “attending university;” it’s learning to see through eyes figuratively swelled shut by emotional blows.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">My family, just like Tara’s, <i>insisted the entire rest of the world was wrong. </i>My mother would say I couldn’t believe any from-outside-the-family respect or valuing or nice awards or compliments, none whatsoever. “Not until— Because—” Never mind. My family was wrong and I was wrong to believe a dear liar. And now I am peeling another layer, facing my false ideals, and looking back gently on stubbornly wasted years. I had thought I was done.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Sean Crawford</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">at minus 31 degrees centigrade,</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">East of Balzac,</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">January</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">2020</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Footnotes:</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>~Holocaust:</b> From “whole burning.” Nobody I know ever says the word. I only know it because I have often read it. During my schooldays the (pre-war) word had not yet been popularized, probably not until 1963 and the book <i>Night</i>.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>~Denial:</b> How long does it take for it to go away? In a CBC radio documentary, interviewing three victims of sibling abuse, it took all three until their thirties to “see,” with one saying that once she had the word “abuse” her life started to make sense. I never thought to apply the word to myself until someone else did, when I was 36. That’s when a lady friend, age 26, sharing in the bar told me she was intimidated because I could see into her mind so well “due to your abuse issues.” (here’s the <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/radio/thecurrent/the-current-for-may-31-2016-1.3608620/i-am-still-petrified-of-her-sibling-bullying-and-its-lasting-effects-1.3608628">CBC link,</a> you will need to scroll down)</span></div>
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At that time? I still thought being functional in life came from accumulating enough experiences to get functional ‘life skills.’ And perhaps (I forget) I blamed myself for not gathering more experiences faster. For me, this was a useful form of denial, because then at least I would do the sort of things business recruiters look for in resumes. I mean, I “got a life.” Maybe the recruiters are right to believe in “character training” but I was wrong to think it would work for me, because abuse that strikes to the bone does not get transcended that easily.<span style="font-kerning: none;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>~A very sad song:</b> Pat Benatar,<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YEf00GC1rlQ"> at a live</a> performance, explains why every one of her shows down the years have always included <i>Hell is For Children.</i></span></div>
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<b>~A jolly song:</b> Speaking of Internet history,<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RO0-7YAxxDY&feature=c4-overview&list=UUAiABuhVSMZJMqyv4Ur5XqA"> here’s a</a> parody I have linked to before.</div>
Sean Crawfordhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13724844971087639706noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6568091996048915629.post-62956730216743212522020-01-08T06:59:00.000-07:002020-01-08T06:59:43.507-07:00I Wandered in Woking<div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none; text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://essaysbysean.blogspot.com/">essaysbysean.blogspot.com</a></span><span style="font-kerning: none;"> </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Hello Reader,</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Got the January resolve-to-travel bug?</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Guess what? I traveled to beautiful Britain. Nice countryside. I went specifically to the suburb of Woking, south of London, a leafy town of 60, 000 where there are some mansions owned by football players. I never entered them, of course, but I probably walked past their front gates.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">If you go, you may get tourist brochures at the local museum-and-art attraction, the Lightbox. You can find plain walking maps at the library: Unfortunately, the sandpit where the first Martian cylinder landed is not shown, but an enthusiastic local showed me on my map where to walk, as we were conversing in the H.G. Wells-themed bar. Now, I’m not a “social beer-swilling with gusto person,” not a stout Falstaff, I’m more of a skinny quiet bookworm, but as a friendly traveler I would muster up enough to nerve to talk to strangers, and then we would all had a good time. And they even told me of a secret place to go in Central London! (I went) </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Speaking of bars, the big thing I learned was that the only person wearing a cap was me: The old image of male Brits (like the cartoon character Andy Cap) wearing cloth tweed caps is from my dear parent’s lost era. And no head scarfs for the ladies. A local said they call me “smiley” not because I smile easily, although I do (my smile muscles are really broken in) but because I wore a <i>My Neighbor Totoro</i> baseball cap, complete with eyes, whiskers, and Totoro’s preposterous Cheshire smile.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Some folks travel in search of Charles Dickens. Me, I was romantically tracing the Martians of H.G. Wells. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Today I have two poems, presenting a romantic tourist view of what must be just ordinary everyday life to the locals. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Walking About</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b></b></span><br /></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Everyone in Woking </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">tells me to go to the Lightbox.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Shaped like a box kite on end—</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">it holds delightful museum displays.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">I missed the War of the Worlds exhibit by only one year.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">On the ground floor</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">—near some educational toys for sale, including robots—</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">is a cartoon map of the town.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Press buttons to illuminate good environmental practices.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">They glow on the map.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">At the bottom is the train station.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">At the top is the common</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">showing a long furrow </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">and a half buried Martian cylinder. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">From the Lightbox you may stroll the towpath</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">along a leafy canal amidst birds and squirrels,</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">or cross under wide streets,</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">using a tunnel lined on both sides with murals</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">to remember the one-sided war with the Martians.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Downtown is nice art.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Another half buried cylinder </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">among triumphant walk-on pictures</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">of amoebas and bacteria and viruses;</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">the only things on our side during that terrible war.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">A fighter jet on a high pedestal </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">noses around the corner</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">to confront a tall chromium Fighting Machine</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">striding into town from the common.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">A scary trophy to show the children.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Mundanes In Town</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">I</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">A non-local tells me,</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">“I’m only here for the drinking.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">An employee tells me,</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">“I’m only here for the job.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Everyone says to me,</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">“Why the heck are you here </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">in Woking?”</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Maybe to see “the real England,”</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">yet here so plain and drab, </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">—of course not,</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">I’m here for the Martians!</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">II</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Entering from a brick-faced alley</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">I ascend past computer shelves</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">up into the history store.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Here are magazines and games,</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Romans and knights</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">but no sign of Martians,</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">of course not.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">A block north I find the</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">H.G. Wells Convention Centre,</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">without fantastical wall paintings,</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">of course not.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Woking is for Mundanes.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">III</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">A happy tourist,</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">I step off the sidewalk into the storefront room,</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">seeing moonfaced young males in bland shirts.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">I won’t enter whistling songs of wine and women</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">as the lads are setting up their orc and dragon table-games.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">People are soft. The walls are barren.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Taking gentle steps around the tables</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">I go over to the broad-chested responsible looking chap.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">He answers by leading me to the doorway </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">and pointing up the street to the best tavern.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Those lads love a good fantasy,</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">but this is not the space and time </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">to talk of Martians,</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">of course not. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Sean Crawford</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Calgary</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">January</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">2020</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Footnote:</b> I’m going back! I just bought a return ticket to Gatwick for the last half of February. </span></div>
Sean Crawfordhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13724844971087639706noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6568091996048915629.post-63549418935817916482019-12-31T08:19:00.000-07:002019-12-31T08:19:43.837-07:00Update and Relax<div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none; text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://essaysbysean.blogspot.com/">essaysbysean.blogspot.com</a></span><span style="font-kerning: none;"> Update and Relax</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>Being a post “including” (which does NOT mean limited to) two mini parts:</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>1 Blog News Update</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>2 Let us Relax</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b></b></span><br /></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Hello Reader,</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Got relaxation?</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>(1) Blog news update:</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">If a weekend band, after a break, plays another set (of songs) then, for variety, a solo will never be the first song. For my blog, I seldom have two poetry-posts in a row, and for each poem I try to tack on a wee essay.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">From my manuscript <i>Tracing the Martians of H.G. Wells</i> I have been posting, for variety, poems out of manuscript order.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">I have already finished the sections <i>Prologue</i> and <i>The Coming of the Martians.</i> During January, for folks with a “New year’s travel resolution,” over two blog posts I will finish <i>To The Home of H.G. Wells.</i> (I stood outside his house and talked to a neighbour) The sole remaining section—half the poems of which have already been posted—is <i>After the Martians</i>.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">As for visitor statistics, </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">my web site stats have not changed after the screening of <i>The War of the Worlds</i> BBC miniseries <b>taking place in Edwardian times.</b> Too bad, as I would hope fellow-fans around the world would like my poems. Here in town, of course, I’m the only one obsessed with Martians.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>(2) Let us Relax</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Let’s relax, after the bustle of the holiday season. Yes, a few artists who are household names will be hard at work at their craft, even on new year’s day, but you and I can take it easy. No? Then maybe not.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">As for my own artistic ambitions, both in my blog life and my personal life—… I will wait until I have something to <i>show; </i>I try not to <i>tell</i> anything to anyone in advance. As I advise new fiction writers, “Show, don’t tell.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>(3) Because last week’s post was so long,</b> </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">today I merely invite you to scroll down and peruse more of my <i>Gay and Sad URLs</i> piece.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Happy new year.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Sean Crawford</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Calgary</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">January</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">2020</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Footnote:</b> Has something changed? I have no idea why people in the U.S. of A., if you write “including,” have recently started making you add the phrase “but not limited to”—(exasperation deleted) Come on, can’t regular adults be reasonably expected to use the Queen’s English? </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Here is the start of my Oxford computer ROM definition:</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">including | ɪnˈkluːdɪŋ |</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">preposition</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">containing as part of the whole being considered: <i>languages including Welsh and Gaelic</i> | <i>weapons were recovered from the house, including a shotgun</i>.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">include | ɪnˈkluːd |</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">verb <i>[with object]</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>1 </b>comprise or contain as part of a whole: <i>the price includes dinner, bed, and breakfast</i> | <i>other changes included the abolition of the death penalty</i>.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>2 </b>make part of a whole or set: <i>we have included some hints for beginners in this section</i>.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>• </b>allow (someone) to share in an activity or privilege: <i>there were doubts as to whether she was included in the invitation</i>.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>• </b>(<b>include someone out</b>) <i>informal </i>specifically exclude someone from a group or activity.</span></div>
Sean Crawfordhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13724844971087639706noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6568091996048915629.post-81172624749069287262019-12-24T07:51:00.000-07:002020-08-27T18:49:53.159-06:00Sad and Gay URLs<div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none; text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://essaysbysean.blogspot.com/">essaysbysean.blogspot.com</a></span><span style="font-kerning: none;"> </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Cheerful<i> </i>Note:<i> This is the closest I’ve ever come to a </i><b><i>“Merry Christmas!”</i></b><i> gift post.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Note on links:<i> For this post, in my mellow mundane life, I surely have plenty of time to place super-quick (for you) colored links, but no-o-o-o. I have NO desire to offer links on a silver platter, and no felt need to encourage search engines (SEO) to find me. </i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>(As explained in </i>No Links is Good Links<i> archived July 2012)</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Hello Reader,</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Got gay links?</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>I once did an</b> essay on bringing “brights” into work and play, such as sneaking a rubber fish into the water cooler, called <i>Brights in a Grey Life,</i> archived December 2013.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Similarly, sometimes I like to brighten my posts at the end by footnoting a link. Most of my foot-links are gay, some are grey. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">In order to easily find my links again, I have slowly gathered most of them to this one blog page, trying to group similar links together. I thought you might like this post, so I have added some partial explanations. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">(Complete explanations would be found in the original essays)</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Of course, the comforting moon has a dark side, and some of the links are darkly sad. An example would be this <b>top link,</b> </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>(I assume you know to copy and paste into your search or website header)</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>a lengthy news article,</b> complete with photographs, about an award-winning teen hero, who is bullied</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none; text-decoration: underline;"><a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-norfolk-48065405">https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-norfolk-48065405</a></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Homeland Songs</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Charlotte Church sings<i> I Vow to Thee My Country</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none; text-decoration: underline;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8yxUp08IK_g">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8yxUp08IK_g</a></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">The Pogues sing <i>Dirty Old Town</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none; text-decoration: underline;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SK99y22uLv8">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SK99y22uLv8</a></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Billy Bragg sings <i>Jerusalem</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none; text-decoration: underline;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMC08TyvGNk">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMC08TyvGNk</a></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Billy Bragg sings <i>A Full English Brexit</i> song (a pun on ‘full English breakfast,’ as distinguished from a ‘small continental breakfast’)</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none; text-decoration: underline;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07X_yk1v8S4">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07X_yk1v8S4</a></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">At the Edinburgh Fringe Festival,<i> </i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Pictures of Road Signs,</b><i> </i>hacked by an artist</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-46139025</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Doctor Who, three songs without a chorus</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">In a tune, the purpose for having a chorus is like why the 6 o’clock TV news has an anchor: For the comfort of returning to something known. Mornings while shaving, I like to hear three lyrical videos in succession. Because these songs don’t have a “proper” chorus, and are repetitive too, they might seem boring to you. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">But not to me, not when I am deeply moved by the episodes the songs are from.</span></div>
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<li style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>Abigail’s Song</i>, a live stage version by an opera singer</span></li>
<li style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVGilpd0e4s"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVGilpd0e4s</span></a></li>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">(… And for <i>my</i> preferred version of <i>Abigail’s Song</i> that <i>does</i> show the plot</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none; text-decoration: underline;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Radrh60tAUk">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Radrh60tAUk</a></span><span style="font-kerning: none;">. )</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">(<b>2)</b> in Latin, here’s the song the gentle Ood sing for the tenth doctor to “sing him to sleep” at the end of his story.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none; text-decoration: underline;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bs_isWP71FE">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bs_isWP71FE</a></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">(<b>3)</b> “The Long Song” with still photos from the episode where religious people sing. Their song had been constantly sung for generations…</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>The sad, defiant words on screen at the end</i> were by the doctor, “nothing left, only me,” as the last of his kind. He’s “the last” because he killed his entire home planet—men, women and children—to save the universe from the Daleks. Hence he is not quite sane. He often tries to have human companions with him so he doesn’t go totally mad… and also to make sure he doesn’t become emotionally closed off and dead to the universe. Song link:</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none; text-decoration: underline;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPisDzhYrCg">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPisDzhYrCg</a></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Songs On Stage</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">On stage, a seasoned Jonie Mitchel (Companion of the Order of Canada) sings <i>Both Sides Now</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tKQSlH-LLTQ</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">At the proms, Dame Judy Dench sings <i>Send in the Clowns</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none; text-decoration: underline;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvZex3Qf7QQ">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvZex3Qf7QQ</a></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">At the proms, from <b><i>War of the Worlds, </i></b>two very powerful songs, with some narration by Sir Richard Burton</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none; text-decoration: underline;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kvm7HgkNL7E">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kvm7HgkNL7E</a></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>*** *** Start Doctor Who </b>*** ***</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Context for award-worthy Speech clip:</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">War is grim: Earlier in space and time is the War Doctor, <b>played by John Hurt</b>. In his life where he destroys his home planet, <b><i>he</i></b> <b><i>is never given a number</i></b> because his later incarnations <i>want to forget they were ever him. </i>He once met Doctors 10 and 11 together: “the one who regrets and the one who forgets” (the number of children present on that final day)</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Speech clip, four minutes, (filmed in one take)</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">With his war doctor background, one of the most powerful speeches is by the 12th doctor, the “Zygon Inversion speech,” where the Zygon in human guise, Bonnie, symbolizes all sorts of violent revolutionaries… including Quebec FLQ “pure wool” separatists who won’t admit (according to former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau) </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">that other Quebecers, <i>not</i> “pure wool,” would <i>some day</i> <i>want to separate from Quebec</i> in turn. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">I grew up hearing periodic tests of atomic air raid sirens: During the speech clip, two horrible opposing boxes, set up by the doctor, symbolize the “The Button” of the cold war, as well as symbolizing every “go/no go” point of “peace/or war.” </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none; text-decoration: underline;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJP9o4BEziI">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJP9o4BEziI<span style="color: #0e0e0e; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"></span></a></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Regarding the episode and the speech:</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><img alt="pastedGraphic.png" src="blob:https://www.blogger.com/4f9c4987-2598-49a5-bb8e-e7b9521bb226" /></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Giovanni Magnus</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none; text-decoration: underline;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCYobBjA1kk&lc=Ugi1KUv-jDbD0HgCoAEC">2 years ago<span style="color: #4d4d4d; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"></span></a></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">I think this episode was broadcast at just the right time; following the Paris Attacks and on the day before Remembrance Sunday. With so much talk of revolution and vengeance, something like this hits home.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>*** *** End Doctor Who *** ***</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Youtube songs</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>England swings.</i> The song that starts, “Pendulum swings like a pendulum do, bobbies on bicycles two by two,”</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ip6pHbAmjiU</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Music Video by Winnipeg’s Crash Test Dummies</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>Mmm mmm mmm mmm</i> </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none; text-decoration: underline;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eTeg1txDv8w">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eTeg1txDv8w</a></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Music video, <i>Superman’s Song</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none; text-decoration: underline;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EeyhKWjQaKk">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EeyhKWjQaKk</a></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i></i></span><br /></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">For isolation,<i> a Simon and Garfunkel song</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none; text-decoration: underline;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6iFNk60xP0">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6iFNk60xP0</a></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"> </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>One-page funeral article</b> on a very small service for a writer once very well known, Eric Nicol</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">https://bcbooklook.com/2012/09/16/authors-remembering-eric-nicol/</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Speech, impromptu, </b>with music, by Robert (Bobby) Kennedy, on the night Martin Luther King was murdered.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none; text-decoration: underline;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GoKzCff8Zbs">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GoKzCff8Zbs</a></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Special note: Even in our 21st century, I can still feel sad from knowing that if Senator Robert Kennedy had lived, and become president, then <b>he would have got us out of Vietnam. </b>Swiftly. Without any patience for stupid well-meaning excuses about how hard and lengthy it would be to extricate such a mass of men and material.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Note: a John Denver song includes the lines, “and your mother called last Friday, <i>Sunshine</i> made her cry;” the music from the movie <i>Sunshine</i> is used under the above speech. I think the film was first shown on TV, but I forget, it was all so long ago. I read the book, back in the day.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Song,</b> of <i>Abraham, Martin and John</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none; text-decoration: underline;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TlxAFq_9Mak">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TlxAFq_9Mak</a></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Lengthy blog page</b> about a lonely “digital nomad” world traveler, to which I linked for the sake of a small quote about belonging, near the end.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">https://www.fluentin3months.com/vagabond/</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Anya, with no last name:</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">The four video links here are in my essay, <i>Anya, Friend of Buffy</i> </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">(But I should have called it <b><i>Death of Anya</i></b><i> </i>to get hits and match my <i>Death of Buffy</i> piece) </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">where I explain <i>WHY </i>Anya fears bunnies, and <i>why</i> that fear leads to her friend Buffy fighting her with a sword.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Note: Anya was born human, and is finally human again, but after being a vengeance demon for about a millennium, she has forgotten mortality, hence her monologue:</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Anya, ‘death of Joyce’ monologue</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZ96c7IOIPQ </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Very short light Song, of Anya’s paranoia of bunnies</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLMaSII_URU</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Light Duet, by Anya and her live-in fiance “I’ll never tell”</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ooD4mmmYrTg</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Anya’s cheery upbeat death song, from living with her fiancé, reminding us that after many horrible centuries, she finally had a happy life, with dreams.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none; text-decoration: underline;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8k2QYSvca40">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8k2QYSvca40<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; color: blue;"></span></a></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Drama clip,</b> </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Buffy the Vampire Slayer, from just outside the doorway, overhears the two grown men in her life, her librarian father-figure and her vampire boyfriend-figure, state the grim, iron prophecy that she is to be killed. So she goes into shock, laughing an unnatural laugh.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none; text-decoration: underline;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcCOZSMpILQ">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcCOZSMpILQ</a></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">(Incidentally, my most popular essay, by hit count, is <i>Death of Buffy</i> from January 2012</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none; text-decoration: underline;"><a href="https://essaysbysean.blogspot.com/2012/01/the-death-of-buffy.html">https://essaysbysean.blogspot.com/2012/01/the-death-of-buffy.html</a></span><span style="font-kerning: none;"> )</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Youtube</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Bonnie Rae, with Bruce Hornsby</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>I can’t make you love me, if you don’t</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none; text-decoration: underline;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTIu4UbkK94">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTIu4UbkK94</a></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Sting, from a few years before the Berlin Wall ‘came a-tumbling down’:</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>Russians </i>(“What can I do to save my boy, from Oppenheimer’s deadly toy?”)</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none; text-decoration: underline;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHylQRVN2Qs">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHylQRVN2Qs</a></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">(Note for nonChristian readers: The “tumbling down” phrase comes from a rousing spiritual song, which I memorized as a boy, where “fought” is pronounced as “fit”: <i>Joshua fit the battle of Jericho, and the wall came a-tumbling down.</i>)</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Lengthy essay with photographs.</b> A writer who has been to Dachau takes his daughter to see an empty old missile silo and talks to her on the drive back, without meaning to scare her.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">http://whatever.scalzi.com/2007/12/21/a-month-of-writers-day-seventeen-jay-lake/</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>News Story, interview</b> on television</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">London Marathon staff being abusive to slower runners</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">https://www.bbc.com/news/av/uk-48130690/london-marathon-pacesetter-says-slower-runners-abused-on-course</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Trailhead for news stories,</b> where a pretty young actress, who has lived all her life<i> </i>in her dear mother country of Taiwan, on the island of Formosa, hopes her country would never be annexed by big China, not like how big Germany did an <i>Anschluss</i> of Austria. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">(The annex was during the Third Reich; Austria, with its German-speaking culture, regained independence after WWII) </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">The link was made regarding ideology in an essay on how to hack together a speech.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none; text-decoration: underline;"><a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-46250674">https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-46250674</a></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Prose, read aloud</b> </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">British Actor David Tennant, in his own voice, reads his forward to the autobiography of actress Elizabeth Sladen, better known worldwide as <b>Sarah Jane</b> Smith. Takes six minutes and has lots of stills. <i>“She inspired absolute devotion from everyone who worked with her.”</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none; text-decoration: underline;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUNDkw3KBVM">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUNDkw3KBVM</a></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Lengthy Open Letter to Brazil,</b> calling on Brazilians to reform because of shortcomings including</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">(—but my lawyer insists I add <i>‘but not limited to’</i> because he says <i>you</i> might not know what the word “<i>including</i>” means—)</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">the sort of “amoral familism” we see (or once saw) in southern Italy, but not in northern Italy.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none; text-decoration: underline;"><a href="https://markmanson.net/brazil">https://markmanson.net/brazil</a></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Youtube of a lengthy memorial</b> at my club for Michael Cody DTM</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">For ease of download by dial-up, my blog has no bells or whistles, no photographs of me. But as for what I look like: Near the end that’s me on camera asking about Michael’s belt.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGLC5VizmSk&feature=em-upload_owner</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Sean Crawford</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Calgary,</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Merry Christmas readers,</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">2019</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Footnotes:</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">~Today’s blog has a <i>lighter</i> page of URL’s. You may have seen the “heavier, darker” sequel to this post which was archived back in September 2019.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">~How queer, to think the “new, exciting” World Wide Web is no longer “new.” In fact, social media-wise, I have heard that Facebook is now only for the “older generation.” (People over 30) </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Back when the web was exotic, newspapers would feature reviews of URLs. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">(And I suppose even the folks <i>with</i> computers would have FOMO) </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">It’s been years since they reviewed Internet sites. Now they only review video games.</span></div>
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Sean Crawfordhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13724844971087639706noreply@blogger.com0