Citizens and Elections

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Sometimes Journalists
Speaking of Voting

Speaking of Elections
They Knew Back in Classical Times
About Polling Stations
Footnote

Sometimes journalists have a vested interest in not reporting the news. For example, five years ago, during the Winter Olympics in Vancouver, an Alberta-based women’s hockey team, right after the final game, celebrated winning olympic gold by publicly popping a bottle of champagne… even though some “girls” were under the legal drinking age, being only 18 years old. As I recall, the “news” took up several paragraphs—and no one wanted to spoil a good story by reporting that in Alberta “women” can drink at age 18: not at 19 as in some more populated parts of Canada. 

And here in Alberta, incidentally, you can get your learners driving permit at 14. (Probably so you can drive around the edge of your big family farm—while in other provinces it’s 16) Voting in Alberta starts at 18. The legal age of citizenship, with voting and jury service—which creates our binding case law—is not something I take lightly.

Speaking of voting, reporters are doing stories on Canadians overseas, ex-patriots, who are offended they can’t vote. A man in California says angrily, (Globe and Mail, Oct 10, 2015) “This is something I believe is wrong—it should be citizenship over residency.” Emotion makes for good news stories. What the journalists leave out, of course, is the 40,000 “prostitutes” in Lebanon. No one even knew those “Canadians” were there until less than ten years ago when Israel suddenly invaded. Then they demanded the Canadian government get them out, tout suite.

I think “real” Canadians would have known our federal government just isn’t that capable.

I called them prostitutes—they certainly weren’t there as tourists—because they had hardened their hearts, pretending to love us, but actually only using us, getting Canadian citizenship as a fire exit in case the Israelis ever invaded.

I truly don’t believe they are raising their blessed children to believe that Canadian values, such as universal human rights and the Charter, are more important than the surrounding values of the Middle East. As Canadian reporters would know, some years back the province of Ontario was flirting with bringing in sharia (Arab) law, but only for Muslim-Canadians. (Perhaps people thought of how aboriginals can achieve justice with sentencing circles on reservations) The difference, to me, is that sharia is not just. My lawyer friend Blair was outraged at sharia. He would never have voted for it. I have no enthusiasm for 40,000 prostitutes participating in our elections.

Speaking of elections, in mid-elementary school we studied how elections worked. Looking back, perhaps this was because we lived in interesting times: This was during the years when new countries in Africa and Asia, having freshly achieved independence from Europe, were trying out their own elections. (The mode (average) year for new African states was 1960)

Maybe the lesson-module was taught province-wide, I don’t know. Anyways, children all over our school district learned words like “scrutineer” and “platform.” Enthusiastic students would telephone a party headquarters and request pamphlets. The word soon went out to all teachers, district-wide, to tell us not to telephone the New Democratic Party, as the NDP staff were volunteers, with limited pamphlets, and they couldn’t handle the workload from students.

My memories of elementary school are clear: Never did I hear anyone hear anyone say the line I heard a 12-year old girl say on CBC radio last week. She had been taking some sort of civics at school. She said, “If you don’t vote, you have no right to complain.” Such a sad, pathetic, despairing line.

Back in elementary school I was enthusiastically reading history texts about the ancient Greeks and Romans being proudly devoted to citizenship. They never recorded for posterity any such line, a line I didn’t hear until years after I was an adult.

They knew back in classical times that actions and decisions and thinking have to engage citizens year round. As our first female prime minister, Kim Campbell, said, “An election is no time to discuss serious issues.” (“Snap elections” in Canada are called by surprise, by the party in office, and usually last about a month) 

Perhaps she meant that any person waiting, to discuss-and-think, until after a snap election has been called is as irresponsible as a college student waiting until the last possible night before thinking through the implications of his due-next-morning research paper. I think she mostly meant that during an election you have barely time for sound bites, slogans and feeling rushed, no time for open-minded deliberate thinking, little or no patience for chewing over explanations.

I am sure some folks, in their despair, would say the public has no responsibility for taking action year round, because the public, they would say, has no authority. No classic citizenship, only a peasant-like endurance; only a brief flash of power, like a firefly in the dark on election night. This despairing, powerless point of view is probably what produces the desperate line, “If you don’t vote you have no right to complain.” If voting is all there is, they reason, then they have to hype it up, even if the line sounds like a cry of weakness. Of course, the fellow-Canadians they are hoping against hope to goad into voting are just like the folks in Lebanon: “they just don’t get it.”

Our ancestors were no giants. They gossiped and complained as much as we do today. Yet, in place of despair they had dignity. They felt the rank of “citizen” was the highest honor in the land.

Sean Crawford

Calgary and Vancouver

October election week

2015

About Polling Stations:

I could be wrong, (not really) but I think advanced polling stations were intended for folks with disabilities, folks going out of town, and for other special reasons. I think the government in recent years has been pushing advanced polls as merely another option, a convenience. Hence the early-voting statistics are up this year, with lineups at the advance polls. Journalists are reporting the lineups, but they aren't reporting just when the government changed to advanced polls being for mere convenience.

Because I will be in another time zone on Election Day, I voted early for the first time, and I can tell you, the atmosphere was different than I’m used to. The lineup did not feel happy; people were silent and uncertain. Partly because the place was a lot smaller than a regular polling station—the staff must have been surprised by the turn out of people voting for convenience.

I don’t want voting to ever be convenient; and, even though I’m a science fiction fan, I certainly don’t want voting to ever be done by pushing a button while sitting at home on my couch. (As some have proposed—I suppose the technology already exists)

When I hit the polling station, even during the last hour before closing, I find a nice positive energy in the air. I feel a certain community spirit towards those who are as committed as I am to doing their duty. Not because they “have to,” or have been goaded, but because they quietly think it is the proper thing to do, even if nobody else notices. But we who are there, we notice each other. 


Footnote:
How amusing: Passing through Kamloops (see Kamloopsthisweek.com) I found the anti-Sean. I mention him not to laugh at him, but to fairly balance my post with "the other side." On page A9 for Tuesday October 13 of the above publication, I  find a letter to the editor headlined It is high Time We are able to a vote Online with the quote call-out "The process of voting should be updated, streamlined and made for (sic) more accessible and convenient for everyone." 

The writer, Brian Husband complains about his experience at an advance poll without giving any reason as to why he felt entitled to vote in advance—presumably he wanted convenience. 
He then writes, "…it just stands to reason I should be able to sign in, prove my identification through a username and password and vote. I should not have to get into my car, burn fossil fusels and find the one and only location, open only during certain hours and not available 24 hours a day, seven days a week."

...I may be starting to sound like a grumpy old man,  but who can tell me why this has to be so difficult when it could be so easy? 

No wonder young  people don't bother to vote."

Well dear readers, I could tell Mr. Husband why, by giving him this blog post to read, but he might find it too long to be convenient. 

Arete Means Excellence

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As I write this, young Olympians are gathered in Sochi striving to become stronger, to go further and faster. They are living examples of the ancient Greeks word, arete, meaning excellence. In the Athlete Village, the young at heart mingle with a friendly excitement you can feel from way over here: The Olympians remind me that I too could strive for excellence—In fact, I have been fitfully doing so ever since a certain class in college.

Meanwhile, far below that special thin atmosphere of Mount Olympus, down here in the muggy world, students the same age as Olympians will be crossing fields to enter campus corridors. Whither arete? In secondary school, as children, the students would have done schoolwork that was adequate, more or less, to pass. As they enter post secondary, as adults, they realize at some level the truth: “You get out of life what you put in.” Some will be inspired—They will strive to learn: A day with new knowledge is like a day with golden sunshine. But many will merely just do what they have to…At least they can look forward to student parties. It’s a long drop from Olympus to campus. Why are so many young people, unlike their peers in Sochi, content to do shoddy work?

I guess they lack vision.

I don’t think students are third-string from a lack of measurable challenges, since their marks are a measurement, and they surely have no shortage of peers to strive with. Rather, I think undergraduates enjoy having a few years of not yet being accountable to life… years betwixt boy and man, girl and woman. I dimly recall a syndicated advice columnist (Ann Landers?) responding to parents. They told Ann about their child’s college sending them two letters. The one letter was a bill for some youthful misadventure. The other letter said the college refused to reveal what the misadventure of their student was, citing (adult) privacy. Ms. Landers suggested the parents switch envelopes and send the letters back.

Citizen

I think many students, despite being legally adults, don’t see themselves as believing in excellence and responsibility, not yet: Among their peers, all too often, being too responsible is too uncool. To illustrate: I attended Mount Royal College, class of 1984. While you would think that folding desks, compared to normal desks, would be more portable, smaller and lighter—else why make them folding? —I once had an early morning class in a small room by the wrestling pit, a room with nothing but huge folding desks made out of cast iron or something: Very noisy. It was a career class in Leisure Services, (Recreation Therapy) so I knew the exact (nineteen) head count. And for nearly every class, various students arriving late would crash around unfolding their desks as the rest of us were trying to be involved. It would have been simple enough for me to arrive on time, count chairs, and then unfold any needed extras before class started. But I never did. Yes, I had initiative, but no, I didn’t want to be too responsible: I judged at the time it wouldn’t seem cool to my peers.

I could discern the contrast between common students and the Greek ideal of arete because I had left the adjacent army base and crossed the abandoned airstrip over to Mount Royal College. I felt like a minority of one. (As every student feels like) At my student newspaper, if someone came in later on the weekend, they could tell if I had been in earlier: I was, people told me, the only one who always put a pad of typing paper between my typewriter and the telephone so I could take phone messages.

When I was in Leisure Services I knew in theory which program would be the most athletic: dance. My college had no dance program; we did have a theatre program. The theatre students, like everyone else, were more student than professional. One day when they were giving memorized recitals, during class, from a stage, I noticed the only person who didn’t ask for help by calling “line!” was Brendan Lavery. He presented Edgar Allan Poe’s lengthy “(Quoth) The Raven.” For doing dance and movement, Brendan was the most skilled of us all.

Arete

It was by taking the Creative Movement class, with permission, that I had the opportunity to be among dramatists. (Note: I find movement is to dance what drama is to acting) Because our teacher, Joyce Grey, taught summers at the Banff School, she had to leave us, mid-semester, for (I think) three weeks to go travel across Canada holding auditions. She found a substitute, a man from the real world: Kevin McKendrick, of the locally based, seen around the world, Arete Mime (Physical Comedy) Troupe. He was determined to expose us to arete. And to our shock, he did.

Our morning class was held in the bare dance studio, no desks to crash around. The first thing Kevin told us, standing with Joyce before she left, was we were to be on time, because he would be locking the doors and starting the class promptly. For his first class a raven came tap-tap-tapping on the door—and she wasn’t allowed in. He started the class by, as one student complained, “…working our asses off!” Such vigorous exercise was to allow maximum stretching for our muscles, ligaments and tendons, after we were warmed up: “Your body is your instrument.” For every class the long vigorous routine never varied. Our in-class lectures and exercises would be matched by homework exercises. I remember being the first element, earth, as I “lectured my fellow executives” on why the Ocean Ranger had capsized. Figuratively, I didn’t dare stumble or call “line!” Call it arete. Classmates noticed I wavered a bit as I stood; the teacher said it was entirely appropriate to be a mixed character as I was.

I suppose many of my classmates in leisure and theatre would, like Marjorie Morningstar, go on to have regular lives. One day, talking with Kevin, he told me how he had avoided that common fate. He had been in Canadian Mime School—and by the end of school, he and two of his classmates decided to make a go of it as their own troupe. As Yoda would say, there is no try: I think they really had no choice, if they were going to succeed, but to seek arete. Hence the vigorous exercises every day. I guess by starting bang on time every day the arete trio never succumbed to pencil sharpening or drifting standards or drifting morale…

By the time Kevin left our class we no longer complained about working so hard: We “got it.” Kevin had held up a torch, giving us a vision of excellence, and we had shared the flame…

That semester was so long ago… I remember an ancient Greek urn depicting athletes forever striving, forever young. Today, old enough to wear reading glasses, I fitfully strive for excellence too.

Sean Crawford

In the shadow of the Parthenon,
Calgary,

February 2014

Footnotes:

~My essay on Creative Movement is archived April 2012; other essays can be found under the label Olympics.

~The airstrip, a relic of WWII, was used during the week  for a truck driving course; during the weekend you might see it used for radio controlled toys, go carts or for launching hot air balloons. Other relics in the area are hangers and very steeply roofed houses, service issue, presumably based on the nation-wide pattern for houses with heavy snowfall. The runway was destroyed to make way for fancy media housing for the 1988 winter Olympics. Those media houses became student housing.

~The army base was decommissioned, over Mayor Al Duerr’s protest, to save the federal government money. Someday the feds will research how it boosts morale and retention to have a base in the city, but then it will be too late… When my dad was stationed there during the war there was nothing but bush between the base and downtown. At night, when the bars closed down, he would walk back to barracks… I’m amused that my dad and I both did time in the guard shack.

~The wrestling pit had been originally planned to be a sunken fountain, according to Len Thomas, Ph.D. He had suggested it be a wrestling pit instead. Fully padded, bottom and sides, it was great for doing cooperative games, or peer lectures just before going off to do recreation.

~My own little class, with a wall of glass, probably had some sort of curtains or blinds, but just around the corner was a small room called the Goldfish Bowl, opening onto a common area with tables and a dairy bar. No curtains. The class was great for learning to teach, Len told me, because students would instantly get distracted if their attention wavered.

Sidebar:

I’m sure I was late for morning class on occasion myself; I mean no lasting disrespect for young students. In fact, I like a poem inspired by what an excellent martial arts master, Masami Tsuruoka, has taught:

We are beginners when we are born.

We are beginners when we go to school.

We are beginners when we leave our parents’ home.

We are beginners when we have children.

We are beginners when we retire.

We are beginners when we die.

The Spirit of Karate-Do Teachings of Masami Tsuruoka, by Andrew Bowerbank, 1997, Morris Marketing and Media Services, Toronto

Oppressors, Gays and the IOC

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You would think, for most of the last hundred years, that the legislation and harsh anti-gay efforts of the police force would be like a heavy foot on the people’s back. You’d think it couldn’t get any worse, only better, but it has: Like how a certain African country instigated new anti-gay measures just last month, like how India has deleted some gay rights, like how Russia has put into law new oppression against homosexuals…

I’m starting to see some connections.

Meanwhile, as regards human rights and the IOC, (International Olympic Committee) people are naturally focused less on the last hundred years and more on the last decade—Women’s ski jump—and especially on this year’s Games in Russia—Gay rights. As you know, the former Soviets have made new laws against homosexuals. Unfortunately for the Russians, the athletes of the lands with ice and snow are the athletes most likely to know that human rights—when things seem otherwise quiet—are the canary in the coalmine. Human rights are the outer minefield defense—at the first boom, tyranny approaches.

Some people are wondering why the IOC has “thrown the athletes under the bus.” Ideally, the young Olympians should be able to focus solely on their sports, secure in the knowledge they can safely delegate speaking up for gay rights to the IOC. But no. The IOC has fumbled the catch—heck, they didn’t even reach for the ball. This leadership failure is especially unacceptable because, as I heard an athlete explain on the CBC, the Olympics are about encouraging citizenship.

I wouldn’t have connected the IOC to oppression, but—yes. For this sad conclusion, I have only two dots to connect. Firstly, I note that my favorite newspaper essay-columnist, Christie Blatchford, has a recent piece both tragic—because in the middle she names and charts the women who diverted their life paths away from ski jumping—and humorous: She names a prominent official, the one who said, in his opposition to women ski jumping, that ski jumping involved big jumps, “not appropriate from a medical point of view” and near the end Christie says he will be at the Games and she’s hoping he will be there to see all those uteruses safely jumping. She makes him look like a stupid idiot.

Secondly, it was George Orwell who opened my eyes by pointing out that those leaders who would benefit from a bad system must render themselves too stupid to notice. So maybe that explains it: Decade after decade the IOC keeps stupidly dragging their feet on even a simple reform like having former Olympians on the committee. (Update: According to Wiki-pedia, "These last 10 years, the composition has evolved… Member seats have been allocated specifically to athletes…") It’s easy to make a simple theory: They want no light to be shone on their actions. Or perhaps the answer is more complex; perhaps, like so much of human affairs, the IOC motivations are mixed, being both stupid and sinister.

By this more complex theory, the IOC is like the CCP—Chinese communist party. To illustrate: Last weekend I read an autobiography of a former believer, Kenneth Ore, called Song of the Azalea. (2005, Penguin Canada) Ore had been a secret Communist Party member for decades, first in China and then, during British rule, in Hong Kong. Devoted to the revolution, he had organized things, giving and receiving orders, while trusting the Party. At last he realized the system was bad, that honest Party members like him never made it past junior management. The middle and senior management were too corrupt to want honest idealists like him around… To me the dinosaurs of the IOC, who willfully disregarded the British Columbia Supreme Court ruling that the IOC was discriminating against women ski jumpers, would be the same saurians who wouldn’t want honest amateurs on their IOC committee. No, not while staying in their five star hotels on the Olympic dime.

I suppose, back when Russia was communist, Putin would have noticed similar dynamics. I am struck by how Ore, years after WWII, tried to drum up Chinese patriotism by encouraging hatred of Japanese wartime behavior. (Now I understand better certain news out of Asia) Obviously Putin has no Japanese servicemen to talk about, and I would hope Russia’s remaining Jews are no longer a suitable target, but…

Those poor idealists—Orwell knew their fate: In Nineteen Eighty-four Winston Smith notes with dread how a fellow party member is just too enthusiastic and innocent. Sure enough, the guy gets disappeared. Queerly, in the same year Orwell’s work came out in Britain, over in the USA Robert A. Heinlein came out with Revolt in 2100 (aka If This Goes On—) where, as in Orwell’s London, there are electronic eyes and ears in prominent places. Two young heroes join the underground, an organization evolved from the Masonic Lodges. The innocent narrator, John, has a slightly older worldly friend, Zeb. In one scene John asks why the pariahs still persist in their heresy, since after all, “We’ve told them often enough!” In a later scene Zeb shocks him by saying the lodge is inclusive, and mentioning some groups other than pariahs, and saying:

 BEGIN QUOTE

“…and we need all the help we can get.”

I thought it over. The idea was logical, though somehow vaguely distasteful. I decided to gulp it down quickly. “I suppose so. I imagine even the pariahs will be of some use to us, when it comes to the fighting, even if they aren’t eligible for membership.” (in the Lodge)

Zeb gave me a look I knew too well. “Oh for Pete’s sake, John! When are you going to give up wearing diapers?”

“Huh?”

“Shut up. Take sex away from people. Make it forbidden, evil, limit it to ritualistic breeding. Force it to back up into suppressed sadism. Then hand the people a scapegoat to hate. Let them kill a scapegoat occasionally for cathartic release. The mechanism is ages old. Tyrants used it centuries before the word ‘psychology’ was ever invented. It works, too. Look at yourself.”

“Look Zeb, I don’t have anything against the pariahs.”

“You had better not have. You’ll find a few dozen of them in the Grand Lodge here. And by the way, forget that word ‘pariah.’ It has, shall we say, a very high negative index.”

He shut up and so did I; again I needed time to get my thoughts straight… END QUOTE

Well, sports fans, what do you think?

http://www.canada.com/olympics/columns/sochi-2014-delay-in-getting-womens-ski-jumping-into-olympics-a-big-blow-to-athletes

Sean Crawford

During the Sochi Olympics

In the land of the free

2014

Footnotes:

~I have written on Olympic reform before:

Olympics and Feminism, archived in March 2013

Olympics and Boards, archived in February 2013

~There is a sad scene in Ore’s book where his older brother shows up at the door, ragged and footsore. He has just walked 900 miles home after discovering that the Red Army is just as corrupt as the government army they are fighting. (Historical note: The government army later joined the mass exodus to Taiwan, and later, although they offered, they were not allowed by General Douglas McArthur to join the UN forces in Korea: corrupt armies are not effective.)

Tragically, Ore encourages his brother to keep faith in the Party, saying surely it must have been only a few bad apples… Decades later? Ore has defected to the west, and his older brother has become very unhappy with sacrificing his own life path for the Party, too angry to speak on the telephone to his own brother.

Application: Like those young innocent brothers, I too thought, initially, “surely it is only coincidence or something” that the noble IOC, dedicated to enhancing citizenship and good character, haven’t supported rights for women and gays. Surely, I thought,  any day now they’ll step up to the plate. No. Never.

~On the CBC I heard someone in an “athlete committee” say the Canadian Olympic Committee has done nothing. I wonder why they haven’t dared to “speak truth to the power of the IOC?” I can’t know, but I do know money is not the sole motivator in life. The COC may have things other than money in common with the IOC.

  

~You aren’t granted human rights by coming to North America; you already have them, everywhere on earth, from the UN declaration of human rights back in 1948; rights can only be denied.

    

Olympics and Feminism

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Prologue:

There is a War On

*Issues Are Connected (Here are the last three paragraphs from the original introduction)

The (US) president's second mistake, (during his speech it Cairo) according to the confident local Muslim, is that he said the west, too, needs to do more for equal rights for women. Too many Muslims will use this as an excuse not to act. I have read in other sources that Muslim men believe that we western men are dishonest, that in reality we too believe that women should not be equal. This reminds me of how the white South Africans, under apartheid, used to say that we too believed in racism.

I have a dream that one day we shall all meet under a democratic sky, a dream encouraged by the scientific evidence (see economist Krueger) that terrorism is connected not to poverty but to a lack of democratic rights. Perhaps the completion of the war on terror will be at the end of a long slow road to human equality. Not male equality.

So if you know any western people on the winter Olympic committee, people who are making us look bad to the Muslims, please rap their knuckles for me.

The Olympics are for Peace

*An Issue went to Court (Here are the last two paragraphs of an Olympic essay introduction)

Nancy Green attended university in Nelson; I took a U of Calgary night school class in law: I learned how the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms applies not only to citizens, but, by federal Supreme Court ruling, to anyone under Canadian sky. Now I find how oppressors can get around that ruling if the orders to oppress are issued from offshore.

The B.C. Supreme Court (provincial) has finished hearing the case of the Canadian women ski jumpers. "There will little solace to the plaintiffs in my finding that they have been discriminated against; there is no remedy available to them in this court." This was in the Calgary Sun, Saturday July 11, 2009. The Sun, reminiscent of my other essay, has buried the story 15 pages into the sports section.

Olympics and Feminism

I can never forget her. She was a pretty biathlete who wanted to be an Olympian. I remember her bright white T-shirt, nice blue jeans and blond athletically short hair. When I came upon her she was standing on a low stool and painting on the boards on a construction site. Here our city's Olympic plaza was being built, inspired by the plaza in Sarajevo. People at the winter games in Sarajevo, a few months ago, had gathered every night celebrate the day's events. For our own Olympics we would soon have a plaza too.

For this dear lady, though, future Olympic celebrations would be bittersweet. The looming Olympics excited the rest of us; schoolchildren had painted happy athlete stick figures on the boards. And there the blond stood, on her stool, like Moses on a hill, sketching a holy land she could never tread. My friend would never ski at the Games. She would only watch.

The world body for the biathlon for the winter Olympics is mainly European. They had just met and "decided" that female biathletes would not participate. There would only be a men's event. I could understand that Europeans lag behind the rest of us in feminism, but understanding does not mean forgiveness. Not from me. By waiting four years for the coming Olympics, and then a further four years down the road... my friend, despite her buff determined body, would be too old to compete. How very sad. I felt like an eight year old trying to silently comfort an adult as I reached up to pat her arm twice.

Down the years I've never quite wanted something badly enough to become devoted to excellence and focus, not like an athlete, but I sympathize deeply with those who do. Myself, I prefer to read more than I exercise, reading things like George Santayana's "Those who forget history are condemned to repeat it."

This winter I am imagining some European guy talking out of both sides of his mouth. "Rights? Women already have equal rights... And besides, they don't deserve it." In Canada the right to the pursuit of happiness is perhaps not yet equal either: buried in the middle of the newspaper, buried six pages into the sports section, is news that the Europeans have done it again. According to the Calgary Herald, Nov 29, 2006 page E6, the International Olympic Committee has ruled that the coming Games of Ice and Snow will include an exciting new event, ski cross, but will not include ski jumping, not for women. I guess the old unexciting concept of equality is still too new for them.

The article contained quotes of Canadian athletes mourning the loss, and hoping against hope that the aging leading lights in their field would not retire before the next Olympics. Ironically, on the same page was a story of Canadian ski racers getting inspired by, and empathizing with, the Canadian male ski racers. Excitement? Empathy? If only Europeans could learn, as Canadian women have, to stand in someone else's ski boots. How many times can we turn our heads while the light of half the human race is dimmed?

By the way, ten years later an eager young biathlete told me that my old friend was still hitting the snow trails skiing and shooting.

Epilogue:

Finally the issue came to a sad conclusion. This time the story was not buried in the sports section: The front of section C, "People," for the Calgary Herald, Sunday April 10, read "Behind the scenes of this week's announcement allowing women's ski jumping into the Olympics was a group of Calgary mothers who worked tirelessly on  behalf of their daughters to buck the international sporting establishment."

I am angered at the word "allowing" for I think rights are not "allowed;" I am soured at how the "work" came from women old enough to have known feminism, not from any of the young male "good German" sports figures; I am saddened at the recital of the names and occupations of young daughters who, while they may have gone on to "get a life," going on to "the real world," they have also left behind their dreams of skiing down Mount Olympus. A little bit of my dreamlife is gone too.

Sean Crawford

as the snow is dumped on us again today,

heartened to feel that spring is as perennial as hope,

March 2013 (and April 2011.31)

Footnote: This is a companion piece to my one from last month, (February) Olympics and Boards. As I wrote then, I see no reason to wait until next year's Olympics before we start to think critically about the Games. Once the Games start we will be too busy to think.

Update: Edmonton Sun, Dec 13, 2013 , page Sports 19, below a big (AFP) photo of a mid-air skier, and a small (Getty Images/AFP) picture of Canadian woman ski jumper Atsuko Tanaka:
Headline: High Flyers Grounded kicker: Canadian ski jumpers won't receive any of the $37 million coming to Own the Podium program
According to coach Lyon, "…said the program received funds in years past, but because the Canadian jumpers didn't perform particularly well at last year's world championships, they wre cut off—meaning that the build-up to this season for Sochi has been a financial grind for the team and the program."

As the article by Steve Bufffery explains, from coach Lyon: "He said a professor at McMaster University, in a gesture of goodwill, designed a special harness the Canadian jumpers could use at the Ottava facility to help in their preparations for Sochi. He said most of the top European teams use wind tunnels for training." But it would have cost abut $40,000 for three days… and so the Candadian athletes were shut out.

Buffery's article ends: "And how's this for the ultimate kick in the head? While programs like Ski Jumping Canada are forced to scramble ahead of the Games, the COC recently announced that it will be  flying its new team mascot Kamak the Moose all across Canada and to Sochi to do whatever it  is mascots do. Talk about getting your priorities mixed up."