My Big Box Experience

My Big Box Experience. 

 

Walking into any box store be it Walmart, Ikea, Home Depot or the like can be an over whelming experience based on the sheer scale of these monstrous facilities.  When I approach a Walmart with caution and pass the lack lustre greeter I am, at least momentarily assaulted by the sensory over-load that actually does greets me.  The smells, sounds, colours, the space that goes to infinity along with the vast array of unusual people that frequent the store is all unique.  Walmart is a surreal experience and like a deer in the headlights I really don’t know how or where to proceed.

 

I look at the crumpled ball of paper in my hand that serves as a list and substitutes as my short term memory as I begin to wander the vast labyrinth of aisles in search of the five items of my quest.  Lighting.  Where would that be? No one to ask.  God send me a sign.  HOUSEHOLD.  There is a God.  I proceed. 

 

Variety.  Always too much.  All from China. I’m again over-whelmed.  Therefore, short sentences.  Breath is short.  Do they pump oxygen in like casinos or out?  I don’t know.  I feel dizzy. 

 

All the lamps and every last thing in this store is part of a supply chain that originates in China.  I find the lamp I want, but where are the light bulbs?  Again no one to ask.  But then I peek at my list. I need a coat rack and I see hangers, logic tells me they will flock together, but they don’t.  In my peripheral vision I see a blue blur of a sales clerk.  I stock her .  She is tired and old.  I don’t know if the two facts are related.  She takes me to the coat racks but in truth only returns me to the hangers and says’ Funny I thought they were here.” I thanked her and told her I had the same thought.

 

I looked at my cart with the Chinese lamp and no bulbs, with the absence of a coat rack and four more things on my list. I would try one more thing.  A smart TV.  Entertainment.  Another younger but slower clerk took me down several aisles and showed me two boxes and started to walk away.  Where was the high pressure sales pitch I thought?  I stopped him.

 

“Can you tell me about these TV’s and what’s the difference.  He went quiet and looked long and pensively at the two boxes. He answered about $100.

 

I looked at the mentally challenged clerk and thanked him before leaving the store.  It was difficult since I had lost my orientation and made several wrong turns and was seeing mirages on the horizon when finally I saw the sea of self check out cashier stations.  There were three over worked cashiers of the human variety still employed.  I staggered passed them to the exit and took my first gulps of fresh air.  

 

Looking back at the store from the safety of my car from the vantage point of my handicapped parking spot I thought of the recent advertisement of thrifty shoppers leaving an IKEA store with their bargains as the wife shouts, “DRIVE, DRIVE”  as if they were thieves escaping the scene of a crime.  Relief crept over me as I drove to the IKEA on Jane Street in a further attempt to find the five items on my list.

 

I knew there would be no Smart TV set at Ikea unless I took one of their display cardboard cut out models for which some assembly would be required but I was aiming higher.

 

IKEA also has a greeter at the entrance and although a box store with a similar colour scheme as Walmart it doesn’t look quite so tacky and run down.  The greeter looks well rested probably because she works for a Dutch/Swedish corporation that although a global corporation doesn’t hunt down union organizers like nazi war criminals.  Although, ironically founder Ingvar Kamrad, was once a Nazi sympathizer of sorts until he discovered his true worth marketing semi- fabricated furniture to the masses.  I had all those thoughts flash through my mind before I could even say, “Where is your lighting department?”

 

I was directed to what seemed like a secret door behind the main staircase that served as a short cut to where I wanted to go.  It was magical.  Like finding Oz behind the green curtain.  On the floor before me were large arrows to follow like my own yellow brick road.  It was like another omen. I was meant to be there.  I had new meaning and direction in the marketing world.  Not only did I find my lamp. I found three of them and they were all located with the requisite light bulbs.  It was as if some higher being or power had planned it thus.  Perhaps a Swedish socialist.

 

Yes, even though, like Walmart, Ikea is a giant labyrinth it has arrows on the floor and maps.  There are many friendly healthy looking people with t-shirts that say hej, in the universal language of Swedish, which I think means Hi!. I again found hangers and by God if right beside them there was an array, not just one, but many varieties of coat racks neatly laid out before my very eyes.  It was exhilarating.

 

At the check out sadly there were also the Walmart, and every other store on the planet’s, automatic self check out plus the requisite three live and in person cashiers.  I think three is the critical number.  They provide no wrapping or bags now but you can buy a big tarp like  blue bag large enough to pack a Smart car to carry your goods.  I did that.

 

While leaving I had no difficulty finding the exit but it was still hard leaving because Ikea sells cinnamon buns which is really an unfair marketing ploy preying on the weak.  It took me an extra 15 minutes to leave the store.  I left in frustration because you have to order on a large computer menu board which shows pictures of cinnamon buns and you can see the real ones over the counter in the distance and maybe even smell them if you work at it only to have the system freeze and the order not go through.  I left with my big blue bag and no buns.

 

Sadly, I had to return to IKEA only two days later because my made in China lamp was damaged and I had to join a line in the large concourse away from the madding crowds where few can see who is returning what and why.  One is required without being told to register on another larger computer screen with no anticipation of getting a cinnamon bun only to queue to return a broken product.  I discovered I was seventh in line.  Gauging by the screen Amid was at the counter taking forever, and at a rate of 7 minutes per customer, with three people serving I was going to be there for another 13 minutes. 

 

In Ikea style given my turn and my knew familiarity with the Swedish language my return went smoothly and with my new unbroken Chinese/Swedish lamp under my arm I returned to the well lit parking lot to my designated handicapped parking spot and drove contentedly home thinking at least there are two unionized Ikea stores in Canada and even unionized warehouses in the United States with one manufacturing unionized manufacturing plant in Virginia all this well thinking do I have an Allen wrench at home.

 The Impact of Cultural Erosion on Native Education

 

When going on a walk with my wife, electronically we count our every step as if there is something magical or scientific in the number 10 000, but that is the motivating number, our quest. As a teacher ascending to the next pay grid level also had a satisfying and motivating influence on me.  There are numerous carrots and sticks, large and small that motivate us throughout life.  However, with all candor, I would have to say I enjoy walking with my wife whether I count the steps or not. I honestly enjoy being in the classroom, it is a career not just a job.  Perhaps, I have just outlined some of the differences between extrinsic and intrinsic motivation.

 

Motivation is something we all have in order to move forward in life for what some would consider the trivial and the mundane to the core of what makes us human and everything in between. In other words what motivates one person may be of no relevance to another.  Motivation is the energy that we direct towards achieving a goal and those goals significantly vary from person to person and between cultures.  

 

The reward/punishment system is built into every facet of life from home to the work place, from the monetary allowance we give our kids for jobs done well or not, the use of cell phones, or the withdrawal of their use when situations are abused or boundaries crossed.  Our society largely operates on the premise that human behaviour is driven by the opportunity to receive either a reward or a sanction. 

 

It is a truly simplistic approach however society seems to be programmed to function in this mode. For example, a direct result of an over reliance on extrinsic motivators is a superficial level of learning such as cramming for a exam when pulling the proverbial “late nighter”.  This manner of preparation may get one through the exam but for the most part there is very little long term retention of content.  Teachers have been using threats, detentions, various punishments including the strap at one point, writing lines, grades all only to create fear with very little in the way of positive change. As for myself I know now that I should not throw snowballs in the no snowball zone after the bell rings as that was five stokes on each hand with a leather strap.  That was a lesson learned in fear and pain.

 

Intrinsic motivation operates on a higher plane and is based on the premise that we learn or do something because the learning or the activity is rewarding in and of itself.  The learning process creates a stream of positive emotions which serve as the inherent rewards thereby making any extrinsic reward superfluous. In fact studies do demonstrate that if extrinsic rewards are given to students for an already rewarding activity the net result is to make the activity less intrinsically rewarding.  This is referred to as the over justification effect.  

 

Students’ lives must also be viewed in the context of a highly complex world, both in school and out, and although it should be obvious that teachers who have knowledge and skills make a large difference so does the cultural world surrounding the lives of our students.  We sometimes make the very naive assumption that students actually do live in a vacuum and that school is the ultimate change agent.  I think sometimes at best we are minor players.

 

Common sense reasoning suggests that motivated students will learn faster and better and retain information and concepts more effectively than those who are not motivated it also follows that instruction should be passionate or motivational in nature and rich in meaningful content, these seeds of learning are then cast on a field of students with various abilities, ages, incomes, learning disorders, ethnicity, from educated families to those who are not, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, bilingual, male, female, those with gender identity issues seeking pronouns, indigenous, diverse cultural back grounds and all of these myriad of factors and many more impact on motivation and learning and serve to determine whether a student will persist in learning or simply give up, whether students feel safe, connected and respected all pertaining to learning.  Its complicated. 

 

I have taught in several native communities where many approaches of instruction have been tried and failed where teachers and boards have been fired en masse out of sheer frustration for lack of results.  Often these cases involving rewards to motivate have utterly failed usually because there is a complete mis-reading of cultural factors at play.  When this happens educators are too quick to play the “blame game”.  Students “they” will say lack all ambition, the parents just don’t care, the families are dysfunctional, there is no initiative or self direction.  In this negative feed back loop students feel defeated and quit school, teachers are frustrated and quit their jobs, administrators get fired for lack of results.

 

Had the planning begun with a greater awareness of native culture and awareness of its history and traditions and incorporated a higher degree or any degree of teaching to the culture or culturally relevant teaching instead of perpetually battling against it, indigenous education, in many places, would turn a corner and become more relevant to students as what is taught is more culturally and emotionally significant to them and will therefore serve to cultivate a new level, or maybe germinate the first level of intrinsic motivation and therefore break the negative loop.  Cultural understanding in the native case or for any culture is everything in terms of success and motivation.

​

I have lived and worked in several native communities in Canada and in an anecdotal way wish to make the connection between residential schools and their negative impact on native motivation and education.  Native culture and likely most native communities, value the importance of the family.  The role of the elders as a source of knowledge and wisdom is recognized and almost revered in native culture.  However, I discovered that there is a significant disconnect between what is valued and what is practiced.  I was soon to learn that many families with links to residential schools are severely dysfunctional and native traditions were rapidly eroded as a result.

 

Despite the fact that children are valued they are given very loose structure in their lives and little discipline. This type of scenario often translates into students who do not know how to behave in a classroom and don’t want to be in school.  Many students rebel against the authority of the teachers.  They are openly and frequently defiant.  Students   spend a disproportionate amount of time with video games.  I had grade one students tell me about the joys of playing “Grand Theft Auto.” 

 

Many of my native students were several grade levels behind in their literacy and numeracy skills.  I had high school students who could barely read and grade 3 students who did not know the alphabet or the sounds the letters make.  I worked with a grade five student who wished to improve his reading skills only to the point of being able to successfully take his driver’s test.  Grant it that is motivation.  Many of these students were about to give up or already have.  Their anger and frustration quickly translated into acting out behaviour and severe discipline issues.

 

When a typical, if there is such a thing, middle class southern suburban child gets to school he/she has been read to, talked to and exposed to a wide range of vocabulary words and ideas thousands, or tens of thousands of times before entering the classroom.  In the native communities in which I have worked students arrive at school not having the  advantage of the English spoken word, story times and chances at adequate vocabulary development. For many, English is a second language. My students begin the literacy race long after the green flag has gone down and too many of them never see the checkered flag.  

 

The sad thing about many of our students at all ages, but especially in the junior high grades is that they have given up on themselves. They have an unfortunate reverse or negative pride and seem to revere a lack of progress. It is just the opposite of self esteem expressed through a near total lack of achievement. The school in which I worked had no teams, or mottos and very little school spirit.  Motivation was dead because the local native culture was dying.

 

Residential schools were a systematic and sanctioned way of robbing the natives of their culture and whatever vestige of heritage they might have left after they were cheated of land and other rights.  I’m no expert in this, but I know enough that this was a period of shame in our history.

 

I was told one reason for the huge disconnect with cultural values had to do with residential schools.  Because of the harsh treatment experienced by many at Indian Residential Schools many natives lost their connection to families and family values. 

 

The government’s goal, through the school system, was to break down the culture and the family structure, thereby developing a group of people who were institutionalized; then when one throws alcohol into the mix with the dislocation of many communities from their lands that they knew, to poorer lands it eventually creates an entrenched cycle of poverty. Some of the former students of the residential school system where I taught, now adults and parents, attend support groups in order to deal with their horrible experiences as children while at the residential school.

 

After all of the social trauma inflicted on native populations “we” blamed natives for being useless. Due to the reserve system and residential schools  linked with a combination of government and church policies, it resulted in creating a true sense of learned helplessness with little sense of connection to anything, no sense of family, no sense of trust in others, or in themselves, and no sense of trust in authority. In fact the very concept of family was destroyed, but I guess that was the point of the residential school. 

 

Is it no wonder that because of abuse and extreme methods of discipline students who left those schools became parents who didn’t know how to parent and were reluctant to discipline.  Soon a generation developed robbed and devoid of heritage and tradition and seemingly helpless to rectify the situation. The evil of residential schools created more than one monster.  The legacy plays on in families and schools today.

 

 

The reality is that much of the parenting in native homes is done by members of the extended family and more often than not by the grandparents.  In traditional native culture there was good reason for the grandparents to handle child rearing because parents would be “out on the land” making a living and surviving.  In modern society some parents seem to rely too heavily on tradition with the continued expectation that grandparents raise the children.  As contemporary society has developed the traditional roles have not changed and possibly family life has suffered in some ways because parents excused themselves from their parenting role at the great detriment of the family as a whole. 

 

Motivation to learn and achieve is solidly linked to culture but once the culture has been stripped away, as was the case with many Canadian indigenous families through the residential school system, any reasonable semblance of family cohesion or motivation to learn in a systematic organized away has also been damaged.  Extrinsic motivation alone would be unproductive in the long run in regaining educational lost ground for native populations.  Likely, only through greater levels of self governance in educational decision making through control of their own educational goals and curriculum based on local native cultures will they have any chance to develop a true sense of intrinsic motivation to rebuild what has been taken from them.

 

Marty Rempel

Grand Theft Auto as Saviour

 Grand Theft Auto as Saviour

I’m not necessarily the most gregarious person in the world but I do have the habit of talking to cashiers and saying hello to people I pass on the sidewalk, if I ever rode public transit I’d probably be that guy to give up his seat to a senior citizen even though I’m now 72; so I guess I may also lack some self awareness.

Being predisposed to a certain personality type makes me somewhat captive to these types of behaviours and then I make the false assumption that everyone else is of the same mind and manner and, well that’s just not a truth. Today, for example, I was in German Park, behind enemy lines, going for a lone walk looking at the beautiful mansions trying to peak into the windows. I even had a fantasy conversation worked out in case someone stopped me in this up scale neighbourhood and wanted to know what I was doing there.

My first response would be silence and then I would look left then right, slowly like I was panning with a cinematic camera and gearing up for a shoot of a final scene. I would say in a low voice “I’m actually casing the neighbourhood for an auto theft ring but I see by your 2012 BMW X3 that you are in no immediate danger.” I would wish him a good day and walk on before asking, “By the way do you know where the entrance to German Park is?”

I know that may not be friendly but it is engaging. As I enter the park a jogger passes me. I say my hello and he nods a greeting in my direction. He, soon followed by a younger man just walking, looking very serious, ignores my salutation. That gives me an immediate flashback to Woodstock where I lived a few years earlier and where my wife and I walked on similar trails and soon realized that this small southern Ontario town was likely one of the most unfriendly places on the planet perhaps secondly only to the anonymity of walking sidewalks on busy New York streets where one could streak and not be noticed.

In reclusive Woodstock we would make a point of saying very loud hellos to every single person who walked by us on a sidewalk or path and make a mental tally of how many responses we got back. Those tallies were easy as it was usually a zero sum game, as nobody or very, very few people ever, ever said hi, hello, nice evening, morning, afternoon whatever the case may be. It was a barren social wasteland of unfriendly walkers. They could all be stars on a Seinfeld episode along with the soup nazi. It was sadly demoralizing. We eventually had to move out of that city and find social connections elsewhere.

I mentioned I liked talking to cashiers and now I’m forever frustrated as there are more and more automated checkout cashiers with these brash, irritating, metallic, artificial, computerized voices. I don’t even like talking to them. I never greet them or say hello. They pretend to be friendly they may even be programmed to be friendly but I’m not buying it. I know real friendly when I see it and you know, sadly it’s getting harder and

harder to find. Certainly, it can’t be found on social media. That’s like going back to the New York sidewalk I just mentioned in the previous paragraph.

Social media is the biggest misnomer going. It uses the word social and by all accounts it has the potential to be social, statistically it has the number count to be social but in reality its like the guy on the path not saying hello or worse saying a sarcastic hello which is even worse. People on social media say and do all sorts of mean things because there are no laws, meaningful guidelines, ethics, controls or realistic restraints to stop those who are basically insane who walk amongst us. I mean I at least feel bad about thinking about saying to a complete stranger I work for a auto theft ring, but that was just a sad private joke in bad taste. People troll and politic on Facebook and elsewhere and there is no respect for opinion, opinion is void of factual basis and tolerance is a virtue long dead as all the vices one can imagine seem to populate the net.

Now that I no longer find enjoyment in life on pathways, sidewalks, with cashiers or on social media the world has become much smaller. Something in me has been pushed to the limit as our society oddly looks for truckers to solve our problems, lacks a belief in science but looks to televangelism to save them and seems fearful of any type of diversity. Maybe I’m just at loose ends because the Queen died this week and we grew up together so to speak. I just don’t know any more.

I have made the only logical decision and joined an auto theft ring in Scarborough and am now cruising a neighbourhood near you.

Definition of Liberal

The Great Divide at the Neolithic Village

There is an obvious divide between conservative and liberal thinkers that began when man had the first stirring of thoughts concerning communal living and related ideas of individualism versus the greater good.  These early musings came into being out of necessity and a need for survival at a very primal level.  It seems in the age of Neanderthal who eventually was eclipsed by the superior homo sapiens version, or us, when there was a great need for co-operation as a means for survival.  This was also at a time when the first division of labour transformed and separated those who were hunters from and those who were gathers and to the women who could do both as multi-tasking was something they excelled at from a very early time period.

Those people who saw the need for communal co-operation in terms of survival and hunting, sharing shelter and food, protection against wild animals and other homo-sapien groups were in fact the survivors.  The idea of a solitary life style with a “me” attitude hadn’t really taken off. In an evolutionary sense it was a very reactionary direction. To be isolationists in a true sense society needed affluence and of course that had to wait for the Industrial Revolution to create that class of entitlement, selfishness along with the associated great divide in wealth.

Society had not yet reached the point of the Have’s and Have Not’s.  This would be one of the culminating achievements of modern man.  Capitalism brought us these social and technical achievements and eventually managed to rip apart, in the process, the entire social fabric of the greater good, community and co-operation for survival.

However, one step before the Industrial Revolution came the Agriculture Revolution that pretty well made the hunter gathers obsolete, under employed and eventually unemployed.  It was like someone had brought in automated cashiers and they didn’t even see it coming.  The Agricultural Revolution stripped the once proud Hunter Gatherers of their noble nomadic existence, not to mention decimating their dietary variety to shreds with the advance of specialized crops leaving them in a new peasant like existence with bad diets, bad health and bad teeth.  

In this new agricultural stay at home world they had lost heir skills both as individuals and in group survival.  Now they depended on brutal toil of small plots of land owned by a small nobility who used power and religion to control their every move.  The Agricultural Revolution made for an easy transition to the brutal system we affectionately know as capitalism.

In capitalism we have basically an enslaved group of powerless people who work for  the “company store” having sold their souls and lost their last vestiges of humanity, sometimes caught staring into the distance no doubt dreaming of their savannah legacy and the freedom their ancestors once enjoyed. Human History has always been working towards an imbalance; so unlike natural history, in a biological sense, which tries, sometimes fails, to balance itself.  Humanity and modern society, it seems, has a natural tendency to create the Haves and the Have Not’s with a quantum and a colossal divide between the two.  The tranquil good ole days of the Neolithic village long gone.

Fast forward to American politics today in which the divide is very apparent as it is in terms of religion to the point there is a blurred line between church and church  The divide has been there for a long time, after all they did have a civil war and killed off a million off their own people over issues of enslaving millions of people in economic systems that were vastly different in a cultural climate that never wanted to change.

To use the American example, it is not built so much on hope but on crisis starting with the American Revolution and has grown with great help from the industrial military complex to become not the beacon of democracy, but probably the most violent society to walk the face of the Earth, making spartans look like school boys.  I mean how many guns are in America? How many schools kids get shot every day?  In a reasonable civilization these problems would be solved but in America they serve as a catalyst for division and a profit for the few.  A democracy, somewhat of a joke by now.

Historically, under the presidential leadership of Lincoln, the two Roosevelt's and yes, Johnston  the two warring parties, Republicans and Democrats came together to resolve issues like war, depression, slavery, labour issues and civil rights. Otherwise always a bipolar society, a two sided world of those who see and work towards common good, rights and progress and those who retard the process at every juncture.

It started with the end of Neolithic group survival and continues and flourishes today.  I think Covid helped illuminate the diversity of thought toward issues such as the veracity and credibility of scientific thought versus the power of social media, freedom convoys and selfish entitled thinking of individual rights. I think it was the attitudes towards Covid and how it was made political on many levels that finally opened my eyes to just how messed up we really are from issues concerning vaccines to the environment and how knowledge, facts and truth are mocked.

My thesis is this:  The divide, the division, the hate of the greater good, of helping society, people, your neighbour comes out of ignorance and fear.  People who fear and make up their facts or use facts of convenience do not seek change, in fact they avoid it at all costs.  These people not only adore the status quo they are reactionary and would have us go backwards in time and say repeal abortion laws or civil rights legislation.

If you are a person that thinks the worst of other people in most contexts then with this negative outlook you fear your neighbour, you see welfare abuse, you would wage war rather than peace, you would support open carry guns, you would do everything in your power to isolate yourself from the wider troubled world.  Change would be a threat and therefore any party you support would never spearhead a social program to help people, you would work to secure your power base and reduce that of others.  To save your world you would without admitting it, eagerly and willingly sacrifice democracy and use fascist tactics to fight the liberal/socialist threat that clearly seeks to destroy your little cloister shell.  You would storm Capital Hill or applaud those who did.

Psychologists have found that conservatives are fundamentally more anxious than are liberals, which explains their need for stability, structures and clear and simple answers to even the most complicated of questions.  The fact of the matter is we do not live in a completely safe world, ask the students in Parkland, Florida.  Things can and do go wrong.  But when conservatives impose their worldview on chaos they can manage their anxiety. It may explain in part why so many American have a love affair with guns as it is a simplistic “solution” to security in a reckless world.  However, anxiety, like fear can wax and wane and as it does so do political views.  When people feel safe and secure, they become more liberal in their outlook, when threatened, they become more conservative. After a terrorist attack people in general become far more conservative. “There is some range within which people can be moved.”


The others, are the opposite and are the survivors from the Neolithic think tanks and strive to help each other not out of love necessarily, but with a sense of justice, progress, survival, truth and with a sense of legacy.  This group of people, lets call them liberals are generally but not always more educated, but specifically see the good in the world and are working to enhance it and save it from destruction.  The liberals think with actual facts and when presented with new data can actually change their course and redirect their programming to new goals and initiatives.  Liberals have created the bulk of what is good in the world and it is their legacy that moves civilization forward.

Historically, liberalism of the past ages has been around so long it is now part of a legacy and therefore has been “cleansed” of its radical nature, that is why conservatives in the past would naturally criticize liberal ideas of the past but are more likely to accept those same ideas today as it is now part of set doctrine. This is why contemporary Conservatives can hold classical liberal beliefs and not see it as a contradiction.  Progressive policies were liberal when first proposed, but over time become part of tradition and so conservatives of today will serve to conserve them and as a result perpetually be out of step with current liberal policy.

Liberalism of the day is constantly changing, constantly expanding boundaries, constantly trying new things, and as such liberalism is not a set ideology or a single set of beliefs and policies.  It is a way of thinking.  When conservatives reach the stage of accepting classical liberalism, liberals are already on to a new concept, or system that by nature conservatives will oppose.  “Liberals adapt to present circumstances seeking to go in new directions, while conservatives generally do not.”

Conservatives within our society are not the builders of society, not the risk takers not the ones fighting for the underdog.  They are the ones that generally surround themselves with religious and political dogma, think in sound bites, are reactionary and will sooner deny themselves of any element of societal benefits if at the same time it will give a minority group any form of an advantage.  They are the isolationists, the self righteous and the judgemental who can cling to what the founding fathers deemed practical but can not cope in a modern world of globalism and co-operation.  They are too small minded and lack any capacity for humanity if in their mind people don’t earn the advantage they seek.  There are no free rides only rugged individualism, true grit and the american way in true frontier spirit. They are the wall builders, the racists, the anti-immigration crowd, the gay bashers, the anti-vaxers.  They do not stand for progress.

Conservatives have little to offer society moving forward and would have gone the way of the Neanderthal in any Neolithic setting because they were in it for themselves.

Gender pronouns.

Gender Pronouns

 

Recently, I was at a family gathering at my sister’s apartment.  Usually in family discussions after we have covered the small talk and usually during coffee and after dinner we systematically solve the majority of the world’s problems.  If my brother is present, a hard core right winger, we seldom solve anything and only go on to create more family animosity.  However, on this evening, my brother away we were poised to solve the seventh of the world issues, mainly the Made in China issue and off-shoring.  Somehow we never got there as out of nowhere like a Chinook wind we landed on the topic of gender pronouns.

 

My nephew who somehow introduced this topic seemed to have some level of expertise which baffled and astounded the rest of the family.  I believe the reason for entry into this realm of topic was an experience or discussion, maybe it was an out of body experience I was never clear on the origin; but he was passionate and animated on this topic as much as he was perplexed frustrated and confused concerning the ever growing number of gender pronouns and their associated political correctness.  I soon realized this was far more interesting than off shoring manufacturing to China and quickly encouraged and directed the family discussion on this dangerous wayward route.

 

I can recall fairly recently in my home town of Waterloo a professor, I think in the music department at one of our three universities got into difficulty over the incorrect use of gender pronouns.  I also remember thinking how is this even possible as I was aware of, at the time of the he/she combo that I grew up with and all the anxiety through puberty of dealing with the social permutations and combinations of what could go wrong with two genders.  I was silly and naive as their is a vast continuum of gender possibilities that change over space and time undulate over the curvature of human experience and impact every permeable indentation of the social walls we construct on life’s journey.  That professor I reference was screwed the moment he/she said he/she in a class situation to a non-binary audience many of whom were likely in various stages of gender transitioning.

 

We know the universe is expanding outward at incredible speed with great forces from its origins commencing with the Big Bang and in the process changing the face of physics as we know it.  The same can be said for the world of pronouns.  That sad professor did not realize, and I would be in this same category  that using  the wrong pronoun in these times can be offensive and potentially harmful.  One, if I may be so liberal as to use that term, can run the risk by ignoring  a person’s pronouns can also imply that people are perhaps under the transgender umbrella for example those who are transgender, non-binary, or even gender non-conforming.  It is if in fact they do not exist.  The professor was busted   These are dangerous times in which we live.

 

I think I still know what a pronoun is. I have taught English. I am an english teacher, but now in the face of new possibilitiesI find I tremble in the face of these parts of speech that theoretically replace an antecedent noun, but in a social sense do so much more.  I am aware of personal pronounssuch as  I, we, you, he, she, it and they. There are your over bearing demonstrative pronouns ( this, that, these, those), relative pronouns (who, which, that, as), indefinite pronouns (each, all, everyone, either, somebody), interrogative pronouns (who, which, that), reflexive pronouns (myself, herself) and possessive (his, her, our, their my, your).  But there seems to be now a whole set of pronouns that quite frankly don’t even sound like English.  Try co, cos cosself?  In a sentence Ze laughed with zir friends enjoying zirself.  

 

Recently, I attended a classical concert, a quintet was performing a selection of Schubert and Brahms compositions.  In the introduction the speaker first thanked all the sponsors, also as is now the custom thanked the native ancestors on whose land we were sitting and listening to the concert, then he proceeded to tell about himself briefly including his pronouns.  I was alert.  I had never heard that in an introduction or anywhere else before.  The speaker was a he/him which sounded, dare I say with the realm of social acceptability and in a flash he was on to some trivia about Schubert.  So I wondered did Schubert or Brahms have this problem with learning new pronouns.  I was thinking about this through the whole concert.

 

There is an entire etiquette built up around the correct use of pronouns, what if you get the pronouns wrong, do you apologize, can you over apologize, can you traumatize a person with the wrong pronoun.  I was told or maybe I read it somewhere, to be safe just memorize everyone’s pronouns and never assume their pronouns, never use masculine or feminine, if you can do all that you will likely stay in pronoun Switzerland. 

 

I just think at my age I stand at the brink of confusion and bewilderment and If I change it will be a slow reluctant change.  I do recognize a gender identity spectrum, but I really want no part of it.  However, I’m not oblivious to changing mores and keeping up with social change and adaptability.  If I have to I personally could identify with several pronouns even if it sounds like a foreign language, but is that really enough?

 

My personal arsenal of identification is much stronger, much deeper and far more meaningful because I know that how, as a person I identify internally in a modern society like ours I must clearly but not necessary succinctly express that externally.  I therefore have come to use an elaborate array of specific adjectives, at least 67 at last count, and the list is growing, adverbs approximately 43, also growing. I also utilize verbs, in all tenses, including gerunds.  I have discovered that in my quest for gender expression clarity and my place in the sun, the use of nouns, prepositions, conjunctions and articles both definite and indefinite are arguable highly beneficial.  I may be a cis-male and although I recognize that maybe a mere social construct perpetuated by my family doctor at the time of my birth I am pretty sure that I am on a single spot on the gender spectrum and hope to stay there unless removed for insubordination by a committee of my non-binary peers.

 

 

Domestic Sunrise/Alberta

 

Domestic Sunrise

The little boy slowly walked along

The darkened hall to his parent’s bedroom

And stood at the doorway, contemplating his

Next move and hoping to be noticed.

Quietly, 

Tentative,

Then more

Urgently

He called, “Daddy have to go pee.”

Father stumbled for his slippers and housecoat,

Walked over to the door and

Scooped up his waiting son who instinctively

Cuddled his little body close.

Together, they walked the darkened hallway

To the washroom.

The sun illuminated the low level morning clouds

With a fiery glow as father and son sat down at the

Long pine kitchen table. Neither making a sound 

As they sat in silent communion, one drinking dark

Coffee, the other warm milk. Ashley, their Cocker Spaniel

Lay wide awake at their feet in anticipation of any handout

That might reach the kitchen floor.

A tiny cry broke the stillness as his daughter awoke…

The morning shuffle began once again.

Brainstorming While Writing A Children’s Storybook

Brain-Storming While Writing a Children’s Storybook

 

Unicorns are stereotypes,

Gnomes, fairies and dwarves have

all been done,

dinosaurs are passe

tales of social responsibility have merit,

but getting tiresome, how much global

warming, bullying, environmental  teaching

can we absorb?

Should I use lyrical text with colourful illustrations?

Fiction or Non-Fiction?

 

Science, numeracy, oral language teaching

with scaffold learning and cultural values 

using frogs, bears eagles and ravens, 

a possibility but...

 

How about surreal, whimsical and verging

on the bizarre or fantastical

Just for fun!

 

Is my main character a child in an adult world

an animal as parable or metaphor?

Then do I cast pigeon, crow, seagulls

or squirrels, if my squirrels wish to migrant 

South do they travel by Greyhound bus, 

with other animals?  What luggage do they take?

Can they text?

 

Will a racoon family live in a Ford Pinto,

in a remote forest with a social media presence, or 

a Canada Goose who suffers learning disabilities,

a navigational impairment tragically

loses his way to Mexico only to connect

with a flock of swallows heading for Capistrano

meeting the love of his life sadly to be rejected 

by their families living a life of obscurity,

but happiness, in suburban San Diego. 

 

The swallow and the goose escaped the stereotype,

so it seems there is always a lesson to learn.