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Vera's Blog |
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July 1, 2021 Monuments This thorny issue of monuments is back again…. How many are we talking about? Nobody knows: it depends at least partly on how the word is used. Technically, it means any edifice erected to commemorate a person or event. Events are easy enough to classify. They’re triumphs (a military victory, a world’s fair) or disasters (a fire, a hurricane) - or both (a massacre, a nuclear melt-down). I suspect the last category outnumbers the first two, but in any case, they’re relatively simple: on such and such a date, someone did something or witnessed something, the memory of which is deemed worthy of preserving. Commemorating a person is a little more ambiguous. What constitutes a monument to a person? Does it have to be an outsized bronze or marble statue in their likeness, placed at a major traffic intersection or gateway to a seat of government, poised on a high pedestal, surrounded by subsidiary statues and friezes, surmounted by a portico or canopy of marble and labelled with a brass plaque outlining his* achievements? Or does it mean all sculptural representations of a famous person in any communal space, such as a park, the atrium of a city hall or rotunda of a library? How about oil paintings in the halls of legislative and judiciary proceeding? Does it count as a monument when a school, library, garden, theater or community center is named for a person who contributed nothing to the establishment of that public amenity? (* The pronoun is rarely inappropriate.) Lately – and not just so lately; actually from the 1990’s, when the residential schools were at last closed for good, there have been loud calls for the removal of monuments to Sir. John A. Macdonald. Some people argue that his positive accomplishments outweigh the charges levelled at him. Certainly, he was instrumental in building a quite successful nation out of hostile colonies and largely responsible for protecting Canada’s interests from US expansionism. And he made the National Dream of a railway come true. Was it worth the suffering and death of many thousands of First Nations people? He evidently thought so, and most of his fellow parliamentarians must have agreed, or they would have insisted on the recall of at least the most sadistic Indian agents and changed at least the most brutal policies. But, because his contemporaries did share the same attitudes, his decisions, appointments and policies were not generally perceived as wrong – and so he was and by many still is – considered our greatest prime minister. Which is easier when you were the first, long and safely dead, than if you’re currently fumbling at the reigns of state. It also accounts, I suppose, for his national monument being surrounded by symbolic depictions of productivity and plenty rather than of abused and starving children. Lately – and not so lately, perhaps as long as a century – many citizens of the United States have called for the removal of monuments to the heroes of the Confederacy, who disrupted that union, and even of some Fathers of Confederation, who did the opposite. Their objection to both kinds of monument is the same: these men supported and profited from the enslavement of Africans (who were not yet counted as American) and the persecution, displacement and wholesale massacre of native populations (who were no longer counted as American). The defenders of the monuments argue that slavery, colonial conquest and racism were generally accepted conditions of the period, and that taking down the statues would be a denial, even a falsification of history. Which doesn’t account for the time-lag between the events commemorated and the erection of the monuments, nor the presentations of Robert E. Lee arrogantly strutting his big tall horse, rather than abjectly surrendering his army, and Jefferson Davis looking down from a high plinth, instead of slinking toward the Mexican border wearing a dress. I went to Winston Churchill CI in Scarborough 60 years ago. It’s still there and still bears the name. There was a large bronze bust of a homely, grumpy old man on display in the foyer – perhaps it still is. That and some glossy photographs in Look magazine, was all I knew of our – what? Certainly not founder, patron or inspiration! – until Grade 11 History. The Great Man turned 80 the year that school opened and died the year I graduated from it. During that period, many, many statues, paintings and the dedication of many public works honoured Churchill. After all, he was declared the greatest Briton who ever lived. He had been in Parliament for half a century, a decade as prime minister. He was very, very good at making speeches. If you believe the movies, he single-handedly brought his nation through the Second World War. He even won a Nobel Prize for writing it all down. But was the Great Man a good man? The sympathetic biographer calls him “complex” – a word that always sets off alarm bells in my head. He had a brief military career, slaughtering colonized peoples; he advocated the use of poison gas against ‘inferior races’, left millions of Indians to starve after taking their rice, suppressed trade unions at home, sent troops to Wales and tanks to Scotland to subdue workers, rather than address their legitimate grievances, harshly repressed Irish, as well as many other, national aspirations and presided over the crumbling British Empire with the tenacity of the bulldog on my old school’s football jersey. His attitudes and values were shared by most of his contemporaries – that is to say, his English compatriots at the time. His policies and methods were approved by most of his contemporaries - that is to say, his peers at the time, and very probably the peerage of today. He is still widely, if not universally admired. Which, I suppose, justifies his statue striding atop its hefty pedestal, in a military surcoat, all resolute, without a single skeletal Bengali peasant or bullet-riddled Greek resistance fighter at his feet. Only, those acts were wrong, are wrong; could never, in any historical period, any civilization, any circumstance be anything but wrong. Some of his contemporaries were well aware of this, and made their views known – just as Jefferson’s, Macdonald’s, Napoleon’s, Constantine’s and Alexander’s policies were denounced by some of their (however short-lived) contemporaries as wrong. Power changes; government priorities change; religious persuasion changes; mores and standards of behaviour change; public opinion changes – right and wrong do not change. The victorious generals, martyred revolutionaries, saintly archbishops and effective statesmen are later seen in a very different light. Their monuments are first denounced, then defaced, then vandalized and finally toppled by the citizenry. They are often removed, with or without ceremony, by governments with different agendas. Some are even repudiated by the successors to their own power-base. Is their removal a falsification of history? Well, that depends on what you mean by history. The names and dates are probably true – everything else is an interpretation, a perspective, a marketing ploy, or blatant propaganda. Each of the monuments I cited above was already a falsification of history at its erection. In fact, I’ll go so far as to say: every monument in the world – yes, even to philosophers and cartographers - is a lie. They are declarations of how the decision-makers of one generation want future generations to think of a person or event. Future generations decline – inevitably! – to follow suit. Your heroes become their villains. If you don’t want to give your great-grandchildren the satisfaction of decapitating your statue, don’t pose for it. If you want to save your compatriots of the future the trouble of pulling down enormous heavy bronze mementoes to atrocities, don’t erect any monuments. (By the time this decision is made, it’s too late to refrain from the atrocities which generated the notoriety which prompts the commemorative gesture.) Meanwhile, save us all a lot of on-going aggravation and internecine strife by properly, thoughtfully, officially dismantling all the present monuments. Install them in some dedicated space in every county; a park or gated community all their own, where the admirers of each Late Great Man can pay homage to him without offending their fellow taxpayers. On second thought, you can leave the poets and scientists, painters and composers. Or else relocate them to a separate park. However ‘complex’ some of their personalities may have been, they don’t seem to be getting up people’s noses so much, and they – more to the point, their visitors - wouldn’t be comfortable in close proximity with the other kind of national hero.
Photo: Jill Evans / Pexels
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June 29, 2021 Things Put Down Boring Prophet (from Life of Brian) : “There shall, in that time, be rumors of things going astray, erm, and there shall be a great confusion as to where things really are, and nobody will really know where lieth those little things wi-- with the sort of raffia work base that has an attachment. At this time, a friend shall lose his friend's hammer and the young shall not know where lieth the things possessed by their fathers that their fathers put there only just the night before, about eight o'clock.” Ain’t that the truth! Much of my life seems to be spent looking for things that I’ve put … somewhere. I trip over a cat on my way to the bedroom to put clean clothes away, so I put down the basket to let him out and see three of the feral cats waiting for their dinner, which reminds me of the time, so I feed them, put on the kettle, wash some cups, make tea, watch a rerun of The Mentalist and never think of laundry again for the rest of the day – possibly week. Fortunately, a laundry basket is too large to overlook for very long. I’m making soup for dinner and need to go to the pantry for a bag of rice, but have a ladle in my hand, and know I won’t be able to open the door, rummage behind the plastic containers and take out the rice with just one hand. Besides, I don’t need a ladle in the pantry. So I put it down. Not on the kitchen counter where I will expect to find it later when I need it again, but somewhere along the way. My pantry is by the front door at one end of the house, while my kitchen is at the back in the middle. There are thirteen flat surfaces at a convenient putting-something-down level between the two. I know that because I just this minute counted them. When the soup is ready and I need the ladle, I check every one of those surfaces, and find them all remarkably – nay, astonishingly – ladle free. I look in the pantry and of course it’s not there. I stop myself before obeying the ridiculous impulse to check my pockets. That ladle is somewhere… and it must eventually turn up. Meanwhile, before the soup gets cold, I find another, less satisfactory one to serve dinner. I don’t entirely forget about the ladle during the evening, but I do try to shove it to the back of my mind. Not a good idea to obsess over inconsequential objects: that way lie far too many opportunities for driving myself crazy. This is a universal experience. Things go missing all the time. Pens, screwdrivers, dog leashes, address books, pruning shears, credit cards, slippers, bicycle locks, earrings, staplers, corkscrews… I’ve heard of people misplacing their cell-phones, but find it difficult to imagine how: those things seem to be grafted directly onto their thumbs. I may be more prone than the average to losing uncommon items: an entire just-opened can of cat food, one DVD from a three-season television series, half a mug of beer, for example, though that’s not as peculiar as the acquaintance who spent a morning frantically searching for the fur hat she had received only that Christmas – which turned up in the refrigerator. And it doesn’t just happen since I qualify for “senior moments” – it’s been a constant in my life since I can remember. Even as a child, I kept losing things, as had my mother before me. We used to say, “Never mind; we’ll find it when we’re looking for the scissors.” A safe enough prediction, as we were constantly looking for the scissors and finding unexpected mislaid things. The only thing that walked about as much was the good paring knife. I have to admit, it does happen more frequently now. I unlock the front door and put my keys down in order to bring in the groceries. I sort them and put them away, mostly where they’re supposed to go, wash my hands, change my clothes, make lunch and carry on living. A week later, when it’s time to go shopping again, my keys are missing. I panic, wondering whether I lost them on the last outing, which is clearly absurd – or how did I get into the house? Not in the car, not in my purse, still not in the tray I’ve already checked twice, where I keep them, along with egg money, parking change, my watch and, these days, a spare mask, in case I forgot to put one in the glove compartment. No keys, no place. I check the door, knowing I would have noticed long before this, if I’d left them in the lock. I pick up my stack of empty, folded shopping bags to put in the trunk and find my keys underneath. Wha…? Oh. Eyeglasses. Well, everybody knows about the glasses; everybody’s glasses go AWOL from time to time. I’m lucky enough not to need prescription lenses, just standard reading ones. Since I have a history of sitting on them, I buy the cheapest and keep many. (Since which, of course, I have not broken a single frame.) One pair on the bedside dresser, one in each of the four rooms where I may need to find a book, except I think I was still wearing the ones that belong in the studio last time I brought in a book, and put them down in some convenient place, intending to take them back next time I have an errand there. There is a pair in my purse for reading labels in the supermarket, one in the dining room where I sometimes consult baking recipes, one over the craft table, bifocals in my sewing box next to the TV chair, and the one on my computer desk that’s missing right now, so I’m wearing the one from the craft table until it turns up, so I’d better not take them off and put them down somewhere, because then I’ll be missing two pairs, which might be distressing. It’s all right. They were in the bathroom. That ladle? I found it when I washed the dishes: I’d put it in the sink. The scissors invariably hide under something, much like the keys. But my mother’s good paring knife is gone forever and irreplaceable. I still mourn its loss.
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June 26, 2021 Class Warfare "There's class warfare, all right, but it's my class, the rich class, that's making war, " Buffett famously said in a 2006 interview. This admission has been considered extraordinary and remarked upon by many commentators since it was made 15 years ago. Nothing so remarkable has been said since – even though FUX et al have made many, many comments on the subject. Well, all right, that was certainly an unusual thing for a rich guy to say in public – but then, he’s always been an unusual rich guy. But the statement itself? I have some issues with it. Warfare is generally understood to take place when a conflict between nations or large enough political factions within a nation, escalates to the level of military clashes. This requires two armies – or, at a minimum, an army facing a large, armed, organized revolutionary force. Class warfare, in contrast, is a difference of opinion regarding the definition of the word “fair” between a very small number of people who control the majority of power and wealth in a country and a very large number of people who produce the wealth and supply the funds and personnel to the power, but control nothing. So, how is this a “war”? The same way Richard Nixon made “War on Drugs”: using a large, extremely well financed and armed police force against a scattering of random young people with a reefer in their pocket, Black neighbourhoods where somebody might (or again, might not; it didn’t seem to matter very much) have sold that reefer. Also, incidentally, shooting down university students who didn’t want to go to “war” against Cambodians, didn’t want their campuses segregated by race or didn’t want to be muzzled. Also, quite incidentally, shooting down Black people who didn’t want to send their children to separate-but-inferior schools or be denied their rights. That sounds like a war, all right – and would have been, perhaps, if the other side ever retaliated with more than the odd can of corn. It’s certainly not a war the same way Lyndon Johnson made an “unconditional war on poverty”. The changes enacted under that policy were actually aimed at the causes of poverty, rather than the people suffering from poverty. Of course, subsequent Republican presidents disarmed the forces fighting that…. Um… You know, passing a few items of sensible legislation and establishing a few agencies to carry out democratically enacted policies to relieve the citizenry of its most egregious economic burdens really shouldn’t need the declaration of “a war.” George W. Bush’s “War on Terror” is something else again. Real armies – particularly notable for their boots and the resounding thump with which they hit the ground – jeeps, tanks, airplanes and missiles are deployed by the United States, plus or minus the half dozen international arms it could twist in any given political climate, laying waste to thousands of hectares of city-scape and countryside in the Middle East, killing thousands of soldiers and (literally) countless civilians, rendering millions homeless and destitute, costing a dollar figure that is impossible for a human skull to encompass and lasting – at an optimistic guess - 20 years…. Some of the other people even fired back, killed troops, blew up vehicles and everything! Now, that’s what I call “war”! When FOX commentators call “billionaire bashing” or “class warfare”, on the other hand, there is no blood or fire, no explosions and rubble, no big holes in the ground with fragments of humans remains scattered on the bottom – probably not even a bruised ego or hurt sensibility - and no discernible change to the demographics or their economic and political relationship. Because, by bashing, they mean words spoken in reasoned sentences, stating facts. By warfare, they mean printing those words on paper or broadcasting them on public media. On the other hand, when the rich make war on the working class, people lose their jobs and homes, health insurance and voting rights, often their freedom and sometimes their lives. And they never, ever have a chance to fight back. So many different wars, so few different outcomes! “Actually, there's been class warfare going on for the last 20 years, and my class has won.” His class had won more than 6000 years ago. Why did they feel it necessary to re-declare in the 1980’s?
Photo by Jacob Morch |
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June 15, 2021 Haircuts When the pandemic “hit” – that is to say, when our organs of government and public information made it official and started to close infection venues – people had a number of concerns: their jobs, their children’s schooling, health issues, the welfare of elders in care, restriction of movement, lack of access to social network and support groups, suspension of travel plans and pretty soon after, suspension of any plans one might have made in any regard. Those are serious concerns. Three months later, the most frequent complaint I heard was: “I need a haircut!” Well, didn’t we all? It was certainly a popular topic of daytime television chat shows. By then, they had all established some virtual format, having the guests appear on little screens within the big screen – and aren’t we glad we sprang for the big tv when the price came down to our income level! Celebrity hairstylists gave lessons in cutting one’s own, or partner’s hair. (Leave aside the question of ‘celebrity hairstylist’ for the moment. I had a book, way back in the 90’s, that illustrated the procedure much better. But let’s leave that aside, as well.) I heard of some renegade salons accepting clients who sneaked in the back door, even during the first, tightest quarantine – getting their hair styled was more important to some people than avoiding what sounded like a really unpleasant illness, even if young people were (mistakenly) sure they couldn’t die of it. This is one of those cultural things I’m aware of but incapable of comprehending. I’ve put up with professional haircuts maybe two dozen times in my life, mostly for damage control when a late-night DIY experiment went badly awry, but I’ve never enjoyed the experience. Granted, I’m cheap and don’t go to a proper neighbourhood beauty parlour, where everybody knows my name and there is gossip to share. In point of fact, though, I’ve had more informative conversations at a Supercuts than I did at the only Sassoon salon on which I was once persuaded to splash out. My stylist was perfectly lovely – and so tactful as to talk incessantly without saying anything at all. The $50 haircut was identical to my usual $10 haircut: I have very ordinary hair. In effect, I had a $40 cup of coffee that was almost as good as The Coffee Mill's. (That was 1978; it would cost considerably more now.) I’m hardly a connoisseur of beauty salons but I know what a loonie is worth. Every second advertisement on prime-time television seems to be for a product to enhance long, flowing, billowing, glossy, silky, screen-filling waterfalls of hair and make them utterly, devastatingly, irresistibly beautiful. Um… why? It’s just some fur, overcompensating for its diminished territory. Okay, the models have nice hair – if you’re not bored rigid by the imperfectly realized corkscrews hanging down each side of every female face, so that if there are two blondes or two brunettes in a crime drama, you have to wait for the climactic scene to tell them apart: whichever one does the arresting was the heroine. But we were never watching that program for the hair! We came for the mystery, the sexual tension between female protagonist and male foil, the warm friendships between women, the baking, the antiques, the flower-arranging…. Yes, of course I mean those mass produced chick flicks in the long entertainment desert of Saturday afternoon: that’s where much of the hair is. I like a little more variety. And the pandemic gave me some. On weekdays at 11am, the PM came out to his front yard to tell us what’s what. (I did appreciate that, BTW.) Every week, we watched him grow shaggier and sexier: what I came to think of as the ‘eat-your-heart-out-Erin-O’Toole’ style. Other notables sported interesting coifs, too. Annamie Paul’s “who has time for hair?!” style. Jagmeet Sing didn’t seem much affected. Nor was Boris Johnson, really: I think he simply sticks his head into the same airplane propeller he’s always used. Most screen personalities didn’t change their appearance at all; I have to assume their hairdresser and makeup artist were locked down in their same bubble. Me, I’m on my way to perfecting the topiary method: whenever I look into the mirror and something sticks up or out, it gets lopped off. This works fine and I’ve been satisfied with it… until yesterday, when I encountered a similar style on a young woman at the grocery checkout. Except that she has about three times my volume and her hedge-cut is as lush as a 400-year-old putting green. Seems I’m capable of hair-envy after all.
Photo by Gabriela Palai from Pexels |
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June 2, 2021 Meal Kits I’ve been irritated for some time by the aggressive, ubiquitous advertising of meal kit services – especially that one that keeps popping up on my computer screen disguised as a pocket article. What’s their profit-margin like, to be able to afford so much airtime and cyberspace? What’s their mark-up on groceries? Just how big a con job is this? What we know: For about two thirds the price of a meal in a mid-range restaurant, you get… ingredients. You have to unpack, discard the packaging, cook in your own kitchen, which you then have to clean, serve on your own dishes, which you then have to wash and put away and later pay your own electric bill. Um – isn’t service what we pay for in a restaurant? Okay, bringing pre-measured ingredients to your door is still a service, for which you ought to pay, just as you would for any delivery. The question is: How much is it worth? What does it actually cost? The “price comparisons” I’ve read tried to estimate the cost of the same quantity of the same ingredients, and concluded that meal kits are not so much more expensive than groceries. Really? Who, besides take-out restaurants, buys salad dressing in little sealed plastic trays, or spices and herbs in tiny paper envelopes? Who buys two potatoes or 200 grams of rice? Who makes a separate trip to the market for every single meal? Are we comparing two practical alternatives? What I keep hearing in favour of meal kits is that they cut down on food wastage. To judge by the adverts, they send just enough for the designated number of recommended (by whom? for whom?) serving size. If you burn your one allotted slice of tuna or knock over a bowl of sauce, too bad: no do-overs. Well, I suppose inattention and clumsiness do occasion waste, and going hungry teaches you a lesson. And I do understand that North Americans need some hard lessons in waste management. Are we learning yet? On the up-side, you have no food to throw away. (Even if your child is less delighted with kale salad than the little actors in the ads, you're probably still hungry enough to finish his portion.) On the down-side, you also have no second helpings, leftovers, midnight snacks; nothing for lunch next day, or to freeze for an emergency. For me, that’s a serious down. For me, it makes sense to cook a double or triple portion of something, especially stews and casseroles. This way, I can use a convenient quantity of ingredients and produce extra meals with very little more work, energy consumption, dishwashing and cleaning of the stove-top (not my favourite kitchen chore). To me, that’s waste-prevention. Especially prevention of my wasted effort. Oh, but meal kits save you the trouble of shopping. Wellll, yeees… only - Is it really that hard to shop for groceries? Take a leisurely walk in a safe, cool, well-lit supermarket, with clean surfaces and smooth, level floors, where everything your eyes, tastebuds and stomach can desire, and a whole lot more foodstuff than anyone can rationally contemplate, is neatly organized by theme in freezers, refrigerators and bins, on conveniently positioned shelving and inconveniently obtrusive display stands, and everything you could possibly want to know about the food it contains is printed on each package, in at least two languages; toss what you need and an unnoticed number of things you momentarily desire into the capacious shopping cart; pay with a single tap of card on little window, after someone else tallies up the prices and fills your shopping bags; trundle it out to your car. No tracking, stalking, trapping, killing, gutting, skinning, digging, watering, weeding, harvesting, drying, hauling, stacking, cellaring, hulling, seeding or grinding required. Ah, but not shopping saves on fuel and car emissions, right? Welll…. Do the meal kit services bring your coffee and breakfast cereal, football game snacks, ice cream, soft drinks, peanut butter and sandwich bread? Nuh-uh! You still go grocery shopping anyway… Once a week? And maybe the odd quick run to the convenience store for milk and potato chips after dark? In fact, you’re probably making as many shopping trips as ever - the meal kits are just extra. As you shop for some food anyway, how hard is it to shop for all your food? How hard is it to look into your cupboards and cooling devices to decide what needs replenishing? How hard is it to size up the available supplies, envision the meals it might turn into and figure in the missing components? How hard is it to take advantage of in-store specials and seasonal produce to reduce cost and enhance quality? Well, I gather, for some modern people, that’s not only difficult but extremely stressful. Maybe not as difficult and stressful as providing for a family of nine through a long winter or trying to estimate the duration of a diaspora with just the sack of yams on your back and the goat on a string, or wondering whether the pharaoh has put by enough grain for every citizen, plus this sudden influx of refugees, for seven lean years - but still. If we are to believe the ads, the 'problem' of a daily evening meal takes its emotional toll. Is it really better to pay an expert to decide what you should eat, how much of it you need and write up instructions for how to turn a can, four plastic packets, some celery (Do they really send just the four stalks of celery you need?), a pepper, a small purple onion, four darling little clusters of cherry tomatoes on the stem, a wee bag of rice and four squares of meticulously preserved muscle tissue into a healthy, wholesome meal for a family? My main question is: Shouldn’t executives be able to make these mundane plans and calculations without stressing out? Shouldn’t adults in responsible social positions be able to handle household-level resource management without calling in a specialist? If we’re doing the work, shouldn’t we also take control of procurement and allocation? (Hmm, that reminds me...) It ain’t rocket science! (BTW, I’ve been told by one who knows that rocket science ain’t that complicated, either. I’m happy to pay him – in kind of course - to know that, rather than learning it myself.) Should we really spend so much of our time, brain capacity and energy on making a living that we lose the most basic skills of living? |
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May 22, 2021 Physics Lesson A package from Amazon arrives, containing the expensive new high-tech toy that will keep your cat amused for endless hours. You unpack it, play with it a while, then put it down on the floor, leaving the empty box on the table. Your cat sniffs the new toy from several angles, then walks away, with just that hint of stiffness in her gait that signifies disdain. You are disappointed, of course, but won’t act childishly miffed in front of a cat, so you go into another room and watch tv. After a while, you re-enter the room and turn on the light. The cat, who has been curled up in the box, is startled awake and leaps out. Her forward momentum thrusts the box backward and sends it clattering to the floor. The sound frightens the cat, who now bounds out from under the table, her claws skittering on the hardwood, and careens into one of its legs. The table promptly topples over. The crash panics the cat, who makes a mad dash out of the room, oblivious to your presence in the doorway. When her escape-route is blocked by one or your legs, she attempts to climb it. In an automatic, totally involuntary – honest! - response to the pain, you kick at your attacker. The cat, tumbling ass over teakettle, finally regains her footing and ends up in a tightly-huddled lump of fur with yellow lantern eyes staring up at you and no visible neck or ears, backed into the farthest corner. You start making apologies that sound more like accusations, since it was all her fault anyway and part of your brain is so, so grateful that there is nobody else in the room with their cell-phone out. You don’t encounter the cat for the rest of the evening, which is just as well. Later, in bed, you’re riffling through your book for where you left off reading last night, when you were too sleepy to find a bookmark but not sleepy enough to dog-ear the page. There is a soft thump at the foot end of the bed. The cat sits there, on the outer edge, unmoving, unblinking, waiting for a sign of forgiveness. You stare her down for a full ten seconds before saying: “C’m’here, you clown!” She marches purposefully onto your chest, curls up and starts purring. After a while, you forgive yourself, too.
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May 15, 2021 The News You know what I hope never, ever to see again? Needles being jabbed into anonymous arms. And little bottles, shuffling endlessly on a mechanical roundabout - the same one, every time, I’m pretty sure. If I’m sick of these images, think how utterly weary of them the film editors must be! Why do we have to be told the same old news day after day, hour after hour? And with an urgency, as if the announcers were afraid of having the microphone snatched away before they can finish telling us what they told us, with the same urgency, four times before lunch, and yesterday, last week, last month, last year. They all speak faster than I can hear. As The Next Generation of presenters kept speeding up, all the talking heads they regularly consult attempted to keep pace, until I can barely follow one in five, even of the older ones who used to be comprehensible. By now, they even speak faster than they can speak. Surely, a major network broadcaster should not be stuttering and stumbling and mispronouncing simple words? Surely, the audience is meant to understand what they’re saying? Wouldn’t it be nice if, instead of that machinegun barrage of absolutely nothing new, every twenty minutes, all day long, they simply told us, three times a day: how many new cases, where the outbreaks are, what advisory has been changed since yesterday, and who is eligible for vaccination? Say it once, slowly, clearly, coherently – and then stop. Fill the rest of the broadcast with actual content. I can put up with the shootings and riots, bombings, car crashes, arson, corruption, collusion, spying and deception - all the mischief and mayhem in which my fellow humans indulge with such predictable regularity and have a right to know - if you just report those events, instead of making a feast of them. Don’t keep panning over the wreckage and asking tear-stained survivors how they feel, how they feel, how they feeeel! Don’t show me five minutes of rain-soaked bouquets, teddy bears and crayoned condolence cards. Report it clearly, concisely, objectively: What happened? Who was involved? What do you know for a fact? Then stop. Don’t spend ten minutes telling me what a government official is going to say, then show him saying it, then show him saying it three more times (six if you count the translation) in response to questions from journalists, then another ten minutes telling me what I just heard him saying. (Especially if he repeated the same things he didn't say yesterday and last week.) Film the speech, comment if you have relevant data to add, and then stop. Now, you have 40 minutes of that hour left to impart more interesting, more useful information. Tell me what’s going on in robotics, sustainable energy generation, cloned meat production, indoor farming in the Arctic. Tell me what food prices have gone up or down. What’s getting built and torn down? Where did they put all those disgraced monuments and how many are decapitated? What’s been invented? What’s been cleaned up, reclaimed or repaired? Who made a really good historical documentary, a beneficial change in traffic flow, or exciting balloon journey? Interview people – individually, not in a scrum where five of them have to divide ten minutes the way a wolf-pack divides a smallish white-tailed deer - who actually know and understand things. Give them adequate time to form coherent sentences and to develop an explanation, even of some difficult concept. Ask them questions informed by prior research. Fact-check their assertions and follow up whatever comment might be inaccurate, misleading or confusing. It might not even kill anybody to let experts rehearse their testimony before facing the camera, to cut down on stumbles, stutters and responses beginning with “So, uh…”. I don’t mind complexity. I don’t mind gossip. I don’t even mind trivia. But I do – oh so very much! – hate repetition!
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