Being Uncomfortable is Necessary

I’ve been thinking a lot about something that a lot of guys like me don’t like to think about.  We like to think that we’re good guys, that we do the right things, that we support the right people and that we are helping our communities.  We’re often right – we are all of those things. We stand up for what is right.  We support those who need our help.  We give to charity, or help out with our time. We’re doing the best we can, right?  So why do we need to think about that thing that the “crazy feminists” and #BlackLivesMatter advocates want to force us into considering, that wacky thing they call “privilege”?

Until just a few years ago, I hadn’t really given it much thought.  I mean, intellectually I knew that I had won the genetic/citizenship/orientation/education lottery.  I’m an able bodied, cis-gendered, straight, educated white male.  If people were choosing the characteristics that would make their lives easier, they couldn’t have chosen a better combination.  And I got it all just by being me. I’m one lucky son of a bitch.

Then along comes rapist Brock Turner.  Convicted of raping an unconscious woman behind a dumpster in an alley.  And he gets a sentence of six months in a county jail because, in the words of the judge, prison might have “a severe impact on him.” The media outcry in response to this has been astronomical and heartwarming.  People are coming out of the woodwork to protest that this slap on the wrist is not appropriate, and that it underlines the white mans’ privilege that so deeply underscores our mindset.  I was upset too, until I did some digging today at the suggestion of my partner.  And then I lost my mind.  See, I was just upset because this seemed to be yet another example of sexual assault against women not being taken seriously enough by the judicial systems that are supposed to protect us all equally.  But it is even worse than that. 

Let me introduce you to Brian Banks. At only 16 he was accused of rape, and ultimately convicted and sentenced to five years in prison.  And he didn’t do it.  But he was black.

Then there is Corey Batey. Unlike Mr. Banks, Batey did do it.  He was accused, convicted and sentenced.  Just like Turner.  And just like Turner Batey was a star athlete at a major US university and his victim was intoxicated to the point of unconsciousness.  Unlike Turner, Batey was sentenced to 15-25 years in prison.  Same crime, same circumstances.  Turner is white.  Batey is black.

Let’s not even get into how long you can get away with being a serial rapist if you are a police officer and you chose poor black women as your targets. Sure, when you finally get caught you go to prison for life, but how long did it take for someone to come forward?  Why were these poor black women afraid to seek help?

The answer is in the question.  

Rejoice!

The last time all y’all (see, I am becoming a Nova Scotian) came by to chat, I was lamenting the fact that I hadn’t been able to convert my two jedi in training over to the dark side completely.  While they loved video games, superheroes and general geekiness, I hadn’t been able to get them to try a sit down role-playing game with me.  That is no longer a bar to their conversion!

When my fantastic partner and I were in Fredericton to watch the amazing spoken word artist / storyteller / poet / shaman / inspiration Shayne Koyzcan (and that’s a whole other story – that man is awe inspiring) we stopped into a little store called The Geek Chic Boutique. Yeah, the name alone was enough to bring me in, and their selection was interesting enough that childlike squees fluttered about the store faster than I could contain them. We passed over the Star Wars t-shirts, the mad scientist kits, Minecraft figures, Pokemon plushies (which were adorable) and the assorted coffee mugs, Doctor Who equipment and Deadpool wallets, because we found a little game called Adventure Maximus. It was designed by a gamer who wanted to find a way to play with his kids too – to bring them into the fold as it were.  So I could relate, in a big way.

Reading over the rules when we got it open, I was a bit dubious at first, and the kids were confused when we started, but once they got rolling, we had a blast. The padawan gloried over the chance to become Kronk, a hulking minotaur thug with a bad attitude and a penchant for fried pork.  The youngling was pleased as punch to pretend to be a scaled dragonkin priest, breathing fire and smiting his enemies (and allies) with equal zeal.  Even their mother joined in, with her morose goblin warrior.

We’ve had a tonne of fun playing this streamlined and very easy to understand game.  It’s whimsical enough to appeal to the seven year old youngling, interesting enough to keep his ten year old brother entertained, and simple enough that you can play through a whole adventure in an hour or two.  They fight, they dance, they loot, they laugh.  And they let me be the Adventure Master.

Lead and They Might Follow

Until you have uttered the phrase “take that out of your mouth” one hundred times, until you have memorized (and hum in your sleep) the theme song from at least three children’s shows and until you realize you are watching Sponge Bob Squarepants with no children in the room, you will not really understand what I’m talking about here… I hope you read on anyway.

Being a father is the single most rewarding, demanding, painful, thankless, seemingly hopeless and awesome task I have ever undertaken.  My two little Jedi have consistently challenged me, driven me to new heights of frustration (“Stop hitting your brother with dirty underwear!!!”), enraged me to the point where “dad needs some alone time” (as noted by the Padawan last night, and reminded me of the awe that the world once inspired in me. I can’t remember being as excited as my boys are about the new discoveries they make, about the new things they learn – though I am sure I once was.  What I can remember, and it’s easy because it happens daily, is how excited I get watching them have fun, watching them become young men.  Those moments of sheer joy are when our ‘parental batteries’ recharge, oftentimes to overflowing – like Iron Man hit with Thor’s lightning.

Which brings me to my point – my boys are geeks.  They denied it last night when we were discussing it at the dinner table, but when asked to name blasters from Star Wars, they were able to identify several by model number, and held opinions on which one is best for which type of battle.  When questioned about Minecraft, they can go on for hours about the types of buildings they can make, how to use redstone and how to best defeat the deadly creepers. They let me join them in this geekery (though I earned my geek card decades ago) and I revel in the fact that they are so proud of it, and are so happy when I join in – the Youngling was telling all his classmates about how he and I joined together to “defeat an Enderman with only stone swords!” His classmates were suitably impressed.

Both continue to profess their desire to become engineers, the elder to build robots which he can use to take over the world and cleanse it of the humans causing all the problems (the dark side is strong in this one) and the younger to build cars and planes that fly and don’t cause pollution (which he admittedly copied from his brother) or maybe a doctor (possibly one that moonlights as an exotic dancer… yeah, he’s complicated).  We live in a time where their desires to be professional YouTubers (another stated goal for both of them) may actually be a career option. In each of them, their love of technology is helping to guide them on their respective paths.

Both are learning to love reading, with the Padawan leaning toward robots and science fiction graphic novels, and the Youngling digging deep into spooky ‘Goosebumps’ books and stories about haunted houses. I keep hoping they will share my passion for high fantasy, and while both love the Hobbit movies (to my chagrin – damn you Peter Jackson!!!) and the Harry Potter movies, neither is interested in the real treat that is a high fantasy novel… but I wait patiently for them.

When asked if he would like to play a roleplaying game with me last night, the Padawan declined – it didn’t sound like fun to him.  I was saddened a bit, the final indoctrination into my geek realm can’t happen until he rolls some polyhedral dice and knows the agony of the critical failure and the ecstasy of rolling a natural twenty.  I want to share that passion with him, but it seems I will have to wait a bit longer yet. 

Above all I’m glad that ‘geek’ no longer has negative connotations, or at least not as negative as they once were.  Where an interest or passion for computers, science fiction or fantasy used to be a one way ticket to social pariah status, it can now be a badge of honor.  And my Jedi in training are many kinds of geeks: video game geeks, technology geeks, superhero geeks, Nerf geeks, Roughrider football geeks, judo geeks and Star Wars geeks.  They are my geeks.

Social Justice Warrior

So the other day, whilst engaged in that most cerebral of pursuits (playing a mobile game on my iPad) I was drawn into an online discussion in the game’s “chat” room.  One of the members had noted that “Its nice to sea so many femail characters in the game.” [sic] That comment was followed by several more, all impeccably worded and clearly well thought out, suggesting that there was no place in comics for women, that no women read comics or played video games, and that certain comic companies’ decisions to “feminize” characters was just part of the larger feminist agenda.

I carefully considered this viewpoint and pondered the possibility that “a girls only place in comics was cosplaying to show her ####!!!” [sic] as one poster noted.  I inferred from the context of post that the chat filter had replaced “mind” for some odd reason, and decided, in a fit of madness, to join the conversation in support of this point.

“While it is refreshing that the comic and gaming studios are including more female characters, there is still a long way to go until we see gender equality in video games and comics in general.”  I wrote.  Then followed it up with “It is especially odd that they (the entertainment companies) haven’t caught on to the fact that a rising percentage (maybe as high as 50%) of gamers and geeks in general are women, with money to spend.”

A commenter, with a charming moniker suggesting a practice uncomfortable at the best of times and unlawful in twenty eight countries, replied “Great.  Just what we needed - a ####### SJW.”

I tried to sort through the words the chat filter could have had an issue with.  I ruled out “awesome” and “amazing” based on the poster’s grammar.  “Wonderful” was too long and both “dashing” and “sensual” implied a level of familiarity I didn’t think they had with me.  I gave up trying to determine what the adjective could have been and decided to just focus on their overall message, that they were happy to have a Social Justice Warrior present.  So I answered in the only way that Thumper’s father would approve of.  I said “Thanks!”

All kidding aside, I will never understand why detractors seem to feel that labelling someone as a SJW is in any way negative.  No one has ever called me a warrior before, outside of a D&D game anyway.  The idea that I could be a warrior, a champion or a gladiator for anything, let alone something as commendable as equality and fairness for all, fills me with pride.  I see myself standing on a grassy hilltop, surrounded by adoring citizens of all races/colours/genders/sexualities/species/beliefs/etc., waving a rainbow flag in one hand and holding balanced scales of justice in the other, the sun setting behind me over a field of flowers.  I want to get that as a poster for my office wall.  Maybe with my face on Matthew McConaughey’s body.  Because, you know, reasons.

I know that as a cis-gendered, white male I will never truly understand my level of privilege.  I also understand that, based on my decade and a half working in the field of Human Rights, I will never know what it is truly like to be in the shoes of ‘the minority.’  Neither of those however preclude me, or anyone else, from supporting those who need my support.  Nor will they ever.

Growing Up

As parents, we always know that our kids will grow up. Which is to say that our brains understand that these small creatures we created are animals and as such they will ingest food which will create additional body tissues causing them to grow taller and heavier, progressing from crawling to walking to running to… well, whatever comes after running.  We know they will grow stronger, smarter and more independent. 

Our hearts on the other hand, don’t have this same understanding. In our hearts, these tiny little creatures are still cute little babies who need us for everything. Our hearts will always ‘know’ that these creatures, regardless of age, need us for everything. They are so small we can carry them in our hands, they have that “new-baby” smell and they need us to comfort them when they are scared or lonely.  They fall asleep on our chests, their wispy hair tickling our chins and their soft pink toes not quite reaching our waists. They look up from our arms with bright eyes, and their little fingers grab our pinkies with a strength that we exclaim over.  Of course, from time to time, our hearts get a shocked awakening to what our brains knew all along.  And it aches when it happens. 

Our eldest celebrated his tenth birthday with a group of his friends yesterday.  A video-game playing, YouTube watching afternoon lead into a quick bite to eat at a burger joint prior to heading off to the movies.  As my son, my tiny little baby, sat with his friends at a table without me, all of them talking and telling stories, joking with each other and having a great time, it really hit home that my baby isn’t a baby any more.  He doesn’t need me like he used to.  I could have left the room and they likely would not even have noticed. 

We’ve seen these signs of independence coming. He’s been riding off with his friends for a couple years now on trips around the neighborhood, and this summer has marked his first forays into going with a friend down to the corner pizza shop for a slice with no adult supervision. I’m proud of his growing independence, and the signs of maturity I am seeing in him. When I look at him now, I see less of a little boy and more of a young man. 

And yet, there’s a small part of me that is sad to see it happening. I know that soon enough, he’ll be driving, then college (or whatever he chooses) and then I’ll be wondering why he doesn’t call more, and will he be coming home for Christmas this year. I know that he will grow up, move out, maybe have a family of his own.  I know that it’s a perfectly natural process – that everyone does it.  I know that, but my heart doesn’t.

Grandma

Yesterday I learned that my grandmother had passed away on Sunday night.  She died quietly in her sleep, with no warning at all.  She was still young for that side of the family, a spry and healthy woman who lived independently, still did all her own cooking and baking, and cooked for the family as well.  She joked with me about her “robotic parts”, but she went dancing, out to bingo and had a circle of friends who no doubt miss her dearly.  She still camped, still travelled, still hugged.

It is kind of funny that when I think back to all my memories of her, that it is food that comes to mind the most, especially her Christmas dinner spreads.  The family would all gather at the hotel she and my grandpa owned in the tiny little town of Fairy Glen (yes, it’s a real place) and she would have set up the banquet tables in the bar, all covered with this red and white plastic table cloth she brought out at Christmas.  The tables would be covered with enough food to feed an army – at least one turkey, one ham and one roast.  Two or three kinds of potatoes, a wide slew of veggies and a jellied salad or two.  Add to that some cabbage rolls and perogies, all homemade of course, and four or five different dessert squares.  She’d been working on the meal for two days or more, and it was great.  Granted, we won’t speak of her spaghetti sauce or her chilli – grandma thought that black pepper was an exotic spice. 

She reminded me of the importance of family, and urged me to reconnect with my birth father and all the family on that side, whom I had not seen since I was a toddler and had no memory of.  She was so happy and so proud when I told her that I had contacted my dad and that we were forging a new relationship that she cried on the phone with me.

She was tough, but forgiving.  She spanked me as a child (I am quite certain I deserved it) but hugged me afterwards.  She yelled at my brothers and I when we drove her crazy on one of our many summer stays at her home, but she is the same lady who chased us through the hallways, cackling an evil laugh as she chased us with her false teeth in hand.

She took me berry picking for blueberries and raspberries, gardening in one of her three gardens (one of which would be considered a farm field by Nova Scotia standards), bottle picking and shopping.  She read to me as a child, and let me cry on her lap when I fell down or when I had one of my frequent ear infections… her heating pad (best thing when you have an ear infection) smelled like lemons.

Grandma was fond of telling me over and over again that once upon a time I held a record of some sort for the most grandmothers.  She has a picture from the newspaper, and if memory serves, there are nine or ten ladies in that picture with me, all grandmothers, great-grandmothers or even great-great grandmothers.

She was so happy when she became a great-grandmother, and I will always cherish the memories of her visiting us in Halifax when our oldest son was still in diapers, and again just a couple of years ago.  She doted on my boys when we travelled back to Saskatchewan last summer, though she didn’t chase them with her false teeth – that will always be mine.

She told me she loved me and was proud of me every time we spoke. 

The last words I spoke to her are the same ones I would say again if she could hear me. “I love you grandma, and I miss you.”

"Why do you do it?"

One of my colleagues noticed that I was favoring my left shoulder this morning (I have been for a week now, but who’s counting) and asked if it was “another judo thing”.  I had to honestly answer that yes, it was a direct result of competing in last weekend’s judo tournament.  They laughed and said that they hoped the medal was worth the pain.  It wasn’t, but not the way it sounds.

I get asked that question a fair amount lately.  As an older, very out of shape guy my return to the judo mats after almost 25 years absence has been full of challenges.  Not the least of which is that judo is not easy on the body.  Ask any judoka who has been practicing for any length of time, and they will regale you with stories of the dislocated or broken toes and fingers, cracked ribs, concussions, twisted (or worse) ankles… the list is endless.  It is to be expected – it is a martial art first and foremost, and a sport second.  Any continuous practitioner of a contact sport, whether it is football, soccer, rugby or judo will accumulate injuries over the years.  In my case, add in three decades of too much McDonald's and too little activity and you have a recipe for injury and pain.  So why do we do it?

The short answer is, I have no idea why others do it.  Maybe they are masochists, maybe they have pain tolerances higher than anyone I know. Maybe they are so caught up in the adrenaline that they pass off the pain.  Or maybe they have another reason, just like I do.

Judo is an individual sport, though its practitioners are still part of a larger team - being part of my dojo has given me a new social circle, one united by a common interest – no, a shared passion.  Even those who aren’t actively practicing judo are still caught up in the excitement of their kids or their partners.  And those who do practice not only cheer each other on, they support and train one another.  Any given night on the mats is full of people with more experience helping those with less (often to the frustration of our sensei).  And there are no secrets among us – if I ask any of my fellow students how they pulled off that amazing throw that sent me flying, they are happy to show me how and coach me until I get the basics down.  So that comradery is certainly part of it.

As a sport or martial art, judo is also physically demanding – most martial arts are the same.  You use muscle groups you don’t use in any other circumstances, and you are frequently giving far more effort in the three minutes of a match, or the hour and a half of training, then you ever thought was in you.  Great sensei (like all of the ones at my dojo) can push you even further.  An hour of judo training burns more calories than an hour of running or an hour of using an elliptical.  There are very few workouts as intense, so as a result over the last 15 months of training, I have started to return to a state of physical fitness that I haven’t had in a decade or more.  So that is also a part of it.

The sense of confidence that comes with challenging yourself, of knowing that you can rise to a challenge that seems insurmountable, is unbelievable. When you step on those mats, and on the other side is a black belt with ten times your skill and experience, you learn quickly that you have to put the inevitable doubts behind you, and give your best effort.  When you bow onto the mats for a tournament, with a few hundred people watching you, your sensei screaming instructions to you and your opponent doing everything they can to drive you into the mat with all their technique and power, you have to believe you can do it. You can rise above the anxiety and fear gnawing at your gut, rise above the ache in your shoulder and that you can succeed. That boost in confidence carries over to every other facet of your life, and that is an undeniable benefit.  But it’s still not the real reason I step on the mats.

The largest part, and the one that really makes it matter to me, is the way it makes me feel when I am on the mats.  Focus.  Determination.  Calm.  Those are feelings that are markedly lacking in my day to day life.

I live with chronic depression, a fact which astonishes many people who know me, but not those who live with me.  They have seen me unable to get out of bed for days.  They know that left to my own devices, I would crawl into a hole and pull it closed behind me.  I struggle daily to get to work, to keep up my smile, to fit in and some days, just to breathe.  The love and support of my partner holds me up when nothing else seems to.  Antidepressants help, in fact they are likely the reason I can function at all.  But even these only make a dent in the grey fog that I live in, a fog that follows me everywhere I go.  Except onto the mats.  It is my one place where, for whatever reason, I find a peace that is lacking elsewhere.  The one place where colours are bright and where I can breathe deeply and fully. Judo has given me back my life.  And that is why I do it.  That is why I have learned to love my bruises (judo “kisses”), my mat burns (judo “trophies”) and my broken toes (judo “badges”).

Those of us who are adrift, whether it is due to mental disability or just to the peculiarities of what we all call life often need an anchor to hold on to.  Some of us are extraordinarily lucky and we get to have multiple holds – our loved ones (friends and family alike), our passions, and maybe even our idiotic love of a thing that breaks us down, even while it keeps us together and builds us up, stronger than ever.

Freedom to not Speak?

2. Everyone has the following fundamental freedoms:

     (a) freedom of conscience and religion;
     (b) freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication;
     (c) freedom of peaceful assembly; and
     (d) freedom of association.

I want to be clear about one thing – I am a huge proponent of freedom of speech.  Not just because it is enshrined in our Charter (you can see section 2 of that above) but because of what I perceive as the necessity of such a freedom.  When a government limits what people can say and when they can say it, they are suppressing change.  Governments generally fear change and try to take steps to limit it at the best of times, and no method of suppression is more effective than taking away citizens' ability to communicate.  So all people need this basic and fundamental right.

I love to quote Evelyn Beatrice Hall , when she wrote “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it” in her work on Voltaire, himself a victim of censorship.  I think that sums it up far better than I ever could. The very basis of the freedom of speech ideal is that I have the right to say things that others disagree with, just as they have the same right toward me.

So when my fantastic wife and I were driving down a main street on our way to work earlier this week and saw a group of anti-abortion protesters lining the road with their pictures of dead fetuses, I accepted their right to do this.  It was appalling, disgusting and completely inappropriate.  The pictures probably gave little children (far too young to understand what the posters stood for) nightmares – hell they probably gave some of the drivers the same!  But I believed then, and still do, that they had a right to do what they were doing.

Wait for it… here it comes… BUT.  But just because you have a constitutionally protected right to do something does not mean that you should do that thing.  Raising awareness of your view can be accomplished in a fashion that does not disgust and alarm the rest of us.  Sure a bit of shock value can be a big eye opener.  Possibly being shocking will get you more air time, and get you more notice.  Maybe you will start an intelligent dialogue on the subject when people start talking about you. That’s a lot of maybes.  One too many for me.

The way to have a rational discourse is to have a rationale discourse.  The way to get attention to your cause is to show the benefits of your cause. Showing disgusting images to people on their way to work does none of that. I can’t imagine any person, driving in to work on that morning and seeing that display said to themselves, “Golly, I never thought about the blood and the bodies before. I may have been pro-choice or on-the-fence on this issue now, but by gosh now I am against it.”

I have to commend the great folks from yourchoicehalifax.com who arranged what can loosely be called a counter-rally.  They did not try to stop the pro-life/anti-choice/terrible-picture-holders from having their say.  They didn’t even go out in support of choice.  They went out with placards covered in hearts and support with the message that people should not be intimidated or made to feel ashamed by bullies.  Their message of acceptance, respect and tolerance was a breath of fresh air in this ongoing debate.

FULL DISCLOSURE:  I am personally against abortion.  I don’t think that I would ever even consider an abortion should I become pregnant.  Of course, I am biologically male, so the likelihood that I would ever be in a position to consider having one is very small indeed.  The likelihood that I even have the most rudimentary understanding of what it is like to be pregnant, or how hard the associated choices are, is as small.  Additionally, as a believer in the rule of law and something of a legal aficionado, I understand that abortion is legal in Canada, and our highest court made that decision almost thirty years ago. These factors, and my ultimately libertarian feminist views on things, make me firmly pro-choice.  I don’t think that reproductive rights are issues that the state, or anyone, should impose upon an individual – their body, their choice, plain and simple.

O Captain! My Captain!

I have idolized Robin Williams for years.  Since I first saw him as the irrepressible Mork from Ork, I have reveled in his zany antics and loved him from afar.  He was one of the rare comedians who was able to make me laugh despite anything happening in my life.  Even now, knowing that he is gone, I am smiling while I think of his performances.

He was not as recognized for his more serious work, though the Academy did give him an Oscar for his work in Good Will Hunting.  But it was here that the real depth of his acting abilities shone through.  Good Morning Vietnam, What Dreams May Come and The Fisher King are all fantastic movies, where we see a small glimpse into the other side of this zany man. 

Dead Poets Society is one of the most inspiring movies of all time.  His role as John Keating made me want to be a teacher when I saw it, and still makes me wish I had chosen that as my career.  To this day, the wisdom and hope that movie provided remains profound and on target – use your brain to think critically, don’t let life pass you by, find and never let go of your passions, carpe diem.

I have always rather immodestly felt that I was a lot like Robin.  No, I don’t pretend to be nearly as funny or smart as he was, but we seemed to have a lot of similarities.  Hell, even physically – we’re both short, hairy and heavyset guys.  But above that, we’re both recovering addicts - from the same drug of choice even (“Cocaine is god’s way of telling you you are making too much money”).  And we both struggle with depression. 

It’s the last part that is tearing me up right now.  Just like Robin, I have spent a large part of my life hiding my feelings and confusing people by being the joker and the funny guy.  I turned to cocaine and alcohol to self-medicate, and it worked… for a while.  It wasn’t until my son died that I was forced to take a long, hard look at my emotions.  It wasn’t until my behaviour started to affect my relationships with my other children that I sought medical help.  And like millions of people, I learned that my life-long battle just to stay alive was not my imagination – it was severe clinical depression.  And I finally started to look for solutions.

That’s when I learned the truth that no one wants to talk about, there is no solution. Nothing really works with depression, you can’t make it go away – it is a part of you.  A sly, dark little part that sits in the back of your brain with long, dull claws dug in and draping everything you do and think with a fog of pain.  You can smother that little fucker with the best prescription medication that money can buy. You can talk about him with trained professionals, and keep him at bay, feeling better most of the time.  Every day though, he waits.  He’s patient and he’ll live with you for the rest of your life.  He’s an insidious little prick and all he wants is to kill you.  And if you listen to him long enough, he will win.  Just like he did with Robin.

There is a significant stigma attached to clinical depression.  So many of us hide it, and hide it well, because we have heard the old mantras a thousand times:  “You’ll get over it”, “It’s just a bad day”, “Pull up your boots!”, “Put on your big girl panties!” and my all-time favorite “But you don’t seem depressed.”  We do pull up our boots and tie on our big girl panties.  That is how we get out of bed in the morning – though even that isn’t possible some days.  We don’t ever get over it and we certainly can’t just shake it off, any more than an epileptic can ‘get over’ their seizures – it is a chemical imbalance in the brain – a purely physical issue that causes these reactions.  Of course, it is hidden away, that little bastard is clever.  If we could point to the wheelchair or the crutch there would be no question that we were living with something that had tremendous impact on our lives.

If there is one thing positive to come out of Robin’s suicide, I hope it is this – that people will start to recognize that laughter can be just a mask and that emotional pain, the kind that drives our friends and family to such despair that the only way out is the peace of death, is real. 

O Captain! My Captain! Be at peace now.  And thank you for brightening our lives with your laugh and your smile.

Lest We Forget

Today marks the 20^th anniversary of one of the darker events that occurred within my lifetime.  On April 7, 1994 the tiny African nation of Rwanda erupted into violence and stayed there for slightly more than three months – 100 days in fact.  In that very short time frame, hundreds of thousands of citizens, the majority of whom were innocent civilians, were massacred.  So fierce and brutal was the period that even today, an accurate count of the number of people murdered remains unknown.  The United Nations estimates that the death toll was between 500,000 and 1,000,000 people.  The official death toll according to the government of Rwanda is 1,174,000.  In three months.

The Rwandan genocide has its roots, as many conflicts do, in conflict that simmered for generations and divided a nation.  I will never understand those roots in all of their complexity, but I do know, at the absolute base of them, lies “the other” – that intangible and often ill-defined condition of being different in some way.  Perhaps a different colour of skin or a different name by which they call god.  Maybe they have a different view on how the people ought to be governed or how government money should be spent.  Sometimes, it is as simple as how they define love.  But some characteristic, some tiny detail, sets them apart.

Terrifyingly, the majority of the murders were not carried out by organized military.  No WWII death camps and trains here.  In this tiny nation, neighbour set upon neighbour with wood axes and clubs.  Baseball bats and machetes were the weapons of mass destruction in Rwanda.

If you have not read Roméo Dallaire’s “Shake Hands with the Devil” you must.  It is a book you will only read once, but it will move you to your core.  It tells a story of a country in need, of a war that was predicted and of a million lives lost that could have been saved.  It ought to be required reading for all military commanders and political leaders.

And that is perhaps the saddest part of the entire horrific matter – they saw it coming.  Months prior to the commencement of the genocide, the UN was told it was going to happen.  Informants in the Rwandan government told UN officials that plans were being made to begin the slaughter, that specific parties were set to incite the people to murder their neighbors.  But no one stopped it.  No one stepped in to help.  In fact, the UN Peacekeepers that were on the ground had their funding cut and their numbers reduced in the middle of the conflict.  Nations with enormous armies did nothing.  Nations with tremendous budgets spent not a dime helping.  And every minute they did nothing, seven people were murdered.

Things in Rwanda today are somewhat improved.  It is no paradise - the nation is still trying to climb out of the hell on earth that it was for those 100 days.  In 100 days, almost 15% of the population was killed.  Children became orphans and orphans became the heads of families.  But the wounds are healing, though resources remain scarce and money, as in many nations, could solve a lot of the problems.  Conflict still runs through the area, and peace remains elusive, though the wide-spread slaughter has long since ceased.

The world has changed.  We’re more connected now, more in touch with people around the world.  We Facebook and Tweet with people from all nations.  We call someone a friend whom we’ve never met face to face, and likely never will.  We have news dumped into our phones, our computers and our tablets every minute of every day.  A mosquito sneezes in Tokyo and we know about it thirty seconds later.

Yet the world has not changed.  Srebenica, Syria, Sudan and now the Central African Republic.  Genocidal attacks where one group makes a concentrated effort to eliminate an opposing (or even just different) group.  Tens of thousands of dead and dying right now, in this moment, but no government will step in.  The United Nations does nothing.  And children watch their parents die.  Fathers watch their daughters brutally assaulted.  Parents gather the remains of their children, horrifically murdered for the crime of being different.

When will we learn?

Matthew 7:1

Jeepers people, what’s with the judging!  It seems that we are so quick to judge people these days that we can’t take five seconds and check our own biases and figure out why we are so quick to throw unhelpful and even hurtful labels at people.

The other morning, on our morning commute to work, my wife and I were regaled with the tale of Ms. Rachel Fredrickson.  If you didn’t know (and we sure didn’t) she was the winner of this season’s “Biggest Loser”.  A ‘reality’ show about people who come into the show carrying weight they don’t want, and with the assistance of dieticians and fitness experts, learn how to lose it.  The ‘contestant’ who loses the largest percentage of their body weight wins the grand prize of $250,000.  And in Ms. Fredrickson’s case, a helping dose of scorn to go along with her new wealth.

It seems that some of the twitterverse (is that still the hip word?  Wait, is it still groovy to ask if things are hip?) and other internet folks are pretty critical of Ms. Fredrickson’s transformation.  And it was a pretty drastic change.  In seven and a half months, Ms. Fredrickson went from 118kg to 48kg.  That’s 260 pounds to 105 pounds for those of us born prior to 1985 or in some poor disadvantaged part of the world that doesn’t use the metric system.

Ms. Fredrickson is 1.62 meters tall (5’4”).  So she went from carrying a significant amount of weight that she didn’t want to carry to being very thin.  In seven and a half months.  Was that crash dieting and did she act recklessly in doing that much change to her body? 

I’d like to answer that with a resounding who cares?  For starters, weight loss is the goal of the contestants on the show – all of them are doing everything they can to lose as much weight.  The winner of the show isn’t determined by who now leads the healthiest life style, or who has made the most positive change in their worlds, but simply by who has lost the greatest percentage of their weight.  And people have done a lot worse, and far stupider things, for $250,000.  Hell, for a quarter million dollars, I would do the same or more - I can’t think of too many things I wouldn’t do for that kind of cash!  Well, okay, I can, but most of them can’t be printed here without a more serious discussion of ethics and morality and a healthy dose of criminal and international law, which is not the topic of my ire today.  Actors and athletes all undergo radical transformations of their bodies for their crafts, and most of them just get accolades for them – Christian Bale I am looking at you!

But what about the message she is sending to children??  Won’t someone think of the children?  Or what about the inaccurate portrayal of beauty that she is giving to women who are bombarded with “skinny” messages every day?  Or the other women who are likewise lambasted with messages about how they are too skinny… how you going to find a husband, mangia mangia!  To those issues I leave with one last question – where do you think the show came from in the first place?

This is how it ends...

This is how it ends.
Not with a bang, nor a whimper
silence.

No screams of incandescent rage

No liquid steaming moans
No childrens’ cries
snuffed out lives
silence.

When no one cares

No one dares
To change

What is in a Word?

We often hear people talking about how words have power.  How the way in which our thought processes, even our worldview, are shaped and molded by the words we use – the words we have available to us.

In my office we deal with word and word meanings all the time.  What one person calls another in the workplace, and the connotations that can be associated with the word or words used, can be the difference between a peaceful work environment and a poisoned one that drives people to do terrible things.  We all know the words I am talking about, though we never say them in polite company.  The “N-word”, the “F-word”, all manner of racial and ethnic hate rolled up into tiny little words.  And of course it isn’t always just races and ethnicities that are the targets of hateful words, classes, sexes, orientations, you name it, if there is a way to differentiate people based on some trivial or inane characteristic, someone, somewhere has invented a way to mock and ridicule those people.

It isn’t just linked to hateful words either.  We attach tremendous importance to words of our own.  My colleagues and I spent almost two years designing a new process for our office.  We created it, almost completely without managerial interference, and we’ve been using it to tremendous success for over a year now.  There is a great deal of pride in the halls of my office when we talk about it.  But… there’s always a but, isn’t there?  We were recently asked to change the name of the process.  Not how we administer it.  Not where, when, what or how we do it, just its name.  The level of defensiveness that has sprung up, over the name of it alone, took me quite by surprise.  After all, they are just words, right?

Right?

The truth is, they aren’t just words.  Words embody our sense of identity.  They give us the framework by which we communicate our sense of justice, our hopes and fears, our prayers and our condemnations.  They define who and what we are.  And when some of these words are used against us, or against those we stand with, they can hurt.

The other day, while walking with my youngest son (now aged four), I was moping my sweating and bald head with a handkerchief.  It happened to be a rainbow handkerchief, a holdover from proudly walking in Halifax’s Pride Parade last year.  I hadn’t given any thought it when I grabbed it from among the others in my drawer, to me it was just a way of keeping the sweat from running down by brow and into my eyes – shaving your head in the summer has a few unintended consequences!

As my son and I walked, sweating, down the path, a young man passing us looked at me with a great deal of disdain and snarled “Fucking faggot” as he passed us.  For a moment, I had no idea where it had even come from, until I realized he had been staring at the handkerchief.  When that realization hit, I was momentarily stunned – it certainly wasn’t the first time someone has assumed I am gay, likely won’t be the last – but what stunned me was the hate in his voice.  This was a complete stranger, someone I had never seen before, and likely will never see again.  And he hated me, for what he thought I was.

I was enraged. Not at what he had called me, because even if it were true I don’t attach any judgement to that and no doubt also because, as a mostly straight person, I don’t have a history with that word being used against me as a weapon.  I was enraged because he saw fit to let that hate show, in front of my four year old son.  My boys are being raised to understand and accept all difference – to acknowledge the truth that we are all human beings, and our differences, as much as our similarities, make us unique, cherished and worthy of basic dignity and respect.  It was fortunate for him that I did have my son with me though, as my first instinct (which I have not felt in a very long time) was to react in a physical manner.

Instead, I reigned in my anger, smiled at him and said “Thank you!” and kept walking.  But I am still fuming over it.

It is not the first time I have been the subject of stereotyping, and won’t be the last.  As a privileged, white (pink really), (over) educated, young(ish), straight (mostly) and able bodied male, it is very rare for me to be the target of an “ism” but it has happened, and no doubt will happen again.  But that hate, that level or disdain - that was new.  Even when I have been (in my misspent youth) beaten up for being the wrong [fill in the blank] - I never felt the level of hate in those actions that this young man held for me on the basis of a brightly colored handkerchief.

Ironically, when these things happen to me, all they do is strengthen my resolve to continue the work I do.  As long as there are bigots out there who hate for no real reason, as long as the insanity that is racism/classism/sexism/etc. exists, I will fight it.  In big ways (my career) and in more important ways (teaching my kids) I will continue to do what is right.

So I hear your hateful word good sir.  I hear your “faggot” and I counter you with “hope”.  Because that word, that idea, is more powerful than your hate will ever be.  It will sustain and nurture a generation raised to know that differences are powerful and that diversity is magnificent.  It will light the way forward, while you and your ideas will cower in dark places and wither. 

Old, White, Christian Men

Yesterday I took my boys out for the afternoon to visit the Nova Scotia Museum of Natural History, one of three “education-type” places that we hold memberships at.  Don’t tell my kids, but the places they love to visit are the same ones that I want them to go to – they’ll learn more if they think they are having fun!  But before we could begin our day of fun at the museum (snakes and lizards and scorpions oh my!) we had to fuel up.  So we stopped at McDonalds for a bite to eat. 

As we sat, munching our way through the communal pile of tasty french fries (we always just pile all our fries together and share them all), I could not help but overhear the conversation between two older gentlemen.  They started off their conversation talking about the “ladies auxiliary"  at their church, and went on at length about how things were going in the church.  They veered to hockey and football for a time, before one of them pushed the newspaper across the table to his friend, with a gruff “You seen this yet?”  What follows is their conversation, not quite verbatim, but close.

“Nah, what’s it about?”

“New premier of Ontario is a woman.  And she’s gay.”

“Damn.  Pretty soon, we’re going to be the minority around here.”

At this point, I was almost set to interject into their conversation.  That statement, coming from the mouths of able bodied, straight, educated, white males always gets my goat.  But I bit down on another fry and tried to mind my own business.  Partly because I was having a great time with my boys and didn't want to ruin it, but partly because I just did not have the energy to engage in that debate all over again. Either way,  I am damned glad I did keep my mouth chewing instead of talking...

“Maybe that’s a good thing.  We had our chance, and we really screwed things up.”

“Yeah, you’re right.  Time to give the lesbians a chance.”

“Yup.  Don’t understand what everyone is so upset about – it’s just about giving everyone the same equality.”

“Exactly.  People get too worked up about stuff that shouldn’t matter to them.  Hey, you heard that Mike’s kid is going to school…”

I nearly hugged them.  It reminded me of my own prejudices; based on their chatting about their church, their patterns of speech and their age, I had already put them in the “old white Christian bigot” category – a form of discrimination all its own.  It reminded me that we all need to revisit our stereotyping constantly – we all do it, and it’s not a bad thing in and of itself, so long as it doesn’t lead to value judgements.

So to all you old white Christian males out there, I’m sorry for sticking you in a box.  I promise to try and remember that you aren’t all the same, and that many (most) of you are good and decent people, who care about people and their human rights just as much (and often more) as me and my young, atheist, “liberal” friends.  We have a lot more in common than we think, and we have to remember that from time to time.

You spin me right round baby, right round...

Here in Halifax, we recently decided - wait... "we" in this case means the elected officials of our fair city, and "recently" means two years ago (we Haligonians consider anything that happened after the 1917 Halifax Explosion to be recent) - to make the temporary skating oval that was designed for the 2011 Canada Games into a permanent winter fixture.  Tubing and cooling equipment, far to complicated to go into great detail on here (and because I don't have the faintest idea how it works, I think it uses science), make the Oval usable even in slightly above zero weather, which is good, because Halifax "winters" are rarely consistent.

The nicest part about the Oval is that it was kept alive due to the public response to it.  You see, when it was originally constructed back in 2011 for that year's Canada Games, it was left open for public skating for the rest of that winter season, but was due to be dismantled and turned back into the vacant park field that it came from.  But the public responded so positively to its existence, and put so much pressure on HRM's city council, that it was decided to keep it open, and even to slowly upgrade it.

The other nicest part about the Oval is that the city has managed, so far, to keep it free to use.  Despite the assuredly high costs of running it every year, it is free for anyone to head out and skate upon.  It is maintained, and kept in very good shape, throughout its open period by tax dollars and corporate sponsorship (note the name after all, our power company hard at work spending its obscene profits).  So anyone with a pair of skates (and a CSA approved hockey helmet if you are under 12 years of age) can head on down and skate at will (during public skates times of course).

But wait!  The other nicest part about the Oval is that if you don't own those aforementioned skates and helmet (see, I used aforementioned in a sentence, that law degree is totally worth the $40K I paid!), then they will lend you a pair of skates and / or the helmet you need.  Just turn over a piece of government issued picture ID, and the very efficient staff members will get you the gear you need - for free!  And they do it quickly too - a line of about sixty people can be processed in as little ten minutes.

OK, the last nicest part about the Oval though is the sense of community that it inspires.  There is a real sense of small town community, an almost Rockwellian vision.  People are all there to skate and to be part of the larger Halifax community - they help each other up, there are few collisions (and being Canadian, more apologies than strictly necessary), people look out for each other and each other's kids.

But the real nicest part about the Oval is that it gave me the chance to take my boys skating for the very first time today.  They had a blast.  The first lap took about thirty minutes, and Doc wiped out about forty times.  But he kept getting up, kept trying.  Even when I could see he was getting frustrated, he didn't throw in the towel.  Gee on the other hand, rarely fell, due in part to his very low center of gravity, but even more to the bob-skates he was wearing.

Both boys had the time of their lives, red cheeked and covered in snow.  They laughed and grinned with each fall, and Gee made a point of trying to get as far ahead of me as he could.  Doc just kept going, and he swears that many of his falls were not due to trying to impress the pretty girls.  I suppose their proximity was just a coincidence, twenty six times.  What?  It could totally happen.

I had the best day I have had in a really long time (and that is out of some pretty damned good days!) watching them, coaching them, and just being their dad.

Thanks for taking me skating boys.  We'll do it again, very soon.

The Risen - Chapter One

They tell me that it is going to get better. That we've survived worse than this before, and we'll get through this as well. I want to believe them. I want to hope. It's hard man, hard. But this morning, the sun came up, and it was fucking glorious. Such colour, such light. Maybe today is the day it gets better, maybe today is the day we win. 

Seattle Space Needle Hilton Broadcast, September 14, 2011 

The view from the tree was perfect. He could see the entire beach - from the base of the cliff to where it turned out of sight almost a mile away. The beach was cold and empty today, the surf lazily crashing against the kelp covered rocks and sending its omnipresent tang of salt into the air. The sand and rocks were devoid of anything interesting, but the motion of the surf was hypnotic in its rhythm, enough so that Michael had to consciously choose to turn and look along the tree line.

The edge of the forest was equally devoid of anything out of the ordinary. A long line of pine, interspersed here and there with white birch and a few oak and maple trees. However, the space between the tree line and the fence around the compound, kept at a strict one hundred yards, was full of activity today. The gardening crew was busy at work, keeping the produce from being overrun by weeds or insects. Without the use of chemicals, that was pretty much a full time job.

Michael watched them at their work for a while, his eyes flicking from gardener to gardener then back to the tree line, over and over again. A soft breeze brought him the sounds of their voices, mostly just talking amongst themselves, some singing softly, other teasing each other; the healthy sounds of long-time friends and family at work. One laugh in particular would carry from time to time, causing him to smile – Venerable Huang was hard at work, but even when the old man’s back was aching, he found reason to smile and joy in the world. His saffron robes stood out clearly against the black earth he toiled over, and Michael laughed when the ancient monk tossed clumps of dirt with unerring accuracy at the raised rumps of his fellow workers.

Inside the fence-line other, smaller, gardens were also being tended. The rain had been plentiful overnight and the earth was easier to work damp. Almost everyone who had no other duties was working hard to keep the gardens healthy and productive. On a day like today, with the warm June sun shining high above and a slight breeze blowing over the fields, it was easy work, even enjoyable. Unlike standing guard, where there was little chance for stretching, no friendly chats, and no room at all for pranks.

Lately, guard duty had become one of the less desirable tasks, and the sign-up sheets had been sparse compared to how they used to fill up. Everyone knew the importance of keeping a constant watch – it was how they had survived this long – and they all remembered the consequences of letting their guard down. Even so… guard duty used to be almost a high-status job, if such could really be said to exist in the commune. Even three months ago, the elders still made a point of selecting the most trustworthy and keen sighted applicants for the duty. All had to be precise sharpshooters as well. For today's list however, Michael had seen two old men and three people who wore glasses chosen for the duty, all sober and responsible no doubt, but still...

Michael shook his head out of the reverie and reminded himself that he had volunteered for this duty, for the quiet and solitude that came with it. He remembered all too well what happened when people let their guard down, when careful watches weren’t kept. He patted the military binoculars around his neck for reassurance, he'd still been entrusted with the best set of optics the commune had, and that showed how much he was still trusted to be in the role.

He leaned back against the trunk of the tree, stretching his back as he raised the glasses to his eyes and examined each of the other twelve scout stations. In every case, he saw his cohorts actively watching the area, fulfilling their duties and maintaining constant vigilance over the gardeners and beyond. A few noted him looking their way and waved casually, the only real communication the guards had access to.

A quiet chime rang through the air and he started, not realizing that it had been so long already. His shift in the tree was almost over if it was already time for the four hour check in. Like all the other sentinels, jumped to the ground and stood at the bole of his watch tree, his left hand raised above his head until he was counted, though his attention never wavered from the area he was watching. The workers in the gardens quickly ran to their assigned lines for the count, and then went back to their work, most of them taking the time to stretch and chat among themselves as they did so. After ten years, the check-ins were second nature to the commune members – every four hours, every day of their lives, night or day. The daytime check-ins were no bother at all, and most people had quickly learned to fall back asleep quickly after the night checks.

Climbing back into the tree, he perched carefully against the trunk and went back to his watch, sweeping his sector carefully, watching for any hint of movement or colour that did not belong. It had been a long time since he had personally spotted anything, over a year now. In fact, no sentinel had raised the alarm in over six months.

That's, he mused, why the watch rotation isn't as glamorous as it once was. When we saved everyone several times a week, we were heroes. Now that we just sit in the trees watching while everyone else breaks their backs, we're lazy. He chuckled softly to himself and scratched an itch. How quickly people forget.

Another hour passed without incident. The gardeners finished their duties and began to head into the compound, the last one through calling out to a few who preceded him to assist him in locking the gates. Ten feet tall and reinforced with thick timbers, the gate was heavy, even on the high quality hinges they had scrounged from the hardware store. Without any real counterweight to assist, no one could close that gate by themself, it weighed almost eight hundred pounds. Ben would know for sure he thought, looking across the field to where the older man was working on the well again.

Ben was bent over the mechanism he'd been working on, some sort of contraption to bring water up faster than the old rope and pulley they had rigged up years ago. A pile of what looked like scrap lumber and a few metal fastenings were laid out on the ground near the well, and Ben was doing something with his tools, pausing every once in a while to scratch his head and pace around the project. He looked up briefly from his work when the gate closed with a thump, and then went right back to his work. That's pretty typical, Michael thought, old man has a one track mind once he gets set on something. Course, we're damned lucky he's here. Ben had been the one to design the fence, using only the materials they could scavenge to build something that big and that strong was a feat of engineering that no one else had the basic idea how to accomplish. The old man had simply thought about it for a couple of days, scratching ideas in the dirt (even then they had known that they would run out of paper fast) and muttering to himself. When he came up with his plan, the group, much smaller then, had thought he was crazy. But everyone knew that a wall was a good idea, even if they didn't have any inkling how to build it. In the end, Venerable Huang had agreed with the idea, and they'd started. Just in time – the wall had saved their lives again and again.

The survivors here in the commune had never had to worry about the hordes that they had heard of in the larger centers. The remoteness of the location, away from any real population centers, meant that not many of them had made it this far out. When they did get here, it was usually just isolated individuals or very small groups – nothing that couldn't be handled, if you were aware and ready for them. Michael remembered the one large group that had made it here, following the Miller family no doubt. There had been over a hundred of them, and their combined weight had nearly brought down the brand new fence. But it had held, and the sentinels were able to take care of the attackers, though it had been a slow and nerve racking process. Michael hadn't been on duty then, he'd only been fourteen, but he remembered carrying water to the sentinels and the other adults. They ran out of bullets long before they ran out of targets, so the older children had carried buckets of rocks and with fire hardened spears. For two days they fought off the horde, praying every moment that no more showed up.

Michael remembered the look on Ben's face the moment the fight was over. When the last of them fell, there had been a hush, then some muted cheering – everyone was too tired to sustain even a small amount of celebration. Ben had walked up to the heavy gate, its main supports sagging and splinted, but still standing strong. He'd run his calloused hand over the wood, smiling softly all the while. Michael had been standing close enough to hear him say to himself "I'll be damned, it worked." That had been even scarier for him than the attack itself – knowing that even Ben wasn't sure they were going to make it.

He smiled softly at the memory then turned his attention back to the tree line with a sigh. His stomach rumbled slightly and he grimaced, knowing that the dinner bell was still an hour away, and his watch wouldn't be over until his replacement arrived after they had eaten. He rubbed his stomach through the thick flannel shirt he wore and settled in to the trunk again. As a matter of habit, he checked that his rifle was still carefully positioned in the rack secured to the tree, and that the bow, with its quiver of arrows, was equally accessible. Just because it had been so long since the last sighting didn't mean that he should be lax in his duties.

There was a loud crash and he started, whirling about in the tree, one had grabbing the rifle and bringing it up as he spun. He had the rifle braced against his shoulder and pointed in the direction of the sound before he even registered what he was seeing – Ben, swearing up a streak and kicking a large piece of wood which had obviously fallen from the scaffold he'd been building. The old man gave the wood one more kick then turned to wave sheepishly at the closest sentinel. "Sorry, damned thing nearly broke my foot!" he hollered out, then stooped to grab the heavy piece of timber and went back to work.

Michael took a few deep breaths to steady himself, his hearth hammering in his breast as he got himself back under control. He laughed to himself as he braced the rifle back in its spot and positioned himself to resume his watch, as always scanning back and forth, along the beach, along the edge of the forest.

A spray of water off the coast caught his attention, and he watched, spell bound, as a large pod of pilot whales breached, almost as one. He found himself grinning as dozens of the small whales surfaced, splashing and whistling to one another, the shrill sounds carrying easily over the calm water. Their grey-black bodies would have been hard to see against the steel grey of the cold Atlantic water, but their movements were so excited and the group moved so quickly through the water that they were hard not to stare at. He laughed out loud when a smaller whale was flipped up and into the air by one of the bigger ones, both of them whistling and chortling at each other.

"Globicephala melas, the common long-finned pilot whale."

Michael yelped in surprise and twisted about, losing his balance and tumbling from the tree. He fell the fifteen feet from his perch and crashed to the ground. The soft loam under the tree cushioned his fall, merely driving the wind from him. As he lay on the ground, gasping to get his breath back, he heard laughter and looked over to see Angela, no doubt his replacement, gasping and wheezing as she laughed. His surprise and pain turned to embarrassment and he scrambled to his feet, comically waving a fist at her.

She looked up from her knees, saw him standing with fist raised and collapsed into gales of laughter. Her face was obscured by her long dark hair, and she laughed so hard that she couldn't stand. Howling, she fell backward onto the ground, laughing the whole time.

Michael tried to maintain his composure, tried to keep the scowl on his face, but her laugh was infectious. He chuckled to himself and then laughed out loud. He sat down beside her on the ground and the two of them leaned against one another while their laughter ran its course.

"I'm sorry," she said, trying to stifle a giggle, "but you should have seen your face as you were falling!"

"Damn it Angie, I could've been hurt! You know better than to sneak up on anyone. What if I'd had the rifle in my hands? Someone could have been shot."

She grinned and pulled herself to her feet, offering him a hand to stand. He took it and she helped to pull him up as well. "You're right Michael. That was a dumb-ass thing to do. I am sorry, and it won't happen again." She looked out over the water, where the pod was swimming out to sea again. "They are beautiful though, aren't they?" Without waiting for an answer, she continued, "Did you know they are one of the only cetacean species where the males stay with their mother's pod? And yet they are careful in their breeding – there is no incest."

He looked at her blankly for a moment, wondering where this lecture was coming from, then remembered "That's right, you were taking marine biology or something, weren't you?"

She smiled up at him, the top of her head barely reaching his chest. "Yup, good memory. My Masters' thesis was going to be a study of the mating habits of the pilot whales. They get together in these huge pods from time to time, over a hundred of them. We think that is where the selection of mates happens, but we've never been able to corroborate that. They are amazingly social, maybe even too social. They are prone to stranding themselves when they try to join each other – if a high ranked member gets stranded, or a young one does, the rest of the pod can end up stranded as well. We're not sure why, though there are a lot of theories." She laughed "but you don't want to stand here and listen to me talking about the mating habits of whales. You must be hungry. Shifts over man, head on back and get some dinner. Susanne made a great stew tonight."

He thanked her and turned to walk back to the compound, his stomach already rumbling.

"The Rising was probably the best thing that happened to them you know."

He turned back to face her, his head tilted quizzically. She didn't turn back to look at him, her gaze locked on the retreating whales. "They were threatened before The Rising. Maybe a couple hundred thousand left in the world. But without us hunting them, and we did, by the thousands, I bet they have almost doubled in population by now."

"Like the deer you mean?" he asked.

"Exactly. Mankind was their only significant predator. Without us hunting them for blubber and meat, they would be rebounding fast." She chuckled, "Well, maybe not as fast as the damned deer, but fast."

He nodded, unsure what to say, then waved and headed back to the compound, his stomach leading the way.

Two up, Two down!

After a serious marathon couple of days of writing, I finished the NaNoWriMo challenge.  50,000 words in 30 days.  I stopped writing mid-month for about eight days, it then decided, on November 27th, that I did want to complete the challenge.  So on November 27, with only about 25,000 words written, and a story that I wasn't sure where to take it, I picked up the thread of the idea, and ran with it.

I have to say, I am very pleased with the outcome!  Just like last year, it is by no means finished, but the ideas that it generated, and the paths the characters have taken, are fascinating.  The more I write lengthy pieces, the more interested I get in the creative process, and how it is different for everyone.  I've read several books now on how to write, and each one is different, which I suppose is the message to take from that.  If you are a writer, or want to be one, then you just have to find what works for you, and run with it.  The important part is to just keep trying.  And that's the hard part for me.

Laziness is a constant problem for me.  I don't usually feel terribly motivated to do much of anything, other than hang out with my kids and play games with them.  Which, as a father, is pretty much what I am expected to do.  So I suppose that is a win for me.  Or them. Or both.

When I was younger, I was a lot more driven.  I had long term goals and intended to follow through on them.  But as I have aged (and the big 40 is on the horizon, a month or two away now) I have found that I seek out goals and thrills less and less.  And that is OK.  There is nothing wrong with being happy with where you are.  There is a great deal of satisfaction in feeling that the place you are in your life is a good one and you don't really want to change.  But...  There is always a but, isn't there?

There is a fine line between satisfaction and complacency.  And complacency can very easily lead to stagnation.  It is important for us to challenge ourselves, it is important for us to learn new things and try new experiences, if we don't do that, we may be cutting ourselves off from something we would love, if only we tried it.

I suffer from "man-itis" - a common condition among men where we find the things we like, and then just stick to them for ever.  Ask any man about his clothes, and most of them will be able to tell you where they always buy their pants, and even that they don't have to try them on anymore, as that style and cut fit them perfectly, so they can just walk into their store of choice (mine is Mark's Work Wearhouse for pants) go over to the pant section, grab two pairs (one khaki, one blue) and take them to the counter.  Ditto our favorite restaurants and pubs.  We have our beer and our dish that we like.  We get them every time.  If it changes because the menu changes, we will be upset.

Now I don't mean to suggest that man-itis is a bad thing.  It isn't wrong or bad to stick to something that we enjoy.  But it does mean we don't learn to enjoy new things.  We don't discover new loves, new passions.  We need to make that effort to try new things all the time.  Or at least I do.  The rest of the men, you guys do what you want, but I am going to try a couple new things this week.  I have no idea what they will be, but they'll be new.

I have no idea how this turned from a quick "Hey!  I did it!" about NaNo into a discussion of personal habits and expanding horizons, but hey, that's the writing process for you.  :)

The Zombies are Coming!!!

Vancouver International Airport had quarantined a small section of the airport after several passengers on a flight from Mexico were "very ill."  As of this time though, the plane is back in service and the people are fine.  Or are they?  This smells of cover-up from the highest levels.  Of course Steven Harper doesn't want us to know that the outbreak is coming - and he definitely doesn't want you to go see World War Z when it comes out in June 2013.

He really doesn't want you to see that movie though, it might give you ideas on how to overthrow both he and his voting base.

I kid, I kid.

On a more serious note, I was a busy boy today, getting in over 7,000 words on my Nanowrimo project, hereinafter titled "Lucid".  Par for course, the main story hasn't even taken off yet, and we are almost 17,000 words into the thing.  For those playing along at home, that is slightly more than 1/3 of the way through it.  Yes, I am aware that I am behind, but I am confident that it will all work out in the end.  If I can nail 7K words today, then I can maintain the 1,900 a day that I need to finish on time without even breaking a sweat.  Hell, I just wasted over a hundred here!

NaNoWriMo

I decided, somewhat on a whim, yesterday that I would try to do the National Novel Writing Month experiment once more.  Last year was a success - well, I completed the task of writing 50,000 words in the month of November - and I am confident that I can make it two in a row by doing the same this year.

Writing, as of late, has really fallen by the wayside.  I have no idea why.  Writing relaxes me, lets me get rid of stress and gives my creativity the outlet that I so desperately crave.  I love watching my characters come to life on the screen, and can't wait to see what they are going to get up to next.  An hour of writing is probably the best hour I will spend in any given day.  Yet, for some odd reason, I find myself finding excuses all the time not to write.

It is probably the simple fact that, as enjoyable as it is, writing is work.  Hard work.  A good writing session leaves me tired, just like a good work out session.  And a great marathon session of writing, where the words just flow out onto the screen as fast as my thick fingers can kit the keys, leaves me exhausted.  But, like a good workout (or good sex), it is a good kind of exhaustion, the kind where you have that afterglow of endorphin fueled euphoria.

So why don't I write more?  I have no idea.  But I am working on it.

Long story short, I am writing like crazy this month, so if I don't respond to your email or telephone call, I'll get back to you later.  Maybe in December.  See you then.

An Apology

I sat down at the computer tonight, after a day of gaming with some great friends, to write an apology note to a friend – to protect the innocent, we’ll call her Feather.  Her and I engaged in a disagreement today, and I didn’t like the way it ended – I felt that I had wronged her, and wanted to apologize.  I know, I know, the internet is hardly a good way to do that.  Don’t worry, I fully intend to deliver the apology in person as soon as I get the chance.  I wanted to pre-empt any hurt feelings as soon as I could and this was just the best way to do it.

Of course, it being me, I had to go back and re-read the apology three times before hitting the old “Send” button. I am really glad I did. The apology was terrible.  Not counting the commas (twenty seven in two paragraphs) and the run-on sentences (all of them) it was a horrible apology.  It was of the typical “Sorry you were offended, but that’s just the way I debate” variety.  That’s not an apology.  That’s a continuation of the argument.  The more I thought about it, the more it reminded me of something a former friend of mine once said.  To paraphrase him, “Yeah, I am an asshole, but that’s just the way I am.  Sorry if you don’t like it, but that’s tough.”  My gaming friends likely remember that chap, and we all remarked on the comment at the time.  It was a ridiculous comment and to see that I had essentially copied it bothered me.  A lot.

I have been spending a fair amount of time over the last year or so metaphorically staring at the man in the mirror, and I have to say, I don’t like him all the time.  Not that I think I am a bad person, no one ever does really. I do have some characteristics that I don’t care for.  They are characteristics that I really don’t want my sons to carry forward, but if they see me modeling those behaviors, they are sure to do so.  Parenting aside, they are traits of mine that are that I am not proud of… no, that’s not strong enough.  They are traits that I am downright ashamed of, and that needs to be fixed.

Now, before I go any further, let me be clear.  Overall, I like myself a fair amount.  I think I am a pretty decent guy.  I’m no poster child for anything, and there is likely neither canonization nor a Nobel prize in my future, but overall, I think I do more good than harm in this life.  I am not suggesting that I am spending all my time thinking about how loathsome I am.  I’m just looking at my behavior and thinking about how I could be a better person.

I have no intention of listing them all here – I am vain enough to think you might care, but I don’t feel the need to share them all at this time.  But this one thing, I am throwing out.

I have to be right, all the time. I try to justify it as being strong willed, or opinionated. That, like most justifications, is bullshit. If I hear someone say something that I think it wrong, or that I even disagree slightly with, I seem to have a tremendous inability to say nothing. I am compelled to “correct” that individual.  Why?  I have no idea.  Never have, likely never will (though my shrink’s going to get an earful next time we talk) but that’s not the point.  It is a problem.  It alienates people.  It hurts people that are important to me. It gives people the impression (sometimes accurately admittedly) that I don’t have a lot of regard for their feelings and opinions.  And that is not the behavior of the person I want to be.

Who is that person?  I have no idea.  He’s me.  He’s just a better version of me.  He’s not taller or thinner, he doesn’t have better hair or whiter teeth.  That stuff is nice, but it doesn’t define who a person is.  We are defined by our actions. The face that we present to the world is not nearly as important as the manner in which we conduct ourselves.

So tonight I want to start something better. 

Feather, I am sorry. I did not give you, or your opinions, the respect they deserved. I can tell that you feel passionately about certain topics, and I while I disagree, that does not give me the right to treat you, or your opinions, in the manner which I did.  I won’t guarantee it won’t happen again, but I will guarantee that I am trying to rein in that sort of behavior and will make every effort to keep my damned mouth shut.  Failing that, to give you the respect you deserve when we discuss things.

I am tempted to offer apologies to a lot of people, but the more I think about it, the longer the list becomes. That list includes the names of people I haven’t seen in decades, and the names of people that I saw today. So I will just say, to the universe in general, I am trying to be a better person, and I will make amends for the wrongs I have committed.