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April 29, 2004

Save the Mallrat

Dave seems to have arrived in Edmonton. He called me collect this morning and the collect caller notification was from Telus. He wouldn't give me an address because he said he thought I would send the police. He said a friend had provided some money for the bus but had ditched him in Edmonton before they could a place or get jobs. He wanted me to send money through the MoneyMart stores because he needed food and a place to stay. He said the shelters were full and he was on the street. He said it was a loan until he got a job. He said his life and future were in Edmonton.

I said I had not agreed to this trip or this plan. I said he had other resources, just like when he was on the street in Winnipeg. I said I was simply not supporting his choices. I said I thought the money was going to pay for drugs again. We ended the call with threats of violence and harsh words from him.

How am I doing with this? Not too badly. If Dave can live like this, I can live with the knowledge of his situation. This is the fourth or fifth replay of the same story since last August. Dave runs away from a safe situation, then says he is in trouble and he needs money for survival. Sometimes the story has been an outright scam to get cash for drugs. Sometimes he has had a more direct and genuine need, caused by his own bad choices. Still, giving him cash just prolongs his time on the street and gives him time and resources to keeping finding drugs.

I had a hard time saying no in the past, because Jan always criticized me for not trusting Dave. She believed I did not love him. It was part of her pattern of blaming me for Dave's addiction and her distress. I was always afraid of losing Jan if I followed my own judgment instead of her impulses. That's all changed now.

I love my son. I also know that today he is an addict and a thief. I don't trust him. I will pray for him to change, but I cannot change him or help him by giving him money now.

Posted by Tony Dalmyn at 04:49 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

April 28, 2004

The New Mallrat

This morning I talked to Dave's worker who confirmed Dave had not been back to the hotel or had any contact with the agency since Tueday morning at 5:00 AM. He's definitely gone. The worker said Dave had been very clear about his priorities. He wants to live his life with no rules. He would like someone to provide financial support for his freedom.

In the afternoon Jan called me. She was at the house, sorting and packing. She said Dave had called her. He said he had arrived in Edmonton. He said someone had bought a ticket for him and had promised him some assistance until he could get a job and get paid. He said this person had ditched him. He said he was at the West Edmonton Mall and trying to find work. He said he had found a shelter but he thought he could only stay a few nights.

He wanted money for food. He wanted one of us to wire it. He did not give Jan a number or address or the name of the shelter.

When Jan and I were still a couple, she agreed that we should not be giving Dave any more money to pay for his version of freedom. I think that in the last few days she has also been telling him that she has no money herself since she is not working yet, and is dependent on me for support.

I notified Child and Family Services that Dave appears to have landed in Edmonton. I'm not sure if Winnipeg CFS can ask the authorities in Edmonton to look for him, or detain him, or send him back. I don't know what he would do if they sent him back here.

I think this is one of those situations where I am powerless to influence or intervene. If I send any money, it will be paying for his lifestyle choices, which I am not willing to support. Sending money will not make him any safer or contribute to his recovery. I might feel, for a moment, that I am doing something helpful but after a while I will just feel angry and used.

Posted by Tony Dalmyn at 05:20 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Butterflies and Wheels

Butterflies and Wheels combines some heavy critical writing with some very funny features.

It defends sciences and rationality from junk science, academic post-modernism and religion. It is heavy on references to atheist and skeptical sites, but strong in writing and critical thinking. It seems to be an academic site so don't expect South Park humour.

It features a funny Fashionable Dictionary which highlights the way many people have distorted language. It also has a Wooly-thinkers Guide to Rhetoric.

I'm finding useful and interesting connections and arguments.

For instance Meera Nanda's article on Postmodernism, Science and Religious Fundamentalism has an interesting look at the academic discipline of "science studies"

Science studies, as I said, is not an ordinary academic discipline. It constitutes the beating heart of postmodernism, for it aims to “deconstruct” natural science, the very core of a secular and modern worldview. Since its inception in the 1970s, the discipline has produced a sizeable body of work that purports to show that not just the agenda, but even the content of theories of natural sciences is “socially constructed.” All knowledge, in different cultures, or different historical times - regardless of whether it is true or false, rational or irrational, successful or not in producing reliable knowledge - is to be explained by the same causes. This demand for “symmetry” between modern science and other local knowledges constitutes the central demand of the “strong programme,” the central dogma of science studies. One cannot assume that only false beliefs or failed sciences (e.g., astrology) are caused by a lack of systematic empirical testing, or by faulty reasoning, or by class interests, religious indoctrination or other forms of social conditioning. A truly “scientific” approach to science requires that we suspend our preconceived faith that what is scientific by the standards of modern science of our times brings us any closer to truth. In the spirit of true scientific impartiality and objectivity, science studies demand that modern science be treated “symmetrically,” as being “at par” with any other local knowledge.

The links took me to some useful and interesting off-site essays such as Wendy Kaminer on The Last Taboo which says in part:

Obviously, people carry their faith in God, Satan, crystals or UFOs into town meetings, community organizations and voting booths. Obviously, a core belief in the supernatural is not severable from beliefs about the natural world and the social order. It is the inevitable effect of religion on public policy that makes it a matter of public concern. Advocates of religiosity extol the virtues or moral habits that religion is supposed to instill in us. But we should be equally concerned with the intellectual habits it discourages.

Religions, of course, have their own demanding intellectual traditions, as Jesuits and Talmudic scholars might attest. Smart people do believe in Gods and devote themselves to uncovering Their truths. But, in its less rigorous, popular forms, religion is about as intellectually challenging as the average self-help book. (Like personal development literature, mass market books about spirituality and religion celebrate emotionalism and denigrate reason. They elevate the "truths" of myths and parables over empiricism.) In its more authoritarian forms, religion punishes questioning and rewards gullibility. Faith is not a function of stupidity but a frequent cause of it.

The magical thinking encouraged by any belief in the supernatural, combined with the vilification of rationality and skepticism, is more conducive to conspiracy theories than it is to productive political debate. Conspiratorial thinking abounds during this period of spiritual and religious revivalism. And, if only small minorities of Americans ascribe to the most outrageous theories in circulation these days -- that a cabal of Jewish bankers run the world, that aids was invented in a laboratory by a mad white scientist intent on racial genocide -- consider the number who take at face value claims that Satanists are conspiring to abuse America's children. According to a 1994 survey by Redbook, 70 percent of Americans believed in the existence of Satanic cults engaged in ritual abuse; nearly one-third believed that the FBI and local police were purposefully ignoring their crimes. (They would probably not be convinced by a recent FBI report finding no evidence to substantiate widespread rumors of Satanic abuse.) As Debbie Nathan and Michael Snedeker report in Satan's Silence, these beliefs infect public life in the form of baseless prosecutions and convictions. If religion engenders civic virtue, by imparting "good" values, it also encourages public hysteria by sanctifying bad thinking.

Skepticism about claims of abuse involving Satanism or recovered memories would serve the public interest, not to mention the interests of those wrongly accused, much more than eagerness to believe and avenge all self-proclaimed victims. Skepticism is essential to criminal justice: guilt is supposed to be proven, not assumed. Skepticism, even cynicism, should play an equally important role in political campaigns, particularly today, when it is in such disrepute. Politicians have learned to accuse anyone who questions or opposes them of "cynicism," a popular term of opprobrium associated with spiritual stasis or soullessness. If "cynic" is a synonym for "critic," it's a label any thoughtful person might embrace, even at the risk of damnation.

I'll be browsing these essays for ideas and references.

Posted by Tony Dalmyn at 08:03 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

April 27, 2004

On the street again

On Saturday morning I awoke to find that someone had gained access to my garage and had tried to steal my vehicle - a disreputable 93 Explorer. Someone had tried to steal it when I was parking on a parking pad at a neighbour's place last year. The Explorer was stolen once last year - by Dave and some of his street pals when he ran away in August. They drove to Kenora with some idea of going to Jan's family cottage at Minaki, and had returned and cruised around Winnipeg for a day before abandoning the car.

I mentally kicked myself for not arming the car alarm, and for leaving the passage door into the yard unlocked. The yard is pretty secure, with the gate to the outside lane locked, a high fence and lights on sensors. Enough to deter thieves, but it was still careless to leave the car and the garage unlocked.

I was suspicious that someone had even bothered to try to take this vehicle. It wasn't a pro because they used tools from my own toolbox to screw with the lock. It wasn't a regular thief because bikes, camping gear and other articles were untouched. It wasn't random because the car was not visible from outside - someone would have had to jump the gate to get into the yard to see it through a window.

I dropped in on Dave at the hotel later in the morning. We talked about plans for the week. He was speaking favourably about going to a meeting on Monday with his social worker to see about a foster placement that will give him some training towards independent living. I said that Claire was leaving for Vancouver, which would give me the opportunity to bring him home and have dinner here once or twice without starting a major argument. I tried to make a plan for Sunday. I said I needed to know if he was coming so I could shop, but he hedged.

I told him about the car. I told him the latch on the back gate had been shifted by someone climbing over the gate - the way the latch shifted when he used to sneak out of the house last summer when he was living here but running on the streets at night. I told him I found a leather bracelet in the car. I speculated that one the guys he had been hanging out with last summer had come back to see if the car could be taken. I told him the car alarm would now be on all the time, and the garage locked front and back. No reaction from Dave.

I called him on Sunday at noon but he was gone for the day.

I checked with the worker at the hotel Monday afternoon. I asked if Dave had gone to see his social worker for the meeting about the placement. The worker said Dave had been awol on Saturday evening. He had turned up early on Sunday, and had disappeared for the day and had been awol Sunday night. He had turned up on Monday morning but taken off again and missed his meeting.

As usual, I couldn't reach his social worker.

I had to call Jan in the afternoon to talk about some of our separation issues, and she said Dave had called her with a story - he had a ticket to Edmonton and a job lined up in Edmonton but needed food money. She had not agreed to meet him and had not given him any money.

This isn't the first time Edmonton has come into his stories. In January, after he had been on the street for a while, he came in to CFS care and went to a group home. He bolted after a day, and tried to get money for a trip to Edmonton to see a dying friend.

I have heard that there is an urban legend among street kids in Winnipeg about a mallrat culture at the West Edmonton Mall. It's supposed to be a punk's nirvana.

I checked in with the worker at the hotel in the evening. Dave was still gone. He had received his allowance on Friday but had spent it on his friends. I think that's code for buying drugs. Dave was still awol.

Dave called me at 6:15 this morning. He said he had been at the hotel last night but had not stayed in his room. He assumed I knew about Edmonton. I said I had heard about that. I wanted to know where he was and he wanted to know why. He asked for money and I said no.

I checked with the worker in the room. Dave was absent all night, and had showed up at 5:00 AM and taken something from his room and then taken off again.

Posted by Tony Dalmyn at 07:26 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Accuracy

On Sunday April 25, Mike, Steve and I rode through Elmwood and East Kildonan to the North Perimeter and across the Perimeter to the Town of Bird's Hill. We returned by a slightly different route which included trails along the artificial lakes in a rather posh subdivision. The wind was from the west blowing at 50 to 60 kilometers an hour, which was a factor at some points, although the route was largely north and south. Distance for the day was about 55 k. Steve has nearly 57 but he almost always get an extra bit because he usually joins Mike or me at one of our respective houses.

After the ride, we sat outside and had beer - that's one low-carb Big Rock Jackrabbit each. It was barely past noon and the rest of the day awaited. We had a chat about whether beers after rides offsets the exercise benefit. Are we riding as an excuse to hang out and drink beer? The hanging out is good, especially for me in my new condition. A couple beer are ok, but it can be a trap. The cycling guys will end up like the cast of Cheers in cycling shorts.

I weighed myself on Monday and was surprized the scale showed me at 146 pounds. On Friday last week it had showed 142. There is no way I had gained 4 pounds on the weekend.

I had been suspicious of that scale. It is an old spring type scale, which Jan may have received second hand from her family when she first moved out of her house long before we were married. I had wondered about a few times. Last summer, that scale was showing me down to about 152 lbs by early August. At that time I was weighed at the hospital before surgery and the nurse had said I was 158 or 160.

Jan did not agree with my suggestion to replace the scale then. She had bought a scale through one of her Network marketing connections - a high priced electronic thing that is supposed to measure percentage of body fat bioelectrically. I seldom had access to it because Jan was always lending it to her Network associates for their health assessments of potential USANA customers, and I had never been able to figure out how turn it on.

I realized that I would need a new scale soon anyway - I assume Jan will take the old one soon. So I stopped at Walmart and got a new Taylor scale. On the new scale I weigh 149.5 pounds.

I took some barbells and weighed them on the new scale. One 10 lb weight shows up a few ounces light. Another 10 lb weight and a couple of 15 lb weights weighed in exactly as advertised. Putting them all on the new scale together yields a reading of a few ounces under 50 lbs. The new scale seems to be accurate.

I put the same 50 lbs of iron on the old scale and it read 47 lbs. If the old scale was losing 3 lbs in 50, that means when the old scale said I was 170, I was actually 181. I'm not sure because I never determined my peak reading before I started exercising, because the margin of error may have been decreasing with higher weights, and because the scale occasionally gave a reading that was off from several preceding days of readings.

The bad news is that I am not as close to my weight loss goal as I had thought. The good news is that I have lost over 30 pounds in the last year.

Posted by Tony Dalmyn at 06:48 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

April 25, 2004

Winnipeg Folk Festival News

The Winnipeg Folk Festival has released its brochure and updated its Web site with information about performers hired for the 2004 Festival.

Festivals are continuously tinkering with descriptive names to classify performers and inform fans. This year Winnipeg is grouping perfomers as Folk Legends, Sounds from Around the World, Singing the Blues, Contemporary Voices, Masters of their Instruments, Songwriters and En Francais.

The Legends group is Earl Scruggs, Dick Gaughan, Utah Phillips and Martin Carthy, and all of them are worthy of the label. I'm looking forward to Gaughan, a great guitarist and vocal interpreter with a crusty and realistic take on modern life. He was an interpreter of traditional music, but in the more recent part of his career, he tends to interpret more modern songs by a variety of writers. He does great versions of Ruby Tuesday, Townes Van Zandt's Lefty & Pancho, and several Brian McNeill songs.

There are a few Legends, in my view, included in other categories, like Taj Mahal, David Lindley, Spirit of the West. Spirit of the West have been superb since they started 20 years ago.

The World group includes a couple of Scots groups. There doesn't seem to be a lot for fans of Celtic or Canadian Maritime/Celtic although J.P. Cormier turns up in the instrumental group.

I'm looking forward to Martyn Joseph, a songwriter from Wales who started to tour in Canada a few years ago. He is a dynamic performer, with a great gift for words, progressive political sensibility, and a strong ethical line in his songs.

Posted by Tony Dalmyn at 06:39 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

April 22, 2004

Fearbusting

Rhonda Britten has found, apparently, commercial success. Her Web Page is a sophisticated advertisement of her books, personal appearances and other services and merchandise. The testimonials on her Web page indicate that she has been hired by companies and organizations as a motivational speaker. She is a writer, and a "coach". She counsels people to buy her books and to form support groups to work her system.

Her professional persona is built around a theory, called fearbusting or Fearless Living, which was the title of her breakthrough book.

There are a few biographical hints on her Web page about her having overcome personal tragedy to become an inspiring person. The implication is that her system made her what she is now - beautiful, successful, inspiring. She presents herself on her Web page autobiography as a survivor. She tells some of her own story in her first book, Fearless Living. She witnessed her father kill her mother, and commit suicide. Her life and career went up and down for years. She was a good student and had a business career. She was an actress. She also worked as a waitress, and spent time in rehab and recovery. She doesn't say if she was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder or any other particular illness. She isn't too clear on her addictions and weaknesses. She isn't clear on what therapies she tried before she became successful.

But she has become successful. She became a personal coach, and founded a public relations firm. She wrote books. Her career has become very successful. What's the secret of successful life according to Rhonda? It's fearbusting.

In Chapter One of Fearless Living, she tries to define fear. She starts with the view that people are incomplete, wounded, separated from the ground of their essential being and want to be whole, or better or self-actualized. She says people are this way because of "fear". She refers, loosely, to a quote from the high priest of humanistic psychology, Abraham Maslow, to the effect that people are afraid to face the fact that they are not whole. Maslow tends to get quoted more by Alternative therapists and coaches than by mainstream psychologists, but I'm going to leave him for another day.

Britten doesn't have a lot more to say about her theory, and she never gets around to a real definition of fear. Fear seems to be whatever you can identify as making you feel bad.

The rest of her books are about working her system. She starts by saying that you have to work the system in secrecy, without telling your family and friends what you are doing. Her first rule is don't tell anyone. Her explanation is that until you have identified the people who are holding you back, and know how to defeat them, you are at risk of having them undermine her system before it can work for you. This sounds more controlling than empowering, and it's pretty typical of the therapy techniques of coaches and alternative therapists.

She teaches exercises to help people identify their fears and the people who inspire fear. The exercises seem to be pretty loaded. Everything comes out the same way. Everybody has the same problem - fear, and fear is whatever you can identify as causing a bad feeling. Fearless living is a slogan, not a therapy system.

We get to the heart of the matter in Chapters 4 and 5 of Fearless Living, which are titled Fear Junkies and Fearbusting. These chapters start with the basic observation that you can only change yourself, and that you can't be responsible for someone else's feelings. She discusses being aware of your reaction to negative content of interactions with others, and taking responsibility for directing the interactions in a positive way. Within the wisdom of addictions counselling theory, co-dependency theory, and 12 step recovery programs, you accept that you are powerless over another person's addiction, and that you may have to disengage from life with an addicted person who is harming you.

Britten twists this into something new - disengage from people who inspire fear in you. By itself, that makes sense. You avoid dangerous and risky people and situations. The question is, what is it that makes you afraid?

In her system, anyone who makes you feel bad is a fearsome person. So in her system, if people around make you feel bad, dump them. This is partly an adaptation of the techniques of business networking where you cultivate useful friends and dump losers. It is partly a feel-good psychology of surrounding yourself with people who build you up and make you happy.

It is mainly very controlling. She counsels people to bust fear by blaming others, and making themselves impervious. You protect yourself by controlling your relationships. There is very little about taking responsibility for yourself. She empowers people to feel good about blaming others for their fear.

This system should appeal to people who see themselves as being held back by being afraid to assert themselves, and I think it might help shy people to overcome their shyness and to present themselves better. However, a system that works by blaming the people who make you feel bad is a system to help narcissists feel good about blaming other people for their feelings.

There's not much more to her system. She must have a powerful presence as a speaker and great skills as a publicist to sell it.

I would suspect that her coaching is aggressive and that she tells clients to make changes. Then she praises them for the changes they are making. Coach and client both go away happy with their work. Meanwhile the client's family, co-workers, friends, spouses and lovers must be wondering where the hell that emotional train that just hit them came from.

Self-help books should come with a consumer warning, but perhaps people addicted to tuning up their feelings would be oblivious to any warning.

She's not a therapist or a healer. She hasn't had any great insight. She's reworked some very basic psychology into her own oddball narcissists' cult. She's a coaching, marketing, selling machine. She's a fakir.

Posted by Tony Dalmyn at 06:35 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

April 20, 2004

Abandoned Buildings

Yesterday, I called Dave to see if he wanted to go to a movie. He hedged at first, because his friends had a plan, and he tried to get a side trip to a model store, but he eventually agreed. I picked him up, and I agreed to stop at a craft store to get some paint brushes to let him keep painting his models.

He told me a little more about his friends. His friend Nigel is about 20, and short - "four feet high". Dave finds him hilarious. They also hang out with a 15 year old named Adrian. They do "missions" in abandoned buildings. Missions involve sneaking or breaking in, and exploration, and risk-taking and vandalism. The idea of mission seems to be taken from video adventure games. Dave says they gain powers by completing missions. I asked him about where Nigel lives and how he supports himself and Dave became defensive.

On the ride to the theater, Dave said he has a meeting on April 26 with his CFS worker to start on "indepedent living" which will allow him to get social assistance to cover a place to live and some food, living unsupervised. This appears to be what he wants. He also talked about starting to hang around the St. Vital mall again, because kids are starting to hang around there again, and it's fun.

We saw Hellboy, which was actually a pretty good movie. It had a good comic-book sensibility with enough humour to avoid becoming pretentious. I didn't realize that there was a strong occult and satanic theme in the plot - although the satanists do not prevail in the end.

On the ride back to his hotel Dave talked about his occult beliefs. He says that Jan has magic healing powers, but she engages in white magic. He believes in Kthulu and dark powers. I knew from previous discussion that he had read the Satanic Bible books a few months ago, and that he had been powerfully impressed. I had already told him that the book was written by man named Anton Szandor Lavey within the last 40 years, and that I thought Lavey's Church of Satan was basically a scam. I didn't get far with that approach then, so I didn't argue about it again. I just asked him to elaborate on his beliefs and I asked how he knew these things. He said he just knew.

My best guess is that Satanic themes pervade metal music, that kids who like that music learn about Satanism through song lyrics and fan information, and are drawn to the modern occult literature about Satanism, and that information is passed among teens by word of mouth.

When I dropped him, I said I would try to see him again another evening, perhaps with his uncle Frank. Dave wanted me to give him $10 because he needed to light up on April 20. He said there was some kind of bud event and people were going to light up publicly. I declined.

This morning, one of the headlines in the newspaper was about the Firefighers' Union's warning that Firefighers were at risk going to fight fires in abandoned industrial plants. There have been many abandoned industrial plants in Winnipeg, and they have all been vulnerable to squatters and vandalism. Sometimes the vandals set fires, or squatters' fires will get out of control. Firefighters will go in, at some risk, if they believe people are in these buildings.

My brother Frank is a firefighter. I have mentioned his efforts to contact Dave and to help Dave to move out of his present state in other posts.

Sometimes the irony of my life becomes palpable.

Posted by Tony Dalmyn at 06:39 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

April 18, 2004

Writing around divorce

My friend Randy has had an Internet presence for several years. He started with web pages which evolved into a blog. The idea of writing a blog myself has been growing for a while. At one time the idea of Web page was intimidating, but the tools for Web logs make it easy to publish. Randy's page has a number of links about blogging, and I found some print resources.

I enjoyed creative writing and writing essays as a student, and writing for sf fanzines. I always thought I would write but I always found excuses for not writing. Too busy at work, too many jobs around the house, need to find time with the kids, need to relax and read a book. Can't write for fear it will compromise career choices in law, alienate business partners, alienate clients. Need to get over the latest crisis at work. Need to ... not face this.

Insecurity about my voice and my talent played a part, but depression and shame played a larger part. With depression and shame came a deep fear of self-disclosure and honesty.

Over the last several months, I was working towards starting to write a Web log in the midst of many problems - a stressful workplace, a run-away son with an addiction problem and a marriage floundering in my depression and my wife's involvement in Network marketing and Alterative spiritual and religious groups and Alternative therapies.

On March 12, 2004 my wife Jan told me that she wanted a divorce. I was shaken. She had asked for a divorce a year ago but had stayed to see if I could change enough for her comfort. I had been in therapy since then, and I had learned a good deal about myself during that year. I feel that I have been making progress in my therapy. I think I am fundamentally healthy.

I realized that her involvement in eclectic and eccentric therapies and groups had become central to her sense of who she was. Her involvement in these groups had left me feeling isolated in our marriage and isolated when I was with her family - who are all pretty far into New Age beliefs and practices. My firm conviction is that Jan's involvement in fringe practices and the advice and support she received from her family and from her counsellors and friends on the fringe influenced her perception of me.

I was doing my best within my emotional and intellectual resources to love her while disagreeing with her about the New Age and Network Marketing. She had come to accusing me of "disrespect" and "emotional abuse" for not supporting and embracing her beliefs. She had come to regard me with anger and blame.

When Jan wanted to leave a year ago, I had been shattered. This time, I was not. I am not responsible for her feelings. Her attitude to me had become intolerable. I could not stay in this marriage. I also realized that I had lost the sense of shame over Jan's wish to end the marriage. It's still terribly painful, and I have contributed to the breakup, but I have nothing to be ashamed of.

Jan's announcement did not stop my desire to write. It has probably helped me to move forward and to start a blog. In the first few weeks of the this blog I held back disclosure on the subject of divorce. I had agreed with promised Jan that we would not tell our daughter Claire about our divorce until after her exams ended. I kept my promise in this blog and in my words and actions at home.

Jan does not want me talking about her New Age interests or to share my opinion that her beliefs are on the fringe with anyone, and especially with the kids. She says that this amounts to criticism of her and her family of origin. She says it is inappropriate for a divorcing parent to share his feelings about the marriage breakdown with the kids.

I want to support my children through the divorce, and I don't think I can share the full and intimate history of the marriage and the break-up with them.

I am wondering how this limits my writing. Does supporting my kids through the divorce mean that I can't criticize the eclectic, the eccentric, the Alternative, the New Age? I want Claire and Dave to find their own sense of who they are and how the world works. I think my children are entitled to information about my life and my spirituality, and my skepticism.

The literature on marriage breakup is diverse and inconsistent. Most writers will support honesty in some circumstances, and silence in others and much depends on the intellect and maturity of the kids. I don't think I have to worry about harming the kids by writing about the New Age.

Both kids were aware of their mother's involvement in Network Marketing and New Age spirituality and of the fact that I was critical of those activities and values, and that I was withdrawn and sad and angry. I don't know how they lived within that conflict. Claire is 19 - an adult - with a strong intellectual and critical focus herself. My son Dave is 16, and has been out of the home for months. His comments to me when I have been in touch with him reflect, apart from his own sense of having been repressed in our home, a fairly clear appreciation of his mother's priorities.

The real question is whether writing about the New Age is just an unhealthy form of complaining about being dumped by my wife.

My starting point is honesty. I was a skeptic, a rationalist, a Christian and a Catholic before I was married. I have always been skeptical of the New Age and all the self-annointed prophets of channelling, alien visitations, secret wisdom, Cosmic consciousness and private enlightenment. I had experiences with intense and eccentric beliefs at other times before I was married and outside the marriage.

I had first hand exposure to the New Age during my marriage. Even though one of my wife's criticisms of me was that she could not talk about her beliefs with me or bring her friends around, I still heard some pretty weird stuff. I had a ringside seat - hell I was part of the show - as my wife and her parents and her aunt and an assortment of people coalesced into their own unamed cult. I felt my wife draw apart from me over my attitude towards her beliefs and friends.

I think I would be foolish and wasteful to avoid the New Age in my writing, and dishonest if I didn't disclose my perspective.

Morbid? Angry? Inappropriate? Let's see how it comes out.

Posted by Tony Dalmyn at 12:54 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

A few days of separation

Jan stayed for a couple of days after we gave Claire the divorce news on Wednesday. She moved out on Friday. Claire and I are discussing some of the basics - shopping, cooking, cleaning. This is a new and strange situation but we are trying to live with it.

Jan took one of the desktop computers with her. Claire had been using that for a lot of her writing and online work. I copied or moved all her files and favourites to the other desktop, and Claire has been able to get everything set up and working. We have to negotiate our computer access now.

I have kept up my riding and my time with my friends. My family are concerned and calling to help us me, Claire and Dave, as much as they can. I have been able to share the news with neighbours and to get some comments on housing issues, and support for staying in the neighbourhood.

Dave has been tougher to talk to this week. He called Thursday night and complained I had not called him this week. I reminded him that he had been late for our planned time on Monday and that I had told him that I would not be around this week. He was demanding models and things. I knew that his mom had bought him other stuff earlier in the day. I am not in a bidding war for his affection. I reminded him that I had been having a hard week, with other issues, and he hung up on me.

I dropped in on Dave on Saturday morning and he gave me hell for dropping in. Since the worker in his room had not answered the phone when I called ahead, I had I had inferred he was having breakfast, and I was right - I found him in the dining room. He went on about how I didn't listen to him or to his needs. I said I would call and make plans later. He called me Sat. evening and asked me to bring him some things that he already owns, and I can live with that.

Claire and I have been watching movies. We saw Kill Bill, Vol. I on DVD and we are going to catch Kill Bill Vol. II at a matinee today. Dinner is cooking in the crock pot.

Posted by Tony Dalmyn at 12:37 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Spring Cycling

Yesterday, Steve, Mike, Rob and I rode from Mike's house to Waverley Street past Wilkes, where we met Clint. Rob and Clint are younger than Mike, Steve and I. They are both students at the University of Manitoba. Clint is in the Armed forces, currently in University. He has obviously done some serious riding in the past. He hasn't had much time on the bike since coming to Winnipeg two years ago - unfamiliarity with the City, and maintaining his studies, and a home life with a young son and a new baby.

We went to Headingley by way of the Harte Trail, which is an abandoned rail line that has been turned into a cycling and walking trail. It runs basically east and west, parallel to the CN Main line and Wilkes Avenue and extends from Charleswood to Beaudry Park past Headingley. Inside the City, the trail is fairly well used, and gravelled. Outside the Perimeter Highway, it is dirt track, and crosses ditches and farmer's fields.

The trail inside the City had a few damp spots, and even a couple of icy patches. We hit a huge mudhole at the point the trail meets the perimeter. Steve rode through. Silly Steve. See Steve wipe sucking mud off his wheels, chain and drive components.

After crossing the perimeter, we pushed ahead on the Hart Trail but our speed dropped to about 12 k as we bumped along. The track was damp by appearance but firm. I didn't think we were sucking up new mud, but we were exerting ourselves on this stretch. The first major road crossing brought us to a ditch full of water. We detoured across a farmer's field, sucking up more mud, to reach a culvert and cross onto the road. For the next several kilometers of gravel and payement, my cleated tires hurled mud clods.

We stopped at the edge of Headingley and turned back. We had planned to go further, but we had taken some time on the mud and the trails and still had to ride back into a southeast wind that was in our face, off our right shoulders, most of the way.

This time last year, I weighed over 170 lbs. I'm not sure how much more because I wasn't checking. I suppose it was not over 175 or I would not have fit my clothes. For the last few weeks my weight has been showing as 142 to 144. Most of the weight came off cycling last year and a little extra came off this spring with stress and not eating around my wife's snapping back into her demand for divorce. I have been eating a bit more now, and rebuilding muscle and fitness. I expect to lose a few more pounds - I think 130 to 135 would be a safe healthy weight.

This time last year, I did not ride until April 20. This year, I have cycled on four consecutive weekends already, and several evenings, and I have logged about 225 k.

The temperature most days has been a little above freezing, but with suitable gear, the conditions are quite tolerable. The company is good.

Posted by Tony Dalmyn at 07:25 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

April 15, 2004

Truthfulness

Last night Jan and I told Claire that we are going to be divorced after almost 21 years of marriage. Jan had made her decision quite a while ago. She told me over a month ago but she did not want to tell Claire. At that point, Claire had a few weeks of classes left, and exams, and the idea was to give her some peace to finish her first year of University. I agreed, for self-serving reasons.

I didn't really think it would affect school. Claire has always succeeded in academic and intellectual matters in spite of struggles with her feelings. I don't think that an immediate announcement and separation would have interfered with her routine and study habits. I agreed because I needed time to react to the news and to make decisions. I agreed because the news would be painful for Claire, and I was not strong enough to be present to face her pain at the time.

It was a relief to tell Claire, and to be able to move into the future. Claire has been shaken by the news. One part of her pain is that we fooled her and that she had not seen this coming. I think I felt the same way when Jan demanded the divorce a month ago.

This was not Claire's fault. She is a victim of her parent's struggles. She has been sacrificing herself to try to please and support both parents. I am looking forward to our new freedom.

Posted by Tony Dalmyn at 07:49 AM | Comments (2)

April 13, 2004

Easter Weekend, 2004

The daytime temperature has not been more than a few degrees above freezing since last Wednesday or Thursday.

On Thursday I met with Dave's worker to give him my sense of how I have let Dave down and why Dave found life on the street more satisfying and exciting than life at home. In the end, there was a great deal about me, but nothing concrete about Dave. On a triage basis, the system is not going to do much for a kid who threatens to run away when if anybody tries to tell him that he has to live within some rules and take responsibility for his life. The worker has a large caseload and doesn't seem to have any real contact with Dave. I learned that the worker admires Robert Bly and the other Jungian poet-gurus of the mens's movement. He was curious about my bowel habits and he suggested I might want to join a men's group to let my feelings out. He has a point about dealing with my emotions.

In the evening Claire and I watched 21 Grams which is very good movie. Sean Penn is a great actor and Naomi Watts gave a powerful performance. The non-linear unfolding of the story created a building sense of doom and an almost unbearable sense of tension and anxiety.

Mike, Steve and I decided to ride to Grant's Mill again on Friday. It was a day for tights or sweat pants, fleece tops and shells. The river and the creeks have not subsided, so the spring thaw and the run-off must be continuing. There are still small ice flows in the river. Steve's pictures for April 9/04 show the grey sky and they show us with balaclavas and hoods, and our jacket collars turned up.

One of the pictures shows a building, the Pavilion in Assiniboine Park. It was originally an uninsulated building with concessions and lavatories, and it has been renovated over the years. It is a landmark of sorts, an easily identified meeting place. I was remembering that when I was in high school, I would ride a bicycle from St. James to my high school on Grant Avenue, fall and spring, using the footbridge in Assiniboine Park as the more quiet way to cross the Assiniboine River. I used to cycle past the Pavilion twice a day.

I was up early on Saturday, restless and sleepless. After reading for a while, after sunrise, I took the talk for a walk into the West Broadway area to drop a couple of video rentals at Blockbuster. I blogged and surfed for a while, and shopped for the week's groceries.

Later in the morning, I visited my parents. My youngest sister Teresa was visiting, as it is part of her routine to take our mother shopping. I have started to visit regularly since early March. My visits have been much less frequent for many years. I stayed at home through University and even after graduation for a couple of years, paying some room and board. I visited regularly until I met Jan and got married. I used to think I was just busy with my job and taking care of my own family and home, but I think depression played a part in my discomfort with my parents and brothers and sisters and allowed me to become isolated and disconnected.

My mother has a progressive dementia. She is comfortable in her home with my dad's support. She recognizes people and converses well about past events but can't recall if she has taken her many medications or had a cup of coffee in the last few minutes. My dad is quite deaf. He doesn't find his hearing aids help much because he can't filter out the background noises to follow a conversation.

There is a warm feeling when I sit with my parents, in the house where I was raised, hearing the familiar tones of their voices and telling stories about family, neighbours and friends. It is also unhappy to realize that I cut myself off from that, regardless of what blame I can place on my parents for my less happy and more frightening childhood memories, and regardless of my old insights and beliefs about how those events have influenced my character.

After visiting my parents, I dropped in on Dave. We had short talk about plans for the next week, and what my might do around my time commitments around work and around Claire's finishing exams. I said I thought I would like to promise to do things with him instead of just dropping by, and then fighting over extra money for his little habits. I told him that his uncle Frank would be calling and taking him out for some outdoor adventure and ATV riding, and he seems to be excited about that.

He would like to come home if we could just accept him as he is, let him play metal music as loud as he liked when he liked, and have his friends over. All he wanted, he said, was to be able to put a towel under the door and have a bong in his room. I asked him how he thought I felt when he and his friends were literally robbing us. I mentioned his raids on his mother's wallet and purse last August while Claire and I were in Edmonton, and while I was in hospital. He couldn't remember that I had surgery last summer. I asked him what he remembered about last summer and fall and he couldn't think of too much.

I left it there. I listened. I gave him some new information to consider. I offered to come back often and to be present for him.

On Sunday, again, I was sleepless and awake early. There was an Easter sunrise service at St. Margaret's Anglican, which is just a block away. I spent the later part of the morning tinkering with bike, and in the afternoon we rode to the Red River floodway gates.

Sunday evening, Easter dinner at Frank's with my daughter Claire, my parents, my sister Teresa and her husband. Frank's kids and Teresa's kids had dinner in front of the TV in the rec room. Claire stayed with the adults. Frank was about an hour late. He had picked Dave up and they had gone to ride an ATV near Grand Beach. Frank's wife Jan was a good hostess, and she teased Frank about being late.

There has been some distance between Frank and me for many years. He has been stuggling with anger and depression, and I have been depressed. He reached out a few weeks ago and is trying to help Dave and to help me with Dave. I reached back and we have talked and done things together. I think this was the first time in many years that Frank has invited family - certainly me - for any family function.

There was friendly sense to the teasing and banter, and I had a good time. I thought I was a part of it, and I hope that Claire has started to find a different sense about my parents and brothers and sisters.

My mother was enjoying herself, but with her mind slipping she was more on the edge of the conversations. I guess if I am honest about it, she doesn't have the resources to be threatening and manipulative, and this makes it easier to be with her. Dad couldn't follow the conversation. He had his hearing aids off and he wanted to go home soon after dinner.

Monday was a slow day at work. Many people working in government or in jobs that interact with government had a holiday and downtown was quiet. I called home to talk to Claire but she didn't answer the phone. I became anxious and I went home for a short visit, and then went back to work to try to move ahead with some pressing projects.

In the evening I went to meet Dave to go to a movie but he wasn't there. He had gone out with friends. He called me later, and I visited him and bought him a burger, and we talked for a while. He had gone out and gained access to an abandoned factory and spent his day exploring, chasing pigeons, breaking things. I told him about my bike rides, and about dinner at Frank's. He told me about his Sunday outing and ATV riding with Frank. He wants me to buy some Warhammer 40,000 models for him, and we wants me to arrange for him to have voice lessons so he can become a metal singer. I said could contribute if I could afford it, after paying for his care with CFS. I thought it would be easier if he stayed in in his placement and got a job to cover some of his own needs. His reply was that he could go to his lessons even if he lived on the street, and then I would have more money for the lessons and for him. I said I would not be letting him decide how to spend the money I set aside for his support.

He started to accuse me of not caring for him, not understanding him, not understanding drugs, not respecting him. I said I didn't agree. He began to throw lines at me - I had to ask if they were song lyrics or personal poetry. He said I wasn't listening. I repeated several phrases back verbatim and asked him what he was trying to tell me. I said I felt I had failed as a parent and let him down, and left him on the street with no skills or resources to take care of himself.

I felt the communication was starting to break down. I said I had to go. I talked about calling him to make plans for later in the week.

Posted by Tony Dalmyn at 06:55 AM | Comments (4)

April 12, 2004

Pining for the Fjords?

Rupert Sheldrake was a reputable plant scientist. He enjoyed a good reputation in his field, and published in conventioal peer-reviewed scientific journals until about 1978. He had articles published in Nature in 1973 and 1974. He has links to his published papers on his web site. According to his own Web site, he went to India and worked his academic field from 1974 to 1978. After that he studied in an ashram, and then began to publish more spiritually oriented writings.

He has continued to publish articles in less conventional publications like the Journal of Parapsychology, the Journal of Noetic Sciences, the Journal of the Society for Psychic Research, Alternative Therapies, and the Journal of Scientific Exploration. He was connected with Matthew Fox and the Univerity of Creation Spirituality in Oakland and appears to have become connected with the Institute of Noetic Sciences in Northern California.

Rupert Sheldrake believes in telepathy and the special powers of animals, and he has spent a great deal of time writing on those topics. Most recently he has explored the powers of a telepathic parrot. This pursuit has attracted a certain amount of skeptical derision, as he concedes on his web site. His research into the psychic parrot puts me in mind of the classic Monty Python's Flying Circus sketch about the dead parrot.

Rupert Sheldrake has also postulated a general theory of how the world holds together, which serves to explain why his cherished beliefs in psychic and paranormal events are real and true. He believes in morphological or morphogenetic fields. Several of his papers are devoted to explaining this theory, and he has been interviewed of published in leading New Age or Alternative magazines such as In Context. He explains his theory as morphic resonance:

morphic resonance: The influence of previous structures of activity on subsequent similar structures of activity organized by morphic fields. Through morphic resonance, formative causal influences pass through or across both space and time, and these influences are assumed not to fall off with distance in space or time, but they come only from the past. The greater the degree of similarity, the greater the influence of morphic resonance. in general, morphic units closely resemble themselves in the past and are subject to self-resonance from their own past states.

His theory of morphic fields isn't actually unique. For instance, we can look at the Morphological Institute's Web Page.

Sheldrake is an intelligent and learned man - a pundit - who has been using his credentials as a real scientist to publish papers of speculative psychology and cosmology in an effort to authenticate strongly held personal beliefs. He has become associated in his teaching and writing with individuals and groups who present themselves as the next wave of human consciousness and spirituality, an essentially religious movement. He is willingly lending his former scientific credibility to an expanding group of teachers, teaching institutions, retreat centers, personal coaches and transformational counsellors to validate their methods.

His belief in fields and psychic phenomena is a theory in search of proof - in short it is a belief held on faith. When his beliefs have been challenged he has resorted, like many religious writers, to the deconstruction of empiricism, materialism, rationalism and the scientific method. I think that's the only logical way for him to go. When Sheldrake writes about psychic phenomena, he is describing his own experience of a transcendental reality. His writing is really theological, or religious.

The study of religious experience is academically and culturally fragmented. Religion is studied by psychologists, sociologists, cultural anthropoligists, philosophers and theologians. There are significant divisions between students who write inside a religious experience, like theologians and religious writers, and students who try to approach religion as a descriptive social science.

Irving Hexham writes about religion as an academic scientist. He has made some of his books available on line, as part of his New Religions Web site. His book, Understanding Cults and New Age Religions, discusses the persistence of myths and fragments of myths in modern culture:

What Maslow [the psychologist Abraham Maslow], in the context of Western modernity, calls peak experiences, others, in the context of non-Western traditions, call primal experiences. Traditional societies mediate the effects of vivid primal experiences through the use of rich mythologies that enable individuals to accept and seemingly understand their psychic condition. But modern man suffers from a fragmentation of belief that often leaves those who have primal experiences without any acceptable means of resolving the conflicts associated with primal realities.

In medieval Europe, people who encountered the primal saw visions of saints and the Virgin Mary. Hindus in India see the gods Krishna and Rama, Buddhists meet Bodhisattvas, and Muslims share visions of God. By contrast, in industrial society, people encounter raw experiences without readily available imaginative frameworks to give the experience content and meaning.

Industrial society has no body of shared beliefs, no common mythology. Its members hold onto a collection of disconnected beliefs and are vaguely familiar with fragments of many myths. The advantage that some new religions have in this situation is that they possess powerful integrated mythologies that accommodate primal experiences.

The mythologies of new religious movements are created out of numerous disjointed myths found in society generally. By weaving these unrelated myths into coherent wholes, new religions create a sense of continuity with society. Through the use of traditional myths, they are able to give themselves an apparent historical depth that legitimates their claims to be the carriers of a high culture.

Within that perspective, I would have to regard Sheldrake as expressing myths of personal power and insight. His interests in morphological fields and psychic animals blend neo-pagan nature myths and pseudo-science myths.

Sheldrake doesn't seem to be asking for money on his own web site, apart from advertising his books and lecture appearances although he seems to be connected with some other ventures that do try to sell something. Mainly, he presents himself as a legitimate scientist, unjustly reviled by a skeptical scientific establishment. He presents his theories as science, to take advantage of people's trust in science and the scientific method, while preaching an essentially religious world-view. His science is speculative, and his theology is simply another warmed over episode from the Twilight Zone.

Posted by Tony Dalmyn at 09:16 AM | Comments (0)

April 09, 2004

Fakirs

When I was six, my parents gave me three books by Rudyard Kipling. There was The Jungle Book, and a book called Stalky and Company which was a fictionalized account of Kipling's teen years in an English "public school" which was actually a private boarding school. My mother had been the Akela in a Cub Scout pack in Holland and she was encouraging me to join a local Cub pack. The Cubs and the scouting movement in England and Canada used the Jungle Book as their organizational metaphor. (Mowgli was raised by wolves in the Jungle Book, and Cub Scouts are wolf cubs).

The third and best one was Kim, the story of an Anglo-Irish orphan abandoned in Northern India, who lives on the street and becomes recruited into the Great Game of military and political spying, while also finding his own integrity in acting as a helper, disciple and friend to an elderly Tibetan Buddhist monk on a pilgrimage in India to seek the River that sprang forth where the Buddha's arrow fell. Kim is a rich, complex and enjoyable novel by an undervalued writer, and I have re-read it several times.

In the book, we find several encounters with fakirs. Fakir has a rich sound to an English-speaking listener. It sounds like faker, and it sounds like an obscenity. In the Oxford World Classic Edition of Kim it is spelled faquir and explained in a footnote referring to a religious mendicant, properly a Muslim but including other ascetics, such as Hindu Saddhus. Kipling and his character Kim see a clear distinction between true holy men, like Kim's Lama, and a variety of yogis (holy men) and pundits (learned men) and other self-serving and corrupted religious characters that they encounter.

Dictionary definitions of fakir inform us that it has an Arabic root, in the word for poverty, and that it refers to the voluntary practice of poverty within the Sufi tradition. It goes back to the early middle ages and corresponds to the radical poverty of St. Francis and his followers in European Christianity. The religious traditions of voluntary poverty inform and inspire socialism, the Christian social gospel, and modern liberation theology. It also seems to inform the creation of communes and alternative communities and movements for voluntary simplicity in modern living, such as Duane Elgin's Voluntary Simplicity books and teachings.

The Skeptic's Dictionary brings us closer to Kipling's observations:

The term is also used, however, to refer to itinerant Indian conjurers and alleged god-men who travel from village to village and perform "miracles" such as materializing vibhuti (holy ash) or jewelry. They do other conjuring stunts such as walking on hot coals, laying on a bed of nails, eating fire, sticking their hands in boiling 'oil', piercing their faces with long needles, putting large hooks through the flesh of their backs attached to heavy objects which they pull. Some conjurers are even said to levitate or to have performed the famous Indian rope trick.

I think there are many fakirs in our time and place. I include many inspirational/motivational speakers and writers, personal coaches, self proclaimed counsellors, therapists, and healers, teachers of personal growth, leaders of cults and vendors of enlightenment.

It has been said that modern writers and thinkers see farther because we stand on the shoulders of giants. I don't mean to imply that the evolution of ideas and culture is progressive or that we are being taken anywhere on the wave of history. I think modern writers and thinkers are able to work with the wisdom of the past in their own work. This gives them a new vantage point, and of course it gives them the opportunity to appropriate terms and ideas from the great traditions.

I believe that modern fakirs have been able to strip mine the religious, spiritual, philosophical and scientific traditions of many cultures to manufacture a variety of pleasing psycho-spiritual stories. Some of the fakirs are true pilgrims, devoted to finding God or enlightenment. However many of them are selling junk, for their own financial gain or to gratify their inner child's need to be the center of attention.

I see a powerful and healthy tension in the word. I would like to use it as a critical tool, rather than as an insult, but I don't plan to walk on eggshells.

Posted by Tony Dalmyn at 10:21 AM | Comments (2)

April 08, 2004

April 7, 2004

Steve has started to post 2004 cycling notes and photos on the Bike with Mike page. I have edited my recent posts in this blog to link to his site.

I had a short and nasty meeting with my son Dave after dinner. I picked him up at the hotel where CFS (the Child Welfare Agency) has parked him. He forgot that I was picking him up, and then began to hint, suggest, request, demand, bargain and threaten. He wanted a pack of cigarettes. My position on cigarettes and other such items is that I don't subsidize his wishes. If he wants to have those things, he will have to decide how to get the money for them by making other choices like getting a job.

I stopped at home before going on to my meeting. I discovered that he had already phoned my wife Jan and complained about my failure to fulfil his wish. Old pattern. If I gave him something that Jan didn't want him to have (if I told a joke or played a prank or expressed a view that she did not support) he would rat me out and she blamed me for corrupting him. If I supported her articulated values and wishes, and denied one of his requests, or disciplined him, he unloaded on her about how mean I was. In fact he didn't have to say a word. She would react to protect him. What she has always heard, felt and seen and then thrown at me is that I don't respect and love him, and that his pain and her pain are my fault.

This is not a conscious process with him. He has been trying to protect himself and to meet his needs with the resources available to him. In plain terms, he has been using his parents' attachment to him - our need to feel good about ourselves and our connection to him - to get what he needs and what he feels or thinks he needs. If parents can't manage themselves, if either parent can't stand the bad feeling that comes from setting and enforcing rules, then they let a child's feelings rule the family. One of our problems was that both parents needed to feel good about ourselves with Dave, while we had different beliefs and ideals and differing ideas about how to raise him.

That's the history. I can't change it.

Dave still wants me buy stuff, and reacts the old way when he doesn't get stuff .... It's a learned behaviour and he can't stop. If I contact him, he will react. He will ask for stuff and then accuse me of trying to control him when I don't get him what he wants. Does this mean I shouldn't contact him?

Do I have to be afraid of what Jan will feel and think or what Claire will feel and think? I am afraid, and I can't manage their reactions. I have to respect my judgment and integrity now. Right now, all I can do is listen to him, support him, love him.

Tonight, I listened to him rage about his smokes and I left him at the hotel.

After that I went to a meeting. When Dave ran away Jan and started going to meetings of local group of Families Anonymous. I still go. Jan has stopped. I think I know the flaws of a 12 step approach, but it is still helpful for me to go to meetings and share and listen.

Then, a new day.

Posted by Tony Dalmyn at 07:00 AM | Comments (2)

April 07, 2004

April 6, 2004

In looking at some old email in an archive folder, I recollected that I used to sign with a quote. For several months or years in the mid 90's, I used a quote from The Dispossessed, (Harper & Row, 1974) by Ursula K. LeGuin:

It is the nature of idea to be communicated: written, spoken, done. The idea is like grass. It craves light, thrives on crossbreeding, grows better for being stepped on.

When I checked Randy's blog, his entry for April 5/04 mentioned his sf fanzine, Winding Numbers. I wrote several articles for Winding Numbers, including a sercon (that was fannish talk for serious and constructive) or critical literary review of The Dispossessed. LeGuin has remained one of my favourite writers, for her honesty and intellectualism and her appreciation of spirituality. I also agree with some of Thomas M. Disch's comments about LeGuin in his book The Dreams our Stuff is Made Of. Disch considers that LeGuin has been made into a feminist icon by literary critics, and that some of her ideas and themes have been appropriated and misrepresented by critics and imitators. Disch is not particularly enchanted with feminism and magical realism in fiction. His critique becomes sour around these matters of taste, and I part company with him there.

I got an email from Steve who asked me if if I had registered Sea of Flowers as a domain name. That wasn't a bad idea, and I registered sea-of-flowers.ca. I haven't set up the web page redirector yet.

I had a few interesting talks with some old neighbours waiting for the bus and with an old collegue over lunch.

I reached my son Dave by phone. He is not living at home. He ran away last fall, just before his 16th birthday to try to find independence, drugs, anarchy, metal music, sex and friends who appreciate his interests. He tried living on the street and he has settled down in a placement through a child welfare agency - at least for now. I have been visiting and talking to him over the last three weeks, after a long estrangement. He seems to have worked out some of his angry sense of having been forced out of school and out of his home by intolerable parental and societal rules.

After supper, Mike, Steve and I took a bike ride of about 26 kilometers through Assiniboine Park, over the bridge on Moray, through Woodhaven, to Grant's Mill in front of the Grace Hospital. The Assiniboine River and the creeks flowing into it are high with spring run-off. Mike took pictures. Steve has reactivated his Bike with Mike page and the pictures are there. I have a red helmet, a beard and a blue fleece or orange shell top in these pics.

With the change to daylight savings time last weekend we can ride for more than 2 hours after dinner which gives us time for riding and some rest and photography stops.

Posted by Tony Dalmyn at 08:29 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

April 06, 2004

Meeting Sister Jane

A little over two years ago, in the early months of 2002, I started a court proceeding for a woman who ran a drop-in center at Higgins and Main, in the very deepest, poorest, most alcohol and drug addled part of Winnipeg's inner City core. (I am, by the way, a lawyer by day). Sister Jane was, at that time, 50 and had been a Catholic nun since she 20. She was living alone, without the support of her religious congregation, and she had terminal cancer.

She had been raised in New Hampshire and joined her congregation as a young woman just at the time that memberships in the Catholic Religious Orders was plummeting. Soon after she joined her Order, she accepted an invitation from a Canadian nun, a self-styled visionary reformer, to move to Edmonton and then to Winnipeg to be part of an innovative spiritual commune.

It didn't work for Sister Jane. The project tried to fuse transformational psychology with Catholic spirituality but it seems to have lost its connection to the Scriptures and the traditions of the Church. It became the leader's personal project, and became whatever the leader wanted it to be. Jane found that her leader was controlling and grandiose. Jane swore in Affidavits that the leader introduced a purported therapy in which she initiated naked hugs which progressed to other sexual acts. Jane submitted sometimes but started to resist and react, which angered her leader, who disciplined her within the close confines of their communal life, and expelled her from the commune. She was then marginalized in her own Order because of her alienation from the leader and the rest of her Sisters who were connected to commune and the project.

Sister Jane had remained a member of her Order, but had started to live on her own. She received a little support to find a building and start a drop-in place but she had to recruit a board and to find funds for operating expenses and her own needs from a very early stage. She made friends, and her friends supported her and her ministry.

When she found that she had cancer, she sought some support from her superiors in the Order. In that process she described her personal experiences in the new movement, and she found that she was getting very little support. The Archbishop of Winnipeg listened to her and helped her personally with some other needs, but he did not intervene in the affairs of Jane's autonomous Religious Order.

When I met Jane, her cancer was in remission and she was trying to understand if she could continue in that Religious Order, or if she had to leave. We started Court proceedings to recover compensation for the harm caused by illegal acts, her cancer came back in the winter of 2002-2003 and she died last summer.

Sister Jane's ministry was curtailed by her illness, and it closed for a while after she died. Her friends have been trying to revive it.

I visited her last spring, before her last hospitalization. Her ministry was based in an old three story bank building. The drop in was on the main floor and she lived in a suite on the upper floors. It was a small apartment, with a little chapel or prayer room. It was small oasis for her in a tough area of town and Jane lived with anxiety and fear.

When I had been discussing her evidence with her, I had tried to understand what she did at a drop-in. Did she provide a social service? Counselling? Teaching? Referrals to other agencies? Some kind of therapy? She explained it as living out the Church's preferential option for the poor. I recognized that as an articulation of liberation theology, but I don't think I started to understand it until later.

What she did was to be present for people and to listen to them, providing them with a safety and respect. The theologian Rowan Williams, in his book Christ on Trial, How the Gospel Unsettled our Judgment
wrote:

God's transcendence is in some sense present in and with those who do not have a voice, in and with those without power to affect their world, in and with those believed to have lost any right they might have had in the world. God is not with them because they are naturally virtuous, or because they are martyrs; he is simply there in the fact that they are 'left over' when the social and moral score is added up by the managers of social and moral behaviour.

What strikes me about Sister Jane's work is that she was able to carry on while she herself was deeply wounded. I think I have only been able understand the value of her ministry as I have begun to experience my own pain and powerlessness over the events and the people in my life, and when I have needed to have people listen to me.

Last week a common friend of Jane's and mine told me that Sister Jane had seen that I was going through some changes - as I certainly have been. I was simply moved to tears that she had the compassion to see me clearly while I thought I was helping her.

Posted by Tony Dalmyn at 07:52 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

April 05, 2004

Bike with Mike

Last year my friends Mike and Steve started to ask me to ride with them. We started to ride, almost every Sunday and one or two evenings a week through the spring, summer and fall. Steve began to log and journal his trips, alone and with Mike, Robbie and me on a web page called Bike with Mike.

Steve's log says that I rode with him on April 20 last year. I don't clearly remember that trip. I remember joining them for evening rides in early May and then for Sunday rides.

I had a hard time learning to ride a bike as a child. I was not coordinated and I was timid. The bike that my parents could afford was too big. I learned to ride when I was 12 or 13. It was liberation, to be able to ride and be alone and feel the air, the sunlight, and the rain. There was period of time in my early and mid 20's when I bought a real road bike, and made regular rides on Henderson Highway to Lockport with some friends. That dropped off after I got married (1983) when I began to go to my wife's family cottage 8 or 10 weekends a summer, and with the demands of home maintenance and family life on the other summer weekends.

I got a mountain bike about 10 years ago - a Giant Yukon, aluminum frame, no shock. A basic bike, but a sound and well made one with reasonable components. I used it to ride around town with my children, and I took it on camping trips to the Rockies and used it a bit on those trips.

Generally, over the years I got idle and put on weight. I was at a good healthy weight of 135 pounds when I was active and fit before 1983. I was at 170 pounds last spring.

Last year, when Mike and Steve first began to invite me to ride, my wife was in the process of telling me that she wanted a divorce. We reconciled after a few weeks of discussion, with some changes on my part.

I realized that I had become depressed and that I had been hiding out in my own home, taking care of basic needs, reading, and drinking a few beer and few glasses of wine every day. At that time I convinced myself that I fit into own of the popular patterns of addiction as explained by addiction counsellors - that I was drinking in response to childhood trauma. My thinking on that has changed in the past year. I think I was depressed in response to a number of problems in my life and that I was using alcohol to medicate my depression. My impulse to drink has gone away as my depression has lifted. I still have beer with the guys at the end cycling trips, and sometimes wine or beer with a special meal or a cocktail at a party or to celebrate the weekend. I have had a number of shocks and stresses that could have pushed me back into depression and drinking, but that hasn't happened.

At first I used the bike rides as a way to burn calories and as a change in the patterns and routines of my life. In the course of the summer - I lost a month due to surgery in August - I lost 20 pounds. I did not gain it back. In fact I lost a little more over the winter. I will probably be down to my old weight in a couple more months of riding.

As time went on, I realized that cycling with my friends was simply the right way to spend time, to enjoy my health, to enjoy the sensations of riding and to receive the support and companionship of my friends. My friends and my rides sustained me through my efforts to reconcile with my wife, and through the bitter hard time when my son (he was just turning 16 in September) ran away to live on the street, an addict to drugs and to his nihilist vision of freedom away from parental control. My riding gave me back the confidence of being fit and the joy of good health.

Spring has come and we have started riding again, last Sunday March 28 and yesterday, April 4 Steve has started to mention some trips in his new blog. He has revived his Bike with Mike page. He has been using his trip pictures and some by Mike. In the March 28 and April 4 pics Steve is wearing a grey helmet and yellow shell, Mike is under the red helmet wearing a blue fleece vest, Robbie is the black helmet and red top, and I am under the red helmet wearing the orange shell.

Posted by Tony Dalmyn at 07:21 AM | Comments (1)

April 04, 2004

Brave Kelso

Canadian Folk musicians spend a lot of time driving long distances between the communities where they perform. In the late 1970's Stan Rogers and his band (his brother Garnet Rogers and a small series of other performers) did their time on the road.

On reaching the prairies, Stan Rogers visualized himself as the "tardiest explorer" in the tradition of Franklin, Mackenzie and David Thompson. In his song Northwest Passage, he describes his own journey across the prairie:

"Three centuries thereafter, I take passage overland,
In the footsteps of brave Kelso, where his sea of flowers began"

While the narrative is anchored in the inner vision of the singer dreaming while he drives, the vision itself is heroic, claiming the vision of the first European explorers of the prairies, plains, rivers and mountains of the Canadian Northwest:

"Ah for just one time, I would take the Northwest Passage,
To find the hand of Franklin reaching for the Beaufort Sea,
Tracing one warm line in a land so wide and savage,
And make a Northwest Passage to the sea"

Most of the names in the song are familiar to Canadians, or easy to identify. Mackenzie is Alexander Mackenzie, a fur trader and explorer who navigated the river that bears his name to the Arctic Ocean in 1789 and then, in 1793 crossed the Rockies and descended to the Pacific - the first European Canadian to reach the Pacific overland, a full decade before Lewis and Clark. David Thompson was a great explorer and cartographer. Franklin is Sir John Franklin, the British naval officer who was lost in the Arctic in the 1840's.

Kelso was Henry Kelsey who joined the service of the Hudson's Bay Company at age 17 in 1688 and rose to become a governor of the Company. At the time, and for centuries, the Company set itself up in forts on Hudson's Bay and let the Canadian First Nations bring the furs down to the Bay for trade. Very occasionally, a Bay man would explore inland. In 1690 young Henry Kelsey joined a group of First Nations travelling into what must have been the Canadian heart of darkness. His journals were preserved in the Company archives and rediscovered in the 20th century. He is believed to have travelled southwest from the Bay to the Grand Rapids of the Saskatchewan River, near the modern town of The Pas, and then west and south onto the prairie. He is believed to have been the first European Canadian to reach the prairie from the Bay.

Stan Rogers discussed the process of writing Northwest Passage in a radio interview in 1982 and admitted that he had been unsure of Kelsey's name and had guessed Kelso while recording the song. He never said if he believed that Kelsey himself had described the prairie as a "sea of flowers" or what brought that image to his mind - since he would himself have only seen the farmlands that the prairies have become.

Kelsey kept a journal, and his only descriptive references to the prairie are as a bleak heath of short round grasses. This indicates that he saw the short sere grasses of the high plains, rather than the tall grass prairies of more fertile regions. It is also not untypical of 17th century aesthetic sensibilities toward nature. It was only in the late 18th and the 19th centuries, through the Romantic movement, that Europeans and European Americans began to see nature as beautiful in itself.

The image of the prairie as a sea or ocean of grass and flowers was employed by the American poet William Cullen Bryant to describe the edge of the plains in southwest Illinois in the early 19th century, and adopted by many later poets and writers, including the 19th century Canadian poet and essayist Charles Mair. The engineer and inventor Sanford Fleming described the prairies that way on arriving at the edge of Red River Valley near the modern town of Ste. Anne, along the Dawson Road from Lake of the Woods in 1870. Fleming and Mair were in the last generation to see the prairies that way, before the slaughter of the last great herds of bison and the breaking of the prairie to agriculture.

In reaching for the beautiful and true meaning of exploration, Rogers transcended geographical and historical accuracy to take us off the asphalt road and into the sea of flowers.

Posted by Tony Dalmyn at 09:08 AM | Comments (0)

April 03, 2004

Sea of Flowers

When I decided to start a Web log, I tried to find a unique name that would represent my place, my voice, and my interests. I think that I will be writing from where I live, with an emphasis on history, literature, ideas, religion, and Canadian folk music.

The Sea of Flowers is a simile - the prairies are, or were, like a sea. I first heard it used by Stan Rogers, the great Canadian singer and songwriter who used it in a song called Northwest Passage. It has stayed with me. For a few years I used to belong to a mailing list about the songs of Stan Rogers, and about Canadian folk music. Ienjoyed writing about the places and the stories that were told and retold in musical poetry.

The tall grass prairie used to cover parts of the eastern Great Plains, including the fertile valley of the Red River as it runs into Lake Winnipeg. For centuries before the settlement of the prairies for agriculture, travellers arriving through the forests of the Canadian Shield and the sandy eskers at the edge of the Shield would have had a vista of miles of tall flowers and flowering grasses rippling in the wind like waves on the sea.

The prairie in its natural state was intimidating . The tall grasses could rise over a person's head, and the grasses were hardy, coarse, prickly, cutting, stinging and infested with biting insects. The prairies might be swept, on a given day, by wind, rain, fire or snow, or flooded, or baked in the glare of the sun in a cloudless sky.

That's where I live, and where I have lived for nearly 50 years. I live in Winnipeg, a large small city in the Red River Valley in Manitoba. My parents left Holland and crossed the ocean and half a continent to try to raise a family in this windy city built along three rivers, in a landscape that was once a sea of flowers. When I was a child, our family home was at the edge of a blue-collar area near the airport, which occupies the Northwest corner of the City. There were patches of prairie a short distance north of our house, and there were vacant lots full of grass and brush tall enough to make hiding places and imaginary battlefields.

The sea of flowers has long since been plowed over but it survives in small patches and in the imagination. That's my home and my starting place for this blog.

Posted by Tony Dalmyn at 08:50 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack