Rants

What are you doing this evening?

Daily writing prompt
What are you doing this evening?
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What are you doing this evening?

This evening, I am thinking about how September is the month in which academics, thinkers, and philosophers, as well as everyday people, can be reborn. I wrote this article 25 years ago. Re-reading it now, I am amazed by its clairvoyance. Here are my thoughts from way back then.

“September Renaissance: The Annual Adventure of (Re)Creating the Individual.”

This address was delivered to faculty at MOUNT ALLISON UNIVERSITY on 07 September 1999. It is a revision (and an extension) of the adress I delivered to students at St. Thomas University during the inaugural speech delivered to the incoming class of students by the winner of the St. Thomas University Excellence in Teaching Award.

Tomorrow, 08 September, 1999, is a very special day for me, and I would like to share my Special Day with all of you.

“A Special Day?” you think. “It must be his birthday.”

But no, it’s not my birthday. Could it be my Saint’s Day then? If we were in class, and you were all students, I would see some puzzled faces. A hand would be raised: “Please Dr. Moore, what’s a Saint’s Day?”

I would smile at the student brave enough to ask that question. “Good question!” I would say. “When one person asks a question, class, there are twenty people in the room, perhaps more, who wanted to ask that question, but did not raise their hands because they were afraid to do so. Never be afraid to ask questions. Question everything. Question everyone. Ask questions all the time. That, in part, is what you are here for: to ask questions and to learn to ask the right questions.”

So: what is a Saint’s Day? Well, in Spain, people often have two celebrations a year: their birth day and their Saint’s Day. Their birthday is, of course, the day they are born; their Saint’s Day is the Feast Day of the Saint after whom they are named. That was a good question, class, and you have gained a little knowledge! But No! It is not my Saint’s Day.

Why is today such a special occasion for me? Again, if this were a classroom I might, at this stage, do one of several things:

  • I might divide you into groups and ask you to discuss the question;
  • I might turn on a video;
  • I might access the classroom computer and show you a multi-media presentation;
  • I might give you a lecture or a talk or a question and answer session, much as I am now doing;
  • I might send you to the library to find out the answer for yourselves;
  • I might send you to the computer room to surf the net in search of an answer;
  • I might ask you to work together on an interactive listserve and let others help you access the information;
  • I might send you home early with reading material for the next class;
  • I might send you home to watch a specific television program;
  • I might set you the question as a Problem Based Learning Group Research Project (written answers on my desk, tomorrow, by 3:15 pm!);
  • I might ask you to write your essay in a journal page or in a researched essay (due in six weeks time, with annotated bibliography!);
  • I might ask you to tap in to your subconscious and freewrite around the question for fifteen minutes;
  • I might tell you to do some thinking and asking around, because that specific question will be on the final examination;
  • I might ask you to design a poster or your own multi-media presentation demonstrating the meaning of the question and several possible answers …


… Clearly, there is no right or wrong approach and there are many ways of dealing with what is, on the surface, a relatively simple question. You are using many of these approaches in your own classes here at Mount Allison University and I do not presume to tell you that one way is right and another wrong. So much depends on the shifting relationships between teacher, learner, class size, class maturity, work capacity, research resources, and subject matter. At Mount Allison you have a national reputation for the excellence of your students and of your faculty. You have proved over a long period of time your ability to distinguish between the more important questions and the correct research and investigation procedures; above all, you know how to choose those that are most suitable to you and to your own students.

Since this is NOT a classroom, since you are not my students, and since I would have great difficulty in dividing you up into small groups so that you could discuss why tomorrow is such an important day for me, I will provide you with the required answer: TOMORROW, September 8, 1999, is my RE-BIRTH-Day! Tomorrow, I celebrate the day of my RE-BIRTH. Thirty-three years ago tomorrow, I was RE-BORN.

Permit me to share with you the matter of my RE-BIRTH!

It came about like this: On September 8, 1966, I got up at 4:00 am, ate a light breakfast, packed my suitcases into my father’s car, and headed for Heathrow Airport, London. There I boarded BOAC Flight 1040 and at 3:00 pm that afternoon I landed in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. By 3:15 pm, I was passing through Canadian Customs and Immigration and by 3:30 pm, I was RE-BORN as a Canadian.

This RE-BIRTH was not an easy process. It took me a long time to learn to act, think, and speak like a Canadian. It also took me a long time to realize that while the Canadian within me was growing stronger every day, other parts of me, even when they were rigorously maintained, were beginning to die. Thus, at the same time as I celebrate my RE-BIRTH as a Canadian, I mourn the gradual passing away of my Welshness, the slow disappearance of my Welsh family, the fading of my Welsh friends, some of whom I have not seen in more than thirty years.

Yes! I was RE-BORN 33 years ago tomorrow. But this is not the only RE-BIRTH that I have undertaken. There have been many other rebirths:

  • 28 years ago, I emigrated from Ontario and was RE-BORN as a New Brunswicker;
  • 27 years ago, I left the University of New Brunswick and was RE-BORN as a St. Thomas University professor;
  • 24 years ago, I was RE-BORN when I graduated with my PhD and was officially no longer a student;
  • 5 years ago, when I visited the Dominican Republic, I was RE-BORN as a conscious critic of certain neo-colonial policies and attitudes towards Developing Countries; in the DR, incidentally, I was also held up at gun-point — and surviving THAT little incident certainly guaranteed an instant RE-BIRTH which I celebrated in the closest bar!
  • 4 years ago, in December 1995, I was RE-BORN as a pseudo Professor of Education when I visited Oaxaca, Mexico, as part of what was later to be called the St. Thomas University – University of New Brunswick – Universidad Autónoma Benito Juárez de Oaxaca Faculty Exchange Program;
  • And tomorrow, on September 8, 1999, as I celebrate the 33rd anniversary of my being RE-BORN as a Canadian, I am in fact in the process of being RE-BORN yet again.


I will explain how in a moment. Meanwhile let me say that along with the pain and struggle for RE-BIRTH come various things:

  • PRIDE: in the fact that I, along with everyone else in this room, can achieve RE-BIRTH;
  • HUMILITY: in the knowledge of how fortunate I am, together with all of you gathered here in this room today, to be counted among those who are still capable of RECREATING their lives and of being RE-BORN;
  • RESPONSIBILITY: in the knowledge that when we are RE-BORN a new set of duties falls upon our shoulders;
  • ENERGY AND ENTHUSIASM: in the knowledge that I, like every one of you, am capable of sharing the secret of my RE-BIRTH with the students who come to my office and my class almost every day in search of the new selves which they wish to create for themselves.


This summer, to prepare myself for this Fall’s RE-BIRTH, I did the following:

• I revised all my courses;
• I attended the University of New Brunswick Multi-Media Institute for three weeks and completed my Certificate of Multi-Media Studies;
• I reconstructed, with the aid of Clare (without whom I would not be here today, but perhaps I’ll tell you more about that later), my web page;
• I (re)commenced my annual summer reading program to update my thinking.

I say all this to assure you that I know as well as you do that knowledge is not a solitary, self-contained unit which, once attained, stays with us forever. Knowledge is an ongoing process; learning is a lifetime commitment; you, as faculty, teach at Mount Allison University, as I teach at St. Thomas University, not just to earn a salary, but to continue a life-long commitment to teaching and learning. If you are like me, you love the sheer process of teaching and learning; you love the contact with young, developing minds.

I try always, as I am sure you do, to encourage my students to start their life studies with us at St. Thomas and to continue their life studies when they leave university. We do not say “Learn for four years and then you can stop learning for you will have all the knowledge you will need for the rest of your lives.” At least, I hope we don’t.

And it is the same thing for us, as faculty. For we, as faculty, are actively involved in our own ongoing research and scholarship, some of which we publish and some of which we use in our classes; research moreover, without which the knowledge we share with our students would be a dead package, taken from our notes, and handed over without thought or revision, or consideration, to the next generation, much as certain forms of knowledge were handed to me when I was an undergraduate by some of the teachers de cuyos nombres no quiero acordarme / by teachers whose names I do not wish to recall, to borrow the famous words with which Cervantes opened perhaps the world’s greatest novel: Don Quijote de la Mancha.


So what did I read this summer?

Amongst other things, I read about the RENAISSANCE — the RE-BIRTH of Western Civilization in the 15th and 16th Centuries; I also read about the REFORMATION that came about as a direct result of the challenges and questions posed by the RENAISSANCE; and I read about the COUNTER-REFORMATION that sprang up as a reaction to and dialogue with that first REFORMATION.

I also realized, not for the first time, the similarities between our own age and that of the RENAISSANCE. The RENAISSANCE, as Marshall MacLuhan pointed out in The Gutenberg Galaxy, was a time of new ideas and new technology; in addition, a radical change occurred in the paradigm of man’s learning and thinking. The known world was expanding with the voyages of discovery that set out to East and to West. Man’s view of the universe changed with the various discoveries in optics that allowed us to see objects in space larger and in more detail than ever before. This led, of course, to the concept of the heliocentric universe, where human beings were displaced, away from the centre of creation; a new concept for the Church, and one that they fought against bitterly at the time.

In the same period the printing press had an enormous influence on the dissemination of knowledge, and totally changed peoples’ ways of disseminating, creating, receiving and perceiving written information. It is very difficult for us to understand, even today — perhaps especially today — the impact of the printed word on a semi-literate society in which, again according to Cervantes, groups of people would gather in the evenings to have books read out loud to them by the one or two people in the village who could read. Walter Ong has described this process to us in Orality and Literacy, another book which I (re)read this summer. Suffice to say, that for us, as a television generation, it is difficult to understand the initial impact of radio upon our parents and grandparents. For the new generations of students emerging today, it is difficult to imagine life without the instant communication of television, telephone, email, and computer.

In many ways, the impact of print must have been similar to the impact of the electronic technological revolution which we are going through today. And one thing I know for certain, after completing my Certificate in MultiMedia Studies: none of us are aware, nor will we be fully aware for a long time yet, of the full impact of the electronic technological revolution upon the hearts, souls, intelligence, and minds (not to speak of the wrists and eyes) of those who use it and of those who are now growing up, many of whom know no other way of accessing information.

The paradigm of knowledge and technical skill is still changing and developing explosively; as a result, we are still unaware of exactly what can be achieved by the new media. Take computer chess, for example. Chessmaster 2000 had approximately 150 games programmed into its chess library; Chessmaster 4000 not only has 1500 games programmed in, but also presents us with games in which Karpov commentates in digital audio his own moves in his own matches!

Yet, in spite of this tremendous rate of progress, few of us who follow Chess would have dreamed that Deep Blue, programmed by a gentleman from Clare’s home town of Bournemouth, would thrash Karpov, the world chess champion from the Soviet Union, only a year or two down the road. Nor can we understand the extremely rapid progress that leads us in a matter of months, to see the memory banks in a pc clone expand from 1 gig of memory to 4 gigs of memory, to 6 gigs of memory, to the 10.6 gigs of memory that Dell is advertising in its latest computer sales. In some ways, it is like the 10, or 12, or 14 zeros that are now following the initial figures in the MEXICAN FOBAPROA SCANDAL: so many zeros that the concept of the magnitude of the debt is beyond the understanding of most of us.

In our day, then, as in the Renaissance, the paradigm of knowledge is expanding explosively. Knowledge in the Renaissance evolved so quickly that few individuals were capable of grasping the full meaning of the REVOLUTION, the RENAISSANCE, the REBIRTH which they were observing and in which they were involved. In fact, the RENAISSANCE BATTLE OF THE BOOKS or the continuing discussions between the ANCIENTS AND MODERNS were very similar in many regards to some of the discussions regarding the FUTURE OF EDUCATION that we are holding in all the Atlantic Provinces Universities right now. Authority or Innovation? The old ways or the new? Technology or Tradition? Whatever side we come down upon, these discussions are good for us all for they mean we are alive and thinking and that our knowledge is not a dead but a living thing.

This summer, I also (re)read Mikhail Bakhtin; I believe with him, that human beings can live in a DIALOGISTIC RELATIONSHIP WITH THEIR CHRONOTOPOS — that is to say, in less Bakhtinian language, that people can hold a dialogue with their time and their space, a dialogue which can bring about change, new directions, new commitments, in short, a RE-BIRTH.

And now, from Dialogue to Drama: Wayne C. Booth, in Freedom and the Individual (the Oxford University Amnesty International Lectures of 1992) wrote that we are all individuals, writing the drama of our own lives; each student’s entrance to Mount Allison University, in Wayne Boothian Theory, is a chance for that student to begin his or her play again; all students can rewrite their roles and their characters; as we can rewrite our lives and our roles. In short, each one of you can, like me, be RE-BORN. And believe me: September is the month in which this ANNUAL REBIRTH can and should take place.

I also read several books on the THEORY OF TIME: sidereal time, atomic time, linear time, instantaneous or contemporaneous time … many of the courses I teach at St. Thomas University are based on linear time: each term, they progress steadily from Day 1 to Day 36; however, our lives as teachers and learners are also based on seasonal or cyclical time. For teacher and student, the learning and teaching cycle begins anew every September; this is the time of the SEPTEMBER RENAISSANCE or RE-BIRTH. September then is the month for us ALL to be RE-BORN.

In some ways, the most important books I read this summer were all written on or about don Francisco de Quevedo. These books no longer have a single author. We are no longer dealing with one person’s ideas. Thus, although Pablo Jauraldo Pou’s name adorns the edition of the latest and best biography of don Francisco de Quevedo, Quevedo’s life has actually been researched by an extensive team of scholars, students, and friends, so large, that only the most important dozen or so can be acknowledged. The same is true of James O. Crosby’s edition of the Sueños, or of Ignacio Arellano and Lia Schwartz Lerner’s edition of the metaphysical poetry, or of Crosby and Jauralde’s edition of Quevedo y su familia en setecientos documentos notoriales, a compendium of legal documents concerning the Quevedo family which runs from 1572 to 1724.

In fact, when a single author, not a member of a team, writes on Quevedo nowadays, it is to offer a study of just a small portion of the author’s work. In this fashion, Josette Riandière de la Roche’s Nouveaux documents quévédiens: Une famille à Madrid au temps de Philippe II deals with a very short time period and only a selected aspect of the life of the poet. In similar fashion, Santiago Fernández Mosquera’s La poesía amorosa de Quevedo: disposición y estilo desde CANTA SOLA A LISI deals with only one aspect of Quevedo’s poetry, that of the love poems seen in the light of the sonnet sequence to Lisi.

TEAMWORK: it is becoming more and more necessary to work as a member of a team in order to keep up with the knowledge explosion with which we are confronted. I once said, tongue in cheek, that a TIER 2 CIDA GRANT APPLICATION demands the construction of a team. You need

  • a reader who specializes in how to read the AUCC / CIDA guidelines as they change from year to year;
  • an interpreter who specializes in what the current buzzwords are in government circles actually mean and how to use them in your documents;
  • an accountant who specializes in cash flow, international money transfer, and book balancing;
  • a manager who specializes in Results Based Management or whatever form of management system is the current government buzz word;
  • this manager must also have organizational skills to link the various parts of the application to the Results Based Management that is currently demanded by AUCC/CIDA.

Further, the manager must have people skills in order to hold the team together when things are going badly or well, for triumph and disaster, as we well know although both impostors are ever present when applying for Grants from Government Sources; you also need

  • a writer who specializes in writing up the final text so that it will convince the granting authorities that you, the applicant, another often forgotten member of the team, actually knows what you are doing;
  • finally you need what I call a people person or a wheeler – dealer who will get out there and make the appropriate contacts and find out who are the current movers and shakers and who will actually give you the internal promotion that your CIDA GRANT needs if the application is to be successful.

I would also suggest, perhaps not totally tongue in cheek, that a similar team approach to the writing of SSHRCC GRANTS FOR THE HUMANITIES would not be a bad idea.

TEAMWORK: As I said earlier, I completed my Certificate in MultiMedia Studies at the University of New Brunswick this summer. One of the things that I learned was the importance of teamwork in computing.

In our first SCENARIO FOR A CASE STUDY this summer, for example, we were required to design and build a commercial web site. Of course one person can build a website, and a pretty good one at that. But the studio team which we were given consisted of

  • a graphic artist,
  • a sound engineer,
  • a creative director,
  • a computer tech,
  • a multimedia specialist,
  • a photographer,
  • a specialist in digital photography,
  • a graphics designer, and
  • a colour specialist.

We did not have digital video capacity and were forced to contract digital video out. Costing was also a major part of the exercise: how many people, how many tasks, what order for the tasks, how many hours, how much time, how much money! I repeat: the new paradigms of knowledge that are developing around us will be demanding more and more teamwork from us.

I will end this brief presentation by reminding you that this fall, on Saturday October the Sixteenth, 1999, to be precise, the Atlantic Teaching Showcase will be coming to St. Thomas University, Fredericton. I hope to see some of you in St. Thomas, at that meeting. I am, as many of you know, the Chair of the Atlantic Association of Universities Teaching Showcase for this year.

However, I have not arranged the Showcase on my own. On the contrary: I have gathered a team of faculty and together we are working towards the Teaching Showcase. In fact, I have one person looking after finances, another looking after registration, another building a website, another looking after catering, another looking after audio visual equipment, another booking rooms, another organizing the program, another recruiting and organizing student help. We have planned and arranged the program between about eight of us.

An exercise in teamwork, no less.

I know that in all that I have said so far today, here at Mount Allison University, I am talking to people who know as much as I do, or more, about all these things: REBIRTH, RENAISSANCE, TEAM WORK, COLLABORATION. For a very long time, I have been impressed by the quality of Mount Allison’s teachers and by the quality of Mount Allison’s students.

In five weeks’ time, at the Atlantic Association of Universities Teaching Showcase, there will be a session entitled “WORKING TOGETHER: MODELS OF COLLABORATION INSIDE AND OUTSIDE THE CLASSROOM.” This particular session is a perfect example of the type of teamwork I have been talking about today. The session was presented to me in its entirety as a proposal for a single session incorporating 4 papers and some interactive discussion. The session will have a 90 minute slot and I very much hope to be present for what promises to be an exciting time. The session currently consists of a series of four papers, as follows:

  • “Mixing media: High Theory, Low Culture (or Inviting Popular Culture into the Classroom”;
  • “Collaborating with Students: Sharing Power over Syllabus Design”;
  • “Interdisciplinary Collaborative Project: A Model”;
  • “Beyond Discipline: Facilitating Collaborative Student Research”.

The session organizers are all associated with Mount Allison University and I would like to congratulate Professors Pat Saunders-Evans, Deborah Wills, Robert Lapp, Jeff and Ausra Burns on the hard work they have put in to an excellent integrated proposal.

Imitation, they say, is the best form of flattery. I have stood here today and spoken to you and you have kindly listened to my words. Tomorrow, I will spend part of my RE-BIRTH-DAY with you, here at Mount Allison. I have been invited to attend your Learning and Teaching Development Workshops, and I hope to take back to St. Thomas University some of the excellent ideas on which you are working here on campus. You are nationally and internationally recognized leaders in your field. Tomorrow, it will be my turn to listen to, and learn from, you!

Thank you for inviting me here.
And thank you for listening.

How would you design the city of the future?

Daily writing prompt
How would you design the city of the future?
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How would you design the city of the future?

What future? Utopian or Dystopian?

Dystopian – how does one plan to design the city of the future in, for example, Syria, Gaza, Ukraine, a war-torn African country? There are wars and rumors of wars. What sort of future city does one design in the aftermath of a nuclear war? Bunkers for the elite? Underground tunnels? Radiation free zones? MAD – Mutually Assured Destruction – and who would be alive to inhabit one of those cities? The ultra-rich might escape on their super-yacht-space-crafts. But where would they go? And for how long would they survive? And what sort of cities would they build when they got to wherever they were going? From some of the rumors that I am hearing, the multi-billionaires are already building those -super-survival-Noah’s-Ark-Bunker Cities in various parts of our world as it is now. A water world? A dust storm world? A radio-active world? First, define the future, and then we can design for it.

And remember how many times, during and after the first Iraq war, we have heard generals and politicians boasting that ‘we bombed them back to the stone age.’ Just think about that. The stone age. Primitive in the extreme. No electricity, no running water, no regular food supply, no weapons other than sticks and stones, no bronze (that age came later), no iron (that age came later), no medicine, no doctors, no hospitals … think twice before you celebrate ‘bombing anyone back to the stone age’, because that might just happen to you, over the next few years. And remember, if everybody turns off all sources of light, we will be entering a very dark age indeed.

Utopian – Voltaire’s Candide – “everything is for the best in the best of all worlds.” Great. Now re-read the paragraph above. Even if our desired Utopian world avoids a nuclear holocaust and turns out to be the best of all worlds, we are still looking at climate change, rising seas – with the accompanying joy of developing new waterfront properties!??? as someone phrased it recently – over-population, mass population shifts, a dwindling set of natural resources, a scarcity of food and, more important, a scarcity of drinking water, and a tremendous division between the ultra-rich and the super poor. We are also dealing with forever plastics, polluted water, air pollution, the extinction of vital and diverse species, and so many more problems. A Utopia, perhaps, but a Dystopian Utopia, not a total disaster, but a Utopian world walking the plank towards a shark-infested sea.

So, tell me, how do we design the city of the future? A super-charged Noah’s Ark, space ship city, sailing to Planet B because we have flooded Planet A with so many devastating Dystopian indulgences? A deep-earth bunker, or linked set of bunkers, way below the earth, where a select community think they can ride out the coming storm? And what if our planet disintegrates and becomes just another dust cloud, its debris floating in the universe?

I would like to think that my own city of the future would be a small one-roomed, wooden cottage, buried six feet deep, in the peace and quiet of a rural cemetery. But who will bury me, if the world around me perishes and I survive only to fulfill my human fate, and die? I would also welcome a fiery end with my ashes scattered in the peace of the countryside, or in my own garden. Then I think of the wildfires currently consuming large parts of the world and I wonder if any of that will survive. Moreover, can a welcome grave in an enormous graveyard be considered a city of the future? If it can, get planning.

Mors omnia solvit / death solves everything. Indeed it does. And it will solve this question, this problem, and the future city, that I will never design or inhabit, unless, along with Blake, “we build Jerusalem, in England’s green and pleasant land.” If England’s Green and Pleasant Land still exists. And from what I am reading in the dystopian English press, there is little chance of that! And anyway, I live in Canada, so what has England’s polluted and dystopian land got to do with me?

Where did your name come from?

Daily writing prompt
Where did your name come from?
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Where did your name come from?
That seems to be a strange sort of question. First of all, what do you mean by ‘your name’? My surname (or family name), my Christian name, my second name, my nick-name? I have already answered that particular question – to find out, click on this link – What’s the story behind your nickname?

As for my surname, well, that came from my father, and his came from his father, and his came from his father – and so on, ad infinitum. If we go back to the original chicken and egg theory, then we find out that, according to Wikipedia, Moore (pronounced mʊər or mɔːr/ is a common English-language surname. It was the 19th most common surname in Ireland in 1901 with 15,417 members. It is the 34th most common surname in Australia, 32nd most common in England, and was the 16th most common surname in the United States in 2000. It can have several meanings and derivations, as it appeared as a surname long before written language had developed in most of the population, resulting in a variety of spellings. Variations of the name can appear as Moore, More or Moor; as well as the Scottish Gaelic originations Muir, Mure and Mor/Mór; the Manx Gaelic origination Moar; the Irish originations O’More and Ó Mórdha; and the later Irish variants O’Moore and de Mora. The name also arises as an anglicisation of the Welsh epithet Mawr meaning great or large.

So, where did my surname, Moore, come from? Well, you tell me. Because Wikipedia didn’t exactly give me a perfect location for its origin.

As for Roger – well, here we go again. Wikipedia says the following – Roger is a masculine given name, and a surname. The given name is derived from the Old French personal names Roger and Rogier. These names are of Germanic origin, derived from the elements hrōd, χrōþi (“fame”, “renown”, “honour”) and gār, gēr (“spear”, “lance”) (Hrōþigēraz). The name was introduced into England by the Normans. In Normandy, the Frankish name had been reinforced by the Old Norse cognate Hróðgeirr. The name introduced into England replaced the Old English cognate Hroðgar. Roger became a very common given name during the Middle Ages. A variant form of the given name Roger that is closer to the name’s origin is Rodger. So there you are. Or you could blame my father and mother, or the gentleman who dipped me in the baptismal font and baptized me with that name. Personally, I cannot remember a thing about it.

Of course – wrth gwrs – me being a creative writer with a sense of humor and a parentage that was also creative, my name might have been drawn out of a hat, or found in a Christmas Cracker, or suggested by the slip of paper inside a Fortune Cookie, or discovered in a bottle left by that ubiquitous Welsh or Irish or French or Scottish or English milkman, Moore the Milk. I only know that I am one of the few people I have ever met blessed with that name. Alas, I never met my namesake – Roger Moore aka James Bond aka .007 [respect that dot, it comes from Rudyard Kipling!] – although I have been gifted with those names and that number by several of my acquaintances.

Discourse Analysis

Discourse Analysis – Original Question –

I have a question for you. Recently I purchased a book by Forrester- The African Queen. I enjoyed the movie years ago and thought I would like to read the story. The main actors were great. The book highlighted that it showed what it was like being a female during the war, (1) which when I look back on now is one of its main points.

My question or thought on this book is tied around the library system. When I lived in Fredericton I wanted to give a bunch of books to the library, their first question to me was, “How old are the books? I told her and she said anything over five years in not being accepted. (2)

I wondered about this and the fact that many books in school are being removed, (3) how can we tell how much we have progressed? (4)

I don’t like prejudice but it seems we are throwing out too much. (5) Any thoughts on this. I don’t mind some of the history being trashed (6) because for Canada the consentation is for Quebec and Ontario.

Roger’s Response

(1) It’s also about the role of the nun in society. How do ‘holy women’ function in a male society? It sets some of the many questions we are now being faced with, but doesn’t really give any answers. It’s a long time since I saw that film. I don’t think I ever read the book – the themes might well change in print. They are present (some of them) in The Handmaid’s Tale.

(2) The library system seems to have rules and an etiquette all its own. When I donated books to the library, they accepted some for their collections, but set others up for sale on the book tables by the door. My guess is that certain books are ‘best sellers’ and will be read, others are ‘dust gatherers’ and won’t be. They want the former, not the latter. They also have specialized collections. If the books fit the specialized collections, great. If they don’t, then they hit the unwanted category and are moved on. This is particularly true of the UNB Library System.

(3) This is an entirely different question, and one with very deep roots. It deals, in part, with the question of control – quis custodiet ipsos custodies – who shall guard the guards, who shall program the programmers? By controlling what people read, you control their thoughts. One of the worst signs of this was the book burnings of the Spanish Inquisition (15th – 16th – 17th centuries). The Jews were expelled from Spain in 1492. (And the Arabs / Moors, in 1609). Prior to that, these people were ‘processed’ by the Inquisition. The original Inquisition was Papal, aimed at instructing the priesthood in Rome in how to interpret the Catholic Catechism. It was corrupted in Spain (under Fernando and Isabelle) by the Spanish Inquisition, a sort of secret police, which worked rather like the Gestapo in WWII. One of their jobs was to ensure that people who had converted to Catholicism, to avoid deportation, stayed converted and didn’t revert to their old religion, even in secret. Another was to ensure that reading material, religious material, and cultural material, particularly after 1527 (Martin Luther and his 97 theses) when the Reformation started, were all in line with the accepted Catholic thoughts of the time. All books about to be published were sent to the Inquisitorial Censor who vetted them and either approved them, or asked for changes. If he (they were all men) saw the slightest sign of dissent or heresy. Don Quixote, Book One, Chapter Six (DQ,I,6), deals with the book burnings of DQ’s personal library. In certain of the States (down south) books are already being banned. A similar ban, in certain States, that touches us closely, is the banning of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale.

(4) “There is no earth, no heaven, no extended body, no magnitude, no place and that nonetheless I perceive these things and they seem good to me. And this is the most harrowing possibility of all, that our world is commanded by a deity who deceives humanity and we cannot avoid being misled for there may be systematic deception and then all is lost. And even the most reliable information is dubious, for we may be faced with an evil genius who is deceiving us and then there can be no reassurance in the foundations of our knowledge.” René Descartes (1635)

Descartes expresses this much better than I can. It is one of the major dangers of the age in which we live. How do we distinguish between reality and alternate realities? Which reality is the real reality? What is, or isn’t, fake news? How do we tell? Who do we believe? And why do we believe them?

(5) Another part of the problem is that ‘certain people’ – who don’t believe in science and who exploit people’s scientific ignorance to their own advantage – are willing to destroy the foundations of our knowledge. Burn everything down, they say, and start again. The new starting point is to impose what they believe upon everybody around them. This is a huge and crucial problem that threatens us, as individuals. It also threatens the foundations of our knowledge, as well as the very world in which we live – climate change vs denial of climate change – profits over people, versus government of the people, for the people, by the people. Once one starts asking such questions and looks at the AI systems with their immense persuasive powers and their seemingly uncontrollable spread of Mis-information and Dis-information, then one starts to realize how serious the problem is.

(6) Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it – Santayana (the Spanish philosopher, I think). However, we must, in certain circumstances, adjust our current beliefs to current realities. Immigration is a major issue – as is how we deal with people, like me, who come from different cultures and beliefs? Not everything written in the past suits our current world view.

I have been looking at old Westerns – “The only good injun is a dead one” (John Wayne). Really? I know some wonderful people in our first nations communities and I have taught them and worked with them and have often been taught by them. “Shoot first and ask questions afterwards.” Really? I won’t comment further on that one, without reflecting on the number of automatic weapons floating around in our socuiety. So many people are being killed by them.

All of this comes down to the big question – freedom of information or the release of just enough information to persuade other people of what we believe and what we want them to believe. Power and Control. Knowledge is Power – Michael Foucault. Control that knowledge and you have power over the people. Noam Chomsky has written widely on this – and his books have been banned in the USA. Bertrand Russell too – The Meaning of Meaning, for example, and his establishing – along with A. J. Ayer – of the doctrine of logical positivism – the removal by means of mathematics of all the emotional content of words.

My friend, you have opened a can of worms.
Long may they wriggle and squirm.

What profession do you admire most and why?

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What profession do you admire most and why?
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What profession do you admire most and why?

Why admire a profession? I used to admire the fire-fighters when I was in Spain. Then I discovered that a small group of them were setting fires deliberately so that they could get double pay and danger money extinguishing the fires they had set. I used to admire politicians. Then I discovered that they weren’t always honest, had their hands in other people’s pockets, used their positions to entrench and enrich themselves, and pulled all sorts of tricks to stay in power. I used to admire priests. Then I started reading horror stories of child abuse, abuse of power, negligence of priestly duties. And these things aren’t new. In The Book of Good Love, (Spain, 1330-1343) written by Juan Ruiz, the Archpriest of Hita details how the celibate priests were ordered in a letter from the pope of the time to give up the ladies with whom they were living (and with whom they had children) to return to a life of celibacy. All fictitious, of course, but also based on a truthful reality, as was the Seller of Papal Bulls (as described in Lazarillo de Tormes – Spain 1554, and published anonymously because of its anti-clerical content).

I hope, with that short selection of potential professional felonies, I have made my point. In brief, to admire the ideal of a profession is one thing. But to admire the unprofessional conduct of certain individuals who ruin the reputation of their own profession is something else entirely.

Therefore, I would propose that we change the title of this prompt from What profession do you admire most and why?, to What professional do you admire most, and why? Now the question can be answered with ease. I most admire those professionals whose profession is a vocation. They do their jobs out of love and not just for money. They are dedicated individuals who put their profession and the people they serve before their own home comforts, wants and desires.

Such unsung heroes abound. The baker who gets u at 4:00 am, arrives at the bakery at 5:00 am, bakes, prepares, and wraps the goods, until 8:00 am when the customers arrive and the shop opens. This is done at minimum wage, autumn, winter, spring, and in the summer when the heat warnings go out and the bakery is a living hell, what with the ovens and the heat dome outside. The teacher whose work does not end in the classroom, but starts outside, when class has ended, and the students really need the TLC that comes from a teacher who puts them before his/her office schedule of 30 minutes student time a week. The general practitioner who does not retire at age 55 to bask in the sun on a Caribbean Island, but who continues his work, until at age 80, he can tend his flock of patients no more, and who then retires with grace, heartfelt thanks, and love from a job well done.

These are my heroes. These are the professionals that I most admire. Not the profession, but the person who performs that profession with skill, hope, love, commitment, and a dedication that reaches out to embrace that specific professional world, whatever it is, and the people who share it.

Scour the news for an entirely uninteresting story. Consider how it connects to your life. Write about that.

Daily writing prompt
Scour the news for an entirely uninteresting story. Consider how it connects to your life. Write about that.
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Scour the news for an entirely uninteresting story. Consider how it connects to your life. Write about that.

Scour the news – what on earth does that mean? Let’s begin with scour – If you scour something such as a place or a book, you make a thorough search of it to try to find what you are looking for. Rescue crews had scoured an area of 30 square miles. Synonyms: search, hunt, comb, ransack. Search, hunt, scour, ransack – well? Which one are you after? And how long have I got? Question: what am I looking for? Answer: an entirely uninteresting story. What a tremendous waste of my time. And, when you get to my age, time is precious.

As for the news, well, what on earth do you mean by that? I speak several languages fluently. Am I looking for an entirely uninteresting piece of news in all of them? As one of the Two Ronnies used to say “You’re having me on, aren’t you? You’re having me on.” Let’s just stick to one language – English. Then let us ponder for a moment the meaning of the news. How many newspapers do you wish me to purchase and peruse? I am not a millionaire, you know. Or do you want me to listen to the news on the radio or the television? If so, how many channels? How about sending me online? I love the thought of that. There are thousands of websites out there filled with all kinds of news, good bad, indifferent, fake, artificial? And you want me to scour them all in search of, and I quote “an entirely uninteresting story”! Pull the other one, as the old comedians used to say, ‘”it’s got bells on”.

I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll scour your prompt, that’s what I’ll do. Having given it a brief analysis, I declare it entirely uninteresting. Next I’ll consider how it links to my life. Well, sorry, it doesn’t. If I were to follow it through, I’d be sitting here for hours, wearing my fingers out on the keyboard. So, what’s the link between your prompt and my life? A total waste of time, that’s what. Sorry, I have better things to do with my life. Like reading Shakespeare – “Friends, Romans, Countrymen, and prompt readers, lend me your shovels. I come to bury this prompt, not to praise it.”

Here endeth the lesson and the prompt.

If you were going to open up a shop, what would you sell?

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If you were going to open up a shop, what would you sell?
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If you were going to open up a shop, what would you sell?

That is a very hard question to answer. I think of all the material things that everyone else can think of, but I do not want to sell commonplace things – antique furniture, paintings, books, stamps, groceries – I could go on and on, but I will resist the temptation to do so.

When I lived in Santander, Spain, the local wines were sometimes called ‘sol embotellado‘ / bottled sunshine. I wouldn’t want to open a wine shop, but I would love to bottle the essence of a warm sunny summer day and – why should I sell it? I wouldn’t. I would give it away, free of charge, to all the needy people, inner city boys and girls, the impoverished, those who live in the streets and sleep in doorways or under bridges at night. Oh the joy and happiness that would come when they opened their bottle of summer sunshine and felt the warm fresh air gather around them so they could breathe it in.

But why stop there? I would also give away ‘essence of butterflies’, that special feeling that comes on the colored wings of a butterfly and combines with the joy of flowers and the gift of taking flight. How special that would be. But sell it? It is much too valuable to sell. Put a dollar, Euro, yen, rupee, or sterling price upon it, and all its powers would vanish, like fairy dreams fading away.

Fairy dreams – yes, I would offer them as well to those who needed them. And not the sort that fade away, but those fairy dreams that suspend us in the wondrous beauty of their ethereal light. And I would bottle hope, and self-belief, and the power to change oneself from what one is to what one is destined to be. And I would add essence of self-knowledge and powder of Davey Lamp light that would enable the seekers to seek in the darkest corners of their souls and find that elusive inner self, and bring it out from the darkness. And I would stock fragrant filaments of firefly that would also allow my customers to enlighten that darkest of nights, the dark night of the soul. And a map of hidden foot paths that would allow the wanderer to wander and never get lost.

How about an elixir of happiness and joy? A quintessence of rainbows, perhaps? Or a magic lantern that would shine out from heart and eyes and enlighten the soul friends of those lucky souls who were able to locate and enter my shop of conditioners, vital vitamins, and soul magic for all those lost and lonely people. And there, that mirror on the wall – look in it, gaze deep into your own eyes, and maybe, just maybe, you will find my shop.

And “What will your shop be called?”, you ask. Look into your heart and you may find the answer engraved therein. It will be called The Gift Shop of Hope Restored. I look forward to welcoming you when you open the door and step in.

What’s the most money you’ve ever spent on a meal? Was it worth it?

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What’s the most money you’ve ever spent on a meal? Was it worth it?
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What’s the most money you’ve ever spent on a meal? Was it worth it?

The real question is not, how much money did you spend, but was the meal worth it! Think hamburgers – they can vary in price from a couple of dollars to twenty or thirty dollars, each. Is a good hamburger at $2.00 worth more than a rotten hamburger at $20.00? Of course it is. However, if you get a rotten hamburger at $2.00, even those dollars seem to be a waste of money, in the stomach pains of post-gobbling regret.

The same question and answer can be applied to most things – a sweater, a suit of clothes, a dress, a diamond ring… What we are really talking about is value for money. One of the best meals I have ever eaten was at a small restaurant outside the railway station in Lisbon. I arrived early for the overnight train to Madrid, checked my luggage in the left-luggage office, and walked down the road to this wonderful restaurant. I had plenty of time.

When I arrived a plate of hors d’oeuvres appeared before. These were meant to be snacked on before I placed my order. I asked for the menu of the day and chose pork tenderloin cutlets, with patatas bravas (hot spicy fried potatoes). After this came a small omelet, with fines herbes, French style, and this was followed by a lettuce, tomato, onion salad, in an oil and vinegar dressing. A fresh loaf of bread accompanied the meal and red wine was served throughout. Dessert was half a melon, hollowed out, filled with ice cream and soaked in cherry brandy. Afterwards, came a cigar (I smoked occasionally in those days), and a glass of brandy, with espresso coffee. It was simply delicious. How do you valley such a meal? I asked for the bill and reached for my traveler’s cheques (these were indeed the old days, before the ubiquitous credit card). I was ready to pay what the waiter demanded.

When the bill came, I couldn’t believe my eyes – $25, $50, $75, $100? No such luck. $4.50 and $5.00 with the tip added on. I didn’t need my traveler’s cheques. I pulled my wallet out and gave the waiter the equivalent of $10. What a wonderful meal. Totally unforgettable.

I have eaten in five star restaurants, in Michelin recommended restaurants, in restaurants owned by the friends of friends, and I have been ripped off, left right, and centre / center – whichever way you want to spell it. I have often found that the simple restaurants, with home cooking, and a simple menu were better than the over-rated, highly expensive, glitzy showpieces.

In Santander, we used to regularly visit a small restaurant that specialized in fish. The owners had their own fishing boat. They would net fish at sea, but line fish on the way back to port, genuine trawling, the old-fashioned way. The fish they caught was fresh, unbruised from the nets, and, at their restaurant, always cooked simply and well. Family and friends, we all shared the bounty of the sea. And the prices were low, while the quality and love was high.

Discourse Analysis – look at the question. Think about the words and ask what they mean. Search beyond them (and the simple answer) for the true values by which you wish to live your life. Do you crave the $100 cigar, or the free one delivered to your table after a wonderful meal? The $100 sauces that cover up the taste of the rancid meat or fish, or the simplicity of family food, hand picked and as fresh as fresh can be?

Oh yes – and I remember waiting two hours for my meal at one restaurant, a tiny one in a small community in Northern Spain, that nestled by a fish-filled stream. The trout, fried with bacon, were on special. The owner’s son had been sent to the stream to catch them, but they were slow to bite that day. The wine and tapas were free until the meal arrived. And arrive it did, dripping wet and still wriggling slightly. Twelve delicious trout, four each between the three of us. Who’s for fast food? Not me. I want the simple life – shared with friends and filled with love – any day of the week, no matter the cost. But when you look well and seek wisely, it will not cost that much – and it will be unforgettable.

And look at the paella I made for my beloved and I – in the photo above -. Warm for supper and cold for lunch the next day. Simple, relatively quick, and four round meals (they really weren’t square) served at about $2.oo a plate. Unbeatable. Unforgettable.

What are you curious about?

Daily writing prompt
What are you curious about?
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What are you curious about?

I am curious about how you generate prompts for people to write about. Do you put words in a hat and pull them out? Or do you examine a multitude of Christmas crackers to see what words of wisdom are contained within them? As for me, I am curious about Olde Curiosity Shoppes and the curious things that one finds in them.

I am also curious about aliens. There are so many of them. At night, they often invade my brain and stamp around causing enormous damage up there. I think they think the own the place, throwing parties at two in the morning and chanting things that shouldn’t be chanted. They embarrass me. Even worse they sometimes shame me. You should hear the things they say and sing. Snippets of old rugby songs and limericks that never even saw the shores of the Emerald Isle. Sometimes, next day, they are still partying, and those little snippets go earwigging their way on and on.

What’s worse, they speak several languages and I hear them chanting in Latin, French, English, Spanish, Catalan, Italian, Galician, and even in Welsh. As for the Welsh, it rolls on and on – ar hyd a nos – in fact they sing until Harry is hoarse. I looked in the mirror one morning, and I saw a whole crowd of them waving their tentacles like multiple octopi and chanting yma o hyd. And yes, indeed, they were still there. They weren’t going anywhere. They followed me around all day.

Another thing about which I am curious – how do I de-alienate the aliens who have alienated me from my old peaceful world of curiosity shops? “Ho-ho-ho-ho-ho, tell me if you know, who the, why the, where the, what the, where do aliens go?”

And if you happen to be curious about what makes me tick, well, I have a long arm and a short one, just like a grandfather clock, and a key in the middle of my back with which you can wind me up and set me off on any topic, however curious it may be. Just light the blue paper and retire.

Do you still sleep in your childhood bedroom?

Do you still sleep in your childhood bedroom?

Good question. A better one might have been – “Did you have your own bedroom as a child?” The answer is “No, I didn’t. Not that I can remember.” As a war baby, I was moved around quite a bit in my childhood. I remember sleeping in three different bedrooms in our first house. Then we moved in with my maternal grandparents, and I slept in three more bedrooms, often in the same bed with one or other of the grandparents, sometimes on a makeshift bed on the floor. Later, or it may be around the same time, those early childhood memories are so hazy, I went to live with my parental grandparents – three more bedrooms there – same conditions. The family also had a bungalow close to the beach on the Gower peninsula. It had three bedrooms and I slept in all of them, under similar conditions, and seldom alone, until my later years.

I was bundled off to boarding school while I was still a child. Two dormitories at the first boarding school. I was between six and eight years old, and the memories of that school are not sharp, though I recall with total clarity the canings and the shaming of myself and the other young children. It was a religious school. And I need say no more on that subject.

My second boarding school , a preparatory school, saw me inhabiting four dormitories that I can remember. My clearest memory of that place is running away one night, only to be brought kicking and screaming back to the place. Both my parents worked. During the holidays, I was shipped around to various members of the family – aunts, uncles, and grandparents. When I left that school, for the last time, age eleven, my grandparents drove me to my new forever home in a city far from my birthday place. There, three bedrooms witnessed my sleeping habits.

My third boarding school, the Junior School of a larger college, provided me with two dormitories, one per year while I was there. This was the time at which I started to travel with my mother during the vacations. A coach tour on the continent once saw us visiting six countries in two weeks, and that wasn’t the only coach tur I did with her. A succession of hotel bedrooms, then, and no nocturnal stability at all.

I stayed in my fourth boarding school, the Senior School of that Junior School, for five years and received a new dormitory each year. From there I went to study in Paris – more bedrooms – then down to Spain for the summer courses at the International University in Santander, but by now, age eighteen, my childhood was over.

So, a quick count shows that I slept in at least twenty-five bedrooms during my child. And that’s without counting holiday hotels, flats, apartments, and other forms of lodgings, including Youth Hostels.

So, remind me – what was the question? Ah yes, I remember now. “Do You still sleep in your childhood bedroom?” Well, my friends and readers, the answer is a very loud “NO!” Think about it – how could I have? I am not sure that I even had a childhood bedroom!