Mother's Day and the Alberta Death Sentence

It's Mother's Day and for me, living in Alberta, that's a reminder of the way that my 44 year old mom died here during the Klein Revolution of the 90s. As the provincial government slashed healthcare expenses in order to remain, as they called it, fiscally responsible, people suffered and died. While under care and direct supervision in hospital for Aplastic Anemia, my mom suffered not one but two strokes as side effects of her treatment. The strokes went un-diagnosed and it wasn't until 8 months later that she got an MRI which showed the brain damage. It was, of course, months too late for any treatment or rehabilitation of the damage.

She changed hospitals once she had been bankrupted and the insurance company withdrew benefits and, under care in the new facility, contracted the flesh eating bacteria that actually killed her. The medical system in Alberta at that time was simply not staffed and equipped well enough to provide real care.

Looking at the landscape now, we see lots of writing on how the situation in Alberta has improved. That's a lie. Per capita healthcare spending has still not reached the levels of the 80s and a friend's recent trials highlight the lack of progress we see here. She's been ill all winter and finally, at the beginning of May, got to see a specialist who told here there's a good chance she has Multiple Sclerosis. He then scheduled a follow-up appointment for September, five months away.

My friend is lucky. She was born in Quebec. She went back three days after the specialist's appointment, had an MRI that exposed the brain lesions causing her suffering two days later and, less than a week after her diagnosis, is now under treatment. Less than a week. There are many people who say that Alberta's stance on healthcare, on the environment, on collecting taxes from corporations to pay for social programs, is an embarrassment.

It isn't. It's a threat. My friend said, when she left, that she cannot feel safe here. How could she? The administration in Alberta is a sociopathic enterprise that treats corporations better than it does citizens and people who aren't even citizens receive what might actually be called psychopathic treatment. A sovereign nation like, say, China can invest directly into our resource development and have the option of paying tax. How often do these sovereign entities actually pay? Never. Why would they? They don't live here and don't need the money to live healthy, fulfilling lives.

Write your MLAs. Pressure them to start collecting taxes from corporations and sovereign entities at the same level they do citizens. Pressure them to put that money into healthcare, into education, into the arts and social programs that make life possible and desirable. The myth of conservative fiscal responsibility is a lie and a threat to their social responsibility. It must stop. Whose mom will die next?

Review of Ash Rizin

So I went to see Ash Rizin on Saturday night, a Hip Hop Opera, or perhaps "hip hopera" put on by the ATP at the Martha Cohen Theatre. Frankly, the show was hit and miss. Some things were very good: the writing is strong, the use of technology to create graffiti onstage was clever and interesting, and the music mix was fantastic. The story's a hiphop tale from the generic Canadian suburbs and while the Eastside vs The Park gang thing gets a bit over the top, it never loses sight of its setting or audience. For that reason, the problems with authenticity and talent really stand out. The show's badass couple, Dosha and Gat (played by Allison Lynch and Kyle Jespersen) are great: over the top, talented - Lynch is a hell of a singer and Jespersen's rapping never takes him out of character - and entirely believable but the star characters Ash, Clean and Dee (played by Aaron Hursh, Ksenia Thurgood, and Luc Roderique) don't come off so well. Hursh and Roderique do a reasonable job of rapping and their acting...well, it's not great but not terrible. I never really felt these characters come to life but they weren't actively bad either. But, in a city like Calgary where there is so much good hip hop and rap talent, I cannot understand why ATP would use actors to rap and not the other way around. The music drives this show and the performers are clearly not musicians. Hip hop is decades old and most of the audience probably knows what the real thing looks like. The director and casting director really shouldn't have tried to fake it with actors and amateurs: the freestyle scene between Ash and Clean was so obviously not freestyle that I could only squirm and wish some of the people around town who can actually do that stuff were there doing it. To top it off, Thurgood's character Clean was an awful casting choice. Her singing was weak and was more jazz than hiphop, her rapping sucked more than the role allowed, she danced like a weird white girl who doesn't actually listen to this music, and she was so obviously too old to play a chickeh working at the mall while trying to make good that her character appeared ridiculous. By the end of the show, the only character who actually came off as authentic was Mike Wasko's evil aryan bastard Angel. Singing a metal song about how much he hates hip hop, he makes the clear statement to the audience that everyone's posing but him. Given that this is a hip hopera, the fact that only the hard rock character actually lives up to his place in life seems to undermine the whole point of the show. These problems with authenticity and performance also get troubled in spots by lazy stage management: the characters, in some of the most emotionally loaded scenes, have to wander on and off with no change in sound or lighting, thus losing any punch their performances might have given. The show has potential and I won't tell people not to go...but to ATP and friends all I can say is next time, use the real deal and quit acting so fucking much. Theatre only gets good when people forget that it's theatre.

filling Station Subscription Sale

filling Station Magazine is having a subscription sale. Subscriptions for three issues runs $17 (you pretty much get a free issue at that price) and you can buy gift subscriptions for just ten bucks. Go to http://www.fillingstation.ca/ for more information and to order online through Paypal.

Honest Graphics

This one's for my COMS 363 students who've had to do the "analysis of a graphic" assignment. Enjoy.

Western thinkers might do well to recall where their empirical science originated. Slavoj, the world demands better of you than this.

Food for thought: here

Wasting and Wanting

Recently, my darling dear had occasion to comment on my habit of reheating day-old coffee in the microwave while brewing a fresh pot. She asked if it's because I like the stuff. No, not really. She asked whether I do it to save money. Well no, I responded, I'm making a fresh pot after all. Ahhh, she said. So it's because you don't want to waste anything, waste not want not, hey?

Yes. She got me dead to rights. I can't bear to throw out anything that might still be used or consumed. I suppose I live up to the frugal Mennonite stereotype, even though I'm long past identifying as a Mennonite. But the term 'waste not, want not' got me thinking. I'm willing to bet that many people don't actually know what that phrase means. I've no doubt my darling, an expert grammarian and adroit user of the English language, has a clear understanding of the verb 'to want' and its etymology, but I clearly remember a time when I did not - and it wasn't so long ago.

I imagine when Poor Richard spit the little aphorism out, folks who read it - and enshrined it in our vernacular - understood it clearly. If you don't waste, you won't want. That is, you won't lack, or go without. A good Puritan sentiment, that. Be frugal, save and recycle and reuse and you'll never starve or suffer wanting of life's needs. Somewhere along the line, though, those needs became desires. I imagine that happened when North Americans conceptually lost the definition of the word 'need' and it's closely related pal, 'lack'.

Let's face it (another fun term, perhaps for another time). Those of us reading and writing these blogs don't know a thing about need. We didn't settle the savage land and we're not the people displaced by those setters. We didn't make it through world wars and great depressions - though some of us may have seen our nest egg get devalued during the last recession and have decided to work a few more years to ensure we get to keep that cozy retirement villa in Arizona or Nelson or wherever. We truthfully want nothing to ensure our continued survival.

Yet we keep using that term - waste not, want not - as though it still has relevance. Ask people what their wants are and you'll doubtless get an exhaustive litany of items and ideas, because we want lots of stuff. The word no longer means lack, though that's rather invisibly implied, but rather it means desire. I may not need that bag of chips or that deep tissue massage or that 1982 Porsche 911 (Targa, of course, with the off-white paint) but I sure want them.

So what do we mean when we use the phrase? I can't reasonably say that since I failed to waste a Porsche, I must not want one. That makes no sense whatsoever. Or, if we play with the negative form of the phrase, my wasting of food means I actually want that kind of food. While there may be some truth to that, that I fail to use what I desire implies that I'm wasteful and can afford to be, because I want not - I'll drink a cup of the fresh coffee too. Truthfully, I really have no needs that can't be easily met and I'm happy as long as I continue to consume, whether I need to or not. There's a lot of slippage in a term like this, a phrase we've used so long that even when its key words change meaning and its context becomes irrelevant, we continue using it.

My previous understanding of the phrase - one that a cursory search of its use online confirms as fairly prevalent, at least among the internet blogging and tweeting crowd - was simply, that if I waste it, I don't want it. Usually, the term comes flying out when the 'it', whatever it is, should, in fact, be wanted or desired. The term has evolved from its original context as an aphoristic truism, a cause and effect bit of wisdom that we can adopt to better manage our lives, to a sardonic prediction of future dissatisfaction; a snide statement that someday the waster will desire the wasted stuff and there won't be any left around.

I suppose that's ironic. Once more our language proves we've devolved into facile whiners regulated by our desires rather than any legitimate needs. We envy each other and curse people for throwing away that which we didn't actually want, ourselves, anyway - blighting those wasters with a future of unsatisfied cravings that we hope they yearn for so greatly that they read those aches as needs. This, of course, is how we form fetishes and let's face it: fetishes fuel North America in ways we can no longer wean ourselves from.

This saddens me, while at the same time, leaving me with a sense of personal gratitude. I'm saddened because I'm clearly entrenched in a society that suffers a significant psychological illness - one that no longer even understands the words it utters and uses that misunderstanding to lash out at its own members while it consumes at a rate it understands to be unsustainable. I'm grateful because, when I drink that bitter cup of day-old coffee while the fresh pot brews, I do so knowing that my darling understands that my frugal soul just wants to ensure I get an extra cup of coffee in the morning.

Child bride dies of internal bleeding in Yemen

Child bride dies of internal bleeding in Yemen

Aren't we glad we no longer need feminism?

loss

sometimes i think
of loss. not lost opportunity,
no - my faith precludes that
sort of thing. i never lose cuff-
links, wallets, travel mugs, passports.
can't lose what i don't have anyway.
i thought i lost a car once - my first porsche -
but i found i just lost the car.

a couple of times i lost races but
won them later so that's okay. a person
told me i lost my mind but that never happened.
i frequently lose my cool, having never had it.

sometimes, in the spring, the muck,
i think about loss. another, a love, a life
less loss, though i also miss Johnny Cash.
i lose friends all the time. hope, they call
that. a friend lost her mom.
and i cant find the
words for that.
sometimes i
don't think
about
loss

Free Exchange Fundraiser!

Join us for a FREE PARTY in support of the UofC English grad. students'
Free Exchange Conference!

Live Music by the Ogden Owls
DJs Chris B & Arlen

Saturday February 13th @ 8pm
Hillhurst Sunnyside Community Centre
1320 5th Avenue NW
Walking distance from Sunnyside Train Station

$4.00 Beer & Wine
donations welcome at the door

Join the Facebook event & help us spread the word:
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=281549791777&ref=ts

Free Exchange is an annual graduate student conference organized entirely
by graduate students at the University of Calgary Department of English.
Founded more than fifteen years ago, it has grown to attract participants
from across Canada, the United States, and elsewhere in the world. Due to
the current economic climate, it has become the responsibility of students
to raise much of the funds necessary for hosting Free Exchange. If you are
interested in supporting this conference, but are unable to attend our
fundraiser party, please feel free to contact conference organizers Carmen
Derkson and Colin Martin at freeex@ucalgary.ca. Visit
http://english.ucalgary.ca/FreeExchange for more details.

Harper's Penis Tastes Salty

As many of you know, I'm the president of filling Station magazine. Over the last 15 years we've published - often for the first time - pretty much every major poet working in Canada today and a damn good selection of the prose writers and visual artists.

We don't meet these criteria. And we apparently don't publish enough work about beef insemination. Too bad for us. Follow the link, read the article, shit on your Conservative MP's porch.

call for work

NōD Magazine [Poetry – Prose – Visual Art]

Call for open submissions

Issue 11 / Fall 2009

Deadline: Oct 31

E-mail: nodmagazine@gmail.com

mail: NōD Magazine
c/o Dep’t of English
University of Calgary
2500 University Dr NW, T2T 1N4

NōD, creative writing publication of the University of Calgary undergraduates, is looking for innovative works of poetry prose or visual art for its eleventh issue. Works from undergraduate students and also the community are eligible for publication.

New this year: NōD magazine is looking for submissions of 50-100 words for a feature on NUTV (UofC's on campus television). Eligible entries are selected monthly from the open submissions and will show regularly during the chosen month. Eligible entries are also featured in the Magazine.

fS Call!

Call to Artists – filling Station Magazine

filling Station Magazine, now in its 14th year of publishing, is a Calgary-based, nationally-distributed literary and arts magazine. A non-profit, it is completely run by volunteers from the community invested in bringing great writing and art from Calgary and area into the national spotlight.

Both emerging and established artists are invited to submit images of their art, or articles, statements, rants and manifestos about art accompanied by images, to our Fine Arts Editor for consideration in upcoming issues of filling Station. Submissions can include visual art, photography, documentation of artworks and events, photo essays about arts events, happenings and more.

Successful contributors receive:
1) a one year (3 issue) subscription to filling Station Magazine
2) two complimentary copies of the issue in which you submission appears
3) exposure to readers across Canada
4) a new line on your CV
5) our everlasting good will

filling Station receives First North American Serial Rights, meaning it appears in our magazine before any other publication. The artist retains all other rights.

How to Submit:

Images may be sent in low (email-able) resolution to Debbie.lee Miszaniec at finearts.fs@gmail.com If selected for publication, the editor will arrange with you to receive high resolution files of images in 300 dpi or higher. Images appearing within filling Station’s pages would be black and white, but colour versions can be made available on our new website at www.fillingstation.ca Also, images selected to appear on covers would be published in colour.

Please include with your submission a short bio or artist’s statement, your mailing address, and your email address in the body of your email.

filling Station publishes 3 issues per year; therefore, please allow up 0-4 months for reply.

About the Fine Arts Editor:
Debbie.lee Miszaniec is an artist living and working in Calgary, Alberta Canada. In 2008 she completed her BFA in painting with distinction at the Alberta College of Art + Design. Further information about her work can be found at www.debbieleemiszaniec.com

Student Unemployment

The hole is getting deeper and deeper. When will our elected representatives start addressing the problem of class education barriers with a productive response?

Never, under the current administration.

For Roy Everett Martin

i wrote this poem for my grandfather during the spring. he died today. i hope, for his sake, that he sees grandma in heaven. i don't believe he will but she was always worth seeing.

there are two versions...

1

my grandpa’s watch stopped years ago

new batteries startled it into motion

but when it recalled the time it said nono

that’s all wrong

the watch changed dates

accorded a martial keeping,

awakened me at strange moments,

bit the hairs from my arm

with jumpy little twitchings

we synchronized our complaints

and proceeded

with our mission

2

my Grandfather’s watch

stopped years ago

new batteries startled

into motion but when it

recollected the time said

nono. that’s all wrong

the time is wrong

the watch changes dates

reminisces about the war

and awakens me at

strange moments to insist

something

its bracelet pinches and bites

the hairs from my arms

makes its complaints

my own, over time

i always vow to wear the watch

when i visit

so sometimes i just wear it

around the house and stuff

god bless you, grandpa. rest in peace.

Amber Bowerman

One of the lead stories on the CBC this morning is about the scholarships created in memory of Amber Bowerman. I only met her once, as a moderator for a session she gave at an AMPA conference a couple of years back, but she struck me that morning as being a wonderful, compassionate person who had made all the choices necessary to pursue a life of publishing and writing that truly fulfilled her. Not all of us have the strength of character to do what she did. It is wonderful to see that her life is not a total waste, that a legacy of helping other developing writers do what she did continues for students across Alberta.

stolen from bp (martyrology book 1)

we have moved beyond belief
into a moon that is no longer there

i used to love you (i think)
used to believe in the things i do
now all is useless repetition
my arms ache from not holding you

the winds blow unfeelingly across your face
& the space between us
is as long as my arm is not

the language i write is no longer spoken

my hands turn the words
clumsily

*****

my lady my lady

this is the day i want to cry for you
but my eyes are dry

somewhere i'm happy

not like the sky
outside this window
gone grey

*****
*****

this is the line between reality
when i hold your body
enter the only way i am

saint orm
keep her from harm

this ship journey safely

quick as it can

*****

no movement in the sky
from the corner where the four winds lie

& the colour of her eyes too
did i tell you how my lady moves?

holds me to her tight
she can

love to feel her
moving with me

into that sweet togetherness presses us thru

My Kind

The Tragedy of the Winnipeg Jets

I just want to thank Jon Ball for leading me to this glorious treasure on UbuWeb. Man, it really does hitcha where you live. Which, thankfully, isn't Winnipeg (a wonderful place to be from).

Colin's Last Montreal Performance (for now)

Quebec Playwrights Deliver

presents

a full-cast reading of Seymour Blicker’s crime drama FOUND MONEY,

a tale of greed and revenge.

Funded by FRED, the Foundation for the Recognition of Excellence in Drama

Seymour Blicker is a Quebec-based playwright. His work has been produced in Canada, the United States, and Europe. Never Judge a Book by Its Cover, translated into Dutch and German, toured fifty cities in Holland and Belgium, had an extended run in Vienna, and, in 1996, was given its Canadian premiere, directed by Emma Stevens, at Theatre Lac Brome. In 1997, Blicker received the British Council International New Playwriting Award for his play Pals, which was produced by Theatre 1774--Infinitheatre of Montreal at "La Cabane" in 2000, directed by Guy Sprung, who also directed staged readings of Blicker’s Home Free (1998) and Pipe Dreams (2000).

With Colin Martin, Karen Kaderavek, Stephen Orlov, Shayne Devouges, and Chris Nachaj.

Monday, April 27 at 7:30 p.m., PWM Studio, 5337 St. Laurent near Fairmount, Suite 214, Door code 930. (Go through door at top of stairs; turn right)

Produced by Quebec Playwrights Deliver (514-842-3208)

Refreshments. Free Admission.