Thanksgiving in the States

It's Thanksgiving in the States; another work day in Canada. At 3:00pm I called up the family who had all gathered at one of my sister's. Turkey, cranberry, stuffing. Everyone happy, excepting, as usual, the turkey. I remember, back in elementary school, taking a day-long field trip to visit Plymouth Rock, the exact spot where the Pilgrims landed. I was expecting to see a rock right on the water's edge because it was, after all, the rock where Captain, oh darn--what was is name?--William Smyth (maybe) stepped ashore. The Rock wasn't at the water's edge; in fact, it was pretty far inland. I remember looking at the rock and trying to figure out how he stepped ashore on it. I decided they must have had the wrong rock, and so lost interest in the outing and was bored the rest of the day. Even worse, I thought if they got the rock wrong, then they may have gotten other parts of the story wrong too. History suddenly seemed up for grabs. That's when I my skepticism began--at a third grade outing to Plymouth Rock.

That said, there was something about a U.S. Thanksgiving in Massachusetts that made one feel just a wee bit smug, because we lived where it had all happened, whether it was true or not. Why the rest of the U.S. also got a day off didn't quite make sense to me. They didn't have anything to do with the Pilgrims. It's odd to think those people sailed across an ocean to the new world to escape religious persecution only to have a nation founded that enshrined the separation of church and state, only to then morph into the most religious democracy in the west. Would it be too much of a stretch to call the States a theocracy? But I digress. I couldn't understand the rest of the U.S. celebrating Thanksgiving any more than I could understand Florida celebrating Christmas. There was no snow, nowhere for the reindeer to land, and--worst of all--poor Santa would work up one mean sweat flying over Florida in his winter coat. I had a winter coat and I knew for sure I wouldn't wear it if I was in Florida. I knew Christmas belonged wherever it snowed, and Thanksgiving belonged in Massachusetts. In the geography of holidays, I figured I was in just about as perfect a place as one could ask for.

The Downfall, Collapse and End of America

Catchy title for a blog post, isnt’ it?
I figure if CBC’s The Battle of Blades made the NY Times (see November 11th) then America's collapse must be imminent. Who ever knew Canadian fluff would be attracting American viewers, particularly at a time when they have minor issues like healthcare, two wars and a banking system trying to right itself.

The latter task isn’t so straightforward apparently. Senator Dodd who is leading the charge on creating bank regulations had a meeting with the ranking Republican on the banking committee who—is this a surprise?—opposed the creating of an agency designed to “protect consumers from abusive and deceptive mortgages and credit cards.” That’s right, why punish business by preventing them from offering deceptive mortgages or issuing abusive credit cards? This is America, Senator Dodd; how about you get with the program, sir?

Of course, one Republican Senator adverse to some regulations isn’t anything to get worried about. Worry only if this sort of foolishness has spread, and Paul Krugman is sure it hasn’t merely spread, it has morphed into a dangerous virus that has legs, maybe even wings. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/09/opinion/09krugman.html?scp=6&sq=Paul%20Krugman&st=Search Yes, this is serious shit. As Krugman puts it, “the takeover of the Republican Party by the irrational right is no laughing matter. Something unprecedented is happening here — and it’s very bad for America.”

Despite all this, America still takes care of its own. And this just in over the wires proves it:
A new study estimates four times as many US Army veterans died last year because they lacked health insurance [WAIT! Hold on a minute, this doesn’t sound like the right item] than the total number of US soldiers who were killed in Iraq and Afghanistan in the same period. A research team at Harvard Medical School says 2,266 veterans under the age of sixty-five died in 2008 because they were uninsured.
Oops.

The vets might not have healthcare, but at least those currently serving have weapons like the U.S.S. New York to be proud of, a warship that has over seven tons of steel from the Twin Towers in its bow. Never mind that the ship wouldn’t have been able to stop those nutcases with box knives who flew planes into the Towers, or that the steel might have been used to make a peace sculpture or benches encircling a garden of forgiveness, what matters is that the ship looks damn f…ing scary! Yee-haw!

Not be outdone by Americans proclaiming the downfall of the States, TV Ontario’s flagship current affairs program, The Agenda, just had a panel discussing the erosion of American power. Tell that to the crew on the U.S.S. New York. Go here http://www.tvo.org/cfmx/tvoorg/theagenda and look at the program for November 11th. Though I’d like to have heard more focus on the challenges of American democracy, the U.S. received tremendous kudos for the depth of its demographics. The U.S. population is growing, and compared to the demographics of China, Russia and Europe, its demographics are sitting pretty. In the future, the U.S. will actually have citizens to do stuff, compared to Russia, for example, whose citizens die young and don't leave offspring.

So let’s see, when you put all this stuff together, what comes out? Well, apparently we’re going to have a southern neighbor with a whole lotta people, who are broke from deceptive credit cards, lacking healthcare, overrun with Republican ideology and chock full of military toys. Not to worry--at least they’ll be watching the CBC.

Sports (?) Updates

Last weekend there was a Curling World Cup tournament (though I admit I’m not sure if they call it a World Cup) and Canada won. Who’d we defeat, you ask? Another Canadian team. That’s right. Apparently Canada is to curling what New Zealand is to rugby, India to cricket, Tiger Woods is to golf (when it comes to golf, Woods counts as a country). To make a sweeping claim, when it comes to curling, Canada rocks!….(Get it? Sweeping, rocks. “Uh?” says your average American, “what’s he talking about?”)

CBC has created the quintessential Canadian competition, and I suggest all of you south of the border who want to understand Canada tune in to watch it. (That insures a viewership of about 8 people, 3 if you exclude the Devereaux family of Eau Claire, Wisconsin). Battle of the Blades is a pairs figure skating competition with a twist: while the female partner is one of Canada’s many lovely former national skaters, their male partners are former NHL stars, big guys trying to find their inner figure skater. I can only imagine the sequel—great Canadian male figure skaters paired with players from the Canadian women’s hockey team. Elvis Stojko throwing Hailey Wickenhauser? That’ll be tv worth watching. (Go to www.cbc.ca/battleoftheblades)

And this past weekend, Canada hosted its first international surfing competition. Off the shores of Tofino, British Columbia, surfers were riding the freezing waves of the Pacific on November 1st. Called the “Yikes, My Testicles!” Competition, the event favored the savvy Canadian surfers who, for many years, have illegally been injecting their family jewels with anti-freeze.

Passports

With my U.S. passport set to expire, I recently applied to get a new one. I also decided I might as well get my first Canadian passport at the same time. As if a single North American government were responsible for servicing passport requests, my new passports both arrived on the same day! These documents, laying unopened on the table, look like the same drab, functional passport that I’ve come to know since I first acquired one, but open them up and—wowee!—these are some different countries/cultures. The U.S. passport is mythology, propaganda, history and sentimentality rolled up into one official and technically advanced travel document. Canada’s passport is functional, practical and without pretension. While one declares its national mythologies at the top of its lungs, the other is little more than an whisper.

Should I do a page by page comparison? I think not, for there is nothing to compare. The U.S. passport is incomparable. It’s full of eagles and wheat and buffalo and the great quotes of great Americans. Canada’s opens with a brief message wherein the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Canada (the current occupant of said position happens to be my current Member of Parliament) requests--in the name of Her Majesty the Queen--safe passage for the bearer of the document, then there’s a couple of pages of info including the page with the bearer's picture, followed by 19 pages of nothing. More accurately, each page of nothing bears rows of small, faint maple leafs and one large one in the centre. No lofty quotes, no images of Inukshuks, no caribou or voyageurs or images of the snow- capped Rockies.

The U.S passport on the other hand…well, one hardly knows where to begin. When I read the U.S. passport I can’t help but think here’s a country that has drunk its own Kool-Aid. I mean, does anyone believe this* is America anymore? Not only is this an America that no longer exists, it’s an America that NEVER existed. It’s a series of images, iconography and juxtapositons that are so relentlessly idyllic I find it dizzying, if not outright exhausting.

After flipping through the U.S.passport, I feel plumb tuckered-out and ready to rest my weary head on the bosom of the great nation in all its wild, rural splendor. Then, after my nap, I’ll be so refreshed I’ll head on out for that frontier that’s been waiting for me. I’m gonna pack my bags, catch a ride on that steamboat chugging down the Mississipi, step off at the town where the steam train is heading west and, yesiree, find those cowboys driving the longhorn cattle just down a country mile from where the farmer is plowing up the soil with his two oxen. With a country like the one in the passport, why would you ever want to leave it or need a travel document to make the leaving possible?

And, in fact, it seems like Americans don’t want to leave it, which must explain why so few of them have the passport in the first place. Compared to Canada and Europe, the U.S passport suffers from a distinct lack of citizens who think it's necessary. Yes, the irony of ironies is that someone somewhere in the U.S. Federal government went to great lengths to create a passport that hollers Here’s What America IS…but few Americans have the ability to hear it. Wouldn’t you know it, a considerably higher percentage of Canadians have passports but there’s nothing particularly worth hearing in it! Lost opportunities all around.

*APPENDIX--The specifics of the U.S. passport are as follows, in order (some of the quotations are not complete):

--Inside the front cover, people who seem to be on an old battle ship watching the flag over Fort Sumter; above it is a verse from the National Anthem that appears to be in the handwriting of Francis Scott Key (why do I know his name?)
--Opposite that page is that quote by Abe Lincoln—Government of the people, by the people--above the official seal of the U.S.
--Turn the page and one finds one’s picture and personal information in a front of a backdrop of the large head of a bald eagle, a sheaf of wheat, and a billowing U.S. flag. The opening words of the U.S constitution top it off.
Then the pages in the following order:
--A landscape of saguro cactus as backdrop to ones personal data and passport information
--A towering mountain range behind a lake. Above it, a quote from Daniel Webster: the principle of free government adheres to the American soil. It is imbedded in it, immovable as its mountains.
--The liberty bell in front of a corner of the Declaration of Independence, beneath Independence Hall, and a quote from George Washington topping it all off:
Let us raise a standard to which the wise and honest can repair.
--A tall ship under full sail moving past a light house, beneath the statement from the Declaration of Independence: We hold these truths to be self-evident…
--A glacial mountain range behind a plain with two buffalo grazing and a quote from Martin Luther King: We have a great dream. It started way back in 1776 and God grant that America will be true to her dream.
--Mount Rushmore beneath JFK’s famous quote, we shall pay any price, bear any burden…
--A steamboat on the Mississippi beneath Teddy Roosevelt's words, This is a new nation, based on a mighty continent, of boundless possibilities.
--A sheaf of wheat in front of a farm scene where a farmer plows the land with a team of oxen and the words of Dwight Eisenhower: Whatever America hopes to bring to pass in the world must first come to pass in the heart of America.
--Some cowboys driving a herd of long horn cattle with the mountains behind them and Lyndon Johnson's words: For this is what America is all about. It is the uncrossed desert and the unclimbed ridge. It is the star that is not reached and the harvest sleeping in the unplowed ground…
--A steam train in the foreground that had traveled over a wooden trestle bridge with hills in the background and the words on the Golden Spike, May God continue the unity of our country...
--A bear eating a fish with mountain in the background and totem pole in the foreground and the words from a Mohawk address on Thanksgiving: We send thanks to all the animal life in the world...
--The statue of liberty with a stone table showing July 4th, 1776 and a quote from Anna Julia Cooper, The cause of freedom is not the cause of a race or a sect…
--A palm tree above and a mountainous (Hawain?) island in the distance and a quote by Ellison S. Onizuka: Every generation has the obligation to free men’s minds…
--A view of the earth from behind the moon and a spaceship above

Military Social Workers

An interesting article appeared in the Ottawa paper recently, examing the stresses place on military social workers in Afghanistan. The article is worth reading in its entirety; here is the part that touches on American-Canadian differences through the voice of a Canadian social worker stationed there:

The influx of Americans here in recent weeks has brought a new dimension to problems with which the social workers must contend.

"The problems that we see amongst the U.S. forces are a reflection of the societal issues they have. In the U.S., there's more extreme poverty than you see in Canada. Poverty comes with its own issues -- abuse, alcohol and drug problems, domestic violence. People come from much more dire circumstances. I've never seen in my practice as a social worker so many people coming from such dire circumstances. They are very patriotic as well. Canadians are not less patriotic, but our patriotism is less overt. The Americans join the military to get out of poverty. But they also do it for God and country."

The article goes on to talk about how the length of deployment also puts increased pressure on U.S. soldiers; it's not unusual for them to be stationed in Afghanistan for a year, whereas Canadian deployment lasts six months. To read the full article: http://www.ottawacitizen.com/news/Foot+soldiers+battlefield+mind/2013288/story.html

Abusing Eulogies

Ted Kennedy had been my U.S. Senator from the first time I could vote until his death a few weeks ago, so when I learned his funeral could be watched live on the internet, I did so. Anybody who has a beating heart would likely say the most poignant moment was Ted Kennedy Jr.’s touching story of his dad helping him walk up a snowy hill shortly after he had lost his leg to cancer. The eulogy Ted Jr. gave for his dad was lovely.

Thank God it was appreciated as a eulogy and nothing more. No one said it was a moment that proved he was ready for politics. No one declared him the “inheritor of the throne.” It was simply a son honoring his father and saying he was a great dad, I loved him and I’ll miss him (in a bit more detail, of course). If only it had been that way when Justin Trudeau gave the eulogy for his father, Pierre, a few years back. Justin also gave a lovely eulogy (though not--if I am to declare (it’s a bit gauche I admit) a “winner” in the eulogy sweepstakes--in the same class at Ted Jr.s). The problem was no sooner had Justin finished delivering the eulogy when pundits began declaring him the next Trudeau, the future leader of the liberals, the Prime Minister in Waiting.

Since when does delivering a eulogy qualify you for anything more than being declared a fine son? It doesn’t. How unfortunate then to see an article in this past weekend’s Boston Globe speculating about Ted Kennedy Jr.’s political future. At least he had a bit more time than Justin was given to remain a son rather than a future politician-savior. Of course this crowning of the next King was never about Justin or Ted Jr. but about us, about our belief that a name itself—Kennedy, Trudeau—contains magic, about our thousand year habit of putting our faith in patrilineal inheritance and the possibility that it frees us from the responsibility of choosing our King. The King is dead, long live the King…that’s easy.

I gave a eulogy at my dad’s funeral. Afterwards people came up and said how moving it was (what else could they say?), but not one of them said you’ve got a future in—take your pick— finance/ politics/broadcasting, etc.. They said, your dad would be pleased or you made your dad proud today. The next step was simply to grieve until I had no more grief left, and then to walk forward into the rest of my life. Justin and Ted Jr. deserved the same opportunity of anonymity in grieving.

Sad to say, Justin apparently believed the press after the eulogy, because he campaigned and won. He looks to be lighter than air, a fine young man with a last name who once gave a eulogy and landed in political office. I wish him well, I genuinely do. I only want us to let eulogies be eulogies and not a ticket for claiming the divine right of Kings.

If you’re interested in seeing the two, here’s Justin’s:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NINxQLY-lsYAnd here’s Ted Jr.’s: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m86jKLjV7-I

We're Not Dead Yet

Remember that classical comedy scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail: it’s the Middle Ages and a cart is going through the village with men yelling “bring out your dead, bring out your dead.” Doors open and bodies of the dead killed by the plague are tossed onto the cart, but one cries “I’m not dead, I’m not dead yet,” at which point the people pulling the cart kill the man. Well, for years, English Canada has wanted to declare French Separatism dead. What could be better, they think, than to go into Quebec with their anglo cart and holler bring out your dead, waiting to see the dream of Levesque and Parizeau and Bouchard tossed onto the cart. Of course, Anglos seem tone deaf to the response, no matter how faint, of I’m not dead yet.

Somethings don’t go away. And so, the naivete of Anglo Canadians over the persistence of separatism seems to have been matched this past week by those leaning to the left in the States. It seems they thought that the rise of Obama signaled the defeat, eclipse and inevitable disappearance of the Republican machine. Pundits everywhere declared the Republicans out of touch, out of sync, lost in the desert and doomed by demographics. Now that Obama’s popularity is coming down from the stratosphere and the Republicans are actually showing signs of life—we’re not dead yet—liberal leaning Americans seem to be surprised. Given the popular vote last fall was not nearly as devastating at the electoral college results, why the surprise? The surprise--be it on the part of Anglo Canadians or liberal Americans--would seem to be proportionate to the strength of one's yearning. Your enemies are not dead because they weren’t killed. They’re back because they never went away.