Wordwork|play

Atheist Ads in Toronto

I went to Toronto last weekend with one of my brothers and my partner in search of the much anticipated, much covered and strangely controversial atheist ads.

We knew from the official Canadian Atheist Bus Campaign website that, beginning February 23rd, 2009, atheist ads would be running in the subway system. We did not know, however, that they would appear only inside subway cars, not on subway station walls. Nor did we know how few ads there would be.

We spent a fair bit of time in the subway system looking into numerous cars and, though we rode only in three cars, we saw only one ad in one of those cars. Many commercial ads appear two, three, or more times in a single car, but this may well be budget-related. However, given how much opposition there has been to these ads -- Halifax, NS, Ottawa and London, ON, Kelowna, Vancouver, and Victoria, BC refused to run them -- it should perhaps not be surprising that their presence, where not blocked entirely, would be minimal. 

What I like about the ad is that it initiates a much overdue conversation and acknowledges, as publicly as the many religious ads plastered around our public places, that the diversity of our cities and our country includes not only adherents to the various world religions, but also those who do not adhere to any religion at all. A sign (or gesture) of open-mindedness in our society is the inclusion of people from other cultural and religious backgrounds in private and public debates and discussions. Atheists are rarely thus included. It seems we have to interject somehow to make ourselves heard. We have to step boldly and uninvited onto the stage.

What I don't like so much about the ad is the last half of the second sentence -- its meaning is simply not clear enough and hence easily misunderstood. But back to that in a bit. 'There's probably no God' is, to my mind, a very mild statement. I would gladly have supported a more strongly worded statement to the effect that the existence of God is highly improbable. Having grown up in a fundamentalist Christian household, the first half of the second sentence, 'now stop worrying', makes complete sense. I worried almost constantly as a child, internally praying on and off throughout my days asking for forgiveness in case I had unknowingly done or thought something sinful. And the world could end any second, so I had to be ready at all times. I had terrible nightmares of devils with glowing red eyes converging on my crib because I had forgotten to say my bedtime prayer. But back to the last half of the second sentence, 'and enjoy your life'. Without any elaboration or explanation, it sounds hedonistic. It can easily be misinterpreted to mean that we need not be concerned about leading decent lives, about being good human beings, and that without God we may do whatever we wish and be absolved of responsibility.

I don't think the framers of the atheist ad advocate or meant to recommend a life of pure pleasure-seeking devoid of  responsibility, but it is too open to just that misinterpretation. The ad, pictured at left, which my partner and I happily discovered at the Queen's Park subway station, is much more to the point. The contention of many, perhaps most, theists is that human goodness derives from, is supported by, and can only manifest in the light of faith in god. This ad, posted by Humanist Canada, responds to that contention simply and without equivocation or ambiguity: "YOU CAN BE GOOD WITHOUT GOD".

While both ads represent a positive step onto the public stage for atheists, secular humanists and freethinkers, I simply cannot find any fault with the latter ad. The message is so clear, concise, non-confrontational and non-provocative. We can indeed be good without god. It means we have to think a great deal more, question our assumptions, come together to study, analyze, discuss and debate human behaviour and our place in the world and universe. It also requires openness and hard work, as life is colourful and complex and we cannot rely on any tradition, book, or institution to decide for us how to be good. But the rewards of letting go of faith and simple answers to embrace independent thought and engage the complexity of life are great and many. I think it's time we grew up as a species and learned to stand on our own feet, so to speak, to make good use of that wonderful tool in our heads and learn to be good because we want to be, not because we fear punishment in an imagined hell or desire the rewards of an imagined paradise.

The Toronto Palestine Film Festival

My partner and I managed to catch the final show in the lineup at the first annual Toronto Palestine Film Festival last night. We would have loved to see more of the 36 films offered at the festival, but unfortunately we only heard about it on CBC radio on Thursday morning. Being short on both time and money, we decided to see at least one show, and that was Slingshot Hip Hop, directed by Jackie Reem Salloum, featuring Palestinian artists living in Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank, including DAM, PR, ABEER, Arapeyat, and Mahmoud Shalabi.

I am by no means a hip hop or rap fan, certainly not of the popular stuff on MTV that many suburban white kids now love to blast in their cars as they cruise the streets, the kind filled with the bling, objectification of women (hoes) and glorification of violent gangsta culture, but I do appreciate what is sometimes called conscious hip hop. American hip hop has, it would seem, lost its urgency and purpose. Enter Palestinian hip hop.

When DAM or PR sing, there is not only raw emotion and anger, but also a poignant narrative and an urgent message. Their lyrics are not about money, guns and hoes. Well, guns do feature, but not wielded by them. There is no glorification of violence here. The guns they rap about are wielded by the IOF. Their narrative is about life under the occupation. Their message is about resistance, protest, and peace--in short, about social justice. They urge kids to channel their anger, to express it by means other than violence.

Slingshot Hip Hop, a film put together from hundreds of hours of footage shot by the artists themselves under very difficult circumstances, weaves together the stories of young Palestinians who have discovered and begun to use the power of hip hop into a moving and emotionally-charged film. I am a non-Arab married to someone whose great-grandparents and grandparent were part of the Nakba generation, evicted from their homes and forced into refugee camps. I've heard the stories and seen the emotional impact of the event passed down to the second and third generation. I found myself repeatedly brought to the verge of tears, to laughter, anger, indignation and sadness.

It was a sold out show, the theatre packed to the brim, and everyone -- the organizers, the director, and the audience -- brought a palpable energy into the hall. Among the often strong emotions expressed in the film, and among the emotions visible among the audience, there was also hope. I hope people -- not just those directly or indirectly connected to the Palestinian situation -- will get the message.

Jackie Reem Salloum, the director, introduced the film and was present afterwards to answer questions. She also stood outside the theatre, among the crowds, selling CDs (we nabbed DAM's first official album, the film's soundtrack, and ordered a DVD of the film) and t-shirts, the proceeds of which go directly to the artists.

It was a great event, an important event, and I'm glad we had the opportunity to attend. The very fact that the Palestine Film Festival has come to Toronto is good news. The message needs to get out to the international community to bring awareness of and attention to the Palestinian situation. And the international community also needs to see more of Palestinian life, arts and culture, directly from Palestinians, as an antidote to the negative images mostly filtered through the mainstream media.

I will certainly be waiting for next year's Toronto Palestine Film Festival and prepare to see more of next year's lineup. Hopefully I can get involved more directly as well. And you can be sure to read about it again here. Please check out the websites of The Palestine Film Festival, DAM, Slingshot Hip Hop, and Jackie Reem Salloum, and then continue reading about the issues by following their links.  

Diversions for Logophiles and Verbivores

If you are a logophile and have some time on your hands, check out the links below:

Etymologic! the toughest word game on the web

• very addictive game, not only because of the learning opportunity, but also because of the words accompanying one's score
• do not start this, unless very disciplined, if you are in danger of procrastinating on something that should really be occupying your time--it's a great enabler

If you've played the game and are hooked, and/or were humiliated by a low score and want to learn more, here's some help:

• Wordorigins.org--neat and informative site with a big list of word and phrase origins, a blog, forum, and lots of further resources.
• Online Etymology Dictionary--handy, searchable online dictionary of etymology where one may quickly look up the history of a word

Verbivores may like, be frustrated and/or entertained by, the eggcorn. Don't know what an eggcorn is? Go to The Eggcorn Database to find out and see lots of examples and discussion of the eggcorn. I personally find the eggcorn, while sometimes amusing, very frustrating--it's just another sign of failing education systems and the dumbing down of culture.

Anyway, play, laugh, cry, beat your head against the wall, and above all, enjoy!

Anti-Arab Bias in Dictionary Definitions

Though not much has happened on Wordwork|play for a few months, it has not been abandoned. It has merely been left to lie fallow for a while. I have continued to read, watch, think, and yes, cook, but I haven't done much writing. There is still more change afoot at my day job, and I'm moving to Hamilton at the end of June, but the change is now more measured and controlled. I think I'm almost ready to resume more regular writing here.

As for watching and thinking, my partner and I watched the 1997 biopic Wilde recently, a fascinating and ultimately frustrating biographical story in which two terms, used quite casually, got me thinking again about anti-Arab bias in dictionary definitions. On a few occasions, the dialogue contained the terms arab and street arab, terms with which neither of us were familiar, though negative connotations were clear.

A few days later, indeed within the same week, I came across this article from the Jordan Times about Merriam-Webster's decision to drop entries considered offensive to Arabs and Muslims. The terms at the center of the protest to Merriam-Webster, by Zarka University president Ishak Ahmad Farhan and the Professional Associations Council president Wael Saqqa, were anti-Semitism and arab. They would like to see the entries for these terms changed and/or dropped from the next edition.

While I would never suggest the dropping of entries from a dictionary or thesaurus, and indeed find it of the utmost importance that they be retained, I do believe that, as with other offensive and racist terms, the entries need to be clear about the fact that they are offensive and reference the context out of which they arose. Leaving them as they are serves not only to perpetuate negative racial stereotypes, but leads the reader to believe that these negative images are still held by the editors and publishers.   

So I did some investigating. My 2003, 2nd Edition Oxford Dictionary of English does not list the lowercase arab on its own, but does list street Arab as "noun archaic a raggedly dressed homeless child wandering the streets." The online Webster Dictionary lists Arab as "n. 1. One of a swarthy race occupying Arabia, and numerous in Syria, Northern Africa, etc.," and as a subcategory, "Street Arab a homeless vagabond in the streets of a city, particularly and (sic) outcast boy or girl." YourDictionary has, as definition 5 under Arab, "a waif left to roam the streets; street Arab." It lists street Arab separately as well. In my cursory search, only the Free Dictionary mentioned, in its definition, that it was 'sometimes offensive'.

The definition of anti-Semitism is another example. Semite is defined, in the Oxford Dictionary, as "noun a member of any of the peoples who speak or spoke a Semitic language, including in particular the Jews and Arabs." It is followed by an etymological reference to "Sem 'Shem', son of Noah in the Bible, from whom these people were traditionally supposed to be descended." Semitic is defined as "adjective 1 relating to or denoting a family of languages that includes Hebrew, Arabic, and Aramaic and certain ancient languages such as Phoenician and Akkadian, constituting the main subgroup of the Afro-Asiatic family. 2 relating to the peoples who speak these languages, especially Hebrew and Arabic."

The prefix anti-, as most of us know, stands for against, or opposed to. But put it in front of Semitic and it doesn't simply mean opposed to or against Semites. As pointed out in the aforementioned article, Webster's Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged, defines anti-Semitism as: “opposition to Zionism: sympathy with opponents of the state of Israel.” What of the anti-Arab sentiment in which a great deal of the Western media and Hollywood blockbusters are soaked? Is this almost fashionable opposition to Arabs and Muslims, a people clearly defined as Semitic, not then anti-Semitism? It clearly is. But not according to our dictionaries.

I checked the definitions for a number of other offensive and racist terms -- Chink, gook, Jap, Kraut, nigger, and wop -- in my Oxford English dictionary and found all of them prefaced with 'informal, offensive' or some such acknowledgment. I think it's time the editors and publishers of modern English dictionaries did the same for terms offensive to Arabs. Leave the terms and definitions in the dictionaries, but at the very least be clear about the fact that they are offensive. And why not include a little historical context? Check arab and anti-Semitism at the Online Etymological Dictionary. There we find that the offensive definition of arab has to do with a settled people's bias against nomadic peoples. As for anti-Semitism, it is acknowledged that, though most commonly used to mean anti-Jewish, the term is not restricted to such use. It even suggests that "[t]hose who object to the inaccuracy of the term might try H. Adler's Judaeophobia (1882)." Why not use anti-Semitism as a general term for 'theories, actions, or policies' that are against Semites in general, and use more restrictive terms with reference to a specific Semitic people, i.e. Judaeophobia, Islamophobia, anti-Jewish, anti-Arab, anti-Assyrian, and so on?

Extended Break from Reviewing

It's been over a month since my last review. I feel bad about it, sometimes, but then remind myself that it is unpaid and entirely voluntary. It's a hobby, for now. But this type of hobby demands a lot in terms of time, focus, and energy.

Lately there has been a lot of change (I know, lead change, change is the only constant, etc.) at work and a fair bit of stress. While I don't usually take work home, the business and stress while at work makes me want to just relax once home. I have little energy left for serious writing. And yes, I do classify reviews as serious writing.

Anyway, when energy and focus are low, I end up working with and writing about food. People often talk about comfort food, but they are referring to particular dishes that give them comfort. I find working with and writing about food itself comforting. So most of what little energy I have left after work has lately been directed towards sprouting, cooking, and my food blog, Vegan Miscellanies.

Reading Satire

The ONION features a neat satire on reading entitled "Area Eccentric Reads Entire Book." It's quite funny on the surface, but points to a disturbing move away from books, especially among the younger generations. Many young people no longer have the requisite attention span to read books. They seem to need a continuous stream of stimuli, of sound bytes and visual flickers. In our always-on, plugged-in, virtually networked and technologically connected culture, there is no shortage thereof. There's lots of money to be made from a generation trained to be in constant 'need' of fresh stimuli and new, or newly packaged, products.

On the topic of books, here's another sad commentary. And here yet another. We laugh at all of them for the same reason that we laugh when poked in the ribs (I'll leave that analogy for you to think about for now).

Book Review: Something About the Blues: an unlikely collection of poetry, by Al Young

(Published Jan. 28, 2008 in BC Magazine)

The poetry in Something About the Blues is beautiful, captivating, painful, powerful, sometimes soothing, and often thought-provoking. Highly recommended.

There is something about the blues that grabs hold of you and moves you, physically and emotionally, that transports you to places past, present and imagined, something that taps into the deepest elemental parts of you to soothe and sometimes heal. It's easy to lose yourself in the blues. Its history runs deep and its influence on other forms has been enormous. The blues, Al Young writes in the introduction to Something About the Blues: an unlikely collection of poetry, is "[b]eaded and threaded throughout America's musical mosaic." But the blues, like poetry, is difficult to describe, define, confine. "[T]he blues," he writes, "will always be dramatically unpredictable, sometimes torturous and sometimes pleasurable," and "[e]ver resistant to classroom analysis," for the blues dwells largely "in a feral state; blues truth is wild and menacing."

Something About the Blues is blues poetry. Though I've often listened to and lost myself in the blues, and have immersed myself in various kinds of poetry, I must confess that I was largely ignorant of the blues in poetic form until I had the good fortune to read this collection. The first to popularize blues poetry was Langston Hughes, born in Joplin, Missouri in 1902, and best "known for his insightful, colorful portrayals of black life in America from the twenties through the sixties" (learn more about Hughes at Poets.org). It is fitting, then, that Young opens his collection of blues poetry with Hughes' beautiful and haunting poem, "The Weary Blues." This poem, read by Hughes himself, also opens the accompanying CD. It serves as a wonderful introduction to the spirit of blues poetry and sets the mood perfectly.

Al Young, born in 1939 in Ocean Springs, Mississippi, was raised first in Mississippi and then in Detroit, Michigan. He attended the University of Michigan from 1957-1960, co-editing Generation, the campus literary magazine. In 1961 he settled in Berkeley, where he held a number of odd jobs--folksinger, lab aide, disk jockey, medical photographer, clerk typist, employment counselor--before graduating with a degree in Spanish from U.C. Berkeley. He has taught creative writing and literature at various universities, has received numerous honours, including, inter alia, Wallace Stegner, Guggenheim, Fulbright National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, and the PEN-Library of Congress Award for Short Fiction. Young has written a number of poetry collections, several novels, three musicals, and numerous screenplays. He was appointed Poet Laureate of California in 2005 by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Everything in Something About the Blues is to some extent a meditation on the blues. This collection attempts to say something about the blues -- its origins, history, themes, essence and power. Whether through dedications, tributes, or other mention, many jazz and blues greats make it into this powerful collection -- Gertrude "Ma" Rainey, Lester "Pres" Young, Marian McPartland, Ella Fitzgerald, Lead Belly, Vernon Alley, Harry Connick, Jr., Lena Horn, the James Cotton Band, Gene Ammons, Benny Carter, Johnny Hodges, Clifford Brown, Billie Holiday, John "Dizzy" Birks Gillespie, Malcolm X, John Coltrane, Charles Mingus, Jackie McLean, James P. Johnson, Langston Hughes, and James Brown. Some poems allude to and play with poetry from the Western "white" Canon, while others address, more specifically, issues of racism and systemic discrimination, of exoticization, othering and hybridity, as well as of terrorism and environmental racism. Some of these topics go well beyond the traditional themes of the blues. And then some poems are of a more playful nature, more earthy and sensual.

The poetry in this collection, like the blues, is raw and elemental. It rarely indulges in complex symbols, extended metaphors, or florid language. It is less constrained by meter and rhyme, but characterized by the liberal use of alliteration, assonance and internal rhyme, enjambment, repetition, and rhythm. It's language is, on the whole, clear, direct, hard-hitting.

There is one poem, just a little into the book, that captures so much of the often contradictory nature of the blues. "The Blues Don't Change" addresses the blues directly:

And I was born with you, wasn't I, Blues?
Wombed with you, wounded, reared and forwarded
from address to address, stamped, stomped
and returned to sender by nobody else but you,
Blue Rider, writing me off every chance you
got, you mean old grudgefulhearted, table
turning demon, you, you sexy soulsucking gem.

The blues is a contradictory character, both wombing and wounding you. You bear its stamp, yet also feel stomped on, moved from place to place, returned to sender, and written off by the blues. The blues stings where you can't scratch and moves you "from frying/pan to skillet" just as it moves you to wiggle your body, juggle your limbs, loosen that goose, up your voice, open your pores, and roll your hips and lips.

The blues is characterized as a grudgefulhearted (neat word), table turning demon who is also -- here begins another wonderful twist -- a sexy soulsucking gem, a "[b]lue diamond in the rough" who "can't be outfoxed don't care how they cut/and smuggle and shine you on." And, in a note to students and theorists, the blues is "too dumb and stubborn and necessary/to let them turn you into what you ain't/with color or theory or powder or paint." You can never, the poem suggests, fully capture or contain the blues. And it is its contradictory, shape-shifting nature that allows the blues to stay forever fresh and current.

The impossibility of capturing the blues completely is also addressed in "Detroit 1958." "Only parts of the pain of living/may be captured in a poem or/tale or song or in the image seen," goes the first stanza. In the blues, as in life, "[s]adness is the theme of existence;/joy its variations." The blues merely imitates the pain of life, but, in another apparent contradiction, it is, "as the man sings,/'The bitter note makes the song so sweet."

There is plenty of bitterness in Young's poetry, though it is not consumed by it. And sometimes that bitterness also comes out in poems alluding to and playing with poems from the Western canon. "The Lovesong of O.O.Gabugah" is a good example, an obvious allusion to T.S. Elliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," a lengthy, meandering, metaphorically dense poem about an aging, indecisive, isolated urban man walking along foggy half-deserted streets on his way to what sounds like a high society party in order to woo a particular woman. But he doesn't dare. His indecisiveness and insecurity are the focus of the poem, and the reader--aren't we lucky--gets to accompany Prufrock and listen in on his inner dialogue.

Though parts of Elliot's poem suggest a somewhat tongue-in-cheek nature, Young's "The Lovesong of O.O. Gabugah" lies in sharp contrast. The tone, right from the start, reflects a rougher context, a very different reality. Instead of "Let us go then, you and I," we get "Time to split now, you & me." The narrator of Young's poem, presumably a black male, also takes his reader along on a walk through an urban landscape, "past alleyways & neon signs/& people waitin in movie lines." But he has no time for lengthy reflection, comparing himself to this or that dramatic figure, to Hamlet, or even Polonius the Fool, or wrapping his emotional insecurities in fancy, drawn-out metaphors. He is physically in danger. If he so much as stops too long near the people waiting in movie lines, he fears getting zapped. What we witness here is something much more grim -- "[t]he snowy line. . . whooshed up the chimney clean, burnt out a nose,/& sniffin all there was to know about July,/just blew its ownself out, forget the rose." Our guide here is not on his way to a high society party where well-dressed ladies discuss Michelangelo. He is headed to a place where he can forget his misery by blowing himself out with cocaine.

One piece in this collection, more short story than poem, addresses a form of oppression and source of misery one wouldn't necessarily expect in a blues collection. "Silent Parrot Blues" discusses environmental racism, a fairly new and academic concept that links racism, a common theme in the blues, to the environment, an uncommon one. It is prefaced by a quote from Myrla Baldanado, Statement Coordinator: People's Task Force for Base Clean Up, that explains what environmental racism is -- forcing people of colour "to bear the brunt of the nation's pollution problem." The story begins with Young encountering a listless, raggedy, broken parrot kept in a dark supply closet by a building superintendent. As he walks back to his apartment, arms full of laundry and disturbed, he meets his intellectually curious hallway neighbor, Briscoe, a veteran of the American War in Vietnam.

Through the conversation with the well-read and socially-aware though rough around the edges Briscoe, a good amount of ground is covered on the topic of environmental racism. Briscoe wants him to take his parrot story straight to the mayor and city council, because, as he puts it, "white people don't like that shit. They hate it -- mistreating birds and animals. . . They won't stand for it. . . . In fact, they're prepared to make your ass extinct in a minute before they'll let anybody fuck with a timber wolf." Young goes on to talk about Romanticism and its role in creating an industrial and post-Industrial society in which humans are seen as separate, apart from, and above nature. He then links that kind of thinking back to the "English romantics -- Shelley, Byron, Keats, Thomas Gray, Samuel Coleridge, and William Blake, among others -- [who] did their part to exoticize nature." He goes on to mention Thoreau, and not very flatteringly either, as well as Nathaniel Hawthorne, James Fennimore Cooper, Washington Irving, and the poetry of Poe and Whitman. Their kind of thinking has led to the dumping of all manner of dangerous waste, as Briscoe points out, "where black people and Mexicans and Indians live." While people of colour, more than anyone else, bear the brunt of the world's pollution problem, Young does point out that poor whites are also affected.

By including environmental racism in this collection, as well as, in "Your Basic Black Poet," cultural hybridity, Young updates the blues. If the subject matter, the inspiration that often gives rise to and feeds the blues is the highs, though more often the lows, of people oppressed, then these topics belong in the blues of an increasingly complex and globalised society.

In Something About the Blues," Al Young, as the title suggests, says something about the blues. In his "Statement on Poetics" at the end of the collection, Young says that "[a]fter 60 years of listening, I still feel as though I can't get started; as though I have so little to say about jazz and the roles all music continue to play in that curtainless sun-room in the mansion of my life, where thinking and telling take bloom." Though a force as elemental and dynamic as the blues can never be entirely captured and contained, Young does manage to say a great deal about the blues in this collection, and the spirit of the blues certainly moves within and through it. The inclusion of a CD with various live readings brings the poetry even closer, making it come to life. Unfortunately, the sound quality of the CD is not always consistent--the volume and clarity change from reading to reading, which is a bit disconcerting. It may be because they were recorded at different venues, without sufficient audio post-processing. And perhaps this is only a problem on the advance copy. Overall, the more time is spent with Something About the Blues, the more emerges that is beautiful, captivating, painful, powerful, sometimes soothing, and often thought-provoking. This collection of blues poetry comes highly recommended.