Tuesday's Child

British North America Bank, Kingsmere, originally uploaded by The River Thief. Copyright Ruth Seeley 2007.

Monday’s Child

Monday's child is fair of face,
Tuesday's child is full of grace,
Wednesday's child is full of woe,
Thursday's child has far to go.
Friday's child is loving and giving,
Saturday's child works hard for a living,
But the child born on the Sabbath Day,
Is fair and wise and good and gay.

-- Mother Goose

I’ve always loved this rhyme, partly because I was born on a Tuesday. Being fair of face would be nice, and if I had to rank the days on which I could have been born, I’d say that after Tuesday, being loving and giving (Friday’s child), or a fair-of-face Monday’s child would be the next best things. I don’t aspire to be a Sunday’s child, although obviously they have it all. Sometimes I’ve wondered if they made a mistake and I was actually born on a Thursday or a Saturday, along with all those others for whom life seems to be semi-constant struggle.

The swimming metaphor for life has always worked for me. Technically I’m a fire sign, but there’s a LOT of water in my chart. (This is not an astrology-free zone.) For some parts of your life you’re floating, drifting in the water currents and letting them take you where they will. You’re strong and confident, and in this phase of existence you feel extremely safe and relaxed. Who doesn’t love this phase?

When things are going badly in my life, I feel like I’m treading water. Anyone who’s been broke for an extended period of time and has had to effect economies knows this. I’ve always relied on my sense of humour to get me through the rough patches, and so far it’s working. Over the course of the past year I’ve found myself thinking a lot about the expression, Don’t borrow trouble. I’ve made a conscious effort to stop worrying about whether things are going to work out or not. A former friend is right: it will all work out.

And then there are the times when you’re trying to get somewhere and the only way to do that is to swim purposefully and vigorously towards your destination. I seem to have had fewer periods of this phase in my life than the other two. I’m not sure why that is, and I wonder if other people feel the same way, or if there is just a fairly wide variance amongst people in terms of precisely how purposeful they are. I’ve often been described as ‘driven’ – but I make quite a few left turns along the way. I like to navigate by the sun and reflect by the moon.

I agree that the death of one’s parents means one has reached the final phase of separation and individuation (although some choose not to separate and individuate – I’m not quite sure why). My mother’s death has given me something I am not sure she ever truly wanted me to have, although it’s something she often said she wanted for me: a sense of infinite possibilities. Ordinarily I am a decisive person. As I get older, however, I have learned to temper my spontaneity with a little reflection. Now for a lake, some sunshine, and a flat-bottomed rowboat in which to sit and reflect.

Wind Swimmer by Doug Taylor

Wind Swimmer by Doug Taylor, originally uploaded by The River Thief.

Those of you who know me are aware of the fact that my mother died last week - Monday night for me, very early on Tuesday morning her time.

I am not ready to write about her yet, but I will have to - that, for better or for worse, is what writers do.

She wrote her own obituary, for which I am grateful. I am also grateful to my cousins who have reached out to me.

More on this subject later. But in the meantime, her obituary:

SEELEY, Lois (nee Potter)
Died Tuesday, June 26, 2007 in her 82nd year after a 10-year struggle with interstitial lung disease (pulmonary fibrosis) at Valley View Villa, Stellarton, Nova Scotia. Lois was born in Ottawa West, Nepean Township, to the late Margaret Gertrude (Murphy) Potter and Andrew Boucher on February 28, 1926, and graduated from the High School of Commerce in Ottawa. She served proudly as a member of the Canadian Women's Army Corps in World War II, attaining the rank of Sergeant, with postings to Ottawa, Saint John and Vancouver. She left when the CWAC was disbanded in 1946. In 1953, Lois married the love of her life, Allan Frederick Seeley, in Ottawa, where their only child, Ruth Elizabeth Seeley, was born in 1955. Lois and Allan worked for many years for the Federal Government in Ottawa, and in 1974, Allan returned to the Maritimes to a posting with Environment Canada. Unfortunately, he died young (64) in 1991. She is survived by her daughter, Ruth, Burnaby, B.C. At Lois's request, her body has been cremated. Interment at a later date in Ottawa, Ontario. Arrangements entrusted to Colchester Community Funeral Home, Truro, Nova Scotia. Very many thanks to Dr. Debra Morrison for her care and devotion over the past 10 years.

Successful networking...not

Building for sale, originally uploaded by The River Thief. Copyright Ruth Seeley 2007

I went to the Successful Consulting and Contracting networking breakfast this morning, having been invited by friend Antoinette Leong of Indaba Design, who took the two-week program last summer and, like all the other program grads I've met, had nothing but good things to say about it. For more information on SCC, check out this link: http://www.goconsult.ca/.

I'm so glad Antoinette was there; also very glad we ran into Edel Walsh, another SCC and self employment program grad from my group.

Sadly, it seems you can dress me up but you can't really take me anywhere. At least, not that early in the morning (I got up at 5:30 to get downtown for 8:30 as I had some work to finish off before I left the house). The muffins were great but it took a while for me to get some coffee - and I had barely had two sips of it when I knocked my mug over and soaked the front of my jacket with it. Luckily it was a double-breasted jacket so the coffee didn't go through to my shirt, nor was it hot enough to do any damage. Also fortuitously, it was great coffee and it smelled really good. Why haven't they invented any coffee-flavoured colognes? Why should vanilla have the field all to itself? I'm not so sure others share my enthuasiasm for coffee cologne though. Between the din and the crowds and suddenly being sopping wet, I just wanted to escape.

Which is a shame, because ordinarily the best parties are the ones where you know no one - or next to no one. Better luck next time. Invite me to your party - I just might show up.

Portraiture

Having finally arranged to get CBC's news digest emailed to me every morning (it's been a while since I've been able to do that, not sure if it's been technical issues with the old laptop or whether it was a problem with www.cbc.ca), I was surprised to read of the controversy surrounding Annie Leibovitz's new photographic portrait of the Queen.

The controversy is peculiar. As I understand it, there are two major issues being dealt with here. The first (and easiest to explain), is that due to our very mixed responses to the idea of the monarchy in the 21st Century, there is bound to be mixed response. Americans are simultaneously defiant of and awed by the whole concept of a monarchy, given their revolutionary past and their rejection of parliamentary democracy. Canadians, as former colonials who didn't have to stage a revolution in order to become a country, can be fawningly sentimental about royals. The Brits' attitude can be summed up by saying, "It's fine for ME to slag my mother - the minute you begin to criticise her, you're in big trouble." [Nod to British spelling there.]

The second issue is a little more subtle and harder to explain. In fact, it seems like a peculiarly Canadian sort of response to the portrait, and that's what makes it puzzling, since there's really no Canadian involvement here. But here in Canada we have a tendency not to revere our most famous offspring, but instead to start chipping away at them for precisely the things we loved most about them when their careers first took off. Love him or hate him, Liberal or Reform/Tory, no one can deny that Lester B. Pearson and Pierre Elliott Trudeau raised Canada's profile globally and transformed us from a nation (in the world's minds) of lumberjacks, fishermen and miners into a country with an idea or two about how to achieve peace in our time, potential thought leaders who would rather negotiate than wage war. But even the most diehard Liberals found Trudeau's imposition of the War Measures Act hard to swallow - and when he finally ended his long bachelorhood we didn't hesitate to criticize his choice of wife on a whole host of fronts.

So the criticism of the Leibovitz portrait of the Queen centres around the fact that it is not sufficiently "edgy" and that it is "unlike" her portraits of John Lennon and Whoopi Goldberg and Clint Eastwood and Demi Moore. It is "less staged by Leibovitz" basically. Aside from the unlikeliness of even Leibovitz being able to persuade the Queen to pose naked in bed with a clothed Prince Philip, in a milk bath, tied up, or naked and hugely pregnant, this criticism misses the mark entirely. This portrait was a commission, and a highly prestigious one: an official portrait of the best known and most influential reigning monarch in the Western world. It wasn't a cover for Rolling Stone or Vanity Fair of an actor of musician who by virtue of his or her artistic talent had become famous, regardless of origin. And the Queen has a vested interest in how she is represented to the world. By virtue of her birth, she has always known that she would have 15 minutes of anonymity rather than 15 minutes of fame.



Photo by Annie Leibovitz, courtesy Contact Press/NB Pictures

For a better view of the portrait, see this link - it just seemed stupid to blog about a portrait without actually reproducing it. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/6614187.stm

I think this is quite an amazing portrait. The fact that the subject is not gazing at the photographer, but at something else in the room, is an interesting choice under the circumstances, reflective of trends in portraiture, but still an interesting choice for an official portrait. Her expression is contemplative, musing, contained...and regal. It seems totally appropriate for a monarch who has reigned for more than half a century and has witnessed some of the most turbulent events and phenomenal changes the world has ever seen. There are several other interesting things about this portrait. The fact that the French doors are open, admitting a view of a sky that can only be called ominous, is significant. And then there's the fact that the subject is really quite tiny in the scale of the portrait - the urn in the foreground actually occupies more of the space in the portrait than the Queen's entire body. Why choose to photograph her seated, and from such a distance? I'd suggest this is what discussion of the portrait should centre on, rather than on questions pertaining to the photographer's personal life and losses and the influence of Susan Sontag on her life and work.

And as part of a compare and contrast exercise, take a look at the last commissioned painting of the Queen, by Lucian Freud in 2001. While I haven't researched the response to this painting thoroughly, it strikes me as odd that no one noticed it appears to be a portrait not of Queen Elizabeth II, but rather of Prince Philip wearing a wig and crown. Or is it just me?



The Royal Collection © Lucian Freud

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/1723071.stm

Update: for a different, pro-Freud point of view, see this article:

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601088&sid=aqeLAkuYdldw&refer=muse

The dark side of life (and blogging)

Hotel Empress on East Pender copyright Ruth Seeley 2006

As with any addiction, this article suggests that if you no longer have time to watch a movie (or your child take his/her first step), you're probably blogging too much. Personally, I've never been all that ambitious about blogging - if I didn't enjoy it, I wouldn't do it.



read more | digg story

Is nothing sacred? I mean, original?

Just a quick note to say I had no idea I'd borrowed my blog title from Primo Levi, whose book I haven't read. Technically, of course, the book was written as Se non ora, quando? (in 1982). Not sure when it was translated into English as If Not Now, When?

I don't think, from what I read about it on Wikipedia, that he meant the same thing as I did by asking the question. For me, it occurred to me when I was 40ish and was first willing to admit to being middle aged (I don't aspire to living to 100), that the fundamental question of middle age is precisely that: If not now, when? If I really want to do this and I haven't yet done it, when am I going to get around to it? From what I've read in the new specialty women's magazines for the menopausal, such as More, the question occurs to a lot of people at this stage of life. I read a hilarious article at the hairdresser's a couple of years ago about crossing things off one's 'to do' list - regardless of whether one had done them or not. One woman let herself off the hook on the bungie jumping front because she wasn't willing to risk spraining an ankle.

Anyway, my posthumous apologies to Primo Levi. The title of this blog was not intended to be any sort of homage, reference, or mockery of him, his work, or his life. Just another case of synchronicity, great minds thinking alike, fools seldom differing....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/If_Not_Now%2C_When%3F

Read 'em and Weep - Scott Butki on books we should have loved

Great summary of the most over-hyped books in recent(ish) memory - including Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Life of Pi, and (snort) The Celestine Prophecy.

I 'dugg' an article for the first time (is dugg the past tense of 'digg'?) and couldn't find an appropriate category so filed it under "Science - Space." That should get some chins wagging. (See article below; digg tried to insist it had already been dugg - they're having difficulty distinguishing between "Read IT and Weep" and "Read 'Em and Weep" obviously.)

The article was from Blogcritics - another first - hadn't seen that site before. Where have I been? Reading books, I guess. Speaking of reading: Geraldine Brooks' March was quite wonderful - weakened somewhat in the last third by her decision to suddenly present Mrs. March as the narrator, when the first two thirds of the novel were all told from Mr. March's point of view. Based on Louisa May Alcott's father rather than her husband (Little Women was fairly autobiographical apparently), I was astonished to discover her dad had 'invented' recess. Children everywhere need to know this. And Greg Hollinghead's Bedlam was quite wonderful too, a fictional account of tea merchant James Tilly Matthews, confined to a notorious lunatic asylum in the late 18th, early 19th centuries for his attempts to prevent war between France and England shortly after the French Revolution.

read more | digg story

Conspicuous consumption versus sustainability

Sun flare on Burrard Street, originally uploaded by The River Thief. Copyright Ruth Seeley

If my last post sounded rather peevish, I apologize. There's no doubt I've benefited greatly from technological innovations. Unlike a British friend of mine who told me he was the only doctor in his entire London hospital who still uses a paper datebook and who has had to be talked through using phone cards (his response to the blog was, "Bloody Hell, how did you do THAT, Ruth?"), I'm not a Luddite. Honest. In fact, it's doubtful I would ever have started taking photographs if I hadn't waited till digital cameras were relatively affordable (and more important, relatively easy to use). My first experiments with a complicated digital camera were less than salubrious (of course it was midnight and there was no manual).

It's when the technology you rely on suddenly doesn't work that I get exercised. I went to high school with Giles Slade, author of Made to Break. I haven't yet read it, and I've read some criticism of some of the statements he makes and the research behind the book. It isn't enough, in my opinion, to discredit his fundamental premise. We're churning through stuff at a fast and furious rate. We've created a world of haves and have-nots that's delineated by computer and internet usage. At this point, you're considered a have-not if you're not running Windows Vista on your computer. My poor old laptop is five years old and in desperate need of not only a new keyboard but of more memory - not because of data files I've added in five years of ownership, but because the frequent updates to Windows XP, the system it came with, have meant there's no memory left to run anything but the operating system.

We still seem to have only the most rudimentary system of recycling computer goods to ensure they don't end up in landfills. Luckily there are enough people in my age group who are slow or reluctant adopters of technology that I don't think I need to worry about what to do with any of the spare bits and bobs of technology I end up with. I'm not buying at a very fast rate and I'm using the technology I purchase long past its "best by" date. When I'm done with it, it goes to a friend. My first home computer, a Mac LCII, served me well for three years, despite the sneers from my internet service provider from my very first call to them. I believe the word "antique" was used, as the machine was already three years old when I got it.

Anyway - you get my point. Western culture has evolved into one that venerates not just youth, but the shiny and the new at the expense of all else. It's strange to think that we don't really understand the concept of sustainability except in our own human physical terms. If we applied the economic concepts we've embraced (continuous rapid growth) to our persons, we'd all weigh 700 pounds by now and be unable to move. Is it because I'm not sufficiently well versed in economics that I just don't get this?

Convergence and Romantic Misdiagnosis

Romantic Misdiagnosis, originally uploaded by The River Thief. Collage copyright Ruth Seeley; photo copyright James Nash.

It is indeed wonderful to sit at one's computer and listen to the radio station you've created on Pandora playing an eclectic mix of songs that run the gamut from Sarah Harmer and Rufus Wainwright through Bryan Ferry and Louis Armstrong with many stops in between as you work away on a Word document you're being paid to create. A little ping announces that you do indeed have email and when you want (or need) to take a break from work you can log onto the social networking site of choice (mine, of course, is flickr), and interact with people around the world who share your interests.

Here's the downside. Having finally bought a digital SLR camera, I anticipated a learning curve with it. I even set aside time for learning what all the buttons did and how to take decent photos with a different camera. What I was unable to anticipate, though, was that my laptop would get sick (there's no other way to describe it, it has even been coughing up dust through its speakers, and the grinding noises it's making are worthy of the worst Victorian catarrah - I'm about to pour some laudanum into it to make it stop). Because it's a digital camera, though, I am experiencing the downside of convergence. When my computer's not working, the camera too is useless. There's no electronic backup that works for this situation. I learned several years ago that the backup I need for my contacts is a hard copy - whether printed from Outlook or in an old-fashioned address book - so I at least have the phone number of my ISP when I can no longer connect to the internet. I'm at a loss for a digital camera uploading and editing backup system though.

And so, at the height of my frustration with the reality of convergence, I found myself on Easter Sunday morning tearing up pieces of paper to create this collage. That seemed like about as much technology as I could live with happily that weekend: paper, scissors, and glue. I'm glad I also have a book or two to read - and that the idea of watching television on my computer screen has always been anathema to me. In the same way that I have come to believe multitasking is overrated, I'm not much interested in having a cell phone perform several critical functions for me. It's enough that it enables me to talk to people and is portable so I don't have to stay home to wait for calls. That in and of itself is liberating. I don't really want my cell phone to give me a pedicure.

Listen and learn: Martin Wilmott on Photography as a Businesss

I came across Martin's blog this morning and was so impressed by his audio tips in the blog post below that I had to blog about it myself. The key point he makes in his audio slideshow is that business is business: it doesn't matter if you're trying to make a living as a photographer or as a shoemaker. Check it out - it's marvellous that he's provided the synopsis free.

Martin Wilmott Photography: Photography as a Business

How not to handle a crisis - the Menu Foods recall and Petcetera

Storkvane, originally uploaded by The River Thief. Copyright Ruth Seeley

For a variety of reasons, I've been following the Menu Foods Income Fund pet food recall story with keen interest.

• I remember receiving a fairly frantic phone call from my parents many years ago at the time of the Tylenol recall. I had been travelling on business to Chicago every month for almost a year, and when my parents heard the story on the news they immediately called to make sure I hadn't bought any while in Chicago.

• My own cat died just over two years ago from kidney failure, and his death was preceded by agonizing decisions on my part concerning what tests I should subject him to, how effective the tests would be in determining the cause of his problems, and how far one should be willing to go to prolong an animal's life. Blood tests? Ultrasound? Exploratory surgery? As with any loved one, you have to try to balance quality of life and torture you're about to inflict or allow others to inflict with your desire to keep a person or a creature you love alive.

• I've 'worked' a few crises as a corporate communications practitioner.

Menu Foods Income Fund would seem to have started out well in terms of dealing with the crisis when it was discovered animals that had eaten its wet and semi-moist private label cat and dog foods were suffering from kidney failure. My heart went out to the Toronto woman I saw on the news who had already spent $6000 on vet bills for her cat, only to be told that he would die in less than a year anyway. The recall by Menu Foods was comprehensive, the creation of a toll-free line and a recall web site was swift, and frequent updates have been issued.

So I was shocked to see a Petcetera vice president on CTV news last night saying that he had heard about the recall from the reporter rather than from anyone at Menu Foods. How is this possible?

I have no way of knowing whether Menu Foods is using a public relations firm to help with its crisis communications. I certainly hope they are, because crises are stressful for all concerned. I can't imagine that if it were using the firm I used to work for that a major stakeholder group - its retailers - would have been overlooked, as seems to be the case.

And so, while it's good to see that the company has stepped up to the plate in some ways, it reinforces the need for crisis communications planning. This crisis involves the whole company, and personnel should have been pulled from sales, marketing, customer service, accounting, shipping, human resources, you name it - each and every department it has - to ensure a major stakeholder group (and the single most important link in the supply chain at this point) had been contacted.

The time to plan for a crisis is not while you're in the middle of it. It's too late to put together the list of phone and fax numbers and email addresses for all your suppliers, customers, industry associations, government officials and other stakeholders after the crisis has happened. Like it or not, some people don't watch or read the news. Some people make a point of tuning out while they're on vacation - even die-hard news junkies. I remember coming back to Toronto from a week-long workshop in North Bay after having studiously avoided listening to the radio, watching television or reading the paper for eight or nine days. As we got off the 401 at the Dufferin exit and headed south, there were hundreds of people waving Italian flags. I thought Italy had invaded Canada. But it was just a World Cup Soccer win.

I've just done a preliminary check of the blogosphere and see that this crisis isn't affecting just Menu Foods' reputation. The fact that Petcetera was slow (for whatever reason) to get the products off its shelves is going to affect its reputation as well.

http://www.empressoftheuniverse.blogspot.com/

For another take on how Menu Foods has handled this crisis from communications perspective (and a comparison of how GoDaddy.com did), see this post from Thalsar Ventures:

http://thalasar.com/archives/crisis_manageme.html

Love (and pain and the whole damn thing)

Plenty, originally uploaded by The River Thief. Copyright Ruth Seeley

I have always claimed that neither the unexamined nor the over-examined life is worth living. It’s all about striking that ephemeral and constantly shifting balance between taking a long hard look at yourself so you don’t make the same mistakes over and over and over again, and driving yourself crazy by never letting a popsicle just be a popsicle.

To say that I was thrilled to be invited to the first of Edel Walsh’s Interactive Seminars on February 15, 2007, is an understatement. Edel is launching her firm, Attitudes Consulting, with a series of six interactive seminars at Rhodes Wellness College in Vancouver. Appropriately, the February topic is love – or am I the only one who thinks that’s the best possible topic for the month? Coming on the heels of one of the most artificial ‘special days’ on the calendar, the post-Valentine’s Day seminar will be a two-hour interactive exploration of an issue that affects our personal, family and work relationships.

For me, February has been a tough month for a long time. My mother’s birthday is at the end of the month, and my father died on Valentine’s Day. It’s rare for me to not spend the first six weeks of the new year feeling somewhat anxious, as issues relating to my family of origin resurface. And then there’s the whole Valentine’s Day issue – although observing the anniversary of your father’s death is the world’s best excuse for not having a date. (Why do I feel I need an excuse for February 14 but not for any other day of the year? Perhaps I’ll figure that out at the seminar.) Last year I decided to do a photo essay to honour the 15th anniversary of my dad’s death, a quite deliberate self-directed form of art therapy. It was intense and absorbing, and a tribute he would have appreciated. I dedicated the series to all my male friends, past and present, virtual and real, because I know my father is the yardstick against which they are all being measured. And I also know that it’s in my choice of male friends that I feel my father’s spirit live on.

But enough about me. Edel Walsh is a dynamic, talented counselor, coach, and facilitator. I met her as part of the New Ventures Network self employment program (see my post ‘Beginnings’ in this blog’s October 2006 archives). We talked a lot about what she hopes to do with her new venture. As a veteran of many corporate workplaces seeking to effect change – or needing desperately to change and not having a clue how to go about it effectively, her goal - to help progressive companies and committed individuals develop dynamic relationships in all areas of their lives – struck a chord in me. This series of seminars will be held the third Thursday of every month, and topics will include love, fear, purpose, spirituality, sex, emotional intimacy, pain, success, money, anxiety, joy, depression, wounds, anger, ego, addictions, and peace.

From Edel Walsh’s brochure for the series:

If relationships were working, most of us would have no need for counselling, coaching, and support groups. We would be walking through them with confidence, clarity and peace. But relationships often bring up unresolved issues, resulting in pain, anxiety, and fear; when we understand what is being asked of us in our relationship challenges, we can rise to meet them and grow in the process.

Contact her to attend – 778-895-8983 – and look for her soon-to-be launched web site, www.attitudesconsulting.ca.

New links

Copyright Ruth Seeley

I've just added a couple of links relating to professionalism and intellectual property. For any 'knowledge worker' they can be invaluable, not only because they provide guidelines for what to charge, but also because they clearly outline why writers, photographers, graphic designers, and artists should not participate in the devaluation of work that only they can do. I don't mean there's only one writer in the world who can do the job, or only one graphic designer. I mean, rather, that in hiring a creative professional one is paying for services that are unique. There will never be consensus when judging writing or photography: there's always an element of subjectivity at play. Being technically literate doesn't make you a writer. Nor does knowing how to operate a camera make you a photographer. The criterion for professionalism in both fields is, to a large extent, the degree to which those who can are willing to pay.

The "No Spec" site outlines the reasons why giving it away devalues all work. The "What Writing Is Worth" site gives some very clear guidelines regarding current rates writers are - and should be - charging.

Early in my career I remember talking about rates to a magazine art director and to a copy editor. Both were at the top of their professions in Toronto, Canada's magazine publishing capital. The art director told me that he had watched the rates for illustration and photography fall by two thirds at a time inflation in Toronto can only be described as galloping. This was in the early 80s, when large companies tended to give 12% raises as cost-of-living increases (more for merit; I got a 20% raise in 1982 or 1983 and I hadn't asked for a dime). It was also only a few years before the unprecedented rise in home prices: 47% in a single year - 1986 - which eclipses Vancouver's 23% increase in 2006. It wasn't pressure from publishers that led to the drop in prices paid for full-page illustrations or photos in the magazines he art directed. It was people trying to get into the field undercutting more established artists' prices.

The copy editor explained very succinctly all the things her seemingly high rate didn't cover: vacations, statutory holidays, the cost of reference materials, health and dental benefits, and contributions to her pension plan. Conservative estimates of the cost of these benefits range from between one third to one half of salaries. By the mid-1990s, health benefits included up to $500 a year for massage, subsidized health club memberships, at better Canadian companies, paid sabbaticals and interest-free loans to buy home computers....

Think about it when next you quibble with a writer, a photographer, a graphic designer, or an illustrator about their rates. You do get what you pay for. We can't really do much about our cost of production. Most of us hone our skills throughout the course of our lifetimes. I'm a far better writer today than I was 10 years ago. I'm a much better photographer than I was even two years ago. And no, I won't write your press release for $15 an hour. Sorry.

Counting blessings 2007

Mira's Crocuses, originally uploaded by The River Thief. Copyright Ruth Seeley

“Whenever … you feel like criticizing anyone … just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

I first read The Great Gatsby when I was 12, and almost 40 years later, although I no longer reread it annually, it still provides me with a moral and ethical base of operations for the conduct of my day-to-day life. I no longer agree that the very rich are different from you and me – I’ve known enough rich people (whether rich by virtue of inheritance or as a result of their own hard work, talent, and luck) to know that net financial worth alone isn’t the determining factor in whether someone is a decent human being or not. Those who have never experienced adversity of any sort, who have led a charmed existence, are really the ones you have to watch out for, whether those people are career criminals or just people who’ve never been unemployed, never been broke, enjoy rude good health, and seem to sail through life with everything to smile about. It’s understandable that they may lack empathy or the ability to see how their actions impact others. I myself have been hideously lacking in both understanding of and empathy for back pain sufferers, for instance. Or at least I was until I put my back out once when in my early 30s, and learned firsthand how demoralizing it was be unable to perform as simple an action as brushing one’s hair without pain.

That experience (mercifully short lived and not repeated), taught me a lot about what I don’t know, and set me on a slightly different path in terms of the way I relate to others. I never did think I knew it all. The older I get the less I realize I actually know.

The good news about this is that my attitude is, “I’ve got a lot to learn.” The bad news is also that I’ve got a lot to learn – and less time left to learn it. I’m trying to be a lot more discriminating in my reading these days, and a part of that process is starting to read more non-fiction. In December I requested a copy of Roméo Dallaire’s account of the UN peacekeeping mission, Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda, from the library, and while it was a tough read on various levels, I finished it earlier this week. I do have a slightly morbid approach to Christmas reading, I realize. One year I read Jane Smiley’s Greenlanders and Barry Unsworth’s Sacred Hunger in the week between Christmas and New Year’s. Somehow reading about starving Greenlanders in the Middle Ages and the origins of the slave trade over the festive season actually made me count my blessings, something I found difficult to do at the time since I was at the onset of a five-year bout of Achilles tendonosis and in considerable pain. Still, I wasn’t starving and I was no one’s slave, and since I had time off that year, as long as I didn’t try to walk I was all right.

Shake Hands with the Devil (just to repeat myself) is a difficult book. The sheer volume of acronyms is hard to handle, and I haven’t seen anything like it since I worked in high tech public relations, where one of my colleagues said, “For the first six months I had no idea what anyone was talking about at the weekly work in progress meetings, the acronyms were flying so fast and furious.” I was almost at the end of the book before I clearly understood who the RGF was and who the RPF was, and who the chief players of both armies were. Dallaire does a good job of providing his personal background, while failing to adequately explain Rwanda’s history as a country and former German, then Belgian colony. Having grown up in a former British colony, I don’t know much about other forms of colonial rule, direct or indirect. Of course, as a Canadian, I think often of the words I read in an annual collection of Scottish short stories about the similarities between Canada and Scotland: two countries with distinct cultures that are continually bombarded by the culture of their neighbours to the immediate south - and that represent 10 times their population.

And then there is the subject matter itself, and Dallaire’s obvious pain and frustration at the role he was forced to play and the ruin of so many of his dreams. Reading about genocide cannot ever be a pleasant experience (unless you’re really perverse, and I don’t even want to think about that). To his credit, Dallaire is open about his personal ambitions, his naïve excitement at getting the command, his desire to do good, and frank about the effect the horrors he witnessed had on him. Unfortunately, he's so engaging that he garners most of the sympathy.

And so it wasn’t until the very end of Shake Hands with the Devil that the importance of the Rwandan genocide really hit me, and what Dallaire says about terrorism foreshadows what Thomas Friedman says in The World is Flat: if the underlying causes of terrorist rage are not addressed, the so-called war on terrorism will never be won. There won’t even be a ceasefire.

From Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda, by Lieutenant-General Roméo Dallaire with Major Brent Beardsley (Toronto: Random House Canada, 2003, pp. 520-521):

At the Canadian Forces Peace Support Training Centre, teachers use a slide to explain to Canadian soldiers the nature of our world. If the entire planet is represented by one hundred people, fifty-seven live in Asia, twenty-one in Europe, fourteen in North and South America, and eight in Africa…. Fifty percent of the wealth of the world is in the hands of six people, all of whom are American. Seventy people are unable to read or write. Fifty suffer from malnutrition…. Thirty-five do not have access to safe drinking water. Eighty live in sub-standard housing. Only one has a university or college education.

It isn’t only the very rich who are different from you and me. When the impulse to whinge and moan strikes me, I think I’m going to reread this passage and count myself lucky to be among the 30 who can read and write, the 14 living in the Americas, the 50 not suffering from malnutrition, the 65 with access to safe drinking water (except for a few turbidity issues for short periods of time here in Vancouver). And even luckier to be the one who’s had the chance to complete a university degree.

Throughout most of 2006, my friends, family, and acquaintances have sustained me and brought me much joy. To all of you: thank you. If I am unable to return the favour directly, I hope you know me well enough by now to know that I will certainly pass on your kindness and generosity to someone else. This photo is dedicated to all of you in the hope that you will remember that, to quote Fitzgerald yet again: "In the real dark night of the soul, it is always 3 o'clock in the morning." (from The Crack Up). Here’s a link that expresses verbally what I hope this photo says visually about fear, pain, growth and hope:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Night_of_the_Soul

And a link to the Dallaire book:

http://www.randomhouse.ca/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780679311713

And a link to the Friedman book:

http://www.thomaslfriedman.com/worldisflat.htm

Happy New Year.