Violence not nudity affects children

Every year, there are colourful parades in Ottawa.  Two of the most interesting include provocative posters and men apparently dressed in women’s clothing: the National March for Life and the Capital Pride Parade.

I have attended a National March for Life rally as a spectator.  There were religious people participating and hundreds of children, some from local schools whom I recognized by their school uniforms.   This rally took place during a school day and students would have taken time off school to attend the rally.

A good number of the participants, including some of the children, were carrying gruesome posters of the dismemberment of women and what appeared to be full-term infants.  Just to make sure the message wasn’t lost, the words “Baby Killers” were scrawled across many of the posters.

It’s interesting to note how readily society accepts violent images even when directed toward children.  The results from a national survey in the United States indicate that 60% of children are exposed to direct or indirect acts of violence including bullying and domestic violence.  The results of an American Psychiatric Association study are also interesting: The typical American child watches 28 hours of television a week, and by the age of 18 will have seen 16,000 simulated murders and 200,000 acts of violence.  There's no reason to think that the numbers in Canada are much different.

Except perhaps for parent-child co-sleeping, studies indicate that exposure to nudity has little effect on children.  On the other hand, studies on violence and bullying directed toward children show an increase in the rate of youth suicide.  Ottawa’s Jamie Hubley is a tragic example but there are many similar stories we hear about everyday.

Let’s take a look at the Capital Pride Parade.  The Ottawa and Toronto pride parades take place during the summer when school is out and children are under parental supervision.  The school board in Ottawa makes no effort to encourage children to attend but we do have a float in the parade, a school bus covered in welcoming messages and colourful balloons.  I have participated in the pride parade here in Ottawa and while I noticed some nudity toward the end of the parade, I did not see any violent images.

As a trustee who supports our school board’s participation in the parade, my rationale springs from a desire for our schools to be welcoming to all children, regardless of race, religion, ethnicity or sexual orientation.   Our school board and many of our teachers individually support Gay-Straight Alliances to offer safe havens within our schools for gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and questioning students.  A recent study out of UBC indicates that GSAs reduce suicide risk for all students, gay and straight.

The persecution of gay people has been ongoing for centuries and the practice cannot be laid at the door of modern culture or pedagogy.  While many stereotypical slurs have decreased or fallen by the wayside, the phrase “that’s so gay” is still commonly used among young people as an expression of derision.  Bullying and the assault of gay youth are still common both in and out of school and the cultures of most high schools, Catholic and public, are not kind toward gay students.

With all this in mind, let’s discuss the effects of violence on young people and not become distracted by a red herring.  For children, bums are bums and water pistols are just water pistols even at a pride parade.  The effects of violence, on the other hand, can last a lifetime or even more tragically, can cut a lifetime far too short.  For the sake of our children, let’s start having an adult conversation about the very real effects of violence on youth.

The views expressed in this post are personal opinions only.

Tip on the tightrope

Dexter - the wonder dog

In my mind's eye, I see him bounding through the newly fallen snow.  Twirling and spinning in the air like Patrick Chan, but without years of practice and millions in support -- one graceful leap in a perfect arc after another.  My mother and I look on in awe.

He's Dexter, an australian sheperd and poodle mix. We adopted Dexter from another family when he was 18 months old and sometime later realized that he was likely the victim of unscrupulous breeders.  But at that special moment, all we could do was wonder at an animal in his heyday and marvel at his joy in being alive.

What is it to be alive?  There's a Blackfoot proverb that is very poetic, "It is the flash of a firefly in the night.  It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime.  It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset."  Life is walking the knife edge between the inertia of rock and the chaos of air.  In our minds, it can be a small happy place bounded by stultifying routine on one side and madness on the other.

Dexter on that winter day was at his prime, using his doggy skills to their maximum and enjoying every moment.  For humans, it's often the same.  We feel most alive when we push our boundaries, challenge ourselves, and gain new mental and physical skills. Citius, Altius, Fortius -- Faster, Higher, Stronger is the motto of the modern Olympic movement for a reason.

It's been exactly a year since I started writing this blog.  I have written close to 40 posts and have had over 15,000 page views.  I'm not a writer and am astounded that you continue to read.  Thank you.  This year, I participated in a beginner's triathlon and will soon begin a major academic challenge ... and I will be 60 years old in two months. Despite a health problem some years back, I feel much the way I did twenty years ago, mentally and physically.  In some ways, better!

All this to say that there is a trick to life.  New challenges keep body and mind young. Of course there will always be setbacks but try not to let them define you. Bounce back and embrace something new.  Live in the moment.

When I was 12, I tried to imagine myself in the year 2000.  I can still hear my child-self talking with a girlfriend and neither of us could envision living so long.  Now that I'm almost 60, I can't imagine not living.

Over the next 13 weeks, I will be studying under Marshall Ganz, the former organizer for the 2008 Presidential campaign of Barack Obama and the civil rights movement.  I applied to Professor Ganz's program in December and never dreamt I would be accepted. My studies will preoccupy me particularly since I haven't done much serious academic work in some time.  As generations of young men have said, I'll write.  Like them, I may not write often.

For those of you dreading that milestone birthday, let me assure you that sixty feels pretty good. You can re-invent yourself in life.  I'm comfortable in my skin, more at ease, smarter, in better shape, and happier than when I was forty.  Oh, and what I love most is the irreverence of my humour has become sharper.

Janelle Monáe in Tightrope

The ancient Greeks must have had the likes of Janelle Monáe in mind. Every goddess should be accompanied by such fine disciples. Listen to the lyrics of Tightrope. Sixty can be the new forty with conscious effort.  It's all about facing your fears and in Monáe's words, learning to "tip on the tightrope."

The views expressed in this post are personal opinions only.

Pete Seeger on hope

On the horizon, the hills above U.C. Berkeley were often brown for lack of rain.  Oakland, the city next door, was also brown but for lack of money.  It seemed that both the rain and money were reserved for the campus and its Californian students.  Unable to afford Berkeley's tuition fees, I took one course at a time.  My classmates seemed amazingly tolerant of my poverty and youth, I was the youngest in my class, but still I enjoyed the experience immensely.

Pete Seeger and Arlo Guthrie, 1975

This was Berkeley in the mid-70's and we took this tolerance for granted.  We were all equals here and we called our professors by their first names, a practice unheard of in previous generations.   We socialized with our teachers too and we challenged their ideas.  It was inclusive at the School of Public Health.

I loved the clash of ideas and it opened my eyes to the substantive, subversive notion that ideas, not people, are judged.  I loved listening to some of the great thinkers of that time, Ivan Illich and Eric Erikson, and loved that we could ask them questions.

On a beautiful spring day, almost everyday was beautiful in Berkeley, I didn't take my usual route to class along the lush footpaths lined with dark, dense growth and colourful bougainvillea.  Instead I went to Sproul Plaza, the main gate to the university.

Sproul Plaza was the hub of campus activity.  There was the lady dressed from head to toe in black, reciting poetry as she blew bubbles. There were the puppeteers with their large almost life-size political figures -- Reagan, Johnson, Kissinger -- there to deliver their message via street theatre.  There were the artists and pundits showing off their wares and abilities.  And there was a lone fundamentalist preacher delivering his sermon in front of the grand fountain that was the centre of the plaza.

Normally our preacher was without an audience but on that particular day, he had a large crowd before him and he was in fine form.  I stopped to listen too.  Behind our preacher, unbeknownst to our preacher,  stood a beautiful young woman on the edge of the fountain reflecting the gold of that day in her long blonde hair.

At about that time, Pete Seeger and Arlo Guthrie came to the Bay Area.  I hadn't heard much anti-war music and they were mostly unknown to me.  The music left a lasting impression and this was Pete Seeger's genius.  Like few before him, Seeger understood that lyrics can stay fresh in the mind long after mere words disappear.

In 1961, Seeger was convicted by The House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) of 10 counts of contempt of Congress and yet a few short years later, he became one of America's best-known troubadours without having served a single day in jail.  Did Seeger know something the rest of us didn't when he arranged the old gospel song "We shall overcome" in 1940?

For Seeger, the banjo was his vehicle to call attention to the injustice of the Vietnam War and like Seeger, the struggle to end the war dominated our thoughts in Berkeley.  Almost every young person belonged to a political or civic organization.  We staged regular public meetings and protests against military recruitment on campus.  I became hooked on politics.

What might Pete Seeger tell us today about this time in his life?  Perhaps it was Seeger who was standing next to me at that fountain in Sproul Plaza on April 30, 1975.  I think he would have enjoyed the scene that followed as the blond removed her clothing while shouting, "The war is over.  The war is over!"  And perhaps it was then that he leaned over and whispered, "If you sing for children, you can't really say there's no hope."

The pictured album cover is how Pete and Arlo looked in 1975.  At the concert, they played a wonderful song of hope, Quite Early Morning.  This is a live recording.  Pete Seeger, you taught us well. History is about change and there is always hope.


The views expressed in this post are personal opinions only.