Sins of Omission

When I was in grade 10, I, along with several other girls, was given the assignment of preparing a presentation about birth control, which we then had to deliver in front of a class of eighth-graders at the junior high school across the field. There were no sex education classes…we were it. It’s sad to think that a bunch of 15-year-old girls who had never even been kissed would be the only sources of information about sex for a bunch of 13-year-olds.

I was elected to speak, and so I talked in great detail about birth control pills and IUDs, trying to use up all the time so that I wouldn't have to talk about anything else. One of my group members, a girl whose last name was Callow, whispered in my ear when I was showing signs that my presentation was drawing to a close. “We need to tell them about condoms.” Turns out I was more callow than she was, and I, too embarrassed to mention such a thing, wrapped it up instead. Yeah, I was raised by Brits…the topic of condoms wasn’t proper for a young lady to discuss in public. My hesitancy to talk about condoms rightly cost our group several points from the supervising instructor.

Looking back, I can’t blame it entirely on my youth or my gender or even my upbringing. Judging from what Pope Benedict XVI has done this week, it turns out that if I was older, a man, and Catholic, I would have behaved in the same way. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090317/ap_on_re_af/af_pope_africa My ignorance may have affected 30 students, assuming any of them were actually listening. The pope’s message certainly holds more weight, and was delivered on a continent where 22 million people are already infected with HIV. He suggests that the problem could actually get worse with condom usage.

It’s appalling that antiquated religious viewpoints can be deemed applicable to a very modern problem in an area where people are looking so desperately for help and advice. Why an 81-year-old man who has never even had sex should be turned to in such times is beyond reason. Better off, I think, getting a savvy 15-year-old girl to do the job instead.

Beautiful Butterfly

A butterfly landed on the walkway near my front door yesterday. It seemed an odd place to stop. There had been some rain just shortly before. The pavement was damp, and there was little sun to warm him. It couldn’t have been a comfortable place to rest, I thought, and I sensed that the butterfly was nearing death.

His delicate wings were stunning, and he displayed them so proudly for two hours before he folded them forever. I picked up his lifeless body gently and moved him off the walkway and into the garden. Within hours, ants began moving him away, tugging him to their underground home. I don’t like to think of them devouring him. I hope instead that they chose to make a pair of curtains from his gorgeous wings, or used them as a fancy tablecloth for their queen.

It's the Pits

My son came home from one of his college classes early yesterday. The instructor had dismissed the students early because several of them — my son included — got into a heated debate about pit bulls and what to do about the “problem.” My son, an avid defender of animals and a proud owner of a pit bull mix, was surprised by the ignorance of his classmates, and disturbed to hear many of them say things like, “If I ever see a pit bull, whether it’s with its owner or not, I will kick it in the head” and “All pit bulls should be rounded up and put down.”

This whole scenario stunned me on several levels. Firstly, I find it hard to believe that the instructor could not control and direct the conversation, but instead chose to simply dismiss the entire class. Aren’t colleges supposed to be the place where discourse happens? Secondly, the class, a Criminal Justice course, is one in which the instructor frequently tells his students not to draw conclusions about police officers or criminals based merely on what they hear in the media. Unfortunately, they (and indeed the instructor himself) did exactly that with what they’ve heard about the pit bull breed. This kind of thinking is no better than people who believe that all police officers are bad because of what some did to Rodney King. Or that all black men are criminals because O. J. Simpson murdered his wife. (Yeah, yeah, not officially.)

Pit bulls aren’t the only dogs that will attack. Dogs, although domesticated, are still animals, and can sometimes behave in ways we don’t understand. A police officer in Fremont, CA was recently attacked by a pack of chihuahuas. France’s former president Jacques Chirac was recently attacked by his poodle. Hopefully cool heads will prevail and no one will start calling for either breed to be banished.

I won’t refute the fact that pit bulls have attacked people in the past. Nor will I assert that these events are not disturbing and horrible. I wouldn’t wish an attack of that kind, by any animal, on anyone. But pit bulls are not inherently mean. They are themselves victims of people who choose to train them to attack. A pit bull is a strong dog. Its build gives it the potential to do serious damage to people and other animals. They seem to be the dog of choice for people who want to have an animal that could truly do some harm, and that’s unfortunate. But should all pit bulls therefore be rounded up and destroyed? Of course not. The problem is with the owners, not with the dogs.

Let’s work on keeping our streets free of drug activity. Let’s focus on enforcing dog licensing laws. Let’s ensure that all animals are given good homes and are treated properly. Let’s start thinking about what the real problems are. And let’s find solutions that eliminate those problems instead of proposing mindless fixes that don’t.

I Hate Love

Valentine’s Day is looming large. Television programs are interrupted with commercials showing men presenting diamond necklaces to beautiful, grateful women. My e-mail box is crammed full of suggestions for Valentine’s gifts, some naughty, some nice. And store shelves are loaded with cards, each offering a ready-made expression of love that will perfectly describe how you feel about your special someone.

But I have a confession to make: My heart doesn’t always go pitter-pat the minute my husband walks into the room. When I go away on business trips, I don’t stay awake at night pining for him. And thoughts of him rarely flutter through my heart when I’m trying to concentrate on something else.

Don’t get me wrong. I love my husband deeply, and I don’t regret one moment of my four years with him. But my love for him is not defined by fairy tales or Hallmark or Kate Hudson films. Perhaps ours is the kind of love that sounds completely boring to some, but I wouldn’t trade what I feel for my husband for any other definition of love.

Oh, I’ve felt the other kind of “love” in the past. There’ve been men who’ve made me swoon, men I’ve gotten all moony-eyed about, spent hours daydreaming about. I’ve felt the kind of love that exhausted me, love that left me completely drained. I’ve even sought out that kind of love, rejected some perfectly good men who didn’t sweep me completely off my feet, stayed with some perfectly horrible men because they did, and figured it couldn’t possibly be real love unless I felt like I was walking on Cloud 9. Love shouldn’t be like that. Love should make you feel stronger, not make you weak in the knees. Love should allow you opportunities to grow, not keep you feeling like you want to spend every waking moment with that other person. Love should make you feel secure, giving you room to think about other things, not emotionally chain your happiness to one other individual so that you can’t move forward as a unique person.

Love means caring immensely about what happens to your partner. Love means being mindful of that person’s feelings, and taking responsibility for being a good friend above all. Love means being mindful of your own feelings, and being a good friend to yourself. And love can be very quiet. It can tiptoe up to you, sneak glances at you from across the room for ages before you even notice it’s there. It doesn’t have to rush in and bowl you over. In fact, love shouldn’t. Love, if it’s worth having, should demonstrate more respect for you than that.

Nonetheless, on this Valentine’s Day, we’ll demonstrate our happiness to the world in some very traditional ways. He’ll give me chocolates and a card, we’ll go out to dinner, each wearing something red, and we’ll hold hands and bat our eyelashes at each other. We’ll satisfy all onlookers that we’re a couple of lovebirds. And when we’ve done all that, I look forward to going back to just the way we are today — content to be nothing more than truly in love.

It Makes Me Cry

Coal generates more than half of all the electricity in the US. And, as the coal industry’s dirtiest secrets are exposed, coal also generates increased public opposition and a growing number of activists every day.

Many of coal’s biggest opponents are residents of southern West Virginia, where coal companies engage in the particularly nasty form of mining known as “mountaintop removal.” The practice’s name is hardly representative of the activity. It’s much less “removal” than it is total destruction; and it’s not just the “mountaintop” that is obliterated, it’s the entire mountain.

Traditional coal-mining methods meant going underground to extract the mineral — an expensive and tedious process. During the past decade, however, coal companies have found it to be much less costly to simply dynamite the mountain away and get at the coal from above ground. Every day in West Virginia, three million pounds of dynamite are used to clear away mountains that have stood for centuries. The devastation extends beyond simply destroying a mountain that can never be replaced. The rocks that once hid the coal are dumped into valleys, covering streams and forests. And the blackwater that is the by-product of washing the coal “clean” is left behind dams: Billions of gallons of coal slurry wait behind flimsy walls. Eventually, the sludge either bursts through and floods away communities, as happened in 1972 in Buffalo Creek, killing 124 people, or leaches a poisonous soup of lead and arsenic into wells and drinking supplies, taking people’s lives slowly.

The recently released film Burning the Future: Coal in America does a wonderful job of illustrating the effects of the coal industry on the lives of ordinary people in West Virginia. Among the people featured in the documentary are Maria Gunnoe, Donetta Blankenship, and Larry Gibson — uncomplicated people whose families have lived in West Virginia for generations. All have taken on roles they never saw themselves fulfilling as the community works to save their way of life and the culture that is being threatened. Suddenly their lives have become very complicated because of the greed of coal companies and the lack of vision of this country’s political leadership, which has yet to decrease our reliance on a dirty source of cheap energy and create a cleaner path.

As the activists take on their new roles of community organizers, they face not only opposition from the coal companies, but also from some members of their own communities. Strangely enough, seeing copper-colored water, contaminated by coal slurry, pour out of their taps isn’t enough to convince some people that there is a problem. Some would rather accept the coal industry’s PR spin that environmentalists and activists are determined to do little more than take away people’s livelihoods. In impoverished communities in West Virginia, this divisive argument effectively turns neighbor upon neighbor, preventing them from having a greater voice, and allowing the companies to continue their filthy business. Ironically, as coal-mining operations rely more heavily on technology, the number of miners in the US has decreased. According to statistics published by the National Mining Association, there were 704,793 miners in the US in 1923; in 1973, just 50 years later, that figure was 148,121. In 2007, it was down to 81,278. As technology increases coal production, the number of miners required to do the job doesn’t keep pace.

Burning the Future cleverly and humorously uses the juxtaposition of words and images to get its message across. For example, scenes of bulldozers dumping tons of rock into valleys once abundant with life roll as Roger Lilly, a spokesman from Walker Machinery, talks about the coal industry’s “small and gentle footprint on the scenic beauty of West Virginia.” Lilly makes it sound like the coal companies’ use of his firm’s machinery during mountaintop removal actually improves the landscape: “As they run the ‘dozers to put the land back, it’s almost an artistic activity, to watch as they sculpt the mountains in really a great manner.”

With the coal-friendly Bush administration gone, now is the time for a much-needed debate about this country’s clean energy needs. If public outrage about the horrific environmental destruction now taking place in coal country doesn’t fuel the discussion, the future for West Virginia, and indeed for all the US, will be as black as the coal the country currently runs on.

It Makes Me Laugh

I love to laugh. While you might think everyone does, I’ve actually met people who have told me they don’t like to laugh, because they don’t like that feeling of losing control. To me, that’s the best part. The feeling that you might never breathe again, or might even yark. Eddie Izzard took me to that dangerous brink when I saw him in San Francisco two years ago. Rent his video Dress to Kill if you’re in need of a good larf.

I try not to analyze what tickles my funny bone, but sometimes I can’t help it. I went to see some improvisers the other night, and I barely cracked a smile at their efforts, never mind double over with tears streaming down my face, which is really what I wanted for my $8. Cheap laughs are so hard to find.

What makes me laugh is hardest is people’s reaction to the unexpected and seeing ordinary people do extraordinary things that I probably wouldn’t think of doing in my daily life. And the improviser’s job is to show me those things, to take those risks that just don’t present themselves. These improvisers were just trying too hard, relying more on their perceived wit than they were on humor that came out of interesting situations. They sat on chairs and talked endless talk, words they thought were funny, instead of getting on their feet and playing with energy, giving their fellow comedians an opportunity to react to action. Take us away from the everyday, and give us a clear vision of life outside our own. Show us activity, give us details, and you’ll make us laugh.

With this in mind, I’d like to share two videos that both gave me aching ribs this week. The first is of a wedding reception (watch it now before reading any further if you don’t want me to spoil the ending) in which one little activity starts a chain reaction, one that actually started before the ceremony even began, when the bride and groom chose to say their vows high atop a swimming pool. (I told you to watch it before reading ahead.) I love slapstick, admittedly, but the humor also lies in the details: the bridesmaid who giggles while she asks “Are you okay?” and the look on the minister’s face as he holds a soggy Bible.

The second is of an unemployed man who has decided to fill his day with an extraordinary activity. His reactions to what happens totally destroy me. Listen to him say “Ohhh, I hate this!” and tell me that’s not classic comedy. And it’s the details, such him mentioning that the balloon comes from South America that makes this bit so brilliant. Insanely funny stuff!

Enjoy! And if you don't laugh at either of these, you're thinking too hard.

Killing Them With Kindness

One of the toughest things I face while living outside of my home and native land is explaining to curious Americans what exactly goes on "up there." Why don't you play your Super Bowl in February too? What state is Ontario in? Is there both a zed and a zee in the Canadian alphabet? I answer all questions cheerfully (okay, most questions...having to explain what a "zed" is has made me lose my cool on more than one occasion), hoping to educate North Americans south of the border about everything Canadian. I haven't invented these questions, by the way. They are all verbatim from the mouths of Americans, and they should be horribly embarrassed by their ignorance.

But there's one thing that makes no sense and can't be explained no matter how hard I try, and one of which makes me horribly embarrassed to be a Canadian. As early as March, Canada will once again begin its unsightly practice of hunting seals, the world’s largest marine mammal hunt. More than 6,000 sealers, hakapiks in hand, will take to the ice to kill roughly 270,000 to 335,000 seals. Nobody understands this practice, and it's completely indefensible. This year, however, there's hope! Canada has made a few small changes to the rules of the hunt now that the country’s $13 million industry faces the possibility of a ban of seal furs from the European market.

The changes are based on an announcement made by the European Union’s Commissioner for the Environment Stavros Dimas last July: “Seal products coming from countries which practice cruel hunting methods must not be allowed to enter the EU. The EU is committed to upholding high standards of animal welfare.” This policy brought with it news that surely stunned Canadians like a smack on the head with a frozen club: “Seals are sentient mammals which can experience pain.”

So, in an effort to comply with Europe’s newly heightened awareness, the Canadian government has proposed new “humane” standards. Firstly, according to an official government publication, “No person shall use a club or a hakapik to strike a seal older than one year unless the seal has been shot with a firearm.” What? Shoot first, club later? Why would you need to club an animal that has already been shot? But for those frugal sealers who don’t want to waste a bullet, however, they can still conduct their business within acceptable standards by simply clubbing a baby seal, which usually happens anyhow. Win-win! Problem solved!

In previous hunts, sealers were required to ensure the animal was truly dead had before taking off its pelt by watching to see if it still was blinking, a test that was unreliable and more than occasionally resulted in seals being skinned alive. But faster than you can bat an eye, the Canadian government has instituted a humane solution to this problem, too! Now sealers must ensure that the seal’s skull is broken and that the animal has been bleeding for 60 seconds before they start to remove its skin. New! Improved!

Of course, all these displays of humanity will slow down the rampage. It will now take sealers much longer to bash their way through a club of baby seals, and consequently there might not be quite so many seal skins on the market this year. Not prepared to skip a beat, the Canadian government is now promoting the sale of harp seal heart valves in addition to the pelts. The Department of Fisheries and Oceans recently announced on its Web site that “promising research” has shown that the seal parts “are superior to those currently used in human heart valve transplants. It is thought that demand could be as high as 300,000 valves per year, at a cost of roughly C$5,000 (€3,400) each.” It is yet to be determined whether humane standards would be enforced for the collection of the seal’s heart valves, but it seems safe to presume that the valves would be not be required for use on a Canadian politicians, clearly a heartless bunch.